Twisting Topeka

by Lissa Staley



  Annette Hope Billings, Annabelle Corrick, Jamie Crispin,

  Aimee L. Gross, Ian Hall, Reaona Hemmingway,

  Duane L. Herrmann, Miranda Ericsson Kendall,

  C.R. Kennedy, Diana Marsh, Roxanna Namey, Vernon Neff,

  Craig Paschang, Marian Rakestraw, Leah Sewell,

  Lissa Staley, Paul Swearingen, and S. R. Thompson

  Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library

  Topeka, Kansas

  Twisting Topeka is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  Project Organizer: Lissa Staley

  Project Organizer: Miranda Ericsson

  Consulting Editor: Marian Rakestraw

  Copy Editor: Bethany McGuire

  Book Layout: Ian Hall and Reaona Hemingway

  Interior Illustration: Lana Grove

  Cover Design: Michael Perkins

  The Community Novel Project is a work that is collaboratively conceptualized, written, illustrated, edited, published and marketed by members of our local writing community. Learn more at tscpl.org/novel.

  Copyright © 2016 Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-10: 1535596287

  ISBN-13: 978-1535596282

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR TWISTING TOPEKA

  “A rich collection of talent and imagination. The diversity of the stories is stunning, but they share one thing in common--each one will make you think.”

  —R.L. Naquin, author of the Monster Haven series

  “An eclectic collection of stories that will be entertaining for fans of short form literature.”

  —James Young, author of Acts of War

  “TWISTING TOPEKA—time travel, tricks / turbulent & terrifying times / tunnels / tragedy, treasure, triumphs / trysts & twists—NOT your typical Topeka tales.”

  —L.J. Williams, author of The Crystal Egg

  “The 18 short stories in this book twist the past and warp the future, challenging the reader to imagine ‘what if?’”

  —Angel Edenburn, author of Night Blind

  “Welcome to a world where nothing is as it seems. The stories, characters, and prose flow from each story like interwoven chains. Authors turn Kansas history upside down and inside out, giving us alternate timelines and new spins on the ordinary. Fellow Topekans, watch out! History is about to get twisted.”

  —Romualdo R. Chavez, author of El Vampiro

  Twisting Topeka

  Contents

  Foreword

  1.What Fate OrdainsDiana Marsh

  2.Native SonMarian Rakestraw

  3.The Printed WordMiranda Ericsson Kendall

  4.Tovarishch O’SullivanCraig Paschang

  5.Test YearJamie Crispin

  6.Proclaim the New NameDuane L. Herrmann

  7.Cleansing WatersC.R. Kennedy

  8.As Mercy Would Have ItAnnette Hope Billings

  9.Underground ArkReaona Hemmingway

  10.Shake, Rattle and RollRoxanna Namey

  11.Black BlizzardVernon Neff

  12.A Library for Every KidS. R. Thompson

  13.The Jesse Owens EffectIan Hall

  14.Happiness is a Cold PistolPaul Swearingen

  15.Psychic ShiftAnnabelle Corrick

  16.TunnelsLeah Sewell

  17.Love and FriendshipLissa Staley

  18.Dance with the DevilAimee L. Gross

  Afterword

  Author Biographies and Interviews

  Also Available

  Foreword

  On the eve of my heart catheterization I felt anxiety, not on account of my health, but because I was afraid I would miss a presentation on editing the novel. It was the program of the library’s 2016 series for writers that I most wanted to hear. But alas, the doctor came to tell me I had only months to live. We moved to Paris. A fellow writer translated my novel into French and I hers into English, and I left my husband an inconsolable millionaire.

  Oh, did I mention that that happened in an alternate timeline?

  In our own timeline, I merely missed the presentation and the story deadline, but in that version the reader also misses out on the suspense and drama of my triumph and death. In this anthology, Twisting Topeka, the writers have twisted the past or the present and made fascinating results appear when they asked “What if….?” It’s surprising how many of them have taken a small real-life incident as the starting point for their fictions.

  The group that writes the Community Novel has major input on the direction the work takes. The writers at the planning meeting considered a long list of themes, and chose this one because it narrowed the focus enough to make the book interesting and characteristic, without limiting the reach of the writers’ imaginations. Kansas, maybe Topeka, maybe even the library- which turns out to have a snarky alternative history of its own in “A Library For Every Kid.” Another, unexpected library appears in the elegiac “The Printed Word.” Topeka’s mental health institutions feature in three stories: the supernatural prose poem “Tunnels,” “Psychic Shift,” in which the chaos butterfly gets a workout in a garden at Menninger’s, and “Cleansing Waters,” which divides its setting between there and Gage Park and drops some famous names. The State Capitol is the setting for “Native Son,” in which John Steuart Curry pulls a moving fast one, and for ambiguous, layered “Tovarisch O’Sullivan.”

  Ordinary Topekans are menaced by death in the cynical “Happiness Is a Cold Pistol” and the tender “As Mercy Would Have It.” A girl makes a hasty choice in the chilling SF story “Test Year.” Bureaucracy is the villain in the delightful Austen homage “Love and Friendship.” No one chose the Pentecostal origin story, but Kansans get religion surprisingly in “Proclaim the New Name.”

  Turning our attention to the wider world, we see a presidential candidate undone by one unconsidered act. A small piece of tech changes the space program drastically in the vividly imagined “What Fate Ordains.” Supporting the troops leads to trouble in the WWII-set “Dance with the Devil.” “Underground Ark” has echoes of “The Stand” and “A Boy and his Dog,” but it’s merely what many people might have chosen. Of course Nature has a say in a couple of stories. In the flash fiction “Shake, Rattle and Roll” the end is inevitable; in “Black Blizzard” the lost opportunities sting as the tragedy slowly unfolds.

  Nonetheless this is a pretty cheerful book, and one we hope you will enjoy. In another timeline you might read my story for this project. A grown-up Dorothy, who never went to Oz, has always had odd and disturbing dreams….

  Betsy McGuire

  Topeka, KS

  2016

  What Fate Ordains

  Diana Marsh

  “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”

  Excerpt from undelivered speech prepared for President Richard Nixon in case of an Apollo 11 disaster.

  July 20, 1969

  The rocket hits the ground hard enough to snap in two; you join it a second later. You, at least, stay in one piece, even if your cheek throbs. When you look up, Claire Hooper stands over you, bent nearly in half at the waist. “Take it back,” she says. Her fists are poised in front of her and she shakes one at you as she speaks. “Take it back right now, or else.” Her eyes are narrow green slits slicing into you.

  You scramble to your feet. “Will not!” You kick one dusty rocket half at her. “It’s true! Not my fault it’s true.”

  “You take it back or I’ll pop you another one!”

  Two adults run out of the house. Claire’s dad reaches the two of you first. He grabs her around the waist and hauls her off her feet. Your dad stands i
n front of you, tanned, meaty arms crossed over his chest. “What the hell are you doing, Joey? Picking fights with girls now?”

  “She picked the fight!”

  “He deserved it!” Claire squirms in her dad’s stringy-armed hold. You know without a doubt if she could get loose she’d sock you again for tattling.

  “Claire Alice Hooper, you stop that right now.” Mr. Hooper looks at you, then the broken rocket next to you. “This over that busted thing? You breaking toys now, Joey?”

  “I broke that.” Claire sounds almost proud about it, too. “It’s over him being a dufus.”

  “Who’re you calling a dufus? You’re a dufus!” You look up at your dad, convinced if anyone will see the logic of your argument, it’s him. “Girls can’t be astronauts, right Dad? They don’t allow dumb ol’ girls in space.”

  Claire lurches against Mr. Hooper’s tenuous hold. “They’d let a girl in space before they’d let a dufus like you anywhere near it.”

  “All right, you two.” Your dad grips your shoulder. It doesn’t hurt. It’s not the “you’ve got a whipping in your future” grip; it’s the “just hold up” one. You know the difference by now. “Let’s just head inside, all right? Almost time for the big event.”

  “And you two get yourselves settled, or neither of you will get to watch.” Mr. Hooper sets Claire back on her feet and swats her backside to get her moving toward the house. You follow at a safe distance—beyond arm or foot reach. The dads bring up the rear, talking about “rambunctiousness” and how you’ll both grow out of it soon. Twelve seems to be the agreed-upon age for when kids should be past that stage. Whatever “that stage” is. Mr. Hooper hopes the two of you survive the next two years to see it.

  “Damned kids,” he says.

  “Damned kids,” your dad agrees. “How about another beer?”

  Claire heads for the kitchen, where the neighborhood women are gathered, gossiping over cheese dip and Mrs. Hooper’s fruit cocktail. Moms are always more receptive to the silly things little girls think than dads. The men head out onto the back patio, where the beer coolers and crass language await. Every now and then, you hear a cheer or a boo from the backyard. Which depends on whether the baseball gods are being kind to the White Sox or the brand new Kansas City Royals at the time. You detour to the living room - you’re a Cardinals fan, after all - and grab a seat in front of the television before any of the little kids can steal the best spots. Dad bought a brand new set for the occasion; it’s the first color T.V. your family’s ever owned and involved a trip to White Lakes Mall to get. “Something this momentous, you want to really see it,” he said. Your mom has already covered the top in family photos to block the “ugly” rabbit ears. Also makes it harder for you to get at them again. It’s not your fault they’re so fun to mess with.

  “D’ya think it’s gonna work, Joey?” Tommy Hitchens settles next to you with his G.I. Joe clutched tight in his hands. Tommy’s only eight.

  “Course it’ll work. Took off, didn’t it? Landing’s easy. Landing’s just falling on purpose.” This sounds like perfect logic to you. You deliver it with all the authority of your extra two years on the planet and a firm nod as backup.

  The living room is stifling, even with both windows open. There’s only an occasional breeze, and when one does manage to blow through the window it’s nothing but hot air. Kansas summers are like that; it didn’t take ten of them for you to figure that out. As you sit there, watching Walter Cronkite talk over footage of the launch, “Sweet Caroline” playing lowly from the radio in the kitchen, you pull at the collar of your t-shirt and wish you were still outside, sprawled out in the shade of the elm in the front yard. Nothing blocks the breeze out there. Maybe one day they’ll invent T.V.s you can take outside, just for days like this. You wonder if the cord would stretch at least to the flower bed. Could take the window screen out. Sure, some flies would get in and your mom’s roses might get a little squished. They’ll grow back, though! And didn’t Dad say this is an historic moment that can’t be missed? Roses can be sacrificed for that, right?

  You’re still pondering that when Claire plops down beside you. She’s got two sweating bottles of Coke in hand. One she reluctantly holds out to you.

  “Your mom says put it against your eye,” she says. A few seconds later, she follows that up with a reluctant, “I’m sorry.” She huffs out the apology in a quiet, noncommittal rush and doesn’t look at you while delivering it.

  “Yeah. Me too. I guess.”  

  “Only because you got punched.”

  “Only because you got in trouble for punching me.”

  She shrugs. You shrug, too. For a minute, you sit and watch the same footage of the astronauts walking to the scaffolding and the rocket lifting off from the launch pad that WIBW’s replayed all afternoon. Tommy watches the two of you instead; when you catch him doing it, he looks down at his G.I. Joe.

  “Gonna have a really swell black eye from it, though,” Claire finally says. You reach up and poke at the sore spot beneath your eye.

  “Think so?” you ask with a wince. She nods. “Anyone asks, you weren’t the one who gave it to me. Right?”

  “Maybe.” She grins around the mouth of her bottle before taking a long drink. You wonder if the bruising will look gorier if you don’t ice it. Makes sense, in the way anything else does. “If you admit girls can go to space too.”

  You give her a sideways glance and mentally kick yourself. She managed to trick you somehow. Your dad warned you about that. Girls get trickier as they get older. You mutter “fine” into your bottle, but you don’t believe it. Don’t need the rest of the neighborhood knowing you got hit by a girl, either, though.

  The screen changes. The rows of desks and men in white shirts and loosened ties you’ve seen before every previous launch replaces the looping footage and Mr. Cronkite’s commentary. All the NASA people are staring at the big screen in front of them. You can almost make out the colorful rows of numbers stretched sideways across it.

  “Mom! Dad!” You and Claire both yell at the same moment. “It’s happening!”

  The adults rush in, chattering. The moms have glasses of wine with big chunks of fruit floating in it. The dads have their cans of beer. You snuck a sip of wine once when your parents had Claire’s over to play Gin Rummy. Maybe the fruit is supposed to make it taste better? It was pretty gross on its own. So is beer, though. Learned that the same day.

  You watch the grown-ups struggle for a minute over empty couch space like it’s a round of musical chairs. The losers settle for standing behind it. Your dad claims his La-Z-Boy like it’s his throne; your mom perches on the chair arm. In the excitement, no one’s turned off the radio. No one really cares that Stevie Wonder is serenading the empty dining room.

  “Look at how peach they all look,” Mrs. Dudley from down the street says, leaning heavy against the back of the couch. Her glass threatens to tip over and dump wine over Mrs. Hooper’s head.

  “That’s prime color there, Dale,” Mr. Groves chimes in. You don’t care about the color. You don’t care how peach any of them look. You’re waiting for the cameras on the rocket to take over. You’ve watched clips of Neil and Buzz and Michael in their tiny command module, shaving and eating and all that normal stuff. Now you want to see them land. You want to see someone walk on the moon.

  The screen changes. It’s bumpy footage of a surface growing closer and closer, sometimes filling half the screen, sometimes just a corner of it. The tinny voices of Houston and the crew replace Mr. Cronkite. You nudge Claire with your elbow. She looks at you and smiles, her face pink with excitement. Her fingers wrap so tight around her Coke bottle that the tips have gone white. So have yours.

  “Eagle,” you hear one of the voices say, “You’re go.”

  “Thirty-five degrees. Seven fifty. Coming down at twenty-three.” That’s Buzz Aldrin. You can only guess what most of it means, but you know it’s Buzz doing the talking.

  “Seven hundred and fif
ty feet to the surface. Degrees are the angle they’re coming down,” your dad says, smiling. “Twenty-three feet a second. That’s how fast they’re descending.”

  “Seven hundred feet. Twenty-one, thirty three degrees.”

  “Pretty rocky area,” the voice you’ve come to recognize as Neil Armstrong’s says. He doesn’t sound concerned. You know what worried adult sounds like by now; you’ve heard it enough in your mom’s voice whenever they talk about money. Like when your dad announced he’d bought a new TV when they’d just argued over the cost of your sister’s braces.

  “Six hundred feet. Down at nineteen.”

  “Eagle, check your gauge again. We have you coming in hotter.” The view on the screen is shakier now. The ground is rushing toward the camera faster than a minute ago. Houston sounds like your mother talking about orthodontists. Houston is worried.

  “Gauge holding steady at nineteen, Houston. Don’t see any…”

  Audio and video cut out all at once. The screen fills with static. You turn your head to look back at your dad. “Something wrong with the TV, Dad?”

  “Maybe,” he says. He gets up and wedges himself in behind the set to adjust the rabbit ears. He fiddles with one, then the other, bending them each as far as they’ll go in either direction. “Screen look any better?” he asks, but it’s an act. He’s lying. You can tell, because you’ve heard him lie before. Like the night he told your mom he was at the movies with you all afternoon. He dropped you off at the Fox Theater with money enough to keep you in movie tickets and ice cream for most of the day and came back smelling like perfume three shows later.

  “I don’t think it’s the T.V.,” Mr. Groves says. ”Listen. Can still hear Houston.”

  “Eagle, respond. Eagle, this is Houston. Respond.” There’s not a single sound. Not on the T.V., not in the room. All you hear is the creaking of sweaty legs shifting on vinyl seat cushions. No one’s breathing – you’re pretty sure a dozen people are all holding their breath, yourself included. “Columbia, Houston. We’ve lost all data with Eagle, over.”