Fiction

Mark Crimmins

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WHAT CHARLIE SAID

by Mark Crimmins

He told me that the first time he met me he thought I was an asshole, because I had replied to everything he said with one word: right. He said he realized that I wasn’t an asshole later, when we were watching the Gerber machine make laser patterns at the factory and I quoted him something from Meister Ekhart. He told me he was on medication and pulled a little pipe from his pocket. He said he took a secret puff every hour of every day. He told me there were many great mountain ranges in this world but that for him it was all about the Uintas. He told me if I climbed the TimpoonekeTrail solo and hiked all the way to the summit of Mount Timpanogos, I would find enlightenment. He almost cut off one of his fingers one day when he was operating a band knife and he couldn’t stop laughing as he told me over his shoulder about how Jimi Hendrix had got out of the army by telling the military shrinks he couldn’t sleep at night because of his obsession with the bums of other soldiers. He said Jimi always slept with his guitar on his chest. He told me he had registered at the university as an anthropology student using three different names for three different years to avoid paying tuition. In first year, he registered as Charles Dodd. In second year, over the phone, he spoke in Bee Gee falsetto and registered as Charlise Dopp. In third year, he registered as Chuck Dodge. He enjoyed playing with the names. It was like a Scrabble game to him. He cut his hair different every time he got a new student picture taken and wore makeup when he was Charlise. He still had his three student cards. They were among his prized possessions. He told me he got busted at the end of third year and dropped out because he couldn’t find the fifteen thousand dollars in back tuition he was ordered to pay. He was so broke he had to live for a year behind Dave Neff’s sofa up on Wasatch Boulevard. He told me the space behind the sofa was his apartment. He covered his rent by paying for the videos they watched. He told me his mother had taken off when he was six and his dad had been sick for a very long time. He told me he only had two feelings: that he was still a little kid and that he was older than the Rock of Ages. He said that every year he held an Antichristmas and performed pagan rituals. He told me that one day, when he was high on shrooms and reading Augustine on a balcony in the Avenues, he had an epiphany. Over the rooftops he saw auras around the trees. He felt a divine presence. Then he heard sobbing and realized there were tears streaming down his own face. He told me he had done peyote and sat on the edge of Bryce Canyon for ten hours. He told me he stared into the amphitheater until he had looked right outside of time. Then one day he called me in the middle of the night and said I needed to save water. We all needed to save water. It was the secret of life. He was calling me because nobody believed him. He called me a few days later and said he gave away his clothes, left his place on Redwood Road without even closing the door, walked down Sixth South to the Greyhound station, and got on a bus for Denver because that’s where he needed to be. He told me he’d be staying in Denver for a while. He said he was in a hospital there. The doctors just wanted to keep an eye on him. He told me he’d be getting out soon. He just needed a little more time. He told me he missed his Uintas. He told me not to worry about him. He told me it was no big deal. He told me had to go now.
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Mark Crimmins photoMark Crimmins teaches Contemporary American and British Fiction at the University of Toronto. His stories and flash fictions have appeared or are forthcoming in Happy, Confrontation, theNewerYork, White Rabbit, Flash Frontier, Columbia online, Cha, and Eunoia Review. He is currently working on two books of fiction: Intersections: Experiments in Short Fiction and Characters Madmen Alone Can Read, a collection of stories. You can find out more about him on his website: www.markcrimmins.com.

Rebecca Givens Rolland

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REVEALING THE FACE

by Rebecca Givens Rolland

It was an ordinary morning when Sarah first met the girl.

Sarah was standing in her third-floor office brushing her hair, only a little more briskly than she would have at home. A few quick short strokes, just enough to neaten, then she put the flat black brush in the particleboard closet above her files. Five minutes before her next patient arrived.

She drew in a breath. Another ten-hour day at Mercy Hospital, fifty-eight-minute sessions with two-minute breaks in between. The same routine as usual: she reminded herself to stay calm, make as little fuss as possible about her needs. Two glasses of water per day, no more than the allotted bathroom breaks. It was the patients she was supposed to worry about—her bodily functions were, at the most, only minor annoyances.

Most days, this reminder would have worked well enough. Her mind would quiet after a minute or two—she’d press herself with both hands away from her desk and stride down the hallway with confidence, like somebody’s mother, somebody who could handle anything. It was what her bosses at Mercy demanded, that extraordinary attention to detail. Craning your ear to a patient’s slight cough, the heave after the swallow, could tell you almost everything. The place was still the best in the country for adult disorders, even in the face of rumors it was going downhill. But today, hands on her standard-issue white coat, its twice-stitched hem hitting at her knees, the thought came into her head again, a thought she couldn’t silence, no matter how hard she drew the brush from root to end: no children for me.

She’d just turned forty years old, and Dr. Meta had said last week it wouldn’t be possible. Even if she’d met a man right now and got started post-haste, the doctor said, laying one hand on her arm, no way would any child find itself to her. A problem with her ovaries—early atrophy, she’d said, then continued talking, her high-pitched voice almost whiny as she bent down so close Sarah could smell the mint on her breath. Then, sticking her file in the drawer with the others, she gave a perfunctory lipsticked frown.

Knowing she would look it all up later, would read the diagnosis over a thousand times, Sarah tried to close her ears off and not hear anything. There would be time to reckon with the sadness, time to figure out if she had any other options, to beat herself up for anything wrong she might have done to get there, any possible role she might have played. There would be time to call up her mother and stare at the telephone, waiting for a long enough pause in the silence to slip in the news. Only a forty-minute drive away, in a suburb outside of Charlotte, and yet they weren’t exactly close—no matter how long Sarah stayed on, she knew she’d hang up without letting her know.

The worst part about them, her ovaries, was she couldn’t even feel them. Those little egg-shaped buggers lay somewhere deep inside her, plotting dysfunction, whispering exactly where they would put on the brakes and decide to halt the engine, and she’d never even know till the game was over.

Not feeling anything, what an awful concept, Sarah thought. As a third-year speech pathologist at Mercy, she had made her living out of words, helping patients speak again after stroke, traumatic brain injury, or in the face of disease—but what could she do when the seeds so deep inside her had ceased to function, when no argument would make them change their minds?

But she didn’t have time to consider that—her office door was opening, a shot of shadow widening on the floor, dark and impossible to ignore. The girl was coming. Her father, Henry, had said he would bring her, scheduled an extra twenty minutes for his appointment, insisting that she was a special case.

Sarah swiveled her head around, her arm grazing the supersized poster of the trachea on the right wall. Black lines snaked down the larynx, the esophagus, showing which way food was supposed to go down, and which you should be sure to avoid.

Henry was standing in the slice of shadow, holding the girl on his shoulder, face in. His body was stocky, blue polo shirt a little too narrow for his shoulders. He had an upright stance, like he’d been playing squash competitively for years. She’d known him for little over a month, and had only seen him alone a couple of times. From the size of the girl, she couldn’t be more than a year or so, with little red booties and old-style overalls that looked oddly fashionable for her age.

“How can I help you?” she said, pulling her coat tighter over her chest, smoothing her hair down for good measure one last time. Henry was looking her over carefully, patting the child’s shoulder as he fixed his gaze on her cheek, then her eyes. How long had he been watching? Smile and look happy, Dr. Rance from grad school had always said, giving a broad-toothed laugh himself, like he was trying to model good behavior. The patient shouldn’t have to deal with your problems on top of his.

But even as she tried to calm herself, she started to feel the familiar floating feeling that came to her when she was panicked. Her feet shuffled, unsteady, on the tiled white floor. Sit down, she told herself, swinging her chair out from the hinge of the desk. Just sit down and you’ll be all right.

“Would you like to have a seat?” she said, gesturing to the chair, then grabbing onto the steel-edged patient table. The words were like a strange croak in her mouth.

For a second, the two of them just stood there, not moving. Two arms’ worth of distance. Sarah let her gaze fall on the girl.

Sausage-chunky arms wrapped around Henry’s upper chest, the very image of a cherub from a Renaissance painting, sun-drenched blonde curls, and an impish, cross-eyed look to her as well. Legs that dimpled when she sat, knees bent a touch inward, as if she might be bowlegged when standing. It was almost impossible to see her eyebrows, they were so blonde and narrow, but when Sarah looked closely, there they were, slightly raised. Her smile was a crooked zigzag, and strangely knowing, like everything she’d ever seen was contained in her open mouth.

Catching Sarah’s smile, the girl gave a sweeping wave of her hand, fingers wiggling from knuckle to tip, the smile breaking out further on her face.

“Meet my daughter,” Henry said, holding the girl’s hand out, palm flat and straight. Sarah bent toward the girl, leaning far over the table so she could feel it hitting at her waist. A single, deferent gesture, bowing down.

Sarah felt an immediate surge of longing and thirst, then a rush of exhaustion. Was this what the border between having and not having a child felt like? Were those two conditions so far apart? If only she could hold onto those fingers a moment longer—there was something about them, the feeling of powder mixed with egg yolk, with an undertone of grittiness, of dirt, that made her want to grab onto them and not let go.

“She looks like you,” Sarah said, leaning back slightly, with a tense sort of shiver in the chair. Maybe getting a cold. Around here, you had to be careful. “So how can I help?” For a second, she heard an echo of her mother’s voice in her own.

“I haven’t been able to get an appointment at the city hospital since her six-month check-up—they said it’s going to take several months, that it isn’t an emergency. So I thought, since you’re treating my dad, you could give her a look. You’re the only one I know who’s qualified.”

Henry swept his sandy hair back with a single hand.

“You know, I’d love to help, but I don’t treat children. You know Mercy’s just set up for adults, and since grad school I haven’t worked with them—”

Henry turned his daughter around on his knee, so she faced out. That same wave of the fingers, this time with her outstretched left hand.

“What are her symptoms?” Sarah said, sighing. Out of politeness, she at least had to ask.

“Only one, to be honest—if you want to call it a symptom. She doesn’t talk, or doesn’t make any noise, I should say, and never has. From the moment of her birth, she has been silent, and nothing we can do has convinced her to produce sound. Maybe it’s psychological, the shock of birth, nobody knows. And we don’t know whether it’s something she’ll grow out of, or whether she’s going to live her life like that. It’s killing us all, to be honest.”

Leaning over the table, Sarah stared at the girl. Round heart-shaped mouth, lips thinner than her father’s, but the same basic shape. Slight double chin that jiggled when she bobbed her head. Brilliant blue eyes that focused right at her face, brightened a little, then shifted away.

“Has she been seen by the neurologists, or the pediatrician—have they checked if there’s anything physically wrong?” Sarah ticked off the possibilities, her fingers freezing to the touch.

“Yes, of course. We’ve been through the usual channels, when she was born, at least. Everything with her larynx checked out fine, her lips and tongue, her tonsils even—no clear problem there. She even had a brain scan as a baby, to see if there was anything wrong, and everything checked out fine—no unusual splotches or anything, just the regular gray matter. Once the doctors decided there wasn’t any clear reason—or nothing they could put a medical name to—they basically gave up. Told us to come back every once in a while to check on her progress, teach her sign language if we wanted. And we’ve been trying….but she’s still so young, it’s awful to think that’s all we’ll be able to do. . . .”

Henry gestured high up in the air, a mixture of deft movements that Sarah couldn’t follow. A hint of light rose into his eyes, blue streaked with brownish flecks. A glassy sheen. He looked defeated, Sarah thought, like he’d been searching for a secret, poking into every cranny, but always turning up empty.

That must be how I look, she thought to herself all of a sudden. A woman who’s always looked in every place she was told to, always colored right within the lines. And now, no children to throw bread on the counters, tip the chairs over. No children to keep me up at night.

Rolling his chair backwards, Henry clapped his feet on the floor. The vibration made Sarah startle, and she looked up, expecting the girl to shuffle in response. Nothing. Motionless on Henry’s shoulder, the girl had clearly fallen fast asleep.

“Look,” Henry said, sitting up straighter, with a steelier tone. “I get it, it’s not your specialty, you’ve got other patients—but I’m getting desperate. Her mother’s not around, and it’s just been me trying to help her all this while. Watching her grow up, seeing her try to talk—I can’t bear it, knowing she has things to say but won’t be able to say them. I can’t just give up like that.”

“I understand, but I don’t want to get your hopes up. I’m not a miracle worker—there’s no speech therapy I can think of that would work,” Sarah said, bending over to search through brochures from various companies—how to fix stuttering, what to do when you start noticing the signs of Parkinson’s.

“I’m asking you as a person, not just a therapist,” Henry said, narrowing his eyes, drawing his right hand over the desk. It almost touched hers—Sarah could feel the heat rising. He had a heavy, bearish weight to his palm. The knuckles hung with tiny hook-shaped scars. “You’re someone I trust, someone I already count on. Couldn’t you just try for me?”

Widening her eyes, the girl shifted her head around to stare. A questioning look, as if Sarah were someone from another species, not a woman at all. Her smile was crooked, almost exactly like Henry’s. How unfair, that she’d never get to have that for herself.

“I don’t know,” she said, her throat clenching.  “What if we realize there’s nothing we can do?”

“Sure,” he said, turning the girl toward him, patting her cheek with the flat of his hand. “I get it. Wouldn’t want to disappoint anyone. But this is my daughter we’re talking about. We worked so hard to have her, and every day that goes by, it’s like I’m losing her. Like I’ll never understand her.”

Henry’s voice was strained as he leaned over the girl, smoothing her loose wisps of hair with his hand. His face had a look of pleading, his eyes turned down, as if he’d wait forever if he had to, fly to whatever country, just to catch the sound of his daughter’s voice.

They all sat in silence. Sarah watched them. The position of their bodies—Henry’s back reclined against the chair, the girl’s shoulders and back horizontal, resting in his arms—reminded her of an image she once saw of the Pietà, mother grasping her son, heavy folds of drapery over them both, the whole of the earth’s sadness contained in her face.

She felt a sudden tension welling up in her body, coiled anger that wouldn’t release. How much suffering could they take? Her body failing her, her skills failing this girl, whom all the doctors had given up trying to save?

At this rate, she’d grow old without children. The girl would grow up without speech. Her father would walk around imagining her voice, the sound a glittering ring around his neck, wondering what she might have spoken of, how she might have sounded when she laughed.

She couldn’t just stand by and watch it happen, Sarah said to herself, clenching her fists underneath the desk. That was how she’d built up her career, taking what she’d called the conservative approach, telling her patients to eat only the thickest purees until she was certain they could swallow all right. This time, she felt sickened by the prospect. She’d had enough of waiting, of hoping. So what if it all came to nothing? The least she could do was try.

“All right,” she said, leaning her head back. Resting on the cool of the black-tiled wall. “I’ll ask around and see if I can find some answers. That’s all I can promise, okay?”

“Thank god,” Henry said, exhaling hard. The muscles in his cheeks unclenched. “You can’t imagine what great news this is. You won’t regret it.”

“No problem,” Sarah said, folding her arms tight. “Like I said, no promises, but I’ll try.”

Leading them out, the girl lying loosely in her father’s arms, Sarah shivered. She pulled her coat tighter, clutching her files to her chest. She felt colder than she’d remembered feeling in years.

Back in her office, she strained up to catch the flash of the digital wall clock. Two minutes until her next patient. Time to pull herself together. Drawing in a rustling, achy breath, she shut her eyes. When she opened them, she was standing in front of her taped-on office mirror, big enough to barely frame her face. Her cheeks blotchy, caked with flecks of mascara. Eyes clogged with faint leaky tears.

No matter, she told herself, blotting them out with a tissue. Keep moving. Give it a try.

All her life, she’d imagined the faces of her children, their milky blue eyes, their hair slightly longer and more tightly curled than her own. All her life, she thought she’d have enough time. Now that was over. Now she did what she could. She couldn’t stand to lose another child.

*

Sarah was lying on a hospital bed in a white-walled room high up in a foreign city, with doves and cooing birds racing across the sky. It felt as though the whole city had been scraped of sound, or the room at least had been turned completely soundless. Long strips of masking tape edged each of the windows, tracing their outlines from window to floor. Her green hospital robe, tied at the back, smelled of linen, of summer, of heavy rain.

Two strange men were standing beside her—Sarah knew they were doctors, but they wore plaid shirts and khakis rather than medical clothes. They were both taller than her, one slightly pudgier than the other, and had bushy mustaches. Chain-linked gold watches on their wrists.

Clutching her stomach, Sarah felt something shift inside it, some awful ache, a screw driving into the flesh above her belly button—slowly, impossibly slowly, being turned. Grabbing the hand of the thinner man, she begged him to cut her stomach open, pleaded with him to take the ache out. And he kept refusing, leaning over her with a knitted expression, said she was going to have to keep it inside…

 

Twisting her head, the way she did when she stretched in the morning, Sarah felt herself come to her senses. That dream again, its images so vivid it was hard to imagine the men as only figments, impossible to see the pain as unreal.

Bolus, she said out loud, the word echoing with a single gong in her throat. That word made her lips pop out with the initial plosive, then the labial in the middle forcing her tongue base up, then the fricative snake-like s at the end. Meaning: clump of liquid or pile of food.

Up until now, that dream had only caught her in the middle of the night, three or four in the morning, when she woke alone in her second-floor walk-up, lying in the double bed that she once shared with Andrew. Alone, she said to herself—even a ghost would catch more noise, attract more spirits. At least the dream had never bothered her during the day, not until now.

Sarah blinked her eyes twice, smoothed her hair down. Get back, she told herself, start your mind over. Remind yourself what you’re here for.

In the third-floor imaging room, Sarah hunched near the filing cabinet, next to two of the floor’s senior doctors and her seventy-five-year-old patient, Mrs. Bar.

Mrs. Bar shuffled in her chair but didn’t turn. The room reeked of latex and applesauce purees. Sarah wrinkled her nose, breathing out. In the three years she’d been here, she still hadn’t gotten used to the smell.

Last month, Mrs. Bar had a stroke, and in the past couple of weeks, she’d been losing alarming amounts of weight. Just didn’t feel like eating, she said. The doctors were conducting a study of her swallow to see if it was safe for her to eat. Sarah put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. She could feel the bones right underneath, the musculature trembling. Mrs. Bar sighed, shifting in her chair. “All right, everybody,” she said, in an achy voice. Shrugging her left shoulder, she shook off Sarah’s hand. “I’ve had enough with you hemming and hawing. Let’s just go.”

All at once, looking at the back of Mrs. Bar’s head—white waves of unkempt curls—Sarah thought of the girl again. Her silent smile, like the smirk of the Mona Lisa. That single-minded look on Henry’s face. Could that have been just this morning? Ever since her own diagnosis, she hadn’t been sleeping. The promise she’d made to Henry made everything worse.

Sarah drew a cupful of liquid from the upper drawer, laced with barium. In the imaging study, they had to use barium sulfate—opaque to X-rays, she remembered her professors saying—so it will show up as a black line on the screen. An eerie feeling, watching that dark line on the screen as it slipped over the top of the tongue, slid to the back of the throat, and down. It made her feel just how fragile the body was, how easily visible everything that went wrong. Did her ovaries look like that, frozen and twisted, or shrunken like raisins, locked into their useless rooms? Why hadn’t they at least allowed her to see them, given her a little while to mourn?

“You’ve prepared it?” Dr. Gans said, leaning over her. Beard frizzy, full. Voice steely and directive, warning almost. Don’t make a mistake.

“Yes, it’s all ready, the liquid bolus,” she said, handing him the thimble-sized cup of radioactive liquid, crossing over Mrs. Bar’s chest. Squeezing her eyes shut, with a cough so light it could almost be a giggle, Mrs. Bar took the cup and swallowed its contents down.

Sarah glanced over at the screen to catch it. Nothing—goddammit, too slow this time.

Pursing her lips, too fast for Sarah to stop her, Mrs. Bar spat the contents out. A shapeless glop of liquid on the floor, laced with a drop of spittle. Sarah couldn’t draw her eyes away.

“The wipes?” Dr. Zeller said from the front of the room. The kind of man her mother would have called dashing, would have said, Why can’t you find somebody just like him?

Turning to the packet on the table, Sarah bent down to collect the mess.

“No more spitting. You’re going to have to hold it in your mouth for the test to work,” Dr. Zeller called out, bending over his files, not a wrinkle in his knee-length white coat.  Maybe he ordered his wife and kids around too.

Mrs. Bar looked panicked, putting her hands to her neck, fiddling with the straps of the plastic covering.

Sarah shuddered. The place did feel claustrophobic. “I know it’s bitter,” Sarah said, feeling guilty to sound so harsh, “but you have to give it a try. We have to know whether it’s safe for you to swallow or not. Whether the gag reflex was compromised. Otherwise, you could get really sick, and we wouldn’t know why.”

Sarah felt oddly worried about the woman. She pointed with great emphasis to her chest, seeing how she was hard of hearing.

“Okay, for you, dearie, I’ll give it a shot. You seem like such a nice girl,” Mrs. Bar said, shifting her shoulders back, opening chapped lips, her mouth a narrow O.

Bending down to get the next bolus ready, Sarah stole a look back at Mrs. Bar. So silent in her green oversized gown, so hopeless-looking, deep crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes.

That woman looked just like her mother, she realized with a start, or what her mother might have looked like in a decade or so. Same tightly rolled curls, the blondish color laced with a Saran-wrap transparence, a few streaks of red. Same slanted eyebrows that turned downward in disgust, or fear.

For a second, standing next to Mrs. Bar’s chair, Sarah caught the woman’s gaze. The momentary look back started her—sweeping blue eyes, pinprick irises with large pupils that held a deep tightness, as if attempting to will her away. In those eyes, she saw for a second her mother’s look, then her mother’s whole presence waiting, as if the transparent film of one face had lifted, revealing the face of another, more fragile, beneath.

That look was the same one her mother had given Sarah for years, whenever Sarah had disappointed her. She couldn’t disappoint her now, not this time, not so harshly. No grandchildren to show at the family reunion, no one to teach how to slide down the river’s rocks, that river winding around the family land, sand-flecked stones perfect for lying on, then dropping down. How could she possibly break the news?

Of course, it wasn’t like she had no other options, what with technology these days, and adoption—right now, though, she struggled to rinse those thoughts from her mind.

But what about Henry? she thought, looking back up at the imaging screen. Blank again, with intermittent moments of blinding light. Two seconds of brightness, then back to dark. She had to find a way to help the girl. Was there research about cases like hers? Would Dr. Zeller know of anything? She couldn’t wait forever—she’d have to face Henry tomorrow. After Mrs. Bar left, she’d have to ask.

It was so quiet, Sarah wondered if the study was working. She glanced back at Ms. Bar. Her eyes were shut tight.

Then, all at once, Mrs. Bar must have felt it—Sarah could see the liquid shooting down her throat on the imaging screen.

“No, no,” Mrs. Bar screamed in a high-pitched, sing-songy voice. A sugary, pleading tone. “Stop it, stop it, all of you—take me home!”

Thrusting her body forward, she shot completely out of her chair, sliding down past the safety catch at the chair’s end into a crumpled heap on the floor.

Such a small woman, no more than five feet tall. Sarah had never really examined her before. Locked in the fetal position, the woman heaved with the effort of her speech, a whistling yell, then an inhuman, deep-throated howl.

The room went back to dreamlike—Sarah couldn’t stop it—her own body rising up with a swoop from her seat, hovering in the space between the imaging machines, in the freezing darkness.

She had to bend down and pick up Mrs. Bar. It was her job, to help whoever needed it, to exhaust herself with the effort of it. But no part of her body moved.

A ringing in her ears, getting louder and louder, like the train outside the window of her childhood house. Dr. Zeller spitting at her to get Mrs. Bar seated, his eyes widening, the same hand gesture you’d use to manage a dog—and yet she couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop her feet from levitating in their clogs, her knees from knocking in, one panty-hosed leg rubbing up against the next, chest and shoulders winging backwards. She felt each individual vertebra arcing through the base of her tailbone, a shot of energy searing along her spine.

“I’ve gotta go,” she said. “Feeling sick. Sorry—oh god—don’t know what’s wrong.”

“Where do you think you’re going? Are you crazy?” Dr. Zeller rushed toward her with his heap of files.

Bent halfway over, she stumbled out of the office, stepping over the curled body of Mrs. Bar. Only a few more steps to her office. Keep running. Food, please stay down.

Thank god for the patient bathrooms. Dragging the door open, Sarah rushed into the last open stall. Kneeled next to the toilet, heaving. Nothing. No lunch or breakfast. Her knees ached on the lumpy edges between the tiles.

How could she have let everybody down? She shifted backwards, yanking her hair tightly into a bun. Mrs. Bar, who needed her, and the girl too.

The image of that girl—those glittering eyes, that open, trusting look, the little dip at the center of her mouth—hung in Sarah’s mind. She smiled, thinking of the girl’s face, the ease of her sleeping body. Something about her could make her forget the green-lipped toilet bowl, the lump of Mrs. Bar’s spit.

Something about the girl made her feel full of warmth, relaxed even. She imagined a hint of perfect sunlight over her face, peach-fuzz cheeks soaking up the heat. What was it about her? Maybe her soundlessness, maybe the intensity of her stare, taking in everything and letting nothing out. Or maybe the way Henry held her, both hands grasping her torso, fingers linked.

She’d simply promised to look into her case. She never said she could fix anything.

“Not your child,” Sarah said out loud, against the hum of the air conditioning. “Can’t forget that.” Her voice sounded odd, the voice of a person rising up out of a dream. Dragging herself up, she steadied herself on the stall’s steel railing. Too much, she thought, all this pressure, at a time when she already didn’t feel well.

Just say you’ve got a meeting with a specialist scheduled. Let them know you’re doing your best.

The idea felt simple suddenly, a real solution. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

Pulling a tissue from the floral box on the sink, she scrubbed with vigor. The marks of her mascara rubbed off halfway. Both cheeks blotchy, spotted, burning red.

Terrible, she thought, that word bolus, the lack of children, everything that could rise up and come down. It felt gross, almost rancid, in her mouth.

Listing her tasks on her fingers, Sarah tried to stand taller. She’d have to put one foot in front of the next. Tomorrow she’d check in with Mrs. Bar. Apologize to the doctors for running out. Talk to Henry about the girl, stall a little. Tell her mother about her barrenness.

There’s always hope, she thought, rinsing her face one last time, drying with a single paper towel square. Let her know you’re managing, and you’ll be fine. A little cry, and you’ll both come to terms with the news.

The paper’s grimy bits, the acid cling of sanitizing soap, made her feel at ease, even safe somehow. The automatic dryer grated off and on, on and off, as she passed under it, with a mechanical rub of her hands.

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Rolland author photoRebecca Givens Rolland won the 2011 Dana Award in Short Fiction, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Witness, Kenyon Review, Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, Georgia Review, Many Mountains Moving, Versal, American Letters & Commentary, and Meridian. Her first book, The Wreck of Birds, won the 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire First Book Prize and was published by Bauhan Publishing. She is a speech-language pathologist and doctoral student at Harvard.

Catching A Bullet In The Brain

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bulletinthebrain
If you haven’t read Tobias Wolff’s classic short story, “Bullet In The Brain,” we urge you to do it now. Go ahead, we’ll wait. If you have read it, then you know how completely unforgettable the story is, with vivid characters, a dangerous scenario gone very wrong, and the Bartlebian response that sets the narrative in motion.

First appearing in Wolff’s short story collection The Night In Question, the story is required reading in creative writing programs, and a favorite among writers and writing teachers. T. Coraghessan Boyle named the story as a favorite and gave a wonderful reading of it on The New Yorker Podcast.

You can also hear Wolff read “Bullet In The Brain” over at This American Life.

And while it is often lamented that the book is always better than the movie, there is a wonderful short film based on Wolff’s story that is well worth watching. Starring Tom Noonan, and the awesome Dean Winters (The Mayhem guy, and character actor from OZ, 30 Rock and others), you can see it in two parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlrA-0t34p4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adogoaOncSw

 

 

Crissy Van Meter

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ONE ROW AHEAD

by Crissy Van Meter

I see you at Moody’s funeral. I try not to lunge at you or throw my floppy arms around your neck and ask you if you remember me, or ask you if ten years ago was even a place you want to remember. With all of this sad funeral shit, I’d assume it’s not really the time.

You’re stuck in the corner of my eye, one row back and to my right. Mom nudges me when she recognizes you.

I don’t ask anyone else about you. I don’t acknowledge you. You have your babies and your wife and we are mourning. I see your parents nearby.

The first time we kissed was in Moody’s bed. I had braces and you smelled like patchouli oil, a scent I absolutely despise now in adulthood. And cumin. I hate those smells so much because they remind me of your messy car.

Moody’s body is locked inside a glossy casket, up front by the God people, by his family, and surrounded by heaps of white and yellow flowers. Mom keeps sneezing. His parents keep playing all this Elvis gospel, his favorite, like they are begging us to cry. I think I can do it now; I think I feel something happening in my eyes.

I want to turn around, to see if you’d bother with something like crying. I want to ask you how this could have happened; how an accident can just happen; like anything just happens and suddenly everything is different, and fuck, it’s annoying.

I’m looking at the photo collages on poster boards that line the church walls, some propped up against old art easels. The photos from before we had camera phones and digital point-and-shoots. I can see us, all of us, and it’s practically like this funeral is an excuse to die from nostalgia. Might as well. Isn’t that how it works anyway? I say this in my head, to you, like you can hear me from one row ahead.

I hear your mom sniffle and I think of you consoling her by putting your hand on her hand, or maybe her shoulder. I want to turn around to remind you that my mom caught us having sex in your car, in the driveway. I want to laugh. I want to tell you.

Moody’s father speaks and the church hushes still. There are a few long sighs; those trying to catch their breath over tragedy. He speaks eloquently on the matter of this tragic accident, saying that the world is not ours and that he’s with Jesus now, with his grandmother, and then a list of others they knew who have already died.

Do you think it’s true? I want to say to you, from one row ahead.

I think you still don’t believe. I hope you don’t, so I don’t feel so fucking alone in this place. We grew up in this church; how terrible. We won goldfish here at the carnival in eighth grade; you won one for me that died about three days later. You left yours in a bowl on top of the microwave and it exploded.

The soundtrack to this funeral is killing me. I really think I could just die. This pain of watching it unfold, knowing you’re behind me, and that none of this exists anymore is too much over the deep blues of Elvis Presley telling me I did it all wrong. I can’t even think of Moody at a time like this.

I’m wearing blue jeans. Mom is actually in jean shorts. It’s inappropriate. The airline lost our bags, or really misplaced them. How do you lose something? Where does it even go? I’m ready to turn around now—someone’s mid-speech at the podium—and ask you that. I want to tell you that my clothes are my plane clothes and that it was one hundred degrees in New York when I boarded. That’s why I’m wearing this stained loose-fitting tank top.

I feel terrible. I had sex with Moody too, and I saw a few others on the way in. Even one of his cousins, a pallbearer. It seems so hard to be practical now. All the girls from high school leaning against the walls, a few pregnant. They wanted Moody too; maybe a few got him. He’d never tell me that stuff.

I look like an asshole in these clothes. Like in a matter of ten years, I got chubby and became white trash in its purest form.

I want to get up there to talk about Moody. The older I get, the more of these I go to, the better I get at articulating my memories. But not in these jeans, I say to Mom when she nudges me again to get on the microphone.

You must be fucking insane, I whisper.

You could have heard a tiny echo of my voice if you were paying attention. But you’re probably grieving properly back there, really thinking about Moody, and I’m thinking about you.

Moody’s brothers talk about all the years they spent up at Big Sur, and they talk about camping. I listen closely; I went on most of those trips.

You were invited once. I know you have to be thinking of it now. We planned it for a month and we were going to share a tent. When we picked you up, you were sitting in a chair in your backyard. There were no provisions packed, and Rachel Martin was in her white bikini, running and jumping off the diving board into your parent’s perfectly maintained pool. You acted surprised. We went without you and I cried for the first hour on the drive north. Moody put his hand on my knee and I finally fell asleep in his lap in the backseat. Me and Moody shared a sleeping bag that whole trip.

After a slideshow and a long-talking priest, we stand and we are to exit. I need a closer look though, at least at the casket they chose, at least at Moody himself, like I’m going to take a quick peek inside. Maybe they’ll let me lift the lid for a second.

I ease up to the front while Mom escapes, totally mortified at her bare and blonde hairy legs showing. She says she’ll meet me in the car. It’s getting quiet in here, and I make it to the altar. I see our old friends and Moody’s brother, who I kissed once at a roller rink. He hugs me and it feels really good to be touched. He leads me to Moody’s shiny closed box.

It doesn’t matter to me, the casket I mean. It’s not Moody. Instead I start to search for my face in photos. There are stacks of them and so many pinned to cork boards. It’s like I never know how much anything means, in the present at least. To go through these glossy photographs, some stuck together, to remember Moody seems impossible. To remember any of it.

I feel you lurking. I think of how I will explain my attire, or what I will say about my life. On the drive over, I decided rightfully that I would not say I’m unemployed, single, and that my record deal fell through. I will not say that I am down to about one gig a month and it’s in Queens.

You’re now standing next to me, examining the photos too. We’re wrapped around each other in most of these shots. I wish I had more time to peruse; I was really looking for pictures of us. I’m not even focused on photos of Moody. I want to find the photos of us, the ones that Moody took in his backyard, when we’d lay in his tree house all day. Where are those photos?

“What a mess,” you say.

I nod.

I’m angry. Do you mean we are a mess, you are a mess, or Moody was a mess?

“I hadn’t seen him in a few years,” you say.

I had. Moody was just in New York. He stayed for a weekend; we made out, too. He told me he loved me and I should’ve just said it back.

“Well, you are so busy now,” I say.

I can tell we want to embrace. I don’t think I’m imagining that. We are edging so close, but I don’t reach and neither do you.

“How’re the boys?” I ask.

You tell me that they are crawling and that two is really much harder than one. I want to blurt out obscene things. Like how I see their photos on Facebook and Instagram and it’s like I still know you.

We’re next to the casket now.

“You still in New York?” you ask.

I tell him I’m unemployed, that my record label dropped me, that I only play in Queens, deep in Queens. I even tell him that the airline lost my bags and that I’m wearing sloppy clothes by pure accident. I say it all so quickly.

“Moody wouldn’t care,” you say.

Probably true. We even laugh for a second.

“God, he loved you so much,” you say.

Now I feel so bad. Even after he’s dead, I don’t love him as much as I do you.

“Not really,” I say.

I can feel my cell phone buzzing in my back pocket, against my probably bigger-than-high school ass. I don’t dare grab it. I stare intently at you.

We don’t have much to say and thankfully some old friends approach. Even Rachel is here. Now we are all hugging and I’m still in jeans. We are talking about our lives; some are rich and some are fat. Most are both. Rachel still looks good. I bet she’d still fit into that stupid bikini.

I see you talking to her.

I want to get Real Housewives crazy on you, flip over Moody’s coffin and scream. Instead I pretend I’m in a hurry and shuffle to an exit.

You grab my arm, almost forcefully. You make weird eyes at me, like you don’t want to talk to crazy Rachel. So I stay for a second, overwhelmed by your grip. I overhear her saying she’s a model, and we all know from Facebook that she’s got four kids and does catalog shoots for cash. She made the cover of the JC Penney insert last summer.

“You’re not going to the graveside?” you ask.

I hadn’t planned on it. It is too hard for me; he is already gone and I couldn’t watch him planted in that shitty cemetery next to Denny’s. And Mom is in the car waiting to get back to our hotel. The sun is finally coming out and she insisted we buy bathing suits at Wal-Mart on the way home. At least we can get some color.

“My Mom needs to be somewhere,” I say.

“Why don’t we go together?” he says.

I look around for your wife, your parents, those really ginger twins of yours. You tell me she took them home and that you drove yourself. But it’s enough, just the thought of being in your car, that sweet waft of cumin and smelly shoes. It’s a small win to tell you no, thanks.

*

Mom and I browse the bathing suits at Wal-Mart. I find a nifty red onesie that looks like something I wore in a photo when I was just a kid. It’s sold with a little ruffle at the top. I opt for the large, hoping it will stretch. Mom gets a blue and white tankini. We grab some candy and waters at the register and she asks about you.

*

The sun is an unfortunate bright, and when I open my eyes to scan Mom floating in the hotel pool, my vision turns blue. The longer my eyes are closed, I begin to see things in all shades of purple. I think of Moody accidentally. I think of how he would describe this, pleasurable, and I finally make my way to the side of the pool. I dunk my feet and slowly slink under the water and everything is quiet. I think of Moody and it’s just enough to be sad.

I think of calling you later that night to leave a weird voicemail. I think of reciting good times and talking about Moody. But I don’t. I sleep in my bathing suit and I know I’ll itch in the morning.

============================================================================
Crissy Van MeterCrissy Van Meter is the co-founder of Five Quarterly, an online literary project out of Brooklyn, New York. She lives in Los Angeles. www.crissyvanmeter.com

Frank Scozzari

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TOO OLD FOR WAR

by Frank Scozzari

Old Makatiku looked wearily upon the young Kantaku. A pillar of youth he was, standing more than two meters in height with broad shoulders, a head full of shiny black hair, skin that was taut and clear, and muscles that rippled like the palms in a tree. His shadow stretched out over the African earth like that of a giraffe. And from his seated position in his thatched throne, Makatiku knew he looked old and weak and worn from a life lived fully.

That was me, Makatiku thought, staring up at the young shujaa warrior, forty years past. But I was taller, and even stronger, and I did not have this look of pity in my eyes.

“You must answer,” demanded Kantaku.

The council sat anxiously waiting. Makatiku glanced over at them. Among them were the elders and friends, and the many brave warriors he had fought alongside in the internecine wars, all in their colorful, ceremonial tunics.

If only there was a way out, gracefully, Makatiku thought.

He glanced back at the towering young Kantaku.

But there was none.

Every spear has two edges and each side cuts with equal depth, he knew. If he agreed to the challenge, he would face a humiliating defeat. He was no match for a man one third his age. After all his wonderful years of ruling with dignity and judicious benevolence, having his face rubbed in the dirt now was something he could not bear. Is this a fit way to end it? The thought of it offended his soul. Yet if he refused, he would have to abdicate the throne. It was law.

Kantaku stood waiting. And behind him was his entourage of young Maasai warriors.

“Are you sleeping?” Kantaku asked impatiently.

“I am thinking.”

And then a pleasant thought came into Makatiku’s head and small grin formed on face. Could young arrogance be so foolish?

And when Makatiku did speak, everyone seemed a bit mystified by his confidence and the cleverness in his eyes.

“I accept the challenge,” he spoke loudly. “It is a great tradition and it is the people’s right to see the challenge answered. Although I doubt that you are up to the task. I doubt that you or any of your young followers have the strength or the will or the intelligence to win such a match.”

A sigh came from the council, and similar exclamations from all the villagers who were gathered around. Kantaku too seemed a bit surprised by Makatiku’s willingness to accept the challenge but welcomed his words nonetheless.

“Okay then, let’s get on with it,” he said.

“There is one condition, however,” Makatiku added.

“Yes?”

“I would like to choose my own weapon.”

“Weapon?” Kantaku asked.

The young Maasai warriors standing behind Kantaku exchanged curious glances.

“Yes, I ask that I be allowed to choose my own weapon in this case.”

Kantaku looked over at the council. It had been more that fifty years since a challenge for the throne had been decided by a fight with weapons, a fight to the death. The Kenyon and Tanzanian governments had long since outlawed the practice, and tribal leaders throughout the Maasai Mara had come to accept the notion of a bloodless succession.

“Do you accept my request?” Makatiku asked.

“A request for weapons is evidence of your antiquity. You are an old man stuck in old ways.”

“Nevertheless,” Makatiku said calmly. “It is in the book of laws and has never been distorted. Though foreign governments have tried to rid us of our ways, the rules have never changed. It is the challenger’s choice of weapons. But in this case, I ask that I be allowed to choose my own weapon.”

Kantaku glanced over at the council expecting some form of intervention from them, but there was none.

“I know tradition,” he replied.

“Only women and politicians desire weaponless fights,” Makatiku said. “Though it is the warrior who chooses peace over war, it is also the warrior who chooses bloodshed over defeat and humiliation. Yes?” As Makatiku said this he ran his eyes over the crowd of villagers. “And it is the warrior who accepts death over dishonor, even from a foe.”

Kantaku remained silent. For nearly a minute he remained silent, then he looked over at the council members and raised his chest high. “I accept, old man,” he said, confident.

Makatiku nodded his head, pleased.

And then there is the issue of an aged body. Makatiku thought. What an abomination it would be if no animal sought his meat! In all his years, he had seen it less than a dozen times. There was the remembrance of Old Nampushi, who had died of some terrible, western disease and had been left in the sun for the buzzards, but no buzzards came. And how a spotted hyena came by and sniffed his dead body and walked past it without even taking a simple bite. This will never do. A corpse rejected by scavengers was considered to have something wrong with it and was cause for great social disgrace.

He dropped his eyes down to the red dirt beneath him.

Nor was burial an option, he knew. It was harmful to the earth. To place a rotting corpse in the ground was to defile the earth.

“Also,” he said, “I will need five kilos of ox fat and blood, placed in the care of my good friend Jakaya.”

Makatiku turned and looked over at his old friend who sat with the other elders on the high council.

Jakaya nodded his head.

Kantaku looked at Makatiku curiously.

“It is not for me,” Makatiku said.

Kantaku chuckled. “We will see who it is for, old man. Anything else?”

“Nothing.”

Kantaku signaled two young boys, who hurried away to the butchery to gather the five kilos of fat and blood.

“And the weapon you will choose?” Kantaku asked, his voice now conveying a tone of disgust.

“I would like to know the weapon you choose first, if that’s permitted.”

“Okay, if it is your wish,” Kantaku said.

He looked around at all the villagers, knowing anticipation was building.

“A long spear,” he said boldly.

The young warriors exchanged spirited words, voicing their pleasure at his choice.

A long spear was the ideal weapon for mortal combat between two men. Its long shaft enabled a thrust from a great distance. Its barbed headpiece, once in, could not be retrieved, at least not without causing substantial additional damage. And when thrown properly, it could pierce the stretched cowhide of a Maasai shield.

“And you?”

“A simi.”

“A simi?”

“Yes, a simi,” Makatiku said firmly.

A lively discussion erupted, not only among the young warriors, but among the council members as well. A simi was not a weapon designed for warfare. It was a simple tribal knife with a blade not longer than fifteen inches, used ritualistically or for skinning animals.

“This is silliness,” Kantaku said.

“It is the weapon I choose,” Makatiku replied.

Kantaku looked back at the warriors behind him. Then he glanced over at the council members. Makatiku sat quietly, joking with the idea of it in his head.

What form of trickery is this? Kantaku wondered.

All his life he had been taught to be suspicious of gifts from adversaries, and he was wary of Makatiku now, of his deception and cunning. Weapon, a simi was not; yet skillful Makatiku was, in the art of combat and killing. Kantaku’s father had told him all the stories, of how Makatiku had overcome a group of five Kaputiei warriors by hiding in the dead, rotting corpse of a water buffalo, and how he had sprung from the corpse with bow and arrows and killed all of them. And how he had been chased once into a steep canyon by a herd of crazed elephants, only to start an avalanche that crushed and killed most of them. His feats of bravery were legendary, and his acts of cunning something to be wary of. For Makatiku to choose a simi now, in a fight that would determine the end of his reign and perhaps the end of his life, surely there was some form of trickery behind it.

And he could throw a knife, Kantaku thought, further than the length of any long spear. And its two-sided blade was perfect for finding a place to stick after sailing end over end through the air.

Makatiku sat quietly in his rickety throne, waiting.

“And I will take a tall shield,” Kantaku said, unflinchingly, “along with my long spear.”

Again the warriors nodded their heads and voiced their approval.

“It is a wise choice,” was all Makatiku said.

A tall shield, two-thirds the length of one’s body, was capable of deflecting a barrage of arrows. It could easily deflect a single, hand-thrown knife.

Despite his arrogance, which comes along with youth, Makatiku was fond of Kantaku and tolerated his youthful ambitions. Of this new generation of warriors, a generation that Makatiku did not like or understand, with cell phones and a desire to live in cities, Kantaku stood apart. It was he who most cherished the traditional ways. And he who was most clever. The others were merely warriors in name and appearance, Makatiku thought, who posed for photographs and dressed the part only to satisfy the expectations of the safari lodges.

It is not an easy thing, Makatiku thought, to make way for a new generation of warriors, some of whom had exchanged their spears for cricket bats and text books. It was a contradiction, he thought, to accept the new; a contradiction of all he was and all he knew, and of all that his father and grandfathers were, and all that they knew.

But this one, perhaps, had a chance, he thought, watching Kantaku’s eyes, if he was forced to eat hyena. He noticed a digital watch on the wrist of one of the warriors. Ah! The New World! It is a pity that life must evolve, and change, and end. And that the flames of youth burn out so quickly. And standing way in the back was another young warrior wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap, no doubt given to him by one of the safari tourists. He quickly removed the cap when he caught Makatiku’s eyes upon him.

Yes, too many changes have passed, Makatiku thought.

He had seen it all, the erosion of customs over many years, from one governmental program to another, each designed to strip his people of their traditional ways. And the unstoppable inflow of technology, like a giant dust storm of locusts that he could not keep out. Commercial cotton and synthetic clothing had long since replaced the traditional calf hide and sheep skin, and the beadwork was no longer made of stone or wood or ivory, but glass or plastic. He glanced down at the feet of the warriors and realized that half of them wore sandals soled with pieces of motorcycle tires, and one even wore a pair of Nikes.

And too came the digital age. It was all too much, this new world that invaded his land and had swept through his people like a foreign disease. He recalled the electric pumps brought in by the new government to filter their water, and what happened when they broke and they had no water for three days because the unfiltered water now made them sick. And how the doctors poisoned their children with injected medicines, making them ill for one week when they were otherwise well; and how lion hunting was banned by the Kenyan government. What kind of obscenity is that? And yet fee-paying trophy hunters were granted permits to hunt lions under a new government plan to create a wildlife corridor, which essentially evicted tribes of his flesh in northern Tanzania. We cannot kill the lions to protect our herds, yet foreigners can hunt them for trophies? It was not a world that Makatiku liked, or wanted to be in.

“Bring two tall shields,” Kantaku said, motioning to a junior warrior.

The young warrior, a boy not more than fifteen years old, went off to gather the weapons, but Makatiku stopped him.

“Wait,” he said. “It is not my desire.”

Kantaku looked on, waiting.

“I would like a short shield,” Makatiku said.

The sound of snickering came from the villagers. Again he mocks me! Kantaku thought. He ran his eyes through the crowd, tightening his upper lip. “Follow his wishes,” he said with a tone of disgust, and the boy hurried off to gather the weapons and shields.

“Anything else?”

“No. It is quite enough.”

Nothing more was said, and the boy returned quickly with the simi, the long spear, and the two shields. And now it was time for Makatiku to rise from his thatched throne and face his young challenger. And he did so gloriously, but slowly, feeling the pains of his arthritic joints. He rose to a height equal to that of Kantaku, and despite his age of nearly sixty-two years, his shoulders were still broad, his muscles still lean and well-defined. He wore a kunga of red and blue, and pink cotton, which wrapped loosely around his trim waist and angled down over one shoulder, across his large, protruding chest. Everything about him symbolized tradition, and the customs of old, and the seniority of his rank, and the success of his reign; from his graying, long hair, that was woven in thinly braided strands and fell to the middle of his back, to his multiple, brightly colored anklets, which numbered no less than ten. His earlobes were pierced and stretched in a manner reserved only for royalty, and there was the symbolic beadwork that embellished his body and told of his meritorious past, of a life lived long and fully.

The boy handed Makatiku the short knife and the small shield. Makatiku examined the knife, running his finger along the edge of it. It had a finely honed metal blade and a wooden handle with a cowhide grip. Then he studied the small shield, flipping it over and looking at the face of it. It is correct, he thought. It bore the sirata of a red badge that signified great bravery in battle and was only permitted to be painted on the shields of the highest of chiefs. Still, it was a decorative piece at best, meant only to be hung outside one’s door to indicate one’s presence. Less than twenty inches in diameter, it was not designed for warfare.

The boy gave the long spear and the tall shield to Kantaku. The shield, made of stretched and hardened buffalo hide sewn to a wooden frame, nearly cloaked his entire frame. The spear, made from the finest dark ebony wood, rose more than a meter above his head.

There was laughter among the villagers, and Kantaku realized how ridiculous it must have looked.

Makatiku smiled broadly and ran his eyes through the crowd. His considerable stature dwarfed the small shield and simi in scale, he knew, even more so than their actual size. He glanced over at the council members and nodded his head appreciatively. Then he raised the shield and knife high above his head to the applause of the villagers.

Kantaku waited for the applause to subside.

“Now you must answer,” he spoke loudly.

Makatiku stared at him. Could young arrogance really be so foolish? he thought. Then, seeing the muscles on Kantaku’s chest tighten and his shoulders flex, Makatiku’s face became gaunt and serious. It is time!

He quickly squatted down into a combat stance, holding the small shield firmly in front of his chest and the short knife high and aggressively above his head.

Kantaku likewise firmed his stance, ducking low behind his large shield and raising his spear into a throwing position.

The two men stood there momentarily, opposite one another on a small mound of earth, the old and the new. The time for talk had ended. The differences between the traditional and modern were past them now, and Kantaku did not wait. He was certain Makatiku had a plan and would spring it upon him quickly if he gave him the chance.

He thrust his spear back, holding it cocked high to the side of his head, and with perfect aim, not wanting to give Makatiku time to strike first, he thrust it forward with all his might.

At the same moment Kantaku released it, Makatiku dropped his shield and short knife to his side and pushed his chest forward. He stood there, poised and relaxed with his chest exposed as if it were impenetrable to the spear.

The blade of the barred spearhead flashed in the morning sunlight. All the villagers looked on in wonder as the spear soared through the air and hit him squarely in the chest, slicing through his flesh and bone and coming out his back.

For a perceptible instant, Makatiku remained upright, impaled by the spear. It was as though his body defied gravity, held high by the soul and the pride of a great chief. Then he dropped to the ground, dead.

The dazed villagers looked on in disbelief, as did Kantaku. The suddenness of it was shocking. Their great king, the fierce warrior who had fought and won so many battles, had not even lifted a finger to fight. His natural abilities to dodge and deflect, and to counterstrike, were not invoked at the time he needed them most. Though he had out-maneuvered all enemies in the past, he had left them now, strangely, without a strategic plan.

Jakaya summoned the young warriors.

“Mnakamata!” he said.“Take him.”

The spearhead was quickly removed. The shaft had snapped when Makatiku fell to the ground, making it easy to extract. The warriors gathered him up, and upon Jakaya’s directions, carried him to a place outside the village, down near where the river flowed out onto the savannah. The five kilos of ox fat and blood was also brought down and set beside the chief’s body.

“Enda!” Jakaya shouted to the young warriors. “Go! Go away!”
And they did so, solemnly, without looking back.

Jakaya knelt down and took a moment to look over his fallen friend. His face was sullen and old, and had the dark lines that come with age. His face was gray with all the signs of death, but his expression still revealed a regal presence. He was king, once more, Jakaya thought. And now was cut the umbilical cord between heaven and Earth.

With a wooden ladle, Jakaya covered Makatiku’s body with the ox fat and blood. He covered every inch of it, making sure no place was left exposed. Then he sprinkled the body with beads of black, green, red, yellow, and white, which mimicked the colour sequence seen in the animal life cycle. He added more white for the decade of peace he had brought to his tribe; and blue for the colors of the waters which ran clean and fresh until the machines of government polluted it; and more red for the warrior’s blood and bravery, which Makatiku had witnessed many times. A good death is its own reward.

“Come feast little Oln’gojine,” Jakaya said. “Come taste the meat of a great warrior.”

Jakaya left, back to the village, to the cluster of mud houses where he hung Makatiku’s small, red shield, and his simi, outside his inkajijik. Then he went to join the others in the celebration of the new chief.

Though Kantaku sat in the thatched throne in full ceremonial dress, he found no joy in his heart. He had achieved the throne, but had not won a victory. Even in death, Makatiku mocked him. He laughs now, he thought. There, down by the river of life, he revels in laughter!

The coronation was quite subdued. Though all the villagers gathered for the festival, it was not full of song and dance like the great celebrations of the past.

“It was Makatiku who threw the spear,” one of the villagers said.

Kantaku looked down at him and quietly hung his head.

“Makatiku is still King,” another villager said.

Down by the river Makatiku’s body lay in the hot African sun. All day it lay there, and by late afternoon the tsetse flies had gathered and the smell of the fermenting ox blood rose across the savannah. Before the sun had completely set, three spotted hyenas came across him. They encircled him and sniffed the earth around him and the kunga that wrapped him. Their nostrils filled with the scent of human, but there was also the smell of the ox blood and fat, and when they tasted the meat, they found it to be unique and flavorsome. On through the night they feasted, gnawing down on the bone and flesh and stealing chunks from one another. By morning when the villagers returned, nothing remained of Makatiku but a stain on the earth.

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Scozzari photoPushcart Prize nominee Frank Scozzari resides in Nipomo, a small town on the California central coast. His award-winning short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including South Dakota Review, Oklahoma Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Ellipsis Magazine, The Nassau Review, and The MacGuffin, and have been featured in literary theater.