From the Editor

It’s 6:00 AM, and my dachshund puppy is chewing a bone on the couch beside me. Every minute or so, he drops the bone off the couch and looks up at me in the most pathetic way. Of course, I stop writing every time to return the bone, which he happily receives, chews, and then proceeds to drop again. This is not the subject of my editor’s note, but it is annoying.

I like building things. It’s a hobby I discovered just out of college when I realized my English degree wasn’t going to take me anywhere. I got a job as an apprentice carpenter at a company my brother worked for. A lot of the work was dirty and uncomfortable, crawling under houses through spiderwebs and mummified mice, wrapping myself in Tyvek and duct tape in the heat of July for a week of “lead-safe demolition”, but sometimes I got to cut wood into pieces and screw it to stuff, an undeniably good time.

I have since pivoted careers again, but the desire to make stuff has not gone away. Unfortunately, apartment living makes carpentry an inconvenient hobby. Tenants are discouraged from renovating, and unless I set up shop in the dining room, most of the places I’ve lived had no room for big dusty messes. Until now.

I bought a house at the beginning of October. It’s the type of house with an endless list of not-quite-essential repairs. The list completely overwhelms my wife. I want to quit my job and submerge myself in that sweet spiral of hammering nails, spreading joint compound, and digging fence holes. I built a desk out of scrap wood; I was nine years old again, sitting in a hayfield, playing with my Playmobil guys. I didn’t leave the shed until the desk was finished.

I’m not the first to say that creative writing is like building (no references needed; just Google that exact expression). You start with nothing. You turn that nothing into something. The process is just as enjoyable as the product (often more). Except for these notes, this journal is not a creative endeavor on my part, but it is for the dozens of artists who make it possible. These stories and poems and photos and paintings and collages would never exist if all these people didn’t love to build. I can’t name another part of my life that persists purely through the passion of others. Even more, they’re funny and thoughtful and sometimes a little bit sad and always a little bit beautiful.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the spring. There goes the bone again.

J.B. Marlow

Contributors 

Fiction

Paul Lewellan (“The Goddess of Little Memphis”) retired from education after fifty years of teaching. He lives, writes, and gardens on the banks of the Mississippi River. Supporting him in his literary efforts are Pamela his wife of forty-four years, a rescue kitten named Caitlin Cat, and Buddy an aging Maltese mix mutt. Find his archived work at www.paullewellan.com or follow him on Substack https://paullewellan.substack.com/.

Daniel Elfanbaum (“The Wheelbarrow”) lives near Boston and runs a reading series called Two Page Tuesday.

Mark Gallini (“Borderline”) was born and raised in Massachusetts, then spent his adult life to date in Philadelphia. His stories have been published in the US and Australia; his journalism and humor have appeared in various print and online publications. He has written for film and written/produced for public radio. He is currently shopping a novel. Fortunately, he is also handy with a hammer.

Matthew Hand (“Sophia Recommends”) is a fiction writer from Cumming, Georgia. His work has appeared in Susurrus and is forthcoming in Half and One. His story “A Test of Our Bodies for the Resurrection” was recently nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, and “Intimacy Coordination” was longlisted for the 2025 CRAFT Short Fiction Prize. In January 2026, he will begin his MFA in Writing at Bennington College. Outside of writing, he has been active in his local theatre community.

Jessica Malen ("The Lightning Woman”) is a writer from Michigan with a master’s in Creative Writing from Edinburgh Napier University. She works as a copywriter and editor.

Inspired by folklore, femininity, and the power of the natural world, her work spans multiple genres. She is currently writing her debut novel, the first in a fantasy trilogy.

Jessica enjoys traveling, hiking, swimming in the Great Lakes, and living a plant-based lifestyle. She lives in Northern Michigan with her husband, three cats, and a dog.

Christine Vartoughian (“Moments Lost in the Dark”) is an award-winning, Armenian-American writer and film director whose work has shown at the Museum of the Moving Image, Lincoln Center, and whose feature film, Living with the Dead: A Love Story, is available on Apple TV and Amazon. She is a founder of (Screen)Play Press, a publishing company for unproduced film scripts. Her short fiction has been published in The Bookends Review, Quibble Lit, 805 Lit + Art, Audience Askew, Rock Salt Journal, and others. Her short story collection, The Only Way Out Is Through the Window, was published in July 2025 by Rebel Satori Press. She is at home in New York City.

Nicholas Viglietti (“Torqued Tougher than a Texas Train”) is a writer from Sacramento, CA. After Katrina ravaged the gulf coast, he rebuilt homes there for 2 years. Up in Mon-tucky, he cut trails in the wilderness. He pedaled from Sac-town to S.D. He’s a seventh-life party-hack, attempting to rip chill lines in the madness (Insta - @nico_chillietti   X - @nviglietti1).

Jamison Standridge (“The Coin”) is a writer of literary fiction and creative nonfiction, and an academic, specializing in teaching creative writing, literature, and cinema courses. Originally from Italy, he has lived and worked on three continents and travels whenever time and funds allow. He currently resides in New Jersey.

Humor

Dave Patterson (“A Letter to the New Yorkers Moving to Maine”) is a fiction writer, musician, and high school English teacher. His stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Salon, Slice Magazine, Maine Magazine, The Masters Review, among others. He is the author of the novel, Soon the Light Will be Perfect, and the story collection, Euphoria. He lives in Cape Elizabeth with his wife and two children.

Nonfiction

Shannon M. Parker (“Giving Trees”) is the author of three novels, including the critically-acclaimed The Girl Who Fell and The Rattled Bones, which explores the history and cultural erasure of Maine’s Malaga Island. Set in midcoast Maine, Love & Lobsters is her adult debut and was immediately optioned for film.  

Shannon has a deep reverence for kindness and laughter, wide and wild philanthropy, and leaving a quiet, impactful footprint. She’s traveled to 38 countries across 5 continents and is always honored to call Maine home. As an author and educator, she holds degrees in English Literature, Applied Linguistics, and Educational Leadership from Saint Michael's College, UMass Boston, and University of Southern Maine respectively. She currently attends Harvard University because she thought it was about time to study creative writing. She can usually be spotted kayaking or venturing to the water in her happy, blue antique pick-up.

Brendan Curtinrich (“Hot Wash”) grew up among the beech-maple forests of Northeast Ohio and studied creative writing at Hiram College and Iowa State University. His work has been published in About Place, Sierra, The Hopper, Appalachia, Birdcoat Quarterly, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. He lives in Virginia near the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

Eliza Schnauck (“Back Home”) lives in coastal Massachusetts and writes both fiction and non-fiction. She is an alumna of Skidmore College, where she not only studied creative writing but also conquered her fear of horses. 

Katherine Farrell-Ginsbach (“Trails that Lead You Home”), a writer and lawyer, has spent years exploring the intersection of policy and health. Her work has been featured in Health Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Think Global Health where she is known for her work on legal preparedness for public health emergencies. She is working on her debut memoir which delves into her experience during COVID-19 while working on COVID-19.  She’s been racing bikes on and off since 2013, she loves going uphill on skis and only stays in shape for trail running in case someone asks her to go to the Grand Canyon. She thinks there is no such thing as too many sour patch kids, glitter, or cartwheels. is originally from South Dakota and has called many places home before finally arriving in Alaska 6 years ago. She splits her time between Anchorage, Alaska and Washington DC.

Kurt Schmidt's (“As a New Pilot, My Son Wanted to Take Me Up”) memoirs and essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Bacopa Literary Review, Puerto del Sol, Barzakh Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Storyhouse, The Mersey Review, The Examined Life Journal, and others. He is also the author of the novel Annapolis Misfit (Crown Publishers) and the chapbook memoir Birth of a Risk-Taker (Bottlecap Press). Kurt lives with his wife in New Hampshire, and since their son flew the nest some years ago, Kurt has been caring for real birds and watching the sky for their son's plane. He is currently finishing a 30-year chronicle about parenting a risk-taker. www.kurtgschmidt.com.

Poetry

Devahuti Chaliha (“The Girl on Gooseberry Hill”) is just finishing off her Neuroscience PhD, and can't wait to finally learn how to be a normal human. So she's learning how to adult, which now includes lugging along the postdoc extension of her project like a clingy child. Between gleefully experimenting on humans, she loves historical detective novels and logic puzzles. Her occasional escape tactics involve singing, casting, graphic design, charity work, and literally flying away (on a plane). She watches horror movies for a laugh, and is equally merciless towards violators of human rights.

Visual

Thomas Vogt (cover: Salt Point, Film Photograph; Rollei 35S, Lomography Potsdam black and white Film) is an aspiring poet, photographer, and city planner in Sacramento, California. He enjoys capturing the ‘every day’ through a pen, a lens, or behind a mug at your local coffee shop. His work has been published in Quibble Lit, Radar Poetry, Burngingword Journal, LIT magazine, and others.

Sarah Walko (To the Gulls and Cormorants, Common Daisies, and Sea Grass) is an artist, director, curator and writer. Her visual art exhibitions include: Creative Climate Awards Exhibition, Between the Feast and the Ground is Where We Live Now, a solo exhibition on Governors Island, Urban Reverence at Valerie Goodman Gallery and the Voelker Orth Museum in New York, Raising the Temperature at the Queens Museum of Art and Preternatural at The Museum of Nature in Canada. She was an invited artist in the inaugural The First Ten, New Hope Artist Residency Program in 2021 and selected as an inaugural participant in Art For Good: HATCHING A Better World program in 2020. She has been a visiting artist at Endicott College, Hudson Valley Community College, Kansas City Art Institute, University of Missouri, Roger Williams University and Savannah College of Art and Design. She is a NYFA Immigrant Artist Mentor and a published author of fiction and nonfiction essays. She is a contributing writer in four anthologies: Sacred Promise (Women Changing the World Press), Neon Guides Me: A Monograph of Artist Anne Katrine Senstad (Praun & Guermouche), Royal Beauty (Arts by the People) and Transpecies Design (Routledge).

Gaby Bedetti (Sheep) is a photographer, writer, and translator living in Lexington, Kentucky, with her spouse and son. She is circulating The Butterfly Tree: Selected Poems of Henri Meschonnic, her co-translation of a French writer who believed in language’s ability to dissolve borders. Her recent work has appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and Barely South. Like an ukiyo-e painting, her photos invite the viewer to be part of “the floating world.” Shot with a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS.

Ann Calandro (Imagine the Sun) is a writer, artist, and classical piano student. Her writing has appeared in Lit Camp, The Fabulist, The Plentitudes, and other literary journals. Serving House Books published her short story collection, Lost in Words, in February 2025 and will publish her poetry collection, To Keep You in This World, in January 2026. Her artwork has appeared in literary journals, been included in the 2023 New Jersey Arts Annual, and exhibited at Phillips Mill, the Monmouth Museum, the Biggs Museum of American Arts, and many galleries. Shanti Arts Press published three children’s books she wrote and illustrated. See artwork at ann-calandro.pixels.com.

GJ Gillespie (Into the Mystic Number 2) is a collage artist living in a 1928 farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, WA. A prolific artist with 22 awards to his name, his work has been exhibited in 70 shows and appeared in 195 publications.

Ferris E Jones, PhD (Home) is a published poet and artist living in Manchester Connecticut. His artwork can be seen at the Workspace Gallery in Manchester Connecticut, and his art has been featured in Gulf Stream Magazine, Levitate Magazine, and Ignatian Literary review. He has published ten collections of poetry, and his work has appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals including Dreich, Oddball Magazine, Se La Vie Writers Journal, Write on Magazine, Outlaw Poetry, Tuck Magazine, and many other literary publications. 

Zahra Zoghi (she/her) (Where the Rocks Bleed Blue) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Tehran with over three decades of experience. Her work explores themes of memory, identity, and transformation through richly textured surfaces, emotional abstraction, and symbolic bird imagery. Her art has been featured on covers and within numerous literary magazines worldwide. She holds a Master’s in Art Research and continues to mentor emerging artists while developing a visual language that bridges tradition and futurity.

The Goddess of Little Memphis Fiction

Paul Lewellan

The door opened; blinding sunlight filled Little Memphis. On the jukebox, O. V. Wright wailed on “A Nickel and a Nail.”

“Shut the damn door,” Bill Peterson shouted from a back booth.

Patrons typically welcomed strangers, but the forty-seven-year-old air conditioning unit had surrendered this morning. We were melting in the unseasonably hot September weather.

“Do not curse the door,” urged a voice out of the brilliance. “Embrace the light.”

A chill rose from the worn linoleum floor as the stranger stepped in.

She wore cutoff jeans, a black tank top, and ancient Keen hiking sandals. She removed her sweat-stained Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap, revealing a sea of freckles. Her earrings were fishhooks, and her arms were covered with sleeve tattoos. I recognized Seraphim and Cherubim cavorting with Ezekiel’s four-winged Living Creatures.

I rose from my barstool. “Buy you a beer?”

“That would be divine.” In the dim taproom light she appeared older than me, but younger than my mother. Call her fifty and change. “Dorothy told me to come.” Dorothy Gingrich ran the Grand View B & B.

Two retired dairy farmers both named William Peterson played cribbage in the corner booth while nursing pints of Spotted Cow. I’d spent a half-hour counseling them individually this morning: Bill #1 for his gambling addiction and Bill #2 for impure thoughts. They lingered because going home meant doing their chores.

Four teenagers searched the Wurlitzer 1015 Bubbler jukebox in vain for any songs on from the last three decades. The girls wanted to give dance lessons to their homecoming dates. Shawn, Colin, and Kate had been in my confirmation class. Shelby was Catholic but leaned Lutheran after dating Colin. After the dance lessons, they’d booked a timeslot with me. They had sex questions. “You’re the only adult who doesn’t bullshit us, Pastor George.”

Little Memphis had a pool table, jukebox, and two ancient Gottlieb pinball machines (a 1964 Majorettes and a 1978 Joker Poker). I ministered to these ancient toys in exchange for an occasional pint. There was a small stage, six red vinyl booths, and a dozen mismatched tables with garage sale chairs. At the hub was an ancient oak bar and Naomi’s spotless grill.

The stranger stepped up to the bar. “What’s on tap?”

Fred Briggs and Milton Pany, Rural Electric Coop linemen, stood motionless, checks in hand. Though not religious men, the stranger’s aura left them breathless.

“No Bud Light, Miller, Corona, or Coors,” Naomi warned. “Everything is locally brewed.” She pointed to the chalk board. “The Pastor is drinking the Black Bavaria from Sprecher. Fred prefers Dancing Man Hefeweizen from New Glarus; Milt favors the Reserve Scotch Ale from Lake Louie.”

“Maybe a pint of Carnal Knowledge in the Wood…?” Milt suggested.

“…from Tyranena,” his partner added. Both were shamelessly staring.

The bartender stretched her hand out. “I’m Naomi Schwass.”

“Call me Phee.” She looked again at the board. “Give me a pint of the Bedlam Belgian IPA.”

Naomi’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, I’m sorry dear, that’s tapped out.”

“Disappointing….” Phee blinked. “Could you double-check?”

Naomi started to protest.

“Humor her,” I suggested. I turned to the heavenly creature beside me. “I’m George.”

“Oh, I know who you are, Reverend Pinkerton.” When she touched my arm, my fatigue faded, my body warmed, my soul melted. I exhaled.

Naomi returned with the pint of Bedlam and a bowl of salted peanuts in the shell. “It’s like the keg is full again.”

“That happens….” Phee took a long drink from the frosty mug. “Oh–my–goodness…. She paused to savor the IPA’s hoppy bitterness. “I’d forgotten the taste of cold beer a hot summer day.”

“Obviously, you’re not from around here.” Naomi knew everyone in a hundred-mile radius, plus all the hunters, fishermen, campers, snowmobilers, and cross country skiers that came through every year. She’d been born and raised in the valley. Twenty-five years ago her husband left her for the new blonde route driver at the Farm Service Cooperative. In the divorce she gave Frank everything–the land, the farm equipment, their farmhouse, and outbuildings–for a cash settlement that allowed her to buy the bar and the three acres surrounding Little Memphis. She lived in the tidy house in back.

“So, Pastor,” Phee asked, “what are you doing on a Friday morning drinking beer?”

“It’s my day off.”

“Hardly,” Naomi huffed. “He comes for breakfast and doesn’t leave until after the Friday night fish fry. Folks from the tri-county area come for his advice, or to clear their conscience, or just to talk. He serves three tiny congregations, so he alternates when he preaches and where he has office hours, but everyone knows he’s at Little Memphis on Friday.”

“So on your one day off, you work a fourteen hour day.” Phee paused. “What does your wife think?”

Naomi grabbed my glass to refill it.

“George lost his wife and infant daughter in a boating accident,” Milt said.

“Three years ago,” Bill #2 added. The farmers approached, their empty pints poised for another round of Spotted Cow. The linemen, checks in hand, found seats at the counter, and texted their boss that they’d been delayed. The teenagers strained to get a better look, curious about her tattoos and her unruly red hair shaved off on the left side.

Phee spoke to them. “Didn’t you come to dance?”

“We did….”

“But the juke box hasn’t been updated since before I was born.”

Phee rose from the stool. “Are you sure…?”  She walked to the flashing Wurlitzer and started reading titles: “‘Tell It To My Heart,’ ‘Don't Be Shy,’ ‘My Heart Goes (La Di Da),’ ‘The Place Where We Belong,’ ‘Chain My Heart.’” She pumped quarters into the machine as the kids rushed over.

“No way….”

Phee rejoined me at the bar.

“The loss of your wife and child must have been very difficult.”

“The folks around here….” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“The summer people decided he’d mourned long enough,” Fred explained. “They tried setting Pastor George up with their sisters, best friends, and distant cousins.”

Naomi handed me a fresh pint. “Then the locals pitched in. He serves three small parishes, so he already knew most everyone. Still they tried. He is so lost. People wanted to help.”

“What happened?” Phee asked, although, of course, she already knew.

 “Every woman claimed to have a nice time. He was easy to talk to. A good kisser. Always a gentleman. Appreciative of their attention.” Naomi grabbed a handful of peanuts from our bowl and began cracking them. “Nobody got a second date. Those who called him back, were politely declined.”

Phee was amused. “So, Pastor, if you buy me a burger and fries, and we retreat to an unoccupied booth for privacy, I will have a good time…. And I’ll never hear from you again.” I stood mute. “Because…?”

“You’re not Alice.”

Her divine laughter filled the room. “Why on Earth would I be?” Her question brought smiles to everyone else. “No one could be, not even Alice herself.” Phee raised her voice. “If your late wife walked in that door, sat down beside you, and spent the afternoon in pleasant conversation, then gave you her number, you wouldn’t call her back either.”

“That’s not true!”

“Of course it is.” The way she said it made me turn to the door. Could she do that? Could she bring Alice back? “Have you forgotten how she infuriated you? Don’t you remember what a terrible parent she was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Word gets around.” Phee looked to the crowd for affirmation. Two women from the St. Matthews sewing circle, and Sherriff’s Deputy Brennan O’Rourke had joined the group. Everyone agreed.

“Alice was a good mother,” I protested.

“She was always so nervous.”

“You did all the parenting. Everyone knew that.”

“But how did Phee know that?” the taller lineman asked.

“She isn’t from around here.”

“Not that you wouldn’t make a fine addition to the valley,” the other lineman assured her. By now he and his partner has gotten fresh pints and taken stools at the bar.

Ruth and Mary Beth from the St. Paul’s sewing circle pulled up chairs and settled in. Mary Beth pulled out a Diet Coke from her large purse and handed it to Ruth. She reached into the purse for another. They came for Naomi’s grilled cheese sandwiches. After lunch they’d corner me until I agreed to hear their litany of complaints about their husbands.

Phee pointed the menu chalked on the blackboard. “What’s good?”

“Naomi’s specialty is the cheeseburger with a white Wisconsin cheddar, baked beans, and coleslaw,” Mary Beth explained.

“She’d also got grilled cheese, brats, or burgers,” Ruth added. “Hot dogs for the kids.”

“Fried catfish with baked potato on Friday nights until Naomi runs out,” Deputy O’Rourke added, “which always happens. If you come late to the table, no fish for you.”

“I’ll take a burger, but with pepper jack instead of the cheddar, and the three bean salad,” she told Naomi. “You should check the coleslaw. It’s turned.” She pointed to an empty booth and gave me a nudge. “Let’s grab that spot before the lunch crowd.” Phee picked up her pint. “Are you coming?”

Once seated, I nursed my beer. “Alice was a good parent,” I mumbled.

“When Missy had colic, you were the one up all night.” Phee tenderly folded my hands into hers. My defenses fell. “Just because she was a poor parent, George, doesn’t mean Alice didn’t love your daughter.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. “How do you know all this?”

“Phee is short for Sophia….”

“Sophia…. Wisdom…. Of course.”

“Think of me as the personification of divine knowledge.”

I’d been to seminary. I knew the concept. “You’re an angel?”

“More like a Greek goddess.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m a cross between an Earth Mother and Wonder Woman, or maybe the Holy Spirit and Helen Reddy.”

“And in heaven…?”

“I’m upper management.”

“What are you doing in Little Memphis?”

“I’ve come to call a prophet, Reverend Pinkerton, and to secure a suitable mate for the prophet’s journey, or should I call you George?”

“We’re the same person….”

“No, you are not.”

“Why come to me?”

“It’s what I do. I connect with people.” Phee looked at our almost empty glasses. I was drinking too quickly. “I’ll grab a pitcher of the Bedlam and check on our burgers. You need a trip to the men’s room.”

It didn’t take divine insight to figure that out. I’d been drinking beer all morning. “What happens after burgers?”

“We put more quarters in the jukebox.”

Later, after burgers, we helped with the dance lessons, then discussed Holsteins with the William Petersons. The mood remained spirited until the phone rang. Naomi called out, “Pastor George!” She waved the receiver from the ancient red princess phone with the twelve-foot-long curly cord. “A Pastor Dettman to speak with you. Claims you’ve been her ducking calls from the synod office.”

The Reverend Ruth Elizabeth Dettman, Assistant to the Bishop, was technically my boss. She was direct and to the point. She was in the area. “Time to face reality, Pastor. Let’s meet at the parsonage.”

I suggested Little Memphis. “There’s someone you should meet.”

After I hung up, Phee suggested that she could help with the fish fry. People from across the valley coming in to eat before the Homecoming football game in Beaver Stadium. “Let’s take a walk before Reverend Dettman arrives.”

We stepped out of the dark bar into the sun. A cool breeze dispelled the heat. “Living here, you have to work real hard to be an atheist,” I told her. I motioned to the wooded hills and pastures that surrounded Little Memphis. “The rivers and streams, lush forests, and fertile cropland make it difficult to deny the existence of a benevolent creator.”

As we walked hand in hand, all the fatigue, the sleepless nights, the anxiety for the upcoming meeting melted away with her touch. “Since I began my ministry, I’ve been surrounded by prayerful people who have comforted me.” I sighed. “I don’t know what I’ll do without my parishes to sustain me.”

Phee squeezed my hand. “Every Sunday you preach forgiveness for everyone but yourself. You believe God can inflict ten plagues on Egypt, destroy Sennacherib's Army, flood the world saving only Noah’s family, part the Red Sea, and deliver Daniel from the lion’s den, but doubt that a divine being can forgive you for your wife’s untimely death?”

“I should have done more.”

“Your wife committed suicide, George. You loved and tried to save her. Sometimes that isn’t enough. Alice killed your only child and herself, you didn’t.” She laid her hands on my shoulders. I bowed my head. “I absolve you. Open your heart. Prepare to love and be loved again.”  

A weight lifted. “Is this is why you came?”

“One of the reasons. I enjoy visiting places like Little Memphis, meeting people like Naomi, those teenagers, and the linemen, you know, before they’re gone….”

“Gone.” As I said the word, another vision filled the edges of my consciousness: violent weather, floods, buildings leveled by tornadic winds. “Can’t you stop these things?”

“That’s not the way it works.” Phee gave me a hip bump. “I’ve got a riddle.”

“All right.” The visions vanished.

“What’s the difference between you and God?”

“No clue.”

“God never thinks She’s you.”

I blinked. “Cute. I’ll share that one with the Assistant to the Bishop. She’ll get a good laugh.”

“No she won’t. You need to work on her sense of humor.”

When we stepped back into Little Memphis, the mood had shifted. The jukebox was silent. The linemen were gone. Of course they would return later with their wives and children for the fish fry. Of the regulars, only the Bill Petersons remained.

Seated at the bar in sober black slacks, a long-sleeved black shirt, and sensible shoes was the Assistant to the Bishop, Reverend Ruth Elizabeth Dettman. The pastor wore her clerical collar like armor. She was hunched over her phone reading text messages. Hovering nearby was Naomi who couldn’t stop wringing her hands. On the bar beside the pastor was what appeared to be an iced tea with a lemon slice.

Naomi looked startled. “George, you’re glowing!”

I stammered, “I got some sun on our walk….”

“No, George, she don’t mean you have a healthy look about you…,” said Bill #1.

“Or that your face is flushed like when you’ve been drinking with us all day…,” clarified Bill #2.”

“You’re glowing.” Naomi pointed to my imagine in the mirror. My face was surrounded in a brilliant white aura.

Pastor Dettman looked up. “What happened?”

Phee stepped up to the bar. “Think of Moses descending with the Ten Commandments, or the transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain top….”

“Transfiguration?”

“It occurs when you consort with a divine being.”

I’d never seen the Bishop’s Assistant hesitate. “Divine being?” She studied Phee. “You?” The tone was accusatory.

I stepped between the two females. “Tell me Reverend Dettman ….” I stopped. I’d known her for almost three years, but I’d never called her anything but Reverend Dettman. “Do you know the difference between you and God?”

“I don’t think, Pastor Pinkerton, that this is a time for levity.”

“Answer the question.”

I waited. I was still glowing. She knew she was missing something.

“I have no idea.”

The goddess extended her hand. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Sophia, but my friends call me Phee.” When their hands touched, the assistant bishop understood.

“I’m the Reverend Ruth Elizabeth Dettman.”

“Who are you when you take off the clerical collar?”

 “Friends call me Liz.”

“Well, Liz, why don’t you and I secure a pitcher of Naomi’s finest while George finds us a table.” On the jukebox Leonard Cohen sang “Hallelujah,” a song not in the selections this morning. “Take off your collar and get comfortable.”

Over beers Liz delivered the news I’d been avoiding. The three small parishes I was serving would be closed by the synod unless they agreed to merge, something the congregations had vowed never to do. “You’ll have to look for another call.” I shook my head in despair. “Spending days in a tavern,” she suggested, “hasn’t helped the problem.” Liz had been talking to Naomi.

I took a breath and plunged in. “My parishioners are territorial. If I’m at St. Albert’s, folks from St. Ambrose won’t come to see me there. If I’m working at St. Bart’s, the people from St. Alberts stay away. Little Memphis is a neutral place.”

“That’s why he spends his day off here,” Phee explained. “This is the one place in the valley where everyone is at home.”

“It’s sacred ground,” I suggested. “Since my wife’s death, I’ve struggled. But here I can take my collar off and listen. I stop shutting myself off from others.”

“On your only day off?” Liz asked.

“Honestly, the only time I feel fully human is when I’m doing shit for others.”

Liz’s armor weakened. “I feel the same way. It’s been more difficult since I started working in the Synod Office.”

“You two have more in common than you suspect.”

I ignored Phee’s comment. “Little Memphis is famous for its fish fry. This Friday will be especially hectic since it’s the night of the Homecoming football game. We’ve offered to help Naomi. Why don’t you join us?

“I need to get back….”

“You’re in no condition to drive.” I pointed to the empty pitcher on our table. “Stay and meet my flock.” Naomi appeared with a fresh pitcher.

Liz relented. “Tell me about the fish fry.”

“Every Friday night. Catfish, baked potato, and coleslaw. Most people save room for pie, which is extra,” Naomi told her. “The fish fry is my biggest source of income. Unfortunately catfish have been in short supply. I run out before everyone can be served. There are hard feeling when people have to settle for burgers.”

“If I’m working the fryer,” Phee suggested, “you won’t run out.” She motioned for Naomi to join us and poured her a beer.

Naomi took a deep drink. “I did what you said. I threw out the coleslaw and made fresh, twice the amount I sold last Friday. And I doubled the number of baked potatoes in the warmers and Styrofoam chests, but without the catfish….”

“Put what fish you have in the coolers by the fryers.” Phee rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take it from there.”

Liz and I watched the fatigue melt from Naomi’s body; her spine straightened; her face glowed. “Bill #1 agreed to take orders and bartend if I tear up the bar tab his wife doesn’t know about. Bill #2 agreed to serve folks and buss tables.”

“What will that cost you?”

“A date. Sunday night he’s taking me to La Crosse for supper at the Charmant.” She suppressed a smile.

Liz slapped her hands on the table. “All right, I’ll help.”

“You’re not dressed for it.” Naomi got up. “I’ve got a Little Memphis t-shirt in back that should fit you.”

That’s how the we came to spend the next six hours frying fish, slinging coleslaw, and splitting baked potatoes. The beer flowed, but the kegs never emptied. By 5:00 when the meal began every table was taken with a line out the door. As people ate and were filled, more arrived. The football game began. That’s when most Friday nights the crowds thinned, but instead the line grew.

People poured in from a tri-county area, drawn by an inexplicable desire to break bread with others. I split baked potatoes and slathered them with butter while Liz dipped from a bottomless tub of coleslaw. When the dirty dishes piled up, volunteers appeared to wash them. Silverware appeared in empty drawers.

The linemen, Fred Briggs and Milton Pany, arrived early with their families. After they’d eaten their fill, Fred pulled out his guitar, Milt his mandolin, and the music began. People sang along: “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” “Saint James Infirmary,” “Down By the Riverside.” Someone joined in on trumpet, another appeared with drumsticks and a plastic bucket to mark the beat. Mary Beth from the St. Matthews sewing circle sat down at the piano. “Joshua Fit de Battle of Jericho,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” “Amazing Grace.”

 And when the last customer was served, hours after the usual dinner hour, Bill #1 presented Naomi with a mountain of cash and credit card receipts. The tip jar overflowed. Naomi decided to close early.

Liz helped her lock up before the pastor collapsed in a chair, wilted in a sweat-stained Little Memphis t-shirt. “So that’s how five thousand were fed.”

“It’s one way.” Much to our surprise Phee knelt before Liz, removed her shoes, and massaged her feet. The pastor closed her eyes as visions of food pantries, community meals, and meals on wheels filled her head. Her face had a brilliant white aura. Finally she spoke. “Folks spoke to me as I dished out the coleslaw. You’ve touched a lot of people, George, but the church buildings are a liability, and working three parishes isn’t sustainable.”

“What if the congregations sold their buildings and land and worshiped here?” Phee suggested. She looked as fresh as the moment she first stepped into Little Memphis.

 “I’m closed on Sunday,” Naomi added. “You can could convert my barn into classrooms, meeting spaces, and an office.”

Bill #2 appeared. Naomi kissed him chastely on the cheek. “Thank you for your help tonight.”

“My pleasure. But you promised me dinner out on Sunday.”

There was an awkward silence. “Let me walk you to your car.”

And then it was just the three of us: Phee, Liz, and me.

“Now what?”

Phee rose. “I have to go. I’ve been called back, Liz, but I have a room at the local B & B you’re welcome to use. You’re not sober enough to drive, but you can walk to Grand View.”

Liz absorbed her words. “And then…?”

“Genesis Chapter 32?”

“God wrestling with Jacob….”

“Yes. That was actually me in the story. But Jacob and I weren’t wrestling….” She touched us and we saw a vision of what they were doing.

“Oh!” My heart rate rose. “It’s been a long time.”

“I know. Not since Alice….” She pressed the room key into Liz’s palm.

“What will we do when we get there?” Liz asked.

“Why not role play. Let George be Jacob. You can be God.”

“We wrestle….” In that instant, Phee was gone.

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Giving Trees. Nonfiction

Shannon M. Parker

The night a stranger called to tell me my son existed I’d been exhausted by a day spent demolishing the exterior wall of my kitchen with the help of my trusted pink crowbar. April blew her cool wind into the butchered room, sprinkling construction dust onto the cutting board where I’d gathered greens for supper. As I snacked, the raw spinach was course and ragged and beautiful, like the empty space where a wall once stood. My fridge and sink were poised to leap off the newly-jagged edge into a dumpster of debris and tetanus fifteen feet below, but me? I was fortified. The rough, gaping maw was progress.

Two years prior, I’d been lured north to this 1840s Greek Revival home by a sexy, swinging For Sale sign, and it was love at first sight. A grand but forgotten home steeped in past and potential? When can I move in? Life in the heart of a quiet Maine coastal village? Where do I sign? My optimism saw past the home’s sagging roof, botched plumbing, and misguided additions. Nothing Yankee craftsmanship can’t mend! The house’s scars made it sag with a kind of negligence I understood, a carryover from my early years, waiting for someone—anyone—to reach through my childhood and rescue me.

“I think you might be a good fit,” the caller said. “The boy needs a young, active family.”

The man on the phone distilled facts. Succinctly. Selectively:

“He’s five.

Living in Gardiner.

Really cute kid.

The parental rights in his case have just been terminated.

He’s legally free for adop—”

“Yes,” I interrupted, the word ‘no’ a foreigner to my tongue.

When I hung up the phone, fatigue slipped from my body, leaving my heartbeat fast and light and racing toward a new horizon. Across the room, a creak whined from the corner post of the kitchen, calling me to its bones like a child wooing a parent toward an unsettled ache. I pressed my palms to the now-exposed post that still wore the bark of a tree, an outer protective coat dried nearly weightless after two centuries, yet still rippling dark and wild as a current. This Eastern White Pine was once tall and resilient, descended from a towering species strong enough to serve as masts on early seafaring vessels, lend spark to the flame of the Revolutionary War and dub Maine the “Pine Tree State.” While alive, this tree would have cast seed to feed songbirds, gifted her foliage to sheltering deer, offered the delicacy of her bark to beaver and snow-shoe hare. She soothed and protected, cradled nests in her bows. Her death gave my home life, and she was sheltering still.

—

Before he could become my son, the child was a boy visiting our home. He introduced himself to his weekend bedroom, making a rug angel in the deep carpet, letting our dog Finn lap at his leaping giggles. He gathered eggs from our chickens, a satisfied smile blooming among his cinnamon freckles as he stroked the silken feathered back of Mable, my full, fat hen. With concentrated stewardship, the child carried two eggs to our broken kitchen, yet didn’t notice the makeshift wall, the randomly missing floorboards or our lack of counters as we piled sugar, flour, and eggs to the mini rolling island. He was terrible at measurements and spectacular at making a mess. Flour stained his cheeks and clothes as he ate chocolate chips, his body a mass of wiggles, always in motion, even as he stood still.

“Do you have powice?” he asked.

“Police?”

He nodded, his face a wreck of melted chocolate.

“There’s a station just down the road.”

“I want to bwing them cookies.” He licked his stubby fingers. “A powice obbicer saved me, you know.”

I didn’t. Though I must have.

Together, we walked to the station with a heavy plate of baked goods, where my small child rang a buzzer, waited and wiggled, then offered twelve cookies and seven words to a tree of a man: “Thank you for always keeping us safe.”

—

My son’s return a week later was easier, quicker, smoother. He bounded toward me; his eyes wide with wonder. My body swallowed his in a whole hug. I breathed in his crisp apple scent, his joy. He called me Respite Mom and moved through the house flanked by a dog at each side, his adventurous spirit pulling me from renovation work to hike the woods. On the trails, he faltered over the terrain, his feet unable to keep pace with his excitement. At the edge of the forest, on the ocean’s wave-slapped rocks, we indulged in a picnic lunch before following the wide, leaf-littered trail home where I wondered if it was the child’s eyesight or his coordination that made him stagger and nearly fall every fifth step. Or was it his footwear? Fatigue? His lack of agility spoke to something bigger than excitement, something I’d already begun to worry over.

Preparing for bedtime, I bathed him, dried and dressed him, then snuggled him into his bed that still wasn’t his forever bed. We read together: me tackling the words, him expanding on the illustrations as I learned the language of his slips, lisps, and mispronunciations.

“Can I say my pwayers?” he asked.

“Of course. Do you want to be alone, or should I join you?”

“I’m otay alone.” He scrambled out of bed and knelt at the side of the mattress, his freshly-soaped skin sweet and intoxicating.

“DEAR GOD!” he yelled, his hands clasped tight below his chin. “THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME A NICE RESPITE MOM AND A GOOD HOME TO SWEEP IN! I LOVE THE DOGS AND MABLE THE CHICKEN!”

He screamed loud enough for neighbors to press their interest our way.

“AND GOD? WATCH OVER YOU, TOO, BECAUSE YOU ARE REALLY NICE AND YOU HELP NICE PEOPLE!” He paused. “PLEASE DON’T LET ANY KIDS GET HURT TONIGHT, GOD. KIDS ARE NICE PEOPLE.”

—

On his third visit, my tandem kayak slipped effortlessly into the inky harbor at Christmas Cove, a nearly round naturally-formed inlet connecting a salty river to the Gulf of Maine. Here, the quiet of Easter gathered around the lobster boats tethered at their moorings, their dove-white hulls bobbing close and concentrated. Under their watchful gaze, I paddled while my son luxuriated in the front seat of the craft, his head raised to the diving cormorants and driving sun. He was an old man on the water, a quiet observer, his small arms crossed behind his neck, his paddle retired across his middle, his tongue stilled, his senses awed. The standing pines of a remote island welcomed us for lunch, their branches gathered just above the shoreline, their fine pine needles as intertwined as linked hands.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know the name of the island.” I portaged the kayak over the beach of broken shells. “But the banks are fat with wild blueberries in the summer and you can eat them until your belly aches.”

“We should call it Bwoobewwy Island!” he said.

“That is a very good name.”

His eagerness sent him climbing the low island until he spotted a small, simple house in the near distance. Abandoned, and not.

“Can we go in?” he asked, his eyes wide.

“We can, but we need to be really careful, okay?”

“Otay, but why?”

“Well, someone owns that house, but they don’t live here anymore.”

He pulled in a breath built of curiosity and we walked past a narrow outhouse with a crude crescent moon carved into its weathered plank door. We slowed at the house and wiped our feet at the entrance to the small, galley kitchen—not butchered like mine, but a storyteller all the same. Crude wooden shelves stocked canned goods like library books, their labels faded to earthy pastels, the expiration dates disappeared to time.

“Are we going to cook?”

“Nope. Just explore around a bit, if that’s okay?”

“Yes, pwease!”

We bent to the living room, with its central fireplace, and knitted wool blanket folded over the back of a wood-rim couch, the stuffing in the arms repurposed by local critters. We moved quietly, slowly—honoring the space that still held the spirit of its last resident, her kindness inviting us in long after she was able.

“This is the first island I ever explored in Maine and it’s my favorite house in the whole wide world.”

“Whole ‘tire world? Let’s lib here!”

Indeed.

Together we were drawn to the roughhewn curio cabinet lined with brightly painted exotic figurines from Asia and India and beyond.

“Wow!” gasped my sweet boy, and I fed his wonder with an Ecuadorian doll offered from my palm to his, her body made of husks, her felt pink vest still vibrant.

“This came from very far away,” I told him.

He petted the corn husk doll with intention, with all the tenderness he showed Mable and Finn.

“This cabinet holds the most special items. I think this collection was very important to the woman who lived here.” I explained how the objects would have arrived by a large boat and then a series of smaller ones, even if he couldn’t know the magnitude of their travels, how long it took for them to reach this place, be assembled together, share this slip of time. “These items were chosen carefully,” I told him. “Like art and love.”

“Where is the lady now?”

“I don’t know.” I placed the doll back to the shelf, running my finger along the dust-free wood. “Let’s go upstairs and maybe you can solve the mystery.”

The dormered second floor was small and crammed with stacks of yellowed publications. The papers made of ink and trees and industry were all addressed to a woman I would never meet. I wondered if this attic on a forested island served as her place of repair. Or maybe her place to prepare—where she corralled her brilliant thoughts to the page before submitting pieces of her life to her editor for print within the thousands of magazines piled like pillars.

“These publications were delivered for years, see?” I pointed to the date next to the sepia-soaked Times announcing Hawaii as the fiftieth state, its ink and print crisp. “All of these papers arrived before 1962. Do you know how long ago that was?”

“When dinosaurs libed here?”

I laughed. “Before I was born, anyway.”

“You must reawwy like papers.”

“I like stories.”

The quick wrinkle of his nose told me he was unconvinced that any worthwhile tale could survive the trapped, stagnant air of the lonely room. But someone had left this island in 1962 when the papers stopped arriving, the food stopped being consumed. The owner moved on or passed on. Maine islands were famous for holding secrets, but this one curated memory.

“This house has been here alone for nearly sixty years and the people who visit take care of it. Each person doing a little. That kind of tenderness seems super rare and special to me.”

“It’s bwoo-tiful,” he said, leaving me unsure if he was talking about the house or a community that tenderly cared for a forgotten place, allowing it to age gracefully, undisturbed, as if its unbroken presence said something important about our collective humanity.

“Do you know places can tell a story, not just people?”

“I know! There are miwwion papers!”

“Yes!” I laughed, surprised by his ability to show me the world without pretense.

“I’m hungry.”

I gave a soft poke to his soft belly. “You’re always hungry.”

He giggled and we braved the steep, warped staircase downward while singing a pirate song from his favorite cartoon. He ventured into the back room with its glass walls and forever view of the sea. He was only a few feet in front of me as the sun beckoned us to the enclosed south-facing porch with its heat and light.

Beneath us, the floorboards of this tiny room creaked as we asked them to bear our weight and interest. We were greeted by the woman’s cast iron Singer sewing machine in the front corner, polished clean of dust, on display as a prized possession. I brushed my palm over the spine of this heavy behemoth of industry and self-reliance and thought of my nana, a woman who bore seven children to life, privately mourned the three she lost, and extended countless welcomes to the children she gathered from the church orphanage to her modest home for Sunday meals because there was always something to give to those who had less.

In the sunbaked room, I felt a small tug on the hem of my jacket.

“Um, Mom?” my child said.

The house inhaled then, the wind, too. Even the ocean stilled its swells while the trees dipped low because we’d all heard it. One word: Mom. Three letters joined to pass effortlessly from a child’s lips. Naming me. Renaming me.

“There’s a lady!” he whispered, and then I saw the sleeping woman, just as he raised his shaking finger to the metal bed in the far corner.

“Oh my god!” I startled, my arms snatching him to my middle, our raced heartbeats syncing as my brain registered the long gray hair spread across the propped pillow, a body turned on its side, the lumps and bumps of a person under blankets. But then. Something didn’t seem right. The length of the body was too short, the hair too perfect, too impossible. “I think…,” I said, daring a step forward, as I tucked him behind me. I poked at the feet and jumped back. Relieved to find the shape was made of jumbled blankets.

“It’s a trick.” I laughed, explained. “A prank.” My hands cupped his cherub face. “Oh my gosh that scared me.”

“That blew the bejezzus from me!”

“I KNOW! Me, too!” We both laughed then, our nerves finding escape.

We peeled down the blankets to investigate the network of pillows and trickery. When we were truly satisfied she was all fluff, he tucked the fake lady back inside her nest, pooling the blanket under her fake chin. He repaired this pillow woman as if tending to a live person. He worked slowly and with respect, showing me the age in his soul, how there was so much I could learn from him.

Under a canopy of guarding trees, we ate apple slice sandwiches, the word Mom pressing us together as it expanded me infinitely.

—

I met more of my son as he stayed for a week of school break. During these longer visits, he fell apart. Had quicker outbursts. Bigger tantrums. I held him, rocked him through his description of the thing that pushed him over the edge: an unresponsive button on his truck that stirred his anger, the way he’d smash a thing until it broke. Then, he’d cry. A terrible, feral cry because the small incident felt so big in his tiny heart.

“Don’t be mad at me,” he begged. “I’m sowwy. Don’t throw me away.”

“It’s just a toy. All I care about is you,” I told him. “If you’re okay then I’m okay, okay?”

“Otay,” he sobbed.

Most times he’d let me pull him from his rage, but I was never fully present. Because the truck didn’t just break; it broke because he got mad because his fingers couldn’t make the truck work the way it was supposed to work because his fingers—and his entire body—were confined to an animal crate and never got to develop and his beautiful heart was raw with anger for the people who would do that to him and even as much as he was beginning to love and trust me, he knew I wasn’t his people and that he was only with me because others let him down, and worse.

This child deserved far more than I could ever give him and I wondered if all moms felt this way. Like even our deepest reservoirs would never be enough.

—

I wondered if my inability to be enough, give enough, was why the state reversed its decision to place a five-year-old boy in our home. For weeks when I cried, terrible words scratched beneath my tears: “I’m sorry. I’m a bad mom. Don’t throw me away.”

—

Months later, I fed long boards through the window of my third-story attic to the driveway below via a crude pulley system I’d rigged to protect the forgotten wood. Their wide surfaces were rough on both sides, so unlike modern construction where neat rectangular boards are whittled into edges and precision in a way that makes it easy to forget lumber begins its life as a tree. The tools I used to restore the boards were old, too, worn soft at their handles and gifted to my husband from his grandfather, a man I knew only from the craftsmanship and kindness he left in his wake, and the freedom his bravery gifted all of us on the other side of Normandy. I had other tools, too. Invisible ones, nurtured in me by my father. Like grit and determination. The ability to do the hard thing in the face of hard things. My Irish nana joined me, too, waking my memory to the ritual of the Celts, how they planted a tree in the center of any new community.

My nana planted a Christian cross at the center of her new life in this country, but still remembered the pagan Crann Bethadh, her thick brogue forever knitting together music and myth in her storytelling. Her curled knuckles rapped at her chest when she spoke of this in- between world of her worship. “The Tree of Life,” she’d tell me in a way that made my own young fingers knock at my sternum, waking that knot in my chest. The heart. The giver of life.

For days I worked, pushing the sharpened blade of the wood planer across the boards’ surfaces in anger for the separation from my could-have-been son. I pushed with grief for the absence of any guarantee that we’d ever see each other again. I pushed for hope that I might be able to heal some deep loss in him, and me. I pushed until all my risk and pain and heartache was sharpened splinter thin, knife-like and embedded. I labored until I was exhausted, until I broke and cried. Still, my hands craved purpose. They returned to work, steadily sanding, polishing away the final layers of rough skin on the enduring wood, unearthing the meaty flesh underneath.

Exposing a surface that was clean and fresh. Like a newborn’s skin. A second chance.

—

From the local diner, I enlisted an old timer to show me how to join edges without using screws or nails, but by allowing the planks to link into each other, binding tightly to hospitable grooves. My mentor was a skilled craftsman, gray around his edges and bright inside, like the wood we worked. He was patient in the way of old people, and I was careful with his kindness.

When the tabletop was finished, it stretched eight feet long and nearly five feet wide. An anchor and meeting place. A tree at the center of my home. A Crann Bethadh of my own making. I attached farmhouse legs and painted them sturdy black. I sat directly across from the old timer and we admired the plain utility of the table, and the craftsmanship it took to make artful hard work appear effortless.

I poured us tea, blowing on the hot liquid more as a way to contemplate than cool. Even then, I was unsure how much I’d risk. But at that table, this man was family. “This table is for my son.”

He looked to my core, the life-giving place tucked under my heart. “Yer with child, are ya?”

I shook my head. “No.”

He turned his mug once in full rotation over the one dark knot in the table’s rich wood, the hardened portion of the tree that once grew perpendicular—against the grain—and got compressed for its efforts. “Yer lookin’ to have a child?”

“Not in the usual sense.” I held my story tight. A growing thing within me. “Mine will be a new home for him,” I said. Risked.

The old-timer met my eyes then, as if recognizing me.

“He was supposed to be here months ago, but the state....” I trailed off.

His hands gathered around the warmth of his cup. “How old?”

“Five. He’ll turn six next month.”

“Ayuh.” Stillness sat between us for a long time before he cleared his throat. “Rode the train when I was a boy ’a six.”

I raised my chin to welcome his story.

“Got scrubbed clean for that ride on the ole Boston & Maine.” His eyes settled to the window and the fertile green of the trees beyond. “Never had nicer clothes than those duds the church ladies gave me that day.” He let free a trapped laugh, light and buoyant as a promise.

“Sounds nice.”

“Seats were hard. Still remember that.” He shifted in my upholstered dining room chair, like the memory still poked sharply at his spine. “Us kids got on and off that train so many times in one day…thought I’d seen the whole world by the time I got to where I was goin’.”

“You have a big family?”

“No family at’all. Till I got to Danforth. Up near Canada. Got picked by a lady needin’ help with her hayin’. Took me and an older boy.” He rolled his lips inward, clucking a noise free from his back teeth. “That older fella didn’t last the night. Was off to the woods before the widow brought our blankets and suppah out to the hayloft. Suspect he’d seen enough not to trust.”

My fingers tightened around my mug. “You’re talking about orphan trains?”

“Didn’t call ’em that by my time. Still, it was folks trying to find homes for kids when a kid lucked outta getting’ a good one the first time ’round.” He smoothed his palms outward across the silk top of the table, his arms spreading wide as wings. “A boy deserves a good table.” Youth crept over his features then, erasing decades.

Sunlight streamed through the window, drawing up a glow from the golden wood and casting it under his chin, fresh as a buttercup. “Ayuh. Ya’ll be givin’ that child a fine table.”

A fine table. A cross. The Tree of Life. Trust. Risk.

So many words for the same center.

The old timer didn’t have words when I gifted him the remaining boards, enough to make a table of his own. He stared at the offering, silent appreciation softening his hardened shoulders.

Together, we loaded the gray wood planks into his tired pick-up before he heaved his slowing body inside the cab, steadying his gnarled hands at ten o’clock and two across the faded steering wheel, his knuckles milk white. He turned his head then, in that slow, deliberate way of elders who know moments matter. His reed green eyes locked on mine. “A boy deserves a good ma,” he told me. “Yer boy might not always realize he deserves good, so ya can’t ever go lettin’ him forget.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised. Him. Me.

“Ayuh.” He slipped his antique truck into gear. “Thing is. Making a place for a boy in the middle of yer house. Well, that’s the kind a thing a good ma does.”

My hand went to my chest, that place so packed with emotion and gratitude and unexpected love for the man in my driveway, reminding me how the hollowed-out parts of us are the spaces where others find sanctuary. I watched his truck drive off and didn’t feel that kind of love swell in my core again until my son returned, all smile and youth and hope and joy.

—

My boy crashed into my legs with his hug. “I missed you!” he said.

I picked him up, joining our bodies as close as the two sides of one heartbeat. I smothered him with kisses and welcome. I wanted to bathe him in apologies. I wanted to tell him we’d never be apart again. I wanted to promise him every tomorrow. I wanted to repair his every yesterday.

But I wouldn’t lie to him.

I would tell him all the truth little-by-little as he and his questions grew, knowing the myths and stories we tell ourselves about family never truly protect us in the end.

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To the Gulls and Cormorants, Common Daisies, and Sea Grass by Sarah Walko

A Letter to the New Yorkers Moving to Maine Humor

Dave Patterson

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but you’re giving off total colonizer vibes. You float in on your Range Rover with a yellow license plate that reads: MAYFLWR. You lustily study your unrolled map, leering at Maine’s mountain ranges and sexy, sexy lakes with a Hudsonian glint in your eye.

As if the pandemic wasn’t bad enough with its deaths and itchy masks and long-COVID symptoms, we now have to stand behind you in line at local coffee shops while you bark imperial phrases into your oversized iPhone. This state is so pristine! The land is absolutely untouched! I can’t believe no one has discovered this place! I’m loath to admit I entertain visions of your oat milk latte spilling on your rural-adjacent J. Crew jeans.

And speaking of jeans, you’re colonizer outfits are an adorable spin-cycle mashup of Village boho meets backwoods lumberjack, and by that, of course, I mean you bought the entire LL Bean fall catalog. Perhaps Columbus’s men jeujed up their Spanish sailor garb with indigenous flare too. Maybe they called it something fun like Island Chic. In the winter for you it’s Patagonia puffy jackets and smart Bean boots. In the summer it’s wicker sun hats and Toms rope platforms. Sometimes we throw you a bone and say, “Nice flannel. Are you from here?” You blush and thank us and call your friend on your iPhone and tell him that you’re starting to blend in with the locals but not in a bad way. Then you order an oat milk latte.

We overhear you when you tell your New York friend that everything in Maine is on sale. Houses are so cheap here—I can’t stop buying them! You have the giddy tone of a child gorging on saltwater taffy—which you now love, by the way. You yell into your phone that you currently own an oceanside villa (private road), a lake house (dockside), and a ski cabin (ski-in-ski-out, obvi). And you’re just getting started. In your excitement you may have missed the weeping single mother who grew up in Maine, attended community college, became a social worker to help Maine kids who grew up like her, but keeps getting outbid on modest homes now priced like Brooklyn brownstones. Maybe keep the gloating to calls made from your growing empire of houses sprinkled around the state. Or maybe those are inside thoughts. I’ll let you decide.

Quick sidebar. I know you feel you can empathize with the aforementioned single mother, because you know something about being outbid on real estate. Before you moved here, every walkup apartment you bid on was snatched from you by a Saudi prince or a Dubai housewife or Miley Cyrus. It’s your turn to win now. I would discourage you from entertaining such empathetic connections. They are what you and your compatriots might call gaucheries. We’re having fun now, aren’t we!

Just a few more things before you get back to taking over local tennis courts with endless sets of pickleball. Pickleball! People from Maine know that we have a symphony orchestra, fine arts museums, a minor league baseball team, lobster roll stands, and Patrick Dempsey. You don’t need to tell us about them or when we can go to them or what will happen when we meet Patrick Dempsey. We know we will fall helplessly in love when we stare into his eyes as blue-green as the foam waves at Crescent Beach. Oh, and speaking of beaches, we know about those too. Remember, what you’re discovering is something we simply call life. But your enthusiasm is cute and infectious, kind of like syphilis. I believe both can be cured with a healthy dose of penicillin, so if you need to keep one trait feel free to choose this one.

It’s my duty to tell you, since I feel a swelling intimacy as this letter grows, that Mainers have always had an affection for you. It’s just that we, like so many Americans in the modern world, are nostalgic for the good old days. We sit around the lobster pot and share yarns from days of yore when you only occupied the state from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Boy do we laugh thinking about your demanding ways, but also about the money you would spend before you fled at the first bite of fall air. But then you moved here year-round with your remote work at a Manhattan salary and ruined a perfectly good thing. It’s like when your grandparents visit for a few weeks: they’re hard to deal with, but they give you money and someone to joke about with your pals. That’s a hoot. But then they move in, and you have to compete with mee-maw every morning for the bathroom. Good luck with that.

You may rightly point out that the people who now occupy Maine are largely not native to the landscape. I fully agree. There were thriving indigenous populations in what is now Maine before European settlers showed up with their SUV-like boats. The Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi’kmaq that form the proud Wabanaki Nation were here for thousands of years. I must ask, if the taking of land by force, be it military or economic, was immoral then, does that make it immoral now? Oh, I’ve gone and pushed it too far. I have that habit.

I do hope you’ll take this all to heart. And if you simply must move here because Saudi princes and Miley Cyrus have priced you out of the Upper East Side, then please no more comments about the growing homeless population in our city. Those are human beings priced out of the housing market so you can own a little slice of heaven. We simply are having fun!

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The Wheelbarrow Fiction

Daniel Elfanbaum

With its cargo of old dirt and red clay and cigarette butts, the wheelbarrow is picked up by its wooden handles and driven from one side of the yard to the other. Familiar work, an unfamiliar part of town. Business. A job. It’s still hot. The wheelbarrow is tipped, emptied, and returned to the hole. Another load. Again. More. And there is always more, and the wheelbarrow is tucked underneath the back steps for a promise of rain and because the bed of the truck is already overfull, tomorrow being another day.

—

In the yard and against the building: the hole; rolls of sod; raised beds; a plastic toy shovel; a coil of hose; two rakes (leaf, soil); a rain barrel; pebbles; worms; knotweed shoots, a small toy car; a stray threaded nut. (Later, mice dance in the moonlight between its upturned metal legs, clamber up its arms and slide down its painted tray over and over to the sound of the garden-level tenant’s radio, which has been left on for a cow-pattern cat that watches from the window.)

—

Bricks are laid carefully and alternating two by two out of the truck bed until it’s filled to the very top, but a lift, strain, and the load must be removed before the wheelbarrow can go and be unloaded and brought back for a second, a third, a fourth trip to the wet truck parked on the street (the driveway being inaccessible due to a large white van and its drunk and angry owner). A fire pit. Soon, perhaps, the wheelbarrow might carry cut wood, an offering.

—

Once upon a time the steel was shiny and fresh painted and new and the right handle had not yet developed a small split and its tire was not yet low and its axle was not yet missing a lock nut and while the edges of the tray has been chipped for years, because of a miscommunication, a recent drop, a fall, there are now three large scratches on the front side of its tray. Somebody had to go to the hospital. There were many concerns aired loudly about workers compensation on the drive home, about money, what was owed and what was fair. There was no concern about the rust beginning to form and bubble up behind the wheelbarrow’s red paint. A problem for later, if at all, if when. Why the tray was made of steel. Why the investment in quality things.

—

Mulch, pebbles for a walkway. Bags of concrete mix. A long time in the sun.

—

The wheelbarrow is loaded lazily into the truck, and as all the small trees and bags of soil and small smooth stones have been placed where they'll stay, it rocks side to side, back and forth just a little turning left, turning right, accelerating, coming to a stop in front of the store and then at the yard and it’s left in the back of the truck for a week, dry, resting on its side next to the shovels, a stray left glove, a bag stuffed with tools and rags.

—

It was not even overburdened at the time but simply through long use and a missing nut during a hard turn at an easy job that the axle was stressed just so and snapped. An unusual way to fail, it was said. (At least it didn't spill.) There was swearing but an idea to check back at the shop to see if there was not a replacement waiting in some drawer, some bin in the back. The wheel had come off and was tossed into the truck. The wheelbarrow itself stood slowly sinking into the ground where it was, since its load had been carried more or less far enough for shovels.

—

(The thing is that old hand tools can find a second life as antiques or decoration or when discovered by grandchildren looking to get back to roots and learn how to plane their own boards and bore their own holes, but a large wheelbarrow doesn't look so nice hung off a wall, and its destiny seems always to be scrap or some kind of planter, carrying, say, a small tree in perpetuity, a juniper, a Christmas tree.)

—

With no replacement in the shop and the shipping for a new axle being far too much and, after all, there being other wheelbarrows in the shed, the red wheelbarrow, robbed of burden and purpose is turned over, naked and all by itself beside the overfull shed, exposed to God and heaven. When it rains the water slides off uncollected, and the paint dries in the weakening sun, and the jobs are different now, and is that not a box truck bearing pallets of new material, new tools? But summer is so far away.

—

The wheelbarrow is taken in the pickup to a neighborhood a few miles away from the shop and set out on a patch of browning grass between the sidewalk and the street. Days pass. The wheelbarrow is loaded into a different, older, and in many ways worse pickup and driven off elsewhere still. More days. A different shed, buried under tarps, garden shears, a chainsaw, boxes, bags of wood pellets from last winter, a collapsed shelf, and, on occasion, a gigantic cat who can't be a stray because it’s so fat but also it has so many mats in its long gray coat.

—

A new axle, wheel, and tire, and the silver bolts shine in such contrast to the dull metal of the tray in the spots where the bubbled paint has been sanded clean. (There is another transaction, another trip in the back of a truck.) Then the fingernail polish used to touch up the paint nearly matches, too. Snow falls outside the windows of the workshop.

—

Beside the guinea hens wandering the yard and pecking for seeds and ticks and dirt, the wheelbarrow rests in the sun. The house is back from the road a little ways but not so far. The neighbors are not close but close enough. It is the same with the suburbs. The eggs the hens lay are small and hard and used mostly for cakes and enriched bread. The feed bags are loaded into the wheelbarrow on weekends from the trunk of a white SUV. The chickens are loud in the morning.

—

The wheelbarrow with its sound new axle is loaded with bags of fertilizer and feed and soil and plastic plant pots and the spring is so far dry in a concerning way, and during the workweek it sits in the sun in the middle of the yard as a platform for the chickens to roost and its handles dry further and a split grows and a fine layer of dust and grime and bird-shit cakes the bottom of the tray. It does rain, finally, but on a Tuesday, and as such a pool of yuck collects and is dumped out behind the chicken coop, and on the weekend the tray is sprayed down with the hose.

—

Summer: to the car and back. Wait. Spray. More trips. A conspicuous gap. Then again back and forth from the car to the coop and side yard and back. Time passes, possibility —

—

The split in the handle grows and creates a noticeable separation and is so pulled back together by rounds and rounds of white hockey tape that turns progressively gray. It’s getting cold and new insulation is installed for the chickens, an extension cord run from the garage to a heated water bowl. A small stockpile of feed and straw is gathered in a brand-new vinyl shed set on the far side of the driveway near the woods. The wheelbarrow is laid up against the shed.

—

A few years go by and the wheelbarrow rests upturned beside the empty coop in the yard of the empty house and a sign has just this afternoon been pounded into the front lawn with a large mallet. There had been a large truck that came and was loaded and then went. In the afternoon the wheelbarrow is directly in the sun, and the red paint threatens to fade. In the evening the weather changes. A family of mice scurry under the tray seeking shelter from the rain.

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Borderline Fiction

Mark Gallini

Norm is standing in front of the bathroom mirror, adjusting his Warden Service uniform when his wife Susan stops behind him. “Well, smell you,” she remarks, and moves on into the kitchen. Norm turns and follows her.

What, he asks. What?

Susan places a mug of coffee on the table for him, tells him she’s teasing.

Norm’s thumbs are hooked into the uniform’s leather belt, which is almost entirely hidden by the leather and canvas pouches strapped to it and, if he’s honest about it, by his belly. She has no doubt noted his sidearm already strapped on, even though this is breaking a longstanding agreement in their household. But hell, their daughter moved into the dorms in Orono two years ago now. Not much chance she’ll be heading back to Aroostook County to live. Once kids get on I-95 and head south for school, they tend to continue in that direction. Often right out of Maine.

“And the tie and tie clip today,” Susan continues. Norm waits for the barb, but she just smiles to him. “Nice,” she says. “You look nice.”

Norm blushes a little. They didn’t often exchange these sorts of pleasantries. But he guesses what she’s really thinking, that after the story in the Boston paper about his handiwork, he’d be getting a lot of attention in town and beyond. Maybe even transferred down to Augusta like she always wanted, closer to her aging parents, and farther from this remote and graying upper corner of the state.

The young, female reporter in the brand-new LL Bean gear had “shadowed” Norm and Dennis in the warden’s truck for a whole day a few weeks back. It was exhausting, frankly, trying to shift the truck without touching her thigh, trying to keep Dennis from saying something stupid, trying to figure out how to keep her happy without giving her what she really wanted, which was to go out on an operation to catch a poacher. Norm didn’t want to have to spend a whole night out in the woods with this girl. Nor did he want to have to police Dennis’ eager attentions. Hell, Norm even told her that it could be dangerous. That was a stretch. It had been almost a hundred years since a Maine warden was shot by poachers in the line of duty, and that time it was over beavers, which were worth something back then.

The girl’s story centered on the half-day spent in their shop, with them building a deer decoy. Well not building exactly. As far as production went, it was a waste of a Saturday. Instead, they demonstrated how their deer decoys worked. Animatronics, it was called. Dennis said the word like fifty times, showing off to the girl who was near his age but clearly out of his league. Norm bit his tongue and let Dennis go on about Norm’s early decoy work, from bales of hay and sticks, to plywood silhouettes with reflective eyes to straight-up taxidermy on styrofoam.

The latest versions, a standing buck that raised and lowered its head, blinked its reflective eyes and flipped its tail, and a prone doe that turned its head side-to-side and did the eye and tail thing, they were realistic beyond anything they had created in the past. To his credit, Dennis did allow that the moving parts were Norm’s idea. Norm in turn credited Dennis with the servo motors Dennis got online. These worked way better than the car-window motors Norm had salvaged from the junkyard for the earlier versions and didn’t need the heavy car batteries. With their transmitters, Norm and Dennis could even control the blinking on the reflective eyes. They were magic, these decoys. Really magic. So for now, in the arms race between poachers and the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Department had the upper hand.

And now they had better work. A landowner had called the Department to report three dead deer found on his property. Two of them were undersized bucks, the other a doe. By the absence of blood trails, and their location not far from the old lumber road, they looked like they were dropped almost in place from a snow machine and by a large-caliber weapon. Possibly at night, although they’d never be able to prove that. No attempt was made to retrieve the animals, except for one haunch cut away from the doe. It was an awful waste of a resource. And it was a crime.

Norm had immediately suspected French Canadians coming over the border, because no one kills deer like those people do, but he kept this to himself. Dennis (LeFebvre) had family over there in New Brunswick, making him a little sensitive on that account. And heck, Dennis was as angry as he was, the waste of it all, and the extra work it created for them. Somehow the story made it into the police blotter and spread from there. Now the big brass in Augusta are coming down on him and Dennis to solve this thing and solve it soon, using whatever means they have at their disposal. The Boston newspaper article doesn’t help. There were murmurings down in Augusta that the pair’s pride had clouded their common sense, allowing a reporter in like they did. Whoever was doing the poaching was going to be extra wary the next time.

In the office, Norm draws for Dennis a rough path of the snow machines that he suspects the poachers were driving. Sure enough the path does cross into New Brunswick where the Svensons’ hay fields straddle the border. But Dennis argues that there were multiple tracks on both sides, and it was impossible to tell which was which after the last thaw. Norm has to admit that this is true, but come on. Still he bites his tongue on this.

Norm and Dennis haven’t made this iteration of decoys too tempting, as experience has proven that a trophy buck decoy close to the road enticed an embarrassingly large number of normally law-abiding townspeople. Even the judge allowed that he was tempted. It didn’t make Norm especially popular among his neighbors. So this new decoy is a 1-point buck, obviously off-limits, joined by a small doe, also obviously off limits, and it will be set back where only four-wheelers and snow machines would go, on posted state forest land. And it will be night. No excuse for misunderstandings here. The legal department gave them clarification on this. There is no way they would lose in court again over entrapment.

It is going to be a long night, so they clock out. At home, Norm wanders from room to room, so unused he is to being home alone in the middle of the day. He finally settles on the sofa, and after running through the night’s plan one more time, he drops off to sleep. A jangle of keys and the scraping of the sticky front door wake him, and Susan enters, home from the grammar school where she is the nurse. She spots him on the sofa and breaks into a smile. “Sleeping on the job?”

Norm rises, straightens his uniform. He leaves his belt off, as his service pistol is still holstered to it, and has to hook his finger in a belt loop to keep the pants up. He tells her he has to work late that night on an operation, and so tried to get in a few winks. Susan puts her bag down, takes off her coat and gives him a kiss. She tells him they’re never home together at this hour, and, grinning devilishly, leads him into the bedroom. Norm wonders if she is hinting at a life to come down in Augusta, or what it is that has brought on this welcomed affection. But he's not going to ask out loud, that’s for sure.

He barely has time to get dressed and shovel down some dinner before Dennis shows up. While they load the truck with the decoys and equipment, Susan makes a pot of coffee for them to fill their thermoses. She whoops when Norm gives her a bear hug that lifts her off the ground, causing Dennis to remark at the newlyweds. As they drive off, Norm looks back at the house, the windows glowing yellow in the snow, the profile of his wife who for the first time in years had sex with him in the dying light of afternoon. He dreads leaving it all, even if it’s to do what has always been his favorite part of his job.

“You’re not your chatty self,” Dennis says eventually.

“Nope,” Norm replies, leaving it at that. So does Dennis.

It’s a cold one that night, cold and clear. The new layer of snow is powdery and crunches under the tires. They have discussed the pros and cons of driving up to the site, but decide against it because of the tracks they would leave. Instead, they park some ways away and snowshoe in from behind the hill with their gear in their backpacks and the decoys held across their chests. The plan is to work in shifts, one man in the truck for pursuit, and the other bivouacked near the decoys to get a positive ID on the crime. They will switch every couple of hours until two am or so. Dennis isn’t so fond of the waiting and watching, but Norm loves the solitude, the stillness of the winter forest, the dark silhouettes of cloud scudding past the stars.

They set up quickly, then test their radios, check their weapons and take their positions. Norm takes first watch in the woods, and while he knows nothing will happen then, he is content to sit there on his camp stool, his boots on a bed of evergreen boughs to keep them out of the snow, and a steaming coffee in his hand, content to recall in detail the gentle afternoon with Susan.

And that is what he does, shushing Dennis’ radioed wisecracks, listening to the occasional breeze like a broom through the grove of pines. When they change shifts, he climbs into the cab of the truck, stifling hot Dennis has kept it, and reeking of his cigarettes. But the heat feels pretty great and he strips down to luxuriate in it. Norm puts the radio on and listens to the hockey game on the CBC. He gives Dennis more leeway to be chatty on the two-way, as Dennis isn’t allowed to play on his ever-present phone in the field, and the young guy needs some chatting to make the time go by.

And by it goes, as does the next shift, where by the silence Norm suspects Dennis has either fallen asleep or is looking at that porn he watches too much of. No vehicles of any sort go by, and Norm begins to wonder if the article in the Boston paper, followed by all the police blotter stuff in the local one, have spooked the poachers. He wonders if they read these papers over there in Canada. And he wonders what kind of sick person or persons would be killing these deer and just leaving them there for the coyotes.

They change shifts one last time. The truck smells a little bleachy, and Norm doesn’t want to think about what went on in it previously. He shuts off the engine, opens the window and eats a piece of the blueberry cake Susan has packed for him. He turns on the radio, which is set to one of the French stations that Dennis has switched it to. He finds the college station out of Presque Isle. He hates the whiny music, but is entertained by the slacker voice of the student DJ, wonders what his daughter is doing this Friday night down in Orono. Then Dennis comes in on the two-way.

Dennis reports two snow machines, spotlights that scan the hills. Norm starts the truck, tells Dennis to stay on the radio. They have found the decoys, Dennis says next. The reflection from the eyes is perfect, an occasional reassuring blink. And the tail, flipping up white. That should make their trigger fingers itch. Whoever it is, they are taking their time though. He wonders if they’re onto the decoys.

Norm hears the rifle shot echo around the hills. “We’re in,” Dennis shouts into the phone, and Norm hears him crunching through the snow, telling the poachers to halt. There are several more gunshots, and the radio goes dead for a bit.

The forest is a black and ominous blur as Norm drives by, the snow on the fields a dead fluorescent blue, the river a blade of steel. He is bombing down the road, shouting into the radio for Dennis to reply. He should call the police, but what if it’s something stupid, like Dennis falling through the ice at a stream, or stuck in old barbed wire fence. They make too much fun of the Department as it is, the State Police do. Whatever, he will be at the scene soon enough.

A light is sweeping through the pine grove up where they were hiding. That’s positive, and there’s two other fixed lights that he guesses are from the snow machines. So maybe Dennis got the situation under control. Typical of him to try to do this solo. Norm pulls the truck within a hundred yards or so of the scene. He leaves the flashing lights on, which usually tells the poachers that it’s game over, but as he exits the car, a shot rings out and shatters his windshield. Norm dives into the snow. He is coatless, but climbing up into the lit cab would make him an easy target. All he can hear is the truck, the snow machine and his heart. It goes without saying that none of this is going according to plan.

Norm crawls through the snow to the passenger side of the truck and slithers across the seat. He calls the police, gives his position, reports armed suspects, shots fired. He cuts off their questions, reaches up for his Remington 700, and gets it down just before another bullet bursts through the windshield. He turns off the headlights, slips back out the passenger door, and begins the long crawl through the snow in the dark, still without his coat.

He tries to crawl on elbows and knees while holding this rifle in the firing position, like he has seen in movies, but at the rate he progresses it will take most of the night and all of his energy to get there. He catches a broken yelp from Dennis. That’s good, he’s alive. And it gives Norm a burst of energy. The spotlight sweeps the field between Norm’s truck and the grove, but it does it predictably, so Norm rises and high-steps it through the knee-deep snow when the beam passes him, then dives back down when it swings back. He’s getting closer, close enough to hear the snow machines idling, two men arguing, Dennis’ defiant cries. Norm sees silhouettes of two men, one with the light, the other with a rifle, but he doesn’t know who’s who, or where Dennis is.

He sure as hell isn’t just going to start shooting. Short of a songbird he downed with a BB gun at age 9, he has never killed anything bigger than a pickerel, and he certainly doesn’t want to start now. Besides, what if he misses? What if he does get one of them? Could he throw the bolt and re-aim before they shoot him or Dennis?

“Where the fuck is he?” one of the men curses.

“Let’s get out of here,” the other says.

“What about him?” The light focuses on a prone Dennis, whose hands are raised over his head.

Norm gets up and sprints at them. The spotlight swings toward him, and he dives down, his heart stopping when his chest breaks through the thin ice capping a stream. He won’t last long, coatless and wet down there, but for now he’s out of sight, and the spotlight passes straight over him, but stays above him, probably on his tracks.

“Motherfucker,” one of the men yells.

“Let’s go,” the other says.

“Nope,” the first one snorts.

“Where you going?”

Norm hears the man huffing and puffing toward him. He turns on his back, the Remington across his chest. The freezing water stings his back like needles. Steam rises from his chest. Norm tries to count to ten before he must roll over and shoot.

Sirens echo across the valley.

“Fuck!” the approaching man says.

“Let’s go!” the other insists.

A snow machine revs a few times. The light above Norm disappears. The machine approaches, stops, then tears out again. Soon two machines are going full throttle toward Svenson’s fields and the border.

Norm struggles to his feet and stumbles toward Dennis, who is splayed on his back in the snow, which is stained red around his left thigh.

“Motherfuckers,” Dennis groans. Norm needs to bandage it. He hesitates for a second and removes his wet shirt, wraps it around the leg, tightens the knot into a tourniquet with a stick until Dennis screams.

“Gotta stop the bleeding,” Norm says.

“Look at you without a shirt out here,” Dennis groans. “Good thing you’re fat as a goddamned seal.”

Norm lets this go. He turns and watches the two flashing vehicles stop at his truck. He turns his flashlight to them, and gives them three short, three long, three short bursts from it.

A voice comes over the megaphone. “Are you okay?”

“Safe now. But got a man down,” Norm yells back. He turns to Dennis. “Help’s on the way,” he says.

“I can hear just fine,” Dennis replies.

Norm is shivering uncontrollably now. He rubs his arms and belly, but it doesn’t help much. “Can you stand?” He asks Dennis.

“I don’t fucking know,” Dennis says. “But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that,” Norm asks bending and helping Dennis to his feet.

“Those fuckers spoke English. Please take note.”

The troopers arrive just then. One offers Norm his coat, but Norm says his is in the truck. They take Dennis from him and support him between them. Norm scans the ground for Dennis’ stuff, but the troopers tell him leave it, it’s evidence. “What was going down here anyway,” one of them asks.

Norm points his light up the hill at their tableau. Something must have happened to the transmitter during the whole to-do, because the buck is nodding endlessly, and its tail is wagging like a dog’s. The doe’s eyes blink like a strobe. The trooper turns to Norm.

“What the hell,” he says.

Norm turns and heads to the truck. He will get his coat, the weapons and such from it, then he will join the men on the drive to the hospital, then to whatever business comes next. What the hell indeed.

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Sheep by Gabriella Bedetti

Hot Wash Nonfiction

Brendan Curtinrich

Jack sat in the door of his tent and stared at his feet. They were pale and wrinkled, like hunks of wet mozzarella. Fat, yellow blisters bulged between his toes. “They look worse than they are,” I said, “Let’s clean them up and see.”

We’d been planning this hike of the 125-mile-long Centennial Trail in South Dakota since early spring. Now, months later, we were just a few days into the walk and it was all coming undone. I retrieved the first aid kit stashed in my tent. I’d pared it down over the years until it contained the bare essentials: a scant collection of ibuprofen, triple antibiotic cream, Vaseline, Band-Aids, and Imodium, and a single safety pin.

On my thru hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2013 I’d developed an array of boils on the insides of my thighs and the underside of my scrotum. They throbbed as I lay in my tent at night, and tormented my every daytime step. When one burst open I sopped up the blood and pus, stuffed a wad of toilet paper into my shorts, kicked back 800 milligrams of ibuprofen, and walked the twenty-five miles to Bear Mountain, New York where my parents had mailed a tube of drawing salve. Usually on thru hikes first aid is just about making it to town.

I knelt in front of Jack and handed him some Wet Ones and Band-Aids. Then I held the point of the safety pin in the flame of my lighter until it glowed. I let it cool and offered it to Jack: “For popping the blisters.”

Jack scrubbed his toes gingerly and I stood up so he wouldn’t feel rushed. His bloody feet were the latest crisis on a trip plagued with problems. Our crossing from Wind Cave to Bear Butte was only supposed to take a week. Already I was doubting we’d make it all the way.

This was Jack’s first backpacking trip. I’d thought he’d be a natural. Motivated. Contemplative. Fit. Tall, broad, and mustachioed, he is the living illustration on a vintage boxing poster. But Jack was beset by ailments from the start and I couldn’t help but blame myself. The paltry first aid kit in my hand represented my folly: I was accustomed to hiking alone, or at least in very particular company.

I set my own schedule on the Appalachian Trail. I carried all I needed on my back for 124 days, sleeping and eating when I pleased and walking as slow or as fast as I liked. I connected 2,186 miles of eastern mountains, pastures, and sidewalks with an unbroken series of footsteps. I crossed every inch of ground between the summits of Springer Mountain and Mount Katahdin with the swing of my own two feet. Even two years later when I walked the 1,000-mile-longer Continental Divide Trail with my girlfriend, we dialed in our system and walked as one fused identity. Holly and I merged our hiking styles through weeks of meticulous compromise to become one amalgamated organism, a two-bodied being that shared food, water, and shelter. We made miles, set up our tent, broke camp, and hitchhiked together.

When I flew to the West Coast the year after that to thru hike the Pacific Crest Trail, I joined up with a tall German named Fabian who I met thirty miles into the desert as I reclined in the shade of some scrubby bushes, sipping a liter of hot, gritty water. “You know,” he said, stopping in the trail and tapping the screen of his Garmin. “There is a good spot for resting maybe a mile ahead.” He was fast and light, I was fast and light, and that made us near-duplicates of each other. Carbon copies. While Holly and I had hiked as a composite being, Fabian and I were clones. We woke at the same time and moved across the land with a shared mindset and ability.

These trails—the Appalachian, Continental Divide, and Pacific Crest—are known as the Triple Crown, an aggregate 7,800 miles of footpath and wilderness corridor across the United States. By the time I walked the length of all three trails in 2016, only about 250 other people had done the same. My mistake was that I set out on the Centennial Trail two years later prepared to walk with Jack the same way.

We weren’t far into our hike when Jack first mentioned that his knees were hurting. Filled with seven days of food, our packs were heavy. But Jack was particularly overburdened. I had spent the previous five years accruing delicate, homemade or expensive, ultralight backpacking equipment. Jack had to make do with the gear he could rent from our university’s outdoor recreation program or buy cheap and last minute from Iowa’s deer-hunting outlets. 

By the second day, he’d begun a regimen of ibuprofen and acetaminophen to ease the pain in his knees. The pills let him soldier on, but his condition continued to deteriorate. We struggled to cover even two miles an hour and I worried more as his supply of pain killers dwindled. If he ran out, mine would only last him a day.

—

I began my Appalachian Trail walk on May 19, 2013, eight days after my college commencement ceremony. The trail was vacant of other thru hikers by that time of year, and day trippers were enamored with a twenty-two-year-old trying to walk across the country. They offered me snacks and cold drinks. Sometimes rides down the road to a post office where I had a box of food waiting. One woman bought me lunch at Cracker Barrel.

But the favors wore off the hairier I grew. I’d been living outside for 105 days by the time I came down from Mount Madison, crossed the West Branch of the Peabody River, and scrambled to the top of Wildcat Peak in New Hampshire. I had walked approximately 1,900 miles. Mount Katahdin was just over 300 miles away. I’d gone more than fifty days with only dips in frigid streams and soapless hand baths near lakes, and it showed. A salt-stained bandana held my greasy hair out of my eyes. My t-shirt was rancid with body soil. My shorts were stretched and faded. My shoes and socks all had holes. I was weary and spare, my six-foot-three frame trimmed to 140 pounds.

Many other thru hikers headed into town for food, rest, and a hot shower, but I avoided this temptation. The only cash I had was a fifty-dollar bill folded up at the bottom of my pack. My bank account had hemorrhaged money ever since April when I bought the food for the trip—cases of Snickers bars, crates of peanut butter, hundreds of packs of instant noodles. My student loans were accruing interest with each passing month. The habit I adopted early on was to visit towns only briefly, to dump my supplies in my pack and get back on the trail as soon as possible. But this strategy was backfiring now. Another skin infection had appeared just above my butt, right where my pack rested against my lower back. I paused on top of Wildcat Peak and winced as I peeled the waistband of my shorts away from the infection. A lump the size of a peach pit sat beneath a hot, red circle of skin.

The next morning I patched up the sore with the rest of my ointment and a folded bandana and wondered about blood poisoning. As I descended to Carter Notch Hut, I thought of MRSA and all the stories I’d heard from my high school health teacher of kids wasting away in hospital beds because they hadn’t showered after gym class. Inside the hut, I found two other thru hikers, Brain Damage and Big Yank, who I’d seen off and on along the trail. Big Yank was a lifeguard back home, and the closest thing I had to a doctor. He peered at the infection. He guessed it wasn’t MRSA, as far as he could tell, and that it hadn’t gone septic either. But in the end, how sure could he be? “What do you want?” He said. “I know CPR.”

I left the AT and followed a side trail along Nineteen Mile Brook to Highway 16 and stood with my thumb out by the side of the road. And I cried because I was afraid it was the end. After three months of soggy shoes, blistered toes, wasp stings, blackfly bites, falls, cuts, bruises, scrapes, chafe, sour clothes, spider webs, spongy green beans, and scrotal boils, it was all going to end for me on the side of a road 300 miles short of my goal.

Back home nobody would understand. It’s hard to comprehend the delicacy of a thru hike. Sure, it would take some time to walk that far, folks admit, looking at a map, but what they can’t realize unless they’re actually out there is that every square inch on that map represents hundreds of thousands of steps. And in every step there are roots, rocks, bugs, and rain. There are aches and pains. There is sweat, exhaustion, hunger, and loneliness. And that lasts for millions of steps. Thousands of miles. Hundreds of days.

Then a pickup truck slid into the gravel by the side of the road and a man with a black ponytail got out, thumbs in the loops of his khaki shorts.

“Always stop for a thru hiker,” he said. “Where you heading?”

“A doctor,” I said, wiping my face. “I have an infection.”

“We’ll want Androscoggin Valley for that,” he said. “Come on, I’m going that way.”

I climbed into the cab and the man turned his truck around in the middle of the road and drove back the way he came.

—

By day four on the Centennial Trail it was clear Jack was in no shape to continue. He wasn’t sleeping well and complained of nausea at mealtimes. He had nearly stopped speaking and we had transferred his food and tent into my pack. After crossing seventy-five miles of South Dakota dust country—hills and valleys full of coneflower and bur oak, flaxen-hued sedge, ponderosa pines, quaking aspen, and towering rock—we sat together at Pilot Knob and texted our friend Connor who planned to meet us at Bear Butte, the northern end of the trail. He would come to Pilot Knob tomorrow and pick up Jack instead. I would carry on to Bear Butte alone. I was confident I could reach it in a day and a half. Jack and Connor would meet me there. Crisis resolved. Or so I thought.

 —

That next day I cruised north along the trail—until I didn’t anymore. At some point in the early afternoon I fell over the threshold of heat exhaustion without even knowing I was at the door. Suddenly I felt lightheaded and wasn’t sweating. Weather reports I heard later said the heat index peaked at 105 degrees. Though I drank water, it was already too late. My mind became foggy and I wobbled along, drunk but parched. Only half a liter of water swirled at the bottom of my bottles. Before clarity receded, I recognized—like taking one last gulp of air below deck in a sinking ship—that I had gotten myself into serious trouble.

I became paranoid about poison ivy and spent miles inching around leaves—leaves of plants that, in brief and increasingly sparse moments of lucidity, I realized belonged to harmless shrubs. I thought I heard car doors slam and the voices of giggling children. I glanced back over and over, certain I’d see a highway and a family in a minivan I could beg for water. But there was only woods. Thunder rumbled overhead even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The badly-printed maps in the guidebook I carried suggested seasonal streams, but each gulch I crossed was dry.

—

The doctor at the Androscoggin Valley Hospital pressed on my abscess. “It’s good you came in,” he said. “I doubt this would have resolved on its own.” I was discharged with a course of strong antibiotics. I bought a package of maxi pads at a nearby convenience store, slapped one over the lump on my butt, and caught a ride from a man on his way home from the grocery store. When he dropped me back at the trail crossing he hung out of his window and tossed me an orange. “Take one for the road,” he said, and then drove away.

Near the top of the steep climb on the far side of Highway 2, I stopped on a log to eat the orange. The forest was close, a dripping, emerald screen that plopped and plunked with light rain. Pulp clung to my beard and juice ran down my wrists as I slurped at the rind. I wanted to linger over the fruit, but drops of water fell on my neck and a chilly breeze coaxed me to my feet. I stuffed the rest of the orange in my mouth, juice dribbling down my chin, and sealed the rind in an old Ziploc bag, which I tucked into my pack.

I sucked citrus stickiness from my arms as I set off uphill, minding my step over roots and rocks. Then something made me stop: a shape in front of me. Heavy breathing. My head snapped up. The bear was so close I could nearly jab it with my ski pole. All the other bears I’d encountered on the trail—twenty-two in all—had been dozens of yards off or had bolted as soon as they’d seen me. One had padded around my tent at night, snuffling in circles at the edge of my rainfly until I rolled over. Then it had run away too. This one was going nowhere.

“Hey, bear,” I said, as low and calm as I could. The bear didn’t move. Its fur was dark underneath, but the hairs turned reddish at their ends in a kind of ginger halo. Its nostrils glistened and flexed as it sniffed the air. A cloud of bugs hovered over its rump. “Come on, bear,” I said. “Move along.” Really thinking: Shit. Fuck. But also not even thinking, just trying to find the volume knob for the static in my head. The bear lifted his nose and breathed deeply. I ran my tongue along my mustache and tasted the orange sheen. I smell like a goddamn fruit basket.

Arms above my head, I raised my voice: “Go on, bear. Get out of here.” The bear took an uneasy step to the side and then another back toward me, lowering his head and swinging it back and forth, snuffing.

“Go on, bear. Go home,” I said louder, feeling desperate. I stepped forward and hit the underbrush with my ski poles. “Go the fuck home!” I shouted and the bear broke away and scampered twenty yards into the woods. It turned to look over its shoulder. I scooted past, checking behind me every few feet until I was certain I’d made a clean escape.

The adrenaline of the encounter sped me along the trail for the next hour, and by the time I reached Mount Hayes—a fog-socked hump capped with mossy rocks and scraggy, misshapen evergreens—I had decided I would not sleep until I got to Maine. Only thirteen miles stood between me and the final state on the trail. I paused only to put on my headlamp before rushing on.

 —

Sometime later I stood on a downward-sloping slab of granite. The lights of Gorham, New Hampshire or Rangeley, Maine twinkled like UFOs in the distance.

The trail had led me to the top of a cliff a few tenths of a mile north of the New Hampshire-Maine border with no apparent way down. Mist rushed through the beam of my headlamp on an eternal gust of wind. The loose ends of my backpack straps beat against my chin. Silhouettes of pines waved against the night sky, creaking and whistling and brushing needles. The rock was slick and I couldn’t see over the edge.

Crouching down, I dug my fingers into the dirt near the trees. I inched forward as if testing ice on a frozen lake. Two steps in, my shoes—bowling-alley-smooth from the last 900 miles of walking—slid out from under me. I skidded across hard granite for a second or two and then tumbled into open space, clumps of dirty moss still clutched in my hands.

All the breath left my body as I hit the ledge below. My headlamp smacked a boulder and went dark. I toppled down a few more feet and landed among some rocks. Rain fell on my face and I sucked at the wet air where I lay, tangled in my pack straps. I pulled my hands from the wrist loops of my ski poles and unbuckled my pack, which fell away and rolled down the hill.

My lungs filled and I touched my face. Nothing seemed broken. I felt my forehead and nose and collarbone. All intact. Ribs, hips, arms. Okay. A gash across my shinbone seared, and my fingertips came back gooey with blood. My headlamp was broken open and the batteries were gone, so I slumped against the rocks, panting in the dark. After a moment I felt around for my ski poles between the stones and found my pack where it had rolled against a tree. A white blaze was painted on the trunk, more ghostly bright than anything else around.

I hoisted my pack and limped down the trail, searching through the Maine rainstorm for the shelter I knew should be close. Soon, a small wooden sign: Carlo Col Shelter pointed me down a side trail, and the luster of the corrugated metal roof guided me through the trees. The interior was split in half by a loft about four feet off the floor. A few hikers were already asleep below it, bundled in sleeping bags and hats. Up top, a couple and their dog watched me step inside.

“Hi, there,” the man said.

“Hi,” I said, pressing water out of my beard.

“Looks like you had a rough one out there.”

“Yeah.” I swung my backpack off my shoulders and hung it from a nail in the wall.

“There’s room for you up here.”

I nodded. “Great. Thanks.”

I pulled off my raincoat and hung that on a nail too, slipped out of my sodden shoes and socks and lined them against the wall. My clothes were damp and I shivered in the breeze. I peeled off the maxi pad, which took a layer of skin with it. Too tired to cook, I poured a few ounces of water into a bag of instant noodles and dehydrated mushrooms and drank it crunchy. Then I gathered my sleeping things and pulled myself into the loft. The couple smiled.

“You going thru?” The man asked.

“Yeah,” I said, unfolding my foam pad. The couple’s shirts and sleeping bags were bright and clean. The aroma of deodorant and shampoo was rich against the musk of old wood and soggy forest. I noticed them still staring.

“You?” I asked.

“Oh, we’re just in for the night,” the man said. “We like to get out for the weekend when we can.”

“That’s good,” I said, unrolling my sleeping bag.

“Fun for the pup, you know?” he said.

“Must love it,” I said, zipping my sleeping bag up to my chin. The man turned to speak to his wife and I pulled the hood of my bag over my head and was asleep in an instant.

 —

I woke in the black interior of the shelter to the sound of the man next to me hacking and gagging. I sat up in alarm, but saw he was still asleep. I sighed and listened to him struggle for air, snores coming in threes or fours before one would catch in his throat, making him retch and snort. I laid on the planks of the loft floor, staring up at the log beams etched with the initials and names of decades of hikers, wanderers, and youth reform expeditions.

The next time I woke up was to whispers: “Stan. Stan. Stan,” the woman in the loft hissed at her husband. Stan snored on. “Stan. Stan-uh.”

Finally, Stan stirred. “Maria, what is it?”

“I heard something by the bear box,” Maria said. I peeked out of my sleeping bag. The doorway of the shelter opened out to heavy fog racing by on stiff wind. I doubted there was anything by the bear box, but if there was, I doubted even more that Maria could hear it.

“Maria, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Stan said.

“Stan, there’s something out there. I heard it,” Maria insisted.

“Maria, go back to sleep,” Stan said.

“I heard something, Stan. It’s by the bear box,” Maria said, perched on her elbow now, staring at her husband.

Stan sighed and sat up, strapping on a headlamp which cast a beam as bright as day around the tiny shelter. This is not happening. I burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag as Stan stepped over me. He leaned his head out into the darkness.

“Maria, I don’t see anything,” Stan called over the wind. The dog groaned and stretched.

“I heard it, Stan. There was something by the bear box,” Maria said.

Wisps of cloud swirled around Stan’s long-johnned legs. “It’s nothing Maria. There’s nothing out there.”

The beam swung around as Stan picked his way back across the shelter to his sleeping bag. He consoled his wife in loud whispers. Their dog stood up, shook, circled, and settled back down. Stan turned off his headlamp and I closed my eyes.

I was just falling asleep for the third time that night when Stan pulled in a growling breath and began to snore again. I unzipped my sleeping bag, folded up my foam pad, and took my pack down from the nail. I loaded spare batteries into my headlamp, pulled on soaking socks and shoes, and buckled my hip belt. Just as I picked up my ski poles, I heard Maria rustle in the loft.

“Are you leaving?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, certain that if I wasn’t sleeping I might as well be making miles.

“You know,” Maria said, her voice suddenly high. “I heard something by the bear box.”

“I know you did,” I said, and stepped back into the night.

—

I still had about twenty-five miles of the Centennial Trail left before I reached Bear Butte, but only a few gulps of water in my bottles. I struggled to bring the tiny topo map in my guidebook into focus. The only little blue line left to cross was Elk Creek.

I sagged in despair as I descended to the creek a few miles later, my tongue thick and dry as a toad. It was nothing but cobble. A rope strung up across the dry streambed hung frayed and useless in the heat.

What were my choices? Hope to hitchhike out at Elk Creek trailhead? Hide in the shade and then night hike to the I-90 underpass? The trailhead was still over two miles away and the underpass, thirteen. I doubted there’d be anyone at the trailhead who could help me, and I couldn’t fathom walking out to the highway as thirsty as I was.

The rocks of the streambed clacked hollowly as I unbuckled my pack and sat down on a boulder. Water gurgled nearby. The hallucinations had returned. I leaned forward to loosen the laces on my shoes and froze. The gurgle got louder as I leaned toward my feet. I dropped to my stomach, sending wolf spiders darting.

Distinct beneath the riverbed was the babble of water flowing somewhere not far below. Standing too fast, my vision dissolved into sparkles and blackness. I steadied myself and then gathered my bottles and teetered downstream. Around a bend and several hundred feet farther on, the stream burst forth from the rocks, cold and clear.

—

After my sleepless night at the Carlo Col Shelter, I emerged, sore and tired, from the Maine woods and found myself on the edge of a paved road. A pickup truck sat in a gravel pullout nearby. As I made to cross the road, a man in a green shirt and green pants stepped out of the truck. He wore a bullet-proof vest and carried a gun on his belt. He held up his hand: “Warden’s office.”

I stopped at the edge of the road and leaned on my poles. “Hi,” I said.

“How long you been on trail?”

“Since May.”

“You hiking with anyone else?”

“Sometimes, but usually not.”

“That all yours?” The warden asked, gesturing at my backpack.

“Yes.”

“Your pack and everything?”

“Yes.”

“Seen this woman anywhere?” The man held out a sheet of paper. ATTENTION SPORTSMAN it said across the top. Beneath it was a photo of a small woman in a bright red shirt and khaki shorts. Her hair was tied back with a bandana. She was beaming, squinting behind a pair of dark-framed glasses. She reminded me of a librarian, someone warm and grandmotherly. I skimmed the rest of the information:

 —

if you come across items that you feel may be connected to the disappearance of geraldine largay, last seen on appalachian trail 7/22/13, please: do not collect or disturb these items. please call maine state police.

 —

The woman in the photo was carrying the same brand and color backpack as me. She even had what looked like the same fluorescent orange whistle hanging from her shoulder strap. I hoped the warden recognized that any pack this woman could carry would be way too small for me.

I handed the paper back and shook my head. “Sorry. I haven’t.”

“Well, I’ll ask that you keep a look out,” he said. “And give us a call if you see anything.” He strode back to his truck.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I had just walked into the largest search and rescue operation in Maine state history. Once we learned of it, the disappearance of Geraldine Largay was on every thru hiker’s mind, though we told ourselves the same couldn’t happen to us. We had walked from Georgia and were confident and fit. I’d made good time after the setback in New Hampshire and the trail felt like home again. I was young and would never die.

I was blind to the reality around me.

Stiff, shrubby pines lined the trail and their branches grabbed at my pack. Sharp green needles fell into my shoes. The forest concealed everything, occasionally parting to reveal whole ponds I’d never have known were there. They even hid moose, one emerging twenty feet ahead of me, the size of a Clydesdale, invisible until it stepped into the trail’s thin line of open air. The mountains are old and covered by a dense, wizened forest. A deep mulch of orange needles and moss obscures anything that stands still.

It’s tough country, with a steep, slick path and damp, chilly weather. Short days make a clammy land of long shadows. Rainstorms last for days. Thick brush and decaying logs lay jumbled on the ground. Blackish water flows between crevices in lichen-covered stones. The land leaps for the sky like tangled rickrack, arbitrary and incongruent humps and ripples, a maze of buckled ground. Root pits collect stagnant water at the base of windthrown trees. Off trail the landscape shifts in a kaleidoscope of bark, fern and rock. Squirrels skitter along branches, stomping tiny feet and chattering.

But still rumors swirled between some thru hikers that Geraldine had been murdered or otherwise kidnapped and smuggled away. It was an easier tale to believe. We’d all met weirdos at some point on our hikes, and to consider a violent misanthrope was kinder to our egos than admitting the truth: any one of us was only ever one misstep from a similar fate.

—

I moseyed along the Centennial Trail with five liters of water glugging in my pack. The fifteen-minute wait for the purification drops to work had seemed interminable, but now I took long pulls every few minutes, resisting the urge to guzzle it all.

Despite my luck, I didn’t feel much better. I probably needed an IV. And I needed to stop walking—to sit in a cool place and rest. A nagging pain began in my chest, accompanied by a strange taste in my mouth that reminded me of how plastic smells when it’s left in the sun. My focus slipped again. I wasn’t going to make the miles I wanted. But then I’d be late meeting Jack and Connor and they would worry. Maybe that was good. Let them call the police. Send in the chopper.

I checked my cell phone even though I hadn’t had service all day. The screen blinked and died. No battery. The light waned as I climbed to the top of a rise. Ahead, something shimmered in the last rays of the setting sun. First, I thought my vision was going, but the shimmer stayed put as I got closer, and I began to believe it was real. What was it? A pane of glass? A pile of snow? Yes. It was snow, I was sure of it. But in July? That didn’t make sense. A moment later I reached the place and saw it was a huge mound of ice cubes. I stepped on a piece and it crunched under my foot. I unbuckled my pack and fell to my knees and thrust my hands deep into the pile. I wriggled in deeper until I was up to my shoulders and then I rolled on my back like a dog. I clutched handfuls of ice to my face. What is this place? What have I found? I popped a cube in my mouth and closed my eyes.

After a long time lying there, I tucked my shirt into my pants and packed it full of ice. I rolled cubes in my bandana and tied it around my neck and stuffed some under my hat. I chugged most of two bottles of water and filled them back up with ice. Then I shouldered my pack and strode away from the oasis, leaving a dribble of melt water in the dusty trail behind me.

—

A few days deeper into Maine I spent the night at Leeman Brook Lean-to while a tremendous storm dumped rain and thunder shook the logs of the shelter. The forest was soaked and dripping early the next morning. I descended to Little Wilson Stream, which brought me up short. It careened through its course and sent a trembling pool of water a dozen yards onto the trail. I splashed down to the edge of the current, which roared out of the forest like a freight train. A white blaze glistened from the trees on the far side of the stampeding water.

I waded in up to my knees. The current was like an unending thunderclap, all around and consuming. I took another step and plunged into the water up to my hips, managing, barely, to stay upright against the stream’s crashing weight. Fighting for balance, I gathered myself in the eddy of a boulder. Water thundered by, rushing around my ribs. I fought back panic and leaned into the flow. No more steps. Just inches now, feeling blindly for a firm hold among the rocks as the river bellowed and raced around me, against me, droplets wetting my face. Never stretching too far, holding down the fear that urged me to rush, to throw myself forward and paddle like mad for the bank, I poked slippery, submerged rocks with my toes. The whole time, the water crashed and sprayed, incessant, heavy—so heavy—just an ounce away from bowling me over, from sweeping me away. It broke around my stomach in a torrent, pushing, pushing, pushing.

—

Bear Butte, the northern end of the Centennial Trail, is sacred to the Lakota and other American Indian tribes. Today, it’s a South Dakota State Park, with an education center and a black, asphalt parking lot. I reached it, still a little unfocused and woozy, a few minutes past noon and sat in the shade by the picnic tables.

The morning had come in the blink of an eye. I’d camped less than ten yards from the trail a couple miles past the place where I found the ice. A dreamless sleep had given way to faint dawn light and I packed in my rehearsed and familiar fashion, though I still felt wobbly and dumb. My head was cloudy, my body stiff, and my lungs and chest were tight and painful. I had fourteen miles to walk by noon in order to rendezvous on time with Jack and Connor.

The forested hills had given way to open plains and Bear Butte’s diminishing humps were just visible in the distance. I walked steadily north, nursing my last liter of water until I passed under Interstate 90 and a cacophony of screaming semis. Alkali Trailhead waited on the other side. A trio of bulletin boards bore fliers for a mountain bike race the previous day and I understood that aid station volunteers had probably dumped their coolers of ice on the ground before leaving the night before. I found a spigot at a campsite nearby and used it to douse my head and then fill up my bottles. I slouched against a stranger’s camper while I drank and then rose and carried on.

The final push to the base of Bear Butte was a never-ending march through the prairie’s furious headwind. A trifecta of bison grazed near where I walked, and they raised their shaggy, woolen heads to watch me shuffle by. Slimy purple tongues slithered into their nostrils. One dipped its head, tore a mouthful of grass, and shook its dusty mane. I wondered if they could smell what I’d been through, could read the ordeal in the brownish urine that had dribbled feebly onto the front of my pants earlier that morning. If any creature knew about surviving this country, it was them. They looked on, indifferent.

I crossed a few final washed-out gullies and then I was there, at the parking lot of the education center. The last two miles of the Centennial Trail switchbacked up the butte to its summit. I’d finish that later. Connor’s black Camry wasn’t yet in the parking lot, so I found a place in the pine trees and laid down to drink some water. I wondered how close I’d come to dying, but supposed I’d never know. Maybe I was close. Maybe I was fathoms away. Maybe the maybes didn’t matter. Still, I thought of Geraldine Largay.

By the time the warden spoke to me at that road crossing on the Appalachian Trail five years before, the sixty-six-year-old woman they were searching for was already dead. Her remains would be found two years later on U.S. Navy property that borders the trail. Her flattened tent and the sleeping bag that held her bones were covered in a heap of woodland debris.

The Maine Warden Service concluded that Geraldine became lost on July 22nd after stepping into the woods to pee. She was disoriented and unable to find her way back. She searched for high ground where she might find a cell phone signal, but this only left her more mixed up and in a worse place to be seen. She typed a series of text messages to her husband, but poor cell phone reception meant they never got delivered.

When she finally hunkered down to wait for rescue, she was only 3,000 feet from the Appalachian Trail and less than a thirty-minute walk from the closest dirt road. At times, search and rescue teams passed within several hundred yards of her tent, but the thick Maine woods prevented them from discovering her camp. After twenty-six days, she succumbed to exposure and starvation.

When I was on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2016, I learned that Stephen Olshansky, a hiker who’d gone missing shortly after my girlfriend and I met him on the Continental Divide Trail, had been found dead in Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico. He’d been caught in a snowstorm and gotten trapped in the impassable mountains for over six weeks. Eventually, he managed to reach a campground where he sought shelter in a latrine. Immobilized by frostbite and weakness, he died of hypothermia and complications due to starvation.

These stories of the final hours of fellow hikers weighed heavily on my mind as I polished off a bottle of water and twisted the cap off another. It’s easy to blame these deaths on bad preparation. According to some, Geraldine had a poor sense of direction and was hiking without basic orienteering or woodcraft skills. This is a common criticism of thru hikers and others who take to the wilderness with ultralight gear and leave their maps and compasses at home. They can walk for miles along a trail, but are ill-equipped to help themselves if ever they lose their way.

But even the Maine Wardens—who have a ninety-eight-percent success rate of finding missing persons within the first forty-eight hours they’re lost—and the U.S. Navy SERE instructors—who are intimately familiar with the land on which Geraldine was waiting for rescue—couldn’t find her. Stephen, or Otter as he was known, was an experienced outdoorsman and had with him a four-season tent and collapsible wood stove. He knew his surroundings well. In fact, he knew exactly where he was the entire time he was stuck.

The frightening thing about the moment I learned of Otter’s death was that I’d just come through the High Sierra on the Pacific Crest Trail. Fabian and I had traversed the range much too early in the season, heading into the mountains when they were still laden with snow, encountering almost no one else in that bright, high-up world only just beginning to thaw. We navigated mostly by Fabian’s handheld GPS, postholing our way through thigh-deep snow, floundering through valleys and kicking steps up snowfields on the sides of 12,000-foot passes.

But we also had maps saved on our phones and we carried collapsible solar panels and external batteries with which to charge our electronics. I had detailed paper maps and a compass as a redundancy measure, and I knew how to use them. The risk wasn’t in getting lost. Like Otter, we’d known where we were the entire time. The risk was in plunging through the snow and breaking a leg in a rocky chasm below. The risk was in being swept away by frigid, melt-swollen rivers in the Yosemite backcountry. The risk was in running out of food as Fabian and I both nearly did, arriving at the road to South Lake Tahoe contemplating the edibility of Dermatone lip balm. We survived partly through preparedness and partly by luck, and I think of Otter frequently and how easily, on the PCT, it could have been me.

In the shade of the pines beneath Bear Butte, I stood gingerly and reveled for a moment in my trail-worn condition—crisp, salt-stained pants; grimy fingernails; sore feet; disheveled hair; tired shoulders; stiff hips. Then I walked to the spigot, refilled my bottle and returned to lay down on the bench of the picnic table. I held the liter of water to my chest like a talisman.

Geraldine, Otter, and I all made textbook errors somewhere along the way—not taking a bearing before leaving the trail; not minding the forecast; pushing on instead of turning back; hiking alone; running out of water. Back when I’d stood stomach-deep in Little Wilson Stream, perilously braced, surrounded by a raging torrent, one slippery rock away from vanishing in the roar of deep, fast, vicious water, Geraldine had flashed through my mind. Along the trail and in the years since, I’ve seen many duplicates of the first poster that warden showed me. They were tacked up at road crossings and at shelters, some damaged by rain to the point of illegibility, fading in detail and clarity just as the hope of finding her alive diminished as well. There, in the midst of the heaving crush, I realized how easy it was to vanish like that. This is how it happens, I remember thinking. This is how you disappear.

But I didn’t disappear. I splashed out of the raging stream on the far bank and, maybe a week later, emerged from the Hundred-Mile Wilderness to see Mount Katahdin rising up in the near distance before me. I climbed to the top and stared with bright, bleary eyes out over all the land I’d crossed to get there. I gorged myself on donuts and thought about how I’d never again feel so alive.

 —

A buzzard soared languidly in the hot, hazy sky. Once, on the PCT in Southern California, Fabian and I came across a snake with a toad in its mouth. The snake had the toad by the hind legs and was swallowing it whole. The toad squirmed and belched its own innards. Its eyes ruptured and hung from their sockets like unraveled buttons.

I thought about that toad as tires crunched in the parking lot—about how it had suffered so badly in its final minutes, about the sequence of events that let the snake win the day. Doors opened and shut and Connor’s bouncing gait flickered between the rows of cars. Jack limped gamely behind. I raised my bottle in greeting. Sometimes it’s easy to forget humane exits from life are never guaranteed. We like to think of ourselves as apart from the wild, but it’s really all the same. We live and die by the law of the toad: the Earth owns us and reminds us from time to time.

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Sophia Recommends Fiction

Matthew Hand

Sophia Brown was a librarian in the way a potato is a moon: quietly rooted, occasionally sprouting eyes, and always dimly aware of being observed. Her name tag read “Sophia B.,” but the B might as well have stood for burning, because inside, a small fire crackled every time the father came in.

She shelved books like she was burying her secrets in alphabetical order. A librarian not by calling but by gravitational mistake, she moved with the gentle sadness of a fax machine that remembers dial-up.

He came in again—the father. A man-shaped eclipse. He wore khakis that whispered of tragedy.

The beard came first: a bramble that looked like it had seen war. It draped down his neck like a conspiracy theory—unprovable, but passionately held. His children orbited him like shrill planets made of juice boxes and underdeveloped plot points.

He arrived at 2:47 p.m., hand-in-hand with the children, like a curse that always ran ten minutes late. His hair, long and unwilling, clung to his head in damp rebellion. His glasses were thick and black, the kind that suggested either profound intelligence or total surrender to prescription strength. His eyes, half-lidded and quietly judging the fluorescent lighting, scanned the shelves with the detachment of a man searching for a book he already owned in three formats.

Sophia watched him from behind the circulation desk, where she pretended to read The Art of War but was actually composing erotic haikus in her head.

Bearded wanderer—
Dewey your decimals, love.
Shelve me like secrets.

His mouth—if it could be called that—was a soft suggestion of a mouth, more theory than fact, framed by a mustache that looked like it had grown out of spite.

He never asked for help. He simply appeared, hovered near the children’s section like a sleep paralysis demon with joint custody, and vanished thirty-five minutes later, always leaving with something—books, usually, but once, a single maple leaf pressed between the pages of Charlotte’s Web, no explanation given.

Sophia had a name for him in her journal:
The Beard Who Reads at Odd Angles.

Eugene the library cart—still bitter, still sentient—squeaked in protest as the man brushed past.

“He smells like a podcast,” Eugene muttered.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Sophia whispered.

And maybe she didn’t.

But she shelved the ache under M for Maybe Someday.

The small family of three spilled into the library like yogurt into a power outlet. One screamed the alphabet backward. Another wept over a crayon. The third may have been imaginary.

Sophia’s voice was the sound of two moths fighting under a lampshade.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked, though her voice sounded like a sentence that forgot how to end.

He smiled. Her spleen twerked.

Instead of imagining speaking to him, this time she found her voice.
“Looking for anything... specific?” she asked, her tongue tripping over its own nervous system.

He wanted a book on dinosaurs again. She offered The Velociraptor Wears Prada—a title she had invented moments earlier, printed on blank paper, and stapled to a discarded romance novel.

“It’s about extinction,” she said. “And fashion. But mostly extinction.”

The father looked at her like a man contemplating the existence of doors.

The children wanted dinosaur books. Sophia handed them The Tyrannosaurus Recks—a thinly veiled metaphor for her own inner chaos. Or possibly a typo.

“For them,” she said. Then, to the father:
“But maybe you’d like something more… adult? The Very Hungry Caterpillar has layers.”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were playing chess with the Dewey Decimal system.

She tried again.
“The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” she said, her voice sticky like the inside of a Twizzler, “is not a children’s book. Not really. It’s a biological striptease. A slow, pulsing transformation. He starts small—don’t we all?—innocent, green, unsatisfied.”

She slid the book toward him like a hotel keycard.
“He eats. And eats. Fruit. Cake. Sausage. A salacious buffet of cravings. He gets bloated with want, with too much. He gets sick, yes—but haven’t we all, after too much pleasure, too fast?”

Her breath caught. She flipped to the final page.

“And then,” she whispered, tracing the illustration like someone lighting a votive candle, “he wraps himself up. In a cocoon. Alone. Bound in silk and shame. Until…”

She opened the last flap, revealing the butterfly. Its wings practically posed.

“He emerges. Reborn. Gorgeous. Absolutely wrecked from the inside out. That,” she said, barely audible now, “is what hunger does. That is what becoming looks like.”

The father blinked once. A child screamed in the background about a fictional stegosaurus being a vegan. Sophia didn’t notice.

She was busy combusting from the metaphor.

“What about Where the Wild Things Are?” she purred, an audible ellipsis trailing behind her like the scent of microwaved fish. “Sometimes... things get wild.”

The children screamed. One climbed a ficus. The father glanced at his watch, which ticked in iambic pentameter. Time was poetry, and he was late.

She exhaled.

“This one…” she said, opening the cover with reverent slowness, “is about rage. And exile. And... monsters that obey you when nothing else will.”

Her eyes searched his, but he was too busy trying not to combust from the tension. She continued:

“Max gets sent to bed. No dinner. No justice. Just punished. So naturally, he creates a realm where his feelings have claws. Where his worst impulses become royalty. Where he’s king... of the wild things.”

She flipped the pages like tarot cards, each one darker than the last.

“They roar. They rampage. They let him rule because he’s the wildest of them all. He dances. He conquers. But even there, even among the fanged and horned and howling, something inside him still aches...”

She leaned in, whispering now:

“He wants to be wanted, not feared. He wants soup. Love. Someone to say, ‘I know who you are under the crown.’”

She closed the book gently, like tucking it into bed.

“He comes back,” she murmured. “And his supper? It’s still warm.”

A beat of silence.

“That’s the real fantasy,” she said, brushing a nonexistent crumb from the cover. “Someone waiting for you... after you’ve shown them the monster.”

The father swallowed hard. One of his children put a sticker on a copy of Moby-Dick. Neither of them noticed.

Sophia was already filing her soul under L—for Lacerated by Longing.

She tried again.
“Or Hop on Pop?” she said, with a wink so slow it legally qualified as a nap.

He nodded, unsure.

“Ohhh, Hop on Pop,” she purred, holding the book like it owed her rent. “A classic. Underestimated. But absolutely... primal.”

She flipped it open with the sass of a woman who’s removed more than just a dust jacket.

“It’s deceptively simple, isn’t it? Just three little words. Hop. On. Pop. But darling—it’s a manifesto.”

She leaned in, conspiratorial.
“You’ve got hop—a verb of joy, of movement, of vertical ambition. Then on—a preposition with intent. And Pop? Well…” she bit her lip. “Pop is clearly the dominant figure. The one being hopped upon. With gusto.”

She fanned herself with a library hold slip.
“It’s not just a book, sweetheart. It’s a lifestyle. An invitation. A very polite way to say: get on top and mean it.”

The father blinked like someone had hit him with a thesaurus wrapped in latex.

Sophia tilted her head, voice like melted cherry Jell-O.
“You see, some of us prefer our storytime with a little bounce. And Pop? He’s just lying there. Taking it. Page after page.”

She shut the book with a snap that echoed like a leather corset giving up.

“Mmm,” she hummed, walking away. “Call me when you’re ready for the sequel: Don’t Stop on Pop.”

Meanwhile, the library cart—named Eugene (unbeknownst to everyone, including the cart)—watched. His wheels itched with betrayal. Sophia used to push Eugene gently, almost erotically. Now she barely touched him. Her fingers had moved on. To... a man. With calves like unfinished concrete.

A footnote appeared.
 1. Sophia has never touched concrete. She thinks it feels like how loneliness smells.

He checked out Hop on Pop. She moaned—quietly, like a haunted radiator.

“Careful,” she whispered. “Hopping has... consequences.”

As he walked away, the children satisfied with their dinosaur books, the floor tiles tried to rearrange themselves into a warning, but only managed to spell BALONEY.

Sophia understood. She was full of it.

That night, she dreamed of the library flooding with milk, and the father surfing down the nonfiction aisles on a back issue of Popular Mechanics. She stood at the circulation desk, naked except for a dust jacket. The dream ended when a barcode scanner grew legs and started singing opera in Romanian.

Her dream was sponsored by the Dewey Decimal System.

She wandered aisle 613.96—“Cults, New Age, and Unexplained Phenomena”—wearing a negligee made of microfilm. The father sat cross-legged, pregnant with meaning. Eugene rolled by on fire, singing an aria from a made-up opera titled Bibliothèque des Rêves Érotiques.

She woke mid-scream, mid-chapter, mid-career. The book in her bed was Goodnight Moon.

She opened it slowly, as if afraid it might judge her, too.

“Goodnight room,” she whispered, scanning her tiny apartment. “Goodnight sanity I left on the third floor of the library next to the true crime section.”

“Goodnight moon,” she added, staring out the window at a flickering streetlamp and thinking: close enough.

Her fingers trembled.
“Goodnight cow... jumping over the moon,” she said, voice cracking like a spine that’s been read too many times. “What’s it like to leap over the impossible, Bessie? What’s it like to go somewhere?”

She flipped another page.

“Goodnight nobody,” she said, staring at the empty spread.

That one hit.

She lingered. Breathed—like she was trying not to.

“Goodnight mush,” she finally muttered, glancing at the cold pasta on the counter that was supposed to be dinner. “You... tried.”

“Goodnight comb, and goodnight brush,” she said, touching her hair absentmindedly, like a woman who hasn’t had a reason to detangle in weeks.

Then, with a breath so heavy it could file for disability, she closed the book.

“Goodnight me,” she whispered.
Pause.
“…you weird, horny librarian.”

She switched off the light. The room went dark.

Somewhere, a library cart dreamed of vengeance.

She threw the book across the room. It hit the wall and said, “Goodnight, dignity.”

—

The next day, he didn’t come in.
The milk soured.
Her heart expired like a library card from 1997.

She alphabetized the pain.
Filed it under B.

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Imagine the Sun by Ann Calandro

The Lightning Woman Fiction

Jessica Malen

Long ago, deep in the Balkan Mountains, a little village lay buried beneath the clouds.

In all of Stara, people worked hard—long into their old age, and they were happy. Whether it was with sheep, crops, or stone, there was a rhythm to life that one did not venture from. It made the cycle of the seasons pass with ease. For thousands of moons, the old fortified the land for the young, and the young took up the tools passed on to them.
And though it rarely rained in the mountains, the village survived each passing season with hard work and fortitude. But with every season in life, a storm must come.

Sometimes it is only a mist, others a flurry, but when Angelika turned eighteen, it changed the course of her life forever…
It was customary for the women of Stara to choose their mate when they came of age. But each time Angelika’s parents asked her who—which boy was suited to her liking—she refused.

Not Hector with his mop of blonde hair and one hundred sheep.

Not Boris with his strong body to wield a chisel and command stone.

And certainly not Casimir with his anvils and forge, no matter what useful metals he crafted.
“What about the young men in the next village?” Angelika’s mother pressed, reaching a point of desperation one evening. The fire cracked and popped in the hearth before them, as if it, too, was impatient for an answer.

“You can choose anyone you like,” her father added. The old man smiled, his dark beard twisting up at the corners of his mouth. But the worry in his eyes betrayed him.
The parents loved their only child, and they wanted her to be happy, but it was well time she moved out of their cottage and started her own family. They had followed the path their parents set before them, and it was only right Angelika did so, too.
“I would much rather sleep,” was always Angelika’s reply. And she would shut the door to her bedchamber, the iron lever falling into place to fasten her away. Then she would tumble into bed, and into dreams.

No one in all of Stara, and three villages over in either direction for that matter, had ever seen a person sleep away that much time.

But Angelika didn’t want to tend to fields or bake bread or darn clothes. She wanted to know the dark man in her dreams, who came to her every night when she reached the deepest dream. He was always enshrouded in clouds, and his bright eyes beckoned her to him. His skin was so pale it shone like starlight, and when he opened his mouth to speak, she always woke crying.

Not tears of sadness, but of longing. She knew he was meant for her, and she for him. But Angelika understood well enough that there would never be a man adorned in a crown of clouds in any village, no matter which direction, if she searched until her last breath.

So she would rather be alone.

Days passed as they did, and sleep came as the only solace Angelika had. She wore it like a cloak. Then, on one particular day, the storm clouds began to roll in over the mountains with their deep purples and blacks. So dark the peaks in the distance could no longer be seen, and the whole of the village watched the sky preparing for what surely was to come. The animals grew restless, people began to shutter their windows, and the elders muttered omens. They whispered of curses and prayed to the old gods for protection.

But not Angelika. She stood at the edge of her parents’ garden where she had all day labored in the sun, feeling a stirring thrum through her body. It wasn’t fear she felt like the others, but the same longing she had felt each night since she could remember. He was here and was beckoning her. As thunder rumbled through the mountains, she felt the pull like a thread tugging her ribs.

That night, while the wind howled like wolves, and her parents slept, she crept out to the oaken chest her mother kept like an altar, adorned with burning candles. Inside was Angelika’s dowry: her mother’s hand-stitched linens, her grandfather's gold wedding ring, a clutch of herbs blessed on solstice. All saved since birth for her wedding day.

She stuffed them into a satchel and slipped out into the night, through the forest, and up the mountain. Barefoot, wind whipping her nightdress furiously around her, the mud swallowed her footsteps, but she carried on. After what felt like hours, a dark silhouette of the healer’s hut came into view beneath a leaning pine.  

Three sharp raps on the wind-worn door were answered by a woman with milk-white eyes and a face carved like old bark. “I know who you are,” said the medicine woman. “You are the girl who dreams.”

“I need to find him,” Angelika replied. “The man in the clouds.”

The woman nodded once. "Then give me what tethers you to the earth."

Angelika placed the bundle in her gnarled hands, and the woman led her to the bonfire blazing outside.

The healer spread the items out in a circle near the fire and, with a potion of ash and wild honey, marked Angelika’s chest, wrists, and forehead. She murmured something older than the mountains and reached for a rod forged from copper and iron, to which she fastened the golden ring.

"You do not become lightning," the woman whispered. "You remember that you always were. Light is the only thing fast enough to catch thunder. If you wish to join him, you must burn away your past."

“I am lightning and he is thunder,” Angelika said as the old woman draped the white linen over Angelika’s shoulders and sprinkled the herbs at her feet. Angelika stepped into the center of the clearing, wind tearing at her hair, clouds roiling above, swirling into the shape of a man—crowned in mist.

“Go,” the old woman whispered, raising her arms, and a bolt came down over Angelika’s body with a scream of silver: flesh became flame, soul became spark. A boom so loud the village below awoke, sure the mountains had broken open. The trees at the forest’s edge burned. And in a flash, Angelika was gone.

But the rain fell. For the first time in nearly a year, the ground drank deeply. Crops sprang back to life, children danced barefoot in puddles, and the elders wiped their eyes, though no one dared say why.

Her mother placed Angelika’s favorite shawl on the hearth. Her father stood in the doorway each dusk, watching the sky.

And far above them, among the storm-wreathed peaks where no man had climbed, thunder chased the light. Always together.

If you looked up at the right time, you might see her: a flicker in the sky, a flash that lingered longer than it should. Not angry. Not lost. But free.

For Angelika had found the man in the clouds. And where thunder rolls, lightning follows—wild, bright, and blazing across the sky, forever in love with the storm.

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Back Home Nonfiction

By Eliza Schnauck

When I lived in New Zealand, I didn’t go a day without a friendly stranger asking where I was from. My accent gave away that this wasn’t home for me. It became part of my coffee order, my rides on the bus, every “good morning” on a sidewalk.

I would explain myself by degree: I was from America, I was from the East Coast of America, I was from the Northeast in America, I was from near New York, I was from Boston, I was from Plymouth County and a town called Marshfield.

“Like the Pilgrims?”

“Yes,” I would say, surprised and somehow embarrassed.

New Zealand unmoored me; my anxiety reached a fever pitch, and I worried about anything and everything. I felt estranged from my beloved Atlantic, the ocean of my hometown. Nightmares of Pacific tsunamis left me weeping in my sterile little flat. There was a jar of raspberry jam I’d bought – the idea of eating jam and butter on nice bread a hopeful mirage towards intuitive wellness – that sat open and uneaten in my fridge for nearly two months before I threw it out. I had convinced myself that the seeds would lodge in the lining of my throat and kill me.

When I felt homesick, it was my childhood bedroom, my mother in the backyard, my father’s dusty bookshelf that I missed. I distracted myself from the uncomfortable present by planning for the cool blue summer that stretched out before me. I decided that being home – the word taking on a new, broader definition, one that could encompass the entire country – was enough for me to be able to conquer the penetrating fear that dictated my life in New Zealand.

My plans fell haphazardly into place, and I moved to Maine. I was living with my grandmother – a plump and fidgety British woman with wire-rimmed glasses and enough striped sweaters to adorn a small, prim army – in the house my mother grew up in. My grandmother was from England but had lived in Hong Kong, South Africa, and Malaysia as a child. She married a Welsh scientist in London in her early twenties, had two children, and moved to America so he could pursue cancer research at a prominent lab. The lab was on an island that was mostly undeveloped – a vacation spot in the summer but with a very small year-round community. The four of them moved into a single-level house on a densely forested road across from a muddy pond. The crafty Welsh scientist, over twenty years, constructed a second floor, a two-car garage, and extravagant front and back decks with white banisters. By the time I moved in for the summer, houses studded the woods in every direction. The woods I’d mapped in my mind as a kid became someone’s guest bathroom, someone’s tomato garden.

The island itself had transformed since my mother’s childhood. The scattered tourists of her youth had amalgamated into schedules of cruise ships and $4 hourly street parking on the east side of the island. Nearly two and a half million tourists visited in 2024. The huge influx of visitors led to an unbelievable rise in rental properties. No one could find a place to live on minimum wage – a measly $14.65 – so at four PM, summer workers endured standstill traffic coming off the island, back to housing erected specifically for them, who had no option but to commute the fifteen miles. Even the lab – which provided the means for my family to come here forty years ago – resorted to satellite housing: hideous gray cubes next to a strip mall along the highway. I wrote a few cover letters and mentioned that I had a place to stay, and jobs tumbled into my lap.

Thirteen days after I moved out of my flat in New Zealand, I was standing on a dock grinning and helping Midwesterners into the cockpit of a lobstering sailboat from 1899 – Alice E. I worked three-hour tours of up to six passengers, pouring white wine into tumblers and telling local histories like I’d lived there forever. I developed eggplant bruises from eleven-hour days perched on the toerail offering fun facts about lobsters and the island. (“And if you look over that hill, that’s Martha Stewart’s house!”)

The transition from living ten thousand miles from America to living in my mother’s childhood home was jarring, but not unpleasant. While abroad, I had missed the toothy smiles and grocery-store eye contact which Americans are unaware that they’re so fond of. The familiar landscape as well as my proximity to my beloved Atlantic was a balm to my anxiety.

To get through eleven hours of customer service, I had gradually developed an alter ego: Affable Sailor Girl was friendly but not overbearing, curious but not invasive. (One day, my grandmother came sailing and commented on how different I seemed at work: “You were so funny!”) This not only kept me from becoming nervous, it required less thinking than being myself and helped the hours go by. Once I’d hauled up the hundred and fifty pounds of cedar boom and gaff and we were properly sailing, it was easy enough to get people to talk at length about themselves. I often felt like a magician, pulling silk handkerchief after silk handkerchief from the sleeves of my passengers, hearing endless stories about first visits to the island (all the way from Michigan, wow!) and the logistics of running a dairy farm in South Dakota (I can’t imagine it’s easy to get away from that this time of year!).

If I was faced with particularly cagey passengers who frowned, tight-lipped, behind their Ray-Bans, I could always ask them the question I had so dreaded in New Zealand. Affable Sailor Girl would chirp, “So, where are you folks from?” followed, inevitably, with, “Have you been to the island before?” And the rest was easy. Like clockwork, these passengers launched into telling me not just where they lived, but where they came from, why they moved.

Young couples would, without fail, say they had just moved to New York for work but are really from just outside of Boston and [Town in Virginia]. Families were from the Midwest and had come to the island a few times in the last five years. Old ladies had never been here, old men had been every summer since they were this high, can you believe it? Anyone who booked a private tour had recently retired to Connecticut but used to live in [Mid-sized City]. One middle-aged lady from North Carolina but living in Delaware told me about how when she goes to North Carolina for the holidays, everyone tells her it must be so nice to be home. She laughed and said she only lived there until she was eighteen and it really wasn’t home anymore, but people Down South are funny about the word ‘home’.

Without fail, every passenger wanted to know if I was from the island. “Are you local?” they’d sigh, already imagining my barefoot childhood dotted with blueberry patches, rocky cliffs, and a sea-grizzled lobstering father. I took a hint of pleasure in shattering this illusion with a recitation of my ancestry.

“People around here are really picky about who gets to be ‘local’,” I would say, pretending I wasn’t including myself in that distinction. “I grew up in Massachusetts, but my parents are kind of from here. My mom is actually British,” – and pause for oh, wow – “but moved here as a kid, and her parents have lived here since, so I’ve spent a long time on the island. My dad lived here for a little while as a kid too, but my parents didn’t actually meet until college. So,” another pause here, like I know, right? “I’m kind of half-local to a local, but I’m totally local to you guys.”

(It was confusing on purpose. I found that straightforward answers resulted in more dead air, which made passengers feel awkward and led to worse tips. Someone could ask me what the hull was made of, and I would launch into a breathless review of how to care for cedar, wet versus dry cold storage, what winters were like on the island, what the year-round population did here in the winter, off-shore lobster fishing practices, and usually end up on the best spot in town for a lobster roll.)

When I relayed my local/not-local story to one woman, she was unimpressed. “Okay,” she said, “but where’s home?” I laughed politely and said, “Right now, my grandmother’s attic!”

Of course, this felt like a lie. I hesitated to claim that I was from any one place. Why wasn’t that true? Hadn’t I come from my grandmother’s house just this morning? Hadn’t I come from New Zealand to work here? Why wasn’t I from wherever I had slept that night?

It didn’t matter that I went to elementary school in a squat brick building two miles from my home, the red house on the hill; it mattered that my dad had a job once sailing out of this same harbor and would sleep on my grandmother’s couch when the weather was bad, the same couch where I read on my days off. On tours, I would point out the top of the mountain where my parents were engaged, where they looked over a greener version of the island that doesn’t exist anymore. I shared the best swimming spots, places where my mom and her brother dared each other to jump off cliffs into glacial lakes, where my dad would dive and find watches and rings and water-eaten wallets. I recommended restaurants where my mom went on dates in high school, wearing a soccer jersey and eyeliner, her hair as dark as mine is now. I pointed out the hotel she worked her first job at, serving drinks wearing a frilly white apron and rubbing her sore feet at the end of the night. I told passengers about where my parents had their wedding photos taken, on the little milk-white bridge that arched its wooden back over a patient, mirrored stream beside the road.

After being nearly ten thousand miles away for six months, being in a place where my parents had been young once felt so much more important to me than where I grew up. I wasn’t from their house in Marshfield; I was from them. What else was there to say? How else could I explain myself?

On misty mornings, I talked about how my grandmother ended up here, in that big house that has neighbors now, and joked about how locals respond to her accent. The island used to be small enough that everyone knew her, that opinionated British lady on the west side of the island, but now she goes out for dinner and people ask if she’s enjoying her visit.

“It’s been home for forty years,” she says, smiling politely. “I’m enjoying it just fine.”

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Into the Mystic Number 2 by GJ Gillespie

Moments Lost in the Dark                                                Fiction

Christine Vartoughian

In my more hopeful days, I tried to develop a support group for insomniacs. I started with my own friend group, people I already knew and spent time talking about our sleepless nights with. One friend said she didn’t want to “have a place to go when she couldn’t sleep”, that she wouldn’t mind talking with me when those nights were horrendous, but she definitely would not want to speak to a whole group about it, especially people she didn’t know. It made sense but I didn’t tell her that. I wanted an audience. If the horrors in our lives are not for performance purposes, then they’re not worth having. Unfortunately, most insomniacs don’t want support, they just want some sleep.

I asked other people, “Do you have difficulty with sleep? Do you often feel alone in the world when you wake up in the middle of the night and have no one to talk to?” Even if you’ve got someone, they’re asleep, and you don’t want to wake them even though many nights I’ve stared and stared at my partner, somehow hoping my gaze would wake him up magically just so I would have someone to chat with, to spend time with so I wouldn’t feel like a completely creepy loner who can’t perform a basic human function that even babies can effortlessly execute?

I’m offering a safe space. A soft space, lined with fluffy blankets and velvet black out curtains.

I’m offering a cool club for uncool people that is only open while everyone else is asleep.

Another woman I asked to join said they’d think about it. They said they didn’t want to worry their family by joining a group that encouraged “her weirdness.”

A man said he was interested but as soon as I imagined having him in the group, I realized that he would become someone I “spent my nights with” and that made me rethink the invitation and, for a moment, the whole concept of the group to begin with.

I thought about who else I could ask and thought about some of my friends that were new parents, but that’s not quite the same as not sleeping when you have all the time, comfort, and allowances to do so (therein lies the true torture of insomnia). Besides, new parents aren’t alone when they wake up, they’re with their children (a purpose).

We true insomniacs have no control over our being awake at 4:14 AM on a Wednesday night. People talk about the places they’ve fallen asleep like planes, couches, even restaurants, and I talk about places I can’t fall asleep in even when I try, even when I take prescription drugs to help me sleep, often suffering the side effects (one of which is, you guessed it: sleeplessness). New parents, when encountering insomniacs, might think, “What a waste” or “That person’s nuts!” or “I wonder if they’d be interested in midnight shift babysitting so I could get some sleep.” Because it is a waste. It's a waste of sleep time and a waste of adventure time because if you’re going to be awake does it even count as consciousness if all you’re doing is rolling around trying to fall asleep? No, it doesn’t count. It doesn’t anything.

Another person I asked was a friend of a friend. When I started telling them about the group and shared some of my own struggles with being awake at night for no reason, they asked, “How do you know if it’s for no reason? Maybe you’re protecting the world from evil forces that are attempting to take over while everyone is sleeping?” Maybe.

Maybe.

The last person I asked before I considered giving up was someone I used to be very close to but hadn’t spoken with in years. She was now living in California and replied back saying that giving up her brain was the best decision of her life, that ever since she decided to stop thinking so much she’s been a lot happier. Only recently has she started waking up in the middle of the night like she used to with unending thoughts. “It’s a real drag, thinking. I don’t miss it.” When I asked her how she stopped thinking she told me she hadn’t meant to do it on purpose but that after her first kid and the move to LA, that it just sort of happened “the way these things usually do.”

By this point, I began to think that being alone and awake every night was probably for the best. I wouldn’t be disturbing anyone else and maybe this is the sort of private thing we all need to deal with on our own. Still, something about that sounds… boring. Dull. Tired.

Better to suffer with someone.

That way, at least, your misery can be used as humor, to tell stories, laugh, feel some… connection.  Otherwise, everything and anything that occurs in those quiet hours–our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings on fantasy–are just moments lost in the dark, forever.

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Torqued Tougher than a Texas Train Fiction

Nicholas Viglietti

Horse sweat feels just as gross as it looks. Type of info you don’t need to touch to know the real shit I mean. One of them days in the saddle...where crotch-busted miles, alters your whole scope of evaluated style.

I was out on the derange flatlands of Comanche country; near the panhandle of North Texas, close to the Oklahoma border. We rode in the brisk-chill, but it was sunny, at the end of November, and I thought: cowboys are a dedicated breed, because my crotch and ass are killing me.

Roger proved the full-scope of his horse-back expertise, and westerns like Joe Kidd, deceived my capabilities. I had done Roger a favor; given him a ride here from the gulf-coast, and his down-home disposition – Texas-to-the-core – wouldn’t let me leave, unless the favor was returned.

Roger was a genuine cowboy soul, and his veins pumped lone-ranger grit – it was a real shame that he was born a hundred years, too late.

Now, the favor returned, and I had ridden a horse, which I hadn’t done before. It felt good to trot on the back of the long-range mammal, and I was comin’ to a point where I had my fill and was ready to dismount and continue operating a car.

So, you can imagine the odd confusion in my concern, when I saw Roger open the gate of the corral, still on his horse. It was one of those sights where you know you are fucked, and this ride is about to get gnarly.

My horse seemed to know the drill, and I figured Roger was just gonna let the horses stretch their legs a bit longer than the limits of the corral. That judgement proved instantaneously incorrect. As soon as the horse crossed the gate threshold, the steeds blasted off, down the trail, and I was desperately tried to stay on its back.  

My nerves didn’t feel right, the gallop speed increased, and Roger whipped around like a stationary owl swivels its head around, and yelled, “when we drop! Lean back! Shoot y’ur legs –V-shaped – in the stirrups!”

I’ll tell ya, it’s a hard strain on the inner-thighs to stay on a horse at full speed. My legs contorted in a death grip on the fast churn of shifting horse-tack – now, don’t go blowin’ steam at my terminology mistakes, that’s how Roger referred to the horse equipment.

I shouted, “what!?!” The clopping hooves made his voice inaudible.   

The horses sprinted faster like an electrical surge, beneath low, face-scraping branches. My bobbled vision was obscured – just ridin’ blind – and abruptly, Roger vanished. Shit..., the hang of the word echoed in the abyss of my wondering mind as to what the hell is goin’ on, and to mentally prepare for the chaos, where I could only control the strength of my cling.

We shot like bullets down the canyon, and my neck hurled backward like I’d bounced off the ropes in a WWE match; catching a trachea-trasher of a clothesline. I wailed terrible bellows of fear, and we ran like thunder.

I finally managed to execute the V-shape stance – which is a skilled maneuver that alleviates the painful smash of your taint against the saddle. I was stiff as a lamppost, pensively petrified, and things got worse: I could see the sharp incline we were about to shoot up, and Roger showed-off again, “lean forward – grab the mane!” he hollered.

I'm about to eat a face full of broken neck dirt, I thought. My pulsed pumped panic.

Stability is crucial in the saddle, it’s tough to learn at a mild trot, so learning how to shift your weight at breakneck speed, on your first ride, is the dumbest way to learn the fine arts of cowboy-ism.  

WHAM! My flung forward face slammed into the slimy neck of the mare, and I clasped my grip to the animal like a desperate baby chimp to its mother. My teeth were filled with grimy hair, it muffled my shrieks like duct-tape, and I was on course for a CTE diagnosis; head bouncing at the tempo of a point-guard on a dribbling fast-break.

My vision blurred, and I thought: my numb skull demands a pint whiskey at the end of this ride.   

All I could see was the canyon’s rock wall of layered earth. I could feel my fingers slip and came to terms with the dirt that was about to hurt...shockingly, we flattened out, under the trees, and the speed of whiplash mayhem reduced to pleasant jog – I could erect myself and my scrambled brains congealed.

I caught up to Roger, “holy shit, bro! Give me a heads up! Shit, just toss me in the fire, why don’t cha!?!” I vehemently spat, gassed out.

“Eh, I knew you could handle it, cowpoke – sometimes, we ain’t where we expect to be, and we gotta do the thang we don’t think we can do; and in those times, we gotta trust our instincts, get on with it, despite our confidence, or lack there-of, and just hang on and get it done,” Roger said, with tranquil conviction like a Zen, cult-leader, “take a gander for a moment – you made it – still alive, and still on life’s ride.”

Valid point. I had to give him, that. Plus, he said it with cowboy-charisma like some key fact-of-life, you shouldn’t forget. It’s that kind of elevated perspective attained at the completion of immensely difficult experiences; you never believed you could handle – I was no desperado, but I felt giddy-up and fine.

“Fair enough...guess it was pretty cool...ya know, to gallop like a bandito on the run,” I said, flashing a proud grin.

“Good, cowpoke – means y’ur gettin’ in sync with the animal,” Roger said, ominously, “That’ll help, because right on, up ahead, the ride’s ‘bout to git a tad hairy,” I thought: shit, I gotta hang-on, again.

The trees filtered away and we stood over a dark blue lake. It was like a scene hand painted by God. Just for us – worth the pain of the saddle.

“Sho’ is purtty, ain’t it,” Roger said. The majestic view almost made a dude think about relocation.

“Fo sho, bro – I see the allure of the boot-scoot lifestyle,” I said. “You’re never really alone, and after all the drudgery, there’s moments like this – bonded with your steed – that make you admire the world.”

“Yup. ‘Bout sums it up, cowpoke,” Roger said. “I reckon, y’ur right, and I’ll tip my hat to it. Alright, well, better get a move on – sun’s settin’ soon.”

“Cool, bro. My groin is killin’ me – do we just head back the way we came?” I asked.

“Not-a-chance, cowpoke. You’ll get caught in the dark, and lost in the pines, that way,” Roger said, “we gotta go ‘round that big rock, out there, in the water – on the other side, we’ll run right to the barn.”

I hated the plan. “Bro, what the hell are you talking about? It’s like a nine-foot drop – down to the shore, and, look at that huge rock, jutting out in the water, like, almost thirty feet – can horses even fuckin’ swim!? – we’re gonna get fuckin’ soaked!” I said, and I’m sure the pony wasn’t too thrilled to have me pullin’ on the reigns.

Roger chuckled – That chud was gettin’ a helluva kick outta me shittin’ my pants.  

Then, Roger said, “horses are great swimmers – just firmly give the ole bugger an all-business, heel nudge. You gotta mean it, though, or he won’t go – right there, in the sides, and then, as he submerges in the water, pull your feet outta the stirrups, and sit Indian-legged ‘till we back on land.”

Fuck horses. It was all I could think, buzzin’ with apprehension. Like most things in life, we had to go through to get back. It was pointless to sulk. Roger executed the “leap-down” maneuver tutorial, and I hollered, “now, crawl back up here, and make this horse heave off the cliff!”

Roger grinned at my rookie fear. “Think less ‘bout it. Just do & go with it – hold tight and stay calm,” Roger said, “be confident, trust the horse; he’ll take care of ya. Don’t let doubt creep in – they can feel your energy, and they don’t like insecure commands.”

“Real easy to say from down there, and a belt bustin’ with experience,” I said, irritably, and attempted to make the horse perform a leap that neither of us wanted to make.

Needless to say, he didn’t budge a muscle, and I’m sure the ole galloper thought: this crazy bastard is STUPID to go down this way. 

Roger turned away. Probably, to relieve the pressure, or, because he didn’t want to see me spike in the ground like a nail-head. I paused, wrangled my mind, and breathed deep. My heart raced, but it bolstered me, and it was now or never.

“Fuck-it!” I hollered, “banzai!” Then with a loose grip of the reigns, I cranked decisive heels into the stallion’s underbelly. Suddenly, we were airborne. My ass floated off the saddle – totally terrifying, and I thought the term, “fuck-it,” has probably progressed humanity more than it gets credit for.

My mouth was open, scream-face loudly frozen in the free-fall. Internally, I compiled a bunch of vicious insults to lay on Roger, but the list got cut short when the horses front hooves landed like Simone Biles sticks gold medal, flip performance, and I slammed my nuts into the saddle nob, resulting in distracted agony – there goes my dreams of fatherhood.

“Ahhh! Hell! Shit! Fuck that hurts!!” I groaned, loud enough for ears across the lake to hear. It was no matter for the pony; he merely walked on, aloof to my pain. I shoved my hands in my pants to make sure my testicles were still intact.

“Well, look at that...the hard parts over,” Roger said; in that honorable, cool-head, cowboy way, that really said: I knew ya had it in ya.

Too bad, we weren’t outta the water yet, and Roger followed his commendable remark with advice for the real hard part, “kick them stirrups loose, hold your core tight, and sit like a monk meditates.”

We waded out and sunk into the frigid water; the icy splashes hit my face-of-disapproval that was beaded with nervous sweat. I was stiff & statuesque in the spine, astounded that while these animals had clubs for feet, they paddled well.

Around the rock, we emerged dry and the horses instinctively picked-up speed, back to the barn. I felt rodeo ready; at least, I thought I was, or my ass went so numb that I couldn’t feel the pain of the ride.

In the sky was an incredibly vibrant sunset. It roared like a blaze of pink, glorious fire. We removed the tack-components, and I was satisfied for givin’ the cowboy-style-a-whirl; however, it ain’t for me, and I’d be saddle-sore for a week.

“Hot damn! That ride beat the hell outta me, and I don’t think my knees will ever retain true alignment – is this why old cowboy’s walk like old whores?”

“Yup, this life’ll pound ya into a shape you don’t recognize –just part of livin’ – for err’body, really – you gotta just keep on...hold your shine and find a reason to survive the madness,” Roger said, “the years will mangle your soul. Part of humanism, I guess. We’re gonna die – which means we’re merely born to lose, and the only way to win in that type of game is to stoke some flame of joy, and pummel on through the ride.”

“Sure, dude, sounds fuckin’ inspirational, but Ima be real honest, I’m tired of the cowboy-zen shit...it sounds beautiful, and all...but, I gotta believe you need reasons like that when you suffer in the saddle, all fuckin’ day,” I said, “now, let’s get a buzz on – I gotta block out this awful throb in my crotch, you son-of-a-bitch.”

“You got it – I know a cure-all, for everything, kinda spot,” Roger said.

It was early on the deep side of the dark night, and we drove on an empty highway, under a sky stretched farther than the prairie. Which was clear of any clouds, and the twinkle of a zillion stars, like bright diamonds, so tangibly bright you thought you could pluck one from the universe.

“Hang a right on that dirt road, up there,” Roger directed.

I did, and up a gravel road there was an odious house in the moonlight; it resembled the scene of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I felt skittish, like a deer being hunted, as I parked my champagne Cavalier. I looked around – tense & vigilant.

“So...is this Leatherface's house?” I asked.  

“Sure, gives that vibe, huh, cowpoke,” Roger said.

“How do you know these people?” I asked.

“Relax. I’ve known this dude for longer than we got time to explain,” Roger said, “round these parts, if you lookin’ for somethin’ to smoke, pop, or snort – he's your man.”

So, at the door, Roger knocked. A scuffle ensued, voices murmured, I zinged with foul trepidation. Then, the door flew open, aggressively – in a way that usually results with guns pointed in your face.

“Roger! You goat-fucker! Good to see ya!” blurted, a loud, bald, behemoth of a man – built like a Juggalo, minus the face-paint.

Roger embraced the mega-man with a hug, and we entered the home. On couches, frayed at the seams, and days away from disintegration; sat the backsides of three women, clad like pole-performance professionals.

On each side were two, twitchy dudes, dressed like the familiarity between dirt-bike mechanics and methamphetamine recipes. Roger told the monster-of-a-man that we wanted to buy some weed – he was an affable beast, but I sensed that he could twist on a heel point, and rip a person’s head off – he handed me a Lonestar beer, and I observed the bizarre medley of Texans.

The home was decoratively bare, like it could be abandoned at the soonest alert of sirens. Weird chatter resumed, which appeared normal for them. I looked towards the kitchen, where I could hear the monster-man shuffle, and that’s when I noticed the hospital bed

From a solution-bag a tube ran down into the arm of a coffin-less corpse. Roger approached me, and asked, “you alright, there, cowpoke?”

“Nope. Gettin’ nightmare waves – is that dude in a coma?” I asked.

Roger turned his head. “Nah. That’s Hank...ya know...the dealer man,” Roger said.

“Ok, so is he alive?” I asked.

“Ole Hank, over there, of course he’s alive, and he’s been a damn-fine, dealer-man for years – he used to sample, quite heavily I might add, which led him to the permanently prone lifestyle,” Roger stated.

“You don’t say, huh,” I said with a no-shit tenor in my voice.

“Yeah, he was fucked up on the train tracks, over yonder, and I don’t know the full details, but let’s just say: he pecked a brawl with a locomotive...and, well, I ain’t got to elaborate...the positions we decide to take have to endure the wake of our fate.

“No way...that’s gnarly bro, and he’s still kickin’?” I asked, “like can he talk, make moves, or, like, c’mon bro, how does he run a fuckin’ drug business in that condition?”

“Well, nowadays, ole Hank’s just the brains of the operation – ya know, he’s got all the contacts – but, neck down, that skeleton don’t dance like it used to...and the burly boy – Steve – ya know, he’s the mover & the shaker of the operation; he’s the hands of their partnership, and takes care of ole Hank,” Roger said.

“So, does everybody here, like, work for Hank?” I asked. “It’s a mangy crew.”

“Nope – these’re just friends,” Roger said, “see, Hank likes company – especially, bein’ bed-ridden...and...welp...some of the ladies...ya know, take care of him – transactions of well compensation.” Roger emphasized the hint with a flutter of his brow.

“No shit...his dick works?” I inquired, baffled.

“Oh yeah, cowpoke,” Roger said, “ole Hank’s broken, but he ain’t beaten by this thang called life...everybody, even in the worst circumstances, has gotta work to find a pleasant release from their burdens.”

Ole Hank, was certainly torqued tougher than a Texas train. He was trapped alive in gizmo-pumped purgatory...but, I guess, there was some admirable quality in his survival – almost an arrogant artistry of persistence.

The monster, Steve, blundered over with a hefty ounce of the finest bud that the flatland had to offer – 60 bucks for a cheap ounce of dope that was as dry as a tumbleweed, rolling over lone-star pavement. I bought it – low-grade livin’ can still get you high.

I started to quickly roll joints, and I smoked ‘em faster, like a wildfire devours the dehydrated trees of a barren willderness. Steve blundered out of the kitchen with a tweedy-bird cage and asked, who wanted to feed the baby racoons...they were swaddled inside.

I had enough of Texas, and went out to the car, climbed inside, locked the doors, curled up to sleep, and preserve my energy to make a run for the horizon line, like a cowboy, at daybreak.

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Home by Ferris Jones

The Girl on Gooseberry Hill Poetry

Devahuti Chaliha

Inspired by Amy.

It was an oldies’ party up in the hills,

not that she minded befriending the lot!

So she went up the poets’ roads

too late for her liking, too early for her age,

with enough trauma behind to fight anyone off.

A shrewd but kind-hearted Artemis she had turned

from the precocious owlish Athena that she was.

The girl who loved Sam Heughan, understood every Stephen Hawking,

despite a mum who yelled while raising her

finger to her lips, “SH, SH, loge kya sochenge!”

She found a place to sing her old Celtic tunes

in the village square. While reading quietly at home,

evading mum’s unconditional wrath and uni’s bureaucratic delays...

Until she could swoop back down to the world, and fly free

as the Gooseberry birds trapped uphill yet uncaring of it.

For in her grief, she bargained the rest of her life

For even just one day when two smiles would beam upon her -

One over her shoulder like the sun on her face;

and the other a little one in the crook of her arm,

that slipped inside her heart.

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Trails that Lead You Home                                            Nonfiction

Katherine Farrell-Ginsbach

I settled into a house nestled in the Alaska Chugach foothills as a very unhealthy relationship was ending. The final 6 months of the relationship left me in the darkest mental health space I had ever encountered along with a fractured sense of self and loss of self-esteem. Gone was the girl who spent all her 20s racing endurance mountain bikes, following her curiosity down a trail, jumping and figuring it out on the way down. The cage that had been built around me seemed to extend to a physical manifestation of where and how far I could venture out. I knew in theory that the trails ran right behind my house, but I didn’t dare find out, the wilderness masquerading for the darkness that I found myself in and worried that if I ended up too far out, I would simply cease to exist, convinced that I would not be able to figure out how to get home. I can’t say why for certain, other than in that context and timeframe that I had spent in that relationship it felt that to face more uncertainty in the unknown of a trail proved too much of a hurdle for me to jump at that point. In the days, weeks, and months after the relationship ended the cage fell away, replaced by a nest of nurturing housemates. The further I seemed to get away from the relationship the farther I seemed to be able to go from the house.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, maybe a few months after I had found some stability, and I met a friend to hike the backside of Nearpoint, a trail nearby. I was more than self-conscious of my ability as a hiker, something that manifested in my relationship when I was told I was too slow to be able to go or I would simply be left to hike by myself, unable or maybe more unwilling to try and keep up. For the record, my friends never made a comment of my inability to hike – but wounds can cut deep. After that hike a burst of creativity that had sat dormant for so long popped in my mind, what if I ran here from the house? I went home and google mapped it, hmmm yeah it looks like it connects and surely I can figure it out. A spark, a light, of venturing into the unknown. I ran the two miles on the Tank Trail to the Nearpoint trailhead only checking once to make sure I was on the right track. I got to the backside, climbing up, using the trees to pull myself up the steeper sections, jogging the slight inclines, and making it to the top. I stood there looking around and really taking it in. I had never noticed the trail running farther back from the top. I wondered how much we see only when we are willing to finally see it. I stood there realizing Wolverine, another peak was just up to the right, hmmmmm. I turned around and headed back home, running mostly the whole way while my brain cooked up longer slogs. The next week I went from the house up to Nearpoint and then over to Wolverine before coming back down and looping around to the house. In those 13 miles my mind had shifted, the calling to explore was back, where would this trail go, how could I link this together. Scrambling up the backside of Wolverine that day, I stood there realizing how many more places I had to go, how many more I wanted to go. Only seven months prior I thought my story had been written, my ending coming soon, all the trails had been taken, no other way out except to die. In that moment on the top of the peak I realized how close it felt to losing it all and was immediately wrapped in gratitude for hanging on, for surviving. I stood in awe of all that mother nature had assembled and stood in awe of all my body and mind had been through.

I ran back home with a level of excitement that had been missing for years, feeling a rush of accomplishment. Here, look at this route I put together, telling my roommates and anyone else that would hear. In the months that followed I found myself on more and more adventures that started and ended at home. Some remained solo pursuits, finding a ride up to Arctic Valley so I could ski home over Powerline Pass, not starting till 2pm and arriving home just after midnight. I cut off the Arctic to Indian route and headed up towards Powerline Pass, putting in some haphazard route and using a bunch of alders to help me ascend, pulling myself up on the branches to get to the route I had in mind. I thought of them as kindred spirits thanking them for the support as I climbed higher. I skirted by Homicide Peak in the cloak of darkness and gave thanks for the stability, my avy beacon in my backpack as I knew if anything slid it would likely be a body recovery– but it was no longer a thought of not wanting to be alive but instead a feeling that when death arrives, she will find me alive. As I was coming down Powerline Pass, opting to not ski because of the potential of kicking off an avalanche and being completely by myself, I down climb an outcropping of rocks. As I held on there was a moment, a hesitation pooled around anxiety, what if I can’t do this, what if this is it. I took a deep breath, reminding myself of all the tangled, dark spots I had seen myself through. I looked down into the valley and the warm glow that illuminated Anchorage eight miles away, finding comfort in the community that I had built and the trails that had never led me astray. I looked at my footing and my potential route, took a breath and placed my foot on the next hold. I’ve seen myself through far darker patches than skiing home at 11pm at night, I thought.

More friends tacked on to the affectionately known, “dumb long slogs” – setting up car shuttles so we could go a little farther each time. I tried not to balk or downplay when people who I felt were far more experienced than me would ask to be my partner on a route or objective, they are picking me for a reason, they know my abilities, as in my relationship I had always felt like a last resort as a partner.  It helped me find a steadiness in knowing my value, in what I bring to the table, and to never settle for a less than feeling when embarking on an adventure. Each outing taught me more about myself and the parts that had stayed hidden for so long for safekeeping finally felt safe enough to re-emerge. Those that embarked on these adventures with me showed me patience, kindness, and the occasional pointer when I would ask how exactly I should take this line. All the same things that I had found on the trails that surrounded me and gave me the confidence to exist in a space that felt foreign for so long.

When the opportunity to buy a house came up that would keep me on the trail network, I immediately said yes, and figured it all out after that. Working remote in global health security and on east coast hours often means that an early starting time means I have afternoons to explore my backyard. I had gained my confidence back in jumping and figuring out the landing on the way down, in taking a route to find out what I was made of, I was no longer afraid of what I would encounter on the trail or in my mind. I have since continued going out from my house into the front range, running up to Flat Top and back home, getting rides up to Glen Alps Parking Lot to save some of myself for the run back. Through it all the trails have supported me, challenged me to grow and the growth that exists in the mountains gave me a way to hold space for my growth as a human– the days that fall short of the objectives, leaning into the progressions, the changes, the trails that I’ve come to love that once destroyed me– the spaces I inhabit that no longer scare me– the solitude that no longer comes at the expense of peace. On the trail I’m reminded of all the different versions of me that have existed on it and the trail now brings certainty to my life, a familiarity, the mile markers invite reminders in, this rock feature, this signpost.

Someone once told me that peace and stability come from within– returning to the trail often reminds me of that– that what will remain after I’m gone– that Mother Nature while providing comfort also responds to the elements both anthropocentric and natural, doing what she needs to do for safekeeping. Even after all the times I’ve run a certain loop or nearby trail, I still find myself in awe of all that surrounds me. And such is life, the different versions of me all exist inside, much as they do on the trail. I can hold space for them all and meet each one with compassion while reminding myself that calmness can be found in the uncertainty, in what’s down the next bend, underneath the snow, the world can fall away, and I can still find grounding on the trails that have brought me home.

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Where the Rocks Bleed Blue by Zahra Zoghi

As a New Pilot, My Son Wanted to Take Me Up NonFiction

Kurt Schmidt

My son’s question made me anxious. He had called on my birthday and asked if I’d like to go up with him in a small single-engine plane that he usually flew on practice flights out of Nashua, New Hampshire. He said, “Ask Mom if she wants to go too.” When I did so, she shook her head and said something about not being able to handle it.  Maybe she’d come along and take photos of us taking off.

The trouble was I’d just turned eighty-two and had many stupid anxieties remaining from a traumatic childhood.  Going up in the air in a small plane with an inexperienced pilot who’d only had his pilot’s license for a few months jumped to the top of the list. I hemmed and hawed on the phone, suggesting to Jesse that it might be better to wait for warmer weather. He said the cockpit would be warm enough and that he was going up anyway unless the weather turned bad.

I sensed he was offering this flight as an exciting birthday present and that turning it down would disappoint him. I took a deep breath and said maybe it would be something I could write about. “Yeah, Dad,” he said. “A new adventure to write about.”

When Jesse was eight-years-old, I’d written he was anxious about fire and wind. When the wind blew in the giant pine tree outside his window, he had trouble falling asleep. He often called for one of us. As I sat on his bed one night, he asked me if I was afraid of the wind. “No,” I said. “In fact, when I was a kid, I used to sleep on the screen porch during summer storms. The wind in that pine tree didn’t bother me much. I just buried my head underneath the covers.” He asked if I was afraid of anything. “Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid of people with guns and truck drivers who drive on my tail.” He said I could always let the trucks go by. “I could,” I said. “You know, I’m also afraid to die.” I’d been Jesse’s age when my parents argued during a scenic autumn drive, causing my father to accelerate our old Pontiac to ninety with the intent to “kill us all.” Over the years his drunken tirades included physical abuse to my mother and threats to “kill the kids.”

“I’m not afraid to die,” Jesse said. “There will be so many people I know in heaven when I get there.”

“That’s true,” I said, “but we’ll have to make the trip alone, and that’s a little scary...like if we sent you alone on the plane to Indiana to visit Grandma and Grandpa.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid then,” he said, “because the airline would have flight attendants to watch me the whole way.”

I was now anxious about flying in a small plane. I hoped God had flight attendants.

…

It was a chilly afternoon on March 4th when my wife and I drove into the parking lot of the East Coast Aero Club in Nashua, New Hampshire. The sun was bright, not a cloud. Jesse stood there, motioning us into a tight parking space.

Out on the tarmac sat a dinky white plane with the wings mounted over the cockpit. I didn’t know how many flight school students had flown this plane, but it appeared to have seen plenty of action. While Jesse did all the plane’s preflight checks, Shelley took a photo of the plane and me with my arms spread out in a crucifixion pose.

Soon Jesse had me buckled into the cockpit, briefing me on levers I would need to pull if we were about to crash. When he started the engine, I said, “I’ve changed my mind.” He said, “You don’t have to go.” I said I was just kidding, although my inner voice was saying false bravery was the same thing as stupidity.

Over my headphones I could hear Jesse communicating with an air traffic controller as we taxied to the top of the runway. Once airborne, he flew us over Manchester to Portsmouth and then up the coast to Portland, Maine.  He did a landing there (for practice, I guess) even though wind was buffeting the plane. We sat on the runway for about five minutes, took off again, and began retracing our flight path back to Nashua.  The sky was so clear we could see faraway places like Mt. Washington, Lake Winnipesaukee, Sebago Lake, Boston, and even Mt. Monadnock. Whenever Jesse spoke to air traffic controllers along the way, he sounded confident and authentic. By the time we landed back in Nashua and saw Shelley waving to us from the tarmac, I was feeling immense pride in a son who had flown us for two hours like a seasoned professional.

After Jesse tied down the plane and called for it to be refueled, we ended the day with more family hugs and photographs. As Shelley drove us home, I thought how fortunate I’d been to overcome the anxiety that might have prevented me from having this unique adventure with my son. I was so grateful now.

Years ago, for his eleventh birthday, I had arranged a local flight in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk from a small airport in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Jesse sat beside the pilot; Grandpa Ned, who’d flown in B-17s in WWII, sat with me behind them. The pilot flew to our town and dipped low over our house. As we returned to the airfield, the pilot let Jesse take the controls. I was not anxious then, perhaps because I failed to realize that someday Jesse would really hold the controls and fly his own airplane.

If I live to be ninety, maybe he can take me up again. Perhaps by then I’ll have forgotten the childhood trauma and be less afraid to die. At least my Boston Globe article about the youthful origins of his passion for flying will be recorded for posterity.

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The Coin Fiction

Jamison Standridge

There are no muses to call upon, there is no place for songs here. If ever there were heroes or gods, they have long since passed on, leaving not even a shadow of their once heralded gestures. I need no oracle to tell me my fate; Atropos has already had her way with me.

The cries of lost souls envelop me with their anguish. Tormented, they wade in the waters of a river black with blood; their bodies clamoring for a single elusive gasp of air. Their bodies are piled upon one another so thickly a man could walk on the sanguine waters like an unholy messiah, bringing anguish and doom to all the sinners of this forsaken underworld. The other end of the pond promises unfathomable punishments that no divine book, comedic or otherwise, could ever have predicted. The air is pregnant with the smoke of charred flesh and a mixture of secretions so fowl that only oblivion’s sweet relief could snuff out, the welcome succor of stupor eternally out of reach. I have no guide to accompany me, to show me a way forward or through. There are no Virgils to be had here, just a single coin I must guard with all my might, lest I become impossibly lost.

Thinking clearly in this place of darkness and despair is an unattainable goal. I could never have imagined sound so deafening that pain could pulse behind my eyes, blurring my vision and causing a throbbing ache throughout my entire body. I have dug my fingers so deeply into my ears that blood now coats the tips of them and floods my canals, yet the sound persists, as though it were within and a part of me and not merely a feature of my surroundings. I try to hold myself steady, to bestow my attention upon the coin, the single shred of possibility, my one constant, but the awesome pain begs for my heed. My flesh is under attack, my enemy invisible. Fire seems to be bursting from under my skin, with thousands of pustules pressing for eruption, percolating under the surface, festering boils erupting from my crackling, arid skin.

In my mouth is a taste so fowl it must be coming from within my bowls, lurking within me, awakening my senses with a most intolerable punishment. I am convinced that something within me has festered and died, if additional deaths are possible in this place, and I am now savoring the mortification of my very biology. How can such anguish, such horror, be possible? How could there be an even greater suffering following the curse that is life? How did I come to be in this place? A futile question, for the answer is forever on my lips. I keep repeating his name: Samuel… Samuel… Samuel… My tormenter, my savior, my castigator, my life giver, my accuser, my relief, my sentence.

 Samuel was a shining beacon in a lightless world – he entered mine as though he had always been meant to find me, finally able to cease his hunt the day our lives converged. Samuel, the sun to my new moon, was everything that I was not – a demigod personified: trusting and open, kind and generous, faithful and good, so beautiful that Apollo himself would have punished him had he not been as smitten with him as was the rest of the world. How his light could even find its way to shine upon me I still cannot comprehend, yet it did and the warmth of it was glorious. I basked in his attention and devotion, I flourished under his gaze, I breathed anew and transformed under his watchful eye as though Ovid had orchestrated my metamorphosis. I wish I could conjure the smell of him, the taste of his tongue jousting with my own, the first time I breathed in the musk of his groin as I explored every inch of his body – alas, my lungs are filled with the ash and soot of no man’s land, refusing even my memories the solace of recollection.

How could someone as wretched as I ever have become the one to win over the prize that was Samuel? I knew that we did not fit, that he could not have been the other half that belonged to me seeking reunification. Yet, by some divination, Samuel seemed to believe that I could be that person. His conviction was so strong that not only was he unbothered, but he seemed not to take notice of the whispers and slanders thrown our way by dismayed creatures astonished by the match between the rival of Adonis and a creature unworthy of anything but disdain and dereliction. I knew this to be true: whatever spell Samuel was under, I had to play my part in maintaining the incantation. I dedicated my time to nurturing him and the precarious love we shared. Neglecting myself was of no cost, I was well used to it and could not fathom notions of pride or selfishness, entitlement was not a word that found a place in my personal vocabulary. Samuel’s approval and kindness were the intoxicating fruits of my labors. I could have lived a thousand lives powered solely by his gratitude and validation.

We spent years in this blissful existence. I cared for him, encouraged his endeavors, nurtured his every indulgence, and cultivated his interests in any way I could. I would have lost myself had I any self to lose. I was his Echo, my proximity to him is what brought purpose to my days. I had finally known happiness, had discovered a meaning to my otherwise pointless existence, and Samuel was the abode in which it thrived. I had never known hope or trust until I was finally enveloped in his bosom, his chest’s percussions became the metronome I set as my personal tempo. Our souls had grown into an ivy of love and passion so tightly entwined that we had turned into one.

I gaze, now, at my body and there is no ivy to be found, no Samuel to shelter me from the putrefaction that is taking hold of me. Samuel will never be one with me again. For a day came, a day like any other but as destined as the original curse of my birth, in which Samuel’s shine ceased to prefer me amongst all men. The change was sudden, the pain of which I had never imagined to be possible. Samuel had begun to love many others, his heart far too vast to belong to just one, yet limited enough to no longer include me among its numbers. He remained impossibly, unbearably, beautiful and good. I, then, must have been the author of the love’s demise, had not pulled the fair burden of our yoke to sustain the passion that once burned powerfully within us. His last embrace, the one that released me as his beloved, banished me from his presence – all I was able to take with me as I let go was the pendant that hung from his neck on a chain as golden as his hair. I knew that vital coin would make the crossing possible on the journey I was about to undertake. I knew what must be done.

Dreams can become broken, and new ones can be made of the splintered pieces, but I had no more dreams to call my own. Samuel was more than I ever could have designed. From the shards of the life I had once called ours I saw that my only option would be to release myself for evermore. The threads that once bound me to this world had to be severed – if the gods were not going to aid me in my transfiguration, I had to take matters into my own hands. I dug and tore inside of myself. With wild abandon I carved at my form, reversing my existence until all that had once belonged within me spilled and washed over, staining indelibly my surroundings with the baptism of my sorrow.

I don’t know how long it has been, how much time has passed between that day and now. Time no longer matters, perhaps it never did, it likely never will again. Passage on the vessel could mean salvation, a respite from the plagues of where I currently dwell. I know, though, that relief will never be possible, that my wretchedness is permanent and that without Samuel, in life and thereafter, survival is neither attainable nor desirable. I have made up my mind. I will let go of this cursed coin, drop it on the banks of this infernal riverbed, and I will join the merciless souls heaving for air from that canal of blood. My paradise has been lost and will never be regained. Affliction is the damnation I deserve. I must make haste. I mustn’t hesitate any longer.

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