Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories

by Various

  The child took the words at face value, and beamed, running her hands down her shorts to smooth them. Gabby felt ashamed. She reached for the jar of toffees behind the counter, took a couple, and held them out.

  “Here. Just for a change from berries. And be careful around the farm. Those old buildings could have root cellars. You might fall in.”

  “I know where they are. I won’t fall.” Mandy turned with another smile, and the bell tinkled overhead as she went out. Gabby looked up at it for the first time in years, and was surprised by its whiteness, and the blueberry motif she’d painted on it by hand. She’d forgotten about that.

  The girl didn’t come again for nearly a week. Maybe Marjorie wasn’t pleased that Gabby had given the child candy. No, that was silly. It was only because the weather was so fine. A sun-dappled day offered better things to do than hang around an old woman in a lonely store. Like picking berries. It was good picking weather. She hoped Mandy wouldn’t get into any trouble with snakes or wasps. Perhaps Gabby should look for her to make sure she was all right.

  Just then the door bell chimed, and sunshine poured in.

  “Bonjour, Mademoiselle Gabby. Crème glacée, s’il vous plait. Et . . . Ah, oui. Du sucre, du pain, et du lait. Merci.”

  “Bien sûr! Your French is very good, Mandy.” She stepped toward the ice cream freezer. She knew the Simms weren’t French, but then all the children learned it in school these days, she supposed. With such a good accent, though. That was surprising.

  “French, Miss Gabby?”

  “Yes, it’s very good. Well done.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What you just said. About the ice cream and everything. Très bien.”

  The puzzlement in the child’s eyes was genuine. Gabby felt a knot of fear in her stomach. Had she only imagined it? Translated the English words in her head, somehow. Was her mind starting to play tricks on her?

  The next Thursday was wet. Mandy sat in a chair near the front window of the dépanneur with a small pad of paper on her lap, sketching in pencil. Old stock—not worth charging for. It kept the child occupied while Gabby worked. There was a ledger to update and new stock to order, even with so few customers.

  When her back became too sore to bend over the counter anymore, she yielded to her curiosity and hobbled toward the front of the store. As she looked over the child’s shoulder, her hand flew to her mouth.

  It was a sketch of a house. So familiar. And so good—where could a child of nine have learned to draw so well? Long, grey boards with swirled grain and dark knots. The portico that was too fancy for a frame bungalow, with a tell-tale of peeling paint on the crosspiece. Filigree in the window curtains.

  She knew that house. Gustave Houle’s house.

  Gustave Houle, who was a painter twice. For money, he would paint homes, whitewash fences, stain barns. For his own pleasure, he made canvases of the landscape, the simple buildings, and the simple people of Manqueville. He helped Armand learn how to draw for his architecture courses.

  God in Heaven. The child was recreating Gustave’s house—with Gustave’s own skill!

  How was it possible?

  “Where did you see that house, Mandy?”

  “In my head. I thought it was pretty. I was eating some blueberries down by the creek, where it slows down and gets a bit marshy. It’s a nice place. Lots of flowers.”

  There would be, yes. Gustave had also been a devoted gardener. Some of the seeds must have lived to try again, the hardiest ones that didn’t require care. The daffodils and day lilies maybe. The hostas—they’d spread like weeds if the deer didn’t get them.

  “Eating blueberries. Always the berries,” Gabby mused. The low bushes were at home throughout the rocky expanses of northern Ontario. They had a special fondness for burned-out clearings, where forest fires left behind acidic soil and shade-free spaces. They’d laid siege to Manqueville and then consummated their victory in its ashes.

  The berry plants drew nutrients from the earth. Could they draw other things, too? Essences of things long lost?

  The ringing above the door broke into her thoughts. It was Marjorie, come to fetch her granddaughter for dinner.

  “Thank you so much for looking after her, Gabby. I hope she hasn’t been any trouble.”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. She’s a very nice girl. And talented. Look at the sketch she made.”

  Mandy proudly displayed her work. Marjorie looked at it and gave Gabby a conspiratorial smile. “Yes, it’s very good. And it was nice of Miss Dufour to help you with it.”

  “I didn’t . . .” But Marjorie had turned away to pick up a few things in the grocery aisles. Some Hamburger Helper, Gabby noticed. Home cooking was disappearing, even here in the north country. People had other priorities. She hobbled to the cash register.

  “Amanda’s French is very good, too,” she said tentatively.

  “French?”

  “She learns it in school, does she?”

  “No, Gabby. Amanda lives in the States. They don’t teach French in the schools there. It’s too bad, really.” Too bad. Was she talking about the lack of a second language? Or an old friend who might be starting to slip a little, and imagine things? The look on her face was hard to read.

  When Mandy came again, Gabby was gruff with her. She’d been brooding over the things she might have only imagined, and over what people might be saying. All because of one little girl.

  People already talked behind her back when she went into the new town for nails or newspapers or notions. Or just to see a fresh face or two. Old maid was one of the kinder names they used when they thought she didn’t hear. But now it might be even worse. Because of a little brat and her damned blueberries!

  As soon as the thought came to her, she regretted it. Mandy had turned back to the door, disappointment like a brand on her face.

  “Wait, child. I’m sorry. Come. Sit with me.” There was a stool behind the counter—the girl mounted it with a little help. Gabby dragged her chair from the back room. They sat together, not sure where to look.

  “Tell me about the fire,” Mandy said.

  Gabby’s eyebrows lifted. Did she really want to do that? What should she reveal? Especially to a child.

  Manqueville had been a thriving town then, small but robust. Mostly lumberjack’s families and mill workers, but some others. The fire had sprung on them out of the night, sweeping in from the bush on a sudden change of wind, so there’d been no forerunner of smoke, no warning. Just hungry flames that found a feast of wood far drier than the forest, and wanted it all.

  Most of the victims had died in their beds. Or behind parlour windows, staring at the flames that entrapped them until they were overcome by smoke, if they were lucky. Women and children—the husbands were away at lumber camps. Like Papa. Gabby and her mother had been lucky because Soyer’s Pond, behind the house, was just wide enough, just deep enough. The flames arced over their heads through the dark sky as they hunched in the water up to their noses, submerging frequently to keep their hair wet.

  Armand wasn’t a lumberer. But he wasn’t killed in his home, either. One of the survivors had seen him pull his mother out of the house and run into the night, but their bodies were never found. Like so many others, they were part of the ash and rubble. The fire was so hot it consumed everything.

  That he was dead, Gabby had no doubt. Otherwise he would have come for her.

  She shook her head slowly, aware of the child watching.

  “It was bad, very bad. A lot of people died. And a lot of dreams. Let it go at that.”

  They were memories she hadn’t wanted to relive. They tasted like dust. Like blueberries.

  Day after day Gabby expected to hear the bell at the door and see Mandy’s picket fence smile again, but she didn’t come. Gabby made an excuse to drive into the new town and dropped in to the library. Marjorie looked surprised to see her. And something more. She said Amanda hadn’t been feeling well—probably too many
berries—but her smile wasn’t quite comfortable on her face.

  Gabby thanked her and left. She knew what had happened. Marjorie had kept the little girl away, afraid to entrust her any longer with a lonely old woman who might be going senile. And maybe she was right. It wasn’t sensible to believe that things like knowledge, or language, or talent could be ingested like sugar and salt. The sign of an unsound mind—it had to be.

  So she felt the summer slip away. The blueberry plants would soon be barren once more, their profusion of tiny pointed leaves turning rusty at the edges. Good riddance. Maybe that was the real message: that it was time for Gabby to be going too. Perhaps she should sell the store and move south. Somewhere. Anywhere. As she’d wanted so desperately to do all those years ago after the fire, but hadn’t. Was it simply life’s inertia that had held her back? Or because, by then, going anywhere at all had seemed so very pointless?

  Then suddenly Mandy was back. With a jingle like a fairy’s laugh, she appeared as if she’d never been away.

  “Gramma said I shouldn’t come here and bother you so much. You’re busy. But I didn’t think you’d be busy all the time. Are you?”

  “No, child. I’m not busy at all. How have you been? How are the blueberries?”

  “Not so many anymore. You have to look for them. I ate a lot this morning from some bushes at the farthest corner of the farm, where the fire didn’t go. There are some very old trees there.”

  “Yes, very old.”

  “I was thinking it would have been a wonderful place to put a library and town hall. With a beautiful clock tower. Grand and tall, with a clock face you could see from anywhere in town. And especially from a house on top of the hill. On a fancy porch with carved posts and a wrought iron railing, you’d look across a sea of rooftops under a starry sky, and catch a glimpse of the clock face in the moonlight just as the bell chimed twelve.” Her brown eyes shone with the vision.

  Gabby gasped.The child sounded just like Armand with his lofty dreams. Armand on the evening before the fire, holding her in his arms on the porch of his mother’s house and talking, talking with the fervour of the true believer. Just before Gabby had finally confessed that she didn’t want to stay there, in a house on the hill or anywhere else in Manqueville. That she felt trapped in such a small town with its small minds. Hated it, and begged for God to free her. Begged to God.

  She looked at the child in wonderment.

  “Amanda,” she said. “Do you remember where to find those bushes you ate from this morning? Could you take me to them? I . . . I have a craving.”

  “Sure.” The girl held out her hand and Gabby took it gratefully.

  The tinkling bell fell silent as the door closed behind them.

  Originally published in On Spec Spring 2012 Vol 24 No 1 # 88

  A radio broadcaster for more than thirty years now living in Sudbury, Ontario, Scott Overton’s short fiction has been published in On Spec, Neo-opsis, Penumbra and several anthologies including Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound. His first novel Dead Air (a mystery/thriller about the radio industry) is published by Scrivener Press.

  Penultimate

  F.J. Bergmann

  You can’t understand the words, of course, but you feel it

  singing, one note that lasts beyond remembrance.

  You will preserve that thought, decant it in the years to come,

  when you are old and wooden, when you are at rest.

  This is a good day; it will be like sweet juice from ripeness

  that you can savour again and again after it has fermented

  inside your brain, long after you forget who you are.

  Your pension and savings would only go so far; the

  health plan informed you there was still no fix in sight

  for some of the iffy genes you carried, making rebodying

  or rebooting “unachievable at this time.” You envisioned

  the unfinished autobiography inscribed inside your skull

  erasing itself page by page. Already there were tunes

  you could not finish, unexpected sputters of silence.

  You kissed your world goodbye. Said farewell to shadows

  cast by your native sun for the last time. Lovers had left

  you years before, moving youthward like leaves unfalling, spiralling back up to greening branches and an absence

  of seasons. So what if they had become nothing more

  than collections of altered molecules, the organic bolted

  to the mechanical, in a slurry of fuel and volition?

  You learned to live in the moment, to travel light. Always

  there was room in the immense star freighters for another

  useful, small creature to disappear. Bells rang, summoning

  you to service, as the ship caromed between planets

  with names you couldn’t pronounce, a cosmic pinball,

  silver shifting to red. Beings with unimaginable capabilities

  for kindness excused your frailties and failings.

  They asked to hear your music, wanted to know everything

  about you. Their choral harmonies encompassed and joined,

  a metaphor for communion turned into sound. As you stand

  on the glassy beach on the far side of a distant galaxy,

  listening to something like a vast chime create its tremendous

  resonances, you realize that the journey is endless,

  its destination a place where you have not yet been born.

  Originally published in On Spec Summer 2012 Vol 24 No 2 #89

  F.J. Bergmann writes poetry and speculative fiction, often simultaneously, appearing in Black Treacle, Lakeside Circus, Silver Blade, and elsewhere. Editor of Star*Line and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change; recent awards include the 2012 Rannu Prize for poetry and the 2013 SFPA Elgin chapbook award.

  Pilgrim at the Edge of the World

  Sarah Frost

  The sun sat on the horizon like a fat red egg. Kaainka squinted into the light, trying to fix every detail of this moment in his mind. Wings folded and spread. Long beaks stabbed the air. Feathers painted yellow and red burned in the sunset. This could be his last night among the People. The camp’s elders danced, singing the Song of the Ancestors. Tomorrow, Kaainka would leave the People and walk north. He would return as an adult, or not at all.

  That night, after the camp had finished singing the sun down from the sky, Kaainka found a place to rest by the campfire. The People walked all around him, dark and graceful shapes in the firelight. No one spoke to him. A red-dyed twist of antelope gut tied loosely around his neck set him apart: No longer a child, but not yet an adult, Kaainka would leave before dawn while the People slept. Until then he was only a traveler resting for the night.

  Kaainka looked up at the sky. Even dimmed by the firelight, the stars were glorious. His eyes traced the great arc of light that hung over his head. The stories said that shining path was made by the River of Death where it spilled out into the sky. He spotted one of the wandering stars as it glided by, slower than a falling star but faster than the moon. It faded as he watched, flashed, and faded again. Kaainka looked away. A wanderer was an unsteady omen with which to begin a journey.

  Footsteps brought his mind down out of the sky. Eikss walked up to Kaainka where he sat by the fire. Fire-light shone on the scales of her legs and the fine blue skin of her face. She held a waterskin in her beak, the last of its stitching still undone. Eikss set the waterskin down and pulled her needle free of the tough goat hide. Holding the skins together with her feet, she stitched up the side with quick, even strokes of the needle.

  “The desert is fierce and wide,” she said as she worked. “You will need to carry as much water with you as you can, and drink sparingly. Walk in the cool of the morning, and in the evening as the sand loses its heat. Do not walk in the dark, or you’ll fall and break your leg. Then you will never come back, and I will owe Airk the entrails of my next kill.” />
  “He thinks I won’t come back?” Kaainka said. Eikss had made the journey last year. When she returned, she had been wiser, full of stories and unexpected stillness. Kaainka longed for her, but dared not say anything. He would think about courtships when his journey was over. He couldn’t afford the distraction, and children couldn’t go courting in any case.

  “He thinks I will be impressed with the guts of the next slimy thing he pulls from a mud-pool.” She laughed, and tied off the last stitch on the waterskin. Eikss took the skin in her beak and proffered it to Kaainka. He took it, and tucked it under his wing.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then, on impulse, he added, “You shouldn’t be talking to me.”

  “Mind how you speak in my camp, traveller.” She snapped, and then laughed. She turned her head to the side, fixing him with a one-eyed stare. “Walk in the Ancestors’ footprints,” she said, and then huddled down by the fire to sleep.

  Kaainka set out under the night’s last stars. The waterskin hung around his neck, next to a new grass bag for his fire-saw and his food. He had packed some chok, a hard, oily seed that would not spoil and would fill his belly when food was scarce. They tasted like fat and dung-dust, and he hoped he would not need them. A slim stone knife rested in a sheath tied to his leg.

  The stars guided him north. As the sun rose, Kaainka beat his short wings mightily to reach the top of a termite mound. The savannah stretched away around him, broken here and there by thorn-trees and other termite mounds. A warm breeze ruffled his feathers. This was his land, the land of the People, and he must leave if he was ever to take his place among the People and add his voice to their songs.

  That night, his first night alone, he made a small fire and sang the Song of Beginning. He told himself that he would not be afraid until he came to truly unfamiliar lands. Thus reassured, he squatted down, resting on his ankles and tucking his beak under his feathers.