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Señora van Bumberchen’s School for Girls

Angge lost her parents to Spanish fire. She remembered the little volcanoes erupting on her mother’s body, the smoke wafting from the craters, the spirit fleeing. Her father had moved quickly. She remembered the thrust of the kalis against her left flank. She was told that her father had intended to deliver the fatal plunge, and that if her twelfth rib had not gotten in the way she would have bled to death. And then the Spanish lieutenant had rushed in, took aim, and with one shot blew her father’s head to bits.

“Here, God’s truth,” she said, anxious to provide evidence of her tragedy. From the folds of her skirt she fished out a piece of her father’s skull. The shard of bone had yellowed over the years. It gave her greater comfort than the scapular that the nuns placed around her neck.

“I believe you,” said Señora Van Bumberchen. “But I cannot take you in.”

The señora sought out destitute orphan girls and put them up in a large house on Calle del Beaterio. As she passed by Señora Van Bumberchen’s house Angge would press her ear to the wall and murmur softly along with the chorus rehearsing the sounds of the Castilian alphabet. At the Chinese market where Angge sold needlework, the señora often came to collect itinerant market girls. Not once did the señora approach Angge. Unable to contain her impatience any longer, she had gone to the big house on Calle del Beaterio and asked to see Señora Van Bumberchen.

“The needlework, Angge. Only the nuns of Santa Clara could produce such elegant needlework. My school is open to all but I cannot admit you as a ward. You belong to Santa Clara.”

Señora Van Bumberchen’s meaning was clear. She had petitioned Madrid for royal recognition for her fledgling school and the route from Manila to Her Majesty’s ears was long and tortuous. She was not about to make enemies especially one as influential as the Abbess of Santa Clara.

“I simply wish to learn my letters,” said Angge. “For fourteen years I’ve served faithfully at the convent and I don’t see why the Abbess would deny my humble request. Doña Sonsoles left a provision in her will for my education. She also promised that I would be free to leave the convent after her death.”

Señora Van Bumberchen studied the fragment of bone that rested on Angge’s palm. “Bring me the will and I shall see what I can do.”

#

Santa Clara was flanked by unlikely neighbors: the military hospital to the left and to the right the foundry where the Spaniards forge their cannons. Perched along the banks of the Pasig River, the convent was surrounded by a high wall to block out the impudent gaze of the outside world. If it weren’t for the lugubrious notes of the Sunday choir wafting from the walls or the servants trudging in and out of the gates, one would think that the stone edifice was but a massive tomb.

“What took you so long?” grumbled Trinidad as she eyed the unsold needlework in Angge’s basket.

“And a good evening to you, Sister,” Angge replied. Trinidad’s frown deepened. As the daughter of old Indio nobility, it irked Trinidad that her blood was not considered pure enough for holy calling. She had sought admission to Santa Clara but instead of becoming a bride of Christ she was appointed governess to several young girls, mestizas born to Spanish friars and Indio women, who were left in the convent’s care. At that moment there were a dozen such girls at Santa Clara: the youngest was abandoned at the convent shortly after being weaned from the breast, and the oldest was approaching her sixteenth year.

“They are not to be seen by anyone from the outside. And if they try to leave,” the Abbess had instructed, handing Angge and Trinidad a whip, “you are to bring them back.”

Angge kept her whip in her cell, untouched.

“The sun is almost gone. Come on now.” Trinidad thrust her lips in the direction of the squat wooden house that served as the kitchen. For supper there will be broiled sardines and tomatoes and fern in vinegar. Service must be prompt. After vespers the nuns must be served and everyone else ate in the kitchen after the refectory was cleared. The older mestizas rallied around Angge, eager to be useful and hoping for bits of gossip from the outside. Angge tasked the girls with gutting the fish while she swept the ashes from the stove and got the fire going. The girls worked quickly, feeling their way through the entrails as they watched Angge with rapt attention. Despite their exuberance Angge could not help but imagine Trinidad’s husk of a face on them. It hurt to think of it. They will inhale the smoke of the kitchen fire all their lives, their hands rank with fish blood, and they will grow old and die within the convent walls.

One said, “Is it true, Angge, that the fashionable señoritas have given up wearing the tapis over their skirts?”

And another: “I heard that no one wears stockings anymore. Is that the fashion now? Why must we take pains to cover up when no one can see us here?”

“Ay, stockings in this infernal heat,” muttered another, a frail girl called Dolor. Angge noted a faint flush on the girl’s cheeks and the beginnings of a clawing in her voice. She reminded herself to take a glass of vinegar water to Dolor before supper.

From her corner perch Trinidad let out a sharp hiss that cut through the chatter quick and clean. “You fools care for nothing but frippery,” she cried. “I should sprinkle salt upon your knees as you say your prayers tonight.”

#

After compline the chapel was dark and empty, illumined only by a half coin of moon peeking through the high glass windows. Angge set her candle down and lowered herself on the marble floor. She stretched out her sore legs and pulled her skirts up to her thighs, grateful for the cold tile on bare flesh. By the time she had washed and dried the china, tidied the kitchen, and extinguished the lamps in the hallways, her clothes had stuck to her like a second skin. Without the murmuring nuns – who seemed perpetually feverish underneath their habits – the chapel was cool and tranquil. If she breathed deeply enough she could detect the vegetal musk of the Pasig.

She leaned against the wall and felt the names of the dead press against her back. The eastern wall of the chapel housed the remains of Santa Clara’s women and there they remained secluded in death as they were in life. Angge turned to the gravestone on her right and gently traced the carved letters with her finger. S glides with ease; O merely goes around; N is three rapid slashes. She had committed the patterns to memory. After her mistress died Angge kept her company every night.

“The time has come, don’t you think?” whispered Angge as she rubbed away a streak of dust on the gravestone. “I’ve waited long enough.”

Something in the pews moved. Mice, perhaps, or a footfall? Angge did not expect any of the nuns to be about. It was a little past nine and there were five more hours to go until matins. She pushed down her skirts and lifted the candle above her head. It formed an islet of oily light around her. First there were pale feet in felt slippers, then a small, wary face with eyes that shone dark amber in the glow. It was a young girl of about ten.

“I’m lost,” she said.

“You must be one of the newcomers,” said Angge, trying to remember if Trinidad alerted her about any new arrivals. They were used to receiving entrants at odd hours. Some were dispatched to the convent within hours of their birth. Others were stolen from their mothers by trackers who were handsomely paid by the friars. The Abbess herself preferred to admit her new charges after sundown when there were fewer prying eyes.

The girl went on, “Sometimes I walk in my sleep and I wake up in strange places. I get confused.”

“The little ones do that a lot,” Angge assured her. “It takes time to get used to this place. Let me take you back to your cell. You must rest.”

The girl stepped closer and lowered herself on the ground next to Angge. “I cannot sleep. Can I stay here with you?”

“Yes, but not for long. We should not be up and about at this time of the night.”

“Then why are you here?”

Angge patted Sonsoles’s gravestone. “She hates to be alone. And it would be rude not to bid her good evening before I retire to bed.”

The child turned to look expectantly at her, eager to hear more, but Angge grew quiet, lost in the fog of memory.

Upon his return from the Moro war the Spanish lieutenant had presented his aunt Sonsoles with a half-broken child. He had dug out the howling girl from the mess of bodies and sailed with her to Manila. The ship surgeon sewed pieces back into place and predicted that the stab wound on the child’s left torso would never completely heal. “The wound of Christ,” declared Sonsoles, who was apt to see miracles where they did not exist. Yet the wound closed in on itself. Angge’s father, a Moro chieftain, had maneuvered the kalis in order to mimic the appearance of a lethal injury. He knew that the Spanish troops took young survivors to be raised in Christian households. But underneath the pile of smoldering flesh his daughter refused to play dead. In Manila, the old faith was rinsed off in baptismal water and the child was named Angustias. A suitable name, thought Sonsoles, for one destined to suffer from lifelong agonies.

The widowed Sonsoles had been in the grip of a withering when Angge was brought to her. She suffered from unexplained hemorrhages, a mortifying affliction for one so devout, and when she withdrew to the convent of Santa Clara she took her young servant with her. Angge remembered Sonsoles enveloped in a swirl of white, stretched out on the ground in the shape of a cross, her cheek against the dirt. Angge, a small, slight child, had helped her corpulent mistress back to her feet while the nuns looked on.

Sighing, Angge shook herself out of her reverie, rose to her feet and stretched out a hand to the girl. The child’s warm, soft hand felt like velvet against Angge’s calloused palm. It won’t be long, she thought, until Santa Clara will make quick work of its prey.

#

In her office, the Abbess thrust a sheaf of papers at Angge. “I cannot find it. Show me the clause providing for your education and your liberty.”

As she received the papers from the Abbess Angge met her gaze. They glared at each other, and the murmurs that Angge often heard in the cloisters began to amplify inside her head with a menacing persistence.

The eyes lie still, and yet —

“Show me the clause, Angustias,” repeated the Abbess, abandoning the Tagalog that she used with the servants and speaking now in her Castilian tongue. “Or do you not understand what clause means?”

Angge caught sight of the familiar S and O and N but the rest of the letters meant nothing to her. She stared hard at the pages as though the force of her will would, through some magic, unravel the meaning hidden beneath the ink. Rage set her insides alight.

“I swear on the doña’s soul. She made a pledge.”

“Bless her, but the will says otherwise. She drew up the will in 1849 right after she entered Santa Clara. It says here that you are to be bequeathed to the convent upon her death. That is all.”

Fury now gave way to a cold, sodden weight. “It cannot be. There has to be another will. She must have drawn up a new one before she passed away last year.”

“I have no power to change what is written here, Angustias. If you wish, you can pursue the matter with the courts. But for now, you belong here.” The Abbess held out her hand, and as Angge knelt to kiss her ring she imagined the Abbess’s severed finger between her teeth. The Abbess’s blood would be as bilious as her person. She would not spit out the bone — she would grind until her jaws break.

#

On her way home from the Chinese market Angge rushed to Señora Van Bumberchen’s house. “If you cannot accept me as a ward, I beg you, admit me as a paying student,” she said as soon as the señora appeared at the door. She felt a brief flash of terror when her words tumbled out, for she had never owned a single coin in her life and the city’s jails overflowed with debtors. Payment was not going to be a small matter. In exchange for her services the convent provided lodging, nothing more. She would have to find a way. The Pasig teemed with merchandise: fish free for the taking, and, she thought with a shudder, boatmen willing to part with a coin for a brief interlude. If it had to come to that, best be a learned whore than an unlettered muchacha.

“And the will?”

“Please,” cried Angge. “Let us speak no more about the will. You have my word that I will not cause you any trouble with the Abbess and I will not leave Santa Clara, not until after I prove my truth. If I have to, I will take the Abbess to court.”

Señora Van Bumberchen could not help but feel a begrudging respect for Angge. If Angge fled from the convent, the dreaded guardia would hunt her down and there would be no mercy for an Indio, especially one who incurred the wrath of the Abbess of Santa Clara. The girl was clearly not intending to escape; instead, she was preparing herself for what would likely be an interminable fight. The señora considered the uproar that would ensue if her efforts to aid a lowly Indio servant, at the expense of her compatriot the Abbess, would ever come to light. But the death of hope would weigh heavily on her conscience, and it was a far greater burden she would have to carry for her remaining years.

#

Like people, letters had names, and each letter had its own recognizable sound, and that was the key to understanding them. For Angge they were like people she had long wished to befriend. The letters came together to form words, and words became phrases, and phrases grew into sentences.

In lieu of quills Angge collected stumps of charcoal from the stove and practiced her letters on the chapel’s marble floor, wiping them away with a damp rag when she was done. Paper was scarce and costly — she saved the precious sheets that Señora Van Bumberchen handed out and she hid them underneath her cot. On marble, the clean lines showed an increasingly confident hand.

“With the jota you breathe slowly and gently,” instructed Angge, “as though you are blowing at a wound to ease its sting.” Crouched next to her on the ground, the girl watched the squiggles of charcoal take shape on the gray marble surface.

“J-U-A-N-I-T-A,” Angge read softly.

The girl squealed with delight. “May I give it a try?”

“Dios mío, lower your voice. Now. Your grasp must be firm. Let it flow from the wrist.”

The girl eagerly grabbed a piece of charcoal from Angge and copied each letter with a careful hand.

Angge nodded her approval and poised her charcoal over the marble. “Excellent. Now, what follows after Juanita?”

“What is that thing that must follow my name?”

“Your father’s name must go after yours.”

“I don’t know who my father is. And if I don’t have one, why must I carry his name?”

Before she became Angustias she was known by another name and the names of her father and her father’s father followed hers. She belonged to them, but she could no longer remember. One day, if the memory returns, she will write down the names.

“You can choose how to be called. After admission the nuns give up the names by which they were known to the outside world.” Angge shone her candle at one of the gravestones and slowly read aloud. “Sor Benedicta del Santísimo Sacramento. I remember her. Poor thing did not last long in this place. Here’s another. Sor Pilar del Espíritu Santo. Ah, the sister was from a different time. She died in 1738.”

The girl cast nervous glances around her. “We mustn’t call out their names. If they hear you they might come back.”

Angge snorted. “Come back here for what? It’s nicer where they are.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Don’t be silly. I talk to Doña Sonsoles all the time but she doesn’t show up.”

The girl shook her head and inched closer to Angge.

“Very well. Come now, we must get going. Can you hear the roosters? Soon the sisters will be up.” Angge gathered her stubs of charcoal and rose to her feet. The ache in her limbs came creeping back but it no longer mattered to her. In her letters she forgot about the day’s labors. For the last few months she had been spending her afternoons at Señora Van Bumberchen’s school. In the evenings she sat with the girl in the chapel, swearing her to secrecy, as she went over her lessons.

Each letter and each word brought Angge closer to her purpose. She must see Doña Sonsoles’s will with her own eyes. Angge believed with all her heart that her mistress did not intend for her to rot away at the convent. Sonsoles had bequeathed her substantial fortune to Santa Clara and the loss of one servant would be of little consequence to the convent’s coffers. Angge was determined not to let the Abbess push her deeper into the dank recesses of Santa Clara.

#

Angge woke up to the sound of the nuns’ fading footsteps as they processioned back to their cells after matins. She lay in her cot unable to sink back to sleep. The cool of the early dawn began to creep into her bones and she wrapped her thin blanket tightly around her. She waited until the last shuffle faded into silence, then she got up, lit her candle, and went to check on Dolor. The sickly girl had been confined to bed with yet another fever. She paused at the door of Dolor’s cell and took in the fetid air in the small, windowless room. In the candle glow Dolor’s hue took on an alarming yellow gleam. Angge laid her hand on the girl’s forehead. The heat nearly seared her skin.

Angge rushed to alert Trinidad, whose cell was a few doors from Dolor’s, and she sped along the narrow, dark corridor that led to the Abbess’s room. Her candle flickered as though the dark was licking the flame with a wet tongue. The thing that came to the door bore a halo of untamed hair, and it was utterly devoid of blood, almost fluorescent in its pallor. Angge caught a flash of what seemed like a feral green eye. She stepped back as though retreating from an animal that she had interrupted in the midst of a feed.

“What is it?”

“It’s Dolor,” stammered Angge, straining her eyes for a better glimpse. Perhaps her sight was failing her. Perhaps the miasma emanating from Dolor’s illness was clouding her faculties. She slowly lifted her candle but stopped herself, uncertain of what the light might reveal. She had never seen the Abbess without her black habit. For the first time in her long years at Santa Clara she felt something like fear grab hold of her, and it was a cold, bony claw that massaged her innards with malicious glee. She thought about the uneasy whispers that lingered in the cloisters and the hush that would descend upon the nuns when the Abbess swept past. When the Abbess finally emerged from the room in full regalia, Angge trailed behind her and held the candle aloft lest the Abbess melt into the shadows.

Inside Dolor’s cell the Abbess pushed aside Trinidad, who was kneeling by the girl’s bedside, and she pressed her thumb against Dolor’s neck. She turned to Angge and Trinidad.

“I must go and seek the Provincial’s counsel. Keep an eye on the girl.”

It was understood that the Abbess cannot call for a surgeon without prior approval from the order. Any outsider brought into the convent must be trusted to keep his silence.

Trinidad flung herself at Dolor. “God have mercy on your soul, poor child.”

“You will kill her soon enough with that talk,” muttered Angge. She arranged Dolor’s blanket around her to trap the fever beneath the bedclothes. With luck, it will find its way out of Dolor through her exhalations; otherwise, the surgeon must slice open a vein and let the fever trickle out of the body. She set about preparing the room for the surgeon.

Trinidad sobbed and hiccupped loudly.

“For the love of God, Sister, don’t go choking on your own tongue now!” Angge yelled. “Make yourself useful. Here, wipe her forehead while I boil some water.”

On her way to the kitchen Angge passed by the Abbess’s office, which was at the end of the hall that housed the dormitories. She stopped in her tracks, the air seething through her ears, as she realized her opportunity. She listened for the sound of stray footsteps and the walls echoed back only silence. Blood pounded against her skull. If she must do it now, she must do so with haste. She approached the Abbess’s office and slowly pushed the door. It opened with just the slightest protest. She lifted her candle and quickly scanned the room. The shelves were stocked with leather-bound folios and on the desk lay an orderly pile of papers. Where did the Abbess keep the will? She reached for the papers on the desk and read as fast as her abecedarian eyes could manage. She felt her heart about to burst not only from the illicit thrill of breaking into the Abbess’s office but also from the intoxicating pleasure of comprehension.

The desk papers were simple lists of needlework made and sold. She turned her attention to the folios on the shelves. She grabbed one and leafed through the pages. It was a list of dates and names, some of which she recognized:

Gertrudes, b. 1847, entered 1847

Asuncion, b. 1848, entered 1849, d. 1857

Gregoria, year of birth unknown, entered 1852

Dolor, b. 1848, entered 1852

Lucia, b. 1856, entered 1862

Intrigued, Angge flipped back to the first pages and ran a finger through the list of names. She knew that the nuns of Santa Clara had been keeping the friars’ children for years, long before she and Sonsoles came to the convent. Her finger stopped at a familiar name.

Juanita, b. 1820, entered 1830, d. 1831

Angge put the book down. She wanted to believe that her eyes were betraying her, just as they had at the Abbess’s room. Perhaps there was a madness creeping within the convent walls, some sort of delirium brought about by the presence of illness. She read the name again, read it a few more times, and whispered it out loud to be certain.

She did not turn around. She recognized the presence behind her before it even spoke. She thought of the nuns that slept the sleep of centuries within the convent walls. Even beasts spit out bones. Santa Clara, a famished witch, carried them within her until they crumbled to dust.

**

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the course of his research on the history of the four-hundred-year-old Real Monasterio de Santa Clara de Manila, Filipino historian Luciano P. R. Santiago discovered archival records pertaining to young girls who were reared in the convent. Only their names, dates of birth and dates of entrance at the monastery were recorded, without mention of their origins. Long presumed to be the illegitimate daughters of Franciscan friars and Filipino women, these girls grew up and died in the cloister without ever venturing out of Santa Clara.

**

Clara Kiat’s fiction has appeared in Luna Station Quarterly. She has recently completed a collection of short stories, The Country Belongs to the Indios, set in Manila during the final century of Spanish colonial rule. She is at work on a novel. Born and raised in the Philippines, Clara currently lives in Madrid, Spain.

**

Image: Flickr / Nina G

The following excerpt from Moxie by Alex Poppe is reprinted here with permission from Tortoise Books.

Moxie – exerpt

I smell it before I see it. Can’t see anything behind the big bag of supplies I’m carrying. Was feeling accomplished that I remembered to buy Moxie-necessities on the way home before the smell of dog piss bitch-slapped me across the face when I opened my front door. At least Moxie skirts the puddle instead of running through it. I follow her lead. It’s easier than cleaning it.

Moxie noses my calves as I fill her bowl with dog food and set it near her impatient tail. ‘Sorry for the wait.’ Pour myself a Black Label and sit to watch her eat. Doggie gulping noises permeate the kitchen. ‘Slow down girl. A lady picks.’ I don’t pick. I point. At junk food in supermarkets or bakeries. I look and point and pretend I am going to eat something delicious, something bad for me. Sometimes, looking is enough. At least I’m not a puker like some models. I went to the souk that day to look at the dried fruits in the spice market. Wanted to point at rings of pineapple and wedges of mango and garlands of dates. Wanted to pretend I was going to eat them.

Moxie settles herself by my feet. She looks at me with these wide-open eyes. There’s a lump pushing up my throat, and I am tempted to kick her. Her blind trust fucking pisses me off. Grabbing my drink, I open the kitchen window to sit on the fire escape. The night hushes.

The sky has gone inky. From its depth, a single star watches. Looking at my reflection in the kitchen window, I see a faceless girl staring back at me. I want to wake up in her body. There’s a hard, blank feeling inside me. I should sleep. When I was an up-and-comer, I never slept. Didn’t want to miss anything. It’s different now.

The sheets are cool as I slip in between them. Fucking hate sleeping alone. I sleep on only half the bed. Used to love it, back in the day when there were a lot of admirers. Back then, I needed the quiet. Now the quiet riots. Rewind and rewrite tonight as my fingertips stroke my stomach. I am not a boyfriend thief, so in my version of reality Aaron does not have a girlfriend who lives with him. My fingertips tickle up to pinch my nipples. My tits are full, my nipples erect. He says I am beautiful, not was, because he sees past the candy shell. Because he misses parking lot salsa lessons and being read to in the bathtub. My hand slides down. Inside I am smooth and slippery. I roll over and grind my pelvis. Pictures flash – Jeff’s cock, sucking Aaron’s bottom lip, some guitarist’s head between my thighs. Tongues pushing more and more and more. My pelvis hooks. An extended present tense. I taste the pillow with my grimace. My body slackens. The ability to speak returns. There is the static noise of silence. My pillow smells sad. I miss so much: middle-of-the-day sex and lying face to face sharing a pillow. Fuck, I miss resting my cheek against my hand. The pillowcase irritates. I turn over toward the window. The sky has lightened. Four black birds fly in a diamond formation against a white sky. How do they stay together? Even lovebirds get divorced. Flying is a cool superpower, but I would choose instant regeneration.

My mouth tastes the way the front hallway smells. Fucking need to take care of the Moxie mess. Like now. I am on my hands and knees with paper towels and piss-soaked journal pages before breakfast. Living the life. Fuck, I miss maid service. That was a great perk of living in model apartments. The agency puts five young hopefuls in a too-small space, competing for the same jobs, and expects them not to kill each other. There is always an odd number of housemates: provides a built-in moderator. I lived in one in Paris. Between the hair-pulling and the tears, there were some moments.

Vive Le Paris! Jeff came over for a visit. All the other girls are like mad in love with him. Who wouldn’t be? He’s like totally hot and nice and cool and 24! Plus, French Vogue just hired him. And he likes ME! He says he like “discovered me” and he’s real proud of it. Mom would FREAK if she heard that because she was my first agent. Anyway, I don’t care because it is summer, and I’m in PARIS, and the night sky goes on forever, and I’m in love!!! I haven’t said it yet or anything because I’m not like totally stupid, but it’s love.

On Friday nights parades of people skate around the Canal Saint Martin. We usually watch them from our balcony. Zaina and Elena (Zaina is from Beirut and has the best hair. Elena is from Kiev and is the skinniest.) got booked on the same shoot and bought us all blades! (They had ten pages of editorial for Italian Elle! Jealous ☹) I haven’t scored anything as big, but I feel like it’s coming. On Monday I have a go-see for some Pirelli calendar. Whoever that is. Anyway, we drank some Voov Cli Co champagne, donned our skates, and off we went. It was electric. The five of us held hands as we skated, a daisy chain of pretty girls. Nobody was elbowing each other out. I feel like we’ll be friends forever.

But the really big news is this. Wait for it ☺. Jeff and I. Hee hee hee. I was really scared because I knew it would hurt, but Jeff was really gentle and patient and like showed me what to do. I was so embarrassed that I didn’t know, but I think he got off on that. That he could make me the way he wanted. I finally feel like I belong to someone.

Jesus Fuck.

There is the clip-clip-clip of tiny paws behind me. The soles of my feet receive a tongue bath. ‘Morning Toe Licker,’ Picking up Moxie, I breathe my dragon breath in her face. She barks. ‘Let’s go buy a ball.’

Fuck, that sun is bright. Moxie has decided to take her morning dump in front of the entrance to the Brooklyn Fleas. She has no shame. Of course not. She’s not the one bent over, picking up warm squishy dogshit with a sandwich baggie.

‘Jax! I’d recognize you anywhere,’ a voice addresses my ass. ‘Girl when did you get a dog? You can barely take care of yourself.’

‘Yesterday.’ Turning around, I spy Frieda’s locks before I spy Frieda. Everything on Frieda has been added: hair, fingernails, breasts. She’s a trannie makeup artist with an identical twin brother named Frank. I wonder how long it took for their mother to stop calling ‘Boys…’ when she wanted both of them. ‘This is Moxie. Moxie meet Frieda.’ Frieda’s one of my few before and after friends.

‘How you feelin’?’ She takes my chin and turns my face to look at both sides. Her silver bangles jangle. ‘Did you see the doctor I told you about?’

She gets away with touching my face because of her six-inch height advantage. And because she was on that Marrakesh shoot. ‘Yeah. Yesterday.’ I wriggle free. She was having tea with a carpet seller at the hotel at the time of the blast. She visited me almost every week during my recovery to give me a mani/pedi. No one asked her to.

‘Girl, you look like shit. Even for you.’

Can’t argue with that.

‘When’s the last time you ate?’

‘This morning.’

‘Liar.’

She’s right. ‘So don’t ask.’

‘Want to have brunch?’

‘Can’t. I have shit to do.’

‘Right. Like you’re so important.’ Frieda never sugarcoats it.

‘Fuck you. I have to get Moxie a ball.’

‘So get her a ball after. Girl, starving yourself to death is going to take a while. ODing is much quicker.’

‘Fuck you. I don’t starve myself.’ Besides, I’ve already decided on hanging. If I were to.

‘Fuck you.’ Frieda sounds like a junior high cheerleader. ‘Fuck you.’

I don’t sound that whiny.

‘Fuck you-ou.’ Frieda’s bopping about as she sings it. ‘Fuck youuu. Hoo-hooooo.’ She grabs my hands and makes me dance along with her, snapping my rubber band. ‘Class bling. Let’s go to Meatballs. You can drink your lunch. Like Moxie, I need me some balls in my mouth.’ Frieda’s laugh sounds like a delicious secret.

Bending down to ruffle Moxie’s fur, I hide my smile. Sometimes it’s easier to give in.

✴

After brunch, liquid and otherwise, Moxie and I stroll through McCarren Park. Frieda has a date. Dating – more like snacking. I don’t know why Frieda appointed herself my fairy godmother, but I am grateful. She’s hooked me up for a prop styling gig next week, which is good because I need something to do.

What the fuck am I going to do with the rest of my life?

Me: Hi. Is this Lost and Found? I’ve lost my way.

Lost and Found: Have you checked the places you were? You probably left it there.

Me: I can’t go back to where I was. They won’t let me in like this.

Lost and Found: I know. Look, it’ll turn up. I always find my iPhone at the wine bar across the street from my apartment.

Me: Can you just look? It’s shiny gold and leads to the top.

Lost and Found: Aren’t you special? Those are one in a million. Yeah, no. It’s not here. You should have taken better care of it in the first place.

Me: But, it’s not my fault it’s gone.

Lost and Found: Isn’t it?

Me: Look, do you know where I can buy a new one?

Lost and Found: Do I look like Information? Kindly step aside Ma’am. You’re holding up the line.

Shit, my rubber band is gone. That bitch must have lifted it during the “Fuck You” dance. Despite her Emily Post posture, Frieda’s always had sticky fingers.

An African drum ensemble starts up on the far side of the park, grabbing Moxie’s attention. She’s strong when she wants her way. A small group of people gather around the musicians, dancing. I recognize Jules playing a modest drum near the center of the cluster. Jules is a protest artist whose big moment came when Jay-Z bought one of his paintings. That moment went. Jules’ hands slap the drum skin, his long, thick fingers splayed. Feeling a tickle rise between my legs causes me to look away from his lapping fingers. I dated Jules for a minute, a lifetime ago.

‘Hey, do you want to dance?’ An unfamiliar voice calls from behind.

I turn toward it and fix on a face volcanic with acne. Glittering eye contact. ‘Sorry, I have to go.’

✴

Back home, I feed Moxie and sit with my friend Johnnie Walker. I need to kiss someone in the worst way. To put all of who I am into lips and tongue and touch. Kissing is underrated because it’s all about the before. People rush that. They don’t get that kissing is hope.

Who am I kidding? I need to lose myself in a good lay. Shut out thought and time and place for however long intense foreplay and a heroic orgasm last. I swear, I am ready to call an escort service and order a totally hot guy who stares not and sexes sweet. Not like the last hookup who grabbed a pillow to smother me as I came, and then squirted in my face as he lifted the pillow. I choked and he laughed. Like I wasn’t a real person. To him, I was only the shape of one. I don’t expect breakfast, but some people are too rough to fuck. It’s a fine line deciding whose standards are low enough. Like it fucking matters. In the dark you become whomever they want. Then in the end, you’re left with who you are. Jesus mother fucking Christ! I can’t stand it inside my head.

With nowhere to go, I go to Alat’s.

Sans Moxie, I sit at the air-conditioned bar and watch Alat work. He doesn’t say much to anyone. He’s probably killed people. How he does not drink the entire contents of the bar baffles me.

‘I feel you watching me.’ Alat has his back to me polishing glasses. Must be his child soldier instincts kicking in.

‘No, I’m not.’ I smile like a receptionist at his back.

‘Why are you always here alone?’ He picks up a knife and starts cutting lemons.

‘I’m not always alone. Yesterday I had Moxie.’ And Aaron, sort of. ‘You’re always here alone. Why doesn’t your girlfriend ever visit you?’ Figure girlfriend is the safer bet.

‘My wife is at home with our sons.’

Eights words tell me more about him than half as many months of patronage. Where’s his ring? ‘Did you meet her here?’

‘Muslim women do not usually frequent bars.’

Who knew he was religious? ‘Did you know her from Somalia?’

‘She knows about my past.’

‘That’s not what I was asking.’ Of course, I deny it.

‘Then what?’

That lump is back, clogging my throat. What I really want to know is how he put himself back together. Half-true. I want to know how to put myself back together. Johnnie Walker isn’t telling.

‘Jax, it’s time to grow up. You’ve had so much more than most.’ Alat’s eyes are shiny; his voice is not unkind. ‘Beauty doesn’t feed you.’

Uh, in my case it did. My before-life purls like a junkyard mobile.

‘Who are you going to be?’

I have no idea. I used to be so many people.

**

Alex Poppe is the author of the debut novel Moxie (2019) and the story collection Girl, World (2017). Girl, World was named a 35 Over 35 Debut Book Award winner, First Horizon Award finalist, Montaigne Medal finalist, and was short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. It was also awarded an Honorable Mention in General Fiction from the Eric Hoffer Awards. Her short fiction has been a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Family Matters contest, a nominee for the Pushcart Prize, and commended for the Baker Prize. Her non-fiction was named a Best of the Net nominee (2016), a finalist for Hot Metal Bridge’s Social Justice Writing contest, and has appeared in Bust and Bella Caledonia. She is an academic writing lecturer at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (soo-la-mani) and is working on her third book of fiction with support from Can Serrat International Art Residency and is an artist in residence at Duplo Linea de Costa.

Music and text for this episode were composed by Joel Woolf and written by Anthony Jones, respectively. The audio was first published in Neon Bedrooms and the Light From Your Mother’s House, and is used here with permission from Jones & Woolf.

The Red Ghost

I’d just finished having sex with my ex-wife when I heard about the Red Ghost for the first time. We were talking about getting back together in those days and I was laying in her new flat outside Rome, playing with those dark, dark curls of hers and trying to forget about all the nastiness and ugliness that had spread between us.

Those were the days when I thought Cleo and I might still have a chance, even though her life had already skyrocketed so far past mine that all I could do was hold onto her for the night and hope I’d made love to her just right enough for her to forget about how badly I’d fucked everything else up.

“Haven’t you heard?” she said, brushing my hand away and picking up a tabloid she had lying on the floor.

“There’s a new hero in Italy.”

. . .

A year later I’d heard plenty more about the Red Ghost. He was in the tabloids all the time by then. I never read the stories but I’d see his name in the headlines, usually when I stopped at the old newsstand on Via Arno or the cafés near the courthouse, which always carried the low brow stuff. I didn’t think people were taking the rumors seriously but I’d have these strange moments—times when I’d be sitting with an espresso, staring into space long enough for another lone customer to see me and think I was longing for company just as badly as they were. They’d come up to me, these people who drank during the day and wandered into cafés alone, and within five minutes it was clear that all they really wanted to do was talk about the Ghost.

“Well, what do you think?” they’d inevitably say, gesturing toward the tabloids or showing me something on their phones they’d dredged up from the internet. “Can it really be true? A hero in Rome patrolling the city from rooftops, just like in the movies?”

I normally shrugged them off or gave them a blank stare. Sometimes I even invoked my heaviest brogue—or at least, what I remembered brogue sounding like from my childhood—and told them, “Sorry friend, I’m just visiting from Dublin. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”  

That normally did the trick, although some of them would keep at it, as if I wasn’t there at all, going on and on about the possibility even after it was abundantly clear there was no person on Earth I’d rather be talking to less.

Still, no matter how intrigued these people were about the Ghost, I always figured it was just curiosity about the supernatural or boredom with their own lives that fueled their interest. It wasn’t until Sofía showed up at my door that I finally met someone who had one hundred percent belief in his existence. And nothing I could ever say to her would change her mind. She was a disciple of his, you might say. How else could you describe it? The types of risks she was willing to take to make contact with him were really quite shocking.  

. . .

She came to my apartment for the first time a week after Easter and the only reason I remember that was because it was exactly seven months after Cleo left me and just over a year since Ana Gonzalez had disappeared for good.

My apartment was in the south of the city, in an old building on the outskirts of the Nomentano District—a few stories above some small apartment units and a Chinese restaurant on the ground floor.

I guess I should mention that my apartment was actually a small, run-down office. A Russian accountant had been renting the unit before me and according to the owner, he’d had a little book-keeping business there for years until one day—poof—the Russian disappeared. He’d even left his desk there, which was the largest piece of furniture in the place, and I’d gotten in the habit of keeping most of my clothes and other personal items inside its massive drawers.  

Even though I’d been there for almost three months, I kept telling myself it was temporary—that I was just sleeping there until I got some work and cut down on the prescription drugs enough to get back on my feet.

For the time being though I had one of those sofa couches you could pull out and turn into an even more uncomfortable bed. Most nights I didn’t even use it. I just laid on the hardwood floor with a sheet and a pillow and dreamed the same dreams I’d been having since I punched a Carabinieri Lieutenant in the face and lost my job in homicide.

But all that is neither here nor there.

What I’m really trying to tell you about is the first time I met Sofía and how I came to be involved with a fifteen year old girl the way I did.

. . .

Of course, the first time I saw her I didn’t know she was fifteen.

I had no idea how old she was.

She was wearing one of those light blue blouses that were common in the Catholic schools of Rome at the time but she’d cut the sleeves off and the fabric was fraying around her shoulders. She had on a black skirt that hugged her hips and black tights beneath that. Her eyes were dark as well with heavy mascara and her hair had been dyed a shockingly bright shade of red. She was carrying a backpack and she didn’t even knock. She just walked right in.

“Are you Detective Drake?” she said.

I looked up at her and blinked slowly. It was past nine o’clock and I’d just run through a fresh vial. I hadn’t been expecting anyone. I was in my undershirt, leaning back in my chair and watching the sun go down on Rome through my window, slowly getting very high on a percocet and oxycontin blend that I’d crushed and snorted and washed down with a bottle of beer.

“I used to be,” I said finally.

**

Anthony Jones studied Creative Writing at UCLA under Mona Simpson and David Wong Louie where he was awarded with the Ruth Brill Scholarship for excellence in fiction. His work has been published in several literary journals, including PANK Magazine and Chicago Literati, and he has forthcoming work in F(r)iction. Together with Sydney-based composer, Joel Woolf, he founded the group Jones & Woolf, a music + lit duo specializing in audio fiction. Their first album, Neon Bedrooms and the Light from your Mother’s House came out in December, 2018.

**

Image: Flickr / Leanne Poon

The following flash pieces are taken from A Girl Goes into the Forest by Peg Alford Pursell (Dzanc Books, July 2019) and are reprinted here with permission from the author and Dzanc Books.

A Girl Goes into the Forest

Tentative, curious, uncertain, alive, she followed him into the woods, moving in the direction where perhaps she imagined the rest of her life waited for her. So ready for something to happen. The old secret cottage had fallen to the ground. He acted as if that surprise of the disintegrated shelter was inconsequential, and spread a thin jacket over the dark forest floor for her. To lie down was harder than it looked to be; wasn’t everything? A thick scent of pine needles. Sour smell of mildewed ash. The moon rose. White and tiny, smeared into the fork of a naked branch overhead. Wind chattered like teeth through the trees, their trunks containing hundreds of years of memory. In this new dimension of light and shade, she lost track of who she’d been before, of the home in the town with cracked streets, concrete and glass, sun-scoured spires. Beside her, he said nothing. A troche on the tongue of the needful earth, she lay, thick thirsting roots deep underneath. This was something for the body to feel. There is so much for a body to feel before it goes, returns to its simplest elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur. Full night must eventually come on. Its deeper chill. They might remain. Together. It might turn summer and she’d have survived the season. Or the earth might be soothed, some want eased.

§

§

Old Church by the Sea

I hadn’t visited the abandoned church by the sea in many years, not since that day with my teenaged daughter. She’d reached that age of awkwardness, so painful to see, when people had begun telling her to calm down, to lower her voice, to walk, not run. I’d brought her to this confused Eden, huge boulders in the garden, cold shadows, the infinite space of sun. Sad jasmine crawled everywhere, even over the dilapidated fence deteriorating as if the weight of the flowers had caused its demise. I’d imagined we would run and play as in a game of tag, like we had when she was younger, as if we were two butterflies in the tall grass.

She wore dark glasses and sat on a stone bench where a white cat lay sleeping. I didn’t dare believe she was looking at me behind those lenses. Her chin tilted up, and I decided she was examining the distant countryside: yellow grass spread with repeated cows, the bay a shimmering backdrop of monotony. A quick wind stroked my bare arms and prodded dark clouds across the sky. It began to rain.

We made the long drive home in silence, her ear buds in place, the tinny chords of her music reaching me behind the wheel. We neared the close-by village where at the street corner, under the overhang of the roof of the grocery mart, a group of five men sat as if hypnotized. My daughter’s head abruptly swiveled, stayed fixed in their direction until we made the turn and left them behind.

How the imagination can forge something from a moment!

Here now the burning light of day rested in all its blue brilliance on the remaining stained glass window of the church, miraculously still intact. The sun bleached only the tips of the wild grasses, while closer to earth darkness churned like sea reeds. Heavy clouds clung to the distant hills speckled with their animals.

Inside the old church it was almost possible to hear what people do to one another.

I always think I’ll circle around to the exact explanation for what went wrong. Having and wanting at the same time, that’s what it was to carry my daughter inside me. After, I was emptier than I could ever have imagined, I thought then. Then, when I thought I would have the chance to tell her one day.  

§

§

Note to a Ghost

After you died I wandered the nearby field. Twilight. Your cat ran up to me with a bird’s heart in its mouth. I wanted to make something more out of that than what it was. You know what it was. The way you knew to let out your first cry: how you were there and not, how it’s a witness who hears and translates raw sensation voiced in the tone. It’s only natural, as in leaves abandoning the trees to fall at your feet, as is the bleeding red moon tonight, scientifically explicable. Beast, bird, botany, being—all knowable.

**

Peg Alford Pursell is the author of A Girl Goes Into the Forest, forthcoming from Dzanc Books in July 2019. Her debut collection of stories Show Her A Flower, A Bird, A Shadow was the 2017 Indies Book of the Year for Literary Fiction. Her work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including Permafrost, Joyland, and the Los Angeles Review, and her microfiction, flash fiction, and hybrid prose have been nominated for Best Small Microfictions and Pushcart Prizes. She is the founder and director of WTAW Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary books, and of Why There Are Words, a national literary reading series she founded in the Bay Area in 2010. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto.

“Three Strikes” by Julie Zuckerman appears in her novel-in-stories, The Book of Jeremiah, and is reprinted below with the author’s permission.

Three Strikes

(1932)

In his whole nine years, Lenny can’t remember feeling this mixed-up, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s sitting next to his father in the synagogue, listening as the congregation recites the special Rosh Hashanah prayer: Avinu Malkenu, our Father, our King, we have sinned before You. The adults around him chant the haunting, powerful melody, first in a murmur, then in a louder, unified plea for God to be gracious. If God is so great, Lenny wants to know, why—this year of all years, when his favorite team is playing—does the Jewish New Year fall on the same days as the World Series? The last time the Yanks were in the Series Lenny had been too young to appreciate it. Later, after the festive lunch and the relatives have gone home, Lenny plans to slip out of the house and walk over to the Barnum Avenue drugstore, where the neighborhood men will be listening to today’s game. He’s not usually a sneaky boy, and he hopes God will forgive him this once.

Inside the synagogue, the service drags on, and Lenny is jealous of his younger brother Jeremiah who, at six, is allowed to play outside. Lenny isn’t thinking about the prayers. His mind is on hits, runs, and strikeouts. The sweet crack of the bat connecting with the ball. The thunder of the crowd pulsing through the static of the radio. He tugs on his father’s suit jacket and asks if he can go outside for a bit, but, no, he’s benched: the elder Gerstler shushes him and tells him he must stay in for longer.

He shifts in his seat, daydreaming about the moment later today when the Yankees will sweep the Series. He’s sure of it. Despite the prohibition of turning the radio on during Rosh Hashanah, he’s learned from a non-Jewish neighbor that the Yanks beat the Cubs in yesterday’s game, bringing the series to 3-0. He felt the agony of missing the game but was triumphant at the news. Today, even though he knows he should be praying for forgiveness and redemption, he’s beseeching God for a Yankees win.

“Give heed to the clarion call of the shofar,” the Rabbi bellows for the third time today. Some of the adults are bored; he can hear murmuring in the rows behind. Finally, towards the end of the service, his father relents and allows Lenny to go out and play.

—

Lenny makes his way to the empty lot next door, where other boys with fathers who are not as strict are playing: stickball for the older boys and marbles for the younger. His brother is kneeling in the dust, counting his pile of coveted bluish-green corkscrew marbles, his white holiday shirt and navy knickers smeared with dirt. Lenny smiles, thinking of his plan. After lunch, he’s going to volunteer to look after Jeremiah so his parents can rest, but then they’ll sneak to the drugstore to catch the game. He’s even saved a Bit-O-Honey and a peanut chew, one to get Jeremiah out of the house and the other in exchange for a promise not to tell. The kid might not know much about baseball, at least not yet, but he’ll do anything for candy. It’s surefire.

Lenny leans against the wall and turns his attention to the stickball players, wishing they’d let him play and dreaming of being a better hitter. The boys are focused on their own game—arguing over who’s batting next, yelling at the boy who just struck out—but Lenny wants to talk about the Series. “A better lineup, the Yanks couldn’t have,” he says, rattling off the batting order. “Lou Gehrig, batting fourth for the grand slam.” He mimics an announcer’s voice and assumes Gehrig’s slugging stance. When no one picks up the conversation, he starts reciting batting averages for the Yankees lineup.

“Aren’t you a real abercrombie?” says an older kid as he gets up to bat.

Lenny shrugs; it’s not the first time he’s been called a know-it-all. One of his father’s friends calls him “Bridgeport’s number-one baseball whiz,” a title he wears proudly. He and Jonny Allen, the rookie pitcher, share a birthday. But the other boys don’t seem interested in statistics, so after a bit Lenny wanders back over to the marble game, just in time to see Jeremiah flick a reddish-blue marble into the circle for a win. Secretly, he’s looking forward to their afternoon together. He would like to tell Jeremiah about the plan, but he’s afraid he’ll tell Mother and Papa by accident. He knows it will work: with Johnny Allen as the starting pitcher, the Yanks can’t lose.

—

The green clock on the kitchen wall reads 3:08 p.m. by the time lunch is over and the last relative says goodbye. Lenny watches his mother wash the dishes and his father dry and stack them in the cabinet. He is trying not to appear too anxious, but the game was scheduled to begin at 2:30 New York time. He’d known he would miss the first inning or two, but now he is getting nervous. His parents are slow in washing and drying. Instead, they gossip about their relatives: Cousin Mendy, out of a job for three months, is having a hard time feeding his family. Sussie has been forced to take in needle and button work for nine cents an hour, instead of having a better-paying factory job that might pay double.

Papa says, “We’re lucky that selling eggs and butter will never go out of business.” He hopes to have his own store one day.

When the dishes are done, Lenny jumps out of the chair, eager to volunteer to watch Jeremiah. But his mother beats him to it. “Play quietly in the den,” she instructs, “so we can rest. If Jeremiah gets too jumpy, take him over to the park on Noble Avenue. But no further than that.” She is always cautioning him not to wander down East Main Street, where the tramps like to gather.

Lenny nods, trying to hide his smile. The park on Noble Avenue is three long blocks away from the pharmacy on Barnum Avenue, though he knows that to go further and get caught would mean a heavy punishment, like no baseball ever.

“What a responsible boy you’re becoming,” his father says. “A better son, I couldn’t ask.”

His mother leans over and kisses his forehead and calls to Jeremiah to mind his big brother. Lenny waits until his parents have climbed the stairs to their bedroom and shut the door.  If they walk fast enough, they might make it by the fourth inning.

Lenny finds Jeremiah on the front porch playing with his marbles. With the Bit-O-Honey, he lures his brother down the steps, and onto the sidewalk, heading for Barnum Avenue. “Come!” he tells him. “We’re going on an adventure.” He doesn’t say where they are going, or how they’re about to be part of Yankee history. To tell him the truth would only raise questions, like why they can’t just turn on their own Philco, Model #20.

As they cross over East Main, still two blocks from the pharmacy, Lenny takes Jeremiah’s hand. They pass hobos sitting under the awnings of closed shops. One tramp is curled in an entryway and looks dead, but then Lenny notices that the man’s brown hat covering his face is rising and falling as he snores.

“Look over there.” Lenny points across the street to divert Jeremiah’s attention, but his vision is drawn to a row of beggars slumped against the ledge of the church yard. The line extends all the way around to the back of the building. The men wear hats of all shapes and sizes, and some hold walking sticks. Their jackets are too tight, the sleeves torn, with filthy white shirts sticking out.

Despite Lenny’s efforts to shield him, Jeremiah notices, and asks, “Why are their clothes so dirty? What are they doing?”

“They’re waiting to get food, I think. Don’t worry about them. We don’t go there anyway, so mind your own business.” Lenny tightens his grip on Jeremiah’s hand.

“Ow! Let go of me,” Jeremiah whines.

“Hurry up then.”

They pick up the pace, passing Pearl’s Bakery and Meyerson the fishmonger. Lenny worries he’s missed the whole game. Surely he would’ve heard cheers if it was over?

“Where are we going?”

“You remember what I told you about the Yankees, right?”

Jeremiah looks up at him with wide eyes, a dribble of candy juice sliding down his chin. “Uh-huh.”

“Today we’re going to sweep the Series. Won’t that be grand?”

“Sure.” Jeremiah pulls his gray marble bag out of his pocket. “Can we play marbles when we get there?”

“Later!” The drugstore in view, he sees a thick cluster of men and boys congregating at the entrance. He starts to run, begging Jeremiah to keep up. “Come on, will you!”

Motioning for Jeremiah to sit on the bench just outside the store, Lenny pushes his head into the crowd, listening for some tidbit, some stat, some crack of the bat, to let him know his team is winning. Instead he hears a snigger, tongues clucking. Babe Ruth has just struck out. Before he can ask the score, he hears the official, tinny voice of the announcer coming over the radio: Ground ball by Gehrig. . .and the Cubs retire the Yanks with an easy out at first. Another disappointing inning for the Bronx Bombers. And after a pause: If you’re just tuning in, the Chicago Cubs are up, 4-3 at the bottom of the fourth.

Lenny can hardly believe his ears. “What!” His voice rattles. “How’s that possible?”

“Where you been, kid?” The fellow standing next to him frowns. “That damn rookie Allen gave up four runs in the first inning!”

A wave of disappointment washes over Lenny, but he tries to stay hopeful. They can still turn it around, he tells himself, and in the top of the sixth inning the Yankees pull ahead, only to have the Cubs catch up almost immediately. Every time a Chicago player is up at bat Lenny feels like he’s holding his breath; judging by the strained looks on the faces of the other boys and men, they are too. Once in a while, Lenny pulls his head from the crowd to look for his brother, and each time he sees him waiting on the designated bench. Good. Jeremiah catches his eye and points at the soda fountain through the window, to which Lenny shakes his head, a firm no. Lenny didn’t bring any money—their parents would never allow them to spend money on Rosh Hashanah, certainly not to buy such a luxury. He ignores his brother and goes back to listening to the game.

At long last, the Yankees take a strong lead in the seventh inning, scoring four runs off of back-to-back singles by Combs, Sewell, and Ruth. The crowd erupts with cheers, but Lenny doesn’t have much time to celebrate, because Jeremiah is tugging on his sleeve and asking, “Is it over yet?” For reasons Lenny cannot understand, Jeremiah has not caught on to the enthusiasm or the team spirit surging through the store.

“No, ding-bat! It’s only the seventh inning! How many innings are there in a baseball game?”

“Nine.” Jeremiah looks down at his feet. “I want to go home.”

Lenny fishes out the other piece of peanut chew, but it doesn’t placate him this time. “Don’t you want to listen? It’s the World Series, game four, only the most important game of the year!”

Jeremiah frowns. “You said we were gonna play marbles.” He holds up his bag.

“Later, I said. Not in the middle of the game, for Pete’s sake!” Lenny’s attention wavers as the glorious sound of the ball hitting the bat, followed by the crowd cheering, pulls him back to the game. “Just go back and sit on the bench. We’ll go when it’s over!”

Lenny half watches his brother sulk off, but he doesn’t care. The Cubs have the bases loaded now, bottom of the eighth. Lenny bows his head and scrunches his eyes shut, hoping for easy outs, and again his prayers are rewarded. By the time the ninth inning draws to a close, Lenny’s heroes have scored four more runs. The radio announcer’s glorious voice makes the triumph complete. Once again, ladies and gents, the New York Yankees are the world champions! Final score: 13-6. Joe McCarthy can be proud of his team today—what a comeback for the Yankees!

A shout of joy erupts from the drugstore crowd. Lenny savors this moment of pure happiness and watches the men and boys around him hugging each other, whether they’re strangers or not. “Babe! Lou! Champions!” he screams for all he’s worth.

Someone starts singing the words, “Take me out to the ballgame.” Lenny and the others join in.

“For its one, two, three strikes you’re out, at the old—ball—game. . .”

For a moment, Lenny thinks back to the unified voices in the synagogue this morning, but he finds this song more beautiful, more uplifting. Even some of the poor hobos from East Main, with holes in their shoes and sooty faces, have joined the crowd and gather to sing along.

As the crowd starts to break up and head in different directions, Lenny pushes his way to the bench where Jeremiah is waiting—only his brother isn’t there. He scans the immediate area, but doesn’t see him; the flow of bodies moving and expanding around him makes it difficult to find a small boy.

“It was Lazzeri’s two home runs that sealed the game,” someone shouts in Lenny’s face. He feels a surge of excitement, but the fear of losing his brother weighs him down, keeps him from enjoying the victory.

“Jeremiah!” he starts shouting. There are too many men walking on the sidewalk. He shouts louder now. “Jeremiah Gerstler!”

When his brother doesn’t appear, panic takes over, his heart frantic in his chest. Lenny searches the faces going past him, and he tries to stop each one, asking if they’ve seen a six-year-old boy.

A few kind men stop to hear Lenny out. “Haven’t seen him. Good luck.”

“What’s he look like?” asks another.

“Brown curly hair, white shirt, navy knickers. Holding a bag of marbles.”

“Sorry kiddo,” he says. “Gotta be careful with kids these days. Some sick people out there. My wife cried for a week over the poor Lindbergh baby.”

At this, Lenny’s eyes bulge with fright and his body goes cold with dread. He runs back and forth in front of the pharmacy, standing on the bench to see over the crowd. He begins to contemplate the unthinkable: how can he go home and face his parents?

The panic creeps down from his throat to his belly and settles like a heavy stone. If God doesn’t strike him down for this, Mother and Papa will. Atta boy, Lenny. Such a good son, we couldn’t ask. He’ll never hear his parents utter those sweet words again, and only now does it dawn on him how much he likes to hear them.

Lenny circles the drugstore, canvassing the area in all directions, his eyes scanning the stoops of the shops and the dark corners under the awnings. He prays, this time not to the god of baseball but to the Almighty Himself, promising that if Jeremiah is found, he will never again break the rules of the holiday. Never go behind his parents’ backs. He even promises to sit in shul for the whole service, every Shabbos.

—

At five-thirty, the drugstore owner shoos out the last men and starts to close up for the night, pulling down the shades and locking the cash register. Lenny sits on the bench where he last saw Jeremiah, shivering in the early October chill. The crowd has dispersed, and Lenny is hoping to see Jeremiah come around a corner. He prays his parents haven’t left the bedroom and discovered them missing. Maybe they wouldn’t worry at first, thinking the boys are at the park. But as evening comes, his mother would expect them home. She’d pace the kitchen, worried. Lenny’s imagination turns to the Hardy Boys books he’s so fond of, with their tales of little boys being tricked and kidnapped. He never thought such a thing could be possible in Bridgeport.

Lenny starts to sob, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his good Rosh Hashanah shirt. His arms prickle with a cold sweat, his chest feels heavy. Despite the sense of doom coursing through his veins, he starts down the street towards home.

“You there,” comes a voice from the manicured lawn of the church they’d passed on their way. The line of hobos has disappeared. “Come with me.” The man is slight, his beard the color of the grimy yellow chicken fat Lenny’s mother skims from the top of the soup. The tramp takes Lenny by the arm, startling him.

“Let go of me, mister!” He tries to pull away, but the man’s grip is too strong.

“I seen you up the road, and when I came back here, I got to thinking. . .” His abductor leads him through the side entrance of the church.

This is his punishment, Lenny thinks. In a flash he sees the bones of tricked, kidnapped boys. He’s just about to call for help when he sees a sign over the door:

Judge not, and you shall not be judged.

Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven.

“Oh, I’m not. . .I’m not a Christian,” Lenny stammers. “My mother is expecting me.”

The man grunts and yanks him inside, where he comes face to face with a big cross hanging on a wall. Next to it is a painting of a woman with her arms spread, her head encircled by a glowing light. He’s never been inside a church before and he begins sniveling again, his mind repeating one phrase over and over: Mother! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!  He’s dimly aware of men’s voices coming from another room. His body feels rigid but the man jerks him forward, through another doorway.

The bright lights stun Lenny into silence. As his eyes adjust, he sees that he is in an assembly hall, with five long tables stretching the length of the room. Tramps sit at the tables, the remnants of leftover potatoes and stew on their plates and gravy stains on the tablecloths. A half-dozen church volunteers serve the men small pieces of chocolate cake and bruised yellow apples.

The man eases his grasp and points to a curly-haired boy sitting at the fourth table, his white shirt covered in greasy drippings.

“Len!” Jeremiah calls and waves. “Over here!”

It takes a few seconds for Lenny to understand. He is breathless by the time he reaches Jeremiah. “Oh, God. Oh, thank God. You’re okay.” His eyes water with relief, and he stops to wipe his nose. “How did you get here?”

Jeremiah shrugs, unaffected by Lenny’s urgency. “I was hungry and I couldn’t find you, so I walked back here. You said they were giving out food, remember?”

“And boy, can he eat,” one of the men at the table says, chuckling.

Lenny sees a few bites of stew on Jeremiah’s plate, and his eyes widen in shock; despite everything he’s done today, he is appalled that his brother has eaten treif. Doesn’t he know anything?

“He’s an ace at marbles,” another one of the tramps chimes in.

A volunteer approaches with several pieces of cake. Jeremiah is first to take one, but Lenny stops him. “We have to go now.”

The man who grabbed him off the street says, “Sit down; what’s the rush?” He reaches out with a grubby hand and Lenny takes two steps backward.

Lenny eyes Jeremiah, imploring him to get out of his seat and say goodbye. “We really have to go.” When he makes no move to leave, Lenny takes Jeremiah by the hand and pulls him out of his chair. “We have to go,” he hisses again.

“Come back and visit us any time, pal,” a man missing two front teeth says to Jeremiah.

“So long, fellas.” Jeremiah waves goodbye. They muss his hair as he passes, holding out their hands for him to give high-fives.

Jeremiah flashes a smile, and Lenny leads him toward the side door. They emerge into the dusky evening. The intermittent twittering of crickets follows them as they walk towards home. He’s amazed at his brother for being so at ease with these men.

Lenny throws his arm around Jeremiah’s shoulder. He has no words to express his deep relief. “I guess you weren’t scared?” he asks, realizing he had come very close to striking out today, but was granted a last-minute save by the most unlikely group of relief pitchers.

Jeremiah doesn’t answer, his nonchalance suggesting that he’s not upset with Lenny. “They were nice. You said we were going to have an adventure.”

An adventure was not quite how Lenny would’ve put it, but if that’s what the kid wanted to think, it was swell by him. His mind spins. So many things have changed in the space of a few hours: dark possibilities he didn’t even know existed, and even a newfound goodwill towards the beggars of East Main. “Stay away from those good-for-nothings,” he remembers his father once saying. But maybe Abe was wrong about some things. Lenny walks a bit taller, feeling more mature, like a rookie who’s gotten a taste of experience from the big leagues.

They are nearly home, the houses lit up with kerosene lamps, their soft glow illuminating the lilac bushes decorating the neighborhood yards. Lenny would have some explaining to do. He wasn’t a good liar, and besides, Jeremiah could not be trusted to keep his mouth shut. As it is, on the short walk home, his brother has already mentioned—twice—that the fellas invited him back to play marbles, and that he’d sure like to.

Inside, Mother and Papa sit at the kitchen table playing cards, waiting for them. They seem relieved, but not overly worried. “Were you playing in the park? Did you lose track of the time?”

Lenny can’t help himself; he starts to cry. He wishes he could be braver.

“What is it, Len?” His mother wraps him in an embrace. Faint aromas of chicken soup, carrot tsimmes, and apple cake—foods for a sweet new year—linger in her dress.

He buries his head in his mother’s bosom.

“Speak up.”

When Lenny stops his tears, he’ll tell them everything. He’ll tell them how he prayed for the wrong things, and that the tramps aren’t such bad people. He’ll explain and explain until they can find a way to forgive him. He also has his promises to keep, and many games of marbles with Jeremiah to make up. He’ll even try to save his money and buy his brother a present, maybe the set of Akro sparkler marbles he’s been asking for. Maybe then God would forgive him, too. And maybe if they aren’t too mad, he’ll see if Papa can spare some butter and eggs, and if Mother can bake a cake to take to the hobos. It’s a new year, after all.

** Julie Zuckerman’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of publications, including The SFWP Quarterly, The MacGuffin, Salt Hill, Sixfold, Crab Orchard Review, Ellipsis, The Coil, and others. The Book of Jeremiah, her debut novel-in-stories, was the runner-up in the 2018 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction, and is coming out May 3. A native of Connecticut, she resides in Modiin, Israel, with her husband and four children. Learn more at her website.

The following is excerpted from Grevious by H. S. Cross. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux April 9th 2019. Copyright © 2019 by H. S. Cross. All rights reserved.

 

From Grievous (coming out April 9, 2019):

At breakfast in Ely, John could hear himself being cold to Owain though Meg seemed not to notice. It was her birthday; she ate with pleasure, and her cheeks glowed. As if to make a point, Owain kept reaching across the table to kiss her. Of course, it was his right, but to break off conversation repeatedly and murmur My darling little girl was overdoing it, surely.

—Now, John, Owain was saying, you mustn’t hurry this afternoon, not in the slightest.

John and Meg had planned an afternoon in Saffron Walden, to visit the graveyard and to collect Cordelia after school for tea with Mrs. Kneesworth.

—You three have a grand old natter with Mrs. K, the old battle-axe.

Another kiss.

—My darling girl.

It would be sickening if it weren’t so transparent: husbands only overdid it when they had something to hide. Likely Owain had not so much started over with her as he had moved the wife to a different town so he could carry on with his pieces in the first. More obvious was Owain’s hostile maneuver in buying a house without a spare room. By many measures the new house was better than the old, but there was no place for John in it. Cordelia had decamped to a cupboard-cum-sewing room and given him her bed, but his neck had begun to ache as soon as he arrived, necessitating another drop.

As they left for the station, Meg put her arm through his. She had been chattering about the new house and town, and now she began to describe the Meeting in Ely, though it sounded as though she’d gone only once. Tradesmen where shouting across the road, and the unsaid pressed like the weight of the scrum.

—Darling, she said, closing her hand around his. Let’s not speak of it. Let’s agree, shall we, not to?

He tried to stop, but she pulled him along.

—You know, don’t you, darling, how grateful I am?

She used the voice that repelled every protest.

—We’re all grateful, for everything you did and are doing.

—I can’t think what you mean.

—Darling.

Sweet, shaming. He sounded like a child and knew it.

—We’ve such a beautiful day. Don’t let’s spoil it.

He followed her, chastened, into the carriage and smiled as she, through a stray association, began to reminisce about the production of Patience they’d both been part of at Cambridge. He’d almost forgotten it, but she conjured every detail.

—Knee breeches vermillion!

A man such as Jamie would simply insist. I’m afraid this won’t do. I’m afraid we must speak of it. It being the madcap string of—what to call them even? Travels? Consultations? Dramatics?—adventures you followed from the moment I left you until the end of August, one hundred and twenty- five interminable days later, when you wrote from Liverpool that We were coming home All of Us, that Everything Was Splendid, that you were, no explanation, Cured. And as for the Splendid New House, it’s plain our holiday arrangements will have to change. But if he said those things, her eyes would overflow, she’d begin coughing, and it would all come around to his spoiling things again.

In Saffron Walden, Meg bought chrysanthemums to put on Delia’s grave. It was something they did every holiday, but this time they found weeds grown up around the headstone. Meg pulled them out with horror and apology, and John realized she was treating him as if he required consolation, presumably for the distress of seeing his wife’s grave untended, this woman dead ten times longer than he’d even known her. Meg was acting as if she were the one whose life was satisfactory, whereas he—wife in the ground, life held hostage by some wretched school— were the one deserving solace. For a moment he froze in fear that she might suggest, obscenely, he marry again.

—It doesn’t seem so long ago, she was saying, does it?

—On the contrary.

—Oh, darling!

He had always believed Delia was pregnant when she died. He’d found markings in her diary that suggested it, and to his shame, rather than grieve at the notion, John had felt only relief that the child had died with her. What sort of creature would it have been, he’d told himself, a child conceived while in his heart he made love to another? He’d always believed it had been a boy, who would now be Cordelia’s age, just old enough to come to the Academy. Now as he carried the grave weeds over to the rough, it occurred to him that the child, if it had indeed existed, would exist still in this very grave, inside her, without name or headstone or even a prayer. Was it wrong to pray for a child you’d no proof existed? Perhaps it was even sacrilegious. This was the kind of question Jamie’s father could answer. You could ask, and he’d listen, and all the embarrassment would vanish as he told you decisively: Yes, pray this; or No, and here is why. Was writing the man so far out of the question? Yet if the Bishop’s portcullis were to raise again for him, Meg would accuse him of backsliding to the superstitions of his childhood.

Did it go against the point of love to keep chambers of one’s self sealed from one’s beloved? Of course it was all hypothetical, wildly so, but if it ever ceased to be hypothetical, he vowed he would renounce the church and conform himself to the Testimonies they affirmed. As they left the cemetery by the far side, he drew a cross in his hand with his middle finger, This is my solemn vow.

✦

John had always been a favorite with Mrs. Kneesworth, and he realized as she welcomed them that he’d neglected her. After everything she’d done to help in March, he’d sent her updates from Paris, but since then not a word. She appeared not to hold it against him and kissed them all repeatedly. Since the Líohts returned, she had seen them only once, when the removers came. Since then she had been trying to get them to pay her a visit, but ah, she understood how very busy they’d been. And Mr. Grieves, dear Mr. Grieves, he knew he was always welcome in her spare room should he ever need accommodation in Saffron Walden. Of course, her room would be nothing to the rooms in the grand new house in Ely. John glanced at Cordelia, who returned an expression roughly equivalent to boys kicking one another under the table.

Mrs. K had made a tower of sandwiches, and although she obviously had a tower of questions, she allowed the conversation to unfold in the customary way: what John was getting up to (a book; an intriguing new boy in his House), how Meg was keeping in Ely (splendidly; plans for next spring’s garden; service with the housebound), how Cordelia was finding the long journey to school (quite short, actually), whether she didn’t after all fancy Mrs. Kneesworth’s spare bedroom (so kind, but no), just how churchy was Ely (rather), how in any case it wasn’t Saffron Walden (never), what the bachelor who’d bought their house was getting up to (travesties).

—And you still haven’t told me about your Grand Tour.

Meg glanced at the clock:

—Your da will be wondering where we’ve got to.

—It’s only five, Cordelia replied. He said not to hurry.

—You mustn’t dash off yet.

And so a monologue was undertaken about their Grand Tour, first by Meg, who put quite a gloss on it, and then by Cordelia. To hear the two of them tell it, the whole thing had been one lark after another, ridiculous foreigners alternating with marvelous foreigners, the account peppered with quaint foreign phrases and their confident assessments of The Germans, The Hungarians, The Swiss, The French, The Italians, The Americans, The Irish.

—And how is Mr. Líoht?

John thought Mrs. K’s voice had turned sour. Shouldn’t she try harder to conceal it? But Mr. Líoht, Meg assured her, had never been better. Business was thriving, and he was compelled to travel less than previously, scarcely at all. In short, there was nothing under the sun that could be judged unsatisfactory.

Mrs. K turned to Cordelia:

—And whatever became of your correspondent, dear?

Cordelia blanched, and John saw her gaze flit to the clock.

—Pardon?

—The person who wrote to me in the summer, Mrs. K said. I always assumed it was a young man, but I was never certain.

The girl’s face was flushing, her cup was being set on the table, and a polite smile was forming, one plainly false, yet one John realized he had seen before and taken as true.

—The one you asked to write to me, dear.

—I feel queer.

John had never seen his goddaughter be rude, yet here she was not only interrupting Mrs. K but refusing her mother’s help and now actually pulling Mrs. K into the kitchen.

—Whatever was that? Meg asked.

They’d closed the door, and John could glean nothing through it. The mantel clock ticked louder than a galloping horse and then commenced an elaborate chiming.

—I ought to stay with Mrs. K next time, he said.

—Darling. Don’t be that way.

She flexed her fingers as if they were stiff. He set his cup on the table and took her hand in his. The edge left her face. She sat back on the settee and closed her eyes. His lips beat. He could see the pulse in her throat. It wasn’t too late, couldn’t be. If Christ were to be believed, it never was, not until the end, and that wasn’t yet.

✦

—It was only a young man I met in Budapest, a medical student.

Mrs. K raised her brow.

—It was entirely gallant, but you can understand, can’t you, why I didn’t want to bother my mother with it?

Mrs. K could certainly understand. She’d had a German suitor herself once. This Cordelia had heard many times, but she smiled as if she hadn’t. (Had Tommy Gray not received the update telling him not to write Mrs. K? She’d written it right after the first, at least she’d thought of writing it . . . had she really lost the thread once her father had . . . train, Lourdes—)

—But, Cordelia dear, why would you ask this man to write to me rather than writing yourself?

She pretended to cough again, and Mrs. K fetched some water.

—It’s such a tedious story.

Mrs. K settled into a chair.

Oh, dear, the truth was that they’d been in a rush. Their train was earlier than they thought, and this boy—the medical student?—yes, this poor boy was simply in love with her, and she felt ever so sorry for him and so she’d tried to make him feel useful and asked him to write to Mrs. K for her. But she hadn’t said America! She’d said Austria.

But what about the rest? Mrs. K persisted. He mentioned a doctor, Mr. Felix Rush in Asheville, North Carolina? She took down a tin and produced a letter.

Oh, dear!—she snatched it—What a misunderstanding! There had been an article in a journal about such a man. The boy must have somehow confused it with Austria. He was foreign and tearful and she needed to be rid of him. It had been unwise, she knew, but no harm had come of it.

But what if the young man turned up at her door? He sounded unstable.

But Mrs. K needn’t worry! He was Hungarian and penniless and couldn’t afford to leave Budapest.

Then why had the letter been postmarked Kent? It was an English letter from an English correspondent. It didn’t look foreign and neither did the penmanship.

Was that so? Could she see the envelope? How curious. How entirely curious! But . . . ah, now see, she knew exactly what had happened. What a circus! This penniless Hungarian doctor-in-training had a friend, a kind older doctor from England who was in Budapest at the time lecturing at the medical school. They had spent time together. No, he hadn’t examined her mother, he was a dental doctor. But . . . what must have happened was that her Hungarian—his name was Stefan—Stefan must have been overwhelmed by the prospect of writing in English, even though he so desperately wanted to help, and so he must have got the English dentist to write it for him. And to save the postage, the dentist must have taken it back with him to England and sent it from there. What an adventure! Wasn’t life funny?  

**

H. S. Cross was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She was educated at Harvard College and has taught at Friends Seminary, among other schools. She lives in New York.

The following story is published with permission of BlazeVOX [books] and Andrew Farkas. The story originally appeared in Denver Quarterly 49.1.

The City of the Sunsphere

At Heliopolis, we saw ruined buildings where the priests had lived.  For it is said, anciently, this was the principle residence of the priests who studied philosophy and astronomy.  But there are no longer such a body of persons or such pursuits. No one was pointed out to us on the spot as presiding over these studies, but only persons who repeated sacred rites, and those who explained to strangers the peculiarities of the obelisk*.

– Strabo, Geographica (XVII.1:29) [*slightly altered]

And now the new Sunsphere is the cynosure of Knoxville. Standing 6,520 feet tall, its base is a black, cylindrical tower capped by a circular crown that extends well past the parameters of the column accentuated by equally black spires which carry the eye to the orb. The orb is a perfect globe of gold hovering twenty feet above the crown. It rotates thirty times per second, 108,000 times per hour precisely as does the Crab Pulsar, located 6,520 light years away near the constellation Taurus in the center of the Crab Nebula. The Crab Nebula and the Crab Pulsar were created by the Supernova of 1054 (SN1054), although the exact date of the event is unknown. The Crab Pulsar is a neutron star six miles in diameter, far smaller yet much denser than the Earth’s sun.  Again, mimicking the Crab Pulsar, the Sunsphere’s orb emits a concentrated beam of light that makes the sphere appear to pulse because of its rotations. If the orb could be decelerated, the light beam would match that of a lighthouse or emergency vehicle. The Sunsphere and the Crab Pulsar also emit radio pulses and X-rays, but only the X-rays are susceptible to Quasi-Periodic Oscillations (QPOs); hence the X-ray emissions vary, the light waves and the radio pulses remain constant. Once the Sunsphere was 266 feet tall, consisting of a green, girder-supported tower and a golden sphere made of connected hexagons. It did not pulse with light. It did not emit radio waves. It did not emit X-rays. It had a red light on a pole at the zenith to warn airplane pilots. On July 4, 2054, an explosion erupted around the Sunsphere, engulfing the structure in red, yellow, green, and blue flames. After the blast, a crimson and cobalt cloud was left behind. When the smoke dispersed, the new Sunsphere stood in place of the former. The orb began spinning. The city filled with light.

§§

To the southeast of the Sunsphere, windows reflecting golden beams, is Knoxville City Hospital. In OR 1058, Yang Wie-Te, a second-generation Chinese-American, a physicist and astronomer, is in critical condition. He proved that the Crab Pulsar and the new Sunsphere are in synchronicity with each other. He is supposed to deduce the meaning of the cosmic alignment. He is supposed to translate the messages being transmitted through the radio waves, light emissions, and X-rays. He lies prone on an operating table. Whether he has solved the mystery of the Sunsphere and the Crab Pulsar is unknown. The operating room, contrary to the rest of the hospital, is painted white and the tables are stainless steel.  The doctors, nurses, and assistants surrounding the astronomer wear suits of aquamarine, including facemasks, caps, and gloves. Their hands move rapidly. They speak in curt, terse commands or laconic repetitions. From the celeritous and ever-increasing activity, it can be deduced that the physicist is in a worsening state of dissolution. Should Mr. Yang die, he would be subject to the following penalizations: a $250,000 fine, the incarceration of his entire family in health resorts for the despondent and valetudinary located in Farragut (or Far West Knoxville), the marking of his entire family with the sign of the Theta (theta for thanatos, the death imprint). Yang Wie-Te’s descendants will also be liable for any destruction caused by the physicist’s death which could reach upwards of one hundred billion dollars to assorted insurance companies, banks, law firms, and other public and private interests.  Ultimately, Mr. Yang’s family may face the severest sentence: expulsion from the City of Knoxville. These sanctions, and perhaps more, would be effected if the astronomer should pass away because of City Code 529: Thou shalt not die, lest ye release a shock wave. And it is true, whenever a human passes away the corpse immediately releases a shock wave that ranges in power from a quarter ton nuclear weapon to a one megaton hydrogen bomb. On account of these puissant bursts, death is prohibited. With modern medicine, however, aging and dying are purely voluntary.  Hence, no one has died in Knoxville in over twenty years. Yet a question arises: how could Yang Wie-Te allow himself to degenerate to his current status? No matter the reason, the penalties and fines to be exacted on Mr. Yang’s family are theoretical, superfluous. At Knoxville’s current population, and given the physicist’s enthalpy and exergy readings, the shock wave from his body would be the genesis of a chain reaction of shock waves that would obliterate each building, that would eradicate the entire population of 100,000,000 Knoxvillians, if not the entire world.

§§

Second only to the Sunsphere, Knoxville City Hospital is the tallest manmade structure in the city (since the aforementioned tower can no longer be considered manmade).  From the roof of the sanatorium, the entire megalopolis is viewable, with the exception of parts of the Northern Wasteland blocked by the former World’s Fair tower. Here one can see that the majority of the population has clogged the streets, parks, bridges, sidewalks, riverbanks, and other open spaces of the city. Although the Knoxville Health Commission (KHC) inundates the airwaves, satellite signals, Internet, newspapers, magazines, etc. with calming broadcasts and Public Placation Announcements (PPAs), the news of Yang Wie-Te’s condition has been disseminated by some means. Utterly docile, the citizens understand that if Mr. Yang expires, Knoxville, but more importantly the Sunsphere, will cease to exist. Yet the soothing tones, the conciliating reports, and the optimistic premonitions do nothing to alleviate the tension. In spite of the danger, such masses of people moved to Knoxville because of the new Sunsphere.  Being a neutron star (although comparatively infinitesimal) like the Crab Pulsar, it supplies the megalopolis with an almighty source of energy. Hence electricity is inexpensive. The citizens, however, are also filled with this vigor. No one in Knoxville needs to sleep any longer than three or four hours per night; only those who fight against their own inherent vivacity (which is also illegal) go without exercise; only those who eschew their intrinsic verve fail to accomplish their goals. Lassitude, as are aging and death, is a voluntary condition. Moreover, the Sunsphere provides the city with a constant heat source. The mean temperature in Knoxville is 85º F. Finally, much as neutron stars generate the most powerful magnetic fields in the universe, the Sunsphere’s magnetism is due to its mystery and the mystery inherent in its connection to the Crab Pulsar. The answer to this enigma is what each citizen of Knoxville hopes to learn. Yang Wie-Te had been attempting to deduce the answer for over eight years when he was checked into Knoxville City Hospital by his assistant. He was found on the outskirts of the Northern Wasteland.

East of the Sunsphere, along Summit Hill, are Market Square and the Old City, until Summit Hill becomes Martin Luther King (MLK).  Market Square and the Old City are an entertainment district composed of subterranean clubs: literally subterranean. Aboveground, this recreational zone is constructed almost uniformly of red brick. The streets are older, still molded from asphalt in most places down to limestone in others. Meticulous care has been taken in this borough to preserve an aged appearance of no particular year.  Gas lights line Gay Street. South Central is made of brick. Advertisements for products no longer in use, whose use is no longer remembered are still prevalent. A structure rumored to be a saloon and a bordello in the middle to late 1800s continues to be both to this day. Past the Old City, the houses are concatenated, and yet most Eastern Knoxvillians still live underground. Whereas the citizens of Knoxville hope to solve the mystery of the Sunsphere, or to have the mystery solved for them, there are three cults whose beliefs find their origins in the exact date of the occurrence of SN1054, which explain their interest in the World’s Fair Tower. The East is home to the Believers, also known as the Doomsdayers or the Apocryphites.  They believe SN1054 was first observed by Sadiae Fujiwara, a Japanese poet, on May 29, 1054. Astronomers have proven that such a viewing would have been impossible because Zeta Tauri, the closest observable star before the supernova, was in direct proximity to the sun, therefore invisible. Furthermore, Sadiae Fujiwara was not yet born in 1054, since he made his astronomical hypothesis in 1235. Although the evidence is against their claim, the Apocryphites continue to believe that Fujiwara was teleported back in time to a position where he could witness SN1054. Along with this belief, the Apocryphites assert that whatever the pulsar message may be, it will encourage humans to die and be transported to Paradise, located in the Crab Nebula, to live with Sadiae Fujiwara and James Agee. The reason humans began erupting into shock waves and the reason the old Sunsphere became the new: so more earthlings would die simultaneously and be delivered to Arcadia. At this hour, while the city of Knoxville awaits the outcome of Yang Wie-Te’s surgery, the Apocryphites have concluded that Mr. Yang induced from the X-rays what the Believers themselves already knew. Yang, who perambulated in the direction of the Old City about once or twice per month, was aiming to bring about the apocalypse when his turncoat assistant committed him. Asked how they are keen to such information, Believers will say that the X-ray QPOs “told me so.” They will also say that the number 529 in City Code 529 is no coincidence. It signifies that the Apocryphite belief in May 29 is correct, that their convictions are also correct. Because of their obsession with death, Apocryphite temples are the aforementioned underground speakeasies. Here they lure Tellers, Ramponans, and their own kind to dine on deleterious cuisine, imbibe alcohol and other drugs, fornicate randomly, smoke cigarettes, brawl with their fellow citizens, etc. With their goals they are successful, although modern medicine, if consulted soon enough, can cure all of the effects of these activities. On occasion, since the diversions in these clubs are prohibited, the police launch cleansing campaigns, sending those who are found to health resorts; the subterranean caves, however, are labyrinthine and the Apocryphites have never been completely reeducated. Instead, they continue their rebellion, speaking of their apocalyptic revolution in hushed, deferential tones, pointing to the new Sunsphere which they feel was created when the ghost of James Agee rose from his grave to make possible the transfer of all humankind to Paradise. The QPOs told them so.

The Northern Wasteland was demolished by the only shock waves that have occurred. It is composed, solely, of rubble.  There are no brick buildings. There are no skyscrapers. There are no cinderblock structures. There are no actual streets.  There are no people. There is nothing but the reminder of what happens when a human being expires. There are sections where the detritus has been itself destroyed, leaving a view of the Appalachian Mountains far in the distance. The shock waves did not obliterate all of Knoxville because there were fewer people living in the city at the time. Before the explosions, the North was home to a fourth Sunsphere Cult: the Free Thinkers, also known as the Sunsphere Haters. Even with the radiating charm of the propaganda and the menace of death, the other Knoxvillian groups despised the Free Thinkers to an almost self-destructive degree. The reason the Free Thinkers were hated, the reason they were called the Sunsphere Haters: they claimed the message the Sunsphere was emitting meant nothing at all, that the alignment of the Crab Pulsar and the World’s Fair Tower was a cosmic event of astounding, yet nonsensical proportions. The light waves, radio pulses, and X-rays were not a code to be decrypted, but even if they were they could be studied from the antipodes where there was no peril. The date of SN1054 is inconsequential, or was so to them. The Free Thinkers, therefore, worked to get Knoxvillians to apostatize, proclaiming there would be no revelation from the Sunsphere, that it was merely beautiful and dangerous. A scandal would have arisen if any of the Free Thinkers had lived: who caused the shock waves? Since the Sunsphere Haters were eradicated, they were blamed. The Tower, according to the other groups, had its vengeance. The one surviving invention the Free Thinkers imparted on Knoxvillian society is the Enthalpy/Exergy Meter (EEM). Exergy is the amount of energy that can be extracted from a system. Since this energy is ejected as a shock wave when a human perishes, exergy is the measure of a person’s explosive potential. Enthalpy calculates internal energy, pressure, and volume (in the case of humans, weight). Keeping enthalpy low is the goal of all human beings who are not Apocryphites. A high enthalpy score means your body contains too much energy, too much pressure, or too much weight. Energy and pressure can add to exergy, increasing explosive potential. Weight cannot add to exergy, but an obese individual could still erupt into a shock wave equivalent to a quarter ton nuclear device. Furthermore, a corpulent human probably has a high energy reserve (since the Sunsphere energizes all), probably is under excessive physical stress, and both of these properties lead to a higher exergy rating. When enthalpy reaches a predetermined level (calculated by doctors for each individual) a person will either go into cardiac arrest or will immediately die; Yang Wie-Te was in cardiac arrest when he was discovered. The Free Thinkers, to simplify the EEM, wrote a song to explain its value:

Enthalpy and exergy work together to instill harmony,

Without them your deaths would destroy this here fine city.

The Sunsphere Haters hoped to preserve as many humans as possible until they could remove them from Knoxville.  Members of the other cults now walk to the edge of Henley Street, which used to become Broadway in the North, whenever they question their own beliefs, whenever they lose hope in the Sunsphere. These questioners stand at the extremity of the city and ponder the expanse of the wastes beyond. In the distance, there are the mountains.

Fort Sanders, the University of Tennessee campus, and parts West are home to the Tellers of the Truth. Here there are mostly skyscrapers made of steel, aluminum, and prismatic windows which cast kaleidoscopic patterns. The streets are made of an advanced polymer that transmogrifies according to the climate to instill optimal traction. Along Kingston Pike, the largest thoroughfare in the megalopolis, are uplifting aphoristic billboards, appeasing colors, and tranquil professionally landscaped gardens. On each street corner is a speaker that broadcasts confidence-building adages and PPAs.  Far West Knoxville is home to the mammoth KHC building, the third largest structure in the city. Contrary to the East, most Westerners live aboveground, as far aboveground as humanly possible, in order to be closer to the Crab Pulsar. The Tellers of the Truth, simply called the Tellers (or the Tattletales, depending on who one asks), believe the original Yang Wie-Te was correct (the Yang Wie-Te being attended to by rapidly moving, aquamarine-clad doctors is a far distant relative). He claimed that SN1054 took place on July 4, 1054. Since this date is widely accepted by the scientific community, the Tellers are completely confident in their assessment. They are also confident that, whatever the message may turn out to be, it will undoubtedly be found in the radio waves and it will undoubtedly encourage humans to live longer and longer. The radio waves hold the secret because they are the most easily deciphered. The secret is obviously to live longer because of the destruction corpses cause. Furthermore, the Tellers hold that their conclusions are correct because the old Sunsphere became the new on July 4: the date, they claim, of SN1054. They also claim that the Sunsphere metamorphosis was caused by a blast from the Crab Pulsar itself. The fact that such a blast would have taken 6,520 years to reach earth from the Crab Nebula does not deter their doctrines. While the prognostication becomes grimmer for Yang Wie-Te, a one-time native of the West (who departed after the Northern Wasteland was formed), the Tellers believe he had yet to deduce the answer to the World’s Fair Tower Enigma. He had been working too hard. He had worn himself down. What Mr. Yang needs to do, once he has convalesced, is to check into one of the health resorts, which are also the Teller temples. Citizens either choose to enter these sanitariums for their own fitness related reasons, or they are incarcerated into them when caught engaging in harmful activities often in insalubrious parts of town (the East). The propaganda from the city address system and the consumption of attitude adjustment pills, both Teller inventions, are not militarily enforced. A human who remains morose for an extended period of time, however, is considered to be engaging in antisocial (and therefore dangerous) behavior and may be subject to surveillance by the Knoxville Police Department (KPD). On this day, the propaganda and the pills appear to be inoperative, insufficient, since the general mood is one of consternation. Yet perhaps the propaganda is working, since the message transmitted for the past two days has been that the mystery of the Sunsphere was about to be solved.

Along Chapman Highway, south of the Sunsphere, live the Ramponans. The vast majority of their structures are made of cinderblock, but there is no architectural consistency. The roads are made of polymers, asphalt, cement, brick, and other substances. Some Southerners live underground, while an equal number live above to far aboveground.  In sections their buildings are concatenated, in others they are sparse. The Ramponan ideology is that human beings can never really know anything at all. Facetiously, they uphold the SN1054 date “discovered” by Giovanni Lupoato, who backs the only Western recording of the occurrence which appears in the admittedly questionable Rampona Chronicle. The Rampona Chronicle itself includes an error, accidentally listing the supernova year as MLVIII (1058), instead of MLIV (1054). If this document can otherwise be trusted, and according to the Ramponans no one knows if it can, then the date of the supernova was June 24, 1054. Since irrefutable knowledge is solely mythical, however, the Ramponans proclaim they are ignorant of the actual date, but that the rest of humanity is also ignorant. Yang Wie-Te, vying to display his exergetic reserve, was equally benighted but had yet to construct a nihilistic detachment from his situation when his assistant committed him. Since nescience is the controlling factor for Ramponans, they have no theories as to what the mystery behind the Sunsphere could be, any more than it is possible to infer the exact date of SN1054 (which might not have occurred in 1054). Moreover, while discussing humanity’s witlessness, Ramponans will often declare that a doctrine of utter ignorance is itself a dogma, so humans cannot aver peremptorily their de facto state of naïveté. When dealing with Apocryphites or Tellers, Ramponans will frequently dismiss the X-rays (especially the QPOs) and the radio waves and point to the light, asserting that it is Morse Code. When asked what the Morse Code means they answer that no one will ever know. Often lacking congruity, the Ramponans feel their system is correct at this hour because Mr. Yang, who last resided in South Knoxville, is in OR 1058: a strictly ironic coincidence. The Ramponans remain in Knoxville to harass the other cults, to sow discord.  Mockingly, they broadcast the radio waves emanating from the Crab Pulsar and the new Sunsphere. The sound, which is repeated ad infinitum, is a chopping sound, the sound of a helicopter, the sound of an overturned lawnmower. They intersperse these transmissions with belittling pleas of what it could all mean. In spite of their nihilistic detachment, the Ramponans also await the outcome of Yang Wie-Te’s operation.

§§

6,520 light years away, shrouded in a cloud of gases extant from SN1054, the Crab Pulsar sends forth its message encrypted in X-rays, radio waves, and light. For now, the Sunsphere relays its esoteric message, not yet deciphered, perhaps indecipherable. Yang Wie-Te was often known to gaze in the direction of the Crab Nebula. When asked what he was pondering, Yang would say that he was imagining himself near the Pulsar, he was imagining himself as an antenna, he was preparing to disseminate the directive that would one day surge forth from his brain. He claimed the Pulsar and the World’s Fair Tower were made to speak through him. And they would. But now Mr. Yang is in the hospital, silent, perhaps awaiting his explosive transubstantiation. Yet in the Crab Nebula, the neutron star’s nature does not change. It continues to pulse. It continues to transmit.

And now the new Sunsphere. Even below the structure, in what was once World’s Fair Park, and what is now Sunsphere Place, people are compacted and waiting. They wait to learn of Mr. Yang’s condition. They wait to learn about the mystery behind the new Sunsphere and the Crab Pulsar. They search for answers. They are told over a loudspeaker by a soothing, relaxing voice that the physicist, the astronomer is fine, that the mystery will soon be solved.  Above them all the orb of the Sunsphere pulses signifying doom, nothing, joy, nescience. Like the eye of a god it sees them all, the tower beneath standing as if a monolith to someone or something’s past or possibly future demise.

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Andrew Farkas is the author of two short fiction collections: Sunsphere (BlazeVOX Books) and Self-Titled Debut (Subito Press), and a novel: The Big Red Herring (KERNPUNKT Press). His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, North American Review, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. He had a Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXV and a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2013. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Washburn University.

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Image: Flickr / Jacob Ian Wall

 

The Other Stories has 7.13 Books’ permission to publish “Dorian Vandercleef” which appears in Not Everyone Is Special by Josh Denslow

Dorian Vandercleef

When you’re a failure at everything else, write a novel. That was the first line of my novel, spoken by Dorian Vandercleef – musician, artist, and social provocateur. My main character would never achieve fame, but I was confident this novel was my ticket to literary stardom.

I wrote the last few pages while staying in the garage of my periodic friend from high school and his obnoxiously nice family. Not a converted garage or anything. It was a sleeping-on-an-air-mattress-next-to-boxes-of-Christmas-decorations-and-two-empty-gas-cans-that-still-emanated-the-ghosts-of-fillings-past type of situation. My friend felt he owed me because my family had taken him in for a few months during our freshman year when his parents were going through a nasty divorce that involved private investigators, secret bank accounts, and a sex toy called The Mint Julep.

After some mild cajoling one night at dinner, I let my friend’s wife read my novel. She hadn’t struck me as all that insightful in our previous conversations, but she fancied herself an expert on the English language because she’d written the manuals that accompanied a popular brand of digital cameras.

That night as I slumbered in the garage (which at the time was the temperature of a meat locker), she shook me awake, her face dangerously close to mine. There was a moment when I thought she’d been so overcome by my prose that she was going to engage me in a bit of sexual escapades. I’m ashamed to admit that I wouldn’t have stopped her. But luckily for everyone, especially my high school friend, that’s not what she had in mind.

“How do you know Dorian?” she asked me urgently.

“I made him up,” I said with pride. “He’s a figment of my imagination.”

“I know this guy. Personally. He’s even writing this same book. Except his is in first person.”

“First person?”

“Like when you say ‘I’ and ‘we’ instead of ‘he’ and ‘they’.”

“I know what first person is,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure out what you’re telling me here.”

She took a deep breath. “I’ve known Dorian Vandercleef since I was a girl. We even tried to date once in college. I’m the Tina in your book.”

I realized I hadn’t bothered to remember my friend’s wife’s name (or the names of any of his children) even though I’d been staying with them for a few days. And now she was looming over me, and somehow, even with my stunning powers of observation, I’d missed that she was exactly as I’d described Tina in the novel. Slightly plump with an alluring overbite and honey-colored hair that she tucked behind her tiny ears.

I sat up on the air mattress and my ass sunk all the way to the cement floor. “I don’t understand,” I said.

“You’ve written my friend Dorian’s story. Perfectly.” She looked scared.

“I must meet this man.”

Which is exactly what we did. Right then. Using their family minivan.

When Dorian opened the door to his apartment (which I’d also described in my novel down to the lopsided number), I knew that everything my friend’s wife said was true. There he was in the robe from the downtown Radisson which I’d had him steal as a reminder of his conquest of the maid-of-honor at his sister’s wedding.

“What’s going on, Tina?” Dorian’s voice was just as mellifluous as I’d written on page three. His leather jacket was thrown over the back of the couch (page ten). The lamp with bird feet he’d found while riding a motorcycle across Bali was on dim (chapter six).

“Do you know this guy?” she said.

They were both staring at me like I was the weird one here. Had I become a character in my book? Or more frightening, was I now going to be a character in his? Standing there between them I was suddenly aware of my burgeoning double chin and the striking whiteness of my bare arms. I couldn’t help but think how we’d each write this scene and how unattractive I would become when reduced to words.

“I don’t know,” Dorian said. “Is he important?”

He wasn’t asking my friend’s wife; he was asking me. He wanted to know if I was going to make it into his book. Would I thrust his narrative forward?

I didn’t need to say anything. We all knew the answer. It was fine for me to write about Dorian because he was interesting whether he was in first or third person. But no one needed to write about me. I’d never been to Bali or slept with the maid-of-honor. I didn’t want Dorian to know my name. I didn’t want this moment to become memorable. I did not want to be part of his plot.

They were waiting for my answer. It was a test of my fortitude. I had to do something unexpected. Something that no reader would see coming.

So I ran like hell.

My feet slammed on the asphalt outside Dorian’s apartment complex, but I didn’t slow until I was out of sight. Hunched over and gasping for breath, one thing was certain.

I had never, ever, meant to tell the truth.

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Josh Denslow’s debut collection Not Everyone Is Special will be published in March by 7.13 Books. It contains stories that originally appeared in Third Coast, Cutbank, Black Clock and other fine places. When he’s not building elaborate Lego sets with his three boys (all under five-years-old!), he plays the drums in the band Borrisokane and edits at SmokeLong Quarterly.

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Image: Flickr / Micah Baldwin