July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
In the wintery spring of 1945, World War II had ended but not the chaos and misery of its survivors. My mother received notice that her husband had been killed. She sought solace in the arms of the messenger, got pregnant, and remarried. The couple moved south looking for work. I was five years- old and left in the care of my maternal grandmother in the bombed-out city of Kassel.
These were the happiest times of my war-torn childhood. I never wanted to leave my grandmother’s side. Days were spent gathering twigs and branches for our wood-burning stove, source of warmth and light. We filled baskets with the white flower heads of chamomile, then dried them for brewing tea. We collected sugar beets in the fields, cooked and stirred them into syrup, a delicious treat over our watery oatmeal. But the evenings were the best. Warmed and protected by my grandmother’s ample body we snuggled as she spun stories of imaginary places and events.
Months later my mother called for me. My grandmother prepared me with allusions to a happy family life and as it turned out, I did thrive in my new environment. We arranged a meeting place where my stepfather waited in a horse-drawn wagon. The exchange was brief. I suddenly felt cramps in my stomach and barely had time to sling my arms around my beloved grandmother’s neck before I was hoisted onto the seat of the wagon.
That was the last time I saw my grandmother. She waved and then her hand covered her mouth as if to stifle a sob. She had to stay behind, war-weary and lonely, while I was ushered toward a fresh beginning. I still see her getting smaller and smaller, sinking into the shadow of the bright morning light.
Ute Carson
July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
It was blasphemous and immoral; they submitted to the thrumming rhythm of the ethereal emotions that curled beneath their rhapsodic boughs; it filled the cosmos between them with embryonic passion—the steps they took were almost predestined, as if they had been there before; the breaths they took were almost too heavy to be healthy; the chances they took were reckless to the brink of all that was and will be tomorrow.
She pressed her lips softly against the warm, yielding lobe of his ear and whispered.
“How can flowers bloom as if they will never wilt? Do they know nothing of futility?”
He smiled.
“They know nothing of futility, those lucky few. We could only dream to be so blind….”
Danny Judge
Danny Judge is an emerging writer who is currently at work on his debut novel. A former Marine, he lives in Iowa with his wife and young son.
July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
Once, I asked my mother “What is the worst part of a car to break?” She said it was the radio. Weeks passed since I inquired and the famous question why? taunted me more each time I eyed her attend to the radio before the adjustment of her seat. Finally, I gave up on wasting countless hours in a desperate attempt to figure it out. It was practically a pant by the time the words “Why the radio? What about the engine? My god, we live in Florida, what about the air conditioner? Or the wind shield wipers? Why the radio?” frantically left my lips. She sat her Breakfast At Tiffany’s mug down carefully and stared at me as if I were a foreign figure rather than her daughter of sixteen years. “You never want a radio to break because without it, you’d be able to hear all of the other problems rattling around.”
I went to bed satisfied with her response. She must be right, too. For it wasn’t until a silence fell around our shoulders that I realized we had been malfunctioning for quite some time.
Abby Kalen Belanger
Abby Kalen Belanger is a junior in high school, attending a School for the Arts for Creative Writing. She has been writing short fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction since the age of eight and aspires to continue as a professional upon obtaining a Master’s Degree for Creative Writing.
July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
I think of my grandmother’s skin—warm creases, her hands rinsing off a peach, its hair smoothed from the softness of wellwater just eat from my hands, can you taste how ripe it is? I just picked it in the orchard this morning.
Or the first day I met Rebecca in that cold café and how the overhead lighting made her nervous, so she pulled and stretched at the bottom of her shirt whenever she talked, and sometimes even when she listened these lights make me itch.
Or the time Keith and I sat on top of Angel Ridge, his legs hanging over the ledge, his dark hair dissolving into the thickness of the night, sitting by my side, his thumb softening my ear, his words frightening me we are all alone.
And no matter how much I try to remember the warmth of my grandmother’s hands or the way I saw myself in Rebecca’s nerves, I can never escape the night of Keith, the night he made me believe, made me see—that we are no more important than the roots of the trees below.
Bethany Freese
Bethany Freese is a writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest.
July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
That autumn morning as we neared our tree, Grandpa stopped hard and pressed a meaty finger to my lips. A snowshoe hare had taken refuge under our Sugar Maple, shaded pistachio and apple.
“God’s little creatures need heartening too.” His voice was like gravel, even his whispers were wieldy.
I was nine, unwilling to share. So while he watched the young leveret frolic and scout, I pursed my lips, folded my arms and forsook the blessed gift.
Eventually, the hare scampered on, “One day boy, you’ll find peace in others’ joy.” We strode to our precious tree and sat beside each other in the stillness. Her seeds had fallen early – they were crisp like toast. Grandpa swept some kernels into his hardy hands and flung them high; they rained down like tiny winged horseshoes…
“A Sugar Maple seed carries partners, a boy and a girl. See?” Every Sunday walk included lessons in nature – but I didn’t mind. “Through mighty gales and sweltering heat, they are bound.
“If they break apart?”
Grandpa culled a samara and split it, “Then it was meant to be.” He blew its parts into the wind, “Sometimes, a seedling flies higher alone.”
He died that spring.
…
Ma daubed at the grief on my face, “the foliage is striking this year.”
Our maple stood prodigious, her branches reaching out like a prayer. I perched beneath her.
There’s such betrayal in her eyes…
The leaves crunched like paper under my feet.
But suspicion is folly…and sinful…
To the right, a silver hare peeked around a mossy stump then continued grazing.
I ambled away but glimpsed over my shoulder to behold the elfin critter, carousing under our tree.
“Enjoy.” I grinned. A sole seedling danced in the solace.
…
And my wife bedded down with her lover.
Chad Broughman
July 2014 | back-issues, fiction
No Good Deed
He might have been twenty-five, or fifty. His face was so dirty it was impossible to tell.
Mayra first saw him picking through a pile of litter near her dormitory. His purposeful search stopped with the discovery of a half-eaten cheeseburger. Horrified, Mayra watched the burger travel from the grass to the man’s mouth and disappear in two bites.
Her friend Lauren, a social-work major, said, “That’s Big Bill. Shelters don’t take him because he’s usually drunk, but he’s harmless.”
He’s still a person with dignity, thought Mayra, who tried hard to see the spiritual beauty in everyone. She gave him a ten. He thanked her.
“You’re just enabling him,” Lauren rebuked.
“But someone’s got to help.”
And she did, organizing a benefit concert and convincing the university to hire Bill as a janitor. When Bill stepped into the entrance of his new apartment, reporters were there to capture the moment. Conscious of the spotlight, he examined the secondhand furniture and full pantry with stoic gratitude.
Mayra chose to major in journalism after reading the feature article and deciding she could do better. A year later she won an internship at the local newspaper.
She interviewed Bill and discovered he was homeless again and unemployed. His breath reeked of vodka. She choked back her heartbreak, filed the story, and resolved to forget.
Two days later, she received an email.
Thank you so much for writing about Bill Arnolds. I’ve been searching for him for years. He’s my son.
Guilt
“Joe, get rid of that gum! You’re goin’ to church!”
Joe extracted the pink blob and smashed it into the coin slot of the parking meter, then ran to catch up with his mother.
His older sister Maggie scolded him. “That was nasty. God will get you for that.”
During Mass, Father Mayhew opened a birdcage and released two doves. As they escaped toward the open window, one defecated on Joe’s head.
Maggie elbowed him. “I told you. That was God.”
No, Joe thought, that was just a bird. And for that, he felt guiltier than he’d ever felt before.
Anna Zumbro
