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The phone rang, Rory’s pencil hesitated above a page of fractions dividing fractions. Came his mother’s expected voice, “Rory! Phone!” “Someone else!” Rory pleaded. “No, you, now.” He left pencil and homework on the folding TV tray table in the nook between refrigerator and kitchen corner where he studied. His mother waited near the phone. He took up the receiver. “Hello,” he said in his firmest treble. “Mrs. Leary?” Rory knew the script from prior performances. “No, this is Rory,” he said. “May I ask who’s calling?” “Tell her it’s Mr. Ghilardi.” The voice held gravel that was none of the phone’s doing. Mr. Ghilardi rented the house to them. Rory had seen him more than once but only by parts when his mother placed herself across the front doorway to block his entry, and from this the sum: A man shorter than her, gray hair slicked imperfectly back, front panels of a short-sleeved plaid shirt untucked by his belly from his belt, rheumy brown eyes under lushly untamed brows in a dried-apple face a range of odd folds and excrescences. “I’ll look for her, Mr. Ghilardi,” Rory said and looked at her. She shook her head. Rory counted slowly in one-eighth fractions – one eighth, one quarter, three eighths, one half, to one – then in their inverses, then uncovered the mouthpiece. “She’s not available.” “When will she be?” said the rough voice. The unwritten script said, and so did Rory, “I don’t know.” His mother made wringing gestures with fists side by side. Thus reminded, Rory added, “You can’t get blood from a turnip. Thank you. Goodbye.” and hung up. His mother kissed his forehead. “Why am I the one for this?” he said. He was in fact one of seven, with an eighth coming. “Because you’re best at it.” Her big rosy cheeks bloomed in a smile and she passed her long fingers, once a pianist’s, across the dark buzzcut she had given him that week. He returned to the nook and the sheet of fractions. His mother remained in the kitchen to put away dishes he and his older sister Maurie had washed and dried but been too short to replace on their high shelves. She hummed something and it was a distraction. He had no other place to study. A room away his father presided before the television in sweatsuit and laborworn sprawl on a recliner, the day’s grit and smear and sweat freshly showered from him, while on the carpet at his sides clustered faces wore the screen’s glow. The bunks and dressers in the small room Rory and his brothers shared left nowhere to sit, one bunk too tight above the other, the floor too narrowed for chair and tray table. He was in any case too eaten by questions to continue homework. He left it for his mother’s side. “How is it,” he said, “that what you have me say is not a lie, and so a sin?” She turned to him and stiffened. “Think carefully,” she said. “What I’ve taught you to say is no lie.” “But how is it true?” He was in reach of her right hand, but he was growing and so feared it less. He believed he saw her weigh its use. She said at last, “The Jesuits called it ‘mental reservation.’ They told enough truth to keep an evil from doing them harm, but no untruth. They had no obligation to tell the whole truth.” What here, Rory wondered, was the evil? He had seen the writing of checks to Mr. Ghilardi. He knew that the last months had not been ordinary. His father had left the house less regularly for work. Rory had heard arguments that had no sense for him, the name of a woman he didn’t know snarled from his mother’s lips, and from his father’s, “I give you enough. Where does it go?” and then the right hand caught and held an instant from his father’s cheek, dark with the day’s grime and hard now from his fury. To this he could add, as some fractions of the whole, cost of heat and light in this chill season of rain and wind and the growls of seven bellies. “Will Mr. Ghilardi make us leave?” he asked. His mother eased a moment and swayed as though she thought to bend and embrace him. “Mr. Ghilardi is a good Catholic,” she said soft-voiced. “He’d be very slow to put a Catholic family out. He might never.” “Then what is the threat I keep away by … by not committing the sin of lying?” Rory said this as it came to him and only then considered the hand. He closed eyes to await it. It didn’t come. “You have your homework, don’t you?” said his mother, and she left the kitchen. He returned to the nook and tried to resume his work. In his mathematics each single-digit whole number had a character, a near-human personality – the four, for example, stolid and hard-working, the three wild and undisciplined except in music, and the seven that combined them clever and adept in navigating the stark world. He had been puzzling how the dramas of their interactions would play on the stage of fractions and delighting in the puzzle, but the numbers now lay inert on the page. He was turned from them to imagining the blood of a turnip, if blood it had. This would not be like his own when it dripped red from cut or scrape. It would, he supposed, run clear, with a heat and sharpness in its taste. He asked himself where – if he were of the family of the turnip-blooded – it might in reservation flow in him. * Father Sánchez faced the class. Rory’s row was seventh of the class’s front-to-back rows and rightmost of its seven across. Seven by seven: The class was an array of cleverness, and outside in its San Francisco neighborhood, where men cut adrift by fading shipyards and industries rode the day’s tide, and where the crisp hard rhythms of gunshot some nights supplanted the dithyrambs of firecrackers, any adeptness from seven-by-seven was – even Rory knew, unversed in adult realities as he understood himself to be – a thing to be sought and, once gained, prized. Father Sánchez looked back and forth, up and down the multihued faces above forty-nine forest green wool cardigans, twenty-six above the white Peter Pan collars of girls, twenty-three surmounting the white point collars of boys, while Sister Athanasius introduced him, whom they all knew. She wore still the long black habit that the younger nuns, given recent opportunity, had abandoned. “Father,” she said, “wishes to speak to you today of vocation.” The priest had removed his jacket and was in short black sleeves. His forearms were much more slender than Rory’s father’s, which Rory assumed his own would someday resemble. After a “Good morning” and bright-toothed smile in the dark olive face that told Rory this visit would be friendly, not admonitory, Father Sánchez said, “My children, a ‘vocation’ is a calling of God to the kind of life any one of us is to live.” He went on to list by example many occupations, some of which Rory didn’t recognize, but most known to him from his neighborhood’s daily sweat and one, Carpenter, from his father’s. “Like Saint Joseph,” said the priest, his accent charming the “J” into a “Ch.” “And for some of you boys, the vocation may be to the priesthood, like mine, and for some of you girls, it may be to serve the Lord in a community of sisters, as does Sister Athanasius. I pray this will be so. You have time, all of you, to come to know your calling, but even now you can ask in your prayers what it is. Do this, and someday you will know, whether by a sign or by a feeling. I felt mine when I was not much older than you, as I knelt one day in the Catedral de Santa María in my birthplace of Trujillo, Perú. Please join me now in prayer. O Lord Jesus, o Holy Mother Mary….” Rory listened past the melody and trilled R’s of the priest’s continuing tenor for some first rustle of response to what it asked. He heard the fidgets of the class’s boys in their deskbound constraint. This seemed too ordinary to speak for God. He heard beyond the classroom windows the skirl of gulls contesting on the play yard the remnants of lunches not long ago finished. This, too, was ordinary, but did inspire in him a question: Did stronger gulls always prevail, or was there sometimes a gull, a seventh maybe, who took the contest by cleverness? * Arturo’s brother and brother’s friends ruled their block, which Rory walked going to and from school. Some few of them were always there, on or near the sidewalk, except on rainier winter days, and even then Rory would meet from within his raincoat hood the eyes of one or another posted at a window. Arturo had another brother whom Rory had known from walking the block while he was yet smaller, but who now had to be away. Rory had asked “Away where?” only once. Arturo’s pinched lips and turn told him not to ask again. Arturo was Rory’s friend. After school they walked together as far as the block. In some of these walks Arturo professed his love for Diana Rinaldi. Whatever his feelings for girls, Rory qualified none as love, which seemed reserved for when his treble broke; but friendship committed him to acknowledging the reality of Arturo’s love for Diana Rinaldi. In class she sat directly in front of Rory and to Arturo’s right. Every day confronted Rory with Diana Rinaldi’s blond hair, which she wore always in single thick French braid at the back of her head. He had asked her once how she could be Italian and so blond. This departed from the norm he had known in the parish. “We’re Po River Italian” had been her reply, quick and sure enough to tell him it was family habit, as was in his own “Granda was out a back door in Cahirciveen as the Black and Tans came through the front.” Several times daily the braid took more of Rory’s eye than Sister Athanasius’s chalk marks or the letters and numbers splayed on his desk. The hair’s rich wave swelled the braid, and the braid’s volume in deepening the plaits and their internal shadows combined dusky tones with the blond in a spectacle that changed with each movement of her head and with each gradient of daylight through the near windows. One afternoon as his eyes wandered the braid’s landscape of hillock and ravine Rory glimpsed Arturo’s hand extending a folded paper across the aisle to Diana Rinaldi. Sister Athanasius, whose face had been to the board, turned at that moment just enough to see the paper offered. “Arturo Sandoval,” she said, turning now completely to him, “bring that here.” The green wool of his cardigan hunched, he obeyed. She did not take the paper from him. “Anything to be shared in class,” she said, “is to be shared with the class. Read.” He unfolded the paper and stared at it in silence. “Read.” “You are so beautiful. I love you so much. When can I kiss you?” The voice was smaller than Rory had ever known it. “I’ll have that now,” Sister Athanasius said. “Back to your desk.” Rory’s friend came hunched still down the aisle. Just before his desk he lifted his eyes to Diana Rinaldi. Rory saw not the least stir of her head Arturo’s way. The instant they reached the street after class Rory put himself at Arturo’s side. As they walked nothing that came to Rory’s thoughts seemed fit to pass his lips. He matched Arturo’s pace wordlessly, then, in hope of shouldering some of his hurt. Along Mission Street, just after they passed an old woman sweeping the sidewalk, they arrived at a cluster of empty beer bottles at the foot of stairs to a house recently vacant, like others in the neighborhood. Most of the bottles stood upright, but some had toppled. A few had broken. They were just one side of Arturo’s line of travel. “Watch out,” said Rory. But Arturo veered slightly and aimed a foot through them. Bottles flew and shattered loudly. The force and reach of his sweep having unbalanced him a little, Arturo stumbled but did not fall, and immediately his shoulder was in silence again by Rory’s. Turning his head to note this, Rory side-glimpsed that the woman had paused her broom and stared. A half-block on he glanced back. A police Ford had stopped by her. She spoke through its open passenger-side window and gestured toward him and Arturo. As Rory continued with Arturo he listened to the distinctive roar of the Ford as it sped toward them. It stopped just ahead of them. Arturo’s cardigan hunched. “Hey,” said the policeman in the passenger seat. He and his partner, who looked younger, came from the car to block the path of Rory’s brown-skinned friend, but not Rory’s. Rory stopped anyway. Both policemen hooked thumbs into black belts with cross-hatched tooling so that one hand was by holstered pistol, the other by can of mace. “What do you think you’re doing, breaking glass?” the younger policeman said to Arturo. The older gestured with chin at Arturo’s uniform sweater and salt-and-pepper corduroy trousers. “What would the Sisters do if they knew you were breaking glass?” Rory watched the small twist of the body beside his and felt its misery. “Breaking glass on a City sidewalk is vandalism,” the younger policeman said to Arturo. “That could get you Juvie.” Rory and all his acquaintances knew this to mean Juvenile Hall, jail for boys. Rory had never contemplated the distinction between a policeman in blue with seven-pointed star and a policeman in black and tan. He wondered if the latter’s reputation for abundant violence, in his family’s telling, applied to the former. He felt in this moment they might at least be kin. Heat rose in him, but no red took his eyes. They saw clear, hot, sharp. It came to him: Turnip-blooded. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said loudly. The policemen looked at him for the first time. “I was talking to him. He looked at me. He tripped over a bottle. It broke. So did a bunch of others. He’s lucky he didn’t fall and get cut up.” Rory spoke with a vehemence that did not seem to himself uncalculated, but surprised him nonetheless. He accompanied his statement with an acting-out of Arturo’s near-fall. “Who is it leaves this stuff on the sidewalk for us to trip over?” he concluded. “Why aren’t they in trouble, not us?” It was all truth, so far as he told it. The younger policeman regarded him impassively, but the older let go of his belt and crossed his arms. After a moment he said, “Be more careful.” He started toward the car. He stopped and turned again to Arturo. “What’s your name?” he said. “Arturo Sandoval,” said Rory’s friend. With a glance at Rory, the policeman asked Arturo, “The Sandovals up there?” He flicked his head toward the block. Arturo’s nod was small. Looking still at Arturo, the policeman held an index finger to his own eye. Then he and his partner were in the car. The roar carried it away. Rory and Arturo took the last steps to the block in silence. At his door, Arturo caught Rory’s cardigan and, turning Rory toward him, touched right shoulders. From across the street, Arturo’s brother and the rulers of the block watched. Arturo’s and Diana Rinaldi’s eyes didn’t once cross the aisle in the next day’s class. Although he told himself his friend’s pain was no fault of hers, Rory’s inevitable regard of her blond braid putrefied through the day into revulsion. At recess, across the play yard and away from Rory’s ear, her friends knotted around her and glanced singly or in bunches at Arturo, and Rory saw but did not hear gusts of laughter blow through them. He kept to Arturo’s side. He wished Arturo had a crew beside him, as Diana Rinaldi did. Arturo needed one. He was by Arturo again on the walk home. When they reached the block, before arriving at Arturo’s door, Rory saw Arturo’s brother stand from the window of a BMW, where he and the young white driver had just touched hands, and start from the street toward them. Two of the brother’s companions crossed the street in something both of saunter and swagger to join him. The three stood athwart Rory’s path. “Little man,” Arturo’s brother said to him. Rory did not believe this attention a threat, but belief was not certainty and did not preclude fear. They were all three bigger than him and likely faster. If they meant to hurt him, he had no hope in either fight or escape. “Little man,” Arturo’s brother said, “little bro told us what you did yesterday. You have skills. We admire skills. They can be useful. We talked. We talked to people. We all think you should come hang with us, so we get to know you.” Something in the voice, a voice broken within Rory’s memory out of a boyhood very like his own among meager cabinets and freighted men, a voice now richening into baritone, this something seemed to Rory a calling. A boy in a large and struggling family seeks and perhaps finds his vocation. And on me: Michael Thériault has been an Ironworker, union organizer, and union representative at various levels. He published fiction in his twenties, half a dozen stories in literary magazines, but abandoned it for decades to support first a family, then a movement. In his recent return, since 2022 his stories have been accepted by numerous publications, among them  Pacifica Literary Review, Overheard,  and  Sky Island Journal.   Popula.com  has published his brief memoir of Ironworker organizing. He is a graduate of St. John’s College, Santa Fe and San Francisco native and resident.

Rick Slickman ached from his neck to his toes, his joints creaking louder than a rusty door. At 72, every  trip to the shared bathroom down the hall in the old house on Bewildered Street felt like an Olympic event.  “Hey Ron, how’s the warehouse job?” They talked while taking care of business. “Nice seeing to you. Be good to your girlfriend and be safe at work.”  Rick made it back to the tiny room and dropped into his recliner.  His wrecked knee had ruined his life, but he stubbornly refused to have it replaced. “Life is tough and the tough keep going.” 1968. Cedaredge High School. He and Robyn had ridden across the brilliantly lit football field in a red convertible Corvette as Homecoming King and Queen. Gorgeous with long brown hair and hazel eyes, she was his first, and he hoped his only . With time running out in the fourth quarter, so had his luck. A linebacker from Hotchkiss High took out his knee. As a result, he nearly missed the homecoming dance where she had waited patiently, refusing to dance with any other man. Rick gulped from a cheap gallon of red wine and sang, “I took my troubles down to Madame Ruth’s. You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth. She’s got a pad down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine, selling little bottles of Love Potion Number 9.” He remembered his past mistakes, the unfortunate events, and most importantly, his lifelong love – a girl with a beautiful smile and a talent for baking chocolate chip cookies. He declared, “I would have kept my jeans and her dress zipped.”  Back then, he was determined to dance despite being badly injured. He limped into the gym towards Robyn with the grace of a waddling duck. He’d envisioned sweeping her off her feet with a romantic spin, but his messed-up knee had other plans. He stepped on her right toe which made his swollen knee buckle – causing him to stumble into a group of innocent girls who fell against the snack table, scattering fruit punch, salsa, and chips through the air like confetti.  Dancing couples stared and laughter broke out. He stood with his face dripping fruit punch.  Robyn doubled over, mirth spilling from her lips.  Rick realized he didn't have to be perfect to win her over. With a goofy grin, he limp-waddled back to her, chips and red sauce stuck to his face. “At least we’re having fun, right?” He said with a smile that could light up a black hole. She wiped away tears of laughter and took his hand. “ You are a disaster… but you’re my  disaster.” As the music resumed, he took Robyn’s hand and led her out to his car since he couldn’t dance. The warm night had an atmosphere of glorious adolescent romance, and he popped the question, “Will you marry me?”  She accepted the small marquise diamond ring, saying, “I love you with all my heart and soul.” But love sometimes has a wretched sense of humor. Six weeks later, Robyn learned she was pregnant. She shook her head. “We only made love one time. I can’t believe it.”  They agreed to name it after popular tunes: Michelle, Sweet Caroline, or Sherry if it was a girl. If it was a boy, Jude or Billie Jo. He promised, “We’ll make it somehow. I’m not afraid of hard work.” Her strict Mormon parents promptly shipped her off to live with relatives somewhere in Utah. Despite pleading and promising to join their church, they slammed the door in Rick’s face. He never saw her again despite thousands of periodic efforts to find her over the years. He constantly wondered what their baby looked like. Was it a blonde with blue eyes like him or a brunette with hazel eyes like her? She was the love of his life. His heart ached more than his joints. God, how he wished. Back in those days, he thought he was destined to be a brilliant attorney who helped the poor. Failing to get a football scholarship, he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. He stayed in the Army as a non-commissioned officer, volunteering for the most dangerous missions, hoping to be killed since he had lost Robyn. After fifteen years, they booted him out for drinking too much. Rick stumbled through two half-hearted marriages like other lonely men. None stuck because he was in love with Robyn, but he took solace in the fact there were no kids to inherit his terrible dance moves or the permanent  stains on his reputation. Days turned into decades. After the Army, he did carpentry jobs here and there. The fucking knee kept giving out and causing more injuries. Now on a pittance of social security, he suffered from more aches and pains than he cared to count and was invisible to the world. As the sun set on his life, the ghost of his knee nibbled at his sanity, and he sank into a deeper depression, perpetually marinated in his Love Potion Number 9 since it numbed his burning knee. He mumbled to himself, sad about the dumpster fire of his life. After a particularly grueling day of greeting people at Walmart, every joint ached with arthritis. He sank into his faded recliner with a sigh loud enough to wake the ghosts of his past. They stomped past as he sipped from a gallon jug of Love Potion Number 9 and popped another pain pill.  Staring out the window of his bare room at the bustling youths playing soccer in a Grand Junction neighborhood park, he fantasized about being back in 1968 when everything was fresh. He imagined how he would change things, especially what happened with Robyn after the homecoming dance. He took another pain pill with a gulp of wine. A guy couldn’t change the choices made in the past. One night after working at Walmart, he took an existential leap off the deep end, mixing his Love Potion Number 9 with pain pills and the nostalgia of lost dreams. This was the ticket to his one-way adventure to the land of regret-free football fields and sweet kisses from Robyn. He was ready for the ultimate escape and guzzled the gallon of cheap red wine like it was grape juice, sucked cigarettes although he hadn’t smoked since Nixon was president, and washed down a large handful of pain pills meant for his sciatica. The potion soothed the burning in his knee, the terrible ache in his back, and numbed his empty heart. That’s what he needed: a pain-free death. With a contented sigh, he crushed out the last of the Camel filters, and slumped into his lumpy recliner, lost to the embrace of potion-induced dreams filled with visions of being with Robyn. He drooped, slobbering wine onto his chest.  With a cacophony of muffled sounds, Rick felt the strange sensation of being pulled through a tunnel before crashing into a familiar yet fuzzy place. When he arrived at the other side, he didn’t find paradise or a cramped room filled with regrets. Instead, he sprawled on the stadium-lit football field of Cedaredge High School in the middle of a game, wearing a tight jersey that accentuated muscles he hadn’t possessed in decades. “What in the name of fried donuts?” He exclaimed, popping up like organic rye bread from a toaster. “Who are you talking to, Rick?” It was Charlie, the quarterback, and his cousin. They were seniors at Cedaredge High School in Western Colorado. Their number one goal was to get scholarships to a small college and avoid the raging Vietnam War the US was losing. Even Walter Cronkite, the trusted CBS newscaster, said it was unwinnable. “I’m talking to a relative I’m trying to forget.”  Charlie rolled his eyes. “As you okay? I thought you were knocked out when you caught that pass since that Hotchkiss player speared you.” He patted his shoulder pads. “Nice first down catch. You’re the best tight end in the conference, and you make me look good with those impossible catches.” “I’m alright.” He staggered to the huddle, holding his head. He was back in high school as a senior! He looked down at himself and nearly fainted. No more skinny, sagging, age-spotted arms—he was a hawk-eyed teenager again. A thrill of youthful energy surged through him. The next play was between him and the right tackle. He knocked the Hotchkiss linebacker down, and their fullback made another first down. He helped the opponent up, but there was anger in the kid’s dark eyes. “I’ll get you.” The next play, the linebacker tried to take his right knee out, but Rick anticipated it this time. Instead of having the cartilage in his knee torn to shreds, he shoved the boy’s head down onto the turf.  The young man glared at him. “I’ll get you on the next play.” It was a reverse to Rick. The pulling guard opened a hole and seeing daylight, he turned on the afterburner. The defensive backs had followed the offensive movement to the right. He was the fastest man on the team. Putting everything he had into it, he sped for the goal line with the defense chasing him. Touchdown! It was an accident because he tripped over his own feet while showing off as he trotted backwards.  The final horn sounded.  “We won!” The Cedaredge fans tumbled from the stands onto the field. Instead of having the coach tell him, “Your knee is badly swollen. I’ll wrap it, but you should see a doctor on Monday,” he blinked against the bright field lights, and before him stood bell-bottom jeans, psychedelic shirt patterns, and the aroma of patchouli oil in the air.  And there was Robyn, running to him across the field, stunning with flowing brown hair, her hazel eyes filled with pride. “You did it, you scored the winning touchdown!” She threw her arms around him and leaped up with her muscular cheerleader legs straddling his grass-stained uniform pants.  This time would be different, he promised himself. Armed with the wisdom of an old man, he would woo her without fail. He felt the shock of paddles on his chest. His drunken eyes flickered.  “Good!” The EMT turned. “Guys, he’s alive; let’s get him into the ambulance. They need to pump his stomach.” Days later, his eyes fluttered open in a hospital room, tubes in his arms and clear bags of some shit above him—this was not the heaven he envisioned. He looked around in confusion. Pissed him off. He’d rather be playing football and kissing Robyn. He moaned, “God, please, if you care, take me home.” The hospital social worker came in and talked with him, asking about his life and why he wanted to end it. After three interviews, she said, “According to your medical records, you need two rotator cuff repairs, a right knee replacement, and your spine fused at L 4-5.” She caught his pained blue eyes. “If you agreed to the surgeries, you might find life a lot more tolerable.” Seeing the doubt in his eyes, she added, “Medicare will pay for it.” “No, I’m ready to go to the other side. I don’t have any friends or family, and I’ve lived with pain since I was a senior in high school.” He shook his head quickly. “It would be a waste of medical resources.” The nice social worker shook her head. “You are a stubborn man, aren’t you?” “Yep. Once I make my mind up, I make it happen.” Mary Sue stared at him. “Rick, I’ve seen you greeting people at Walmart. You make us feel warm and welcome. I hope you’ll change your mind.” Somewhat upset, she left.  Closing his eyes, he didn’t give a thought to having the surgeries. He was done. He heard a noise and this beautiful woman in her fifties with long brown hair and hazel eyes quietly walked in. Behind her stood two adult children who looked somewhat like him—the muscular man was adorned with blonde hair and the brunette female held a baby in her arms. He stared at the lady. She looked just like Robyn. Am I dreaming? “They said you’re well enough to have visitors.” She gently took his weathered, spotted, and blue-veined hand. “Thank God, I’ve finally found you.” Moisture rose in her eyes. “W..who are you?” “I’m your daughter, Sweet Caroline.   I paid for an internet search to get your phone number, and I kept calling you that night. Your buddy across the hall told me about the EMT’s saving your life.” She smiled, oddly mystified. “Ron wondered why you didn’t answer your phone so he went over to check on you.” She introduced the kids, “These are your grandchildren – Jude and his sister, Michelle, and the baby is Sherry.” His Love Potion Number 9-free brain was clear. “Where are you from?”  “We drove over from Salt Lake City. I’ve been trying to find you since I was fourteen.” A tear ran down her pink cheek. “Well, it’s sure  nice to finally meet you. You’re lovely. I’ve always wished things had turned out the way your mom and I wanted.” “May I call you Dad?” “Well, of course !” Something in his chest broke loose. He fought the tears welling up. A tough man doesn’t cry, but he couldn’t avoid her eyes. She looked exactly like Robyn.  She leaned to him, softly wrapping her arms around him. They kissed as tears ran down their cheeks. The two grandchildren moved to the other side of the bed, their hands reaching out. Sweet Caroline sat on the bed, and everyone held hands. No one could speak. Michelle placed her baby on his chest.  He wrapped his arms around the baby, holding it gently, looking at its familiar face. He caught his breath. “Where’s your mother?” He stubbornly forced the tears to stop. “She’s at the motel. Mom is afraid you might not love her after how her parents treated you. Her husband died ten years ago.” There was something in her hazel eyes. “They never had children, and Mom refused to marry him in the Mormon Temple for time and eternity because you  belong together.” A lump rose in his throat. He gritted his teeth. They talked for over an hour, and Sweet Caroline realized the old man was tired because his eyes kept closing. She stood. “We’ll come back tomorrow.” “I’d love to see Robyn.” Those darned tears started up again. “She’s the only woman I ever loved.” Sweet Caroline and her children smiled brightly. He slept soundly for who knows how long.  The social worker came in. “I heard you had some visitors. How do you feel?” “Wonderful.” He shook his head with disbelief. “I haven’t felt like this since Robyn was sent away.” They had a delightful talk. At the end of her visit, Mary Sue asked, “Would you consider talking to one of the surgeons? Your medical records say you have been suffering for many years.” “Sure.” A smile rose on his lips. “Maybe send the knee replacement doctor.” The food service cart arrived. Rick couldn’t believe how good the hospital food smelled and tasted. Slept like a rock. No football nightmares. In the morning after coffee and a great breakfast, he pulled himself up and raised the back of the bed as he worked to control his excitement. Unable to, he managed to move the IV lines so he could make it to the restroom without using the plastic jug. There, he got cleaned up, using water to smooth his thin blonde hair. “Oh well, she’s got to look old too.” He flashed his famous smile that out shined any weakness.. To his surprise, the pain wasn’t as bad, so he walked up the hall and back, pushing the IV rack in front of him, using it like a cane. He asked for his clothes, but a doctor had to order the IVs removed first. With steely determination, he sat on the hard leather couch, waiting, the IV rack to his left side. His heart pounded each time he heard footsteps approaching his room, hoping it was Robyn. He hadn’t felt anything in his empty heart for years. This was both exciting and confusing. The hours passed.  Disappointed and afraid Robyn might not come, he ate lunch alone. The tasteless food in his stomach made him sleepy, so he crawled back into the bed and slept, dreaming of her, of them – of having a family. A light touch on his right arm startled him awake. It was Sweet Caroline. He looked around. She was alone. He stared into her eyes. “Mom is outside. She’s too nervous to come in.” A wide grin on his face, he said softly, “Tell her I won’t bite.”   She turned and called, “Mom, come in. Dad is awake and he wants to see you.” With long silver hair, Robyn walked in with a shy smile, her hazel eyes down, wearing his small marquise engagement ring and a plain white dress as if she was going to the Temple. Their anxious eyes met.  Suddenly, he was happy to be alive. Danyl A. Doyle is a former resident of New Zealand, now living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He is a professional speaker of mixed race. Despite learning disabilities and mild autism, he became an English teacher, a Ph.D. psychologist, and a businessman. He has five Facebook profiles with 5000 followers each, along with Twitter, LinkedIn, and an author blog. He enjoys traveling worldwide as a professional speaker. His stories and poems have been published in The Southern Quill, The Milkbarn, Anaconda Magazine, The Wilderness House Literary Review, and The Winged Penny Review. He has two novels accepted for publication in 2024-25: “The End Of Hardship” and “For A Woman’s Love.”

O Lord of burning pain O Giver of aching head I have wronged thee   I have in my foolishness Mistaken thy rays For a curse to oppress   As I lay in a daze Filmed in dank sweat I see thy blessing outside And begin to count inside With each tree espied My gratitude is multiplied But when I raise my head To glory in thy stead -   Why doth it stink so?!   But nay! I go off-track With drenched palm I smack Sense into greasy face My sweat is but vital water Thy gift to feed bacteria.   So I lay there in a senseless swoon Bursting with the bounty of thy boon When I realise what you grant Is not just trees and bees Sweaty pits and knees   No, what you grant to me Is the most cherished of all For in my utter misery In my abject downfall I care nothing of trivial urges  That my paunch bulges That my shoulders are round That my teeth are unsound That I walk like a 10 beer drunk That my thoughts are mostly bunk That I may never reach that goal Never give back what I stole   I care nothing but for Thy shining orb’s daily rise Its pure burning lancing fire Glows when I close my eyes I have no thought but thee Thy glorious fury with its touch Sets me utterly free. H. Talichi is a writer of speculative fiction, satire and poetry. He's awaiting publication of one short story in the Sci-Fi Lampoon but has otherwise only been posting out on his substack.

“You’re everything that’s wrong with this country, do you know that?” “Me? I’m sorry sweetheart, I thought that was your side.” “Sweetheart?” she fumes. “Sweetheart?” She glances around the coffee shop as if to say See what I’m dealing with here? “Relax, it’s a term of endearment. You should grow a thicker skin—it’d make your life a lot easier if you didn’t have to go around being so offended all the time.” Now it’s his turn to look around like, Get a load of this chick, amirite? The other patrons avoid their eyes. This does not discourage either. They are among like minded people, surely.  “Oh, next you’ll call me a snowflake. It’s always the same old crap with you assholes.”  “So sue me. We’re just saying what everyone’s thinking. It’s about time somebody did.” “You really think we’d be better off with Neanderthals like you in charge?”  “As a matter of fact, I do. But at the moment I’m just trying to get to my job, lady. Us Neanderthals have to work for a living. We don’t all have the luxury of majoring in women’s studies.”  She sniffs at this latest affront and performs another solicitous scan of the café. Of course these good, sensible people are on her side. How could you not be, unless you were an idiot? “I’m a dental hygienist, douchebag. But since you brought it up, loud-mouthed bigots like you are the reason we need women’s studies.”  “Woah! Who said I was a bigot? You’re making a lot of assumptions about me, girlie, but let’s be real here. You’re triggered because you don’t like my hat. Well, I feel the same way about your haircut.” “My haircut isn’t an open endorsement of fascism.” “Maybe not, but it’s a definite crime against fashion.” He looks around to see if this strikes a chord with anyone. He,too, assumes he is in sympathetic company.  People bury their noses in newspapers, books, screens, and coffee cups. Behind the counter, a beleaguered barista queues up the quarrelers’ orders. In this instant, she has an opportunity to defuse the conflict between her two most obnoxious customers of the morning. All it would take is to withhold one party’s beverage long enough for the other to exit the café. She opts instead to clear both problems from her plate at once. She doesn’t get paid to resolve conflicts; she barely gets paid enough to serve coffee.   “Mocha latte with an extra shot for Ty? Cortado for Hailey?”  Tyler thanks her, tips her, takes his latte, and heads for the door. Hailey stuffs a crumpled fiver into the tip jar on top of his desultory handful of change and exits hot on his heels. He holds the door for her with a pointed look, daring her to take issue with the common courtesy. “After you, miss.” She doesn’t rise to the bait. She takes a deep breath and, determined to be the bigger person, marches past him with her chin held high.  Tyler knows he should let her go, but can’t resist a parting shot. Nothing ticks him off like the smug superiority this woman exudes from every pore. “Have a nice life, lady.” It’s the insistent mention of her gender that irks Hailey most of all. As if by calling attention to it, this stranger thinks he can assert himself as the more rational party. The grown-up in this situation, and her just a hysterical woman. This makes her so angry she does something uncharacteristic. She pivots on her heel and follows him down the sidewalk.   “Listen, man ,” she begins. She is two steps behind him, gathering herself to say something truly biting, something that sums it all up in one blistering retort. In this moment, she is champion of the downtrodden and oppressed. Defender of all that is righteous. If only more people were willing to stand up to bullies like this, she thinks, maybe we could make some real progress. “Just because you can’t see it from your white, male privilege pedestal doesn’t mean your awful politics aren’t hurting real people.” As she says it, she gives him the slightest push.  He whirls to look at her, face flushed with anger, and  plummets       from sight.  One moment there, the next gone. Hailey blinks. Somehow, the sidewalk before her has immaterialized. No, look again: not the sidewalk. A loose sewer grate, onto which her antagonist just happened to be stepping at the moment she nudged him. It takes her a moment to apprehend this, another to believe it. By then, there is a loud metallic clang and a thud. An agonized groan rises from somewhere below. What shit luck.  For a sliver of a second she wavers. Later, she will be ashamed to recall this moment of hesitation, how she looked around as if to—no, not as if  to, — in order to check for bystanders. Then moral sanity returns. She peeks over the edge.  There, ten feet below, is the red ballcap with its maddening slogan, the rubicund face covered in five o’clock shadow, cheeks now paling with pain and dawning horror.  “You pushed me!” “I didn’t! I—” “You did! You pushed me, and I think my ankle’s broken! Oh, it hurts!”  “You provoked me!”  “What, by holding the door for you? How the hell am I supposed to get to work now? Never mind that, how the hell am I getting out of here?” “Oh don’t play dumb, you know what you did! Your whole persona is designed to needle people like me.” “People like—what, because of the hat? Are you listening to yourself, lady—agh!” He cuts off with a groan of pain. “My lawyer’s gonna have a field day with this.” “It’s stuff like that! The ‘lady,’ and the ‘girlie,’ and the general air of boorishness!”  “So what, you shove me?” “Not shove you! Lightly   nudged you! I didn’t mean for you to fall. How was I supposed to know the grate was loose?”  “I could have died!”  “Oh come on, that seems a touch dramatic.” “You’re a monster! Don’t just stand there, are you crazy? Go get help!” “Okay, okay! Hold on.” Hailey pulls out her phone, dials 911, and walks a few steps away, so he doesn’t hear how she describes the situation. By now several passersby have taken interest, including a couple who witnessed their spat in the café.  Great, she thinks. Just great.  Then the operator starts asking questions and she says, “Yes, hello, there’s been an, um, accident on…” She hangs up once she’s given the location and returns to the sewer grate. “Alright, I called 911. They’re sending help.” As her face, framed in that offensive haircut, reappears in the window of sky above him, Tyler grits his teeth against a fresh wave of pain. “Good. Don’t think for a second this makes us even, either. My lawyer’s going to love hearing about you!”  “Me? If anyone, it’s the city sanitation department you should be blaming!” This makes him splutter. “Oh, that’s rich. See? This is what you get when you let liberals run your city. Blue-state politics at their finest!” “Well, the fire department is on its way. Should I screen them for political views when they get here? Make sure they didn’t send the diversity hires?” “You’re pretty snarky for someone who just assaulted me!” “Oh sure, it’s very easy for you to claim the moral high ground now.” Tyler sniffs in contempt, and immediately regrets it. The air down there is fetid. “Like you wouldn’t do the same if the situation were reversed. Believe me, if you were in my shoes, you’d give pretty much anything for higher ground! Don’t you feel any remorse at all?” “…I am  sorry you fell into the bowels of the city.” Like the piece of crap you are, she doesn’t add. “There you go. How about a little empathy for the guy with the busted leg?” The appeal to her better nature is not lost on Hailey. “Fair enough. Sorry. Does it hurt?” Tyler grits his teeth. “It’s pretty bad, yeah. I can handle it, though. And let’s be honest, the view down here’s not that much worse than the dumpster fire up there.” “If you hate how this city is run so much, why don’t you leave?”  “It doesn’t work that way. I got family here. I got a job here—which I’m missing right now, thanks to you. I can’t just pick up and go wherever I want, whenever I want. Plus, forgive me if I feel extra stuck at the moment.”  “Okay, I’ll give you that. We don’t choose our own circumstances. But here you are asking for empathy, and yet you don’t seem to have much compassion for the other side. Why can’t you see that sometimes we have to sacrifice a little to make life a lot better for everyone? Change doesn’t happen overnight; it takes time for the effects to be felt across the board.” He scoffs. “Pssh. Better how? By hiking taxes and taking away our freedoms? And for who? All I see is how they’re trying to make things better for certain groups of people. Meanwhile, us blue-collar guys get short shrift.”  She rolls her eyes with such vigor that it’s visible even from his vantage. “Just the response I’d expect from your typical entitled white guy.” Tyler throws up his hands in exasperation. “ You’re white, lady!” “If you call me ‘lady’ one more time, I’ll replace this grate and be on my way.” “Fine, fine. What was it again? Kayleigh? Tragedeigh?” “Hailey, asshole.” “Hey, that’s Mister Asshole to you. Tyler Asshole.” She smiles despite herself. “That a family name?” “Nah, that’s just how they anglicized it when my ancestors came through Staten Island. In the Old Country it was Assholioni.” This earns a reluctant snort of laughter. “See? That’s the systematic bastardization of culture, that’s what that is.”  “Exactly what I’d expect to hear from a leftist.” This time they both laugh. “Seriously though,” she says. “You don’t seem like a total imbecile now that we’ve talked for a little. I mean, not completely irredeemable. I refuse to believe anyone’s completely irredeemable. So help me understand. Why the hat? What’s the appeal of all that willful ignorance and punching down?” “How’s my hat any different from your haircut or those Doc Martens you’re wearing? And as far as ignorance and punching down go, you got it all wrong. What’s ignorant is expecting people to give up the ways they’ve always lived on the drop of a dime. So I see it as a way to protect our future and  our past. To get back to the original vision of this country, how it was meant to be, even if that means stepping on a few toes to make it happen. Shit, politics ain’t beanbag. America didn’t happen without stepping on a few toes. Besides, that’s better than lionizing weakness.” “Every person deserves dignity and respect. It’s not weak to show people basic humanity.” “It is if it means sacrificing our national interests.” “Politics doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.” “It does if you’re part of the group they’ve decided to take everything away from.” “Oh, spare me.” Another eyeroll from the heavens. “Take everything away from? Please. If anything, it’s about evening the playing field. Giving everyone a seat at the table.” Tyler rolls his eyes right back at her. “Wow. You really drank the Kool-Aid, huh?” “Really plumbing the depths of the gene pool today, huh.” “Hilarious. Are those firefighters getting here anytime soon?” “Any moment now.” “Can’t come soon enough.” When the firefighters arrive, neither Hailey nor Tyler mention the push or the argument that preceded it. The rescuers lower a harness and hoist Tyler to safety with only a minor hitch: he loses his hat as they raise him up. Paramedics diagnose him on the spot with a double ankle sprain; contrary to his fears, neither ankle turns out to be broken. He profusely thanks the first responders but refuses an ambulance ride to the hospital (“Oh no, I couldn’t afford the medical bills—I can hobble home just fine from here.”). Worst wounded is his pride, which he doubts they’d be able to treat on his crappy insurance.  Hailey stays on the scene out of a sense of moral obligation until the last of the emergency personnel leave. “Sorry about your hat.” “Ah, no worries. I got two more just like it at home.” “Of course you do. And um, listen. I really am sorry about this, you know. This wasn’t like me at all.” “I got under your skin that bad, huh?” “Yeah.” It physically pains her to give him the satisfaction, but there’s no use denying it. “I guess so.” They exchange numbers, since, as he assures her, “You’ll still be hearing from my attorney. But…maybe just to help corroborate my case against the sanitation department. I could’ve died, y’know?” “I think ‘died’ might be a bit of an exaggeration,” she says, then adds in response to his glower, “But sure, have him give me a call.” A slow, shit-eating grin spreads across his face. “Maybe I’ll hire a woman attorney.” At this, she turns on her heel.  As Hailey struts away, wondering how the hell this morning got away from her so fast, Tyler shoots his shot. “So, you want to grab a drink with me sometime?” This prompts another sharp heel-turn. “Are you shitting me? The nerve of some men!” “Hey hon, it’s a compliment. Don’t be uppity.” “As if attention from someone as asinine as you could be taken for a compliment.” “Asinine? I don’t know the meaning of the word.” “Why am I not surprised? Nope, sorry bud. I think we view the world a bit too differently.” As she attempts to walk away for the fourth time this morning, he calls after her. “Oh well. You got my number—maybe you can call and try to change my views sometime! Who knows, maybe you’ll even come around to my way of seeing things!” He laughs. She scoffs and says over her shoulder, “Ha! Don’t count on it, guy.” The stoplight on the corner changes, and she joins the press of pedestrians in the crosswalk. He turns and limps the other way, wondering how the hell he’s going to explain this to his boss. Within seconds both are out of sight. B. P. Gallagher moonlights as a writer and is completing a Ph.D. in Social-Personality Psychology at the University at Albany, where he will defend his dissertation at the end of July. His specialization is in political psychology, in particular predictors of left- and right-wing authoritarianism. In the fall, he is excited to begin a post as Assistant Professor of Psychology and Culture at Naz University. His fiction has been published in Barzakh Literary Magazine, Meniscus Literary Journal,  and elsewhere.

Sometime in 2019, I realized that my brain held onto information the best in list form, and so, at the bottom of my notes app, there’s a document that starts like this: 1. Jake 2. Caleb 3. Victoria If I was organized enough to label things properly, I guess I could call it the kiss list. It’s almost a directory of my life from age 16 and on, a way of remembering things I did by the people I was with. My first-ever boyfriend, that guy from the weird club on St. Patrick’s Day weekend, my best friend. The time I got my hopes up or the time it just felt like the right thing to do. It’s a reminder to myself that sometimes a kiss is a question, a leap; sometimes it is nothing more than an answer, and not always the right one. 13: Micah He’s a bad idea from the start, not that he was an idea I even had—two years older and part of a friend group I’ve just barely made myself a part of, and when we both end up crashing on the same couch after a party goes too long to walk home, I lull myself to sleep with a list of reasons why I shouldn’t think anything of it. The list, which starts with “Alice, she has a crush on him” and ends with “Max, he’s asleep in the other room and still obsessed with me,” goes out of my head when I wake up at five in the morning to someone’s alarm and realize he’s practically holding my hand. The sky is a hazy early-morning gray and we’re half-asleep quiet, and somehow in the middle of it we shift from opposite ends of the sectional to pressed up close to each other. The kiss arrives without butterflies or sparks; it’s intentional and calm, every point of contact measured. It’s exhilarating at first—he’s tall and gorgeous and talented, and I have no idea what he’s doing with me —and that only changes when we go back to sleep, this time his arms around me on purpose, and he whispers I want to see you again  and then we can’t tell Alice  into my hair. We wake up to Max’s eyes on me like a brand, red hot, from across the room. I hide the memory in the list in my notes app on my walk home so that I remember what happens when I let myself be selfish. 34: Mike Mike kisses me before my seatbelt is on in the massive parking garage on Mass Ave. after offering to drive me home from dinner. It’s a good kiss, better than I’d expected. I’d made a habit of gravitating toward assholes, albeit pretty ones; Mike in his polo shirt is more polite than my usual taste. A week before our date I’d held a funeral, party of one, to mourn the end of a year-long situationship I’d had no business being genuinely upset over. Mike is the first step in my plan to find someone nice , even if nice  means kinda boring . He wears khakis and works in tech sales and drives a Toyota so bland I forget what model it is immediately after I identify it. He is, in a way, not someone I expected to be a good kisser. Maybe it’s because he takes me by surprise that I don’t let it stop there. It feels the opposite of classy to sleep with a man after the first date, but it’s been so long since the last time I’d been on one that I forget what the rules are and let him follow me into my apartment, into my twin-sized bed. We last a week longer, one more date until he drops me off at my apartment in his khakis and his Toyota and makes no move to follow me. I waste one more kiss on a goodbye, and I never see him again. 41 & 42: The hottest girl ever at Down, & John The curve of her waist under my hand devastates me. We’re in a shitty club in downtown Boston and I’ve been drinking gin and tonics like my actions don’t have consequences that will haunt me in the morning. She has cold hands and her blonde hair spills down her back in a wave I’m scared to touch, for fear of getting swept up in it. Her lime green eyeliner was what caught me earlier, a compliment yelled over the music to a girl I’d thought was astronomically out of my league until she found me in the crowd and pulled me into her orbit. She’s taller than me even in my platform sneakers, and in that single moment it is the best kiss of my life, better than the 40 kisses I’ve had before it. It lasts a fraction of how long I want it to—which is forever —and then she’s gone before I’ve processed the loss fully, over by the bar and then, eventually, world-endingly, in a man’s arms. She kisses him and I force myself to stop planning how I’ll go up to her and get her name, get her number, get her to—I don’t know, propose to me? She kisses him and I allow a boy in a backwards hat to dance his way up to me. She kisses him and I let this new boy kiss me, even though he yells in my ear to tell me that his name is John  and his hands are sweaty and I crack my eyes open to see where my friends are. In the car, once we make our escape, I add them both to the list, and allow myself one more moment of devastation over the fact that I only got one name. 45: Cole Cole has a tattoo of a lipstick kiss on his hip bone, a fact that drives me to distraction long after his shirt comes off. We watch Ocean’s Twelve  in his bed and drink red wine, taking breaks to eat fruit out of the plastic supermarket container and smoke out the open window into the humid July air. He tells me about his job at the crystal store and I nominate myself for an Oscar with how I pretend that I had no idea, that I hadn’t sent all-caps texts on the way to his place exclaiming how I was finally finally  seeing cutie-crystal-boy Cole. I lose track of the kisses—the ones I press to his mouth and to that tattoo, the ones he leaves on my forehead and along my jaw like points in a constellation. We nearly die twice on Storrow Drive later that night, rain so thick we can barely see out his windshield, and I make him promise to let me know when he’s home safely. He seals the vow with a kiss, on the sidewalk in the rain like we’re in a movie, and I let myself feel every second of it, every spark. In spite of this moment, it isn’t until I see him on a different dating app five months later that I finally know he made it back in one piece. 51. Kay I know before I even meet Kay that developing a crush is a bad idea. We match on a stupid app a month before she’s set to move over 900 miles away, doomed from the start, but I let her take me out anyway. She picks me up and brings me to her favorite restaurant, and I laugh more than I have in months over fruity drinks and food that I normally wouldn’t try but I eat without hesitation in an effort to come across as cool and unaffected and not someone who excuses her eating habits with some bullshit line about textures . We make it back to her car after dinner and she looks at me from the driver’s seat and says “can I kiss you?” and… oh, fuck. She kisses me and I am in so much trouble—I’ve caught feelings in a way that feels like a tidal wave or jumping off a cliff, like there’s no coming back from it. She takes me home and we talk for hours , sitting close enough together that I can pull her mouth to mine whenever I want, which is all of the time. She drives me home at 2 a.m. and the highway is deserted because it’s the middle of the week, and I have work in the morning and she has to start packing up her apartment, but none of it matters because she holds my hand over the center console the entire time. She drives with her left wrist over the steering wheel, drumming along the top of the dash to each song that comes on with a practiced ease that shouldn’t be hot but has me distracted in ways I’ve never been before. At every red light she leans in to kiss me. I pull back when I notice it’s turned green, but she draws me back anyway. There’s no one else on the roads so it doesn’t matter when we give in and just linger, foreheads touching and matching ridiculous smiles on our faces in the middle of an empty intersection. “Uh oh,” she whispers. It’s 3 a.m. and we’re standing on the sidewalk by her car, illegally parked outside my apartment. We have our arms around each other and I’m frozen, unable to comprehend how someone has come to mean so much to me in such a short period of time, especially when they’re leaving so soon. Uh oh, indeed. It doesn’t last, because of course it doesn’t. By the time a month has passed since that night, we barely speak—by June, it’s gone completely quiet. It takes two weeks of the requisite sad music spiral I always go through when I get ghosted before I am able to sit down and think less about the ending and more about the moments of pure joy. Maybe I need to split up the kiss list—do the math I don’t want to calculate and see how short it gets if I take out people I never touch again, how many stories get cut off before they hit any sort of meaningful conclusion. Maybe I’ll start to learn something. Jamison O’Sullivan is running out of storage in her notes app, which is how this story ended up here. She has also recovered file space through publications in Schuylkill Valley Journal, Rejection Letters, JAKE , and more. She lives in Boston, and you can follow her on Twitter @pajamisonn .

To Fill Their Glasses Once Again Allen Ginsberg, Walt Whitman and  Frederico Garcia Lorca  walk into a bar. That’s all. No joke. Just one magical evening  in a dusty corner of a long-forgotten dive bar where poets convene  to drink coffee and laugh at  the sadness and ridiculousness of humanity. We aim to please our personal demons while the crowd outside struggles to keep warm, clustered at the dusky windows, using torn sleeves to clean the pane to get a closer look inside at the splendor that is a small group of dangerously beautiful minds coming together to explore the foundations of joy, the meaning of life, and the spaces between time. Ginsberg says to Whitman ‘Ooh what have you done to your hair, Walt? It’s vibrant and alive tonight. It really brings out your eyes!’ Whitman shyly smiles and tosses his tresses back like  a shy high school girl about to hit her prime. Lorca sighs and sips his almost-empty cup, his luck worn thin.  Salty as the bottom of sailor’s boots, he rises to fill their glasses once again. The Poem Escapes Me  I thought of a poem  on my way home in the car and  when I turned to look at it  when I parked  it had gone. Must have snuck out  the window  when I was daydreaming,  looking up  at a yellow sky with  the sun  in my tired eyes. You know I like to run the ac and  roll the windows down  on these hot summer days  on the way home.  A small luxury I afford myself  for windswept hair and  chilly feet after a long day of  gazing into the abyss of  nowhere-near retirement, of  too-short weekends teasing  luridly  from the beginning of  a long week. The poem escapes me regularly, as life does at times  when I get too focused on  staring internally, not looking at the sun, the stars the people who surround me. The air hanging desperately  in spaces just waiting  to be discovered were every day  a Saturday with no plans. April Ridge lives in the expansive hopes and dreams of melancholy rescue cats. She thrives on strong coffee, and lives for danger. In the midst of Indiana pines, she follows her heart out to the horizon of reality and hopes never to return to the misty sands of the nightmarish 9 to 5. April aspires to beat seasonal depression with a well-carved stick, and to one day experience the splendor of the Cucumber Magnolia tree in bloom.

and by the time we order drinks she’s lit two cigarettes.   She says, (while breathing in smoke from harbor fires),   Glo-ree days! Says, I’m trying to quit. ​​​Exhale.   Did anyone ever tell you, that with your eyes silver and gold like that, they look like coins? Like, I could scoop ‘em out and plunk them in my pocket and they’d jingle? You should know that you’re not the first — or, there’s been hundreds of firsts who thought they could make me right.   For example: I sometimes act a little too much like my daddy. I’ve got wiles to drive a man wild, and I often use ‘em to burn. Sometimes I’m burning, and I never met a history book that didn’t make me cry. Sometimes I powder my hair, and did you know that I got “collateral damage” tattooed across my inner thigh? ​ Do you wanna see?   … Slow down, boy!   Have you ever held someone who looked like you? A girl disappeared from this place, right after we kissed behind the jukebox — that old dinosaur, that old relic. I was high. They probably got her bones scattered across Appalachia by now, and she’s making things grow, or else she hit-and-run to Hawaii trying to get away from me as best she can. God Bless Her, either way. A toast!   ​ And down goes a gulp of Diet Coke — her lips, ​ mine.   I wonder sometimes what museum they’ll put me in. Once I wrapped bandages around my chest — up&up — and it felt kinda good, until I started seeing shades of mummification. I’m past my peak. There’s no future here. And I thought, Fossilize me.   What the hell.   Sometimes I act too much like my daddy. I deny the influence of prescription pills. I don’t cut myself- I just rust. But I don’t read  either.   ​ She takes a bite of a burger, ​ and breathes out smoke.   Ever been to France? There, they call me La Liberté éclairant le monde  — and I think that’s beautiful. My accent’s kinda good, huh? My mama got kicked hard, in the gut before I was born And maybe that’s why it all turned out the way it did. Did anyone ever tell you that your eyes, silver and gold, looks like blood money? You can love me —   believe me, honey, I’m wide open —   but once day these acrylics will stop piercing your hands, and I’ll topple down, down, into the harbor and she’ll welcome me home. She’s tasteful.   I’ll sleep.   But until then—   ​ I toss ​ blood-money bills on the countertop of justice as Liberty              lights another match,              licks out, and              swallows it whole.   But until then — hell, we got time. C’mon, new-moon sucker — let’s light a fire, pummel the highway, make the National Parks fear to god. Let’s end up laughing on a slab. let’s hit the road.   Julianna Reidell is an undergraduate English and French major at Arcadia University. Her work can be found in two anthologies by Moonstone Press, Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine, Sword and Kettle Press’s “Farewell, Neverland,” and issues of her university’s literary magazine, Quiddity.

Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished,                         and all the host of them Her smile is a dead end street,  a door opens, snow  skitters across hardwood.  I’m inconspicuously  armed; we’re not supposed to be here,  not flirting, not during Mass.  I miss the sting,  that sharp bite right before needle  hits groove.  Light bends to her,  I become a long shadow;  her breath evaporates. Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden;                         and there he put the man whom he had formed The moon is bullet shaped,  wonder how it might feel  pressed against my temple.  My limbs are pitched, nothing  ever happens here.   She gives me a sideways wink,  her shoulder bumps mine;  wonder what I’m made for,  wonder if it was a day like today when men stopped believing in God.  Into the Land of Nod Genesis 2:12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium                          and the onyx stone There are other people’s feelings to consider.  There are saints, traditions, passages with hidden doors.  There are steps and steps and steps and the dry  sharp intake of air when we hold our breath.  She brushes her hair back, touches my hand,  we’re supposed to be recounting our sins; all I see is the black edge of her bra strap, all I feel are the ragged edges of the exit wound.   Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper's Folly Poetry Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook,  Postcards from the Knife-Thrower's Wife , was released by Louisiana Literature Press in 2024.  http://www.louisianaliterature.org/2024/04/11/new-release-announcement-alex-stolis/  ,  RIP Winston Smith  from Allen Buddha Press 2024, and  The Hum of Geometry; The Music of Spheres , 2024 by Bottlecap Press.

SNOWSCAPE Flakes gathered  on a stone, on a leaf, on the arm of a lawn chair left out. A coating of snow, I suppose I could say. Yet  each object  holds  its own. WHITE ON WHITE The white lettering pasted  onto his front bass drum head  blends into its white background, so no  full words emerge  to name the snappy society quartet  for which he was the drummer. My teenage grandfather, cigar  jutting out, brandishes  two sticks in one hand and a tambourine in the other for this sepia-toned, Roaring-Twenties publicity photograph. If, say, fourteen, he had ten years to live before  his fatal auto accident and made use of them: played in a band on a boat to Europe; played  on a cruise to the Caribbean; filled-in, one night,  with Paul Whiteman (the biggest bandleader of the day); married a beautiful, tender woman; fathered my father. And left this blanked-out—so iconic—lettering. THE BRONZE BUST I forgot to buy milk and needed wine so I threw my coat on and clopped downstairs with the shops across the street in mind when I saw, in my building foyer,  a life-size bronze bust  of Gene—one  he fashioned when a young artist  of his beautiful young self—receding atop a wooden dolly, an appraiser giving instructions to the mover in her British accent. I literally clutched my heart, having  known this bust nearly thirty years as it presided over the entry hall  of Gene’s apartment, a bust passed countless times by my wife and me  and our two boys when Gene invited us up  for tea and pastries, a bust that seemed to watch  its model’s manifold life unfold before its  attentive, sensual, unchanging gaze. But Gene, at ninety-one, his memory deteriorating  by the day, felt it was time to deaccess  his kept work while he could handle it  judiciously, stripping  his apartment of every piece, a process  about which he was unsentimental—or  so the appraiser reported when I confessed  my stab of pain. And she, of course, was as unsentimental as he,  just doing her job while I stood and watched this  emblem of Gene’s full life—and emptying memory— fade away, its tender face to me. Mark Belair's  poems have appeared in numerous journals, including  Alabama Literary Review, Harvard Review , and  Michigan Quarterly Review .  Author of seven collections of poems, his most recent books are two works of fiction: Stonehaven  (Turning Point, 2020) and its sequel, Edgewood  (Turning Point, 2022). A new collection of poems entitled Settling In  will be published by Kelsay Books later this year. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit www.markbelair.com

“Let me just send this one email,” Derek says, his eyes already on the phone, thumbs flying across the screen. He’s not expecting me to say, Please, don’t, we’re in the middle of a conversation . I don’t think he’s expecting me to say anything, because, to him, I might not be  fully corporeal, certainly not someone who’d place a barrier between him and an email. Or him and a call. Or him and a text. I lean back and bring my glass toward my chest. Take small sips. Roll the glass between my palms while I hold it close. Watch the liquid swirl. I look up at Derek from time to time, but he might as well not be here. He types. And types. I should say something. It feels like it’s been forever. But I only take another sip.   Eventually, I set the drink back on the table. I run a finger along the rim, pressing down as I do, wondering how much harder I would have to press before I hear a sound. A squeak. “Just give me a minute,” Derek says, not lifting his eyes. “It’s a whole clusterfuck at work.” There is always a clusterfuck at work. At 12 PM on a Tuesday, during our first lunch date. Perfectly understandable, I thought, even felt a little in awe of him then. Such commitment. Such importance.   At 5 PM on a Wednesday, leading to a canceled dinner. Sometimes things really do happen just before the work day is over. At 10 AM on a Saturday, while on vacation. He really can’t take any time off. Things would fall apart without him. Such commitment. Such importance. Clusterfuck. “Sorry, baby, just a couple of messages that I have to fire off. I’m really sorry.” I look around and wonder what the hell I’m doing here. What even is this place? The tiny dollop of seafood risotto, topped off with fresh basil, sure looked nice for the two minutes it took me to eat it. It also looked much better than it tasted, and it didn’t look or taste nearly good enough for how much it cost. Derek has barely touched his food, and now his phone rings. He picks it up and shoots me an apologetic smile as he presses his index finger to his lips, letting me know I should be quiet, as if I’d actually said anything in the last … how long? Ten minutes? Hours? It feels like months. And then he takes the call— of course he fucking takes the call —and gets up to go outside, because my being perfectly silent just isn’t silent enough. There’s a low hum around us from other patrons, but this is a nice place, an overpriced-fancy-risotto place, so even the hum is fancy, the kind that helps cushion all conversation so no one hears anyone else, and the togetherness of eating out feels insulating and cozy, the kind of aloneness among the crowd that only a pile of money can buy. We have a nice table, one that faces the street. I can see Derek outside, pacing, four long strides in each direction before he turns around. His free arm waves wildly, stilling only to point straight ahead, as if he’s trying to show someone the path forward, to impart on the person who called at 8 PM on a Friday that things are about to go Derek’s way, because that is the only way that things can ever go. He stops, runs his hand through his hair, and starts yelling, his body tense in a half squat, one arm straight above his head, as if he’s summoning some divine help, or trying to beam all the frustration at this Friday night clusterfuck into the stratosphere through his outstretched palm. He yells and yells and yells. I dab my lips with a napkin. Even the napkins are stupid fancy here. For a split second, I feel bad that I’ve left some lipstick on it. The funny thing is, Derek looks and acts exactly how he did when I first met him. He hasn’t done  anything wrong, really. He’s always been exactly this, this thing we’re all supposed to want. He finishes the call. I think, Finally , but then he starts to type. He types and types and types. And then he makes another call. I look at the traces of my long-gone risotto and realize I’m still hungry. I am so desperately, endlessly hungry, like there is a cavern at the center of me, and something ravenous lives inside, clawing rabidly at the walls. I look at Derek’s untouched steak, which is probably cold by now, and I wonder if I should just eat it to spite him, but I don’t want Derek’s steak, I don’t want anything from Derek anymore, perhaps I never did, so I pull out my phone and send him an email, not a text message but an email to his work account because that’s what he seems most likely to check, and I write a very nice polite message starting with Dear Derek , and I say that I left so he would have one less clusterfuck to handle tonight, and that it was nice to know him, and I close with Sincerely , because I am being sincere, the most sincere that I’ve probably been for as long as I’ve known him. Then I block his number and I am off, making my way through the kitchen and out the back door. I await a pang of guilt, guilt over doing this the way I have, because maybe he deserves more from me, more sincerity, more explanation. I wait for the pang on the ride to a fast-food drive-through, and when I bite into a greasy sandwich, ketchup and mustard dripping down my chin, but it never comes. Maura Yzmore is a Midwest-based short-fiction author. Her work can be found in trampset, Bending Genres, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. Find out more at https://maurayzmore.com  or on Twitter  @MauraYzmore .

Prologue  You write your wills before your first trip away from your young son. You revise them when you have more assets and a second son. They are more complicated. But they won’t be relevant until a time in the distant future. You rewrite your wills after your husband is diagnosed with a disease that gives him a 5% chance of living 5 years, the disease fiction writers unimaginatively use to kill off a character.  You do not understand the minute details of living trusts and irrevocable trusts. But you have more immediate worries, concerns, fears about how to get through each day.  You go together to a cemetery to select the plot you will visit in the future. That future arrives sooner than you think, as his body comes apart like the fraying quilt on your bed. You lose sleep, weight. Your wobbly hold onto the life you’ve known, falling away. In a millisecond, you are a member of a club no one wants to join.  The Next Chapter Dinner invitations pour in at first, from friends, from mere acquaintances. You feel grateful, resentful, exhausted. Soon those invitations disappear. You think of the condolence notes you wrote with “let me know what I can do to help” offers that never materialized. A colleague tells you co-workers don’t know what to say to you. You become a third, fifth, seventh wheel when invited out by couples, wondering if you mention your husband’s name too often or not often enough. Turning away rather than watching those couples walk holding hands, tuning out talk about their travel plans, their anniversary celebrations.  Your number of anniversaries are trapped in amber.  There are days when you don’t see or speak to anyone other than a barista, a pharmacist, or a wrong number.  Or, maybe, to anyone.  You talk to yourself. You feel incompetent struggling to open jars, clasping necklaces. You are overwhelmed by a first-ever sewer backup in the basement, fetid water from the past. A metaphor, you wonder.  Haircuts, pedicures, and massages are the menu of intimate touches. Unless you have grandchildren, whose impossibly soft skin and sweat baby sweat replenish you. Joy tinged with an ache for the absence that no balm can soothe. Collections of vinyl albums, stamps and postcards fill the basement closet shelves and spill out of the basement, haunting you. You curse the computer. The inoperative passwords. Your husband’s incomprehensible financial records. Your husband. Your house is a minefield of memories. The graceful tall glass vase shaped like a volcano, the colors of lava, from Hawaii, a surprise gift; the painting that dominates the dining room of ripe persimmons, which everyone thinks are tomatoes, by an artist in a tiny town in Nova Scotia, whose garden filled with wildflowers enticed you into her studio.  Everywhere are reminders of your lifetime of decisions, arguments when you felt so angry you wanted to leave, days when you felt lonely.  Wasted emotions you regret. You eat soup every night for dinner, sometimes with chunks of squash, carrots, mushrooms in rich seasoned broth from the farmer’s market, sometimes the salty brew from the familiar red and white can of your childhood.  You spoon coffee gelato, the flavor only you liked, directly out of the pint plastic container, unable to stop yourself from having just one more spoonful, until the spoon is empty. Some in your situation find new companions through random meetings, others on   dating apps, which you’ve eschewed as phony, frightening, and foolish. Leaving you, secretly envious, to wonder what is wrong with you. You imagine a meeting on an airplane, in an art class, a wedding, a memorial service. Thoughts that tantalize and terrify. You do not return to your previous “usual” side of the bed, the side closer to the bathroom, which you relinquished to make it easier.  You sleep on a third of the bed, narrowing yourself as if in a coffin. You treat the rest of the bed with reverence and the spot for your new leap-of-faith puppy.   Epilogue  You feel less incompetent with each necklace clasped. In the morning, you smooth wrinkles from the blankets and tug your new quilt tight, just the way you like it. So you can slip under them at night. Alone. A compact exploration of widowhood. I live outside Washington, DC, and am part of a small women writers’ workshop.  I have published pieces in Wild Greens, Months to Years, Struggle Magazine, and Five Minutes 100 Words.

On a sunny, bright blue June morning—likely the last day of his nine-month-long teaching career—Randy Shep slouched on a hot metal folding chair next to his soon-to-be-ex-fellow teachers, facing the crowd of students and parents, and sweating through his shirt. The queasy and anxious thoughts about his future that had clouded Randy’s mind over the past week had now congealed into sour and grudging resignation about his present circumstance: if he wanted to get his last full paycheck and to leave this job on a good-enough note, he would have to make it through today’s Celebration of Excellence!  and somehow pretend to give a shit. The 1980 sixth-grade graduating class of Camino Alto Elementary School sat on the new lunch benches—under a canopy that the district had somehow found money for—nice and comfortable. Their parents were behind them, fumbling with Polaroids and flowers wrapped in crackling cellophane, talking away. One dad, taping the whole graduation ceremony on a giant Betamax camera with a furry microphone, kept standing up to pan back and forth.  Behind the audience, late-model family cars filled the teacher’s parking area. Mercedes coupes, Volvo station wagons, black BMW sedans, and more than one new Porsche were crammed into the lot. A burgundy Alfa Romeo convertible was parked on an angle in Randy’s usual spot, blocking half of the next space. Randy had been forced to park his rusty Datsun half a mile away. Proposition 13 had paid for a lot of those new cars. Two years ago, most Californians had listened to Howard Jarvis and passed his Prop 13, cutting property taxes for themselves, and the state government made up the deficit by gutting school budgets. So, while these parents drank rosé and ate quiche on their decks with beach access, Randy and his wife Joanie had rented a house they could afford at the edge of town. They watched the ground near their home for rattlers, and coyotes hunting through the sagebrush at dusk. The other sixth-grade teachers hissed and glared or snapped their fingers and pointed when one of their students stopped paying attention or started to pull a stunt. Randy half-heartedly tried to quiet his bunch, who were in the first row twenty feet in front of him. The Miller twins were at one end, bickering in matching checkered dresses. Bobby Corn was next to them, picking at a big scab on his knee, and the other Bobby, Bobby Flake, was flossing his teeth with a strand of his own hair. Mikey, Todd, Tom, David, Josh, Patrick, and Scott were taking turns punching each other in the arm or sticking their wet index fingers in each other’s ears. Stephanie, Christine, Michelle, and Samantha alternated between whispering and scowling at the boys horsing around next to them. Mary was being ignored by the four of them, and Zoë, wearing her older sister’s Circle Jerks tee shirt again, was drawing the anarchy “A” symbol on her leg with a purple Sanford felt pen. Next to her, Jonathan, big dopey grin, hummed “Another One Bites the Dust.” In the middle of the chaos sat Donnie, who tried very hard to blend into the middle of elementary school. Bowl-cut white-blonde hair, blue eyes, spray of freckles across his nose, wearing the typical all-weather Southern California boy uniform: Ocean Pacific short sleeve shirt, matching two-tone corduroy shorts, checkered slip-on Vans. He did his homework—and his test scores were high—but you could see he didn’t like the days he was pulled out of regular class for gifted program activities. He volunteered to clean up after art projects or to pass out milk cartons at lunch, but not too much or too often. Sometimes, he played with Jonathan when no one else would, or helped Zoë trace a picture of Siouxsie Sioux, or said hello to Mary, but never so much for anyone to notice or remember. If pressed, Stephanie, Christine, Michelle and Samantha would think about it for a minute and then say he was “sweet,” and he wasn’t the first or last pick when Mikey and the boys played football. He was decent to the gross Bobbies but kept his distance and, unlike Randy, could tell which Miller twin was which, but rarely sat near them at lunch. He never fought or mouthed off or pranked anyone, and if he knew what nonsense his classmates were up to behind the snack shack, he stayed clear of any trouble, and never snitched.  Right now, though, Donnie sat stiffly, his eyes radiating discomfort, darting left at the kids talking too loudly, then right at the kids about to throw real punches, then up at the teachers, then locking onto the principal walking up to the podium. Randy’s lineup of pre-teen troublemakers was causing a scene, and there wasn’t anywhere for Donnie to hide. Donnie’s expression froze.  Now that the student names had been read, the principal spoke, loud and sharp enough to startle Randy’s class and shut them up for a minute. “While we are here to celebrate the graduating sixth grade class of 1980, we are also saying farewell to someone from our Camino Alto family.” Here we go. Randy stopped staring at Donnie, sat up straight, and adjusted the black armband he had made last night from one of Joanie’s old Polyester scarves. He twisted around a bit to show it off. Betamax dad noticed, stood up and adjusted the zoom. Randy looked right at the lens and smiled. “One of our beloved—” said the principal. He turned and glanced at Randy’s black armband. “—teachers will not be returning to our school next year.” The principal paused again, maybe debating whether this was a good idea, then turned to the parents. “I’d like for Mr. Shep to stand up. Let’s show our appreciation for all his hard work and dedication to your sons and daughters.” Randy stood up. He smiled and slowly waved, making sure everyone got a good look at his black armband. A handful of parents applauded; the few handclaps sounded tinny as they bounced off the stucco walls of the courtyard. Betamax stopped filming and changed a tape. Randy kept standing and turned to look at the principal. Randy waited another moment, watching the principal about to say something. Randy sat down. The principal exhaled and turned back to the audience. “A fun day ahead. Three-legged races. Then our famous cakewalk. Teacher-Student softball game starts at two PM.” The parents gave a hearty round of applause. Randy looked over at Donnie. Donnie sat there, relieved. Donnie smiled at the principal. The principal winked at Donnie. The same principal who had pulled Randy into his little triangular office last week and, as the last bell rang, started talking about budget cuts, used the word “redundancy” twice, said that certain contracts could not be renewed, and ended by telling Randy he was laid off. The same principal who happened to be Donnie’s dad.  The ceremony ended. Randy ducked out. # While Randy walked to his—well, what used to be his—classroom to grab the rest of his stuff, he replayed the parent’s halfhearted clapping in his head. The silence as he stood up with his armband. The principal winking at Donnie. As he turned the corner of the building, Randy felt a hot electrical pulse of resentment ripple through his body. A neighborhood dog—the big brown mutt, the one that wandered into the schoolyard daily and looked like the bear on the California state flag—was dropping the last of a giant dump outside Randy’s classroom door. The dog looked at Randy as it straightened its back and padded away. Randy stepped over the soft mountain of crap and slammed the door behind him. He crossed the classroom, sat down at his desk, opened a drawer, lit a Kool, and ejected a plume of blue cigarette smoke over the rows of empty tables. The swirl of particles floated in the streams of light from the high windows. The clock above the chalkboard ticked forward, paused, ticked backwards, then ticked forward again. Randy seethed, waiting for the nicotine to kick in.  Randy had spent his first—and maybe only—school year as a teacher in this classroom. The kids had cleaned it out earlier in the week. They had taken down their California history posters, math concept diagrams, illustrated short stories, and rubbed tinfoil artwork, leaving behind an assortment of thumbtacks stuck into the mustard yellow fabric wall. On the low shelf where they’d displayed their reforestation dioramas, bits of dried-up clay and green pipe cleaner lay next to an empty tape dispenser. Plastic olive-green chairs were stored upside down, chrome legs sticking up in the air. One chewed-up pencil lay on the linoleum floor next to a rubber band and a Now and Later candy wrapper. A paper airplane, which until now had been stuck by the tip of its nose between two ceiling tiles, suddenly dropped down, made a loop, and shot straight towards Randy’s face, hitting him square in the forehead. Randy crumpled the plane and tossed it across the room. Randy dragged a moving box across his desk, tipped it back, and looked inside: his high school baseball glove that he would need for this afternoon; the roller skates he’d used to show Newton’s first law of physics by rolling across the playground, letting the kids whip cherry balls at him to try and knock him down with an “unbalanced force;” the videotapes he used to record PBS for rained-out afternoon recesses. Randy spent weeks dialing that antenna controller back and forth to get a good TV signal on his old Zenith to catch the full season of Connections.  James Burke—professorial Irish brogue, leisure suits, thick glasses—laid out centuries of consequences. Like how the dukes of Burgundy were the first to use credit to buy armor, which ended up creating larger armies. Those bigger armies needed food that didn’t spoil, which led to bottled food. Those bottles led to the idea of refrigeration, which, in turn, led to Sir James Dewar creating a thermos that could keep liquids hot or cold—and, next thing you know, the Germans use that idea to send V2 rockets across the channel and smash into London. Some of the kids paid attention—Donnie did, now that Randy thought about it—and only acted up when Randy forgot one episode had topless Medieval women running around a bath house. Randy pushed the box back and sniffed. The room had the same overpowering odor it had the whole year: Formula 409, Ditto ink, a splash of sour milk. Even Randy’s fresh cigarette smoke was undetectable, swallowed into the air. Randy’s stomach knotted. He felt his resolve to be pragmatic today transform into something denser, heavier, and sharper. Randy picked up his box and walked toward the door, stopping where Donnie sat all year. Randy set his box down and stubbed out his cigarette in the pencil groove of Donnie’s table. Randy lit another, grabbed his box, and walked out, stepping over the dogshit. # Randy made way across the blacktop playground to the baseball field. He reached the shuttered snack shack next to third base and placed his box on the dented metal counter. He leaned against the wall and flicked his cigarette butt into the dirt. Soon the parents would be walking over to the bleachers for the big game. Randy pulled out the joint he’d brought for the occasion, stuck it in his mouth, and headed to the rear of the snack shack, flipping his lighter open. Randy heard voices.  “Dude. Awesome,” said someone, voice breaking on “awesome.” “Do it do it do it,” said someone else, followed by peals of snotty laughter. Mikey, Todd, Tom, David, Josh, Patrick, and Scott turned to Randy, and their mouths dropped open. Scott’s grip on a plastic garbage bag slipped, and a dozen water balloons rolled out on to the gravel. One popped and splashed over Scott’s navy blue Keds sneakers. Randy recognized the giant slingshot-like contraption that Mikey, Todd, and Tom were about to use. The Funnelator—six feet of surgical tubing with a duct taped plastic paint funnel in the middle serving as a pouch for a wide variety of projectiles—was a formidable and economical weapon, favored equally by thrifty delinquents and fun-loving idiots all over Southern California. Todd and Tom, standing almost eight feet apart, strained to hold on to the taught silicone stretched out between them. Mikey, crouched on the ground between Todd and Tom and leaning back hard, had pulled the duct-taped paint funnel at the center back nearly ten feet. He was about to launch the first water balloon round over the snack shack, right into the crowd of parents watching the end of the cakewalk a football field away. “Uh-oh,” grunted David. For a moment, Randy regretted interrupting them. Seeing a parent take one to the head might’ve lightened his mood. There was a pause. Randy could hear the tubing squeak as Mikey struggled to hold on. Mikey tilted his head quizzically. “What’s that in your mouth?” Randy remembered the joint hanging off his lower lip. He pulled it out and stuffed it back into his shirt pocket.  “Drop it,” said Randy, pointing at the Funnelator.  Randy held out his hand as Mikey, Todd, and Tom shuffled closer together, releasing the tension. Mikey hung the Funnelator from Randy’s outstretched palm and stepped back. Randy looked at Scott and the half empty bag of water balloons and pointed to the oil drum trash can next to the back wall of the snack shack. Scott shuffled over and dumped the bag, followed by Josh and Patrick carrying the balloons that had rolled out on the ground. Six of the boys had worried expressions. Mikey—who, Randy was pretty sure, had at least two stoner brothers in high school—looked less worried and started to open his mouth.   “Get out of here,” said Randy. All seven looked at each other, then bolted back across the field. Randy leaned against the snack shack wall, dropped the Funnelator, pulled out his joint again, and popped it back into his mouth. He looked down at the Funnelator lying in the dirt. Can’t leave it here. Too easy. Can’t tell the principal. Mikey knew what he’d seen. Bury it in lost and found, that was the answer: someone, probably looking for their retainer, would pull the Funnelator from the mountain of forgotten surfer ponchos and unleash a new reign of terror. Randy would be long gone. Not his problem. Randy lit the joint, and took one nice, long, deep hit. He licked his index finger and dabbed spit onto the cherry. He picked up the Funnelator, stuffed it into his box, and took off across the field towards the school office. As Randy walked, he looked at the bleachers now filling up with parents. To the right of home plate, Betamax had claimed a prime part of the row in front. Some kids were running around on the infield, haphazardly tossing the ball back and forth, missing grounders, overreacting, and slamming their mitts into the dust. The teachers were gossiping, leaning against the low chain-link fence lining the visitor’s dugout.  Donnie was in the outfield. His mitt looked expensive, and he was wearing a new Padres cap. Randy looked straight ahead and quickened his pace. Opposite the field, near the library, the principal was chatting it up with the district superintendent. The superintendent stopped talking, leaned to her right, and glanced at Randy over the principal’s shoulder. The principal turned to look at Randy, turned back to the superintendent, said something to her, and then both laughed. Randy felt nauseated. The weight inside him lurched. Heat bloomed behind his eyes. Randy reached the empty front office, stood outside the open door, and set down his box on the concrete. Across from the interior entrance to the principal’s office was the school secretary’s desk. Behind it was the bulging cardboard lost and found box. Randy whipped the Funnelator across the room. It slapped the back wall and fell onto the top of the jacket pile.  Randy picked up his box and took the long way back to the field, avoiding the principal and superintendent. Randy stopped behind a corner to look at two of them. The superintendent shrugged at the principal, headed to the parking lot, and drove off. The principal walked into the office and shut the door. Randy made it to the teacher’s dugout, flopped down at the end, tucked his box under the bench, and leaned back into the chain link fence. Gail, who had just hit her two-year mark and made tenure, sat down next to him. “Randy, it’s going to be ok." “No, it isn’t.” said Randy. # By the bottom of the last inning, teachers were up by two, the kids were at bat with bases loaded, and Randy stood out in left field.  Donnie walked out of the dugout, popped a too-large batting helmet over his Padres cap, and took a few practice swings over home plate. Gail—who had been playing catcher—waved at Randy, who pretended not to see her. Each of the teachers had taken turns at the mound, tossing three easy pitches to make it a fair game, and, so far, Randy had avoided his turn. Gail waved again, and then pointed at the pitcher’s mound. Randy ignored her. Gail stood up from her crouch behind home plate. Donnie broke his batting stance and stepped back as Gail marched across the infield, right up to Randy. “Your turn,” said Gail. “You need to pitch.” “Get someone else.” “Randy,” said Gail. “I’m sorry you got laid off. We all are. But they’re kids and their parents are right there in the stands. It’s not their fault and they are kids and it’s their graduation day.” Gail held out her hand with the ball. “These are the good times.” Randy looked over at Donnie. He looked at Gail. He grabbed the ball out of her hand. Gail started to say something more, but Randy took off towards the mound. She ran ahead and returned to her crouch behind home plate. Donnie stepped back into his stance. Donnie drew in his breath and focused, looking expectant, confident as he twirled the tip of his bat. Randy had seen this Donnie once before. A month ago, Randy had promised the class that the lift and drag diagrams he had drawn on the noisy overhead projector would pay off with something fun. He had opened a ream of crisp white letter-sized paper and passed out stapled packets with instructions for a dozen different paper airplanes. “Or make your own,” said Randy. “It’s a contest.” While the rest of the kids folded one or two planes and started whipping them at each other, Donnie had taken a quarter inch pile of paper. He sat at his desk, ignoring the planes zipping over his head, creasing subtle changes into his designs, and carefully stacking each version into a shoebox.  The next day, Randy took his class on a field trip down into the state park bordering the school. They wound their way through the sunny and hot chapparal, taking a far switchback trail up to the top of a large canyon that opened out to the beach. The slow ocean breeze—a little humid, with a hint of drying kelp even this far from the water—drafted up the canyon, gently buffeted the sage brush, and whistled in the few pine trees lining the flat ridge where Randy and his class stood in a semicircle. Randy’s class pulled out their creations. They were supposed to go one at a time, but within seconds, the air was filled with planes making clumsy arcs, smacking into tree trunks, flopping down into the dirt, or tearing into backwards loops and nearly scoring headshots on the kids who threw the planes in the first place.  Donnie waited until the air was clear. Randy saw that Donnie’s plane was different than the others. Crisp winglets, carefully angled flaps, and what looked like a thicker, heavier set of folds at the nose. Donnie pinched the plane between his thumb and index finger and cocked his arm. He took a breath, focused, brought his arm forward, and lightly snapped his wrist, sending his plane curving upwards into the wind.  Randy kept watching Donnie’s face as the plane caught a thermal. The kids around him started yelping as it soared higher. Donnie ignored them and watched his plane sweep and glide in the air. For the first time Randy could think of, Donnie looked like he didn’t care who was watching or what was happening around him.  Now, as Randy stood on the pitcher’s mound remembering that moment, something inside him started to give way. His thoughts tumbled loose. He could feel them smash together, their sharp edges punching holes in each other, the whole jagged mess tearing through his body, falling into his stomach, and imploding. He remembered the paper plane rising and floating. He remembered how he had felt happy for Donnie. He remembered that Donnie’s dad put him out of a job. He remembered those parents and their cars and their houses, and that Gail and the principal and all the other teachers would be back next year. He remembered people around him would have money and careers and lives and everyone except himself would be just fine.  Randy threw the ball as hard as he had ever thrown a ball in his life. The slap against Gail’s mitt caused everyone in the stands to look at her, and then Randy. Betamax swung the camera away from some kids making faces and towards Randy. Gail stood up and glared as she tossed the ball back to Randy. He caught it and shrugged. Donnie hadn’t even been able to swing. Randy rifled it again. “What’s he doing?” murmured someone in the bleachers. Gail threw the ball at Randy hard, mouthing, “Stop.” Slap. Again. That was it. Randy was breathing hard. His skin tingled. His peripheral vision shimmered.  Donnie tossed the bat. It landed with a dull aluminum thud. He walked towards the dugout, looking down. “Dogshit,” he said, just loud enough for Randy to hear. “What?” Randy heard himself saying, feeling himself leave the pitcher’s mound and walking right up to Donnie. Donnie stopped and looked up. Tears rimmed his eyes. He balled his fists and turned to face Randy. “What did you say?” asked Randy. Donnie’s cheeks were pink. His mouth trembled. Tears jetted down. His breathing hitched. He looked back at the stands, then the dugout, the school, the front office.   “I asked you a question,” said Randy. “DOGSHIT,” yelped Donnie, startling the crowd. “I SAID THAT WAS DOGSHIT.”   “Your poor sportsmanship,” said Randy, shaking his head, “sets a bad example.” Donnie shook, breathing hard. He started to say something but stopped and gritted his teeth. “I will see you,” said Randy, “in your father’s office.” Randy pointed. “Go.” Donnie’s eyes darkened. He turned and walked past the dugout and out across the field. His team stifled giggles as he passed. Jonathan reprised “Another One Bites the Dust.” Randy walked back to the pitcher’s mound, taking in the silence of the crowd. Betamax lowered his camera. Gail, her jaw clenched, tossed the ball back. Randy pitched one last, nice, slow ball to Mikey, who sent it flying over center field and past the chain link fence. The stands were quiet until the ball hit the grass. Mikey’s dad stood up and let out a guttural yell, followed by the rest of the crowd clapping for the grand slam. The game ended and the kids cheered “2-4-6-8. Who do we appreciate? Teachers!” Randy grabbed his box from under the dugout bench and walked away from the crowd towards the school office. # The door to the front office was open, but the lights were off. Randy stepped inside. His eyes adjusted to the gloom, and he saw Donnie sitting at the school secretary’s desk, slowly swiveling in the chair in front of the big lost and found box. He was cradling an open backpack in his lap. There was can of Sunkist orange soda in front of him. “Randy,” said the principal, leaning out of the doorway to his office. “A word?” Randy followed him into the cramped triangular room. A bookcase holding thick three-ring binders with neatly hand-lettered labels loomed behind his desk. Framed class and staff pictures formed a grid on the wall. A baseball glove from the 1930s lay on his desk, next to an open package of lemon cookies. The principal shut the door. “Randy,” the principal started, holding up a finger before Randy could speak. “I’m sorry you lost your job. Those decisions come from the district.” He pointed to Randy’s black armband. “I get it. You’re angry. But taking it out on a kid? My kid?” “Poor sportsmanship—” said Randy. “You humiliated him in front of his friends. His friend’s parents. Teachers.” the principal said. “This is what’s going to happen. We’re going to walk out this door, my son will apologize, you’ll accept it, you’ll drive away, and that will be it.” The principal opened the door, gesturing for Randy to walk out. Donnie zipped up his backpack. “I’m sorry I said dogshit,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. He picked up the can of Sunkist, took a sip, and walked out. “Goodbye Randy,” said the principal, stepping back into his office and closing the door. Randy stood and listened to the clock tick. # On the drive home, Randy stopped by the 7-Eleven. While he paid for two six-packs of Olympia, three Camino Alto kids at the new Asteroids  machine shot looks at him and whispered. Randy got back in his Datsun, pulled out his joint, lit it, and swerved out of the parking lot, cutting off a white station wagon as he made the left turn heading out to the back country. East of town, and past the new freeway, the housing developments stopped. Where the street’s four freshly paved lanes switched to cracked concrete, he pulled off and headed down the uneven road into the canyon. Randy and Joanie’s rental—a peach colored ranch with a chipped orange tile roof—sat next to a dusty trailhead and faced a steep cliff. Randy pulled up to the front of the house, grabbed his beer, and walked across the lawn. “I’ve done the math,” said Joanie, arms folded, leaning against her yellow Nova in the driveway. “Rent, utilities, gas, food, student loans. The numbers are in the kitchen.” She shook her head. “I’ll tell you one number right now. Twelve. You, Randy Shep, are twelve years older than that little boy.” Joanie flicked her cigarette at Randy and got into her car. Randy caught a bit of ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” from the radio as she accelerated up the street. Gail must have called her. Randy would be on his own tonight. Randy opened the garage door, turned on the radio, unfolded a beach chair, and sat down in the middle of the driveway. He opened a beer and closed his eyes. # Randy was drunk by sunset. The streetlight flickered on as the sky darkened to deep blue. The large pine tree that sat at the top of the cliff across the street became silhouetted, it’s Y-split trunk framing the last light of day. KFRQ’s “Friday Night Freaque-Out” thumped. Randy was a six-pack in, and Average White Band was feeling better than average. The aluminum frame of the beach chair scraped against the concrete driveway as he shimmied in his seat and tapped his foot. “Pick Up the Pieces” segued into “You Should Be Dancing”, and Randy squeaked out his best Barry Gibb. Randy tried to stand up, slipped, rolled onto his knees, then bounced up to the bass kicking in on “I’m Coming Out.” He kicked the beach chair across the driveway onto the lawn and stumbled into the garage. Where was his box? Bingo. Randy yanked out his roller skates, spun the wheels and loosened the laces from the top eyelets. Back against the wall, he slid down to the ground, kicked off his shoes, and pulled on the skates. Chic came on and Randy was up and carving loops around the driveway to “Good Times”, grooving like it was senior year back at Skate King. Randy spun in place and stopped, hands on his hips, lit by the sodium glow of the streetlight. He breathed in the smoggy night air. The dark mass inside of him was now a black hole. He could feel himself being pulled down and crushed, but there was a rush of euphoria, too. Everything was fucked, he thought, so fuck everything. Fuck these rich people, fuck their cars, fuck their houses, fuck their property tax breaks. Fuck that school, fuck that principal, and fuck Donnie. Before it hit him in the face, Randy sensed something flying at him, fast. A warm, wet mass slapped the bridge of his nose and spread explosively from ear to ear, chin to hairline. The stench filled his nostrils, and realizing it was in his mouth too, he jerked backwards and gagged, throwing himself off balance. His legs flew out from under him, and for a moment Randy was parallel to the concrete, roller skate wheels spinning violently in the air. He hit the pavement and smacked the back of his head. The buh buh buh ah rumbumbumbumbabump  of “Another One Bites the Dust” rumbled out of the radio. After a moment, Randy sat up and checked for blood at the back of his head. He pressed gently into the swelling bump and looked at his fingers. Nothing. He crawled over to the beach chair on the lawn and dragged himself up to sit, his legs splayed out in front of him.  He untied the black armband he had been wearing all day and used it to wipe the dogshit off his face. # Joanie found Randy at dawn. Still sitting in the lawn chair, he woke up as she pulled off the roller skates. He winced as he got up. She folded the beach chair and bagged up the empty Olympia cans that had rolled onto the lawn. She left the black armband alone. Randy touched his face. Traces of dogshit had dried into crusty streaks. He pulled off a shred of flimsy plastic grocery store vegetable bag stuck to his forehead. He looked across the street and up at the pine tree on the cliff, glowing brightly in the sharp sunrise light. Something was new. Tied between the Y of the tree trunk was the Funnelator. A pair of yellow kitchen gloves hung neatly from the surgical tubing. Randy thought of Donnie zipping up his backpack, casually walking out of the school office. Joanie handed Randy a damp rag. “Clean up.” Randy pointed to the tree. “Look! Fucking Donnie. The Funnelator. Fuck! It had to be. He shot me with dogshit! In a bag! He stuffed dogshit in a plastic bag and shot me in the face!” “Toss your armband before you come indoors,” said Joanie as she walked inside the house. # Randy showered and dressed. The bump on the back of his head throbbed. He walked from the back bedroom to the kitchen, pushed through the swinging doors, and stifled a gasp. The principal was sitting at the breakfast table with Joanie. A half-empty coffee pot sat between them. “Randy,” said the principal. He stood up. “The district is desperate for people to teach this summer. The superintendent found enough contingent staff budget to cover it. She called last night to tell me and to ask me to take care of getting the teaching positions filled. Personally.” Joanie sipped her coffee. “I’ve been told to bring you back.” The principal turned to Joanie and thanked her. He turned back to Randy. “Donnie liked you. He would come home and talk about the projects you had them do. How you’d roller skate around for a physics experiment. Those Connections  episodes you had them watch. Even after yesterday, he mentioned the paper airplanes. I asked him: what did you learn from all of that? ‘One thing leads to another,’ he said.” The principal showed himself out. # Randy kept his mouth shut about what had happened that night. Eventually he was hired back full-time and spent his career at different schools in the district. Within a few years, even whispers of graduation day 1980 faded, and Betamax’s video—trapped on an obsolete format—never surfaced. Randy’s students graduated from solid universities and had nice families and did good things. Sometimes one would be visiting home and remember Randy at the supermarket. Randy and Joanie saved up enough to buy their rented house. The land around them was developed into some of the most coveted real estate in the area. Prop 13 kept their property taxes low, and Randy ditched his Datsun for an Escort, and, eventually, a series of Taurus sedans. The principal retired, and twenty years after that—just after the principal passed away—Randy and Joanie sat under cool canopied benches at the recently rebuilt Camino Alto Academy campus, listening to the dedication ceremony for the school’s new engineering laboratory and workshop complex named in the principal’s honor. A tall man in an expensive suit approached the podium. Donnie—well, it was Donnell   now—adjusted the microphone. Darker hair cropped short. Same blue eyes behind stainless-steel eyeglass frames. Tanned, with faded freckles across the bridge of his nose. Donnell had made billions from his stealth defense startup. His company created “advanced machine learning algorithms” and “autonomous flight guidance and precision targeting” for their “economical nano-drone hardware.” Applied Ballistics Corporation became the country’s premier supplier of “smart projectiles” made from sustainable materials. Green, cheap, and easy to assemble in the field. Donnell spoke about his father, the school, the teachers, and the community in a measured and warm tone. He announced a donation to the school that made the audience gasp. He stepped back. As others spoke, Donnell slowly scanned the audience. For a second, Randy thought Donnell looked directly at him, but Donnell’s gaze passed right by. After the ceremony, Randy waited for Joanie at the entrance to the teacher’s parking lot. He searched for Donnell’s company on his phone and tapped on a video. The first scene showed soldiers folding small laser cut sheets of stiff transparent paper into shapes that looked like razor-sharp miniature paper airplanes. The video graphics pointed out the fire control and navigation circuitry printed on the wings, the recycled battery, the miniaturized high torque motor, the bamboo rotor blades at the rear, and the glaze of explosive material coating everything. Racks of completed planes leaned against a sandbagged wall. In the next scene, three soldiers were behind a concrete building. Two of them stood several feet apart and held onto thick elastic bands. Between them, the third soldier crouched, leaned back, let go, and slingshotted dozens of the nearly invisible planes into the dusty air. Each one quietly whirred to life and whispered away in multiple directions. The soldiers started laughing as explosions cracked and screams echoed in the distance. Someone had dubbed “Another One Bites the Dust” over the footage. Randy looked up from his phone and saw a big clump of people headed straight for him, fast. Donnell was in the middle, shaking hands, comfortable in the crowd. Randy couldn’t get out of the way in time. The mass of people pushed him to the side, forcing him off balance. Rolf Ebeling is a product design manager at a technology company in Seattle and lives with his family in Kirkland, Washington. In his previous career in New York, he worked at Newsweek and Scientific American magazines.