Spring Fevers
Copyright 2012 Matt Sinclair
Cover design by Calista Taylor
Book design by R.C. Lewis
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
Introduction
First Kiss by Mindy McGinnis
The Haricots Verts by J. Lea Lopez
The Idea Exchange by R.S. Mellette
Connected by MarcyKate Connolly
Annabelle by Cat Woods
The Adventures of Sasquatch by J. Lea Lopez
The Pit by A.M. Supinger
Dreams by Robb Grindstaff
Step Zero by Matt Sinclair
The Tree of Life by A.M. Supinger
Anything for Will by Yvonne Osborne
Resolution by S.Q. Eries
Only by Moonlight by A.M. Supinger
Remy and Charlie by Yvonne Osborne
The Elysar Sea by Matt Sinclair
The Evolution of Love by Robb Grindstaff
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Introduction
There’s an old Irish saying I love: bionn gach tasu lag. It means every beginning is weak. Things will improve, or they’ll languish and die. In my strange way, I find the saying filled with hope.
Relationships come and go. Some bloom into the most important friendships and loves that we ever know. Others pass like faces on the bus.
When Cat Woods and I began discussing ideas for this anthology, we thought it would be nice to publish stories about relationships of all sorts: love, requited and unrequited; friendships discovered and lost; family in its many guises. Writers, myself included, tend to be quite familiar with bittersweet emotions, and the stories we received were rarely warm or fuzzy. And we were reminded that love is not necessarily about romance.
Spring Fevers is a collection of the most memorable moments and characters we met. I thank all those writers who shared their tales. I hope you find these stories compelling and provocative, and I encourage you to look at the biographies of each writer to learn more about what compels them to write. While some of them have been published numerous times before, others are seeing their work published for the first time.
Spring is the time of new beginnings, new life, new love. And fevers can result in pain, unexpected visions, and an appreciation for health and normalcy. We open with a story that excited me from the beginning. In Mindy McGinnis’s “First Kiss,” we find a young woman whose love life promises to be fraught with hope and pain. The closing story, Robb Grindstaff’s “Evolution of Love,” takes science and faith on a speed date. And when they see the light … well, I’ll let you discover for yourself.
— Matt Sinclair
First Kiss by Mindy McGinnis
Out where I live, you hear a siren and it's coming for someone you know.
The day Brandon Telford died, I heard the long, wailing rise and fall across the evening mist while I helped Mom pull laundry from the line, the dry cornstalks in the fields around us doing nothing to soften the shrilling scream. My mother's grip slipped on a clothespin as it snapped shut, sending it spinning off into the overgrown green of our lawn, never to be recovered.
Sirens still do that to her.
She won't walk over the well cover, either.
"Where's it headed?" I asked. We both strained our eyes but could see nothing, only hear the peal that echoed off everything but seemed to come from the east.
"Is it Fern? She might've slipped again." I offered something innocuous.
"No." She shook her head. "Too far."
"Might be the new place the Jeffersons built. She's due any day now with the baby, you know."
Mom whisked the last t-shirt from the line, anxious to get indoors and away from the sound of danger. "That siren didn't sound like it meant anything good."
"I don't think it sounds different whether they're coming for a baby or a body," I countered. She shot me a look that told me I would've done better to keep it to myself.
The night the sirens had come for me, I'd already been in the old well shaft a good twelve hours, the kneecap of my left leg pressed against my cheek, the other leg dangling beneath me. Both my arms were pinned to my sides. I must've been kicking as I fell to end up stuck like that, a wine cork keeping the buried gases of the earth safely at bay.
Even at that depth, the sirens had found my ears, slipping past the dirt and the roots and the milling worms to let me know someone was coming for me. Someone more efficient than my poor mother had been, anyway. Her tears had gained momentum as they fell, so by the time they reached my upturned face, they'd struck like warm hail. I could do nothing more than flinch when they hit, but asking her to go away seemed a bit harsh.
More than a decade later, I'm still mastering the art of talking to Mom without hurting her feelings.
"I think it's the Telford place," she said as we made our way to the house, full laundry baskets balanced on our hips. "Their boy is about your age, right?"
"Two years older."
Mom's eyebrows pinched together as she held the screen door open for me. "Wasn't he seeing your friend Jess?"
"Not anymore," I corrected. "That went south."
She looked to the east once more, where the pulsating red and white lights bounced off the twisted black tops of the trees in the Telford front yard.
"Hope it's nothing serious," Mom said. "For Jess' sake."
"They broke up," I repeated, dropping my basket onto the hardwood floor.
We folded the laundry in silence, neat squares of washcloths, long rectangles for dishrags, and piles of our own clothes that we never bothered folding before hanging them in our closets. Another squad came, this one blowing past our house and sending Mother out to the front yard, hand to her mouth.
She's never learned how to control panic, something I've had on auto-pilot from the womb, it seems. Mom had told me the doctors were shocked I didn't cry when I slipped from her warmth into the cold, sterile light of the delivery room. I suppose that's a gene that must've come to me through Dad, though it failed him at least once in his life. I guess it might be specific to life-threatening situations, which getting your girlfriend pregnant doesn't qualify as. I don’t have the luxury of asking him how our shared stoicism works; I’ve never met the man.
With only one parent in my life, I should've clutched onto Mom, but falling down the well had starkly illuminated the differences between us. Once she fulfilled the initial obligation of finding me, she didn't have much else to offer. Her voice, thick with tears, carried down to me, and that in itself had been an escape from the closeness of everything but the existence of very little. Her lack of control caused an odd calm to settle over me. I couldn't fall farther; I couldn't climb. I had time to think, and even something to eat, if it had been possible to bring the cluster of grapes still clutched in my hand up to my mouth.
When the fire truck got there, somebody had the big idea to drop the hose down to me, but since my arms were pinned, there wasn't much I could do other than bite it. I tried to yell up to them that my arms were stuck, but my voice ricocheted, coming back down to inform me that my arms were stuck. Some genius dropped me a walkie-talkie, but all that did was bounce off my face and rest on my shoulder. It proceeded to ask me, with a fair amount of static and the occasional break-in of the local AM channel, if I was all right, which was so ridiculous I probably wouldn't have answered even if I could.
Finally, someone intelligent had tied two tin cans together and dropped one down to me. I could talk, I could hear, I didn't have to press a button. I would've been profoundly grateful, except whoever did it was so excited about their bright idea they didn't rinse out the can. There's a nice big piece of pork from a can of Pork 'n' Beans stuck on my nose in the newspaper pictu
re to prove it. That and a black eye from the damn walkie-talkie.
I looked scared in the picture, which was just as well. People expected a five-year old who'd been rescued from a well shaft to look that way. Turned out I didn’t have to fake it after something brushed up against me. From below. Most people assumed that the claustrophobia was the worst part, so I let them think it. I didn't tell them the worst part was discovering the space beneath me.
Mom came back inside, brushing a few stray tears from her face. "It looks bad, honey. Three squads now."
"Okay," I said, tossing the last of my t-shirts onto the misshapen pile of clothes.
"I understand if you don't want to talk about it, if it makes you think about—"
"Yeah, I don't want to talk about it," I said. I took my laundry and headed up the stairs to my room.
They hadn't let me not talk about it for awhile—cops, doctors, shrinks, my mother. As if stringing words together into sentences, or using only the black crayons out of the packs of sixty-four, would actually help anyone.
I couldn't draw what I hadn't seen, and there wasn't a color for nothing.
That's what had been underneath me. My five-year-old brain had finally processed the fact that my loose leg was swinging to pass the time until my rescuers got to me. It swung out into nothing, jauntily ticking away the seconds, blissfully unaware that its very freedom meant something was horribly wrong down there in the dark.
The limitlessness of the nothing beneath had sent a shock wave through my little brain, causing me to cry out into my lifeline, the Pork 'n' Beans can shuddering with the force of my shout. The man on the other end had reassured me that everything would be all right, they were drilling a shaft parallel to me and would be there within minutes, if I could just hold on—or if I wanted to talk. I didn't have a lot to say other than four-letter words I wasn't supposed to know, and "There's a piece of hot dog on my face and nothing underneath me," so I kept my mouth shut, the fear firmly clamped inside. Seconds before the invasive light of a headlamp broke through the earth beside me, I realized that Nothing was preferable to Something.
I don't know if it'd been there all along, watching my swinging foot with curiosity, or if it was only passing along its subterranean world, oblivious to the fact that I'd landed in it like a falling star. But it felt like an acknowledgement when it tugged on my foot, a recognition of my existence, or an attempt to be recognized itself.
The first thing I said when they pulled me up was, "It took my grapes."
Which was quite true. My little fist had curled protectively around the clump, some primordial sense wanting to Fight since I couldn't Flight. But the tug that had started with my foot moved on to my hand and I had known I didn't want it to keep going, like the boa constrictor in the song that Mrs. Johnson made us sing every week.
Mrs. Johnson still forces kindergarteners through to the inevitable end. They were making overly dramatic gulping noises as I ushered a tear-stained Jess through the halls just a week before, past wings we weren't supposed to be near in an attempt to find her some privacy. Somewhere like the primary section, where tears meant your puppy had died. No one there would think that Jess had found out the hard way some boys don't stop when you tell them to.
I plunked my laundry basket onto my unmade bed and went to the window. Squads still littered the Telfords' front lawn, but their lights were dead, the sirens silenced. Whatever emergency they were called to had been handled, or resolved itself.
My own ambulance ride had been anti-climactic, any sense of urgency undercut by my adamant denial that I wasn't hurt in the first place. My mother hyperventilated and passed out beside me, her clawed hand curled around my grimy one. The medics focused on her, which made them feel useful.
Once I was securely tucked into a bed at the hospital, I curled into a ball and faced the window, relishing the sight of the stars. Mom collapsed into a chair by the long windows, exhaustion pulling her down into sleep along with some assistance in pill-form from a sympathetic nurse.
The single sheet they'd given me had been thin, and I shivered as I watched a spider on some mysterious mission cross the window inches from my nose. I blew on him, unable to fight some inexplicable child impulse. His legs rolled towards his abdomen and he dropped to the radiator with a tiny metallic noise, as dead as the mummified flies he joined there. I didn't think much of it until the next day, when my flowers began to wilt. At least, the ones I had pressed against my face did.
The psychiatrist told Mom that my reluctance to let her touch me wasn't all that unusual after having been trapped for so long. I needed my space, he said. I suppose she kept telling herself that as the years passed, spreading the word so there were no awkward moments at family reunions when someone came in for a hug and I shoved them away. As I got older, I imagined the scenes playing out in my distant relatives' houses. "Remember the girl who fell down the well? Don't try to touch her. She's still a little bit … different."
And I was, and I am, and I've apologized for the small moments when I've forgotten. The tiny kiss I bestowed on my new kitten that resulted in a shallow hole in the side yard the next morning. The one time I left out a half-finished drink and Mom downed it, falling terribly and inexplicably ill. My pest-free garden full of dead plants.
Whatever dark gift my mysterious friend bestowed on me, it is fading. I now have to spit on things to kill them, and the maple near my bedroom window budded for the first time in a decade this past spring. The few tentative hugs I've given my mother haven't caused a relapse of the mysterious toxin that filled her blood screens.
An ambulance pulled away from the Telfords', passing our house with its lifeless burden, siren silent, lights out. I put my hand to the windowpane as it went by, holding on to the memory of my first kiss.
The Haricots Verts by J. Lea López
"Why don't they just say green beans?"
You look across the table at him through eyelashes and candlelight. See if you can make him understand.
"'Haricots Verts, the thinnest, sweetest, most delicate variety of French green beans. Everything thin and pretty deserves a special place of honor, a fancy title."
You fumble with the water glass, fingers uncoordinated. He's watching as you look down through the clear liquid and ice cubes; through the water, your fingers appear as thick as they feel. What does he see when he looks at you?
"You know the haricots verts."
"I know what?" He laughs at you, softly, nervously.
"You know who the haricots verts are. The homecoming queen, the guy with the slick tongue and Daddy's money. I bet you knew one in high school, or maybe college. She was completely out of your league, but you asked her out anyway. Right?"
He sits back in his chair, looking past you, over your shoulder, and it's your turn to chuckle.
"Even after she turned you down, you still let her copy your class notes every time she asked, didn't you?"
His eyes meet yours again, a little colder this time, less twinkle.
Apologize. Tell him it was only a joke.
The waiter interrupts by announcing your entrees and setting your plates in front of you. It looks beautiful, as it should, haricots verts and all.
"I guess you never had any problem getting your own haricots verts?" He doesn't sound too annoyed. Only slightly. "Always had any guy you wanted, no doubt."
He holds your gaze for a long time, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. He's waiting for your answer. You shake your head.
Tell him he's wrong. Tell him you're more the canned string bean kind of girl and you know it. The ones that inevitably turn all children against vegetables—all perfectly the same stout size, always too mushy, with a bitter, tinny flavor. They could never hold their own next to haricots verts. Tell him you never tried.
You push your pretty little vegetables around the plate. Tell him you would have let him copy your class notes, too. Tell him:
"I should’ve ordered mashed potatoes."
The Idea Exchange by R.S. Mellette
"We need to return to the McCarthy era."
Jerry Falwell 1980
"There's no such thing as a constitutional right to privacy."
Pat Robertson 1984
"Allahu Akbar."
Various Suicide Bombers 1990s-Present
"So, what are you doing this weekend?"
At sixteen, those are hard words to say. Particularly to the girl you've been dreaming of all year. Peter had trouble keeping his voice in control.
"Nothing much," she said. "Some of the girls are going to a movie on Saturday."
"Sounds like fun."
"Yeah, loads."
Her manner gave away that it was not her idea of a good time. He noticed, was encouraged by it, but could only bring himself to say, "Well, see ya."
Her face fell. "Yeah, see ya."
That was Friday. By Sunday's rainy afternoon, Peter had grown tired of the ridicule he'd tortured himself with over his conversation with Linda, the object of his affection. He needed a new idea, a new approach to get close to her. But it was a Sunday, and this was the South, so the Idea Exchange was closed. Damned Blue Laws. All he could do until it opened was flip through his old ideas to see what he either hadn't tried or what he might exchange on Monday.
First—he was cool. "Never let your emotions show." Rule One. That was a keeper.
Second—pay more attention to yourself than to her. That one he wasn't sure about, but it seemed to work for other guys.
Next—don't talk about anything serious. Girls hate that. He got that idea from his friends in the computer club at school, along with the old standard, "Do as I say, not as I do."
Other than the basic social rules anyone learned by the age of sixteen, that was about it as far as girls were concerned. Most of these ideas he'd picked up in the streets and from watching jocks. They always seemed to be so good with girls. At least they always had them around. Peter wasn't sure why. They did lots of things that he knew couldn't help, like drinking until they got sick, beating up their friends, or both. Peter wasn't ready to try those yet. Nor was he interested in having his body smashed to pieces four days a week playing football. Been there, done that, had the tailbone injury to prove it.
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