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Issue # 49 Fall 2023

Prose

Edited by Dorian Gossy

 

 

 

Stephen Combs
The Ghost and the Decoy  

 

Maria…

She was said to have eyes and hair as dark as the inside of a blackhole. Though her apparition was of a Guatemalan girl who only lived to be eleven years old—death empowered her to unleash her psychotic evil across all of San Pedro Necta. My wife and I knew of these legends but never lived through them the way the villagers had…never until we reached a winter night that was colder and rainier than the locals had ever faced.

After nightfall, a lost three-legged Bull Terrier howled in our alley. The townswoman in the shadows of our living room whispered in prayer. From houses that peeked out of mountains, the eyes of the silent watched over our trepidation. According to San Pedro Necta’s locals, Maria’s ghost was acting in mischief, once more.

One large space encompassed the living room, dining area, and shower. This left nowhere to flee from endless praying and barking. It didn’t help that on one side in the front of the home, we had large trees in place of a wall. Maria poured right through the branches and wet half our concrete floor with rain as restless and eternal as her unsavory soul.

I sat at an unclothed, white folding table in an area adjacent to where our guest prayed. My nearsightedness put everyone out of view but my wife, who was next to me with her hand in mine.  Her eyeglasses and the worried expression on her narrow face shown in the glow of the candle that cast a cedarwood scent between us. At least in this moment, she worried for me, not for any myth that created pandemonium in the world around us.

Just as the rain was out of place in the winter, things weren’t right inside me. She knew this, because we didn’t play like we always had from the time we met in the United States.

Back then, I worked as a bank teller; she was my client. My short side part and round, boyish face tempered my six-foot-four stature and country accent. I tried the Spanish I learned in school on her. She was nothing but straight hair, knees, and elbows but was as confident as David against Goliath and was thoughtful in her comebacks. We held up the line, one lame joke of mine after another.

It’d been a long time since I told lame jokes.

Now she said, “Go with my cousin, Jesus, tomorrow. You need to get out.”

I hesitated but nodded. Pops and I had moved to Guatemala with her, a year earlier, and I was still isolated and not working. Jesus had been inviting me to the bar for a while and—ready or not, drinker or not—it was time.

“Okay.” Those two syllables took effort, but I followed up with, “Okay, I’ll go.”

“Leave your grandpa at home,” she said.

“You know I can’t.”

“Vamos!” our praying guest and town elder, Yanneth, told us. We followed her into the small kitchen with the woodfire stove where she cracked open a couple of eggs and started frying. Dressed in the women’s custom wear of a red and white striped shirt and long black skirt, her aura shifted in the smoky aroma. Her eyes appeared as fiery as those red stripes; her hair bun as ancient as the white ones. Her tone was as dark as her skirt as she prophesied, “Maria attacks indiscriminately, and one day we’ll all face her.”

After she spoke, I asked my wife what motivates Maria. She told me, “They say she was born inherently cruel.”

I sipped my coffee.

The next night at the Adventure Bar, the Gallos I sipped gave me a buzz when Pops and I were at the table with Jesus. I needed the kick from the alcohol to loosen up; otherwise, all my large frame could do was take up dirt between two roof-holding pillars in the packed outdoor banqueting area.

Jesus asked, “Do you fear Maria?”

“I don’t know. What’s the deal with her, anyway? Wife tells me about her, but where’d she come from?”

“It’s pretty funny,” he said.

I leaned in.  His shoulder length unbrushed hair, scruffy face, immense eyes, gummy smile, and drinking habits made him a candidate for town scoffer.

I gaped and glanced over at Pops. Behind his shaggy bangs and beard, he scowled and averted eye contact from us.

I replied, “Jesus, what do you mean by funny?”

 He had four empty glasses in front of him. “Hey, get me another drink!” he told the waiter. “Hurry up, la prisa.” He turned his attention back. “Anyway, she was an orphan and troublemaker in her life, but then—”

Pops had advanced to falling asleep and snoring while I waited for what would come next. My wife never told me how she died.

“She choked on a cheese fry… And now her body rests in the tombs up the mountain.”

“…”

His eyes and grin got wider as he guffawed. I laughed, my side aching.

Then, we hushed as if the ears of a malevolent force could hear us. I said, “But what if she’s real? Yanneth says we all have to face her.”

After another quiet moment, he said, “Yanneth,” and we laughed again.

His voice lowered to just above a whisper, as he said, “Good to see you smiling. Life’s full of sadness, but you have to laugh.”

 “You’re telling me.”

“This song made me think of you, hermano.”  I recognized the one he serenaded me with as “Mi Viejo.” He broke into a romantic tone, smiling. I smiled back and— must have been the beer—but joined him in a duet. We stood up, put our arms around each other, and bellowed from deep within our bellies. As we finished, his eyes filled with tears for me, but I wouldn’t...

I patted his shoulder.

By the time our commotion ended, the other patrons had all jumped up and gathered across the bar. It was a blur, but Jesus said two scrawny boys were going at it, one had a bloody nose, and we needed to check it out.

 I wanted to go but noticed Pops at the table, awake, shaking his head and folding his arms. I said to Jesus, “You go ahead. Our performance wore me out.”

Jesus laughed, let go of my embrace, and ran to the fight. I pulled a chair next to Pops.

“How was our music?” I asked.

“Rotten. Can’t understand a lick of what either of you is howling about, or anybody else from here,” he grumbled.

I wanted to tell him he wasn’t giving Guatemala a chance but altered my glance to the table, the unfolded table cloths, and the empty drinking glasses Jesus went through.

He went on, “Look at these folks naming their children Jesus. It’s blasphemous.”

“C’mon, Pops, don’t you know the name Joshua means Jesus, too?”

“When did you start drinking, boy?”

After I shifted my beer to arm’s length, Jesus returned, peering down. “Guess who they’re blaming the fight on?”

“Maria?” I said.

He laughed. “Pendejos.”

When I arrived home, I rushed through the door, fleeing the rain that smacked against our tree wall. At the candlelit table, my mother-in-law sniveled in tears with my wife and Yanneth consoling her. I moved slowly toward them and listened to Yanneth.

“Look at your suegra. She has gray hair so gloriously long, wears a skirt, is quiet and well-mannered, and never hurts anybody. Today, at the market, she bought some apples, carried the basket of them on her head, and Maria slapped it off. The apples splattered on the ground. It terrified your suegra. She cannot speak.”

Must have been the beers or listening to Jesus’ mocking, but I braved up at my wife and spoke in English which the other ladies could not understand. “They’re delusional. What if Mom just lost her balance, and that’s why the apples fell.”

“Delusional? You want to talk about delusional? Why don’t you talk about that with your grandpa?”

I balled my fist as if I would hit the table but held back, stood up, and went to my quarters.

Minutes later, my wife came in. “Just got a phone call.”

I stayed silent.

“Jesus was in a car accident on the way home. He’s in the hospital.”

No words came to me, partly, because we’d been fighting, partly because I felt the weight of the saddest English and Spanish condolences drop to the pit of my stomach.

She continued, “You know… He thought if he made fun of it, it wouldn’t happen to him?”

As she went to leave angry, I reached over and grabbed her by the wrist, then sat her on my knee. “I’m sorry about Mom and this— I can’t believe this. Jesus was laughing just earlier. He was having fun. If this is all true, Maria took his laugh away. I won’t stand for it.”

All that could be heard were raindrops until my wife left.

 I marched to the room next door. Pops glared into my eyes. He stood short but square and strong and bearded and intimidating, and whatever he had to say, he looked ready to come to blows over it if he had to.

I braced myself and said, “Yeah?”

“I’m gonna go home to Linda.”

That put a grimace across my face. Linda was his last girlfriend; one of many. He called her his blonde bombshell and only complimented her young age of fifty and her tight jeans. Now he wanted to show feelings for her? I swallowed, and if bitterness went down my throat, I hid it away in my belly. Hid it, only because San Pedro Necta, Mom, and Jesus needed me united with the old-timer. “Be ready in the morning, Pops. We’re going to stop Maria.”

“No, boy, I mean it. I’m gonna go see Linda.”

“Pops, you can’t go where she is. You know that. Besides, you’re gonna let this ghost terrorize this town? What’s happened to you?”

Howling and barking from outside started but this time with growling and biting as if an intruder was right in our alley. I turned and headed through the house and out the front door. The shadow of the three-legged dog stood halfway down the ramp. Rain showered his black coat.

Must have sensed me there, because he looked back and darted away. I chased him down the cement until we turned a corner around some trees. Drenched and with cramping thighs, I didn’t stop until we were on the charcoal and tan cobblestone in the village.

 There, he waited between a couple of small houses made of cornstalk and cane that were nearly on top of each other. In candlelight from the nearby windows, the dog limped on his one front leg to a more open area, rose his chin up toward the mountains, and wailed as if to send a signal.

“Looks like that ghost girl is settling up there in the tombs, boy,” a voice from behind me said.

I turned, and Grandpa stood there, water sliding down his face from his shaggy hair. As the rain mercifully reduced to a drizzle, he said, “You’re determined to confront this.”

“Confront evil. That’s what you taught me.”

“Get your salt rifle ready, boy.” He sighed.

From the dark alley, my wife called me to come back and get sleep, and we headed toward her.

That night, when I closed my eyes and heard the rustle in the trees, I thought of Pop’s own legends: myself eight years old with him in the woods, rushing over grass to shoot at any sound. Any owl’s hoot could have been a vengeful spirit.

“You got to confront evil,” he told me as he handed over the rifle. “A man’s gotta have some danger about him.”

Danger.

I nodded off.

In the morning, after Yanneth led me, my wife, and Mom in a prayer, I said my goodbyes, and Pops and I seized danger.

Sky a white ghost. Grass dead. We drove the Ford F-150 toward the mountain’s summit.  For once, I took the wheel.

Riding shotgun, Grandpa scrunched his legs and focused on the floormat. We bounced with every bump the tires hit. “Gloomy day,” he said.

“What? You feeling worried about cruising close to the ledge, or something?”  I laughed, concentrating ahead and knowing he was always like that on the passenger side.

“Boy, the sky says a lot about how I feel, right now. But I’d rather not talk about that. What you gonna do if you catch this ghost girl?”

“Going to throw you in front of her.”

“Hey! Just cause you’re big as an ox, don’t mean you gotta pick on me.” Grandpa popped open the storage compartment, looking for cigarettes but only finding a sandwich wrapped in foil. “Where’s my Marlboros?”

“Threw them out while you were whimpering with your head between your legs. They’re bad for you.”

“Why do you care? They can’t hurt me any more than they already did, and you’re taking me to go up against a ghost? It’s about like Abraham trying to sacrifice Isaac, except it’s the boy doing it to the patriarch.”

“Look, Pops, either both of us are coming back or neither. Now eat your sandwich.”

“You eat it. How are you gonna talk about what was best for me when your whole canteen is a cheeseburger?”

I rolled the window down and slung the double-decker out into the valley.

“You’re veering, boy.”

When we reached the tombs, the vividness of the crosses, small houses, and coffins that memorialized the deceased stopped us dead. Their orange, yellow, light blue, and pink colors enlivened our cloudy day.

Grandpa said, “Don’t they look like little vacation homes?”

Windchill went through my chest, and I shrugged off a creepy feeling that death sought to seduce Pops. Then, we hopped from the next grave to the next, hard limestone and tuff representing the journeys of those underneath who braved us forward.

When I was a kid, I apologized to skeletons for stepping on their homes. Grandpa’s chuckle echoed in my imagination as clearly as if it were out in these mountains.

He broke up my reverie to get my thoughts on passing away.

I longed for a simpler conversation like the one of the skeletons’ houses. Twenty-two and big as an ox wasn’t as fun as eight, or twelve, or fifteen, or being smaller without a worry over consequences. “Why, Pops, I hate to think about death.”

He stopped and stood steadfast, not fighting for breath in the thin air, and said, “Boy, you know I raised you to believe in heaven.” 

That rough, buttoned-up beige shirt and working man’s tan, and the fact age turned his hair and beard strawberry blond instead of grey seemed to give him a glow.

Beige shirt.

Kept in rotation for my entire life.

Glow.

It all took me home to North Carolina. A morning after a church service when I was eight years old. An old man and a boy next to each other on a red-carpeted pew. The air conditioning and the fresh scent of pages of my Bible contrasted with our usual feel of the outdoors’ heat and its smell of must. Swings and woods and acorns and ticks and grass stains, but not in church. In church were dress shoes, combed-over hairdos, and hymns, but in church were Pops and me, all the same.

“Like the preacher said, boy, the cat’s with Jesus now. Don’t cry about it.”

“I know.” I held tears inside and didn’t shed a drop on his shoulders, no matter how broad they seemed back then.

Growth happened gradually with height and width; no use trying to pinpoint when a boy’s shoulders get bigger than his pops. But here we were: men swaggering toward my truck to retrieve our weapon. A metallic pop broke the silence as the bolt went back into the loaded rifle.

“The salt gun,” he said. “What’d my daddy say?”

“It repels spirits. Sends them to heaven—or down there for all he cared.”

“Daddy believed so much in the devil; that was his weakness. Care about souls, boy.” After a brief pause, he looked up into my eyes and said, “The way he passed the stories to me, I handed the rifle to you.”

 Now I bore it on the front lines, without mercy for Maria. As we hunted for her amongst the colorful tombs, we turned our heads in all directions. To advance, I slid off a grave and fell flat onto my back into a dormant, brown grassy area. The earth penetrated me like a bed of spikes. I wouldn’t stay in it, however. Got right up, looked at Pops, and said, “I’ll sniff for sulfur; you tell me if you see her.”

“What we gonna go do if we find her, boy?”

“I suppose reason with her. If she gives us flack, I’ll blast her.” I aimed and squinted at the sun. Not that things weren’t blurry, even when the sun didn’t blind me.

“She ain't gonna like us walking on all these graves,” he said.

“There’s little elsewhere to walk.”

Grandpa pursed his lips and nodded. In the distance, he saw the back end of long, dark hair belonging to a little girl. She sat motionless on a turquoise casket. After he told me, I cocked my gun and pointed it downward. As we moved on her, she turned, and Pops said his favorite word. It wasn’t a pleasantry.

She looked normal but melancholic. “Might just be a regular little girl,” said Grandpa.

“Maybe. But I got the gun ready in case she’s fooling us. Let me go first.”

When we reached her, she said something in Spanish. Grandpa gave me a curious grin.

“She asked if we’re looking for Maria, too.” Translated to Pops we might be waiting forever. She came here to get revenge on Maria for pulling her three-legged dog’s tail and making it run away but has seen no trace of a ghost.

I turned away from Pops and toward the little girl. I threw my hands around, warning her of danger, letting her know it was our jurisdiction now. She dropped her shoulders and cast her stare toward a pinus contorta tree next to the grave and said, “You’re making me give up.”

 I told her I knew her dog, that he must have led us to her. She then said we’d be waiting a long time anyway and departed.

When the night sky and quietness settled in, the cold air and smell of pinewood and earth consumed us. I looked ahead in a daze.

“Go to sleep, boy,” Pops said.

“You don’t ever sleep.”

Then, I spotted her—that darn Maria’s shadow materialized beside the turquoise grave. I felt my face flush, not only from getting chapped in the wind but from my blood boiling. Why did she traumatize my mother-in-law, who’d have given apples to anybody? The woman might sting a wound with her Vicks-VapoRub, but she only meant to heal. And Maria slapped the basket off her head? I fired that gun to the sound of quick explosions.

“Boy, what you shooting at?”

I kept on blasting.

“Stop. It’s your vision, boy. Playing tricks on you again. That’s a tree.”

I yelled, “Take back what you did to Mom and Jesus, and we’ll let you go.”

“Boy, it’s a tree.”

Scurrying over graves like they were burning, I made it to her. A humped-over pinus contorta greeted me with its lifeless stare. Grandpa pulled me back from squeezing its branches.

He said, “Boy, what you so angry about? And why did you think you could ever make a deal with her?”

When sunrise ended our night of naught, Grandpa said maybe the ghost story was a decoy. With heavy eyes and a growling belly, I agreed, theorizing the little girl we saw could be behind the turmoil in the village.

“But there’s the what if,” I said, ignoring the part of me that only wanted to go home and get a mouthful of beans and a bed. “What if the ghost is real? We have nothing but time.”

The second evening out, Grandpa doubted we’d see her. He mentioned it two or three times before the sky went dark. By then, hunger pains, sleep deprivation, and chilly evenings and nights that nipped at my nose and fingertips were par for the course.

It didn’t matter, because I had Pops. His waiting next to me reminded me of when I was a child playing video games. He never liked electronics but when poor eyesight put me close to the TV, he never left my side.

In this hunt for Maria, he was still my eyes, my lamp in the night.

“Maybe Maria’s haunting your mother-in-law’s warm house,” Grandpa said.

“She’ll show up, Pops. Can’t stay in town all day, every day.”

“Don’t let yourself get cold.”

“Men don’t get cold.”

“You need to eat.”

“You’re not hungry so neither am I.”

“You need to sleep.”

“You don’t ever sleep.”

“You know my situation is different. Stop denying it.”

I pointed my gun at an apparition over his shoulder.

“Boy, there’s nothing there…” he said, raising his hands.

 As shots boomed into the lonely night, Grandpa jumped to a grave behind. “What in the world is the matter with you?”

 I replied, “Her clammy hand was groping to pull you right into her dark soul.”

He stayed; I plodded forward, bending at the knees and aiming.

“There’s nothing there… Boy, she’s a decoy.”

With my eyesight being what it was, Pops became a figure in the darkness only by staying six feet behind. “C’mon!” I shouted, “C’mon!” He didn’t move. “Grandpa!” I sounded like a hurt, little boy. “I can’t see you good from over here!”

“What you going to do if you catch her?” he said.

“I’m going to talk to her.”

“What if she tries to get away.”

“Stop asking stupid questions!”

“I want to know. Tell me what you going to do if she runs?”

“I’ll squeeze her… So there.”

His silence added more sadness and eeriness to where we’d been the last couple of days. Breaking it, he said, “You can’t spend your life holding on to a ghost.”

“Pops! Stop messing, or I’ll take the butt of this gun and knock you out.”

“There’s no Maria, boy. Not in the sense you’re thinking. Let’s deal with your ghost, the one in front of you. You know I gotta be on my way…”

“No. You never left me. Not even when I was a teenager.”

“I ain't just up and leavin’. God don’t like us messing ‘round with his order.” 

“How do you expect me to let go? You didn’t even tell me you had lung cancer, and then you were gone. It’s not fair.”

“That was my sin. Okay?  I’ve paid in this purgatory long enough. Can’t ride passenger no more. You're cold. Not eating. Not sleeping. I was your eyes, boy, but you can’t follow me to go to the place my blond bombshell has gone. Besides, you got friends and a family. It’s time for you to guide them to defeat their own Marias.”

“Pops…please…stop.”

 “Listen to me, you got most of your life ahead. I was at the beginning of yours, and you were at the end of mine. You were a blessin’, and I loved you.”

A year and a half ago, before this day, his… His funeral had hurt a lot more than the cat’s, but I held that fact in. Walked out of the service as if he led me through the doors, flew to my new house in Guatemala as if he was in the seat in front of me, adventured to these graves as if he…

His voice drifted out somewhere, a shrill in the distant wind. “You gotta take that love or leave it.”

He didn’t give me time to leap to him and stop his fading. I tossed the salt rifle into the dead grass and shook my head.

At dusk the next day, my wife led me to my mother-in-law who was buying cheese fries in an outdoor market. She asked me if I had vanquished Maria.

Standing weary on the cobblestone, I covered my face and surrendered tears.  Hands embraced me, and voices asked what was wrong, but when crying broke from a year and a half of imprisonment, it refused to be restrained.

During the passage of the next few months, I hurt from the wound I had only begun to allow myself to feel. I guess it was like Mom’s Vicks; sometimes you have to sting a wound to heal.

When the independence parade came, I squinted at the sky. Its beige tint shone down pride and its fluffy cloud, wisdom. I could picture Pops up there, smoking a cigarette, rubbing his hands all over Linda’s tight jeans, and giving a thumbs up.

Walking down the alleyway ramp from our abode to the village, my wife caught my gaze. “You look like your old, determined self,” she said. I laughed and grasped her hand.

At the parade, I stood next to Jesus and put an arm around him. He looked well.  When a marching drummer tripped, I rushed the street, crushing candy, to help. As she lifted her head, I recognized her little face under her big marching band hat. She had once sat on the turquoise grave in the mountains. She mumbled, “Maria pushed me down, and she took my dog, too. I’m going to get him back.”

As I helped her to her feet, I remembered the advice Grandpa gave me when I was her age and realized his wisdom had grown as big as an ox within me.  I said, “Don’t stop confronting evil. A woman has to keep some danger about her.”

 

James Hartman
Crack

Jacob’s mother was not having a good night and he was trying to distract her.  They were sitting in the back living room with the television tuned to Family Feud, all the lights off so kids wouldn’t knock demanding candy.  “Look, Mom,” he said, and pointed again at the television.  “Let’s see what the final question’s going to be.”
      “Jacob, any minute now one of those rebels is going to fall through that crack.  Wait and see.”
        “Ready?  Name something you can fill with air."
       “Jacob,” she whispered.  “You must be quiet.”
        His mother’s eyes jumped along the ceiling as if she were following something only she could see.  He had watched brain cancer slowly ravage his father, and now he was watching the cancer of grief slowly ravage his mother.  Living in the rural Adams County farm she and Dad had shared for forty two years wasn’t good for her well-being, and Gettysburg was still far enough from York for her not to feel like she was  “invading” him, so this row home on Baltimore Street was a compromise.
       Two houses down was the Shriver House, where, his mother said shortly after moving in, Confederate sharpshooters had taken aim at Union troops until they were discovered and shot.  Jacob didn’t know where she learned this.  But now she knew, and so far there had been nothing he could do to persuade her that Confederate sharpshooters had not died in her attic, too.  It didn’t matter that her home was not even here during the battle.  Once his mother got a hold of something, you couldn’t take it from her.
       “Any minute now,” his mother whispered.
        At the rounded slope where the wall met the right corner of the ceiling was a small black lightning bolt of peeling paint but which his mother insisted, no matter how many times he told her it was only peeling paint, that it was a crack that would burst any minute.  It was exactly two months since his father died, and his mother had gotten hold of this “crack” that afternoon before he came over.  Jacob tried everything.  He suggested they cook dinner together—no.  He suggested they play chess—no.  Checkers—no.  Watch a movie—no.  Finally he just turned on the television, hoping something would quickly appear that might work.  Family Feud was the show Jacob and his father had watched together when he was in the hospital recuperating from his last operation.

Outside he could hear another ghost walking tour, the leader of which was clearly explaining how Confederate sharpshooters had hid in attics so he turned up the television’s volume.  Sometimes the television made a tiny hiss if someone laughed or yelled really loud and now a woman in blue pigtails was hopping and shouting because she had won nine thousand dollars.  Then a quiet commercial about Tide Pods flipped on, and yet the hissing sharpened—though it wasn’t exactly a hissing.  It was a light scratching.  Jacob looked around the living room and nothing seemed unusual.  He looked at his mother, who had her head tilted all the way back as she blinked rapidly at the ceiling.  And then the black lightning bolt suddenly dissolved in a vast waterfall, and in its place loomed a jagged black hole.  Pale shards of plaster and shattered beams amassed on the floor, and from this chaotic mess popped a young Confederate soldier, his clothes a clean, unwrinkled gray, his skin pink and fresh.  Strapped across his chest was a glimmering green canteen and, in one hand, a long musket, the plastic kind sold at souvenir shops around town.  Jacob stared, and finally he saw just a boy: short and willowy with wide curious eyes now containing the shine of someone who knew he might be in serious trouble.

Jacob’s mother shook her head.  “You stupid ass,” she growled.  “The war is over. Why can’t you let there be peace?”

After patting the plaster-dust off his uniform, the boy looked at Jacob’s mother and swiftly bowed.  “Ma’am,” he said, with overly southern polite inflection.  Then he noticed Jacob and immediately straightened and swung very stretched-out fingers to his eyebrow.  “Sir!” he shouted.  Then he shouldered his plastic musket like a good, disciplined soldier, and marched out the front door.     

The boy was the son of a single parent who had strayed from his group.  Apparently the boy had climbed the old stairwell in the back, wanting to see for himself what it must have been like to take aim at Union troops, but instead of crawling over to the Shriver House, he crawled two houses over in the opposite direction.  That was it for her.  She was not staying in “that damned haunted house one more nanosecond.”  She would rather “invade” Jacob in York, and so she moved in until they could determine where she should live next.

One morning they were eating scrambled eggs at the kitchen table when his mother said, “Lungs.”

“What?”

“They fill with air,” she said.  "Or they don’t.  Like your father’s didn’t.”

“Mom?” Jacob said.

“You asked me a question and I’m answering it.  Even at the hospital, his lungs didn’t fill with air.  Other things sure did though, didn’t they?  Like other people’s precious lungs.  Or those precious tires on their precious cars that wheel them out of that hospital and back into their precious lives.  Or that balloon that floated out of that person’s room down the hall.  Did you know it was still there the next morning, bobbing on the ceiling as I was still kissing your father’s dead hand?”

Jacob reached for his mother, but she pulled away.  She lowered her fork, and, for the first time, dug into the eggs on her plate.  He looked at his own plate, all those eggs still always untouched, and he reached out desperately for his mother, but she was holding on to something he could not grasp.

 

Eleanor Lerman
Old Dogs  

Steven was feeling a little tipsy as he walked down Garfield Avenue in Jersey City, heading home after an afternoon of drinking in a bar near his apartment. He liked the place because it still had a Pac-Man game, so he could sit in the dark for an hour or two and amuse himself, watching a glowing yellow disc devour electronic dots when it was not being stymied by evil little ghost things. The bar was far enough away from the new steel and glass condo towers and rental units being built along the Jersey side of the Hudson River that it still felt like a neighborhood hangout, though its days were probably numbered. The developers were eating up this old, industrial city, making it yet another place where only young people with big salaries and hefty bonuses could afford to live. Steven was not one of those people. It had never occurred to him that he was supposed to try to achieve anything like that. Peace, love, and understanding—that was the tune that played in his head when he was younger. It didn’t mean anything anymore, but he remembered when it did.

So there he was, Steven, walking along, passing old brick apartment buildings leaning against each other behind their concrete stoops and broken sidewalks, when his cell phone rang. His first thought was that if it was the cleaning service he worked for as a temp he wouldn’t answer because his voice might sound a little slurred and that wouldn’t be a good thing for them to hear. But it wasn’t them: it was his sister, Jane. It was okay for her to hear how he sounded, anytime.

“So, what’s going on?” Jane asked. “What did the eye doctor say?”

Steven had that he’d told her about the problems he’d been having with his vision for the past few months. His sight was getting fuzzy, kind of dim, so he’d gone into a cheapo eyeglass store near his apartment and asked to see the optometrist, thinking he probably just needed a new prescription for his distance glasses but no, that wasn’t the verdict.

“I have to have cataract surgery,” Steven told his sister. “I’ve already seen an eye surgeon and he scheduled it for the end of next week. It’s no big deal, really—just an outpatient procedure. Medicare will pay for most of it, and all that happens is your eye is blurry for a few days and when it clears up, bingo, your sight is back to normal. Better than. They’ll do the right eye first, then the left a few weeks later. No pain, nothing to worry about. I read about it online and everyone who’s had it says it’s an easy-peasy kind of thing.”

“Oh, well, if the Internet says so.” A dog barked somewhere in Jane’s house, then another joined in, and another, along with one or two more. Jane said their names and told them to be quiet, speaking to them as if they were people, saying that she was on the phone and they should cool it for a while, and they responded. They were quiet. “So who’s taking you?” Jane asked.

“What do you mean, who’s taking me?”

“Come on, Stevie. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that eye surgery requires anesthesia, which means they’re not going to let you have the procedure without someone to take you home.”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t asked anybody yet.”

“Uh-huh. And when you do ask someone, who will that be?”

The truth is, Steven had been avoiding even thinking about this problem—who was going to be the “responsible adult” to accompany him on the day of the procedure, as specified on the paperwork he was given at the eye surgeon’s office? One option he was considering was to call the local senior citizen center and see if he could find someone through them—one of the volunteers who baked cookies for the seniors or played the piano for them or something like that. It was hugely embarrassing, but he might just have to swallow his pride, if he even had any of that left.

“I’ll figure it out,” Steven said.

“No, Stevie, don’t figure out anything. I’ll drive down and be there with you.”

“I don’t want that, Jane. It’s like a two-, three-hour drive. Besides, what would you do about the dogs?”

“My neighbor will come over to feed them and let them out in the yard. He’s a nice guy. I took care of his goats last year when he was in the hospital for a few days.”

“Jesus. Sounds like a whole hillbilly thing going on up there.”

“No, just a bunch of old hippies hanging on as best we can. Anyway, tell me what day and I’ll drive down the night before.”

Steven sighed and gave in. “Alright. Thanks, Jane. I’ll text you the info.” The barking started again, along with some high-pitched yips from what was probably a small dog. Maybe two or three small dogs. Jane usually had an assortment: big dogs, little dogs, some in-between. “I hear your background chorus,” Steven said. “How many do you have these days? The dogs, I mean.”        

“I know what you mean. Seven. All senior citizens.”

“Just like us.”
Jane laughed. “Yeah, can you believe it? Just like us. Fucking crazy, right? I’m seventy-one years old. How did that happen?”

“The same way I got to be sixty-five.”

“Alright, old man. I love you anyway. See you soon.”

After his sister hung up, Steven realized he’d forgotten to ask her how she was feeling. Jane had rheumatoid arthritis that seemed to get worse year after year, but she never mentioned it unless he asked, and he felt guilty for not even thinking about it. But what always came to mind first when Steven talked to his sister was her dogs.

From the time she was around twenty or so, Jane had lived in the Village, but some years ago she had left the city and moved upstate, to a house near Woodstock. She told Steven she couldn’t afford to live in the city anymore and besides, the Village had changed beyond recognition. There were no more cheap rentals, no more dive bars that hadn’t been turned into fancy clubs decked out to look intentionally seedy, no more places she recognized and very few friends left anywhere east, west, north, or south of Christopher Street. She did have some friends living in upstate New York, people who had decamped to the Catskills, to mountain towns like Woodstock to get by on just a little money. They sold things they made or drove delivery vans or worked in bakeries or stores that sold rings and candles and tarot cards. Jane had a small pension from the various unionized jobs she’d had in Manhattan’s Garment District, rising from seamstress to production manager, and now she had Social Security, so she got by. She and the dogs. Steven couldn’t remember a time when Jane didn’t have a dog, even when she lived in the city, but this thing with having a house full of old dogs…maybe it was getting to be too much?

He had decided to broach the subject with Jane the last time he visited her, which was about six months ago. He usually took a bus up to Woodstock two or three times a year because he missed his sister when he didn’t see her for too long a stretch of time and she missed him. It had always been easy for them to tell that to each other; they’d been close from the time they were kids and that’s how their relationship remained. On his last visit, Steven remembered sitting on the back steps of her house, a 1950s-style ranch house that someone had built at the edge of a woods, with a picture window that looked out on a quiet, two-lane road and a wide, grassy backyard fenced off from a meadow full of wildflowers. It was a pretty enough place, but always, always, full of dogs. Dogs on the sofas, dogs on the chairs, dogs lying in the sunlight that came through the picture window, dogs in the laundry room, dogs on the rugs. While they were sitting on the steps, watching three of the current bunch of dogs chasing each other through the grass, Steven told Jane that he was worried about how she was managing because of her arthritis: he had watched her struggling with dishing out the dogs’ food at their mealtimes. Her hands were beginning to look like the bones inside them were permanently mangled and her fingers didn’t seem to be listening to what her brain was telling them to do.

“I know your heart’s in the right place, running this old folk’s home for dogs, but doesn’t it get to be a bit much sometimes?” Steven asked. “I mean, you must have fifteen different kinds of prescription dog medicines in the kitchen. And I looked at that schedule you’ve got on the wall about who gets which pills, when. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially with the trouble I can see you’re having with your hands.”

“Ha! My hands,” Jane said. “You should see what my back looks like on an X-ray. I think the last one I had even scared my doctor.”

“So why keep this up?”

“So just have one. Get some nice little puppy…”

“Stevie,” Jane said, and Steven heard the big-sister sound in her voice. “This didn’t just happen.” She looked out towards where the dogs were still running around in the sunshine and smiled. “Do you remember after Teddy died? I thought my heart would break. I had him for seventeen years, from the time he was six weeks old. I thought I could never get another dog but just one day of living here without a dog running around…well. It was too lonely. So I drove down to Kingston, to the big ASPCA shelter they have there, and I saw this adorable little brown puppy that I liked right away. I took him into the room where they let you sit with the puppies to play with them and decide if you want the one you’ve picked out when it suddenly occurred to me that if the puppy lived to be as old as Teddy, then I’d be, like, eighty-five—if I live to be that old.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t’ say if.”

“But if is the right word. So how could I get a puppy? It might outlive me and then who would take care of it? And don’t say you would. That’s not the point.”

“But I would.”

“And I said, that’s not the point. So I put the puppy back in the kennel and went to look at the older dogs. There were a couple of one-year-olds, two-year-olds—those were easily going to be adopted soon enough. But then there was a kennel with a big, sad-looking shepherd mix lying against the wall, and there was a sign that said he was eleven years old. Eleven! Lying all alone in a cage, hunched up against a concrete wall. I asked about him and the lady I was talking to said there was another dog there, too, about the same age. It’s a no-kill shelter, thank goodness, but that means that these poor dogs just live in these cages until they die. So, I took them both.”

“I remember you telling me about that. Roxie and El Paso, right? Those were their names.”

“Yes, Roxie and El Paso. A couple of months later, the shelter called me and said some people had dropped off a ten-year-old lab whose owner had died and no one else in the family wanted the dog, so they asked if I’d be willing to take her. The poor dog was so confused, so terrified when I took her home but eventually, she figured out someone loved her again. That’s how it started, I guess. I became the old lady who takes in old dogs. It’s okay with me, to be that person.”

“But a lot of them are sick. And even if they’re not…well, they’re old, so they die.”   

“Yeah, that’s what happens when you get old. You have to take a lot of medicine and then you die. But in between, if you’re a dog and somebody takes care of you, you get to run around in the grass with a couple of friends if you can and if you can’t, you just hang out, feeling safe and happy. If you’re a person, you get to watch a lot of cable tv and eat as many guilt-free potato chips as you want. Did I tell you that’s my new thing? I’m eating potato chips for breakfast if that’s what I feel like doing.”

Steven was thinking about that conversation as he unlocked his front door and walked into his apartment. On his kitchen counter, there were three different bottles of eye drops he had to start taking before the cataract surgery and more drops to take afterwards. And he had to remember to take his blood pressure medicine this afternoon—that bottle was sitting next to the eye drops. Medicine and death—not so different than the dogs. Human or animal, it really was a shitty thing, getting old.

The building where Steven lived was probably a grand place back in the early 1900s when they laid the foundation, but now it was owned by some real estate company that just collected the ever-rising rents and never fixed anything. His apartment was small—just a bedroom, a living room, and a tiny kitchen, but at least it looked out on a small park so he got to see some greenery at this time of year. Otherwise, there wasn’t much about the apartment that meant anything to him—it was just the place where he was living now, in what was considered the “bad” part of Jersey City, meaning, the people who lived here were mostly immigrants or they were Covid refugees who’d lost their jobs, or just people who lived on the margins because that’s where they’d ended up or where they’d always been. Steven was here because right now, it was what he could afford. By next year, when he got the new lease, that might not be the case, which was why he was still working. Well, sort of.

For over twenty years, Steven had been a steady, reliable member of the maintenance crew that served a number of co-op buildings in an area of Manhattan around the West 40s that used to be called Hell’s Kitchen but was now as fancy and expensive as most of the rest of the city. He’d been let go from that job during Covid so, because his sister had urged him to, he’d signed up for Social Security (“For God’s sake,” she’d said, “take it before the government spends it all and there’s nothing left”), but the monthly amount he received was hardly enough to keep him going.

When Covid began to recede and the world started brightening up again, Steven suddenly noticed lots of ads online for temp agencies that were looking for cleaning people.

The well-to-do who’d fled their apartments during the pandemic were coming back to the city, and most of them weren’t going to do their own cleaning, so Steven decided it would be a good way for him to earn extra cash. What was “maintenance,” anyway, besides fixing things and cleaning up? The temp agency he signed up with, The Clean Slate Homecare Service, told him that some customers might be a little uncomfortable with a man showing up (which he heard as Our customers not only expect women, they expect them to be Mexican or maybe Filipina and not to speak much English so no one has to try to carry on a conversation) but his solution for that was to wear a big, bright rainbow LGBTQ Pride pin on his shirt. Maybe people with enough money to hire other people to clean their apartments would be unnerved by some strange man showing up with a bucket and a broom, but Steven was willing to bet that a gay man would be welcome. Regular men might rape and murder you, especially if you were a woman opening the door to an apartment where you lived alone, but gay men would only shower the place with pixie dust, or something like that. In any case, the Pride pin worked and Steven was able to clean enough apartments to squeak by in terms of paying his bills.

One of the people he cleaned for ended up becoming a friend. Billy Broome was a sculptor who had a studio in a building off Canal Street. Most of Steven’s cleaning jobs were uptown, so it had been unusual to be sent down to one of the very few areas of the city where there were still cobblestone streets and the century-old old factory buildings had not yet been turned into upscale lofts. But that didn’t mean the neighborhood was an inviting place; instead, the buildings looked heavy and tired, ready to give up. Billy Broome’s studio was actually an old warehouse that had served the surrounding factories.

He had moved into the space in order to accommodate the sculpture he had been working on when Steven first met him:  an angel as tall as a two-story building and weighing about 13,000 pounds. The marble block from which the angel had been carved had been hoisted into the building using the industrial-sized elevator that had once been used to lift heavy machinery. That was four years ago. Two months ago, a specialized fine arts moving service had carefully wrapped the finished piece in a bounty of foam, rope, and padding, a process that had taken hours, then built a crate around it and loaded it on a private plane that had carried it across the country, to Phoenix. There, the museum that had commissioned the angel was waiting to install it in the entranceway that had been specifically designed for that purpose. The sculpture was an extraordinary achievement: a huge figure with outstretched wings that had required the help of an engineer to figure out how to balance the angel’s shoulders with the burden of marble cartilage and feathers that it was going to carry for the next few centuries.

The day after Steven talked to Jane about his cataract surgery, he went to Billy’s studio to do his regular weekly cleaning, which was confined to a makeshift living area separated from the rest of the huge studio by bamboo screens.  Steven also did Billy’s laundry, which meant carrying sheets and towels and whatever clothing Billy had worn during the week to the nearest laundromat, more than a dozen blocks away. But today, since the statue was gone, Steven expected that Billy would finally want him to start cleaning the empty studio space, which was going to be a major job, so perhaps he’d leave the laundry for next week. That was about all that was going through his mind when he rang the bell and Billy let him in.

He looked terrible, Steven thought, which was not what he expected. Billy had actually been gone for the past week; he’d flown out to Phoenix for the celebration that the museum had sponsored to honor both Billy and his work. The event had been covered by the local New York City news programs because Billy, whose real name was William Kunkle and who had been born and raised in Pennsylvania, had been a denizen of New York City for more than fifty years and had taken the surname “Broome” from the first street where he’d lived, just a few blocks away.

With the angel gone, the huge studio looked abandoned. When Steven said hello to Billy his voice seemed to bounce off the walls. The wooden frame that had surrounded the angel when Billy was working on it had not yet been completely dismantled but the dozen or so floodlights that hung from the beams were all turned off. The only light in the empty, echoing studio was streaming in from windows high up near the ceiling, light that was bleary, rainy, reminiscent of bad intentions.           

“Jesus, Billy,” Steven said, “this place looks like someone died here.”

“Oh yeah,” Billy said. “That would be me.”

So it’s going to be that kind of a day, Steven thought. Billy had these once in a while but today had an even worse feeling about it because of all the empty space and the echoing silence. But, meaning to get on with his work, Steven started taking things out of the wheeled case he used to lug around his cleaning supplies until Billy stopped him.

“Not today,” Billy said. “Please. I’ll sign your worksheet but let’s just have a couple of drinks, okay? I feel like shit and tidying up this hellhole isn’t going to help anything.”

He headed toward the old, flower-patterned couch that stood near his mattress, a remnant of his old dumpster-diving days, the time before he became famous, which he was, and rich, which he was from time to time, though money seemed to be a fluid thing with Billy. There were accountants who kept track of his finances for him but he mostly avoided talking to them.

As he walked towards the couch, Steven saw that Billy’s steps were wobbly and he actually looked even worse than Steven thought when he’d first walked in. Billy was in his mid-seventies, a small, thin man with a nearly concave chest and spindly legs. His hair was still dark, mostly, but gray was quickly taking over, though the grayer he got, the thicker and wirier his hair seemed to become. Today, it was a tangled mess; so was his beard. And the air around him stank from the smoke of the cheroots he favored, which were thin, black cigars he was almost never without.

“Okay,” Steven said. “Fine. It’ll be a drinking day. But what’s the matter? You kept saying you’d be happy to finally be done with Hermione.”

“Oh, fuck Hermione,” Billy said. “Fuck Hermione six ways to Sunday and back again.”
Steven was pretty sure that he was the only person who knew that “Hermione” was what Billy called the angel, with which he seemed to have an ongoing love-hate relationship.

There was no doubt that he had loved doing the work, had lovingly held in his hands the same kind of hammers and chisels that Michelangelo had used, and employed them with consummate skill. That, after all, was what had interested him in taking on the commission in the first place—the museum had wanted an angel carved from the same Carrara marble as Michelangelo had worked with and with the same tools that would have been available to him in the early 1500s. But there must have been something about living alone with the angel—with Hermione —for four years, day and night, day and night, that had driven Billy around the bend. Not really, but almost. He had done almost nothing but work on it, sleep a little, and work for hours more. Climbing all over the scaffolding that was built up as he progressed had ruined his back; tapping and banging and delicately scraping his tools against the marble had damaged his hands, strained his muscles, and—from a fall high up on the scaffolding—nearly broken a leg. Now, with the statue finished and gone from the studio forever, Billy seemed to have no future plans for himself other than to sit alone in this huge, lonely space and feel shattered to bits. He owned a loft nearby that was his official address, but he had spent almost no time there in the past few years and apparently had no plans to move back anytime soon. And while he stayed here, in the empty warehouse space, there was nobody to come sit with him because he didn’t have any friends. He knew people—lots of people—but no one he seemed to be able to stand for more than five minutes except Steven. There was no explanation for that except that they were two old, gay men who had lived in New York for a long time and, though they’d never met before Steven had come to clean Billy’s place, had been to the same bars and clubs over the years, lived through the time of AIDS and somehow survived, and now, were feeling like relics.

“I know what you think,” Billy said to Steven. “You think I’m depressed. I’m not, really. I just don’t feel anything.” There was a bottle of Macallan single malt scotch on a little wicker table near the couch, which Billy had been tipping into a plastic glass and drinking from since Steven arrived. The bottle was already half empty. “Want some?”

Billy asked, offering the bottle to Steven. “The museum people gave it to me. I’m sure it costs the same as some pharaoh’s sarcophagus. They have a couple of those in the museum, along with a giant dinosaur skeleton they insisted on showing me. They call him Mel, but Hermione is going to be the big attraction, or so they tell me. Do you know what I think? I think ‘Angels in America’ ruined the whole idea of angels as any kind of art forever and always, but who wants my opinion? So I spent four years of my life with Hermione, who turned out looking like a judgmental bitch, if you want my opinion, which I don’t think is what I intended. But when I looked up at that face in the museum, standing on this kind of plinth they built for the statue, that’s what I saw; Hermione has a real puss on. Plus, she—or he; everybody asks me about that but I say the gender is ‘angel,’ so shut the fuck up—isn’t very interesting. All Hermione is, is big. A big, white, nothing, representing nothing. Oh man,” Billy concluded, leaning back against the couch, “I’m tired.”

"Hermoine is beautiful,” Steven said, stating what he thought was obvious. And the easy compliment was also a way to buy a moment or two until he thought of some better words of praise, all of them meant to be sincere. “What you created is extraordinary. No one could have made as exquisite a work of art as Hermione except you. No one else would have attempted it.  You must know that.”

“I don’t know anything. That’s the problem with all this work, that’s always been the problem. Once it’s done, I don’t care anymore, I don’t feel anything. And I don’t feel like anybody. Not anybody at all.”

Steven walked over to the sink, where he found a glass on the counter and rinsed it out. Then he took the bottle away from Billy and poured himself a small drink. He imagined it was supposed to taste like liquid gold or something of that nature, but he couldn’t tell. Liquor—no matter how expensive—mostly tasted like penicillin to him, or what he thought penicillin would taste like, so he swallowed what was in the glass and then opened the refrigerator to get himself a beer. There wasn’t much else in the fridge except beer.

“So,” Steven said, “maybe you should get back to work and then you’ll feel better.”

“Work?” Billy said the word like it meant something he had absolutely no knowledge of.

“Yeah, maybe, but what would I do? The only thing I’ve even thought about is making ceramics. Black panthers, like my father used to have on top of the tv when I was a kid. That was a big thing in the fifties: once you saved up enough money to buy a tv in a cabinet—preferably, blonde wood, as my father called it—then you had to have some kind of ceramic statue sitting on top of it. My dad had this sleek black panther crouching on top of the tv, with its mouth open in a snarl. I was scared shitless of that thing. I was sure it was going to come to life one day and eat us all alive. So yeah,” he said, finally cracking a smile, “maybe that’s what I’ll do. I’ll get a kiln in here and start turning out black panthers. Wouldn’t you buy one?”

“Oh, for sure,” Steven said. “Who wouldn’t?”

“Alright,” Billy said, waving the bottle around, “enough about me. So what’s going on in your world these days? How’s life far across the Hudson in wild and wonderful New Jersey?”

She looked the same as she always looked to her brother: lean and spare, with a bit of the witch about her. She had started dying her hair jet black when she was a teenager and it was still the same color, and still long, though now it also had a streak of red in it. She was wearing jeans, a Ramones tee shirt, and had a backpack with her that sported several Grateful Dead decals. Not a person you would ever think of as an old lady, Steven reminded himself as he watched her get out of her car. A tough chick. Still, the effects of her arthritis were even more noticeable than when he’d seen her a few months ago: the knuckles of her fingers were red and swollen, and when she bent over to reach for something in the back seat of the car, the top of her spine looked painfully twisted, like it was ready to snap.

“Hey Stevie,” she said as she embraced him. “You’re looking good,”

That, Steven knew, was a lie—or maybe it was just the way she saw him. Never mind her own problems: to Jane, Steven was still the little brother, though the man she was hugging tight knew that he was beginning to look a little shopworn, a little thin. His hair was white, spiky but sparse, and his face was becoming mapped with lines. Jane’s face was all angles; few lines, thin lips, hazel eyes that made her black hair look even darker.

No one would ever have taken them for brother and sister and yet this was the one relationship in Steven’s life that had never been complicated, never in question. They’d grown up in the Bronx, in a household where their parents’ main interest had been drinking and they often had violent fights. As children, Steven and Jane had been put into separate foster care homes more than once, but each time, Jane had managed to find out where Steven was and had written him letters. It seemed almost quaint to think of such a thing now—letters! Pen on paper, stuck in an envelope, and mailed with a stamp. But this was in the early 1960s, long before there were computers or email, so if Jane wasn’t able to phone her brother, she wrote to him. Mostly, she just wanted him to know that she knew where he was living, that she was keeping track of him and he wasn’t alone, even if he felt that way. She had made herself responsible for him from the time they were young, which was what Steven was thinking about now as they sat together in his apartment, working out what they had to do tomorrow, which wasn’t all that complicated: just get to the hospital, then get Steven home to rest. After that, if he seemed able to manage on his own, Jane would drive home. She’d come back in a few weeks when the second surgery was scheduled. And then, presto chango: Steven’s vision would go from dim and blurry to sharp and bright. If only everything else could be so easily corrected.That was something they laughed about, together.

Later, when Steven was trying to turn his couch into a bed for his sister, tucking in a sheet around the cushions and bringing her a blanket and pillows, he watched her open the backpack and saw that it was full of medicine vials. She looked over at him, smiled, and shrugged, because what was there to say? She’d told him all she needed to on the phone, when they had the conversation about how she was too old to have a puppy. Maybe it was unimaginable, but they were both, now, the senior citizens they used to make fun of. Arthritis. Cataract surgery. More was coming and none of it was pretty.

So, as planned, in the morning Jane drove Steven to the Jersey City Medical Center, and three hours later he was back in her car. He had been in twilight sleep during the procedure so he didn’t remember much about it other than a kind of psychedelic light show and now, the eye that had been operated on was mostly pain-free but very blurry.

Otherwise, he felt okay. Good, in fact.

“Listen,” he said, “why don’t we go sit by the river for a while? I know that I can only half see it, but it’s a pretty day.”

It was. A lovely spring day, mild and sunny, with only a few small white clouds drifting through the sky like little boats, little balloons. Jane drove them to Exchange Place, directly across the Hudson from the tip of lower Manhattan, and parked the car.

They found a bench and sat together, enjoying the weather, enjoying the view, even if Steven’s version of it was less than perfect.

“Even with just one eye,” Steven said, gesturing towards the city skyline, “there’s nothing like it.”

“No,” Jane said. “But we don’t live there anymore.”

“I’m there every week,” Steven reminded her.

“Yup,” she said. “To clean people’s apartments.”

“Hey,” Steven said, pulling away from his sister, turning so he could face her, but with the effects of the anesthesia he’d been given during the procedure starting to wear off, his vision seemed strange; the eye with the new lens was blurry and the one with the remaining cataract was dim. The effect made him feel like he was underwater. “Are you in a mean mood for some reason?” he asked.

“No,” Jane told him. “This is just something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

She looked down at her palms as if she’d written some notes there for herself, but then she turned her hands over and placed them both firmly on her knees. “Look, I know that the city was the place we both ran to the first chance we got to be on our own. I did, you did. And we felt like we owned it, like we knew all the secret places, the bad ones, good ones, in-and-out places, gay, straight, and whatever. And we stayed out all night, ran around like crazy people, had all the fun in the world. And dealt with lots of shitty stuff, too. But Stevie, I think it’s time for you to give it up. I mean, do you see how you end up moving further and further away? Like me, first you lived in the Village until the developers turned it into unaffordable yuppy-ville, then you moved to Brooklyn until the same thing happened, then to Queens, and now you’ve been pushed out, all the way to New Jersey. I know you’re not even going to be able to afford to live here soon enough, and then what? I went through the same thing. You know I did.”

“So?”

“So. Maybe you finally need to let go. Fall out of love, Stevie. You could come live with me for a while.”

“Oh really? Maybe you found a way to make yourself believe you’re a lady of the mountains or something like that, but no, it’s not for me. No fucking way.”

“It’s the Catskills, for God’s sake, not the Alps. Woodstock’s a nice place. I have a bunch of friends—people you’d like, so at least you’d have some social life. You don’t have anything going on here so don’t pretend you do. Besides, living upstate is a lot cheaper than the city. You wouldn’t have to clean anybody’s place and you could find something else to do with yourself. Or do nothing. Rest, relax. Commune with nature. Vacation with your sister.”

“My sister in the house of elderly dogs.”

“You make it sound like a nineteenth-century novel. But there are worse things.”

“We were raised in the Bronx, Jane. Apartment buildings, stoops, sidewalks, corner stores. Playing punchball in the street. I can’t exactly see myself communing with nature in any shape or form.”

“In our case, ‘raised’ is a theoretical idea, no?”

“Even so. I can’t imagine moving away from New York.”

“As I pointed out, you already have.”

“No,” Steven said. He stood up and ran his fingers through his bristly hair—an old gesture, a childhood thing that he did when he was feeling off-kilter. Too late to stop himself, he remembered that of course, Jane knew what he was doing—and so, what he was feeling—which only made him more annoyed. “Can we go back to my place now?” he said. “I’m beginning to feel really tired. And this thing with my vision—it feels like it’s getting weirder by the minute.”

“Sure,” Jane replied. “I should probably get on the road, anyway. But I hope you don’t mind—I have to make a quick stop first.”

They went back to the car and Jane got her phone, typed an address in her GPS program and off they went. She steered the car down Kennedy Boulevard, heading further and further away from the waterfront, from the condo towers, French restaurants and ironically named bars. Then they passed through Journal Square, where people were selling used clothes from racks they pushed along the street and every bodega sold single cigarettes or joints. This was old Jersey City, old America, old, poor, struggling U.S.A.

Jane finally turned onto a street lined with broken-down trucks parked outside a junkyard piled high with skeletal automobile frames. At the far end of the street was a long, low building with a peeling sign that said it was an animal shelter.

“You’re kidding,” he said to Jane.

“Sometimes I just have to give in to fate,” she told him. “I had to get here by three o’clock or there’s a dog they have inside who’s going to be euthanized.”

“How did you even know?”

“Well, online, I keep in touch with someone who tries to save older shelter dogs all over the country. She monitors the shelters’ websites and sends out daily alerts so, if there’s someone in a particular area, they can try to rescue whatever dogs they can.”

Jane went into the building and twenty minutes later emerged with a ragged-looking Dalmatian on a leash. The dog’s right front leg was bandaged and he had scars from older wounds on his flanks. Limping badly, he followed slowly beside Jane, keeping his eyes on the ground. He never looked up, not even once. When she finally got him to the car, Jane opened the door and began to pick him up because it was clear that he couldn’t possibly climb up himself, but when Steven saw what his sister was doing, he jumped out of the car and said, “Let me help you.”

Jane told her brother to put the dog in the back seat, where she had already laid out blankets to make a comfortable bed. As soon as he felt a soft surface underneath him, the dog curled himself up, closed his eyes, and almost immediately, fell asleep.

“Jesus,” Steven said, looking down at the dog, “is he even going to make it back home with you?”

“There’s a vet tech on staff on staff in this place and he said that the dog looks worse than he is, but he’s definitely hurting. The tech gave him a pain shot and a sedative, so he’ll probably sleep all the way back to my place and I’ll get him to a proper vet tomorrow. God knows what his life has been like,” Jane said, placing a gentle hand on the dog’s head, then stroking his ears. Far away, in sleep, the dog let out a deep breath.

“Good boy,” Jane said to the dog. “Good Kenny. You’re safe now.”

“His name is Kenny?” Steven said.

“It is now,” Jane replied. “See?” she said when they both got back into the front seat of the car, “This is something you could do. You could join the dog brigade. Don’t pretend you don’t like dogs because I know you do.”

“Who said I don’t like dogs?” Steven huffed, but the question didn’t need an answer. Jane drove back the way they came, then turned onto Garfield Avenue and pulled up outside Steven’s building.

“I’ll call you during the week and see how you’re doing,” Jane said. “And I’ll be back for eye number two.”  

“Okay,” Steven said, but he didn’t get out of the car just yet. He found himself looking at his sister’s hands, still folded around the steering wheel. Her knuckles looked raw today, her fingers were puffy. There must be times when it’s really difficult for her to drive, he heard himself thinking. Then he finally stepped out of the car but leaned back in and looked over at the sleeping dog, curled into a shape like a crescent moon.

“When he wakes up, tell Kenny I said hi,” Steven told his sister.     

He stood in the street for a while, even after Jane’s car had turned the corner and was out of sight—though “sight,” right now, didn’t seem like a word that applied to what was going on with his eyes: the psychedelic lights were back, streaking and flashing so much that he was feeling nauseous. One of the nurses in the recovery room at the hospital had mentioned that this might happen, so he went back inside, carefully climbed the stairs to his apartment, and after dousing himself with the various eyedrops he’d been given, stretched out on the couch. As the afternoon changed to evening, the room seemed swept by light from a dying sun: red, fiery, intense. If the light show didn’t stop soon, he decided he was going to call the doctor’s office and ask them if this was normal—never mind what the nurse had said—but then he fell asleep. He had a dream about the wounded Dalmatian: nothing strange or scary, just that he was riding in the back seat with the dog, Kenny, while Jane drove. The dog had his head on Steven’s lap.   

When he woke up the next morning, Steven’s eye was still blurry, but the flashing lights were gone. And he was in bed: somewhere in the night, he must have gotten off the couch and made his way to the bedroom. Now, he pulled himself up and swung his legs onto the floor, testing that he felt steady enough to stand, and he did. Even the nausea had subsided.

As he headed for the kitchen to start some coffee brewing, his cell phone rang. He knew it was his sister without even looking at the caller i.d. “Good timing,” Steven said. “I only woke up a little while ago.”

“Well, I’m just checking in,” Jane said. “How are you feeling?”
He decided not to tell her about the light show; she might worry or worse, get in the car and drive right back down to Jersey City. “I’m okay. Tired, but okay. How’s Kenny?”

“That’s nice, Stevie. You remembered his name.”

“Of course: he was my comrade in arms. You drove us both home yesterday. In fact, I had a dream about that. Well, sort of.”

For the next few days, Steven didn’t do much other than sit in the park across the street, trying to enjoy the mild spring weather, but all he managed to feel was lonely—and vulnerable, which he wasn’t used to. Unexpected feelings seemed to be creeping up on him these days and he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just the cataract surgery because it was the first time in his life that his body had required what he was trying to think of as an upgrade. But the visit to the hospital, the need for his sister to come help him out, and the continued blurry vision, which he hadn’t banked on—though maybe the doctor had warned him about this and just hadn’t been listening, or not listening well enough?—didn’t feel like an improvement. Nope. Steven felt like this was the beginning of the proverbial slippery slope and from here on in, there would be more failures relating to aging, more medicines like the eyedrops to keep track of, more weaknesses and pain. Pain came to mind because of his sister: the sight of her raw knuckles and bent fingers would not leave him. Maybe the less he could see with his eyes, the more that the images in his mind were taking center stage.

He hadn’t even gone to the bar to play Pac-Man because he was afraid that the flashing lights of the game’s electronic maze, along with the bouncy, repetitious music, would start up his own behind-the-eyeballs laser light show again. Plus, he was worried about drinking—all he needed was one stumble, one trip, and he might do something to damage the new and still-recovering lens that had been implanted in his eye. So mostly, when he wasn’t in the park he just sat around his apartment. He found that he could watch tv if he wore sunglasses, which darkened everything in a way that seemed to even out his sight so that the problems with it could almost be ignored. Almost.

Towards the end of the week, Steven got a phone call from Billy Broome. He’d told Billy that he was going to have to skip a week of cleaning, so he was surprised to hear from him. At first, he thought that Billy had just forgotten that he’d canceled the appointment, but that wasn’t it at all. Billy just wanted Steven to come hang out.

“Like last time you were here,” Billy said. “Let’s just sit around and drink. I enjoyed that. It was like a date.”

“Aren’t we a little old for that?” Steven replied. He knew that Billy wasn’t really serious.

“Of course we are. Come over anyway.”

Steven agreed, mostly because he was more than ready for a break in his routine. He took a taxi to the ferry, then another taxi when he disembarked on the west side of Manhattan. These were expensive cab fares, more than he should have been spending, but he was concerned about trying to navigate the subway while his vision was still untrustworthy.

It was late morning when Steven finally got downtown and was greeted by the sight of Billy wearing a silk bathrobe printed with a pattern of water lilies and trailing ashes from his ever-present cheroot. And never mind the hour, it was clear that he was already drunk. That didn’t particularly bother Steven, but the huge, empty space gave him an odd feeling from the moment he walked in. The wooden scaffolding that had surrounded the angel had now been completely dismantled and carted away, which made the space seem even larger. His footsteps echoed on the concrete floor, and as he headed toward the couch in the back of the studio, Steven felt like he was passing through mountains of swirling dust motes. Long, pale tendrils of sunlight trailed down from the windows near the ceiling and though, thankfully, this didn’t irritate his eye, the dust and the pale sunbeams seemed to emphasize how empty the studio’s work area was. Even Billy’s mallets and chisels had been put away. There was no work going on here and none seemed to be planned.

Billy stretched himself out on the couch; Steven sat in an armchair that was another rescue from the streets, as was the small rattan table standing between them. The Macallan was long gone, replaced by a tall, thin, ice-blue bottle of Russian vodka standing too near the table’s edge. “Help yourself,” Billy said. “You know where the glasses are.”

“Thanks,” Steven replied. He picked up the bottle to move it closer to the center of the table but he didn’t rise from his chair just yet. He still didn’t feel much like drinking.

“So, how are you doing?” Billy asked.

Steven realized that Billy didn’t remember anything about the cataract surgery, so he didn’t bother bringing it up. “Oh, you know. Nothing new. And you? I see you haven’t started on the black panther project yet.”

“What?” Billy seemed genuinely confused, but then he must have remembered their last conversation. “Oh, ha, ha. Right. Nope, no panthers to be seen hereabouts. But I have been thinking about going back to Phoenix to visit Hermoine. I hear she’s very popular. Maybe I could bring a beach chair with me and sit under one of her wings, signing autographs because I’m a famous artist. I used to be a handsome artist—no, beautiful. I really was a beautiful creature when I was young if I do say so myself, and I do. I even have the pictures to prove it but I don’t like to look at them anymore. So, now I’m just famous and old. Sadly, I have discovered that is not the same thing.”

“No,” Steven said. “I imagine not.” He decided that he did want a drink—this was clearly going to be the kind of conversation that required one.

“Maybe I should get a dog,” Billy said as he watched Steven pour himself a dose of vodka. “At least a dog would keep me company when I can’t sleep, which is all the time now. Doesn’t your sister sell dogs?”

“No, she rescues them. She finds them in shelters and takes them home with her. Mostly old dogs, in fact, so I don’t think that would help you much.”

“Jesus, there’s no escaping it, is there? Old, old, old, old, old.” Billy began waving his hands around, as if old age itself was flying around the studio and he was trying to bat it away.

“She wants me to move upstate with her.” Steven surprised himself by saying this: somehow, voicing the idea out loud made it seem almost reasonable. Almost possible.

But Billy certainly didn’t see it like that. “Why in God’s name would you want to move upstate?” He spat out the word so that it sounded like Steven was contemplating the idea of decamping to the underworld.

“Jane has a house near Woodstock. I’ve been there a couple of times and it’s kind of a nice place.”

“What’s the matter with you? If the dogs don’t eat you—or gum you to death, since I imagine they don’t have teeth anymore—then you’ll just wither away and die. You’re a city boy, Steven. We’re both city boys.”

“Yes,” Steven said, smiling to himself as he heard his own argument presented to him, chapter and verse. But interestingly, hearing these words from someone else made them sound impersonal, like a chant at a protest rally, a slogan on a sign. “I know.”

“Besides” Billy continued, “then I’d have to call those Cleany Weenie people…”

“Do you mean Clean Slate?”

“Whatever. I’d have to get someone new to come clean this dungeon and I can’t face any new people.” 

“Oh, well. You might surprise yourself.”

Steven stayed with Billy through most of the afternoon, watching him drink the bottle of vodka, but he never refilled his own glass. Finally, Billy mumbled something about wanting to sleep for a while and found his way to the mattress in the corner of the studio that served as his bed. Steven went on sitting in the armchair for a while, watching as the mountains of dust motes, cathedrals of sunbeams, moved across the floor. Then he started the long trip home.

In the evening, back in his apartment in Jersey City, Steven picked up his phone and called his sister. “Hey, Janie,” he said.

“Hey, Stevie,” she replied. “Everything okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “I was just calling to see how Kenny is doing.”

“Kenny?” Jane laughed. Sometimes, Steven thought, when Jane laughed, she sounded like the wild child she used to be. “He’s fine. I took him to the vet, got him some meds, and he’s settling in.”

“So listen,” Steven said, “you’re still coming the week after next, right? I have to be back at the hospital by nine a.m.”

“Of course I’m coming. I’ll drive down the night before, just like last time. Don’t worry, Stevie,” Jane added, for emphasis. “I’ll be there.”

They talked a while longer, just about this and that, and then Steven left the apartment, heading to the pizza place down the street, because that’s what he felt like having for dinner. On the way there, standing on a corner while he waited for the traffic light to change from red to green, Steven found himself staring at the light and realizing that finally, the vision in his right eye was beginning to clear up.

No, more than that: it was like the blurry cloud that had obscured his sight for the past few days had scuttered away, leaving a clear field ahead. He could see stars, like tiny drops of light in the soft violet sky and the leafy trees in the park across the street were so green that they looked almost gold. Raising his hand, Steven covered the eye that was no longer occluded by a cataract so that, for just a moment, he was returned to the dim world that was all his other eye could see. The week after next, when his sister was here,

Steven would have his second surgery and when the blurriness from that cleared up, his vision would be balanced; it would be sharp and clear. All he could think about as he continued on his way was that he should have had cataract surgery years ago, but how could he have known that was a problem he needed to deal with? For the longest time, he didn’t know what he couldn’t see.

 

Pegah Ouji
To Conquer the Fog

Farhad, a man with the heart of a boy, had bitterly missed his village of Masooleh, the Shah Moalem mountain’s crisp water, even the fog; a fog that settled on everything and in between everything, from the villagers to the clay houses, to the forest stretched as far as the eye could see. After being away four years, Farhad had journeyed back to his village, with one goal on his mind: to save Masooleh, this place of magic and logic, from sinking in the swampland of the forgotten.

Farhad held onto Saareh, his niece’s, small hand as they strolled through Masoolehs’ narrow, stony pathways. Despite his attempts to warm her icy fingers through gentle squeezes and the occasional vigorous rub, her fingers remained cold to the touch. Saareh, the only daughter of Farhad’s sister Mahsa, a girl of eight, with large hazel eyes, and an expression of perpetual pondering, was mute. Last time Farhad had seen her, Saareh had been four. Naively, he had dispensed false hopes to his sister that Saareh would speak when she was ready. Now, with the years of Saareh’s silence between them, the fog of that false promise hung around his conscience like the ring of clouds that surrounded the mountain top.

It was early in the morning, the contour of the sun still curtained by the clouds. The shop owners polished wooden entrance doors, each a cavernous aperture. They arranged the colorful souvenirs, hand-sewn leather slippers, red, yellow, and green wool socks, and hats, ornate with spiraling patterns, hand-knitted, colorful dolls, hung row upon row, their eyes following the movement of every passerby.

Saareh pulled on Farhad’s hand, halting in front of a wall of dolls, their bulging, dark eyes staring at him.

“Which one is your favorite Saareh?”

Saareh, shook her head side to side, without taking her eyes off the knitted creatures.

“Bah, Bah, Farhad Agha. Buy a few for your niece, man. It will make Gilda’s wandering spirit happy,” Asghar, the seller, said. He was two years Farhaad’s junior. This morning his nose was bright red, beet-like, from the frosty bite of the mountain air.

“So, people here are still obsessed with Gilda?”

“Of course, she was our savior. You, being a historian and whatnot, should be more obsessed with her than anyone else.”

Saareh suddenly shivered, despite her wool, red, long-sleeve dress and pants. Perhaps, it was better to take her back home.

“Baleh Agha Hashem, Baleh. I am telling you, with some proper management, productivity training, and efficient use of the funds, we can make Masooleh run like a well-oiled machine. We can even attract more tourists than Disney World so getting on UNESCO’s list would be a piece of cake. You trust me. Don’t you?” Farhaad felt his boy-like heart turn hard like the stone stairs of the village at hearing these words, coming out of his own cousin, Saaman’s mouth, whose overly gelled hair glistened even in the fog. Why was everyone obsessed with getting Masooleh on UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list? The assumption that more attention always meant a good thing infuriated him. Farhad rubbed an emergent bald spot at the top of his head, the little island revealing itself amidst his otherwise sparsely populated black strands and exhaled a tiny white cloud. Wasn’t history a testimony of vested outside interests who ruined the local heritage of a people? Masooleh needed to be left alone to find herself in her past and to forge a path for her future without the interference of outside interests.

Farhad and Saaman had been, once upon a time, playmates, but the years had put something as unmovable as the Shah Moalem Mountain between them. Saaman had moved to Germany to pursue his studies in business management, while Farhaad chose to study library science and history in Tehran. Come to think of it, Farhaad wasn't sure how Samaan and He had ever gotten along even as children; it seemed as if the two of them were cut from different cloths, like leather and lace.

Impelled by his almost allergic aversion to all manner of confrontation, Farhad tugged on Saareh’s hands, pulling her in the opposite direction, away from Samaan and the talk of Disney Land, back towards the warmth of the Soomeh, the room in the back of each house, with a lit fireplace, far from the draft of the front windows, safe from the winters’ frosted claws.

Farhad’s shallow breaths contrasted embarrassingly with the ease with which Saareh climbed the many stairs. Over the years, the village of Masooleh had grown to span eight hundred meters, tucked in the heart of the mountain, row upon row of homes arranged stair-like so that one man’s roof was another man’s front yard. Once upon a time, Farhad, as a young boy, had hopped over these stairs with the swiftness of a mountain goat. But now clearly, he had been away for too long, even his muscles had atrophied, each screaming in a painful protest.

Bright pink, red, and purple geranium flowers in clay pots hung in an uninterrupted procession from each house’s front porch, next to wooden windows. Farhaad’s heart fluttered at the simplicity of life in Masooleh. Who would be cruel enough to make these people change their ancient ways of life? Or worse, to display their life for the privileged eyes of the rich tourists who would buy their culture one hand-woven rug at a time? And was an industrialized life that much better? Farhad had lived in Tehran and had hated every minute of it, its sprawling features, its lack of identity as one solid city, and the way Tehran seemed to swallow its inhabitants whole.

Bee Bee khanoum, an elderly woman, stood on the front porch of a house, watering a geranium pot. “Agha Farhaad, Salam. Khobi? Welcome back my son, welcome. We missed you but I always told everyone, watch, Farhaad will come back, his umbilical cord was cut in the name of Masooleh. Wasn't I right now? And to come back to build a library. What an honor. I am sure that makes your parents’ spirit happy.”

“Salaam Bee Bee Khanoum. Mersi. If you have books for the library, please let me know.”

“Sure, I do son, sure I do. Wait here.” Bee Bee huffed as she walked away, her stride marked with an angled gait, shifting her weight completely from one foot to another. She disappeared inside the ornately carved wooden door behind her, appearing a few minutes later with some books.

“These are all hand-written. My eyes are now too old to read them. Maybe your library will make our youth stop leaving us.”

Farhaad’s head bowed slightly as he received the books, an expression of almost reverence crystallizing over his face.

“One of the books has some writing by Gilda. It’s heart-wrenching. You know, she is related to me by blood. I still sense her spirit from time to time. She watches over Masooleh.”

In that instance, Saareh looked up at Bee Bee and smiled widely, the widest smile Farhaad had seen in a while.

As they walked up the stairs towards Mahsa’s house, Farhaad wondered about Gilda, how it seemed like she lived in the consciousness of the people of the village despite being dead for years. What was the secret of her hold on the villagers?

“Saareh jaan, you can make books for our library too. Your mom told me that you are becoming good at drawing.”

There was a momentary twinkle in Saareh’s eyes that warmed Farhaad’s heart like a sweet cup of tea, but before he could hang onto it, it slipped past him like the steam rising from the very same cup. He wanted Saareh to be happy, wanted her to laugh and run around like other children but his niece preferred holding pencils to dolls and sitting atop a tree branch to a game of hide and seek.

Later that afternoon, Farhad left Mahsa’s home, in search of some solitude, to peruse the books Bee Bee had donated to the library. What should the library be called? The library of Masooleh was a safe choice but it didn’t tug at the heart. The library to save our lives. Too pretentious. The living library. Better but not quite right.

As Farhad moseyed down the stony path, a faint melody reached his ears. At the next turn of the walkway, Asghar’s father sat on the white stone steps of his house, playing the Leh Leh flute. The patch of his gray stubble, the swift movement of his calloused fingertips, the almost unearthly melody emanating from his flute, all made Farhad think that he was catching a vision of something beyond the sticky fingers of time.

The first book, titled The Music of Our Lives, proved difficult to read, the handwriting resembling a trail of confused, uncoordinated ants. From some of the words, which he wasn’t sure he read correctly, Farhaad gathered that the people of old Masooleh, the village before this current one, located a few kilometers away, had an affinity for music. Not any kind of music. The word was either “heavenly” or “harnessly” but that was not really a word, was it? Music from an unseen source, music preexisting any instrument. Was this a book of fiction or fact? Reared in a sterile academic environment, skeptical of any man-made myths, Farhad had learned to spot fiction even if it was as far away from him as the top of the mountain and toss it in a pile of rubbish.

One could not build a future on a heap of myths.

“Here is your tea, Agha Farhad.” The restaurant owner, Hamid, placed a steaming glass on the paisley patterned table cover. The restaurant, Sofre Khoneh, sat near the top of the mountain. Here, in the heart of the fog, you could sip cardamom scented tea, while your eyes found solace in the the serene greenery of the vast forest. Farhaad took a deep breath, inhaling the crisp air. Even Masooleh’s air had a taste uniquely its own.

“I think that book is a bunch of nonsense. My mother swears it is all true though. Can you believe that? Our people once arranged their lives according to the degree of harmony in a musical melody they all claimed to hear but no one knew where it came from. You know what I think? I think someone from another village was hiding in the forest, playing some Leh Leh and messing with people’s simple minds. It’s really pathetic the lies we are willing to believe.”

“The trick is to know when you are being lied to. Like this business of UNESCO’s list.”

“Farhad! God forbid! That’s not a lie. What will we do without tourists? We have nothing else to sell.”

“Even if it means selling your culture?”

“Why not? What culture? Selling some dolls, which we owe to Gilda anyways, and some rugs and slippers doesn’t mean we are selling our culture. We are still the people of Masooleh. We are just being generous with our handiwork. What’s wrong with that?”

“Has you mom ever heard this music herself?” Farhad wiped the sweat off his forehead despite the cool breeze, diverting his gaze from Hamid back to the dust-stained cover of the book. Farhaad, reared in the chilly mountain air, preferred his conversations lukewarm, devoid of any heated emotions.

“No, she said since people migrated from old Masooleh, no one hears the music anymore. She said Gilda was the last person to hear it. Not that I believe any of it.”

Farhad took another sip of his tea, its heat burning his tongue, as he began to read Gilda’s writing:

“The notes were off, like broken blades that cut into my heart. But no one else seemed to notice them. What I was hearing seemed to have deviated from what we all had always heard together. Our melody had been what binded us as the people of Masooleh. We had always sensed the smooth sequence of notes, its responsive rhythm, its heavenly pitch. The melody communicated with us. We used it to plot our rice fields and decide on the direction to herd our cows. Marriage ceremonies used the guidance of our Melody. If it became disharmonious as we did something, we knew to change course. No one ever argued, its authority an undisputed blessing.

 But those days, all I heard was jagged and sharply deviant regardless of what I did. Nothing changed the melody. I felt in my heart that something evil was headed our way, and we must leave behind our village to save ourselves.”

Farhad rubbed the tender spot in between his eyes where a growing tension signaled the onset of a headache. Farhad’s instinct was to discard the book. But whether it was his oath to build a library to preserve the history of Masooleh, or the fact that the book was handwritten, a depository of someone’s labor of love, or maybe simply the mesmerizing effect of the mountain fog, something stopped him from tossing the book in the steel garbage bin by the entrance of the restaurant.

“I knew I would find you here cousin. I see you still look as ragged as ever Farhad. Tell me now, is your brown coat patched up by Mahsa because you can’t afford a new one?”

In his mind, Farhad saw clearly what he wanted to do to Samaan. He wanted to pick up the book with Gilda’s nonsense, and smack Saaman on the head. He would very much enjoy the satisfying thump! Then he wanted to pour the rest of the tea over Samaan’s smug face, which hopefully would wipe that plastic smile off forever.

But in reality, Farhaad only turned his gaze over to the inexhaustible blanket of the forest before him, noticing the small patches of clouds clustered around some of the trees. He took a long sip of his tea, now cold with a metallic aftertaste.

“So, what brings you back here cousin? You heard I am coming to save Masooleh and just couldn’t miss the chance to see me in action? Or maybe you just missed my handsome face?”

“I am busy reading Samaan. Go save Masooleh somewhere else please.”

“Oh, come on cousin! At least tell me what brought you back.”

“Why do you want to know so badly? Afraid for your precious Disney Land plans for Masooleh?”

It was brief; the reflexive annoyed expression that materialized on Samaan’s face, like a tiny cloud that is pushed off by the wind, but it was there. Farhaad had hit a nerve.

“There is nothing you can do to stop the tide of progress Farhad. Go back to reading your dusty books. I bet worms crawl inside of them and you still hang onto them like some hopeless romantic.”

Samaan got up and walked away, the back of his white pants stained with something like mud. A slow smile sprawled over Farhaad’s face as his eyes followed Samaan, his ridiculous neon-blue jacket, his tight, ankle-cut, stained white pants, his glistening hair, down the stairs of the village until Samaan was nothing more than a tiny spectacle, a mote of dust compared to the towering mountain overshadowing him.

*

 Word about the library slowly permeated the village, as unmistakable as the morning spread of the fog. Some villagers stopped him in the alleys or in Sofre Khoneh and handed him piles of books, always leaving him with their kind words of“God bless you son” or “Finally someone doing some good for Masooleh”. Others dropped off books at Mahsa’s house. Despite the growing cool of the late autumn, their generosity warmed Farhaad’s heart.

 With each passing day, the chill of the mountain air solidified around the villagers, petrifying their bones gradually. Farhaad began to cherish the afternoons, when Saareh and He would huddle under a wool blanket in the Soomeh, Farhad reading a book, Saareh drawing a picture of forests, the mountain or sometimes coloring a whole page yellow. Those afternoons, as time slowed down, a sense of endlessness, of eternity, permeated everything.

Mahsa and Mohsen, her husband, at Farhaad’s insistent promises to watch Saareh after school, spent more of their time in their bakery where Mahsa deep fried dozens upon dozens of Kaka cookies, selling them to the growing mass of tourists. Tourists with their plastic selfie-sticks and brief flashing smiles. Tourists who produced a preponderance of trash.

During one such afternoon, Farhad read more from Gilda’s account of how the people of old Masooleh migrated to the new Masooleh as Saareh, nestled in his embrace, drifted into sleep.

“Zaher, my own husband, dismissed my words, saying I must be getting ill and needed to rest more. He said the pain of being childless was messing with my head. It is true that I longed to hold a child of my own, and that void tore at me every day, but this was different. The music had turned into screams and shouts, incessant and urgent. No one else seemed to hear this deviant version of the holy melody. I couldn’t take it anymore. I felt alone and scared.

I told our neighbors about it. A few of them believed me. I could see a change in their eyes. They were scared too. What was after us? Why couldn’t anyone else hear their approach? Sometimes, the melody was so terrifying that I had to cover my ears and scream at the sinister notes to go away. I wanted peace but it had utterly left me.

More villagers started to believe me, maybe some of them could even hear the deviated notes, but no one confessed to it. The sacred melody was not doubted. Others, I could see in the way they looked at me, thought I was crazy. And maybe I was.

But however crazy, I wish they had listened to me. We all could have been saved.

I did the only thing I could think of. I gave Zaher an ultimatum. I was going to leave the next morning, either he could come with me or stay back. Looking back, if I knew that he would not follow me, would I have really left? I still don’t know. This question haunts me, keeps me up at night. The truth is, deep down, I believed Zaher would come. We loved one another. I was sure that if he saw my resolve, he wouldn’t let me go. How wrong we can be when we are young and naive!

The next morning, I left with a few of the villagers. Everyone else stayed back, including Zaher. They laughed at us as we walked down the stairways of the village, telling us that we would be back with our tails between our legs.

As soon as I left Masooleh, the harmony of an enchanting new melody filled my soul, gifting me with the peace that I desperately needed. We walked into the forest, passing elm trees and chirping sparrows. The wailing of the Loons in the distance, hidden from our eyes, chilled my heart.

We found a place to spend the night. I prayed that Zaher would come, believed that his knowledge of my fear of the dark would move his heart. I kept myself awake, wanting to be the first to greet him. There was an odd silence around us, unusual for the forest. Not one Loon was heard, no owls hooted. The smell of moss and cedar twirled around me. The sweet melody rocked me; I was cradled baby in its embrace.

The moon was high in the sky, shining a soft halo of light, when I suddenly felt the earth shiver and heard a frightening booming noise. I woke the few women next to me. This was the moment I stopped hearing the melody, maybe the moment we all stopped hearing it. We ran back to Masooleh and the whole time I prayed to God that Zaher and others would be safe.

 I cannot bear to describe what I saw when I reached Masooleh. My beloved village had become level with the ground, large piles of rubble strewn around as if a giant had squashed everything beneath his thumb, as if we had always been tiny ants destined to be crushed one day. An earthquake. It had destroyed all that we knew in less time than it took me to say, “I am sorry Zaher”. I threw myself at the rubbles, picking up rocks, throwing them behind me. I screamed for Zaher, my dear Zaher, my life, the light of my eyes. He was nowhere to be found; his body crushed under my inability to convince him to flee with me. I had saved myself and a few others, but at what price? What is a life bereft of the presence of one’s loved ones?

That night, tossing and turning on the cotton-filled mattress, Farhaad’s dreams transformed into nightmares of earthquakes and the harrowing eyes of silent owls. Farhad pitied Gilda, regardless of her insane claims to hear a sacred melody. In some strange sense, Farhaad even felt grateful that Gilda had listened to what she heard. If it hadn’t been for her, then this new Masooleh, his birthplace, would have never existed. No Gilda, no new Masooleh, no Farhaad, no Saareh. The very thought arose the hairs on his arms.

The next morning, Farhaad set out to visit Gilda’s grave, after dropping off Saareh at school and watching her tiny figure, with her red backpack, disappear inside the school’s brick building. The afternoon prior, back at their house, Saareh, with a fixed look of determination, chewing on the corner of her lips, wrote something in her notebook. Farhaad, peering over her shoulder, read her homework assignment. Write an essay about why you like Masooleh. Sareeh had written, “I like Masooleh because she is always with me. Her fingers point at me and shine a warm light.”

The secluded cemetery was surrounded by a ring of tall Elm and Cypress trees, located on the outskirts of the village, toward the bottom of the mountain. Walking among the mass of graves, atop bodies decaying under heaps of dirt, life seemed as impermanent as the fog. Farhaad’s own parents’ bodies lay here, under the soil of their beloved Masooleh. The lashes of the chilled breeze burned the tip of Farhaad’s ears.

Bee Bee Khanoum sang a song under her breath, inaudible to Farhaad’s nearly frozen ears as she poured water over a gravestone from a small green watering can. The gravestone was surrounded by dozens of knitted dolls.

“Salam Bee Bee Khanoum.”

“Salaam Farhaad Agha. Have you come to pray for Gilda too? She came to my dream last night. She tried to tell me something, but my old ears couldn’t hear. It’s a pity to get old Farhaad. Stay young my son.”

“Does she come to your dreams often?” Farhad crouched down, placing a fingertip on Gilda’s gravestone, tracing the engraved letters. Gilda Eshraghi. His fingers stung from the contact with the frozen stone.

“She hadn’t for a while, but we are all on edge these days. This business of UNESCO has everyone riled up and all that people coming here now, everyone convinced of what’s good for Masooleh. I don’t know my son; I don’t know how we are supposed to live anymore.”

Farhaad wanted to reach out a hand and pat Bee Bee on the back, this women, who had given Farhaad rose water lollipops after school for years; this woman who devoutly fed the stray cats, exchanging the frozen water in their metal bowls with fresh water every morning; this woman, whom Farhaad had watched shrivel with age, was at a loss for what to do. What hope was there then for someone like Farhaad?

A loud thumping noise cut off his thoughts. Near the top of the mountain, amidst a dust cloud, chopped stones and broken bricks fell to the ground.

Farhaad, whose lungs felt throbbed with pain by the time he raced up the stairs, looked with bewildered eyes at the demolished piles of what once had been a local hostel run by a few of the villagers. A bulldozer continued to hack away at a few still standing half-walls.  Samaan, wearing a ridiculously neon orange construction helmet stood next to the elderly owner of the hostel, pointing at a paper gripped in a clip chart.

Farhaad’s rage momentarily burned through his aversion to conflict.

“What the hell Samaan? Are you destroying buildings now?” Farhaad screamed as loud as he could, though his protests were drowned out by the bulldozer’s loud noise.

Samaan raised a hand to the man in the driver’s seat and the commotion came to a sudden stop. A few violent coughs left Farhaad breathless; his lungs, which had been ruined by Tehran’s pollution, could not tolerate this sudden level of dust and anxiety.

“What do you want cousin? Are here to offer help? I have an extra hat though I am not sure you could pull it off as well as I can.” Samaan turned to the elderly man next to him and winked with a toothy smile, so proud of his stupid plastic joke. Farhaad hated Samaan, everything about him felt like plastic, cheap and unoriginal. He was like a doll, like Ken, nothing more than a pliable toy.

“What are you doing Samaan? Why are you destroying people’s lives?”

“There is no rebuilding without some destruction. Haven’t you heard Napeleon’s quote? “Destruction is essential to construction. If we want to build the new, we must be willing to let the old burn.” You should read a little Farhaad. Do you need to get better glasses?”

“Why are you doing this?” Farhaad hissed, a snake that, unbeknown to Farhaad, lived inside of him, ready to attack the smugness of Samaan.

“Relax Farhaad. Mr. Ali has given us his consent. He sees our vision for the future of Masooleh, don’t you Agha? But if your nosy nose needs to know, last cycle UNESCO denied Masooleh’s admission because this building was added much later than the original ones and in its not in the same style. It sticks out like a sore thumb. You should be able to sympathize with that Farhaad, no?”

Farhaad, at a loss for words stormed away from Samaan in such a way that each angry step left a small dust cloud in its wake.

      *

“Asghar, why did you say we owe the dolls to Gilda?” The rage of the previous encounter with Samaan still raced in Farhaad’s blood by the time he reached Asghar’s small shop. Farhaad had stormed away aimlessly but when he found himself by Asghar, he realized something he had been curious about, something that could distract him from Samaan’s nonsense.

 Asghar hopped off a low wall, rubbing his palms and approached Samaan.

“Buy some dolls to pay your respect to Gilda and I will tell you.”

Farhaad knew a manipulating seller when he saw one. Despite this, he took out his wallet and handed Asghar a few thousand Toumans. The long restless night, his aching heart, his tired body, the demolished hostel, his plastic cousin, all rallied against him, making Farhaad give in for a story. A small win.

Plus, the dolls would be a nice gift for Saareh.

“After the earthquake that destroyed Masooleh and killed Gilda’s husband, she never spoke a word but knitted dolls nonstop. She gave them away to the village children and taught other women how to knit them. The rumor is that she knitted dolls instead of the children she couldn't have and gave them away as an apology to her dead husband.”

Some moments in life stretched beyond others, Farhaad knew this, had experienced these in the afternoons with Saareh where the pleasure of life’s simplicity ran abundant. But what happened when these moments of abeyance, these timeless seconds, were woven with threads of pain and sorrow, with loss and loneliness? Had Gilda been condemned to one such existence? Farhaad looked up at the next row of houses above, at the half-open wooden windows, each houses’s interior seeped in darkness. He could almost see her, Gilda, sitting behind one such window, knitting one doll after another, her finger joints red and raw, but refusing to stop.

In some mysterious way, with the whole village excited about being on UNESCO’s list, Farhaad could sympathize with Gilda, he even felt the chill of “sticking out like a sore thumb” as Samaan had put it. But with Gilda peacefully dead, and Farhaad painfully alive, witnessing the slow crumble of his beloved Masooleh, one building at a time, what was he to do?

There was no holy melody to guide Farhaad. For a brief moment, to the surprise of his academic mind, Farhaad almost wished that he could hear the holy melody, if such a thing had ever existed. But the thought evaporated swiftly, like a fog that disperses at the first rays of the sun.

*

The buzz of excited chatter, of shuffling bodies huddled in Bee Bee Khanoum’s Soomeh, felt both enlivening and overwhelming for Farhaad. Almost every one of the permanent residents of Masooleh was there, except the children who were braving the whips of the wind, playing in the snow. The winter sky was a green shade of gray, the same hue that tinged the early morning and early afternoon’s sky, making it impossible to tell the time. During the winter months in Masooleh, everyone lived a life suspended above time, as powdery snow covered the stairs of the village, the roofs of each home all the way to the mountain peak.

That evening, the whole village had gathered together to talk about the deadline for submitting Masooleh for UNESCO’s list less than two weeks away.

“The future of Masooleh is in tourism. We must do whatever is needed to attract more visitors.” Asghar’s father shouted this so excitedly that the small teacup on the saucer in his hand shook, spilling some of its steaming contents.

“But our old homes are falling apart. Shouldn’t we focus on fixing those first? Tourists don’t come to see ugly homes.”

“There is no future for a village built against a mountain. It is only a matter of time before another earthquake levels this village too. We should leave like the Mohseni’s and others. The future is in big cities.”

The men shouted one over another, a new comment voiced before the last one had a chance to be born into the stuffy atmosphere of the room. The women, sitting on the other side had been quiet mostly, Bee Bee Khanoum and a few others busy serving steaming cups of tea along with the golden fried KaKa cookies.

“We need to find our way back to the music.” Mahsa said this with a quiet voice. Saareh, who had been leaning against her mother’s lap, looked up at Mahsa, an intrigued expression on her face. Despite Mahsa’s quiet voice, the substance of her comment had been loud enough. The whole conversation stopped, all eyes turned to Mahsa, the person who had uttered the forbidden words, who had referred publicly to the pain of the past, to the loss that all the villagers still carried around in one way or another. Their collective burden.

“Maybe if the people of old Masooleh had trusted Gilda, we still could have the chance to know the music. Maybe if we stop fighting the music can come back.” Mahsa continued.

“The music never left; we stopped listening Mahsa.” Bee Bee Khanoum said as she added a few logs to the already blazing fireplace.

“We cannot build a future based on an old tale.” Samaan interjected.

“How do we find our way back to the music?” Farhaad, shocked even his own self by asking this question. The men usually stayed away from any comments that could suggest any truth to Gilda’s tale. The tale was the property of old wives, of females with their non-logical minds. This remark arose a fresh round of passionate opinions and heated comments until the whole debacle became almost intolerable for Farhaad. As he was about to leave the room, a sudden piercing scream brought everything to a stop once again. Farhaad’s confused eyes quickly spotted Saareh, in her red dress, her hands covering her ears, screaming so loud that Farhaad’s ears actually hurt. Saareh ran outside, without her coat, barefoot, a tiny red figure against the white outstretched piles of snow.

Farhaad ran out after her, grabbing her coat and boots from the pile of coats on the small bench by the door. He motioned for Mahsa to stay and not to worry.

After being in the dimly lit Soomeh, the brightness of the snow-covered village momentarily hurt Farhaad’s eyes. Squinting, he spotted Saareh down two rows of homes, running, elusive as a butterfly, squeamish as a kitten, her hands still covering her ears. Farhaad ran after her, against the force of the unforgiving wind which hurt his cheeks. “Saareh, wait!”

Farhaad’s toes, stiff frozen, ached by the time he reached the third row of homes. How was Saareh still running without her boots? Where was she going? What had bothered her so much? One of these questions was answered when Farhaad saw Saareh take a turn at the bottom of the mountain towards the village cemetery.

Saareh, huddling her knees under her dress, sat next to Gilda’s grave, as she clung tightly to a pile of dolls in her embrace, muttering a quiet mournful cry. The longing of her voice crumbled Farhaad’s heart like a piece of old newspaper. He wrapped her coat around her and rubbed her bare red feet with his hands, blowing his breath over them, but her feet were determined not to warm up.

Farhaad took off his own socks and pulled them over Saareh’s feet, the socks reaching up to her knees. He helped her put on her boots.

“Saareh jaan, what happened azizam?” Farhaad sat down next to Saareh, next to Gilda and all the other bodies who were now free from this world with all its troubles and pulled Saareh under his arm. Saareh became quiet and pointed to Farhaad’s coat’s side pocket.

“Do you want something in my pocket?”

Saareh pretended to hold a pen and scribble over her palm. Farhaad handed her a piece of blank paper and a pen.

Saareh placed the paper on her knees after gently setting down the dolls, side by side, next to Gilda’s headstone.

Saareh grabbed Farhaad’s hand and wrapped it around her own small hand. Farhaad tilted his head sideways, confused but Saaerh smiled and tightened his grip. She closed her eyes and gently closed Farhaad’s eyelids with her other hand.

The whole world suddenly was steeped in darkness. Farhaad could only feel Saareh’s small hand moving deliberately across the paper.

In the distance, a sparrow chirped as pile of snow slid off a branch, landing with a soft thud on the ground. Despite the cold, Farhaad felt a warm sensation slowly spreading over him.

As Saareh’s hands swayed up and down, Farhaad began to sense a vague sense of rhythm in her movements. Was someone playing the Leh Leh music?

Saareh’s hands were unusually warm.

Farhaad didn’t know how long they remained like that. Time, once again, had become elusive, a slippery fish, forever escaping his grip.

Eventually, Saareh tapped Farhaad’s shoulder, and he slowly opened his eyes. What he saw on the paper upended Farhaad’s logical streams, destroying his sensible ways.

On the paper was a map of what looked like Masooleh but also was not, could not possibly be Masooleh. Row upon row of stair-shaped homes but also new rows, spiraling patterns that trailed off into the forest. Inside each of the homes were drawn musical notes, staves that danced on the paper, black and white dots trailing one another. It was like a blueprint of the heart of current Masooleh and what Masooleh could become, both at once. It was as if Saareh had drawn the very soul of the place.

Saareh smiled radiantly as she began to hum a soft melody, grabbing Farhaad’s index finger, moving it up and down across each home on the map.

Farhaad closed his eyes, this time unprompted, and felt like a baby rocked to peacefulness through the gentle Melody. He could faintly hear something, or was his brain frozen enough to play tricks on him?

Suddenly it all made sense. “You can hear the Melody?” at once shocked and delighted, Farhaad asked his niece.

Saareh’s smile bloomed like a beautiful crescent moon.

Farhaad, this man with the heart of a boy, had come back to save his Masooleh because above all, he loved it with the maternal fierceness of a mountain lioness. Had he been successful? There was now a growing library in Masooleh, The Never-Ending Library. Would it be enough? What will become of Masooleh? He didn’t know the answer to any of these or many more questions that had been his constant companions over these weeks, over the moments that had contracted and expanded, the moments when time had staged a magician’s show to baffle his mind.

But with Saareh, this pure child of pondering eyes, mystically one with this village, who knew what the future might hold.

After all, anything was possible in Masooleh, a place of magic and logic.

 

Li Ruan
Ride to Heaven

Summer retired spring 16 years ago. My husband presented me with a brand-new bicycle, a hopeful gesture to pull me out of an emotional abyss.

With a faint grasp of the machine's caprice, I set out for a routine ride along the uneven roads of the Jersey Shore. In our well-worn pattern, my husband led, I followed, though this time with fragile focus. As I ascended the bridge’s summit, my bike amassed an exhilarating momentum, hurtling downhill at supersonic speeds. Panic overcame me, I instinctively clamped the brakes with all my might, desperate to regain control. The forceful reaction catapulted me over the handlebars, flinging me airborne before gravity boldly hurled me back.

The unforgiving ground, a chaotic mosaic of concrete, dirt, stones, and grass, greeted my left body first. Paralyzed by terror, I lay motionless on the edge of the sinuous street. My husband rushed back toward me, struggling to help me stand on my feet. Blood, road debris, and weeds tangled with the torn fabric of my light-colored attire. Shock rendered me speechless and gasping for breath. The harsh reality of the accident slowly seeped into my awareness. Pain surged through my body, searing my left shoulder, and stealing my left arm’s mobility. Tears poured out of my eyes. My husband dialed 911 with a twisted voice that I could hardly recognize.

My memory faded, only to resurface when I sensed my body bouncing up and down. A distant sound tried to reach me, cooing as though hidden behind a dense forest. Something hazy floated down from the sky, lifting me into a boundless, rolling bubble. The intriguing object emitted pleasant metallics and sequins, flickering like fish scales. It gently nudged me towards a sparkling ocean beneath a canopy of pale tenderness. Everything unfolded in slow motion, as if I were in a tranquil painting on an infinite canvas. Mellow echoes drifted through the breeze, caressing my hair and ears. I found myself alone in a serene, mysterious wonderland, unknown yet deeply soothing. Time and life paused. 

The peace shattered, violently awakening me from partial consciousness. I was carried from the ambulance into the emergency room. The ethereal paradise vanished, giving way to excruciating pain. Background conversations buzzed around, volumes fluctuating, words slipping past my hearing like elusive shells in the sand. One voice stood out, familiar and intimate, radiating through the turbulent ocean of cacophony. It must have been my husband’s.

Shortly thereafter, a sharp needle pierced my right arm, propelling me into another realm.

Suddenly, my mother flew toward me, emerging from the right corner of the room's ceiling. Her youthful features flooded my mind with childhood memories: a slender, fine-skinned face; a lithe, athletic form; short, shiny dark hair; and thin, bright eyes. As I strained to reach her, a cyclone of excitement and despair entwined, churning within me; my arms felt too heavy to lift. A heartache engulfed me, as if frigid waters plunging into my chest when her progress abruptly halted three steps away from my bedside. I was adrift in a sea of sadness and joy – saddened by her inability to come closer, overjoyed by her unexpected presence. We stayed near enough to see each other but painfully separated, unable to touch.

Worry furrowed her brow, much like the expression she had worn when I fell ill as a little girl. Her lips moved ceaselessly; murmurs exceeded my comprehension. This heightened my frustration, which further deepened the creases on her forehead in concern. Helpless to cross the invisible divide, she paced restlessly between the vicinity of my bed and the corner of the room's ceiling where she had descended. Suspended between heaven and earth, she subtly tilted to her left side, offering me a clearer view of her silhouette as I lay flat on my back, facing the corner where she had alighted. With each of her approaches, I cried out, “Mama.” The cycle of interaction repeated itself, providing a sense of consolation and satisfaction despite my incapacity to physically feel or hear her.

A heavy crash erupted; its vibrations reverberated through the space. The doctor burst into the room, my mother disappeared without a trace. Her fleeting and startling absence intensified my pain, leaving me in vain.

Upon my discharge, I eagerly recounted my mother’s visit in the ER to my husband. He confirmed that while I was in bed, I had stubbornly opened my eyes, fixated on the ceiling, and persistently called out: "Mama.”

Whirlwind puzzles swirled in my brain: Where was I? How did Mom find my whereabouts? Did I experience an in-between life phase? Why hadn’t we...? Many mysteries lingered, especially as gratitude overwhelmed me when reflecting on the exquisite encounter with my mother.

Six months prior to the accident, my mother had departed for heaven after a brutal year-long battle with ovarian cancer. My incapability to cross the Pacific Ocean and return by her side once again during her final days had left me with an unspoken emotional void. The bicycle injury served as a vehicle to a bittersweet reunion, bringing her back into my life – for real. The unforeseen yet purposeful occurrence swallowed my mind.

In my solitude, I closed my eyes, immersed in reminiscences of my mother. A montage of our time in the hospital began to project on a milky canvas in my reveries. This visual play advanced into a sweet replay, carrying a significance beyond mere recollection. Every emotion, motion, and interaction we shared remained vividly engraved in my heart. The most moving realization was this: “Even in heaven, my mother's love, care and concern still embrace me, as they did on earth.”

The accident left me with a broken left shoulder and agonizing pain. Nearly a year of physical therapy yielded a semblance of complete recovery. In an extraordinary twist of fate, that misfortune birthed a priceless surprise – a magical, mystical silent reunion with my mother. The yearning for that sensational togetherness everlasted; my genuine wish was to ride my bicycle again, setting forth on the same otherworldly journey, in the hope of re-experiencing that unfathomable miracle.

 

Daniel Ruefman
The Viper

The thin soil was ground to dust against the belly scales of the prairie rattler. She kept to the rocky outcrops and worked her way up the granite slope, making her way to the closest thing that any pit viper had to a childhood home.

Summer had come all at once. A tepid month of May was followed immediately by record highs in June. The sun had transformed the slope to a solar oven that cooked alive everything that touched it. Everything, it seemed, except the snakes.

She made the journey, as she had almost every year since her birth. She came like the others generations before and for the same reason.

The valley walls writhed with rattles as she slid along the edge of a well-worn game trail. She slipped past others who had staked their own claims to the hillside. The others settled into the first dens they came to, then waited to be found. But she didn’t. She knew that the young and impatient always over crowded the lower slopes. There competition for game, shelter, and mates would be fierce. The prairie rattler worked her way higher, through the dry, arthritic underbrush.

Near the tree line, she found vacancy between two boulders on the western face. She folded herself into a narrow crevice, where she could wait out the worst of the sun. Dusk would come soon enough, and when it did, the tiny mammals would slip from their burrows and she would feed.

2

Two miles into his run, Mike Cox settled into his rhythm. It wasn’t difficult. Give him a set of earbuds and a decent playlist set on shuffle, and Mike felt as if he could happily Forrest Gump it from coast to coast.

As he approached a steep and narrow section of trail, a chorus of rattles sent a startling shush through the valley. The sound echoed, peak-to-peak. It would have been warning enough for anyone paying attention. But Mike wasn’t. As his feet pounded hot against the trail, all he heard was Fallout Boy. Guitars, drum kits, and vocals rang through his earbuds. He listened as he ran. He never heard a thing.

3

The prairie rattler sensed him before she saw him. She felt the steady smack of his feet against the rocks, sensed the heat from a massive body.

Curled between her rocks, she drew up her head, arched her spine, and flicked the tip of her tail. The hollow chambers sounded. Her warning joined the call from the others on that face of the mountain, the others who had sensed that same threat climbing past their hiding places.

She waited there. It kept coming. The steady thwap-thwap of rubber soles against the parched trail carried that beast closer to her.

She drew up further, intent on making the most of her size. Her muscles locked. Her long, sinuous body froze; everything stilled except for her flicking tongue and the rattle at the end of her tail.

The beast was almost upon her. She flicked her tongue, tasting the air, her eyes finding a target—the exposed skin of a muscled calf.

Thwap-thwap went the feet.

Her tail trilled with renewed vigor.

Then she lunged.

 

4

The flicker of motion caught Mike’s eye, and he jumped back just as the pit viper struck out from the trail-side rocks. His ear buds were dislodged as he tumbled back onto his haunches.

That’s when he heard it. Not just the rattle of the snake in front of him, but the chorus of rattles live in the air all around him.

On the trail, the viper slid out of hiding. It glided out from between the rocks. The long, sinuous body coiled and the snake’s head drew up. It swayed, tracking his movement. He leaned; the pointed tip of the viper’s face followed him. He kicked dirt in its direction. The snake flinched. Desperate to put some distance between them, Mike scuttled back along the edge of the trail.

The viper’s tongue and tail worked feverishly as it moved. It bent back, like a cocked spring in the cap gun that he had played with as a kid. The smooth muscles of the snake flexed. Its scales rippled in the late afternoon light. It saw him, tracked him, and he knew it would try to strike again.

Mike clamored backwards. He had no idea what he was about to do until he felt his fingers close around a grapefruit-sized hunk of granite. He gripped it, felt its heft in his palm. Then, with a long fluid motion, he heaved the stone at the snake.

The viper didn’t waver as the stone sailed wide off target, and crashed to the ground behind it. Rattle trilling more loudly, the snake’s undulating body folded over itself as it slid closer to Mike’s exposed legs.

His hands searched the surrounding ground, and Mike felt his fingers wrap around another, smaller stone this time. The body of the snake tensed. Mike let the stone fly.

The snake struck out again, its head shooting directly into the path of the stone. The stone collided with the snake’s open jaw, knocking it back and smashing its head against one of the large boulders it had sheltered between. A sickening crunch of bone and her trilling tail slowed.

Shush–shush–shush.

An involuntary death spasm took control, and the shush turned chunk. The chambered tail of the snake rose slowly and fell impotently.

Chunk.

Again, the tail rose and fell.

Chunk.

Then it was still.

In the distance, the other rattles went silent all at once. It was like the hush of cheers in a sold-out stadium when a player was injured. The quiet enveloped Mike, though his pulse still pounded in his ears and adrenaline caused his hands to shake.

Mike stared at the snake. Its head was pinned between the stones. The prairie rattler’s jaw was disjointed and broken, giving the corpse the illusion of a mischievous half-smile. One fang was unfolded and exposed. The other was pinned inside the clenched half of the jaw that was pressed against the boulder. Pressed and distorted like a child’s face on a school bus window. The snake’s right eye was caved in, while the left eye bulged out of its socket, its dilated slit appeared almost round, and from where Mike was sitting, that dead eye seemed locked on him.

Mike’s pulse pounded in his neck so hard that he thought his carotid artery might rupture. He stared at the dead snake, gulping the thin mountain air.

The dead snake stared back at him.

Finally, he stood. His legs shook as they took his full weight and he checked and re-checked his calves. No bites. Thank God for that.

On the ground beside him, his earbuds lay in the dirt, whispering the faint sound of Fallout Boy. He stooped to pick them up, wiped the dust from them with his shirt. Just as he was about to slip one into his ear, he glanced back at the snake and thought better of it. He slipped the earbuds in his pocket and turned back, following the trail down the mountain. Back toward his bride and their rented honeymoon cabin at the trailhead.

 

5

Her mate was the first to find her. They had met near this spot years before, had coupled many times, birthing countless broods together in this spot, feeding along the same westward slope.

Just like in seasons past, her scent called him up the mountainside, but this time, as he drew nearer, something about her scent was very wrong.

He found her pinned against that trail side rock. The congealed blood that had poured from her head was dark and sticky and her thick body was unfurled, draped along the dry edge of the trail.

He crawled to her, coiling around her body the way he had so many times before in a tantric tangle of muscularity. He twined around her. Her muscles were soft and limp. For a while he held her there, tasting the air around her, willing her to grip him back the way she had before. She didn’t.

At last, his length still curled around hers, the whole of his body tensed and his rattle sounded.

Shush—shush—shushhhhhh.

There was something odd in that rhythm. It wasn’t the steady warning that most who encountered a prairie rattler might hear. This was like a code, as if he were calling for someone. Calling for help.

Shush—shush—shushhhhhh.

For a long time, he gripped his mate and shook his rattle, until the dry undergrowth twitched along the trail. Another smaller rattler slid into view. It started toward the mourner, clutching the body of his mate, but stopped not far from him. The newcomer coiled itself on the trail, raised its rattle, and echoed the mourner’s call.

One-by-one, more snakes appeared. Some were the juveniles that she had spawned over the last few years. The chorus of rattles sounded in unison until a hundred tails of a hundred pit vipers were coiled on the trail, their rattles working as one.

The male gripped her dead body more tightly then.

Shush—shush—shushhhhhh.

The stone that pinned her head to the boulder fell away then and the dead viper’s head thudded to the ground. Her lover’s body slid against hers and the sound of the rattles changed to a singular shushhhhhh.

Suddenly, the corpse tensed. Her mate loosened his grip on her slightly.

The dead viper’s rattle twitched. Her back arched and relaxed. Arched and relaxed. On her third try, the pupil of her bulging eye narrowed, and she raised her crushed head. Her jaw was still unhinged on one side, a single fang unfolded.

Still twisted around his mate, the male felt her power push against him. He rubbed his head against her mangled skull. His body gripped her. She gripped him back. And as she had so many times before, she felt his engorged organ and drew him inside her.

Hours passed while their bodies were locked together in tangled coitus. They seemed unaware of the others who lingered nearby—those who had gathered to work their magic. The ones who came together to call her back.

At last, when their bodies peeled apart, the dead viper’s dry black tongue flicked in and out. She peered out at the congregants and gathered up her mass before them, raised her tail and answered their call. 

One need was slaked; the viper tongued the air around her. She could still taste the sweat of the man who had hurled the stones at her. The one who had broken her jaw and caved in her skull; it was a scent that she would never forget.

Vengeance would have to wait, though.

It wasn’t easy to raise the dead. She knew that, although her brain was still oozing down her face. The others were spent and now. Before anything else could happen, they needed to be fed.

The viper tasted the air again. Most of the usual prey had been spooked by their vigil. Chipmunks, squirrels, moles, even the short-tailed weasels had been driven out by their presence. There was nothing within striking distance. Nothing—except.

She flicked out her tongue again, drawing a bead on something else. Something big. Too big to be practical, but what this congregation had done for her had gone beyond practicality too, hadn’t it? The bottom line was that they needed fed, and she owed them all.

Just downhill from the gathering, a black-tailed buck stripped the leaves from the scrub. It bowed to nuzzle the dry foliage, took a few steps, then bowed again.

She started toward it, working her way from one clutch of stones to another.

The deer munched contentedly.

She worked her way closer, settling into the scrub a few strides in front of the deer. Concealed and coiled, she waited for her prey to come to her. The deer munched and stepped. Munched and stepped.

She arched up, her good eye locked on her target. She sensed the bright heat of the animal’s body. Venom dripped from the tip of her exposed fang as she planned her strike.

It bowed its head.

Thwack!

Her fangs sank into the deer’s neck, piercing an artery just behind the animal’s jawline. The deer bucked and tossed its head, trying to free itself from the snake. The undead viper clenched her jaw, pumping her venom into her prey. The deer staggered and tried to run.

The viper worked her jaw again, wrenching her fangs deeper. Pumping. Pumping.

The buck lost its footing and slid a short way down the mountainside. It rolled onto its side, its legs flailing uselessly, searching for the ground, finding only air.

She wrapped her tail around the buck’s neck, just below her bite, and wrenched it with all of her strength. The deer’s final bleat was cut off, its eyes bulged.

Still, she squeezed. Her rough scales sawed at her prey’s neck. She squeezed and sawed. Squeezed and sawed.

The deer’s blood came in spurts then. It gushed between her coils, oozed out from her bite. Hot blood covered her as she gave one final twist and the deer’s head was separated from its body.

For an instant, the muscles of the legs contracted in a final gallop against the sky until, all at once, the body was still.

When her rattle sounded, the congregants proceeded downhill, working their way to the kill. There, the undead viper wrenched bite-sized chunks from the carcass. She worked at it, stripping muscle and sinew from the bones and scattering bits of the kill on the ground until the scene resembled something similar to an animal that had been exploded by a tractor-trailer on the interstate.

Then she pulled herself onto a nearby rock, surveyed the scene as those who had brought her back ate their fill.

6

“Where are you at?” Liz asked as she prepped dinner on the picnic table outside their cabin.

The question made Mike jump. His body had come down from the mountain, but his mind was still up there. Hours had passed and he couldn’t seem to shake the sight of that dead snake or the sound of its rattle. It was absurd. It was just a snake. A snake that would have struck at him if he hadn’t struck first.

“What’s going on?” Liz asked again.

As she said it, Liz dumped the plastic bag of vegetables into aluminum foil pouches. She dropped in a pad of butter and sprinkled a dash of garlic salt and pepper on top.

He recoiled at the sound of the foil.

“Nothing,” Mike said.

Liz raised one perfect, pencil-thin eyebrow.

Mike sighed. “Got spooked—that’s all.”

“By what?”

“Snake,” Mike answered, vaguely.

Liz chuckled. “That’s it? A snake. What’s so scary about a snake?”

Mike blinked. “They bite.”

“Not unless you fuck with them,” Liz said simply. “If you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you.”

He wanted to argue, but thought better of it. Sure, she had a point. Most animals steered clear of humans if they could help it. But she wasn’t there for this one. This snake was different.

Mike built a fire in the charcoal grill that was posted outside their cabin. Once the fire was going, Liz dropped the foil pouches in to cook.

Liz ducked inside the cabin. Behind the front door, there was a canvas bag with several glass bottles inside. They chimed as she passed over the vodka, whiskey, until she selected a large bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. When she returned, she was carrying Mike’s Swiss Army knife and two plastic glasses.

“You mind?” she asked.

Mike took the knife, selected the corkscrew utility, and popped open the bottle. Liz held out the two plastic cups, and he poured a generous serving into each of them. Then they sat side-by-side on the picnic table, sipping their wine, listening to the sizzle of their dinner.

After they ate, they watched the sun go down. They stacked wood on top of the bed of charcoal. Together, they munched on a dessert of toasted marshmallows and sipped more wine. Still, Mike couldn’t shake the thoughts of that rattlesnake. The way that it had come after him. Sure, it lunged and missed, but instead of retreating between those rocks, it came out at him. He fell back and still the snake rose up to strike again. At that point, he had no choice. He had to defend himself. There was no comfort in that thought.

Night life whirred around them. The fire popped and crackled, but in the distance, there was another sound. A day ago, Mike would have mistaken the sound for cicadas or some other insect, but now he knew better. That was the sound of the rattlers.

“Jesus, you’re wound up so tight,” Liz said. “Why don’t you just try and relax?”

“Can’t,” Mike said.

“You can’t?” Liz asked. She ran a single finger down Mike’s neck. “You can’t think of anything that could get you to relax?”

Mike shrugged.

“Really? Nothing?”

For a moment, Liz stared at her husband. Then she stood and ducked back inside the cabin. Mike prodded at the fire with the sticky marshmallow fork and watched the sparks shoot up from the engulfed wood.

When she returned, she had changed into the gold two piece that she had bought for their honeymoon. It glinted against the firelight, accenting her caramel skin. The fabric glittered and hugged to her like the gold ribbon of a Christmas present. She let down her hair and twisted it over her shoulder. The sight of her finally jarred Mike from any thought of the snake.

“You sure there’s nothing you want to do?” Liz asked. “Because I’m pretty sure there’s this big old pool behind the cabin that nobody seems to be using at the moment.”

 

7

Along the trailhead, the dry scrub scratched and shook as the viper parted it. Her belly scales gripped the gravel, and the shadows gave way as moonlight shone the relief of her disjointed jaw and the bloodied dent of her skull.

On her way down the mountain, new followers fell in behind her, filling the growing gap between her and the initial sluggish congregants, bellies bloated with the blacktail buck.

She paused and tasted the air. Everything there was thicker at the base of the mountain. The scent of the azaleas near the camp office, the perfume of charcoal briquettes smoldering in iron grates, and the chlorinated water of the swimming pool.

That last scent gripped her. On her way down the mountain, all other needs were subsumed by the desire to sink her fangs into that man who had brained her on the trial. Sensing the water, however, she realized just how much venom she had pumped into that blacktail. She was depleted. She needed more and to do that; she needed to drink.

She worked her way across the gravel, over a patch of weedy grass, then pressed her body through a chain-link fence. Against the concrete decking, her belly scales rubbed like sandpaper. The water sloshed in rhythmic waves that broke against the walls of the pool that contained it. The sound drew her nearer. Then, the viper unhinged her good jaw and plunged her head into the water. Head fully submerged, the snake drew in a big gulp before closing her mouth and rising again to swallow. Water and congealed blood dribbled from one half of her half-open mouth.

Another wave rose up and broke over her face. A realization welled up in her then. She was not the only one in that pool. She fixed her good eye on the water’s surface, looking for the source of the waves. 

Bobbing at the center of the pool, a half-naked couple cleaved to one another, chortling and groaning in the warm water. After hours, the pool was technically closed, and the lights were doused. She sensed the heat from their bodies, though, and flicked her tongue.

Something convulsed inside her then. One scent—sweaty and meaty—she knew. There was no mistaking it. That was the scent she had climbed down from the mountain to find; it was the scent of her quarry. And with that realization, a fresh bead of venom dripped from her fang.

She slipped into the water, her tail sweeping in long, languid strokes. The human bodies ground and bobbed and kissed, sending more waves in her direction. The viper ducked under them and pushed closer.

Almost upon them, the couple drifted away, moving toward the ladder in the far corner of the pool. The viper altered course, but they moved more quickly than she did and soon, she watched their heels leaving the water.

There, in the light of the silver crescent, they necked and groped at one another. The woman cupped the bulge in her partner’s trunks, while the young man pulled her in, feeling her bare breasts pert against his chest.

The viper turned back and spotted something else floating in the water near the side of the pool. She swam closer to investigate.

“I need my top,” Liz whispered.

“Nah,” Mike said. “Like you better without it.”

Liz bit his collarbone. “Yeah, but it was $125.”

Mike groaned.

She kissed him once more, then peeled herself away, swaying her hips as she moved. She glanced over her shoulder as she stooped to retrieve her top.

The viper was in striking distance now. The snake folded its body over itself. Muscles tensed as it lifted its head from the water.

Liz hooked the strap of her bathing suit top with her forefinger.

The snake lunged, but the water absorbed much of the force. She extended her body to her full length, opened her jaw, but fell just short of the woman’s arm.

Liz stood and returned to her husband. Together, they swept out of the gate and moved purposefully toward their cabin.

 8

Inside cabin six, sopping swimsuits slapped against the tile of the bathroom floor. Water whooshed and steam billowed, hovering against the ceiling.

Liz and Mike slipped past the curtain. Hot water poured down as their hands explored one another slippery curves, working the lather over each other’s bodies. They kissed as the shower swept the day down the drain, along with the scent of chlorine that had clung to Liz’s hair.

9

Outside, the viper pushed her way back through the chain-link fence and tracked her prey to the doorstep of the cabin. She slithered across the scrubby lawn, passed the grill, still smoldering from Mike and Liz’s dinner, and settled onto the largest rock at the center of the flagstone path.

Her congregants followed. They encircled the building. Side-by-side, they fell in along the front walk, coiled in small piles in a nearby yard, around the picnic table, and around the grill. They squeezed tight into every inch of space, threading their bodies into the gaps between the lilac bushes and the cinderblock foundation that carried the cabin’s weight.

Soon the ground outside appeared to be formed entirely of their sleek, live bodies. Finally, rattles raised, they trilled as they had hours before on the mountain.

From her place, alone on the path, she surveyed the others, and a certain satisfaction swelled inside her. The one she hunted was cloistered away inside. All that they needed to do was flush him out. Then she and her congregants would strip his bones clean.

With a hiss, she ordered the advance and those along the base of the cabin probed for access. They pressed in at the cracked and crumbling mortar in the foundation, tested the narrow gaps of the rough-cut shingled siding, then a few scaled the bushes.

They curled around the thin shoots, climbing high lilacs. A few boughs bent and cracked, but several snakes made it to the top. From there, they slipped silently onto the roof.

Few access points seemed clear. Two vent pipes for the cabin’s plumbing and the narrow chimney for an old woodstove.

The chimney was capped with a steel cage. There was no way in there. But the vent pipes were open. Two of the rattlers curled around them and slid silently inside.

 

10

Mike was a little too preoccupied with the way Liz wrapped her legs around him to notice the shower backing up. That is, until the water was nearly ankle deep and threatening to spill out onto the bathroom floor.

“Oh, shit?”

“What?” Liz gasped. “Already?”

“No,” Mike said.

He reached toward the opposite wall and turned off the shower. He gave the standing water a quick kick.

“Drain’s backed up.”

Liz squeezed his neck between her elbows and bit his lower lip. “Are there drains in the bedroom?”

Mike carried her like that out of the bathroom without stopping to dry off. He moved through the great room and into the bedroom on the opposite side of the cabin. With one hand, he gripped the back of Liz’s neck. With the other, he gripped her supple buttock. Her legs tightened their grip around him as Mike lowered her wet body onto the pillows.

As the last of the water slowly filtered from the shower, a frustrated hiss sounded from the bathroom. A solitary snake peered through the drain cover.

 

11

Mike lay spent on the damp comforter as Liz ran a finger up and down his chest. She traced that line from chest to belly button and back again. 

“Feeling better?” Liz whispered.

Mike let out a satisfied sigh punctuated by a soft grunt.

“I thought so,” she said.

She kissed his chest, then pushed herself up from the bed and glided naked to the bathroom.

She kicked their swimsuits against the wall and glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her wet hair was tangled and a faint hickey bloomed just below her collarbone. Liz chuckled at the sight of it. Haven’t had one of those since high school, she thought, running one finger along its surface. Not since . . .

That thought trailed off as Liz turned to lift the lid of the toilet seat. A sudden sting shot through her pinky finger. She screamed, pulling her hand back, letting the lid slam closed with a hollow thunk.

Mike was jarred from his post-coital half sleep. He leaped from the bed and covered the distance between bed and bathroom in four strides.

He hit the bathroom light and saw Liz bent over the shower. She held one hand in the bower of the other as blood dripped against the white basin.

“What happened?” Mike asked.

Liz glanced up from her hand.

“I—I’m not sure,” she said. “I just was going to go pee, but then something on the toilet—it stung me.”

“Let me look.”

She turned and Mike gazed at her little finger. Blood trickled from two pin-prick holes. Curious, he took her hand gently in his own and leaned in for a better look. Just then, there was a loud exhale in the corner behind Liz. Mike’s head snapped in its direction.

The sound made his heart thunder inside his chest. That exhale, that muffled hiss. He had heard something like it on the mountain.

He picked up the plunger by the sink and lifted the lid with it. The hiss grew louder. Tentatively, Mike leaned in to see the body of a young rattler clinging to the sides of the toilet bowl. It gave its tail a shake and drew back its head.

“Liz?” Mike said in a forced calm. He stepped back from the toilet, letting the lid slam shut. “Out!”

12

Mike whirled around and pushed her out of the bathroom. The door slammed behind them.

Still confused, Liz switched on the overhead light and considered the wound on her hand. Her finger pulsed as it swelled, and the stinging sensation spread up her arm. Her skin at each puncture had started to purple. 

“Mike?” she asked. “What?”

“Snakebite,” he said.

Something thick thumped against the bathroom floor.

“What?”

“Rattler. In the toilet,” he said. “That’s what got you.”

Stunned by this, Liz looked again at her hand, at the two perfect punctures, like something out of a vampire movie.

“We’ve got to get you to a hospital,” he said.

They rushed to pull on some clothes and slipped on their sandals.

Mike snatched his keys and wallet from the end table beside the cabin door, knocking the canvas bag over in the process. The bottles chimed inside, but Mike hardly noticed. His gaze was preoccupied by the shadow moving at the bottom of the bathroom door. The shadow drew across it and a rattle sounded from inside.

“You ready?” Mike asked.

Liz winced as she nodded. Shocks of pain shot from her hand to her elbow. It was as if she could feel the venom already coursing through her veins.

“It’s going to be alright,” Mike said. “Just got to stay calm. Should have time to get you where we need to go.

Then he switched off the light in the main room and opened the front door.

           

13

The sounds of a thousand rattles filled the cabin then. Mike’s throat ached and pulse quickened even more. He froze, unable to process what he was seeing.

The entire ground seethed in the moonlight. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the flagstone path outside. He could see the outline of their car at the end of it. But a dark shadow rose up in the space between them.

Mike stared at the shadow, until finally, he saw the dented head and broken jaw of the old prairie rattler. It was undeniable. That was the snake he had killed on the mountain.

 

14

She sensed him at the threshold. The one responsible. Her venom flowed steadily from her exposed fang as she focused her good eye on the man in the doorway.

 

15

“Impossible.”

The word was little more than a whisper, but Liz had heard it.

“Mike. What is it?”

“It’s here,” he said.

“What’s here?” Liz asked. “What are you talking about?”

“That snake I mentioned, the one from my run,” Mike began.

“What about it?” “It’s here,” he said. “And it’s not alone.”

Liz pushed Mike to the side and surveyed the yard. “Jesus. There must be a hundred—”

“Or more,” Mike cut in.

He took a tentative step outside. The snakes on either side of the trail rose, their tails working more vigorously. Mike withdrew back inside, and the snakes settled back into their steady cadence.

In the crack beneath the bathroom door, the head of the snake inside was pushing itself through the gap.

“Fuck.”

It was the only word that came to him.

 

16

Mike slammed the door. His eyes darted wildly about the cabin. There were the snakes outside, and now, there was one inside, squeezing itself under the bathroom door.

On the mountain, he had defended himself with rocks, but what did he have to defend himself with inside this cabin?

Just then, his toe connected with the canvas bag behind the door. The bottles inside it rocked.

Better than nothing, he thought. He bent down and grabbed the neck of one bottle. When he stood up again, he was gripping the bottle of vodka.

The head of the snake in the bathroom had just cleared the door. Soon there would be nothing between that snake and them. Mike drew up his arm, ready to throw the bottle at the snake.

“Wait!” Liz said, staying Mike’s arm with her good hand.

He glanced back at her, confused.

Liz stood on her tiptoes and peered through the glazed glass in the door. She couldn’t see much detail. The glass distorted everything, but she saw the outline of the snakes. She saw the shadow of the massive one on the flagstone walkway. She could even see a few of the others gathered around the grill outside. A grill that still glowed orange with hot coals.

“Give it here,” Liz said.

With a fluid motion, she wrenched the bottle from Mike’s grip and she whirled to open the door. Without hesitating, she threw the bottle with every ounce of strength. The bottle shattered as it connected with the side of the grill outside.

A puff of vapor rose. Then came the flames. The fire fell like rain on the dry grass as the vodka ignited in midair. The snakes beneath the grill sizzled and screamed in the night.

The snakes on that side of the yard shrunk from the fire, spitting and hissing as they fell back.

Mike, finally understanding, pulled a second bottle from the bag of booze. It was the gift of Wild Turkey that his groomsmen had given him at the reception, a bottle he had yet to open.

His eyes shot to the flagstone path. The viper, the one with the caved-in skull, did not shrink from the flames the way the others had. That one rose, its eyes clamped onto him. Then it advanced.

She slithered up the path, made for the open door where Liz was still standing. Mike pulled Liz back and hurled his bottle at the viper.

 

17

That bottle, too, shattered on the stone directly in front of the rattler. The whiskey sprayed the fire spreading through the scrub. In an instant, it ignited. Blue flame crawled across the stone and engulfed her.

Mike watched as the body contorted in agony as the head of the viper twisted and spat in their direction. From the doorway, they watched the fire spread. The remaining snakes scattered.

“Time to get going,” Liz said.

Mike nodded.

The two of them grabbed what they could, and together they rushed outside, past the charred remains of dead and dying snakes. The soles of their sandals were sticky against the hot earth. Once they were on the other side of the flames, both kicked off what was left of their sandals.

Mike fingered the key fob unlocking the doors, letting Liz into the passenger seat. He threw everything that they could carry into the back seat before darting around to take his place behind the wheel. He started the car and Liz searched the GPS for the nearest hospital. And together they tore down the driveway and out onto the main road.

 

18

 In the morning light, the volunteer firefighters from two counties secured their gear. The scrub and pine around the base of the mountain were scorched. A smoldering black scar stretched from where the cabins once were. It stretched like fingers clawing at the granite slope.

Near the road, the bodies of snakes were reduced to slag—like the black ash from those snake fireworks burned by kids on the fourth of July. There was an eerie calm there, like the ashen remains of the people of Pompeii.

As the fire trucks pulled away, the entire site was quiet and still. That is, until one of the bodies on the flagstone path that led up to cabin six jerked. The thick belly of the scorched viper wriggled and twitched until, at the base of her burned rattle, her flesh pulled apart like dried jerky. A too-small black viper slid out of its mother. It coiled on the flagstone path beside her, raised its button tail in a sort of salute, twitching its silent warning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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