"From Homer, you mean. Everyone thought it was a myth but it wasn't."
"Ja, and you, you are writing true things in your poems?
"Well,” I said, thinking about it, “I guess so, true for me anyway."
"Ja, just so. If they are being true for you, they vill be true for eferybody."
I pondered Kurt's logic; it would be nice to be able to believe that.
"Why are you carrying that axe?” I asked, finally getting up the nerve.
"For the bears."
"Ah, bears...” I was sure there hadn't been bears here since the last Ice Age. “I'll bet they don't give you much trouble then."
"Nein, they are knowing I have the axe. They smell it, ja?"
Or the dead wolf, I thought.
Later I went to Bar Anita for a cerveza. The whole village was gathered there, gaping. The moon was on television; television was on the moon. Neil Armstrong was taking a giant step for mankind. I wondered if he'd seen the hare.
Walking home in the dark, I was nervous.
I didn't have an axe.
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Scenes
Chris Fox
Punk-rock mimes crashed the Spoken Word festival I'd organized.
They detailed, through gesture alone, their mutual entrapment in a box called
Society.
I guess I prefer irony in less obvious forms:
remember the time we rented that cannibal documentary and my VCR ate the tape?
We were so happy then—two outcasts, two oranges ostracized from the rhyming dictionary of the world...
Now I simply drink my orange juice alone as childish ideas and childish words struggle with Life's childproof cap.
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Cat Whisker Wound
Christina Manucy
On Monday, Jack showed up at lunch and tossed a clear plastic sandwich bag in front of me. “Here.” He hung over us, in wrinkled T-shirt and jeans, his shoulders curved in a perpetual slouch.
Stacey kicked me under the table.
I must've been staring. “Um, thanks."
"For your birthday,” he said.
The bag looked empty. No, there were a dozen or more flaxen strands, the size of ... “What...?"
He said, “Cat whiskers. I thought you'd like them.” Then Jack walked away. Fast. People swept from his path
"That's creepy,” said Stacey.
"Yes,” I agreed.
"He's creepy,” said Stacey.
Later, I took the whiskers out of the plastic bag, and taped them (in a tiny bundle) to the inside corner of my notebook.
* * * *
Jack watched me and I couldn't ignore him. So I ignored myself instead. The pang pulling at my diaphragm I tamped down, vacuum-sealed, expelling air until I sounded like Stacey, talking about whatever. Blah, blah, blah.
I soliloquized and Stacey rhapsodized, non-sequitur theater. “Did you see her hair...? I have the dumbest math teacher in the world ... You were crazy last weekend ... Like the time I saw John Waters ... I had carrots and a Snickers bar for lunch..."
In the drama of the moment, Jack proffered a tightly-folded sonnet. I read his confession after class and taped it face down in the back of my notebook, next to the whiskers. Stacey fumed: I wouldn't show her what he'd written.
* * * *
The following day I asked Jack to quit smoking. Jack watched me, but I was watching his cigarette drop to the ground. He crushed it under the heel of his boot.
* * * *
In the parking lot, his friends prowled around me. I would've felt no stranger, no more displaced, had Jack joined me at lunch to chat about clothes and hair. They must've smelled my fear.
His friend approached, bristling. He blew smoke out of the side of his mouth, away from my face. I suppressed a cough.
"Why'd you bring her?” His gaze ricocheted off Jack, landed back on me; his eyes narrowed. “You're feeble. But that's cool. I can see. We're all insane. You, me, him,” he jerked his head in Jack's direction.
And he sliced me neatly down the center, split me in two.
* * * *
At his home, Jack told me in awkward sounds that he saw only me. His hand touched my waist and I looked up. For a moment I was dizzy, as if I'd been standing still before a mirror and seen my own reflection move. I forgot not to breathe. When we kissed, he smelled like the woods at night. I wanted that wildness for myself. My arms wrapped around him. The cut his friend had made began to tear.
* * * *
Stacey said, “Is it true that you're dating?"
"I guess,” I said. I had known I was weak, bifurcated.
"It's almost the end of the year,” she said.
I shrugged. “I know. It won't last."
"Perhaps it will."
* * * *
I smelled the trees, the damp earth. Afterward, in the darkness, we kissed. My insides ached. I held him with one arm; I needed the other to keep from splitting apart. I gripped hard, a stranglehold. “Stay."
His head jerked up. In the gloom I saw the whites of his eyes, light escaping. For a long time, there was no sound but his panting. Then, heavy as a stone, “I will stay."
At his words, I felt power enough to ignore my fear, and that slice, until I told myself I must have imagined my weakness.
* * * *
The summer waned. The gap widened. My two half-selves stopped speaking to each other.
Once upon a time he had come to me. I don't remember when I first noticed the rope between us.
He smelled like the city; he smelled like his friend. A light flared and he lit a cigarette. I saw him out of one eye. My other eye was facing the wrong direction.
"Why?” I asked. He'd said the ashtrays in his room were his friend's, before.
He shook his head. “I can't. My friends..."
The half of me that might have understood wasn't listening. I babbled out of one side of my mouth. My words were incomprehensible; he only heard every other one. “You me. you I us be together. I that happen. a and live your ."
Smoke rose, rope burned. I was unstrung.
He leaned back, twirling the singed end of the tether. “Come with me."
Torn, afraid, I plucked out the eye that saw him and ran away.
* * * *
The empty socket was on the wrong side. Stacey didn't notice.
I said, “It's over."
"He was creepy,” she said.
* * * *
When I cried, my halves slackened together. One side of my face was wet. Tears from the missing eye fell back inside my head, filled up my lungs. My heart capsized, and bobbed on the surface. Water leaked from my mouth, my empty eye, seeped through the unhealed slice down my center.
I breathed in. Something floated in the marsh my room had become. I picked up my notebook and waded to the window, climbed onto the roof to sit in the sun. My feet left damp prints behind.
Taped inside the cover of my notebook were cat whiskers and a sonnet. I gently pulled back layers of tape. The sonnet, bleeding blue ink, was placed carefully to the side. I saw the seam where I had severed. I pierced my skin with a whisker and knotted the ends together. Down, and down, I buttoned up living flesh. The sonnet was dry. I crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it into my empty socket.
A breeze went in and out of my lungs, nesting like birds. I lay on the roof. I smelled salt water, felt warmth and open sky. One eye crinkled when I blinked. The sky was clear, cloudless.
* * * *
Your feet pound across the roof. I feel your weight vibrate through me. I smell the exhaled smoke; feel your gaze in the pause where your steps end.
"He's not here,” I say.
No answer. I turn my head. If I stretched out my arm, my fingertips could touch your bare feet.
You flick the spent cigarette in an arc over the edge of the roof. One leg crosses the other and you sit in a single, smooth movement. “Did I do that?” you ask with a nod toward my stitched
wound.
I lift my head to look down my reclining body. The edges of the wound are pink and raw. My head thumps back against the shingles. “You worried a thread that was ready to unravel,” I say.
I know you're staring at my nakedness. After a while, I look over. You lean forward. One hand reaches out to hover above my navel, above a cat whisker. “When you're ready to take those out...” Your hand moves away, rests on my forearm with a touch so light I barely feel it.
I meet your eyes. My new eye sees more clearly than the old.
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The Perfect Pair
Jenny Ashley
Lucy saw them through the window, strappy aquamarine heels with flecks of gold. They reminded her of fishing lures. She strutted inside, gestured to the shoes and the storeowner nodded, sending an employee to the back to retrieve the perfect size.
As Lucy slipped her right foot in the sling back heel, she felt a delicious thrill. The two hundred dollar price tag seemed like a sale. Everyone watching—the storeowner, the employee—remained hushed, in awe of Lucy's religious attention to the shoes. They knew this ritual well. She stopped in several times a week and never failed to leave the store with at least one new pair: platforms, Mary Janes, T-strap pumps, vivaldi slides, bellini thongs.
The storeowner and her employee agreed that Lucy was beautiful, but her most stunning feature was her feet. Her toes angled down in a perfect line. Her soles were pink and soft as a baby's. Her delicate ankles must drive men crazy, they said across the counter only moments after Lucy floated out the store.
And Lucy, Lucy of course knew this too. Why else spend all her disposable income on shoes? She could walk into a party wearing four hundred dollar pumps and men in the room would suddenly turn her way, unaware of the exact cause of their irrepressible attraction. Women would slit their eyes, unable to pinpoint the source of their envy. Men would buy her cocktails and escort her to balconies and offer to fly her to private villas on the coasts of Spain and France. They wanted to uncover what it was about her. And Lucy would twist her lips in a smile, never lowering her eyes so as to give away the secret.
Because they were her most seductive feature, she did everything to keep them looking fabulous. She went to her pedicurist twice a week. She never walked barefoot, not even on carpet. And it was practically a full time job shopping for the best shoes.
She kept her favorite pair on top of her television, their own private altar. They were red silk heels, the color of ripe cherries. She bought them in San Sebastian and was so enamored with the rich red of the satin, she contemplated buying two pair in case one was damaged or stolen in the process of international shipping. But the storeowner assured her they would arrive safely in the States as he folded the cherry shoes in gold tissue and placed them in a velvet-lined box.
Now they were the first thing she saw when she got home from work and the last thing she saw before going to bed at night. Her succulent red shoes. They sparkled on their altar, the glowing television. People were immediately drawn to them when visiting her house. And Lucy would tense up if someone gestured toward them with a compliment: What cute shoes! forcing her to dash between the person and the television so as to stop their foreign hands from marring the virgin satin.
Last week one woman asked if she could try them on and Lucy abruptly changed the subject to yogurt and asked if the woman would like some or maybe a cup of cottage cheese? It was then that Lucy realized she would have to invest in a special glass case. This pair was too precious to be exposed to the hazards of everyday life.
The carpenter came at the end of the week. She showed him to the shoes and he pulled out an arm's length of yellow measuring tape, allowing it to retract recklessly as he scratched out some numbers on paper. He was so focused: sketching ideas at her kitchen table with a sharp pencil, tapping on her wall to find studs.
In bed that night, she imagined making love to the carpenter: her hands grasping the strong shoulder muscles, her feet dangling off the bed in sparkling red heels.
The next afternoon, he brought over samples of wood and various stains and thick sheets of tinted glass: sky blue, pink rose, pale green. She answered the door in her newest pair of aquamarine heels and flexed her ankle as he walked in.
She asked if he'd like something cold to drink but he held out a piece of wood, prompting her to feel it. They ship it straight from Japan, he said. Very few trees remain. She braised her hand against his wrist as she reached for the delicate grain.
Spectacular, she said. I'm rethinking the placement of the case. What do you think about the bedroom? He followed her down the hall. I was thinking it could go here, she said. And the light in the case would go on when the bedroom lights turn off. She flicked the bedroom light off and he noticed that her closet was illuminated.
May I? He stepped forward.
She slid open the doors of her closet and they walked in. He ran his hand over the elaborate cedar shelving, admiring the carpentry. The woman admired her shoes. There were hundreds of them: each sitting at attention, waiting to be chosen.
It was then that she found herself unbuttoning her blouse. She let her skirt fall to the floor. She was wearing nothing but her open-toed, gold-flecked heels. Then she ran her hand along the finish of the shelf until it met his wrist and they breathed in the seductive scent of the cedar. The carpenter turned around and in the brilliant light of her walk-in closet, he traced his fingers down the curve of her neck to her breast, the jut of her hip to the small of her knee and down to the delicate hill of her ankle. He kneeled to unfasten the leather strap around her heel and then touched his lips to each of her perfectly painted toes.
I am going to build you so many things, he said. He was speaking to the immaculate shape of her irresistible feet.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Gears Grind Down
Sean Melican
The first thing Henry Vick did when his mother handed him the acceptance letter was to tear it in two with his greased hands and let the pieces drift with the wind. With a cry, she chased after them through the high grass. It took her a while to collect them, so that by the time she had found them Henry was finished reassembling the mower.
"I had to replace the pinions,” he said. “It'll cost us, but the crop has been good this year. Plus, Kurt said he needs to clean the gears of his mill. That would be a little extra."
Mrs. Vick's arms and face were covered in shallow scratches from the brush she'd run through. She held the letter in her hand, waving it. “Why don't you want to go?"
She was the thin fluttery type of woman that few men love but that love all men. She had seen Henry's father by candlelight after too much wine; then she had woken to see one half of the bed empty and the money lying on her dresser. Ashamed (for it had not been her intention) but not too proud, she had used the money for the chain with the green jewel she wore around her neck.
Henry lowered his head and sighed. “What did you say to them?"
"Only the truth. I told them how good you are with your hands. How you fix most anything that anyone brings to you. Look what you've just done. And Kurt doesn't just ask anyone.” She lowered the letter. She took his hand in hers. “Why don't you go? The worst that can happen is you can be expelled. And so what? If that happens, you can come back here and marry someone. You could make up any lie to tell them if you wanted."
"Who would milk the cows? Who would manage the garden? Who would come if you fell down the stairs again?"
She winced when he said this, her hand going to her hip. “I'll be fine. I could sell the house. Maybe go to work as a seamstress. I'll be fine,” she said once more.
He wanted to go. Who didn't? He could spend his whole life sowing and reaping. Marry a nice girl, have a few kids. Grow old. Die. Or he could go to the College and become something more.
"I'll tell everyone you got in, but didn't go. What then, Henry?"
It was cruel but it was enough. It took him three hours and
a lot of spilled ink to print out the carefully blocked letters.
* * * *
DEAR MR. BRIGHTMAN,
THANK YOU FOR YOUR OFFER. I HAVE DECIDED TO ACCEPT IT. I WILL BE THERE THE FIRST OF THE MONTH.
YOURS,
HENRY VICK
* * * *
The last of the month would be in three days. His mother had arranged to sell the house to a young couple looking for a good plot, which it wasn't, but the young man looked strong and honest. She had written to a friend of hers in the seamstress trade in the next town. There was always room for a new pair of hands.
She packed his bags. There were two of them but there could just as easily have been one. “For the things you bring back,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. He had to bend down so she could. She touched his eye with a cloth. “Don't you worry. I'll be right as rain.” She removed the necklace and said, “Take it. Don't argue. That money was always for you; I was just keeping it safe."
He tried to say no, but she was insistent.
He was the only one to board the coach. When the coachman stopped at a stream so the horses could drink, Henry stepped out to relieve himself in the trees. When he came back, he saw that the coachman held the door for him. Embarrassed by this display, he said, “Would it be all right if I rode with you?"
The coachman's face brightened. “Sure, young man. I could do with the company. The name's Peter.” He had to crane his neck terribly to see Henry's face.
They rode in silence for some time. Henry could think of nothing to say. Peter pulled his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes, for the sun had risen high and there were no clouds. “Where you headed, young man? Wait. Let me guess.” He waggled his finger. “Your spinster aunt is in need of a young man's strong arm to till her fields, right?” He smiled brightly, but when he saw Henry's face he said, “It's a common enough thing."
"No,” said Henry. “I know. But that isn't it at all. I'm going to the College. But I have to leave my spinster mother on her own."
"When did your father die?” said Peter, and then said, “I'm not doing very good today. I'm sorry. Please, don't tell me. I'll just be quiet now."
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 16 Page 9
