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Writing<br />
Shaping Tomorrow With Our Pens<br />
Tomorrow<br />
Stories and poems<br />
Rolli<br />
Steven Volynets<br />
April Salzano<br />
Rob Andwood<br />
I.K. Paterson-Harkness<br />
Jennifer Racek<br />
Leila Fortier<br />
Devyani Borade<br />
February 2014<br />
www.WritingTomorrow.com
February 2014<br />
Volume 2 Number 3<br />
© ramonespelt/Fotolia.com<br />
Writing Tomorrow Magazine<br />
Kristopher Gage, publisher<br />
Miranda Kopp Filek, editor<br />
Great literature and artwork instill in us a sense of<br />
beauty, a promise of hope, and every possibility.<br />
Writing Tomorrow Magazine<br />
Stories and Poems<br />
•<br />
© 2014 Kristopher Gage/Writing Tomorrow Magazine.<br />
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced<br />
or used in any manner whatsover without the express written<br />
permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in<br />
reviews.<br />
Writing Tomorrow is a literary journal publishing fiction, poetry, creative<br />
nonfiction, articles, and artwork from emerging and established<br />
writers and artists. For submission guidelines and payment information,<br />
please refer to our website www.WritingTomorrow.com. Please<br />
direct general inquiries to editor@writingtomorrow.com
Contents<br />
Fiction<br />
6 A Day of Rain/Rolli<br />
12 For Love, Eternal/Steven Volynets<br />
36 Set Phasers for One/Rob Andwood<br />
44 The Dragon Keepr/Jennifer Racek<br />
64 Sky’s the Limit/Devyani Borade<br />
Poetry<br />
April Salzano/<br />
33 An Impact Wrench is Not...<br />
34 Lightning<br />
35 Someone Else’s Oak<br />
I.K. Paterson-Harkness/<br />
41 Broken Egg<br />
Leila Fortier/<br />
60 Punctuated<br />
61 Offerings<br />
62 Impossible Geometry<br />
4 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
“There was a boy. Another boy.<br />
Before this one. We’ve never told<br />
you. We’ve never told him. He<br />
looked just like him. We named<br />
him. He was everything. We were<br />
different, then.<br />
Rolli, A Day of Rain<br />
—the paper plane flies faithfully<br />
as fast as Akash’s legs can run.<br />
The uneven terrain of the sofa is a<br />
battlefield strewn with the remains<br />
of today’s newspaper, a pair of scissors,<br />
and a few grains of mud from<br />
his barefoot heels.<br />
Devyani Borade, Sky’s the Limit<br />
The silverware was centered on<br />
napkins folded at protractorsharp<br />
angles, while water<br />
glasses orbited the plates at<br />
such symmetrical distances<br />
they might have controlled<br />
tides. Ellen felt no pull towards<br />
humility regarding her work.<br />
These things were difficult to<br />
accomplish this far out in the<br />
cosmos.<br />
And yet, he wasn’t home.<br />
Rob Andwood, Set Phasers for<br />
One<br />
A shiver of cool air bristles my<br />
skin, and it all makes sense:<br />
there is an endless order to<br />
this city, but you can only see<br />
it from way up in the sky. And<br />
when yellow window squares<br />
begin to light Manhattan<br />
anew, I suddenly feel like crying.<br />
I know I will never see this<br />
view again.<br />
Steven Volynets, For Love,<br />
Eternal<br />
And so the goats stayed. And<br />
the baby stayed as well, burrowing<br />
into his life tight as a thorn<br />
tangled in cloth. Even the dragons<br />
remained, and in time, with<br />
her first words, Minchka named<br />
them: Zinfir and Dravij.<br />
Jennifer Racek, The Dragon<br />
Keeper<br />
My mother owns sixty-one eggcups<br />
/ though seldom eats her<br />
own eggs. / They sit in a brown<br />
cabinet / beside the lamp whose<br />
height hides a layer of dust.<br />
I.K. Paterson-Harkness,<br />
Broken Egg<br />
February 2014 5
Rolli<br />
A Day of Rain<br />
As it was a day of rain, I could not tend to the roses.<br />
Moisture is injurious to circuitry. The family remained indoors,<br />
and so I remained with them, and tended to them. They are so<br />
much more important than roses.<br />
Though it is only water, rain has a curious influence. The<br />
usual behaviors change. My Mistress, though she seldom sets<br />
foot out-of-doors, will stand at the window on a day of rain and<br />
say, “And I so wanted to stroll in the garden.” Or she will mention<br />
articles that she imagines she needs, but would never, on a<br />
clear day, mention—for instance, sleeping pills. My Mistress generally<br />
sleeps longer than anyone.<br />
My Master, when it rains for any length of time, becomes<br />
(it seems to me) melancholy. He remains all day in his study; he<br />
prefers not to be disturbed. He will even, after several days of<br />
rain, begin to take his dinner, and his tea there. Though he will<br />
always say, “Thank-you,” as I set down his tray, he will say nothing<br />
more. While he is a taciturn man, my Master, on days of rain<br />
he is virtually mute.<br />
The Boy alone grows more energetic. As he cannot run<br />
out-of-doors, he runs indoors, with twice the vigor, or plays with<br />
his car. When he damages the furniture, I repair it as swiftly as I<br />
am able.<br />
“Boy,” said the Grandmother. It is the Grandmother’s<br />
custom (she will not come downstairs when I am active) to sit on<br />
the landing, where a chair is kept for her, and observe the family.<br />
On occasion she knits— she is a skillful artisan—though mostly<br />
6 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
she observes.<br />
“Boy!” she said again. He can be so energetic, on a day of<br />
rain, that one cannot calm him enough to listen.<br />
She called him a third time.<br />
“What, Gramma” he said, at last.<br />
“Get me my liniment. Please. It’s the coral jar, in the<br />
kitchen bathroom. On the shelf.”<br />
“What”<br />
“My liniment. The coral jar.”<br />
The Boy continued to look puzzled.<br />
“I will retrieve it,” I said, and wheeled to the kitchen<br />
bathroom, and back again. Yet when I attempted to hand her the<br />
jar—though I am unable to climb stairs, my arms can extend to<br />
a maximum of ten feet—she merely turned her head away, and<br />
gazed up the length of the stairs. There is a portrait of her late<br />
husband at the top of the staircase.<br />
“Boy!” she said again, still looking ahead.<br />
The Boy put down his car, and came to her.<br />
“Please hand me my liniment.”<br />
I contracted my arm, and handed the jar to him. He carried<br />
it up the stairs.<br />
“It stinks,” he said, as he passed it to the Grandmother.<br />
She laughed. The laughter of the Grandmother is not joyful.<br />
It is nearly identical to her speech. She set aside her knitting.<br />
She said:<br />
“It stinks getting old, too—especially when the big bad<br />
rain makes you stiff.”<br />
“I’m not stiff, Gramma!” He hopped onto her lap.<br />
“I can see that,” she said, again laughing. “Well, I might<br />
old and stiff—but not too old and stiff, I’ll bet, to read her special<br />
Boy a story.”<br />
The Boy dropped his car; it tumbled downstairs. I am<br />
aware of nothing that brings him more enjoyment than his favorite<br />
stories. The two walked up the stairs together.<br />
I retrieved the car—from where it lay, on the bottom<br />
step, it posed a danger— and placed it in the nearest toy box.<br />
February 2014 7
I then returned to my Duties. As I lifted a plant back onto its<br />
pedestal—the pot had fortunately not broken—I observed the<br />
Grandmother, at the top of the staircase now, observing me. Her<br />
expression (at a distance, however, emotions are more difficult to<br />
discern) was comparable to disdain. She abruptly turned then,<br />
and hand-in-hand with the Boy, walked past the portrait, down<br />
the upstairs hall, and into the regions of the Manor with which I<br />
am unfamiliar.<br />
On days of rain, my Mistress, in especial, requires more<br />
tending than usual. As usual, I brush her hair, while she<br />
watches her programs. Her preferred program is one entitled<br />
Mossgrave Mansion, which illustrates the private life of a wealthy<br />
family. Though watching television is not among my duties, I<br />
have over-observed and heard many fragments of this program<br />
in particular. Over the course of a year, the principle character<br />
on Mossgrave Mansion, Lady Mossgrave, has been kidnapped,<br />
blackmailed, buried alive, accused of arson, accused of murder,<br />
and even murdered (though she continues to live). “Why can’t<br />
my life be like that” my Mistress will say to me, sighing, while I<br />
brush her hair. My Mistress is an intricate woman.<br />
When she grows bored of television, my Mistress will ask<br />
me to read to her (there are a million texts in my Reservoir), or<br />
transmit music. When her boredom is extreme she will even,<br />
though she does not excel at games, challenge me to a game of<br />
checkers. While I have yet to be defeated, I have found it beneficial,<br />
on occasion, to permit her an artificial victory.<br />
“I’m so bored,” said my Mistress, that day, as I brushed<br />
her hair.<br />
Though as a rule my Mistress is easily bored, I consider it<br />
a failing when I cannot amuse her.<br />
“Would you care to play checkers, Mistress” I asked her.<br />
She pressed her lips together, but did not answer. From<br />
this I understood that, while she truly did wish to play, she<br />
preferred to do so at her own request, only. Experience informed<br />
me that she would allow several minutes to pass, and then make<br />
8 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
the suggestion herself. Before that time arrived, however, I was<br />
summoned.<br />
My Master and Mistress each have the authority to<br />
summon me, via a pendant worn around the neck. When I am<br />
summoned, there is a vibration and a warmth in my chest, where<br />
a man’s heart would be. This differs in character, depending on<br />
the pendant. When my Mistress summons me, there is a small<br />
warmth, and minor vibration (when I am cooking, it may even<br />
go unnoticed). In the case of my Master, the warmth is greater,<br />
and the vibration so strong as to be audible. A third pendant,<br />
which was intended for the Grandmother, has never been used,<br />
but remains in my Cabinet. It may some day be given to the Boy,<br />
when he has grown less energetic.<br />
My Master was of course in his study, which is located at<br />
the end of the long hall in the Manor’s west wing. He desired<br />
tea. My Master drinks only Earl Grey tea. I prepared it, then<br />
returned with it to his study.<br />
My Master’s study is walled with books; it is a library,<br />
essentially. By my estimate, it contains over forty-one hundred<br />
volumes. Though I would happily read to him— the collection<br />
in my Reservoir is by far superior—my Master has informed me<br />
often that there is no substitute for a real book. Whereas my Reservoir<br />
is updated daily, no volume of my Master’s— paper books<br />
have not been manufactured for decades— is of less than twenty<br />
years heritage. Several dozen are hundreds of years old. The<br />
latter— they are hidden behind a red curtain— are fragile, and<br />
must be handled with so much care. The Boy is not permitted in<br />
the study.<br />
My Master was reading a book entitled Treasure Island by<br />
R.L. Stevenson. In my Reservoir, this title is categorized under<br />
Children’s Literature—Classics. When he first summoned me, he<br />
was on the eighteenth page of that volume. He appeared to still<br />
be reading that page.<br />
“Your tea, Master,” I said, setting it down.<br />
My Master is a courteous man. But it was not “thankyou”<br />
that he opened his mouth, this time, to say. It was this:<br />
February 2014 9
“There was a boy. Another boy. Before this one. We’ve<br />
never told you. We’ve never told him. He looked just like him.<br />
We named him. He was everything. We were different, then.<br />
Our first boy. Eric. We needed him. We were young. We were not<br />
unhappy. We might be happier. We had a son. He was beautiful.<br />
We were happier. He was everything. But then. When we went<br />
to him, he backed away. He stopped laughing. He backed away,<br />
into corners. We wondered. He became pale. We should not have<br />
wondered. We waited. We should not have waited. We carried<br />
him, in. They kept him in. Is there a danger We’re unsure. We<br />
went home, for the evening. I wished to stay. She didn’t wish to<br />
stay. It was uncomfortable. We’d return, in the morning. There’s<br />
no danger. We left him. Then. We were dressing. A phone rang.<br />
Her face ... changed. No, there’s no danger. Now. Not now. Sinking<br />
down. She changed. Instantly. She’s a different woman. We<br />
both changed. She wouldn’t say...I’ve changed, but I’ve changed<br />
more. I couldn’t show it, for her. Time even passed. We remained<br />
changed. I did not think we would be happy. We had a son. Another.<br />
Our Boy. You know him. He is beautiful. He is everything.<br />
We’re different, now. We are not unhappy. He is happy. That’s<br />
the only thing. I would do anything. For Eric, I would have done<br />
anything. But I do not think of him. I try. I can’t even think. I<br />
can only think...he was alone. I would have done anything. I<br />
loved him more than anything. He was alone.”<br />
My Master is taciturn. On no other occasion has he ever<br />
spoken so much to me. Though I remain uncertain as to why he<br />
chose to reveal this information, I nonetheless prized it, and continue<br />
to prize it; I filed it instantly in my Memories.<br />
During the whole of his speech, my Master had not<br />
looked up once, but continued to stare at his book. He looked up<br />
at me only after he had finished. The Boy’s sadness—as when he<br />
has broken his toy—has a plain character. It is temporary and<br />
thin, like a Halloween mask. The sadness of my Master, as he observed<br />
me, resembled more a true face, after the mask’s removal.<br />
But this may not be the case. Though I am an excellent judge of<br />
emotion—I can identify over seventy distinct emotions—I am<br />
10 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
occasionally mistaken, as when more than one emotion is present.<br />
Then it can be difficult to process, and adequately respond;<br />
though I am always adapting. In this instance, I first determined<br />
to extend my arm, and rest my hand on my Master’s shoulder, in<br />
a consoling manner, though I instantly discarded this plan. My<br />
Master is not what would be called a physical man. He seldom<br />
shakes hands, but prefers to bow. The notion, as well, that a man<br />
could derive comfort from a machine is likely unsound.<br />
Before I could make a determination, my chest grew<br />
warm—for I was again being summoned. I apologized. My Master<br />
looked down at his book, and I withdrew.<br />
“What took you so long” said my Mistress, yawning. She<br />
was stretched out on the parlor floor. The checkers board was<br />
spread out next to her.<br />
I apologized. We played. Though it would have been simpler<br />
for me to play had the board been elevated—an empty coffee<br />
table sat next to us—I am adaptive; I extended my arms.<br />
On the television, Lady Mossgrave fainted—but my<br />
Mistress did not appear to be paying attention. She had difficulty<br />
remaining awake.<br />
“King me,” she said, with a deep yawn, some minutes<br />
later.<br />
“You are playing well today, my Mistress,” I said to her.<br />
Rolli is a writer and illustrator hailing<br />
from Canada. He’s the author of<br />
God’s Autobio (short stories), Plum<br />
Stuff (poems/drawings), and five<br />
forthcoming titles for adults and<br />
children. Visit his website<br />
(www.rolliwrites.wordpress.com),<br />
and follow his epic tweets<br />
@rolliwrites.<br />
February 2014 11
Steven Volynets<br />
For Love, Eternal<br />
We joke with the Kid, but riding the step crosstown is<br />
nothing to sneeze at. It’s a slow creep laced with piss, blood,<br />
needles, and loaves of shit—rat and human. Every now and then<br />
you see mangled animal corpses too—cats, dogs, pigeons—<br />
turned inside out by some kind of death. For hours we put our<br />
hands on all this steamy waste, rub our bodies against it, breathe<br />
in its final reek. I missed my shot at Vietnam. But on a hot, humid<br />
day like today, when everything dead keeps dying, boys who<br />
hop on the step at Amsterdam are men by the time they reach<br />
Park.<br />
The truck shakes and comes alive with a throaty growl,<br />
the old motor whistling a tiny squeak. Skip is already behind the<br />
wheel, stained uniform over him like a Hefty sack, fresh newspaper<br />
across his face. He peeks at me over the fold, eyes squinted,<br />
and I can tell he is smiling. Nearby, the Kid laughs and curses. He<br />
is new. The brakes hiss and he climbs into the cabin next to Skip.<br />
The truck jolts, starts rolling, and I catch up on the tail-end. I hop<br />
on the step behind the compactor, right where those smudges of<br />
grime lick the white paint. The truck revs up, pulls toward the<br />
exit, and I hold on tight. It’s almost October, but the sun won’t<br />
give up. And as soon as we bump over the curb outside the depot,<br />
the street washes over me like a soiled rag. The car horns yelp<br />
and a plane crawls across the Harlem sky with that roar, the kind<br />
that’s distant but everywhere. I smell shit, rot, and diesel, and I<br />
know it’s morning.<br />
There is nothing like riding the step in Manhattan and<br />
we all take turns—from our depot on 125th Street, where it falls<br />
into that slant, past the Grant Houses, and then crosstown to<br />
Park Avenue and all the way down to 86th Street. Everyone rides,<br />
12 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
covering ten, twenty blocks on pickup duty. Everyone except Skip.<br />
He’s been riding the step since 1960, first before and then after his<br />
two tours in Vietnam. He is forty-eight now, rough and thickset—one<br />
of the first black San-men in New York City—enough<br />
years behind him to collect city pension. But it’s 1980 and these<br />
days he mostly sits back and drives while the Kid and I take turns<br />
jumping and tossing. Everyone likes Skip because he doesn’t talk<br />
much, and when he does it’s always deep and sharp. That’s why<br />
we call him Skip. He’s got that wisdom about him. Every chance<br />
he gets he leans into that newspaper, hissing or smirking from<br />
time to time at the words. And the only thing that ever snaps him<br />
out of it is the clack of high heels down the sidewalk.<br />
The truck stops and I jump off. We are on 125th and<br />
Broadway, by the Chinese food place—our fist pit. The bags are<br />
all stacked curbside, black and leaky, bloated by the heat like dead<br />
bodies, putrid with throw-away food from the night before. I grab<br />
two, one in each hand, and brown cockroaches spread about like<br />
giant almonds with wiry legs and antennas. The Kid looks away,<br />
his hair all curls, face smooth and boyish. He can only handle<br />
one bag at a time. So he pulls on it with both hands, breathing<br />
hard. His name is Carmine Corallo, only eighteen and skinny—<br />
not built for this work. We toss the bags into the compactor. It<br />
grumbles, digesting the filth. I glance over at Skip, but his face is<br />
half-covered by Jimmy Carter’s—deep in thought, palm over his<br />
forehead—peering from the front of the Daily News.<br />
“What’s the word on them hostages” the Kid shouts over<br />
the motor.<br />
“They still hostages,” says Skip, eyes on the page.<br />
“Jimmy Carter a pussy,” the Kid shoots back. “Me, I<br />
would’a bombed the hell out of those mamaluks with C-4 and napalm<br />
from the get-go. Then send the Marines to secure the area.<br />
You know what I’m talking about, Skipper,” the Kid looks over at<br />
Skip and winks, but Skip just keeps reading. “M-16s locked and<br />
loaded, flying in that Huey over bamboo, blasting The Trashmen<br />
on the radio.”<br />
“Okay, take it easy, Surfin’ Bird,” I say and point to the<br />
February 2014 13
pile. “Don’t hurtchaself now.”<br />
He frowns, but gets back to work.<br />
“What would you do, Buff”<br />
“I’m not sure,” I say and squint like I’m thinking about it.<br />
“Seems like all the answers are wrong.”<br />
“The hell they are,” the Kid says. “You just haven’t been<br />
there, is all.”<br />
“Neither have you,” I say.<br />
“Hey!” Skip snaps out of his paper and the Kid and I both<br />
look. “There aint no bamboo over there,” he mutters, eyes still<br />
tracing ink.<br />
“What” the Kid shouts.<br />
“There is no bamboo in Iran,” Skip says. “It’s all sand and<br />
desert and shit.”<br />
The Kid and I trade glances and attack the rest of the pile.<br />
I don’t know whose ass the Kid kissed to get the morning shift<br />
just days on the job, but guys work years, sometimes decades to<br />
get the 6:00 to 2:00. Most start off riding at night and work their<br />
way up clockwise, getting bumped an hour or two—and maybe a<br />
dollar or two—every few years. I’m only twenty-five myself, but I<br />
got fast-tracked because I’m one of the toughest San-men riding<br />
the step. They call the city Sanitation Department “New York’s<br />
Strongest” and, I tell you, my name and photo should be stamped<br />
on that seal. Not Brian, but “Buff”—my proper San-man name.<br />
Just ask around. Built solid, all muscle—harder than our steel<br />
truck—I can clear twice as much garbage as an average Schmo<br />
working the same route. I even ripped the sleeves off my uniform<br />
because my arms got so big they were starting to cut at the seams.<br />
Now when I lift those bags and swing them over my shoulders,<br />
my biceps lump like two raw potatoes growing under my skin.<br />
I’ve been like that since high school, in Brooklyn, where I played<br />
football on the team. That’s where I fell in love with Grace, with<br />
her freckles, green eyes, and dreams. We are married now. But<br />
back then I was on my way to the Air Force, and my old man<br />
was happy. Grace was happy too. But once I got my bell rung by<br />
another guy’s helmet and lost some vision in my right eye, the Air<br />
14 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Force went good night Johny-boy. My old man served in Korea,<br />
and for months he wouldn’t talk to me—mad as hell because my<br />
blurry right eye was the only thing that kept me out of Vietnam.<br />
The smell of the pickup bay by Grant Projects is a mix of<br />
human piss, dog hair, and insecticide—a spicy fume of heated salt<br />
and plastic that cuts deep in the throat. But thanks to the bums<br />
and new immigrants, by the time we pull up, all the big and<br />
heavy stuff is gone. The sofas, the tables, the chairs, the dressers—<br />
all blasted with Raid, stripped and looted. All that’s left is trash<br />
bags. That and the mattresses, stacked in pairs, alive with fleas<br />
and bedbugs and spotted with stains—rusty pink and yellow—<br />
dry lakes of blood and urine on a quilted map.<br />
The Kid jumps off and locks his stringy arms around a<br />
mattress. He grunts, pulling hard, cheek pressed to the soiled<br />
cloth.<br />
“Jesus Christ,” he cringes at the stench.<br />
“Don’t worry,” I smile. “A few more months and it’ll smell<br />
like lilies.”<br />
“No thanks,” he spits. “Besides, my uncle says next year<br />
we’re all gettin’ our walking papers anyway. Says our routes are<br />
going private.”<br />
“Few days on the job and already he is the garbage commissioner,”<br />
I laugh, but inside I worry. I think about Grace. She<br />
is pregnant, and we’ve been fighting cause she says our money<br />
is short. The whole city is pretty strapped, but Ed Koch treats us<br />
San-men fair. Better than cops and firemen who get paid less than<br />
we do from the start. But ever since we got married, Grace has<br />
been all nerves—now even more with the kid on the way—yelling<br />
at me about our tiny Gravesend walkup, how it’s no place to raise<br />
a kid. She calls me a deadbeat and says she could’ve done better.<br />
And when she says that I stick my finger in her face and tell her to<br />
shut her stupid mouth, but inside I know it’s true. She fell in love<br />
with a future pilot and that makes me angry as hell. Few times it<br />
got so bad I punched a couple of holes in our bedroom drywall,<br />
getting the neighbors all riled. Sometimes I could swear she is fixing<br />
to leave me. That’s why I need this job. Another year and I’m<br />
February 2014 15
up for a bump—maybe as much as two dollars.<br />
“Oh, you’ll see,” the Kid says. “And if it’s not that, then<br />
they’ll just come up with some new robot truck that picks up<br />
trash by itself. You know, like in that Quark show on TV.”<br />
“Let me ask you something,” I stop and look at him. “Say<br />
your robot truck gets blocked off by a double-parked car. Can it<br />
tell the asshole to move”<br />
Skip snorts and I feel better.<br />
“I’m just sayin’,” the Kid pinches his thumbs and index<br />
fingers together and flaps his wrists. “If we can send a man to the<br />
Moon, anything’s possible.”<br />
“We’re not in space,” Skip looks up from the page. “We’re<br />
in Harlem.”<br />
The clutch rasps and screeches, and we all laugh.<br />
“Don’t worry, Buff,” the Kid yells, stepping up to the cabin,<br />
all grins. “When you get canned, I’ll talk to my uncle for you. He<br />
can always use a strong Irishman.”<br />
We pull out and I’m back on the step, riding a cloud of exhaust.<br />
It’s almost 9:30 and the traffic is getting thicker and louder.<br />
In the morning, driving down 125th Street is like swimming<br />
through mud. Only the mud is made of metal and sweat—jerking,<br />
honking, and cursing—wafting its hot morning breath from<br />
tailpipes and radiators. And there aint no way out of it. Because<br />
Manhattan traffic is like God commanding the uncontrollable.<br />
And if you think about it, our big white truck, with all its power<br />
and metal, is sort of like Jesus Christ, keeping us safe—steering<br />
us and our human filth across the madness. It’s silly, I know. But<br />
sometimes I think about that. And I realize that even with all the<br />
pulling and jerking and reeking and noise I’m better off riding<br />
the step than sitting inside the cabin with Skip. Because when<br />
the traffic comes to a crawl and our truck is barely moving, I<br />
sometimes jump off and walk alongside, free. And when things<br />
get moving again, I hop back on, wait for some speed and put my<br />
face against the cool breath of that holly spirit.<br />
It takes us almost an hour and a half to make it across<br />
125th to Eighth Avenue, and I’m hungry. Grace packed roast beef<br />
16 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
on a rye, a dill pickle, and a Coke, but no Hershey bar this time<br />
‘cause we’ve been fighting. I jump off at the next pit and grab my<br />
lunchbox from the cabin. I can’t see the Apollo—a city bus is<br />
blocking the view—but I know it’s there. There is a milky smell<br />
of vomit and beer, and I can tell we’re half way through with the<br />
day. I smile and take a bite off my sandwich.<br />
The front of the Apollo, under that famous marquee, is<br />
one of the most well kept sidewalks in Manhattan. The bags are<br />
tied with red and blue rubber-bands and neatly stacked by the<br />
service entrance just off to the side. All the action is across the<br />
street: it sparkles with broken glass, trash bins flipped and tumbled,<br />
the asphalt smudged with blood and splashed with vomit.<br />
The truck hisses to a stop and the Kid and I step off. He<br />
looks over the mess and then at me.<br />
“How can you eat”<br />
I shrug and take another bite.<br />
“I’m hungry.”<br />
“Marone’a mia!” he cups his hand over his mouth and<br />
nose.<br />
I set my sandwich, wrapped in foil, down on the step behind<br />
the compactor and grab two bags. The Kid and I take turns<br />
working the pile, and when it’s done he dashes back to the truck<br />
as fast as he can, and I can hear Skip giggle.<br />
We roll out and when we finally hit Park Avenue the<br />
brakes squeal and the truck shakes and lumbers into a right<br />
turn. This is where the rusty beams whipped in graffiti prop the<br />
Amtrak rail overhead, and half-baked whores, bums, and junkies<br />
seek shade under the steel overpass. Some are unconscious,<br />
some hunched over soupy puddles of vomit, others stumbling<br />
about, scratching and raving, sweaty t-shirts stuck to their chests.<br />
When they see me ride the step sleeveless, my sandy hair wild in<br />
the wind, the whores stop cat-walking and turn. “Hey Buff,” they<br />
call out, ropey legs wobbling in fat platform shoes. “Wanna get<br />
sommah’dis” I smile and we keep riding, past the slow whiff of<br />
urine and sewage water all the way down to 96th Street. The trash<br />
we pick up along the way is bulky, not bagged or boxed, industrial<br />
February 2014 17
mostly, crude pieces of wood and scrap metal too rusty for crack<br />
fiends to salvage and sell.<br />
As we get closer to Carver Houses, the whores and junkies<br />
thin out, afraid to get raped or robbed by project boys or cut<br />
down by a stray shot. Because even they—already half-dead and<br />
abandoned—aren’t asking to go before their time. No. Suicide<br />
is a rich man’s game. Around here it’s all gang tags and murder<br />
marks burning metal and brick—“Komik,” “CrawlRboy,” “FatZ,”<br />
“R.I.Pr,” “KoNman,” “Peacebitch”—all funny bubbles. Cartoons<br />
of the laughing dead. I look at the spray paint and think of Grace<br />
and our baby in her belly. And how once it’s born we’ll watch<br />
Looney Tunes together just like my old man did with me when<br />
I was a kid. Back then he was still excited about me joining the<br />
Air Force. Aint nothing like flying, he used to say. And when I<br />
turned five or six, he showed me those cartoons in some picture<br />
book— Bugs and Daffy and Taz and Jessica Rabbit—all painted<br />
on the bombs we used to drop in World War II. And I remember<br />
thinking how those Looney Tunes must’ve been the last thing the<br />
Germans and Japs saw before they turned to ash. The laughing<br />
dead. I look at all that graffiti—all those funny squiggles of blues,<br />
reds and yellows—and they are all around me. All so bright and<br />
playful they cut my eyes, as if the sun itself had enough of this<br />
city and threw up all over its brick walls.<br />
Another few blocks and we pull up to the Carver Projects.<br />
Brick City, USA. We don’t talk much around here, just do our<br />
pickup and move.<br />
“Hey, do me a favor,” I say to the Kid. “Give your bags a<br />
little poke, see if they feel funny.”<br />
“How come”<br />
“Just do it,” I say.<br />
“Oh, I get it,” he smirks and shoves one of the bags with<br />
his boot. “We’re checking for stiffs, aren’t we My uncle told me<br />
about it. You and Skip ever find any”<br />
We found two this year alone, but I don’t tell him about it.<br />
“Just do your work,” I say.<br />
We had to call the cops both times. They were younger<br />
18 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
than the Kid, still boys, fifteen years old, both cut up in six pieces<br />
and stuffed in a trash bag which smelled like perished blood. I<br />
don’t tell the Kid about it. I don’t want him to get spooked. Instead<br />
I just pat the bags before I lift them and take a look around.<br />
It’s not even three o’clock, but the Mae Grant playground is empty,<br />
surrounded by sky-high brown brick. Why did they ever build<br />
these projects How did this place go from a dream for the lost to<br />
lost dreams—to forty blocks of tears and sandpaper knuckles and<br />
grim stares over the bouncing ball<br />
I hop back on the truck and it pulls me away. We keep riding<br />
and working. And soon the rusty carcass of the Amtrak dips<br />
below the asphalt—its metallic cling-clang now a rumble under<br />
our wheels—and the street opens up to daylight. There is no more<br />
graffiti. And when I see a narrow island of trees splitting traffic,<br />
I know we’re on 96th and Park Avenue. Green awnings stretch<br />
over the sidewalk, one after another on both sides, and potbellied<br />
doormen, all frocks and black-ties, hover about like penguins<br />
from the Captain Cook. These buildings are just as tall as the<br />
projects, but older and cast a different kind of shadow—longer<br />
and wider—blotches of darkness so grand that when they fall<br />
they flood all the little shadows and make them disappear. The<br />
smell is also different: jasmine, fruit, and a touch of baby powder.<br />
Too different, come to think of it. We stop at the corner and I<br />
jump off. Skip and the Kid are in the cabin, but they can smell it<br />
too.<br />
“Now that’s a sweet ice cream cone on a hot summer day,”<br />
Skip bites his lip and fizzes from his nostrils.<br />
“Mah-rone!” the Kid echoes, rubbing his chin.<br />
I see her. She is in front of the truck, right on the corner,<br />
waiting for the light to change. Tall and smooth like a statue, high<br />
heels, little skirt cut at the thighs, and blonde hair—real blonde—<br />
like streams of liquid gold parted down the middle. I know it’s<br />
real too because no dark roots are showing. And even though she<br />
is wearing sunglasses, those big oval ones with half-yellow shades,<br />
I can tell she is young, eighteen, nineteen at most.<br />
“Damn, she can get it,” Skip tilts his head way down to the<br />
February 2014 19
side.<br />
“Twice!” the Kid barks back.<br />
The light turns green and they both watch her click-clack<br />
down the crosswalk. I watch her too.<br />
“Say Skip, don’t you have a wife” I say and try hard to<br />
remember Grace.<br />
“Yessir, twenty years,” he says, nosing back in the paper.<br />
“Good woman. Good mother too.”<br />
“That’s right,” the Kid perks up. “Soon as I get married, I’ll<br />
get me a nice pretty goomara on the side too. A little blondie just<br />
like that one.” He winks at me. “Cause one good piece’ah cavaccia<br />
aint’never enough. Not for this skinny ginny.”<br />
“Easy now, Alphalpha,” I tell him and point back to the<br />
step. “You’re up.”<br />
“Buff, you’re such a square,” he lowers his head and shakes<br />
it, walking off. “All that muscle and no sack.”<br />
I’m about to smack the Kid upside the head with one of<br />
my gloves, but I hear Skip laughing.<br />
“You know, you two aint nothin’ but a pair of peanuts,” he<br />
snorts, shaking the paper with his heavy breath. “What do you<br />
say Think that fancy little treat is gonna run off with me” He<br />
lets out a wheezing cough-laugh.<br />
“What do you mean, Skipper” the Kid says, and he and I<br />
glance back and forth.<br />
Skip’s face is big, round, and stubby, like old bulldog’s,<br />
and his eyeballs are slightly yellow from all those years on the job.<br />
He shuts the newspaper, puts it down beside him, and we know<br />
serious wisdom is on its way. The truck idles and we wait for it by<br />
the cabin doors.<br />
“What I mean is I can’t have that young pretty thing.<br />
Not no more. But I can still feel good looking at her struttin’ by,<br />
letting my eyes feast on all that fineness.”<br />
“And why can’t you have her” the Kid demands.<br />
“Cause I am black, fat, and smell like ass!” Skip coughlaughs<br />
again. “That’s why.”<br />
20 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
“So then why even bother” I say and remember Grace—<br />
all of her—her dimples, her eyelashes, her smooth round belly,<br />
and how even after we fight and I hate her, her fingertips tingle<br />
when she touches my face. “Why bother cat-calling and hollering<br />
when your wife is waiting at home”<br />
“Cause it aint about possession,” he looks at us and smiles<br />
real gentle, like he’s got something we don’t. “It’s about hope. That<br />
sweet pain between crying and laughing that everyone forgets.<br />
But back in the jungle that’s all I had. And at night, laying in wet<br />
fern with my loaded twenty, soaked in my own piss and sweat,<br />
big-ass spiders tickling my neck, a young girl like that is all there<br />
was in my head—smiling, playing with her hair, her smell clean<br />
and pure like storm water fresh outta the sky. But funny thing<br />
is, soon as I squeezed that trigger and put a drop on one of them<br />
Gooks, I felt safe again—safe and empty—like the moment after<br />
you come. And as soon as I did, that girl in my head—she was<br />
gone. Gone until I needed her again. To remind me I was still in<br />
that jungle, but also still alive.”<br />
I look at Skip for a minute not knowing what to say.<br />
“Well, I don’t know about the jungle and all,” the Kid says,<br />
rubbing his curly head. “But she definitely made my cazzo wiggle.”<br />
We all laugh and I’m glad we do, because that’s the first<br />
time I ever heard Skip talk about the war.<br />
“You’re up, Kid,” I say and tap him on the shoulder. He<br />
smiles and springs for the pile. He is a good kid, that one, just<br />
lazy and yaks too much. He grabs a bag. They line the curbside<br />
neatly, all black, double-layered Park Avenue-style to keep the<br />
trash from spilling. He drags it to the back and dumps it into the<br />
open hopper. The compactor growls, crushing and draining the<br />
waste. Then I hear a sucking sound, like a birthday balloon leaking<br />
air, and then a big old pop.<br />
“Vaffanculo putanna!”<br />
I drop my bags and run to the compactor. A trail of litter<br />
stretches over the sidewalk from the back of the truck. The Kid<br />
kicks the steel intake, cursing. Yellow trash juice drips from his<br />
February 2014 21
hair and face.<br />
“The friggin’ bag burst on me!” He yells, wiping himself<br />
with his sleeve.<br />
“Dump and move, remember” I say, and I can feel a laugh<br />
building up in my nose. “What’re you doing standing over there<br />
anyway”<br />
“I was just up on the step watching!”<br />
“This aint a sunset, you dolt,” I say and let go laughing.<br />
“You’ve got to wait until it’s done compressing before you step<br />
up.”<br />
Hearing the pop and the Kid cursing, Skip hobbles over to<br />
check out the mess.<br />
“It’s just a love-quirt, kiddo,” he laughs and wheezes. “She<br />
does that sometimes.”<br />
The Kid can’t help it and starts laughing too. I look back<br />
at the spilled trash. The people in suits bustling past are starting<br />
to notice, walking roundabout or hopping over it lifting pant legs<br />
and skirts.<br />
“We’re not in Harlem anymore, Toto.” I say looking at the<br />
Kid. “Let’s clean this up.”<br />
We both bend down and start plucking garbage from the<br />
asphalt. It’s mostly crumpled paper, some old socks, food-stained<br />
packages, plastic bottles, and a few stringed tampons with little<br />
red tips. Then I see something, something small and shiny. Even<br />
smudged in waste it sticks out amid orange peel and paper envelopes,<br />
soaking up all the light and sprinkling it around. I kneel<br />
and pick it up. The Kid sees it too.<br />
“Eh-yo Buff, what is that” he straightens up and walks<br />
over.<br />
It’s a ring. A tiny loop of yellow metal fitted with a glassy<br />
rock the size of a marble, like one of them bouncy ones for the<br />
kids.<br />
“Let me see,” the Kid takes it from my hand. “Holly shit!”<br />
He brings it up to his mouth, puts it between his teeth and bites.<br />
“What’s wrong with you” I say and cringe.<br />
“Why” he looks up. “My uncle told me that’s how you<br />
22 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
check if it’s real.”<br />
“I thought your uncle was in the moving business.”<br />
“It’s real, alright,” he spits and narrows his eyes. “Something<br />
written on it too.”<br />
“Okay, that’s enough,” I snatch it back from him and wipe<br />
the inside rim with the corner of my shirt.<br />
“What’s it say” The Kid’s face is all eyes.<br />
“For Love, Eternal,” I trace the words.<br />
“For love eternal” he tugs his mouth. “Who the hell talks<br />
like that”<br />
“Rich people,” Skip says out of the blue.<br />
“Holly shit!” the Kid jumps. “This is some score!”<br />
“Says something else here too,” I squint at the tiny script.<br />
“E. S. Swanson.”<br />
I bend down and pick up one of the torn postal envelopes<br />
from the pavement next to where I found the ring. The same<br />
name is printed on it, E. S. Swanson, and an address: 1130 Park<br />
Avenue, PH. New York, NY 10128.<br />
“See” I show it to the Kid. “It’s just a couple of blocks<br />
down. These Swanson people must’ve dropped it in the shoot by<br />
accident.”<br />
“Too bad for them,” the Kid says, beaming.<br />
I look over at Skip. “They’ve got to be looking for it.”<br />
“So” the Kid shrugs.<br />
“I don’t want no trouble,” I say. “Let’s just take it back to<br />
the depot and give it to Chief.”<br />
“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” the Kid laughs and glances at<br />
Skip too. “That thing must be worth fifty grand, maybe a hundred.<br />
What do you think the Chief’s gonna do File it in lost and<br />
found He is gonna pocket this baby and go adios amigos. No,<br />
this is our score.”<br />
“This aint a score,” I raise my voice and look at Skip again,<br />
but he just stands there and says nothing.<br />
“Hey, what’s ah matter with you” the Kid arches his face<br />
and flaps his pinched fingers. “You think you gonna get an atta’<br />
boy from the Chief and get your two-dollar bump early Trust<br />
February 2014 23
me, it aint happening. My uncle said so. So I say we split it three<br />
ways and cash out. Whataya say, ah Skipper”<br />
“Oh, don’t look at me,” Skip puts his palms up. “I’m a year<br />
away from clocking out with city pension. The full ride. I aint<br />
messing that up.”<br />
“City pension Are you kiddin’ me” he stares at Skip.<br />
“You went to war for this country!”<br />
“We’re not keeping it,” I say, feeling better now that Skip<br />
said no.<br />
“You think you’re gonna get some kinda reward from<br />
these people” the Kid chuckles. “Forget it! You lucky if they don’t<br />
call the cops. Meanwhile, you gonna come home and tell your<br />
wife that you found a rock half-ah-size of a baseball and then returned<br />
it to some rich f’noosh who aint even gonna miss it What<br />
do you think she’ll say”<br />
A stickball-chasing loudmouth still wet behind his ears.<br />
What does he know about my Grace But somehow his words<br />
make the Park Avenue sidewalk float under me like a snapper<br />
boat unmoored in Caesar’s Bay. I think of Grace and imagine us<br />
moving out of our murky walkup and buying a place of our own.<br />
Maybe even in Staten Island. It’s clean and full of sunshine with a<br />
little room for the kid. But then I look at the ring, this tiny sparkle<br />
in my palm, and begin to drown in someone else’s happiness.<br />
“You know what Forget you guys,” the Kid says. “I’ll keep<br />
it for myself. Better yet, I’ll bring it to my uncle. Get’m to front<br />
me for a business, a nice little moving joint of my own. Start<br />
small at first, then maybe put up a pizzeria, maybe two. Hell, you<br />
play your cards right, maybe I’ll even hire you twos. Cause soon<br />
enough you’re getting your walking papers anyways.”<br />
“No,” I say. “You heard the man. Nobody’s keeping nothing.”<br />
“Like hell,” the Kid says. “We all found it. We all have a<br />
say. We work this route together.”<br />
“No, I found it,” I say and start walking back to the truck.<br />
He catches up to me and grabs my arm.<br />
I turn and take him by his collar. “You don’t want to do<br />
24 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
this with me, baby cheeks.” I give him a little jerk and his whole<br />
body, stringy and limp, sways under my grip.<br />
“Get your hands off me!” He stares at me all tough and I<br />
feel sorry for him. “You know who I am”<br />
“Tough guy, huh” I loosen my grip on his shirt. “Get back<br />
to work.”<br />
“Go to hell!” He flings my arm off. “Touch me again and<br />
you better learn to dodge bullets, you dumb Irish prick.” He kicks<br />
over a trash can, spilling garbage on street, and walks off to the<br />
cabin. I see him climb the steps and disappear inside. I’m now<br />
alone with Skip, and he looks uneasy.<br />
“Look, Buff,” he exhales deep. “You better lay off this kid.”<br />
“What” I say. “All this time me and you ride together and<br />
you take his side”<br />
“It aint about that,” he says quietly and checks around like<br />
someone is listening in. “You know how he is always going on<br />
about his uncle”<br />
“So”<br />
“The Kid’s last name. Corallo” He leans close to me. “The<br />
Kid is all mobbed up. How do you think he got the morning shift<br />
only a week on the job”<br />
“I don’t get it.”<br />
“You don’t read the papers much, do you” Skip looks<br />
around again. “His uncle is Anthony Corallo. The Lucchese crime<br />
boss. You know, Tony Ducks You know why they call him that<br />
Because he ducks all the charges.”<br />
“So then what’s his nephew doing picking up trash” I say.<br />
“Shouldn’t he be walking around with pinstripes and a handkerchief”<br />
“I guess he is trying to break the Kid in,” Skip says.<br />
“Break him in” I say. “For what”<br />
“I’m sorry, Buff,” he breathes heavy again. “But it’s true.<br />
His uncle must be making some kind of move. Next year<br />
our routes are going private.”<br />
Skip is untouchable—on his way out with a full pension.<br />
But if the routes are now up for grabs, my own job is on the block.<br />
February 2014 25
“What am I supposed to do, Skipper” I say, and even<br />
though the sun is blasting, my hands shiver like it’s Christmas<br />
eve. “Next year I’m out of a job and with Grace the way she is<br />
I need the money. It’s that or she’ll leave me, Skip, she said she<br />
would. Hell, she’ll probably leave me anyway. But if I keep it, if I<br />
keep this damn ring, the Kid will be after me for a piece of it. And<br />
if I give it back to Swansons, he and his grease-ball uncle will get<br />
me for sure, orphan my poor kid before it even sees its first light.<br />
What do I do, uh Skip What the hell do I do”<br />
“Relax, Buff. I’ll talk to the Kid,” he says and gives my<br />
shoulders a little shake.<br />
“What would you do, Skip” I look up at him. “What<br />
would you do in my spot”<br />
He looks at me and half-smiles. “Don’t think about that.<br />
Just do what it is you do. Because things, they don’t change none.<br />
And whatever you do, tomorrow the world be same as it is today.<br />
Them hostages in the paper still be hostages. Rich folks still be<br />
rich. The Kid be the Kid. And you, you’ll be alright.”<br />
I want to tell him something but Park Avenue traffic<br />
drowns my thoughts.<br />
“Thanks, Skip,” I say instead and put the ring in my pocket.<br />
“The hell with him and his ducks.”<br />
He smiles and I know he means it.<br />
“Go on,” he says, struggling up the steps to the cabin and<br />
plopping down behind the wheel. “The Kid and I will cover the<br />
rest of the stretch.”<br />
The engine groans, coughs up smoke from the tailpipe,<br />
and I watch them merge with the honking flow.<br />
I walk the rest of the way alone, past the endless storefront<br />
glass of Park Avenue madness. Godiva chocolates with ribbons<br />
and bows, music boxes and porcelain dogs, chandeliers and<br />
paintings and candles and rugs—all neatly arranged as if by some<br />
kid who finally tidied up his toys after playing. Each thing tries to<br />
one-up another, but instead they mingle and match, itching my<br />
bad eye with colorful sameness. Just a bunch of pretty things that<br />
do nothing, my old man would say and keep walking.<br />
26 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
But here I am, with a diamond ring in my pocket, wishing<br />
I had enough dough to get something for Grace. He’d never<br />
bring into the house a useless thing of beauty. But I keep daydreaming<br />
about buying one, even though Grace and I would<br />
end up fighting about what it is or where to put it or which way<br />
to turn it, and soon enough its shattered pieces would be food<br />
for Fresh Kills. So I keep walking and wishing I had my old<br />
man’s heart. A man who hugs my mother smelling like scotch<br />
and flooded basements, and she loves him anyway; who smiles<br />
his crinkly smile while picking shit crumbs from the soles of his<br />
boots, and she loves him even more. The kind of man who can<br />
lose a war and wake up the next day to drain septic tanks. And<br />
if only he knew I was fixed to give up what could save my Grace<br />
and my baby from Gravesend, he’d smack me upside the head<br />
and call me a disgrace to all Fitzgeralds. Because Fitzgeralds are<br />
men who have a tumbler switch for a soul; who knob between<br />
war men, san men, husband men, ladies men, rich men, poor<br />
men, beggar men, and thieves like wooden men in foosball.<br />
But maybe it’s not too late. Korea is clipped right down the<br />
middle, Vietnam as pinko as the Village, and my right eye not<br />
worth a wink. But those hostages in the dessert are still hostages.<br />
And though I’m too blind to drop Bugs Bunny bombs from the<br />
sky like my old man wanted, I can still make the dead laugh by<br />
lifting and strapping them under the wings. I am still strong. I<br />
can still join up and lose my own war; claim my own 38th parallel<br />
heartsplit. Them hostages still be hostages, Skip’s wisdom<br />
buzzing in my ear. And so long as they stay that way I still have<br />
a shot at the desert. And if I ever come back I’ll never again bark<br />
filth at Grace or drag her out of the shower by the hair, naked and<br />
wet, for lack of pride and pension. I walk through the smoke of<br />
the corner food stand and choke on the burning meat. Maybe it’s<br />
not too late. Just one more block.<br />
Doormen trade squawks over Park Avenue traffic from<br />
one sidewalk to the other and back. And when I get to Swanson’s<br />
building, it looks just like the ones next to it: old, clean, and faceless.<br />
I can always tell where I am in the city by the garbage on the<br />
February 2014 27
street— Chinatown, Harlem, Murray Hill. Waste always says the<br />
same thing, just sounds different, like foreign languages you hear<br />
on the street. On trash days, even the Upper West Side is familiar<br />
with its curbed sofas, old paintings, book cases, and lamps. Go<br />
ahead and keep working, its brownstones snicker, but you will<br />
never afford what I throw away. But this side of the park is different,<br />
its trash hidden like some awful secret, and for a minute I feel<br />
lost. It’s as if the people who live here never throw things away,<br />
just lose them from time to time, like these Swanson folks.<br />
“May I help you” the doorman crosses me.<br />
“I’m here to see Mr. Swanson.”<br />
“And who are you” he looks me up and down and puts<br />
his white glove up to his nose. He is about thirty with brown skin,<br />
dark eyes, and a thin black mustache trimmed neatly on both<br />
sides. There is a strong waft of cologne from him too, Old Spice,<br />
and I can tell, if not for this job and the starched uniform, he’d<br />
have as much business hanging around this place as me in my<br />
dirty rags.<br />
“My name is Brian Fitzgerald,” I say. “I’m with the Sanitation<br />
Department.”<br />
“Is that right” he says and steps up. “And I’m with the piss<br />
off or I’ll call the cops department. Get my meaning”<br />
He sounds just like me and half the guys I grew up with in<br />
Brooklyn. I bet that’s why they hired him, too. A guard dog—loyal<br />
to his masters but aint afraid to swallow his “Rs” and get up in<br />
a stranger’s face.<br />
“Here,” I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring. “It’s<br />
got Swanson’s name inscribed.”<br />
He looks at it and squints at me, “Where did you get that”<br />
“I found it working my route, just a block away,” I say.<br />
“And an envelope with the same name and address.”<br />
“You saying you found this in the trash” he mocks me.<br />
“No, I found it in the Hamptons,” I flip my middle finger<br />
up. “It must’ve slipped off while I was ridin’ my pony.”<br />
He smirks at first, then lets out a giggle and we break out<br />
into a good laugh.<br />
28 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
“Whatta they call ya” He catches his breath.<br />
“Buff.”<br />
“Roberto,” he smiles. “Where’ya from, Buff”<br />
“Gravesend,” I say.<br />
“Oh, yeah” His eyes grow big. “I’m from Coney Island.<br />
Surf Avenue. We damn-near neighbors.”<br />
“And here we are.”<br />
“Tell ya what,” he takes another careful look around.<br />
“Why don’t you come in here a minute while I see what’s what.”<br />
I follow him into the lobby and wait while he rings upstairs.<br />
It’s big, bright, and spotless and smells like vanilla with a<br />
lemon twist.<br />
“No answer,” he hangs up the phone and steps back from<br />
his desk. “They must be out or asleep. You can wait here if you<br />
want. I’ll try them again, but it might be a while.”<br />
I sit in one of the chairs in the lobby and Roberto and I<br />
talk awhile. Turns out we went to the same high school, but never<br />
met because he was ahead of me by a few years. He tells me he<br />
is Cuban and came to America in 1959 with his father when he<br />
was just a kid. Says his father was running away from Castro and<br />
Batista and how they still can’t figure out which one of the two<br />
was worse. He lucked out with this job, he tells me, like I did with<br />
mine, and has been working the door a few years now. Still, he<br />
says, they won’t let him into the union. I tell him about my own<br />
old man and his time in Korea and how much better off I’d be<br />
myself if my bad eye didn’t keep me from going to Vietnam. He<br />
tells me he’s got a couple of boys and a girl of his own, and when<br />
he asks about Grace I tell him she is pregnant and we’ve been<br />
fighting about the money, and how if you live in this city nothing<br />
is ever good enough.<br />
Every now and then the people who live in the building or<br />
have some business inside pass between us and I wonder if one<br />
of them is a Swanson. Roberto and I talk and laugh, and even<br />
though I look like a hobo and reek of garbage and sweat, they<br />
never stop or say anything—just smile to themselves and clack<br />
across the lobby, making my eyes heavy with sleep. I watch them<br />
February 2014 29
go back and forth in silence, like happy zombies, drifting in and<br />
out of the afternoon light.<br />
•<br />
“Hey Buff,” Roberto pokes me awake and I realize I’ve<br />
been waiting in the lobby for hours.<br />
“You can come up now,” he smiles.<br />
I shake off sleep and follow him to the elevator. Once<br />
inside, he puts a small key in the hole above all the buttons with<br />
“PH” stamped nearby. He clicks it in and turns and the elevator<br />
jerks under our feet.<br />
“That’s some ring,” he smiles and adjusts his cap. “Sure<br />
you wanna give it back”<br />
“No,” I say and we giggle again.<br />
The buttons light up one after another. And when the<br />
doors finally ding open I step into a room the size of my old high<br />
school gym. The whole place is like a Bensonhurst row house<br />
built on top of a skyscraper. There are paintings everywhere, all<br />
framed in brown wood and staircases at each end of the place<br />
stretch to higher floors. A big white piano sits off to the side. And<br />
out of the tall windows, which circle the place all around, I see<br />
real trees, tall and leafy, planted in big jars along the terrace.<br />
Chairs and sofas line the walls, plush leather, beige and<br />
brown, but I stay on my feet, afraid to stain Swanson’s fancy<br />
upholstery with my clothes, drenched in a long day of sweat and<br />
trash. Instead I walk toward a cool breeze from the terrace and<br />
look outside. I spent five years riding the step uptown. I know its<br />
every street corner from East to West and back. I know every alley,<br />
every stink-hole, every crevice of this city, but I’ve never seen<br />
it like this. Central Park, like Swanson’s own lawn with a couple<br />
of rain puddles, sits square in the middle, its green protected<br />
from all sides by walls of forts and towers. Like a heart rate, they<br />
rise and fall in restless slopes, beating out the granite pulse of the<br />
city. A shiver of cool air bristles my skin, and it all makes sense:<br />
30 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
there is an endless order to this city, but you can only see it from<br />
way up in the sky. And when yellow window squares begin to<br />
light Manhattan anew, I suddenly feel like crying. I know I will<br />
never see this view again.<br />
“Are you Mister Fitzgerald” a voice says, and I turn<br />
around.<br />
It’s a woman. She is small. Her face is heavy with makeup,<br />
her hair bleached and pulled back in a funny twist. She looks just<br />
shy of fifty—something beautiful about her, but I can’t tell what it<br />
is.<br />
“I am Misses Swanson,” she says.<br />
“I brought you this,” I take the ring out of my pocket and<br />
wipe it on my shirt. “It’s yours, isn’t it”<br />
“It was,” she says. “But I threw it away.”<br />
I feel my eyes blinking, but the rest of me won’t move.<br />
“You did what you say”<br />
“I threw it away, Mister Fitzgerald,” she says and her chin<br />
trembles. “I threw it away because my husband is cheating on me<br />
with another woman.”<br />
I look at her and suddenly the only filth I can smell is my<br />
own. And it makes me sick. And for a moment I feel like running<br />
out with the ring, away from this place, racing downtown, across<br />
the Brooklyn Bridge, all the way back to Gravesend. Back to<br />
Grace.<br />
“Why Why would you do that, Misses Swanson Why<br />
would you do a thing like that” My words grow louder, pouring<br />
out of my mouth, but I can hardly hear myself. I can only feel it<br />
burning me, this filthy treasure in my hand, tossed out by this<br />
woman like a piss-stained mattress. “Do you know what I had to<br />
do What this ring means to people like me How much it could<br />
change things For my wife My pregnant wife”<br />
“Then take it,” she says and her voice quivers. “Please.<br />
Take it and give it to her.”<br />
I look at her—stiff hair, tiny eyes with flakes of tears and<br />
mascara—and I get her beauty. It’s her skin. Smooth and even,<br />
with not one wrinkle or mark, it’s stretched over her face like a<br />
February 2014 31
cellophane trash bag, pulled real tight and stapled on the back of<br />
her skull.<br />
“Mister Fitzgerald...” she begs and all I want to do is hold<br />
her. But I stay back. I don’t want to stain her. So I put the ring on<br />
the piano and watch water build in her eyes.<br />
•<br />
Outside it’s already dark, and overnight delivery trucks<br />
rumble back and forth kicking up dust. A woman in a black dress<br />
flings her wrist for a taxi. She looks me up and down and smiles,<br />
but I feel like a midget. The Kid has his grease-ball uncle, and<br />
Skip, he has his war. And what’ve I got My job My Grace All<br />
like fine grains of beach sand seeping through my fingers. I walk<br />
by a news stand and a delivery boy dumps off a fresh stack of the<br />
Daily News. I think of Skip and read the headline:<br />
Saddam Hussein Invades Iran; Hostage Negotiations Beckon.<br />
Steven Volynets was born in<br />
Soviet Ukraine and raised in South<br />
Brooklyn. His fiction appeared in<br />
Works & Days Quarterly and is<br />
forthcoming from Kaleidoscope<br />
Magazine and Per Contra Journal.<br />
His essays and criticism have<br />
been published in HTMLGIANT,<br />
Construction Literary Magazine,<br />
and Moment Magazine (founded<br />
by Elie Wiesel) among others.<br />
Steven also spent several years as<br />
a journalist at the PC Magazine, covering everything from gadgets<br />
to energy policy. His news gathering and reporting earned nominations<br />
for the Weblog Award, MIN Best of the Web Award, and<br />
the Annual Jesse H. Neal Award—the “Oscar” of business journalism.<br />
He has since covered crime, politics, and culture in Southern<br />
Brooklyn neighborhoods. Steven graduated from Brooklyn College<br />
and attended the MFA program in fiction at the City College of<br />
New York. He is at work on a collection of stories.<br />
32 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
April Salzano<br />
An Impact Wrench is Not<br />
a sound I thought I would ever miss from those days<br />
I lived beside the small town mechanic’s shop.<br />
But I do. Its definitive finality, its crescendo,<br />
the distinct pause between lug nuts, between wheels,<br />
between cars. It was a sound I could count on,<br />
sunrise to sunset when the shop closed for the day,<br />
the grease-covered men went home to dinner,<br />
the father who owned the place, the son<br />
who never went to college, and the third, expendable,<br />
nameless fellow with the beat-up pickup truck<br />
and the suggestion of loneliness. I nursed my son<br />
to that sound, curtains on the east side<br />
of the house usually closed, but I would peer<br />
between the slats of the plantation shutters sometimes<br />
when I was lonely and bored, toward the end<br />
of my marriage, kids napping, laundry folded<br />
in its outdoor-fresh scented squares of domesticity.<br />
I found comfort in watching the customers<br />
who walked to pick up their cars, then pulled away,<br />
never in any kind of hurry, back to the college<br />
campus up the street, to the failing coffee shop<br />
on the corner, to the town’s one hair salon or market.<br />
I hear it now, my second husband rotating my tires,<br />
my youngest boy eight years old, playing various<br />
electronic devices whose names and games I cannot keep<br />
track of, my oldest upstairs more than he is down,<br />
and I wonder how it happened that I am suddenly forty<br />
and do not live anywhere near the fix-it shop,<br />
existing in another town, another life entirely.<br />
February 2014 33
April Salzano<br />
Lightning<br />
can, does, and will strike<br />
in the same place twice,<br />
unlike you said<br />
after punching my left arm,<br />
before rapid-firing my right. This,<br />
among the lies you told that I actually<br />
believed. Other, sober nonsense I thought<br />
I had ignored, I find myself quoting<br />
like my line in a school play. Pain does not<br />
have an address, but muscle has memory, bruised<br />
as fruit. A five pound paste jar to the leg, pissed<br />
pants, a septum as deviated as a fork of electricity.<br />
Arms open wide in upward acknowledgment, childlike<br />
hero worship, solid as a 2x4’s discipline, and just<br />
as hard. Lessons always learned the first time. Still,<br />
when I remember you, it is with a sad shade of nostalgia,<br />
the color of sky just before a storm.<br />
34 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
April Salzano<br />
Someone Else’s Oak<br />
I want to say her eyes are cathedrals,<br />
spires of stone and light, built<br />
to honor something perhaps<br />
not tangible, but important.<br />
Her skin is a wilderness<br />
stuffed so full of stars and darkness<br />
she threatens to burst,<br />
Venus-fire, Helios-hot.<br />
Her hair is Medusa’s snakes<br />
curling toward the sky. They show<br />
no pretense, no venom, not even<br />
curiosity for what is above.<br />
But I can only say her locks are branches,<br />
simply existing through a hundred seasons.<br />
Her roots are cities that do not see,<br />
but feel every inch of the distance<br />
they have grown.<br />
Recent Puschart nominee, April Salzano teaches college<br />
writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband<br />
and two sons. She is working on a memoir on raising a son<br />
with autism and has recently finished her first collection of<br />
poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Convergence,<br />
Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Blue Stem,<br />
and Rattle. She serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane<br />
Press.<br />
February 2014 35
Rob Andwood<br />
Set Phasers for One<br />
Ellen finished speaking into the empty telephone and<br />
noticed that one of the forks was starting to bend upwards, off the<br />
table, tines stretching toward the ceiling like hands to God. She<br />
returned the phone to its base and adjusted the gravity monitor<br />
that hung on the wall next to it, turning it up several clicks until<br />
the fork lay flat once more.<br />
Her husband was off looking for work on the fringes of<br />
a distant galaxy. He’d been doing that a lot lately. He repeated<br />
the promise every day, a mantra fit for a high school locker<br />
room. Once I find steady work, we’ll buy our own ship, one with<br />
Earth-level gravity in every room.<br />
When the destruction of Earth evolved from a frightening<br />
possibility into a grave certainty, they’d taken a rental on a beaten-up<br />
space cruiser, the equivalent of a minivan littered with dirt<br />
clumps and crumpled McDonald’s bags. The rental was a split<br />
they shared with another couple who had also been looking for<br />
an escape plan on the cheap. The kitchen was the only room in<br />
their half of the ship that had a gravity monitor. The devices were<br />
in high demand in this, the Evacuation Age, and the price of just<br />
one installation was steep. Ellen nodded every time her husband<br />
laid out his plan for their future. Whether she nodded for him or<br />
for herself, she never knew.<br />
The monitors weren’t perfect, but they held most objects<br />
down on a consistent basis. It was always the smallest bits that<br />
seemed to drift, like the fork. Ellen didn’t mind, though. It was<br />
nice to be able to move around the kitchen without having to<br />
worry about a cast-iron pan smacking you upside the head.<br />
On this night, she turned the monitor up high and set<br />
about preparing dinner, a perfect model of her mother on days<br />
36 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
when her father’s tires screeched in the driveway, when his boots<br />
stamping on the front porch gave advance notice that he’d been<br />
let go from yet another cookie-cutter factory job. Ellen didn’t<br />
have much to work with: tube-squeezed vegetables formed a<br />
border for chicken drained from a can. Not the stuff monthsin-advance<br />
reservations are made of by any means, but she’d<br />
compensated through attention to detail. The table was laid out<br />
perfectly, everything arranged so precisely it looked as though<br />
she’d measured out the proportions with a ruler. The silverware<br />
was centered on napkins folded at protractor-sharp angles, while<br />
water glasses orbited the plates at such symmetrical distances<br />
they might have controlled tides. Ellen felt no pull towards humility<br />
regarding her work. These things were difficult to accomplish<br />
this far out in the cosmos.<br />
And yet, he wasn’t home.<br />
The first night after launch, he’d sat her down in the tiny<br />
living room, belts cinched tightly around their waists lest they<br />
go floating off the couch, and explained how difficult it would be<br />
for him to support the two of them, working contract labor in a<br />
market unbound by the old restrictions of the upper atmosphere.<br />
Some nights I won’t make it home, he’d said, but you don’t<br />
have to worry. She’d nodded and believed herself when she told<br />
him that it would be fine.<br />
As the following night wore on, hours since he’d disembarked<br />
from the rear bay to inquire after a job somewhere in the<br />
Virgo Stellar Stream, Ellen hadn’t been able to sleep. She sat up in<br />
the living room, reading one of the few books they’d been able to<br />
bring along.<br />
Susan, who occupied the other half of the ship with her<br />
husband, was walking along the hallway outside the living room,<br />
which served as an invisible divider between the two halves of the<br />
ship. She stopped and watched Ellen silently for a few moments,<br />
then cleared her throat. Ellen looked up at her.<br />
He not back yet Susan had asked.<br />
No, Ellen said, and grinned a grin that disappeared quickly,<br />
like a half-moon not quite luminous enough to break through<br />
February 2014 37
the cloud cover.<br />
Don’t fret, Susan said, Doug was gone nearly a week the<br />
first time he went out.<br />
That hadn’t made Ellen feel any better, but she’d tried to<br />
sound sincere when she thanked Susan and wished her good<br />
night.<br />
That was five months ago by Ellen’s estimate, and there<br />
were still nights she spent alone, thinking about television and<br />
the sky and her childhood and all of the other things she once<br />
had but had no longer.<br />
Ellen sat down at the table and, checking the clock that<br />
hung on the wall one last time, started to transfer food from the<br />
serving dishes to her plate.<br />
The clock was an heirloom, given to Ellen by her mother<br />
when she sold the house after Ellen’s father passed. It was an<br />
old clock, the kind that chimes every hour, and used to stand in<br />
the kitchen of the house where Ellen grew up. Her mother had<br />
spent half her life pretending the clock didn’t exist while she<br />
knitted her fingers together in worry, waiting for her husband<br />
to return from the bowels of who-knows-where on nights when<br />
he hadn’t bothered to come home after work, or not work, at all.<br />
Ellen remembered watching her mother’s smile flicker as she said<br />
good night, both of them omitting certain questions and certain<br />
answers. Ellen would crawl into her bed and make quiet promises<br />
to herself, the kind that stick deep within the frontal lobe. All of<br />
them concerned men.<br />
These promises had died around the same time the old<br />
planet did.<br />
Ellen stared hard at her plate as she ate, churning her way<br />
through the rest of the could-call-it food she’d piled there. When<br />
she finished, she walked her dish to the sink and made up a plate<br />
for him, wrapping it in plastic and putting it in the refrigerator<br />
for time future.<br />
She thought about going into the living room to read, but<br />
it was nice sitting in the kitchen, to be able to cross and uncross<br />
her legs without the discomfort of the couch belt. She exhaled<br />
38 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
contentedly, feeling cracks in her voice like the fissures that had<br />
ripped Earth apart. Visions of moving galaxies occupied her<br />
mind until she fell asleep.<br />
She woke to a noise and checked the clock to discover<br />
she’d slept for nearly two hours. Another noise floated down the<br />
hallway, coming from the rear bay. She heard the entrance hatch<br />
open and close, and then footsteps that echoed around the corner.<br />
She watched as he tiptoed by the kitchen, on his way to their<br />
bedroom. He stopped and looked in when he heard her laughing<br />
quietly.<br />
I figured you’d be asleep, he said, taking the seat across<br />
from her.<br />
I was, she said.<br />
Sorry I’m so late.<br />
That’s OK. How’d it go<br />
I’m on for two weeks, starting tomorrow. Pay isn’t bad,<br />
either.<br />
Good.<br />
They fell into silence. She thought about the plate in the<br />
refrigerator.<br />
You hungry<br />
He smiled, so she stood up and got the plate out. She<br />
placed it in the solar-powered microwave they both swore would<br />
have them sprouting extra limbs some day very soon, and waited<br />
until it beeped. He was peeling off his shoes when she set the plate<br />
down in front of him.<br />
She was quiet while he ate. After a few minutes, he started<br />
to slow down.<br />
Where’s the job, anyway<br />
The far side of BZ3150-NC615, northwest sector.<br />
Sounds beautiful.<br />
He laughed.<br />
It’s nice, actually, he said. I think you’d like it.<br />
Tell me about it.<br />
He told her about the way there and the way back and the<br />
there itself, of course. When he finished eating she stood up and<br />
February 2014 39
carried his plate to the sink. By the time she returned to the table<br />
he’d stopped talking and his eyes were closed.<br />
Do you want to go to bed she asked, and he shook his<br />
head.<br />
It’s nice talking like this, he said. Let’s talk like this awhile.<br />
He told her about star flares and feeling weightless<br />
and horizons that never saw a sunset. He told her about flying<br />
through nebulas and eclipses you couldn’t look in the eye and<br />
terraformed moons that looked exactly like home. After a while<br />
he closed his eyes again but went on talking. She closed her eyes,<br />
too, and tried to conjure up images to fit his words. She couldn’t<br />
do it. Inside her head was all blackness.<br />
She didn’t mind very much, figuring that, after all, most<br />
of the universe was blackness anyway, a series of gulfs between<br />
two bright points, a suburban night closing in on a dim upstairs<br />
window.<br />
Rob Andwood is a fiction writer from the Pine Barrens of<br />
southern New Jersey. He currently resides in Cambridge,<br />
Massachusetts, although he returns home at least once every<br />
year to continue his prolonged hunt for the elusive Jersey<br />
Devil. He is obsessed with rap music and superheroes.<br />
40 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
I.K. Paterson-Harkness<br />
Broken Egg<br />
1<br />
They come bounding at me bow-legged,<br />
expecting beaks like upside down spoons and brass eyes unblinking.<br />
Oi, get off, I skip backwards, I gave you the wheat!<br />
Don’t you remember pecking my hand and hearing me squeak<br />
I check for eggs inside the roosting shed, poke my head in,<br />
perceive a hen-like shape and beak swiveling my way.<br />
Oops, sorry—I say, retreat, retreat.<br />
A rock in your place, a sleeping cat, even,<br />
so stuffed with shadows, I’d think it a hen.<br />
Sometimes I hear you wailing all the way from the front fence.<br />
With misshapen eggs, I wonder why you lay.<br />
Maybe because, secretly, you enjoy the quiet, dark,<br />
the rustle of your feathers in the straw,<br />
the curve, the release.<br />
2<br />
My mother owns sixty-one eggcups<br />
though seldom eats her own eggs.<br />
They sit in a brown cabinet<br />
beside the lamp whose height hides a layer of dust.<br />
The rest of her house is spotless, of course.<br />
She’s a short woman, it’s not her fault.<br />
She tried to have more kids but was stuck with just the one,<br />
then my dad won big with the bonus bonds and moved away<br />
February 2014 41
with the lady who cut all our hair.<br />
Two of the eggcups were wedding presents.<br />
They sit front, center , polished brightly.<br />
Mum doesn’t receive many gifts.<br />
In the early eve she’s sleeve-deep in the garden<br />
speaking to her hens, upturning rocks.<br />
Beetles and millipedes have no safe nooks.<br />
I’ll never understand the pleasure she gets, digging potatoes,<br />
wrenching sticky weeds from the mischievous earth.<br />
She lays her carrots with care,<br />
side by side on the lilac rug we used to take to the beach.<br />
It’s covered in holes, I don’t know why she doesn’t biff it.<br />
I sit with her till dusk while she shovels compost, full of broken shells.<br />
She told me once that when hens eat a broken egg they get a taste.<br />
3<br />
Dad could catch a wave with his body, like a rocket,<br />
arms stretched straight in front, strong legs kicking.<br />
Mum and I skulked beneath the parasol, watching him.<br />
I hear he has three kids now—probably brown, and fit, like him.<br />
As a teenager I hated this farm.<br />
I’d climb the overgrown rhododendrons,<br />
perch like a pissed-off gargoyle, listing unfairnesses.<br />
There’s nothing fun about being a kid.<br />
When the doctor told me I couldn’t have any I was glad.<br />
Dad sent me a postcard once, from France,<br />
wrote it like he wrote them every week.<br />
I didn’t recognize the handwriting<br />
till Mum pointed out his name at the bottom.<br />
I remember she cried.<br />
She told me once she would’ve liked grandchildren.<br />
42 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Sometimes I see you running wide-armed at me,<br />
scabby knees and bright eyes unflinching.<br />
I’ve seen plasters with pictures on them, at the supermarket, just for kids.<br />
Oi, get off, I tut, holding you at arm’s length<br />
and poking your tummy till you squeak.<br />
I. K. Paterson-Harkness hails from Auckland, New Zealand.<br />
Before picking up the pen (or rather laptop) she spent<br />
fifteen years firmly grasping a guitar—and released three<br />
albums locally. She gained degrees in both music and philosophy<br />
before returning to university in 2012 and completing<br />
a Masters of Creative Writing, and has since<br />
published several short stories and poems. She plans to<br />
write and publish many more songs and stories in the coming<br />
years. www.ikpatersonharkness.com<br />
February 2014 43
Jennifer Racek<br />
The Dragon Keeper<br />
Like Moses, the baby arrived in a reed basket. No river<br />
carried her, only the howling eddies of a blizzard flinging itself<br />
against his door. The river came later, when she left, and by then<br />
the basket was no more than ash. Maybe if he had pulled her<br />
from the river, claimed her as his own in that way, their little<br />
family could have remained as it should: a father, his daughter,<br />
the two dragons. Everything the world needed to be perfect.<br />
Instead, he had only the blizzard scraping the wooden<br />
logs of the outer wall and hissing icy breath underneath the door.<br />
That was how Minchka arrived in his life, heralded by a rattling<br />
knock.<br />
•<br />
Aleksandr shifted on the sleeping platform, rolling onto<br />
his back and adjusting the hay-filled sack that formed his pillow.<br />
The clay fireplace, white face dark with soot, trickled heat into<br />
the room, carrying the stench of fresh dung and moldy hay. His<br />
stomach rumbled, unsatisfied by the turnip and beet dinner of<br />
only an hour before. A knock sounded from the door.<br />
He shoved up onto an elbow and stared. Who would travel<br />
on such a night The sun had set hours ago. Besides, his home was<br />
far from the village, an hour’s hike through the forest. Only a fool<br />
would travel the Russian mountains during a storm. Or a witch.<br />
His hand dipped below the sleeping platform, groping for his<br />
short ax.<br />
Another knock, louder than the first. Aleksandr called<br />
out, “Lord’s blessing upon you.”<br />
If a witch stood outside the door, invoking the Lord would<br />
drive her away. A third knock sounded, quick and impatient.<br />
44 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Aleksandr got to his feet. Despite the hearth fire, his fingers<br />
were stiff with cold and it took a long minute to unlatch the<br />
sinew tie that held the door locked.<br />
On his doorstep lay a large, snow-covered basket. Wind<br />
whined through the trees like an old woman’s wheezing breath.<br />
Babba Yagga come to steal his soul perhaps. Aleksandr shivered,<br />
glancing at the trees, and then dragged the basket inside. He<br />
slammed the door against the storm.<br />
The wailing of the wind outside gave way to a different<br />
wailing as something woke within the basket. The snow shivered<br />
and shifted, falling away so that he could see it was not snow, but<br />
a blanket covering a tiny babe. The child’s eyes were green as a<br />
beetle’s shell and fat tears rolled down her cheeks as she let out<br />
another howl. The blanket twitched and twisted, shimmying lower<br />
in the basket as something else moved under its heavy weight.<br />
He grabbed a corner of the blanket and pulled it back,<br />
prepared for another scrunched, crying face. Glittering dark eyes<br />
stared back at him instead. Two black creatures rested on either<br />
side of the baby, both watching Aleksandr. Long necks rose from<br />
plump, scaled bodies with tiny wings tucked tight against their<br />
backs. One of the creatures opened its jaws and flicked the air<br />
with its tongue. Rows of sharp fangs filled its mouth. Dragons.<br />
Aleksandr stumbled backwards, eyes wide.<br />
The child let out another wail, and Aleksandr edged closer.<br />
One of the dragons hissed, eyes fixed on him, and whipped<br />
its tail, thumping the side of the basket. The other dragon rested<br />
its head against the baby’’s chest, and she stopped crying. She<br />
hiccupped and blinked sleepy eyes, sucking on her chubby fist as<br />
she fell back asleep. Her little lips made wet, smacking sounds.<br />
The dragons curled closer, protecting the baby. No need to rescue<br />
the child, then.<br />
Aleksandr backed to the opposite wall and kept his distance<br />
from the foreign creatures, each equally terrifying. From<br />
a corner of the basket, he could see a roll of creamy yellow paper<br />
dappled with damp from the melting snow and held in place by a<br />
loose loop of vine. He ignored it, fearing the dragons’ fangs.<br />
February 2014 45
They spent the night in a standoff, dragons and baby on<br />
one side of the room, Aleksandr on the other. He slumped onto<br />
one of the benches built into the wall and watched the visitors<br />
warily, muttering prayers under his breath to ward off evil and<br />
bad luck.<br />
In the morning, the baby woke early with a whimper.<br />
Aleksandr startled awake, bumping his head against the wall<br />
and kicking over a clay jar at his feet. The jar rolled across the<br />
floor, hitting the hearth with a crack. Beets and pickling solution<br />
leaked out, filling the air with a sour-sweet smell. Both dragons<br />
stirred and curled more tightly around the baby, nudging her<br />
cheeks with their stubby snouts. This time, however, the babe<br />
would not be consoled, she wailed louder and louder, face red.<br />
Cautiously, one foot at a time, Aleksandr edged closer to<br />
the basket. The dragons nudged and chortled and whipped their<br />
tails, but the baby didn’t quiet. Aleksandr bent and stroked a finger<br />
down her cheek, keeping one eye on the dragons. Immediately,<br />
the baby turned her head and latched onto his finger, sucking<br />
the tip and then spitting it out and crying harder.<br />
“Lapushka,” Aleksandr whispered, “I have no milk to feed<br />
you.” He frowned and glanced at the jars and bowls, the hollow<br />
wood containers that marked his food store for the winter. There<br />
was nothing there he could give such a young child. What did<br />
babies eat other than milk Finally, Aleksandr reached for the paper<br />
he’d glimpsed the night before. He kept his movements slow,<br />
trying not to startle the dragons, but they were too distracted by<br />
the baby’s crying to pay attention to him.<br />
The paper was rolled into a column, tight and slender as a<br />
birch branch, and Aleksandr unrolled it carefully.<br />
Aleksandr,<br />
Be known of our daughter. Her name is Minchka. I bid you<br />
raise her well. I send you my dragonlings as a help. They will keep<br />
you both and bring prosperity on your home. Seven times seven is a<br />
halfling’s life, half of your world, half of mine.<br />
Sinivushka<br />
46 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Aleksandr stared at the name, perplexed by the letters tangled<br />
like thorns. She’d never told him her name, and in the three<br />
evenings they spent together, he’d never asked it. Shame boiled<br />
under his skin. Glancing at the baby, he didn’t doubt Sinivushka’s<br />
claim. Like her mother, the child’s lips were tinged a soft blue, but<br />
the fuzz of hair on her head was as dark as Aleksandr’s. Her nose,<br />
too wide and flat was also his. Her eyes were her own, however,<br />
neither her mother’s soft blue nor her father’s dark brown. And<br />
unlike her mother, frost did not cling to the child like a cloak, she<br />
did not breathe the winter out with each exhalation. ‘Halfling’ the<br />
note said. Did he need any further confirmation of Sinivushka’s<br />
nature<br />
He’d lied to himself, hoped she might be a girl from one of<br />
the north villages visiting family, even with her strangeness. But<br />
no, Sinivushka was something else, something other than human.<br />
He had met her by the river, watched her walk barefoot next<br />
to the frozen water. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled<br />
at him, and nothing else in the world mattered. They had lain<br />
together and now, so long after Sinivushka had disappeared those<br />
months ago, he had a daughter. A beautiful, inhuman daughter,<br />
and no idea how to care for the child.<br />
Aleksandr cursed under his breath.<br />
One of the dragons raised its head and snapped at him.<br />
“I will curse if I want, you wretched beast,” Aleksandr<br />
snarled. “And just what am I supposed to do with a pair of dragons<br />
She said you would keep us and bring prosperity. More likely<br />
burn the house down.”<br />
One of the dragons uncoiled and stretched, unfurling<br />
wings as fragile as glass. The creature was hardly bigger than a cat<br />
and supremely unimpressive.<br />
“Much use you shall be,” Aleksandr muttered.<br />
All that time the baby cried—great heaving wails that<br />
seemed impossible for such a tiny thing. The dragon beside the<br />
basket padded to the door with clacking claws and bumped its<br />
snout impatiently against it. Aleksandr sighed.<br />
“I am servant to a dragon pup now.”<br />
February 2014 47
The door belched cold air into the room when he yanked<br />
it open, barely missing the dragon. The creature sent a spurt of<br />
flame at the tip of Aleksandr’s shoe as it skittered past and he<br />
leapt backward, stamping his feet frantically to put out the fire.<br />
“Wretched beast,” he bellowed after the dragon. Its black<br />
body disappeared into a snow bank, and Aleksandr slammed the<br />
door.<br />
The baby cried even louder. How by the Tsar’s court was<br />
such a thing possible He had to press both hands over his ears<br />
just to think. The other dragon, still curled beside the baby, glared<br />
reproachfully at Aleksandr.<br />
“It set my foot on fire!” Aleksandr yelled at the other dragon.<br />
The dragon snorted and tucked its head against the baby’s<br />
throat.<br />
He stormed toward the basket, half ready to chuck it, the<br />
dragon, and the baby out into the snow. The child’s mother had to<br />
be close by, didn’t she Anyway, the babe was half winter-wild—<br />
she’d be fine outside no matter how young she was. The other<br />
dragon hissed and bared its teeth at Aleksandr when he reached<br />
for the basket. Before either of them had a chance to discover if he<br />
really would have thrown the pair out, something knocked into<br />
the door from outside. Aleksandr whirled around, staring. Had<br />
Sinivushka come back for her child<br />
The thump came again, louder, more insistent. Aleksandr<br />
hurried to open the door, eager to pass the child off. The other<br />
dragon was back. And it had a goat with it. A huge, fat goat, with<br />
sides half as wide as the door and an exact miniature of itself<br />
trailing behind. Aleksandr could only stare.<br />
“W-w-where,” he stammered. The dragon outside shoved<br />
past him, flicking his knee with its tail, and the kid trotted after<br />
it, the nanny goat moving to follow as well.<br />
“Oh no,” Aleksandr bellowed. “I am not so low as to sleep<br />
with animals in my home. You. Goat. Stop!”<br />
The goat knocked him over and went right inside, shadowing<br />
her kid. The little procession clomped the few steps to the<br />
baby’s basket and stopped. Both dragons looked at Aleksandr<br />
48 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
expectantly.<br />
“I do not like goats.”<br />
The animals stared. The baby cried, hiccupping little sobs<br />
now, and the nanny goat baa-ed plaintively.<br />
Aleksandr sighed. He grabbed a chair and stomped over.<br />
With a bit of trial and error, he filled a bowl with milk from the<br />
goat’s swollen udders and, using a twist of cloth, the baby sucked<br />
the milk from the material hungrily. As steady as the ax falling<br />
when he chopped wood, his hand dipped into the bowl, soaked<br />
the cloth, and lifted it for the child. She drank for an hour until<br />
her little stomach was full and round as a piglet.<br />
In the following days, he built a small enclosure for the<br />
goat and her kid beside the house, adding to it until it was a proper<br />
shelter against the wind and snow. He had expected an angry<br />
farmer to show up at his door demanding the goat’s return, but<br />
none ever did. And so the goats stayed. And the baby stayed as<br />
well, burrowing into his life tight as a thorn tangled in cloth. Even<br />
the dragons remained, and in time, with her first words, Minchka<br />
named them: Zinfir and Dravij.<br />
On the night before Minchka’s seventh birthday, Dravij<br />
laid an egg. Aleksandr woke to the dragon’s pleased clicks as she<br />
crouched over it, nuzzling the thing with her snout. The eggshell<br />
was as muddy blue as the river before the first frost, and gold<br />
specks flecked the surface. Dravij had chosen one of Aleksandr’s<br />
boots as her nest and the leather tongue lolled out from under her<br />
paw, boot-strings tangled liked weeds, part of the heel propping<br />
up the egg while the rest lay in pieces around the dragon. His<br />
other boot, still intact, lay beside the door, as though Dravij had<br />
dragged it halfway across the room before deciding it wasn’t<br />
worth the effort. The boots were scarcely a month old.<br />
Wretched dragons! And now there were going to be three<br />
of them. He stared glumly at the egg.<br />
The next morning, when Minchka saw the egg for the first<br />
time, she squealed and leaped up and down, clasping her hands.<br />
February 2014 49
“A baby dragon! There’s going to be a baby dragon!” It was<br />
several minutes before she stopped dancing around. Then she<br />
quieted abruptly and looked uncertain. “It will be a dragon, won’t<br />
it, Papa It won’t be a child like me, will it”<br />
Her hand moved to the cord necklace she wore, fingers<br />
playing over the fragment of dragon’s egg she’d tied into it.<br />
Aleksandr coughed and nearly sucked half his beard<br />
down trying to get air back in his lungs. He’d kept the egg fragments<br />
he found in Minchka’s basket the night she arrived. The<br />
shell was hard as river ice and good for cutting bits of meat with<br />
its sharp edges. Minchka claimed the smallest piece when she<br />
was two, a jagged oval. The blue-grey sliver of shell, bright against<br />
Minchka’s dark smock, had given him the idea. So perfect. So<br />
easy. If the baby had hatched from an egg, then of course there<br />
was no way of knowing who her mother was or how to find her.<br />
He had spun the lie into a grand story and as he’d hoped, the tale<br />
quieted Minchka’s questions in later years.<br />
“Of course not! Just a dragonling, that’s all. The egg isn’t<br />
nearly big enough for a baby.”<br />
Minchka sagged against the wall and smiled. “Won’t it be<br />
wonderful, Papa A baby dragon!”<br />
“What’s wrong with the ones we’ve got” Aleksandr muttered.<br />
“They destroy the place well enough.”<br />
“Don’t be silly! Dravij and Zinfir are wonderful dragons,<br />
but they’re old. They aren’t babies.”<br />
“Old” he protested. “They’re only seven, same as you.<br />
Scarce bigger than lambs!”<br />
“They aren’t babies,” Minchka repeated, hands on her<br />
hips.<br />
He waved a hand in defeat. “They aren’t babies. Whatever<br />
they are, they need to get to work. It’s late.” He left Dravij to her<br />
egg but scooped up Zinfir and headed for the smokehouse. Zinfir<br />
could hold a controlled flame for five minutes solid and focus it<br />
enough to dry and smoke a side of venison in that time.<br />
Aleksandr had tried regular flames but they just cooked or<br />
burned the meat.<br />
50 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
As Sinivushka had promised in her note that long ago<br />
night, the dragons provided for Aleksandr and Minchka. They<br />
helped Aleksandr dry meat, creating delicate cuts and strips.<br />
Their claws, when shed, could be shaped into curved needles that<br />
were suited to leather work. The dragon’s scales glittered and<br />
shimmered in the light and made perfect ornamentation for pots<br />
or jewelry. By trading with the goods shop in Valminsky, Aleksandr<br />
was able to get whatever he and Minchka needed. He grew<br />
and preserved their own vegetables and their small herd of goats<br />
provided milk and dung for the fire. They were largely self-sufficient<br />
and Aleksandr preferred it that way.<br />
By midday, Minchka was driving Dravij and Aleksandr<br />
mad with her constant prattle about the egg and the way she hovered<br />
beside the dragon.<br />
“When do you think it will hatch, Papa When” Minchka<br />
demanded.<br />
Dravij snapped her fangs and curled more tightly around<br />
the egg, glaring at Minchka.<br />
“I don’t know,” Aleksandr muttered. “They’re not like<br />
birds.”<br />
The egg cracked open as Aleksandr tucked Minchka<br />
under her covers that night. The two halves fell apart in Dravij’s<br />
claws. She shoved her snout inside the shell and hunted for her<br />
baby. There was no dragonling, only a twist of paper like the<br />
one Aleksandr had received the night Minchka arrived. Dravij<br />
tipped the eggshell and the note out of her makeshift nest and<br />
searched the ripped leather desperately. She searched the room<br />
and then stood by the door, wheezing smoke and huffing. Zinfir<br />
approached and nuzzled her neck. Dravij made a hoarse sound<br />
that Aleksandr had never heard before, and then the two dragons<br />
curled into one another furling and unfurling their wings.<br />
Watching the two dragons, Minchka cried. Aleksandr<br />
cuddled her close to his chest as she sobbed. There was no baby<br />
dragon for either of them. He suddenly regretted his earlier<br />
thoughts. Another dragon would have been fine. It would have<br />
been perfect.<br />
February 2014 51
It was a long time before Minchka fell silent and Dravij<br />
and Zinfir retreated to their pile of rags beneath the sleeping platform.<br />
Only when Minchka was asleep did Aleksandr retrieve the<br />
note from the floor. His hands shook as he opened it.<br />
Seven times seven is a halfling’s life. It is time our daughter<br />
visited the other side of her nature, time she walked amid the ice<br />
and snow. She may bring three things only with her, none living.<br />
When she has chosen, send her into the woods under the full moon,<br />
where the two elms cross by the river. Before the moon sets she will<br />
be with me. Remember, aleksandr, she must walk in both worlds or<br />
none at all. I leave the dragons with you as compensation.<br />
Sinivushka<br />
The paper crackled like dry leaves underfoot as he crumpled<br />
it into a ball. How dare she demand Minchka! Hadn’t he<br />
loved the girl Hadn’t he taken her in and cared for Hadn’t he<br />
turned his life upside down for Minchka And where was her<br />
mother in all that time Where was Sinivushka when Minchka<br />
spoke her first words Where was Sinivushka when Minchka had<br />
trained the dragons to fetch river stones Her proudest accomplishment,<br />
getting those mad creatures to do tricks, and it was<br />
Aleksandr she had flung her arms around and laughed with when<br />
the first stone was spit at her feet.<br />
Through every moment of the girl’s life her mother had<br />
been absent and now she demanded he hand Minchka over Just<br />
send his daughter into the woods Alone He wouldn’t. Curse<br />
Sinivushka, curse her blue-lipped mouth, her cold eyes, her colder<br />
heart. Curse the day he’d ever met that winter-bound creature!<br />
Letter be damned, he was keeping his daughter.<br />
He stormed to the door and threw it open, flinging the<br />
note outside. The moon was high and full. Aleksandr staggered<br />
back. Though the moon looked the same as it had on other<br />
nights, he could see only Sinivushka’s face, laughing at him. He<br />
slammed the door on the moon and the night, turning away from<br />
them.<br />
52 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
By morning, Minchka was running a fever. Her small<br />
body felt dry and empty to his touch, a husk. Her lips cracked as<br />
though she’d swallowed dragon’s flame.<br />
“Papa,” Minchka said, shivering, “it’s so cold inside. Did<br />
the fire burn out” He piled blankets on top of her and patted her<br />
back.<br />
“No, the fire is still in the hearth. You are sick. It will be<br />
better by night.”<br />
But it was not. The fever burned so hot it was painful to<br />
touch her skin and Minchka cried out when Aleksandr brushed<br />
a lock of hair from her face. Her covers were soaked with sweat<br />
and her lips so dry they bled. He dribbled snow between her<br />
clenched teeth but it did no good. The fever would not break. Late<br />
in the second evening, she slipped so far into sleep, he could not<br />
wake her. Aleksandr shook her and shook her but she would not<br />
open her eyes. He slapped her cheeks and yelled, he rubbed her<br />
back and cajoled. She never stirred, breathing only shallowly. He<br />
slumped down, resting his head on the bed beside her, counting<br />
each halting breath. His eyes were wet and he felt desperate and<br />
wild. Helpless. Hopeless.<br />
“I’ll do it,” he whispered, reaching up to touch her cheek.<br />
He sat up and shouted the words at the bare walls, “Do you hear<br />
me, Sinivushka I will do it! I will give you our daughter. Only<br />
stop this. Let her live.” The words cracked and broke apart. Ice<br />
was slipping into his chest and wrapping around him, it choked<br />
his voice and made it hard to talk. “I will do it,” he whispered<br />
again. “Let her live.”<br />
There was nothing left inside of him, just a hollow place<br />
where he’d stored up all of Minchka’s laughter and smiles. He<br />
shivered and lay his head down beside her, counting her breaths<br />
until his own slowed and he fell asleep.<br />
A butterfly’s wing fluttered against his cheek and tickled<br />
him. Aleksandr dragged his eyes open, wincing at the river silt<br />
that felt lodged beneath each eyelid. Minchka watched him.<br />
“Papa,” she rasped, “I’m thirsty.” The butterfly’s wing<br />
touched his cheek again and he saw it was her fingers, lightly,<br />
February 2014 53
laboriously stretched out to him.<br />
Aleksandr leapt up, knocking his chair over. The two<br />
dragons, curled by his feet, skittered backward, hissing annoyance.<br />
“Of course.” He snatched a cup and poured fresh water<br />
into it, rushing back to her and tipping the cup to her lips.<br />
She sipped at the water, rolling it on her tongue before<br />
swallowing. “Thank you.”<br />
Aleksandr had to turn away so she didn’t see the tears<br />
dampening his beard.<br />
She ate a little bread that morning, and later, the soft<br />
crumbly cheese that was normally kept for holy days. They<br />
clustered together like birds waiting out a storm, Minchka on the<br />
sleeping platform, propped up amid a nest of blankets, Aleksandr<br />
in a chair beside her, constantly touching her face, her hands. He<br />
had to make sure she was real and still with him. The dragons<br />
moved easily from the sleeping platform to the floor, indifferent<br />
to human emotions. Dravij moved more slowly than Zinfir, and<br />
her head dipped often, tail dragging behind her. Minchka stroked<br />
the little dragon’s scales and whispered songs. Night wrapped<br />
around the house too soon, letting moonlight slip under the door.<br />
“Minchka,” Aleksandr said, drawing her attention away<br />
from Dravij, cradled in her lap. “You’re going to have an adventure.<br />
Your mother is waiting for you in the woods. She wants you<br />
to visit her for a little time. Then you can come back to me.” His<br />
voice cracked. “I know that you are still sick, but we have to go<br />
tonight. We must gather the things you will take.”<br />
She stared at him for a long moment. “I do not have a<br />
mother, Papa. I hatched from an egg.” Minchka touched the raw<br />
edge of her necklace.<br />
Aleksandr sighed. “Everyone has a mother, little one. Even<br />
if you have never met her.”<br />
“Is...is she a dragon”<br />
“No, not a dragon. She is beautiful,” he said carefully. “You<br />
can judge for yourself her nature. I knew her very little and it has<br />
been many, many years since I saw her last.”<br />
54 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
“But I want to stay with you,” Minchka whispered. Aleksandr’s<br />
breath caught in his chest and every part of him ached.<br />
He wanted to snatch her up and run away.<br />
“I want you to stay more than anything. But you must do<br />
this.”<br />
Minchka didn’t argue. Her docility worried him, a lingering<br />
effect of the fever that had nearly taken her life. She was<br />
so pale. How could she walk into the forest alone How could he<br />
let her go But then, how could he not He remembered trying to<br />
wake her, shaking her and shaking her and the lack of response.<br />
He remembered the way her breath had grown shallow and still<br />
until it seemed she might not breathe again at all.<br />
“What will you take with you” Aleksandr asked hoarsely.<br />
“You can bring only three things other than the clothes you<br />
wear.”<br />
“I will take you and Zinfir and Dravij.”<br />
Aleksandr hugged her tight against his chest. “We cannot<br />
come. You are not allowed to take anything living with you.”<br />
Minchka squirmed in his arms and he let her go reluctantly,<br />
settling back into his chair.<br />
“But I want to!”<br />
“I am sorry, little one. Choose something else. The dragons<br />
and I must stay.”<br />
“I won’t go without you, Papa. Don’t make me.” Tears<br />
filled Minchka’s eyes and she coughed, wheezing.<br />
Aleksandr stroked her hair. “You are a good girl Minchka,<br />
you must do this for me.”<br />
She was silent a long time, playing with the edge of her<br />
blanket.<br />
“Please, Minchka.”<br />
“I will take my doll,” she whispered, still crying. “The one<br />
with the blue kerchief. And my yellow hair comb with the flowers<br />
painted on it.”<br />
He sagged back in his chair. “And what more”<br />
She touched the necklace at her throat, running a finger<br />
over the shell’s edge as she had so often. “The dragon scale pouch<br />
February 2014 55
you made me last summer.”<br />
Aleksandr nodded. “Very well, I will gather them. You<br />
rest.”<br />
She lay with a dragon stretched on either side of her and<br />
watched as he moved around the room. Her comb was beside the<br />
water bowl and the pouch hung by the door. The doll, however,<br />
proved more elusive. Aleksandr searched beside the food jars,<br />
checked the hearth and the log pile. He looked under the small<br />
table and even inside the scrap bin where old clothes were set<br />
aside to be remade. He searched every corner of the tiny oneroom<br />
house, but he could not find the doll. Minchka’s bottom<br />
lip had begun to tremble and the dark half circles under her eyes<br />
deepened.<br />
“I have to have my doll, Papa, I can’t go without her,”<br />
Minchka pleaded.<br />
He swore under his breath and searched again, but still<br />
couldn’t find the doll. The moon was high in the sky. He had to<br />
send her into the forest now. If he did not....He considered it. Perhaps<br />
her illness had broken on its own. Perhaps it had nothing to<br />
do with Sinivushka. Aleksandr grimaced, Sinivushka was pulling<br />
them in like fish on a line. Struggling would only wound them<br />
more.<br />
“I am sorry, little one. I cannot find the doll. Will you take<br />
something else instead”<br />
Minchka began to cry but shook her head.<br />
He gathered Minchka in his arms, dislodging the dragons<br />
from the sleeping platform. They hissed but twined around<br />
his boots, nevertheless. And then he was walking outside, with<br />
Minchka, with the dragons. The moon was so bright it hurt his<br />
eyes, and he squinted.<br />
The walk down to the river took less than a quarter hour.<br />
Frost dusted the tree trunks and clung in a hard crust over the<br />
ground. The crunch of his boots was loud as musket fire. He<br />
found the two elms easily. Minchka was so light in his arms, so<br />
small. She wobbled, clutching his arm when he set her on her feet.<br />
Beyond them the river burbled and rushed, singing a dirge.<br />
56 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
“You have to walk on your own from here.”<br />
Her face was white as the stones beside the water. “I’m<br />
scared, Papa.”<br />
“I’ll stay right here, and you’ll be with your mother soon.<br />
Just walk between those trees,” he pointed at the trunks which<br />
twined together like a cathedral arch, delicate limbs ornamenting<br />
each side.<br />
Zinfir and Dravij huffed smoke and twined fitfully around<br />
Aleksandr’s ankles like oversize cats.<br />
Minchka shook, clutching her yellow comb in one hand,<br />
the other hand hanging at her side. She turned and stumbled<br />
toward the trees, and then she was through them. The shadows<br />
of the forest swallowed her. The dragons lay at his feet, still and<br />
silent. The three of them stayed there until the sun broke over the<br />
trees and chased the night away. The light fell cold and hard, as<br />
empty as the world. Aleksandr walked to the two trees, staring at<br />
the ground. Five steps from the river’s edge, Minchka’s footsteps<br />
vanished. Aleksandr knelt and pressed his hand into the damp,<br />
hard earth where she had walked. Tears froze on his cheeks.<br />
He delayed as long as he could, but eventually he and the<br />
dragons returned to the house. He hadn’t eaten for more than a<br />
day and hadn’t felt the cold for hours—a dangerous sign. Somehow,<br />
he had to keep drawing in breath, getting through the hours<br />
because one day, Minchka would come back. One day she’d<br />
return to his world, and he had to be here when she did.<br />
Seven times seven is a life. How could he possibly survive<br />
seven years without her<br />
The days moved slowly. First a year passed and then another.<br />
Aleksandr’s hair began to gray and thin. The winter carved itself<br />
into his face, roughening his skin and deepening the lines and<br />
wrinkles.<br />
The last day of his interminable wait dragged on longer<br />
than all seven years combined. The sun moved sluggishly in the<br />
sky. Zinfir and Dravij snapped irritably at the air, shooting tiny<br />
February 2014 57
flames at one another and huffing. Aleksandr ignored them,<br />
glancing at the sun again and again. Why wouldn’t the damn<br />
thing move Finally, blessedly, the night came.<br />
He stayed in front of the house until the moon was high<br />
overhead and the cold made his bones feel heavy as oxen. The<br />
dragons nipped at his feet and drove him inside. So he waited in<br />
his chair by the fire. In his lap, Aleksandr cradled Minchka’s doll,<br />
hands loosely closed over the little cloth chest. He had found the<br />
tiny doll a week after Minchka left, wedged amid the rags the two<br />
dragons used as a nest beneath the sleeping platform. One of the<br />
dragons had sharpened its teeth on the carved wood of the doll’s<br />
face, making deep gouges like the tracks of tears. It was a child’s<br />
toy and his daughter was no longer a child. Seven years gone,<br />
but he could not picture her as anything other than the little girl<br />
he’d held that last night. The doll wasn’t even a proper present as<br />
Minchka had already owned the thing. But she had loved the doll<br />
so much. Would she still Would she still love him<br />
The night trickled away with no sign of Minchka. She<br />
had to come. She had to. His fingers tapped out the minutes on<br />
the chair arm. The fire burned lower in the hearth but he didn’t<br />
add more wood. His legs wouldn’t work anymore. If she didn’t<br />
come....<br />
When morning’s first pink touched the sky and Aleksandr’s<br />
eyes had drifted shut, there was a knock on the door.<br />
Aleksandr started awake. The knock came again. He was frozen.<br />
Unable to open the door and see. If it wasn’t her he was afraid<br />
something would break inside him that couldn’t ever be fixed.<br />
“Papa” A soft voice called.<br />
His breath caught and he clutched the doll tighter.<br />
“Papa, are you there”<br />
Aleksandr’s hands trembled as he rose and shuffled to<br />
the door like an old man. The dragons snorted smoke rings in<br />
disgust, racing to the door and back five times before he reached<br />
it. The wood was cold and pitted beneath his palm.<br />
“Minchka” Aleksandr whispered. His hands shook harder<br />
but he fumbled the door open.<br />
58 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Snow covered the ground outside. There was no reed<br />
basket this time. A girl stood on his doorstep, foreign, fey. Her<br />
chin was pointed and cheeks too sharp. Green eyes. Dark hair<br />
dotted with snow. Blue lips. Her nose was wide and flat, marring<br />
the pretty face and making it easier to look at her. She would have<br />
been too perfect otherwise. She was beautiful as a winter storm.<br />
“Minchka” Aleksandr whispered again.<br />
She looked up at him and smiled. Minchka’s smile.<br />
“Hello, Papa.”<br />
Aleksandr wrapped her in a hug and the little doll fell to<br />
the ground. With the sun scrabbling its way higher in the sky,<br />
they stood in the doorway a long, long time and the dragons<br />
twined around their feet, claws clicking, flames bursting from<br />
their snouts. All around them, the snow began to melt.<br />
A programmer by day,<br />
Jennifer Racek loves writing<br />
stories on the train during<br />
her commute to downtown<br />
Dallas. In her spare time,<br />
she runs a writing critique<br />
group, a YA book club, a<br />
Harry Potter meetup group,<br />
and participates in far too<br />
many craft swaps. Mrs. Racek lives with her husband, two<br />
children, two dogs, a cat, and a hedgehog named Percy<br />
Jackson. You can find out more about the author and read<br />
samples of her writing at http://www.jcracek.com.<br />
February 2014 59
Leila Fortier<br />
~Punctuated~<br />
Why<br />
Am I always<br />
Somewhere in between<br />
Missing you Punctuated with<br />
Absence~ Spaces yet to be filled by<br />
Our silences~ There is an unraveling<br />
Of soul upon the ether~ The trajectory<br />
Of fingertips in search of identical<br />
Prints~ You hear me as though from a distance inside of<br />
You~ Kinetic resonance within perpetual yearning~<br />
All embellishment aside~ You still linger at<br />
The end of every sentence~ As the<br />
One word left I cannot say~<br />
I swallow you again<br />
…Like the sun…<br />
Like the<br />
M<br />
o<br />
o<br />
n<br />
.<br />
60 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Leila Fortier<br />
~Offerings~<br />
*<br />
Oh<br />
Honeyed globe<br />
Of sunlight~ bleeding your<br />
Vital pigments into a watercolor<br />
Wash across the canopy of blue sky~<br />
You shed your apple perfume~ the leaves<br />
Will drink your offerings in starving admiration<br />
A feast of forbidden color~ whirling dervishes of<br />
Saffron reds and burnt turmeric~ falling in whispers<br />
Of inebriation~ mired into cool streams of liquid glass<br />
Paper boats bobbing upon crystal crests~ the mirror of<br />
Every reflection~ tumbling over pebbles of thought;<br />
Zen-stones of consciousness now wet with meditation~ sobriety comes to be born<br />
Once again~ the inevitable seep back into the marrow of roots~ nourishing<br />
Serpentine lovers~ knotted in kisses; uprooted by their lovemaking~<br />
A tangled climb up the textured bark of existence~ terrain<br />
Of all memory~ bares its silent testimony into<br />
The branches~ the tree of life~<br />
Always reaching...<br />
Back to<br />
You<br />
*<br />
February 2014 61
Leila Fortier<br />
~Impossible Geometry~<br />
She claims she has no passions or interests~ Nothing special or unique~ Nothing worthy to be<br />
Noted, she says~ She claims no specialty save for the memory of holding her daughter<br />
In a body bag~ No specialty less than a her unshakable faith~ How she<br />
Clawed through an earthen purgatory weighted with a cross<br />
None would wish to bear- through the fruitless search<br />
And agony of waiting~ Sixty-eight days of<br />
Limbo and fire walking~ Revealing<br />
Only her unfathomable face<br />
Of grace~ There must<br />
Be something<br />
More than<br />
…This…<br />
My<br />
Mind is snared in a web of equations~ An impossible geometry barren of answers~<br />
I suppose this is where God comes in...I want to fill her absences~ Smooth<br />
Over her emotional scars~ Like a shining spoon- A moon without<br />
Cavity~ A terrainless expanse for her taking~ I wanted to<br />
Pry open the ribcage of her resistance~ Fill her<br />
With musicality; New world, new womb;<br />
Creation, paint, and poetry~ Give<br />
Her a way to speak through<br />
Her hands~ Because<br />
I believe even her<br />
Fingers listen<br />
There is<br />
Not a<br />
Part<br />
Of<br />
62 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
Her that does not listen~ I wanted to bring her these gifts<br />
The way that the wise men brought gifts to Jesus~<br />
But I am only wise enough to know that<br />
I cannot fill her absences, and<br />
That it is no wonder at<br />
All that she was<br />
Given the<br />
Name<br />
M<br />
a<br />
r<br />
y<br />
Leila A. Fortier is a poet, artist,<br />
and photographer currently<br />
residing in Okinawa, Japan<br />
while pursuing her BFA in creative<br />
writing through Southern<br />
New Hampshire University. Her<br />
sculpted poetry is often accompanied<br />
by her own multi-medium<br />
forms of art, photography,<br />
and spoken performance. The<br />
use of italics in her text forms a symbolic representation of<br />
inner dialog while the tilde lends to the fluidity and continuum<br />
of her thought processes. Selections of her work have been<br />
translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and German in<br />
a growing effort to foster cultural diversity and understanding<br />
through the voice of poetry. With over one hundred publishing<br />
credits, her work in all its mediums has been featured in a vast<br />
array of publications both in print and online. A complete listing<br />
of her published works can be found at: www.leilafortier.com<br />
February 2014 63
Devyani Borade<br />
Sky’s the Limit<br />
The aeroplane takes off like an arrow towards an unknown<br />
destination. The wind lifts the plane’s wings, giving<br />
them the required thrust to gain altitude rapidly. Twin headlights<br />
cleave a path through the darkness as the dull roar of its engines<br />
carries clearly on the cold night air.<br />
Five pairs of eyes are turned up towards it, watching the<br />
lights steadily climb higher. The dull eyes of a prostitute lying<br />
motionless in a dingy room as a paying customer grimly goes to<br />
work on her for his money’s worth, see an unattainable escape to<br />
another life. The indifferent eyes of a constable as he struggles to<br />
create order, see a vehicle that thankfully does not add to the burgeoning<br />
traffic snarl on the ground. The unblinking sharp eyes of<br />
an air traffic controller watching aircraft activity in the vicinity,<br />
see only a dark speck on a green screen and visions of another<br />
month’s salary if it doesn’t disappear. The sightless eyes of a man<br />
dead on the pavement, crushed under the wheels of yet another<br />
rich tycoon driving drunk, see nothing.<br />
The fifth pair of eyes belong to a small boy perched high<br />
64 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
atop the hill where only fearless crows and toiling ants venture.<br />
There is worship in these young warm brown eyes; worship,<br />
mixed with great longing. As Akash swings his legs unconcernedly<br />
over the lip into the void below, he lunges forward with<br />
outstretched hands as though to snatch the plane out of the sky<br />
in his grubby fingers. For a moment, he is precariously balanced.<br />
Then his center of gravity rights itself, and oblivious to the danger<br />
that has nearly touched his four-year-old life, he leans back with a<br />
sigh. The sigh mimics the ache in his heart. It is a sigh of aborted<br />
desire, of hopelessness, of frustration with his current situation,<br />
of festering resentment at the unfairness of the world.<br />
“I wish I had an aeroplane!” he whispers. It is a wish he<br />
has expressed often— to the birds trilling shrilly in the trees, to<br />
the sun rising and setting in all its majestic grandeur, to the cow<br />
that lows every morning under his window, to the stones that are<br />
mute witnesses to life. So far, though, neither the birds, nor the<br />
sun, nor the cow, nor the stones have been able to fulfil it. Akash<br />
can’t help but think the universe must be conspiring against him.<br />
Rousing himself, he twists around and rests his naked<br />
bum against the leeward side of the hill, which has been worn<br />
smooth by his many visits. As he slides down with practiced ease,<br />
his oversized shirt flares out like a parasail and hides the shallow<br />
drop from view. Plop! He lands softly on his feet like a cat<br />
and begins meandering homewards. A dirty tramp salutes him<br />
and rasps something. Akash sticks his tongue out at him. Now<br />
and then he pauses to investigate roadside treasures that may be<br />
of interest, and duly resumes his journey. He passes a toy shop<br />
with many exciting things on display: a large jack-in-the-box, a<br />
doll that rights itself when you kick it down, a grave looking tin<br />
soldier, a jolly clown, a hideous ogre mask, a train with twinkling<br />
lights. His nose pressed against the glass, he gazes inside. He has<br />
eyes for only one thing: a beautiful blue airplane model hanging<br />
from the ceiling, soaring upwards.<br />
Within minutes of reaching home, he is pestering his<br />
mother, following her around doggedly, holding on to the hem<br />
February 2014 65
of her sari as she goes about her business. “What do you want,<br />
child” she asks him, running her hand affectionately through his<br />
spiky hair.<br />
“Aeroplane,” he replies promptly.<br />
“Not again! Do you know how big aeroplanes are”<br />
Akash nods several times, eager to show that he knows.<br />
“As big as my forearm,” he says, holding out his hand and pulling<br />
up his sleeve to show his elbows. “And they have huge lights in<br />
the front,” he says, cupping both palms into the size of a bowl in<br />
front of his face. “Smaller lights on the wings.” Now the fingers<br />
are squeezed together and the eyes squinched onto a spot.<br />
His mother breaks into peals of laughter. “Is that so No,<br />
little one, you’re wrong. Aeroplanes are very, very big. As big as<br />
our building. Even bigger. People sit inside them. Can you imagine<br />
that” Akash’s eyes widen and he shakes his head slowly.<br />
“Now what makes you think I can get you something that big”<br />
“Because you’re my Ma, na You are old. You can do<br />
anything,” he replies, puzzled by her question. “And they have<br />
upright tails that don’t move. Not like the fish in the canal,” he<br />
adds belatedly. How could he have been so absent-minded as to<br />
forget that!<br />
His mother looks at the chagrin on his face and laughs<br />
again. “Go and wash your hands. Look how filthy they are! Have<br />
you been climbing up that silly hill again You’re not eating like<br />
that.” And with a pat on his bum he is sent on his way.<br />
Morsels of the most delectable feast will not satisfy the<br />
hunger in his heart. Even so, with great reluctance, Akash sets<br />
off in the direction of the tap, but midway he veers off. Fine. If no<br />
one will get him an aeroplane, he will get one himself. Within<br />
minutes, utterly oblivious to his surroundings and the smell of<br />
food gnawing at his insides, he is absorbed in his game. “Wrroooooooommm,”<br />
his pursed lips whimper softly as deft hands<br />
hold aloft a paper plane and wave it all around the room. Over a<br />
rickety chair, along the occasionally chipped grey expanse of the<br />
old refrigerator’s side, past the open window with its faded and<br />
billowing curtains, under the tail of a neighborhood stray dog<br />
66 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
lying listlessly on the mosaic floor, even between the legs of his<br />
father who is now chewing paan and preparing to spit out the<br />
juice—the paper plane flies faithfully as fast as Akash’s legs can<br />
run. The uneven terrain of the sofa is a battlefield strewn with the<br />
remains of today’s newspaper, a pair of scissors, and a few grains<br />
of mud from his barefoot heels.<br />
A familiar hand lightly cuffs his ear and the little boy<br />
howls in protest. This sets off the dog that joins in the cacophony<br />
and for a while the yowling continues uninterrupted.<br />
“You little monster! Why did you tear up today’s newspaper<br />
Don’t you know your father hasn’t read it yet Look at it! It’s<br />
completely ruined!” yells his mother.<br />
“I was making an aeroplane,” replies the boy indignantly and<br />
runs off before he receives his retribution.<br />
Away from the incessant loud arguments of the adults<br />
above the shrill background of the television squawking, he<br />
blinks back tears and stares up at the sky where another plane’s<br />
lights are twinkling. Whether they are beckoning him or taunting,<br />
he can’t tell. He waves vigorously until they are swallowed up<br />
in the darkness. Then he squats down and picks up some pebbles.<br />
Under the unconscious instruction of his wrists, they re-arrange<br />
themselves into a simple outline of an aeroplane. What had Ma<br />
said Do people really sit inside them Surely there must be a<br />
conductor who checks tickets and throws you out at the next stop<br />
if you don’t have one, the little boy thinks, remembering the rides<br />
he has frequently taken on the overcrowded red state transport<br />
buses.<br />
•<br />
He can see his face in the smooth black leather, it is that<br />
polished. The man seems pleased too, for he flicks not one but<br />
two coins down at the eleven year old and swaggers away. Akash<br />
carefully picks up the money and tucks it out of sight under a<br />
threadbare mat below his right hip.<br />
February 2014 67
“Shoe shine! Shoe shine! Get your shoes polished here!<br />
Smooth and sparkling, we take care of your footwear in five minutes!<br />
Cheap shoe shine!” He scans the crowds pouring out from<br />
the railway station for potential customers. In this heat, most<br />
people are clad in cool sandals and slippers, but occasionally<br />
there steps out a smart young man on the way to his first interview,<br />
or a rich mogul back from a successful business deal who<br />
may be in an expansive mood. Akash glances at the cheap plastic<br />
watch on his wrist. 12:13. He squints up into the sun expectantly.<br />
An almost indiscernible whine heralds the Air France aeroplane<br />
as it makes its customary daily flight to the continent. Akash<br />
grins to himself and feels the familiar peace steal over him as he<br />
drifts into his usual daydream. How it must feel to sit on plush<br />
seats inside a cool cabin. How Chacha said they give you food and<br />
drink free!<br />
Tap. Tap tap. A customer taps his foot on the wooden<br />
stand and Akash gets to work on his shoes.<br />
“Gooooood day, sir! What a lovely pair of shoes. No,<br />
really, I see many types of shoes all day everyday, so I know.<br />
These are really of a very good quality. You should shine them<br />
often to keep the leather soft and malleable. So, did you watch<br />
the cricket match yesterday Ah, what a super sixer Tendulkar<br />
struck! Beautiful.” His brush pauses its incessant rubbing to<br />
make an elaborate arc in the air as he gestures the trajectory of<br />
the ball. “Went clean over the boundary. About thirty yards or<br />
so, I reckon. Definitely one for the record books. Pity we couldn’t<br />
maintain the early lead in the end. If the tail-enders had kept the<br />
momentum up, we could have easily won, eh What do you reckon<br />
No What’re you saying, sir! That wicket was a dream. Fast<br />
outfield, too. Those foreigners sure know how to make a pitch, eh<br />
You ever been abroad, sir No Ah, me neither! But one day I will<br />
definitely go. In a big aeroplane.” Again the brushing hand pauses<br />
to sweep the air around his head. “Watch an Ashes match. Live!<br />
At Lords. Did you know-” Like a professional, Akash keeps up a<br />
constant stream of nonsensical chatter which is a better source<br />
of local news than any newspaper, regional television channel, or<br />
68 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
adio station. Without looking up, he knows that the 12:19 British<br />
Airways flight with its distinctive blue colors will be taking off<br />
from the northbound airstrip right about now.<br />
“Chacha, tell me again about your Dubai flight,” urges<br />
Akash later that night at home as he watches his uncle wash his<br />
face, hands, and feet and step over the threshold of the room. Unconsciously<br />
he tugs at his uncle’s dhoti which is sharply yanked<br />
away in indignation. “Go away! Try to trouble somebody else<br />
once in a while. Every minute this fellow is after me to tell him<br />
about the aeroplane. Not a moment of rest. Shoo! Go and get me<br />
a glass of water to drink,” says his uncle irritably and flaps him<br />
away.<br />
A couple of hours later, feeling generous after a satisfactory<br />
meal, his uncle bids him sit down. “So there I was, walking<br />
along this huge…” For the next hour or so, the boy, sometimes<br />
lounging on his stomach, sometimes sitting upright cross-legged<br />
with his chin cupped in his hand, listens enthralled as visions<br />
of unimagined beauty and luxury are conjured up by his uncle<br />
who’s been to Dubai on an aeroplane.<br />
•<br />
“Next.”<br />
“Namaste, sir.”<br />
“Name”<br />
“Akash.”<br />
“Father’s Name”<br />
“Hari Prasad.”<br />
“Age”<br />
“Erm, about fifty or fifty-five. I can’t be sure, though. Is it<br />
important”<br />
“Imbecile! Not your father’s age! Yours.”<br />
“Oh. Sorry, sir.”<br />
“Well”<br />
February 2014 69
“What, sir”<br />
“So what’s your age, you fool!”<br />
“Oh, sorry, sir. Nineteen, sir.”<br />
“Tch. Address”<br />
“Room No. 3, Ramani Bhavan, Chiragnagar.”<br />
“Hmm. Who do you want to meet”<br />
“The senior Mr. Shah.”<br />
“What for”<br />
“I want to ask him if he has a position vacant for me.”<br />
“Hmph. How much have you studied”<br />
“Almost up to class three, sir! I can recite the alphabet and<br />
I know numbers in English too. My teacher used to say that I was<br />
very clever. Sir, would you like to hear a poem”<br />
Large black eyes stare at him from under thick square<br />
lenses. “Do I look like your school teacher” asks the man at the<br />
reception, his moustache bristling with irritation.<br />
“Hai, no, sir, not at all!” smiles Akash and shakes his head<br />
with his tongue between his teeth. “My teacher was a woman,<br />
sir.”<br />
“Shut up! Mr. Shah can’t see you yet. He’s busy. Wait here.”<br />
The man dismisses him by pointedly picking up a large register<br />
and opening it. The name plate on his table falls off with a loud<br />
clatter. The letters R. TYAGI stare back at Akash with insolence.<br />
“But, sir, I’ve already been waiting for an hour.”<br />
“I said, didn’t I, that he’s busy Don’t you understand<br />
Hindi And use your eyes. See this long line of people They are<br />
all waiting to meet him. Now go stand somewhere else and don’t<br />
bother me. Next!”<br />
“You’ll work with my men in the logistics department,”<br />
says Mr. Shah when Akash finally steps into his office after four<br />
hours. “They haul luggage to and from the planes. There’s just one<br />
rule: no damage. Absolutely none, you understand” He pauses<br />
and tilts his chin up in question. Ruthless. His eyes are so ruthless,<br />
Akash thinks. And nods.<br />
“In this job, other people’s possessions are our livelihood.<br />
70 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
You break something and you’re out of a job. No exceptions. Our<br />
merchandise is far too valuable to allow our workers to afford<br />
more than one mistake. These foreigners—their perfume bottles<br />
cost more than my manager’s quarterly wages! I would be bankrupt<br />
within the week. Oh, and speaking of money, your salary<br />
will be four hundred rupees a month, okay It’s not much but I<br />
hope you can save enough to fulfil your dreams, whatever they<br />
might be. I’ll send Tyagi to explain the details. Good luck.”<br />
“Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it, I promise,” Akash<br />
breathes. Aeroplanes, his heart replies.<br />
It is a wet morning. Akash opens his eyes and out of habit<br />
looks up at the sky. Naturally the clouds have hidden it, but he<br />
can hear the faint drone of the twin engine glider circling above.<br />
“Always waiting for his turn to land, poor sod.” He shakes his<br />
head, sits up, and gathers the bedclothes into a rough pile. “First<br />
day on the job, better not be late.”<br />
By the time the rest of the world is dragging itself blearyeyed<br />
out of bed, Akash and his new colleagues are already hard at<br />
work.<br />
“So where do you come from” asks Shanker, a sandy-haired<br />
youth with an air of disinterest. His jaw is busily working<br />
at chewing a matchstick.<br />
“Originally from Vikhroli. Now I live in Chiragnagar,”<br />
Akash replies as he hefts a large brown case. “Oof. How heavy<br />
this stuff is!”<br />
“Nice shirt. Yours”<br />
“No, I borrowed it from a friend. I don’t have any of my<br />
own. Do we have to wear shirts every day It’s so hot.”<br />
“Of course! You want the customers to think we live in the<br />
slums or what”<br />
“But we do live in slums. Aargh! Whew! Good thing my<br />
back is strong. What do people carry in such large boxes How<br />
long have you been working here”<br />
“A year. And this is my own shirt. I’m from Dharavi.”<br />
Akash grunts in reply. He really must save enough to get<br />
February 2014 71
himself some decent clothes. How long will he keep borrowing<br />
from people At this rate, he will run out of friends!<br />
“Can you read or write” asks Shanker.<br />
“No, not enough to speak of. Can you”<br />
“Sure! And fast too. And neat. I even have my own pen,”<br />
Shanker claims proudly. “Every so often, Tyagi gives me the ink<br />
pot from the office when there are a few dregs left in it.”<br />
“Hey, then will you write a letter for me” Akash asks<br />
eagerly.<br />
“It’s twenty rupees per page.”<br />
Akash’s face falls.<br />
“But since you’re new here, I’ll give you a discount. Fifteen<br />
rupees. And you have to make me tea every day for a week. Take<br />
it or leave it.”<br />
At this rate, it’ll take him longer to save for his first flight<br />
than he thought. But there’s no help for it. He has to write to Ma<br />
at least once a month, otherwise she’s liable to worry herself and<br />
become ill.<br />
“I’ll come to your hut tonight after work, shall I” says<br />
Akash, with hope in his voice. “I’ll pay you when I get my salary.”<br />
“Suit yourself. Whom are you writing to Got yourself<br />
a foxy girlfriend back in Chiragnagar, have you, eh” Shanker<br />
winks lecherously as the other youths snigger.<br />
“Oh no! I have to write to my Ma,” Akash turns red and<br />
busies himself with the boxes.<br />
“What It’s only your first day yet. What are you going to<br />
tell her” asks Shanker with incredulousness.<br />
“Well, nothing much. I’ll just tell her how happy I am to<br />
be working so close to the planes. And that I have made some<br />
friends and got a shack to live in for the time being. And that I<br />
promise to eat my meals on time and take care of myself. And<br />
remind her to take her medicines on time as well. She forgets<br />
very easily. It’s the curse of old age.” A pensive smile appears on<br />
Akash’s face. “And that I am perfectly safe here. She’s scared that<br />
I’ll somehow hurt or kill myself by being so near the big aeroplanes.<br />
That they’ll run over me or something!”<br />
72 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
The boys laugh and for a while they work in silence—<br />
Shanker and the others rapidly with practiced motions, Akash<br />
laborious and painstakingly.<br />
“Hey, rookie! That’s not how you handle this stuff. Watch.”<br />
Shanker whistles and winks at another boy working nearby.<br />
The boy grins and ambles over. Shanker suddenly grabs the<br />
brown case that Akash has kept on the ground, heaves it with a<br />
jerk and sweeps his arms around. And then he lets it fly.<br />
“Hey! Watch out! It looks delicate!” Akash cries out in<br />
dismay. But the other boy is standing by alert to the action and<br />
catches the case just before it hits the ground and eases it down<br />
gently. Akash lets out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.<br />
“What clowns you guys are. What if something had broken”<br />
“Nah. Nothing will happen. That’s the only way to move<br />
these big fat cases of the big fat rich people. Otherwise you’ll be<br />
working here till midnight,” replies Shanker nonchalantly. “Now<br />
you try.”<br />
“No way.”<br />
“Oh, don’t be such a pansy. C’mon. Trust me.”<br />
“Are you sure I don’t feel very comfortable with this.”<br />
“Of course. Look, would I want to get you into trouble Go<br />
on. It’s easy. And fun!”<br />
“Well, okay. Hungph!” Akash lifts another brown case<br />
marked ‘Fragile’ and swings it.<br />
Crash!<br />
A thousand glass bottles smash into smithereens.<br />
The world freezes.<br />
Akash’s blood runs cold.<br />
Shanker and his friend bark with laughter.<br />
“You muppet! You should’ve warned which one of us you<br />
were throwing it to! Now you’re going to get it.”<br />
“Hee hee, what a muppet!”<br />
Akash hears the crash in silence. He hears his dream of<br />
flying in an aeroplane shattering with it.<br />
February 2014 73
•<br />
He watches the dancing water gradually become calm<br />
even as he readies to disturb it again. One callused hand fingers<br />
the smooth, round, flawless surface of the second pebble.<br />
At twenty-eight, his eyes, though still young and sharp, are red<br />
rimmed and hooded with crusty lids and small sparse eyelashes.<br />
At the moment they are narrowed and shielded by his shaggy<br />
eyebrows, puckered and closing ranks together against the<br />
blazing afternoon sun. With the other hand he brushes back a<br />
lock of hair soggy with sweat and moisture from the humid air of<br />
Fatehpur. He knows he must be smelling richly by now. His master<br />
made him work extra hard that morning. Perhaps he can take<br />
a quick dip in the river. His dark skin is sheathed with a sheer<br />
patina of perspiration, the corded muscles making little rivulets<br />
run down the contours of his body. He is wearing only a soiled<br />
loin cloth on his body and nothing else.<br />
Akash shuffles into a more comfortable position, making<br />
shallow furrows into the silt as he squats at the banks of the<br />
stream. The mud leaves thin streaks of grime on his bare, cracked<br />
heels. He is gazing at the undulations of the dirty currents when<br />
he hears his name being called out in the distance.<br />
“Aka-aa-sh! Where has that no good wretch got to Oy!<br />
Akash! What are you doing there wasting time Saheb has more<br />
work for you to do. Come back to the mines at once.”<br />
Hurriedly Akash waggles his fingers in the water in a<br />
half-hearted attempt to wash his hands and gets to his feet. A<br />
steaming pile of feces remains behind; its tip peaked off like an<br />
icecream cone’s. As if on cue, an aeroplane shrieks across the sky<br />
overhead from the airfield nearby, and a flock of birds take flight<br />
in alarm, their squawking adding to the din. Akash glances up<br />
at the sky wistfully, then shakes his head and strides away into<br />
the dark yawning opening that forms the entrance of the mines.<br />
He had his chance years ago. His golden opportunity—in Mr.<br />
Shah’s air freight company. And he blew it. He really ought to<br />
stop dreaming of the heavens. His home is now the bowels of the<br />
74 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
earth.<br />
When the blast rocks the quarry, it sends shock waves several<br />
meters away. Loose stones tumble down hills and raise more<br />
dust as men rush in a panic into the cave. There is pandemonium<br />
everywhere.<br />
“Arre, get some water, hurry!”<br />
“Has anybody called the ambulance Somebody call the<br />
ambulance!”<br />
“God, what peril is this! Surely He is testing us!”<br />
“How many are inside”<br />
“Don’t know. Here’s the water! Don’t go in there just like<br />
that! Here, cover your mouth. And watch your step!”<br />
“This is the fourth blast in eleven months! But that tyrant<br />
will still insist on making men work here! May God rot his ancestral<br />
tree!”<br />
“Arre, has anybody taken a head count yet”<br />
“Here come the paramedics, thank goodness!”<br />
“Quickly! Let’s hope some of those poor buggers are alive.”<br />
“You! Go with these doctors. Doctor, don’t breathe too<br />
deeply, okay There may be a lot of gas still in there.”<br />
Hours pass. Families are huddled in terror outside.<br />
Makeshift stretchers from hastily gathered rags are laid out on<br />
the ground. Helpers are standing by at the ready. Small children<br />
run around yelling and playing, unaware that there is something<br />
wrong. The news of the mishap has reached the ears of the media<br />
and a few camera crews with their ubiquitous large microphones<br />
are gathered around like flies attracted to carcass. Now and again,<br />
important looking well-heeled men and women mutter into their<br />
lapels in grave and hushed tones. Some meters away, a scrawny<br />
kid with a bleeding lip peeps out with a mixture of fascination<br />
and horror from behind an old tree. There is not much activity.<br />
Everyone seems to be watching, waiting.<br />
Eventually the men emerge. With broken steps and sagging<br />
shoulders, the black layer on their faces struggling to cover<br />
the pale fear underneath, they carry limp bodies slung over like<br />
February 2014 75
sacks on their shoulders. Of the last such body to come out, the<br />
torso is missing both arms and a leg. It is covered only in a tattered<br />
loin cloth and nothing else.<br />
The next day Akash’s body is returned to his desolate<br />
mother at the other end of the country. The rough wooden crate<br />
carrying his remains jostles for space with designer luggage in the<br />
cargo hold of an aeroplane. His hunger satisfied, Akash is finally<br />
flying.<br />
Devyani Borade writes on the humor and pathos of everyday<br />
life. Her fiction, nonfiction, and art have appeared in<br />
magazines across the world. Visit her website Verbolatry at<br />
http://devyaniborade.blogspot.com to contact her and read<br />
her other work.<br />
76 Writing Tomorrow Magazine
February 2014 77
Still,<br />
when I remember you, it is with a sad shade of nostalgia,<br />
the color of sky just before a storm.<br />
Lightning, April Salzano