Press 53 Spotlight
Sharing remarkable voices from the catalog of our publisher, Press 53
Poetry
Three Poems by Chanel Brenner
Short Fiction
Three Flash Fictions by Clifford Garstang
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Chanel Brenner
Chanel Brenner won the 2021 Press 53 Award for Poetry for Smile, or Else. She is also the author of Vanilla Milk: A Memoir Told in Poems, (Silver Birch Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the 2016 Independent Book Awards and honorable mention in the 2014 Eric Hoffer awards. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Raleigh Review, New Ohio Review, Duende, Muzzle Magazine, Spry Literary Journal, Barrow Street, Salamander, Spoon River Poetry Review, Literary Mama, and others. Her poem “Apology” won first place in the Smartish Pace Beullah Rose Poetry Prize (2018) and her poem “July 28th, 2012” won first prize in The Write Place At the Write Time’s contest, judged by Ellen Bass. Her essays have appeared in Modern Loss, The Good Men Project, and HerStry. She lives in Southern California with her husband and son.
Three Poems
At Sequin Boutique
I wonder, when the owner says,
We’re closing at the end of the month,
Do we ever stop feeling hollowed by loss?
I still grieve the lipstick I used in my twenties.
When Lancome discontinued Matte Claret,
I stopped at every store for the coveted tubes,
digging my fingernail into the last one,
until it was just an empty hole.
Riley and I loved to shop here, before he died,
and I hear him comment as I sift through shirts,
ogling the rainbow colors and favored sheens.
I stop, distracted by the window’s reflection—
a blue shawl draping a manikin’s shoulders
more like a rescue blanket, than fashion.
I hear my younger self ask,
echoing from the bottom of a well—
if Riley likes the blouse I’m holding.
He chants, Mom, get this one,
this one, this one, as he rubs
the past against his face,
shining in the window like ash.
Ode to the Crossing Guard at 25th & Pearl
Braving speeding vehicles all day,
with just her body and a feeble stick—
lofting one word, STOP.
When a car struck, splaying me
in a cross walk, years ago,
on this very date, April 28,
Where were you? I wonder,
when the guard’s eyes meet mine.
Drivers rush to work, check emails,
apply last-minute mascara—
A toddler in a tutu escapes
her mother’s grasp, just as a minivan
breeches the crosswalk—brakes screeching
as the guard wings her arms,
then leads the girl to the curb.
She waves us on,
blond hair illuminating her face
like St. Gianna’s aureole.
Mustela Baby Wipes
remind me of Riley,
writhing on the changing pad,
my willowy silhouette
wrestling his thrusting legs—
wisp of hair bookmarked
behind my ear.
The memory scrapes
like a skipping record—
hoist his bum,
clutch his kicking legs,
wipe and repeat—
his brown eyes
plugged into mine
like a lifeline—
the Mustela scent
clinging to my tongue.
Its saccharine aftertaste,
masking his decay.
Valerie Nieman
Valerie Nieman was the first poetry editor of Prime Number Magazine, from July 2011 through December 3016. Her latest poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, joins two earlier collections from Press 53: Wake Wake Wake and Hotel Worthy. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies. She has held creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. A novel published by Press 53, Blood Clay, received the Eric Hoffer Award, and her fourth novel, To the Bones, was published in spring 2019 by West Virginia University Press. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she teaches writing at North Carolina A&T State University and at other venues including John C. Campbell Folk School.
Three Poems
Hotel Worthy
(from Hotel Worthy)
I was being so careful the new blue brush held like a pen no a knife to dagger the paint down perfectly to observe the lines to honor the edges and the teacher asks me do you believe in fairness which takes me by surprise because yes yes I do believe in fairness and justice and all equal before she adds it shows in your painting you give things equal weight why should this branch be as large and detailed as that one
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is
always dress for the blues dress blues and tennis shoes and a trunk packed with mementoes not half understood by the girl child who paged old issues of Leatherneck and fingered the red stripes and gold eagles and some spore of honor or such breathed in not meant, not meant at all but necessary if she was to carry the dignities of first born and only (for a while) and daddy’s girl sorting nails chopping weeds and shaking hands with cold hard work to be done life long
Confidence thrives on honesty
so you must walk three miles to return six Lincoln cents and go back to the cashier and stand in line for her put-upon face the red worn off her downturned mouth to say ma’am you gave me too much change ma’am and always catch the teacher’s eye doing it right am I doing it right and that would be the same refrain in sweaty sheets many years later, give it your all give it your best give it and still the sidelong glance to ask has this been seen has this been caught
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is
to know every name of every part of the sailboat from gudgeon to headstay and the capitals of the states in their polychrome glory, the Latin names for trees the characters of Shakespeare the agricultural exports of Costa Rica, why the sea is salt, and the flight path of the Arctic tern
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which
I am watching Charleston WV 1932 a movie made by people button-busting proud of their bridges their baby parades their new telephone building and as the film truck rolls through the downtown there on the left is the Hotel Worthy and I realize I’ve been trying to check in for years but not enough hours in the day the sun marching across the sky soundless its billions of bright feet its silent army bound for the routine conflagration
~ ~ ~
You Don’t Leave It on the Side of the Road
(from Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, first appeared in Chautauqua)
Only the skunk
(who is precious in the sight
of the Almighty,
for His first-fingers marked its back
like you’d stroke a cat’s)—
that piss-kitty
just humping across the road
headed for what egg-breaking
or cricket hunting
it does in the night—
when the tire finds it and the wheel,
(the bump too small to be a body
broken but it was), raises up
a smell from earth to heaven
like a mortal soul
clinched for the longest time
to the ankle of its death.
~ ~ ~
Persephone in Suburbia
(from Wake Wake Wake, first appeared in Poetry)
If I stop
stirring for one moment
this delicate sauce will curdle
and my hand, allowed to
rest, will curl into the shape
of a shrunken leaf
bare twigs of the single
chokecherry tree gleam like ruby
pressed into narrow life
in deep basalt
If the sound of children pauses,
the bassoon voice
that underlies their treble
will become plain
and they will freeze
until I race the lengthening shadow
around the cul-de-sac,
touching their blue temples
the days are still warm
but at 4 in the afternoon I find dew
beaded in that wild pocket
between lawn and woods
If for one moment I fail
to pray this house
square on its lot,
chant the laundered curtains
just so, intone perfection,
the lawn will crack apart
along seams marked
by the lime-spreader’s wheels
and there will be no recovery
I know now that the interior
of a pomegranate is a hive,
berries vibrating
their muted life,
waxy membranes impressed with hexagons
as in all things
which move, or are still,
shape and function are preserved
One by one by one
I nibble the red bees.
Clifford Garstang
Clifford Garstang is the co-founder and former managing editor of Prime Number Magazine. He is the author of the Press 53 story collections House of the Ancients and Other Stories; In an Uncharted Country; and What the Zhang Boys Know: A Novel in Stories, which won the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction. He is also the editor of the three-volume anthology series from Press 53, Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, and the author of the novels, The Shaman of Turtle Valley and Oliver’s Travels. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Northwestern University, an MA in English and a JD from Indiana University, an MPA from Harvard University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Bellevue Literary Review, Blackbird, The Hopkins Review, Cream City Review, and Whitefish Review. His book reviews have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Rain Taxi, Washington Independent Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Three Flash Fictions from
House of the Ancients and Other Stories
The Year of the Rooster
Bali is the perfect place for Oliver. It feels like the end of the road, the end of the world, where everything stops. No pressure, no pretense. Just the waves on the beach, constant, tempting. The bars in Kuta, art in Ubud, temples, music, beer, beautiful Australians, men and women.
He’s backpacking with a guy he’d met at the hostel in Bangkok, Barry, a sour kid from Brooklyn who couldn’t wait to get out of Thailand and now can’t wait to get out of Indonesia. He wants to leave, and Oliver wants to stay, maybe forever. So go ahead, Barry, go, have a nice life. Replacing Barry with a girl, or another guy, or both, could lead to a new world of possibilities for Oliver, arousing possibilities. But Barry backs off, says he isn’t serious about leaving, and, to show there’s no hard feelings, he’s got a special treat for Oliver.
Oliver is skeptical. In Bangkok, Barry’s idea of something special was a whorehouse. Not that Oliver didn’t thoroughly enjoy himself, but that was Bangkok. Another planet.
Barry leads him to a café. It looks like all the other cafés, and bottles of Anker beer arrive, along with a menu.
“A very special menu,” Barry says.
Special, indeed: blue meanie omelets, blue meanie soup (with carrots), blue meanies sautéed with onions and garlic.
They order the omelet, to share, and, when it comes, Oliver has to make a choice. This could be a colossal mistake. He’s heard about the effects, that mushrooms are like LSD, which somehow never came his way during college, and, although he’s curious, he’s just plain scared. He wants adventure, he wants experience, but it could kill you, right? Warp your mind?
The omelet is greasy and gritty, barely edible, but that’s hardly the point. When nothing happens, Oliver recalls the first time he smoked pot, how it had no effect. Barry is disappointed, too, and they go in search of a real meal.
As they walk down the sandy street, Barry jumps over the shadow of a palm tree. Oliver sees the same shadow, but suddenly it’s writhing like a snake, and Oliver is rooted where he stands. Barry laughs and jumps back over the shadow, kicking sand onto Oliver’s feet, and then he grabs Oliver, dragging him forward. When Oliver tries to pull free, they both tumble, laughing, into the sand.
As the mushrooms take hold, they return to their inn near the beach, where Oliver hopes to ride out the trip in safety. They sit on the porch, and he grips the railing, afraid he will fall or—and this seems a real possibility—drift into the endless sky. He’s thirsty, thirstier than he has ever been in his life. A beer materializes at his side, and then it is pouring into his mouth, dribbling down his chest.
A rooster struts through the courtyard. It picks and pecks, cocky. Peck. Cock. Prick. Cocky cock. The rooster looks at him and speaks, but he’s speaking Indonesian. Whatever he’s saying, it’s hilarious, and Oliver laughs. He can’t stop. Barry pulls his dick out and pisses on the rooster, which is even funnier. The rooster cackles and leaps away. Barry runs after him, spraying piss on himself, on the rooster, all over. Oliver is laughing so hard he spills his beer, and that makes him laugh more. He falls backward onto the porch. His head lands on the hard wood with a thud.
* * *
Oliver opens his eyes. He remembers the rooster and he remembers hitting his head. He feels his head now and there is a bump. But he’s no longer at the inn. He’s on the beach. He’s wearing shorts, but he’s shirtless and barefoot. His skin burns. The sun is sinking, nearly gone.
He stands, dizzy. On the way to the inn he comes across a shop and asks for beer. His thirst is still epic. He reaches into his pocket, but his wallet is gone. He pats front and back, back and front. He runs back to the beach, anticipating the relief he will feel when he finds the wallet. But the entire beach looks like someone slept there, sand troughs and sand waves, and although he does find a spot that seems right, there is no wallet.
Did he have it when they went for the omelet? It was Barry’s treat, he knew he wouldn’t need money, so maybe it’s in the room? He runs now, with darkness deepening, and finds the inn.
The rooster still struts through the sand. Oliver jumps onto the porch. The door to their room is open, but Barry isn’t there. Barry’s backpack isn’t there, either. Oliver’s is there, though, open, disturbed. He pulls clothes from the pack, his guidebook, his journal, piling it all on the bed, until the pack is empty. His wallet is gone. The linen pouch with his passport is still there, but the travelers’ cheques are not. His camera. The tiny ruby he bargained for in Bangkok. The batik he bought in Jogjakarta. Gone.
He slumps on the porch, as close to tears as he’s been since childhood. If Barry appeared right now he might kill him. Oliver pounds his fist on the porch once—take that—and then again—take that—and again. The violence helps. He pounds the porch again. Better. He pounds the porch one more time and, when he looks up, sees that he’s being watched. In the glow of a lamp across the courtyard, two travelers, tall and blond, a man and a woman, lift bottles of beer in greeting. The man reaches into the bag by his side, pulls out another bottle, and holds it toward Oliver.
Oliver rises. The dizziness—whether from the mushrooms, or the fall, or the sun—is still with him. As he crosses the courtyard, the rooster eyes him warily and then, in a moment of clarity, runs for his life.
In Hoan Kiem Lake
Oliver has just emerged from the Metropole’s air-conditioned lobby and already Hanoi’s damp envelops him. Beneath his shirt, sweat trickles. With a handkerchief he blots his forehead, but it’s unstoppable.
Unstoppable, too, are the boys who accost him each time he leaves the hotel.
“Buy from me,” they shout.
Postcards. Pirated copies of The Sorrow of War, The Quiet American. He once thought of them as entrepreneurs, but now he knows that the boss operates nearby, doling out inventory, collecting receipts. It’s big business, Dickensian.
He waves the boys off and crosses the street, dodging cyclists and motorbikes. His negotiations with the Ministry finished for this trip, he can relax and reflect before flying home tomorrow. He passes behind the Post Office and joins the crowd strolling around Hoan Kiem Lake. The lake’s appeal to the locals puzzles him. Litter mars its surface. Shore trees are stunted. A crumbling pagoda occupies a tiny, lifeless island. Each breeze carries the smell of sewage and decay.
More of the postcard brigade assail him and now there are boys with shoeshine kits. He points to his sneakers and shakes his head, but the boys are relentless.
The heat and damp are finally too much and he claims an empty bench. The black water ripples under a hot breeze. His eyes close. His mind drifts to a dark childhood lake, an unexplained accident.
When he opens his eyes he has company, a woman with a swaddled baby. As if on cue, the baby shrieks. He knows the trick: the woman’s hand inside the blanket has pinched the child to draw sympathy and cash. He’s not heartless, but there’s nothing he can do for her, or for the boys who still hover. A fistful of cash will not help. He’s seen it all, wherever he goes, the beggars and the whores and the boys. What the country needs, he alone cannot provide.
The woman shouts over the baby’s cries. She holds out one hand while the other pinches again, screams renewed. He turns away, but she grabs his arm. She lifts the baby and swings it in the direction of the lake. She holds out her hand again, and when he doesn’t move she points to the lake, swinging the baby over the water.
Oliver understands what she intends, knows the bluff. But he knows, too, that poverty here is beyond crushing. It obliterates. What if this woman isn’t a con? What if she’s come to the point where there is no choice: money, or they both die.
The woman shouts again and swings the baby in an arc that will land it in the lake, beyond reach. Oliver imagines the bundle taking on water, sinking, its cries silenced. In the water he sees the placid faces of the baby and his drowned brother. And in the instant before the woman might let go, he leaps, wraps his arms around her and the howling child, and the three of them sink to the hot, hard ground.
The Learned Lama
Snow fills the Ulaan Baatar morning. As arranged, Oliver meets Ganbat outside the hotel. The boy’s ruddy face is soot-streaked, and Oliver knows he has slept underground, relying on steam pipes to survive another bitter night. Like many streetkids, Ganbat knows beggar English and has offered, for a thousand tögrög, to guide Oliver. Oliver’s here on business, but wants to do the right thing, to help, so he’ll employ Ganbat for one morning, and hope it is enough.
Oliver pays and they both enter the Choijin Lama Monastery. He thinks he sees disapproval on the gatekeeper’s face, but he doesn’t care. Ganbat leads him through the grounds, tries to explain the significance of the temples, but he has too few words.
Ganbat waits outside while Oliver browses in the monastery’s giftshop, a jumble of handicrafts displayed in a traditional ger. He examines a Mongolian woodblock—Buddhist scripture, the clerk tells him—and his eyes settle on a row of tiny bronze statues. He lifts the smallest, no larger than a molar, surprised by its heft. The clerk holds a magnifying glass and indicates the features of the diminutive Learned Lama: pointed cap, raised hands, enigmatic smile. Oliver pays a small fortune for the statue and carries it in his closed fist, sharp edges biting into his flesh.
The snow is thick now, and wet. Ganbat waits for him at the gate, shivering. Oliver shows him the Lama. He presses the little statue into Ganbat’s hand and watches the boy’s eyes grow wide.
Marjorie Hudson
“Providence” was first published in Marjorie Hudson’s collection Accidental Birds of the Carolinas, a PEN/Hemingway Honorable Mention. Resonant with birdcall, redolent with nature, and rich with characters who are lost, seeking a new home in the South, the collection has become a favorite of indie bookstores and book clubs in the South. Her next book, Indigo Field, a novel (forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in spring of 2023), revisits Ambler County, revealing the secret lives of families who live in different worlds, one white, one black and Tuscarora, divided by Quarryville Road and the weight of history.
The writing of Indigo Field is supported by the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, and the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
A Story from
Accidental Birds of the Carolinas
Providence
After Tyler knocked me down that spring and I got so scared, and there was nobody I could talk to about any of it, one day there was a Voice inside me telling me what I had to do. “Make Tyler some noodles with meatballs,” it would say. I’d do it, and he would like it, and we’d get a break from him being so mental for a while. “Wear the red shoes,” it would say, and I’d do it, and Tyler would like it, or I’d feel happier, and I’d feel like I could do something right after all.
Tyler had stopped telling me what to do all the time, “Nina do this and Nina do that,” like he used to do, and now this Voice took over. I don’t know if it was God, but that’s what I thought at the time. Why not? God had better ideas than Tyler ever did.
After that there wasn’t any of that asking my girlfriends what they think or doing the Tarot or wondering if my mom had been wrong about how I should marry the soldier before he went to war. I hadn’t been sure then, but it had made him so happy, and Tyler was such a sweet boy back then, like a fifth grader at heart, with his brush cut and his fast car and his text message love.
When he came back I tried to help. Played his music loud, drank beer with him, let him hang with the buddies and drive around town skidding tires, like he still had some kind of Hummer and was gunning down I-Rocks right and left, on an as-needed basis.
There was nothing wrong with him. He still had his arms and legs. But they had discharged him and didn’t plan to call him back.
I was glad at first.
And then I wasn’t.
One night he was drunk and couldn’t sleep. Sitting on the edge of the bed, groaning, his head in his hands. What’s wrong, baby? I said, tickling his back the way he used to like, but he slammed me to the floor before I knew what was what, and then he’s lying on top of me punching my ribs until they start to crack, one-two-three, and then the choking and the banging of heads and god I guess he saw my tatt shine out in a little patch of moonlight, the Baby T just on my shoulder bone, with a heart and an arrow and a sunburst, his choice, and he fell back on his knees and saw what he had done. I give him credit for this: he picked me up and put me in the car and drove me to the hospital. But he left me there and went driving around and rammed the Viper into a brick wall. No more fast car.
My girlfriends said stop being such a drama queen. Everybody’s got problems. My mom said find a way. He’s a good boy at heart.
But that was just the start of it.
I tried to help him, and he told me some of it, how they made him torture people with electricity just like in that movie Three Kings, you do it until people start cracking their own teeth and spitting them out—not that I believed that, but I know they made him do something horrible for him to make that up. And this was a guy who used to want to raise golden retrievers, NOT pit bulls, before he went over to that hell pit. After that I knew what he saw under his eyelids when he slept, those eyes roving back and forth, back and forth, I was afraid to be in the same bed with him. I could smell something bad in his sweat, something like evil, old chewing gum, blue jeans left in the washer damp for three days. I could almost hear the gunfire sounds and screaming and things blowing up like they do in the movies, but he could hear it for real. For him it was real. He was sour with fear, and his arms and legs looked like snakes rippling and writhing in the sheets.
I couldn’t sleep in that bed. I lay there awake. The only way he could go to sleep was wrapping his arms around me, hanging on for dear life. If I got up, it woke him up too and he would start to yell. His new medication made him even more touchy than before. One night I was lying there, still as possible, trying not to breathe too much air because the ribs still hurt and Tyler was clutching them tight. I started to panic and I knew I would die if I stayed here. I knew Tyler would squeeze the air out of me and I would die. I hadn’t heard the Voice in a while, so I figured it was my turn to talk to it. I made a little bargain. “You tell me what to do, one more time, and I’ll do it.” That calmed me a little. Somewhere in the night Tyler eased his grip on my ribs and I began to breathe, then sleep.
I woke up that fine spring morning to silence in the house and Tyler gone, not even the spooky sound of him smoking: Suck it in. Hiss out. Ahhh.
“Get in the car, Nina,” the Voice said. “Take your stuff.”
I dragged everything I owned out to the ratty old Mustang, which Tyler loved, he called it the Bitch ’Stang, and which he was someday going to fix up but now was the only car we had that worked. It started on the first crank. I blew out of Utica so fast, heading south, that I left my iPod in the charger and my cell phone on the kitchen counter. North was Canada. South would have green leaves, not snow, in April. I didn’t need The Voice to tell me that. I figured that out on my own.
Around Pennsylvania the car radio went out. All I could hear after that was static, and the hum of the tires on asphalt, that one bad tire going shush, shush, shush. About three hours past the North Carolina state line, when God told me I was about to run out of gas and money, I checked the gauge and my purse. God was right. I could not believe the price of gas that spring. (The war did that too.) I pulled off the interstate and went looking for a gas station; but that Voice said, “Turn Here.” I looked. There in the middle of a cow pasture was a big sign that said, “Providence.”
Ha ha, I said. Very funny, Mister Voice.
Of course it was only a Baptist church. It wasn’t like God was painting signs now. I wasn’t that crazy, not yet. The road passed the church and ended by the river at a washed-out bridge.
“Don’t cross that bridge till you come to it,” I heard a voice say. It wasn’t God, this time. It was me.
I got out of the car. I looked around. This was a place I’d been looking for my whole life. There didn’t seem to be any people in it.
The river was wild and brown, running over rocks, and purple vines were growing over everything. Together, the river and vines smelled like grape jelly and mud. Somebody’s sneakers were hanging in a tree over the water. Next to the river was an old stone building with the roof caved in. On the other side of the river was a long low red brick building, with tall chimneys and broken out windows. I already loved it.
“Looks like the end of the road,” I heard my own voice say. Yes, I was already talking to myself, an early sign of madness, my mother used to say.
I turned around and looked back up the hill. There was an old whitewashed store with a tin roof that was caved in a little on one side. I got in the Bitch ’Stang and rumbled back up the hill, running on fumes.
It was only April, and it was already hot. A trickle of sweat slipped down my scalp, onto my neck.
The store had a big sign on the front, not as clean and new as the Baptist church sign, but faded and peeling and with a word that looked like “Mississippi” on it, only with the “Miss” part missing and the end screwed up:
Sissipahaw, NC
Pop. 41
A square little American flag, hanging off a pole. A soda bottle rack out front. Some crates of potatoes and onions. This place was just like the movies where you see old Southern guys spitting tobacco and dusting off moldy hams hanging from the rafters and playing banjo. But it was deserted. Nobody on the porch. I cupped my eyes against the window. Dark inside. Cooler, maybe. Was it even open? Damn, I hoped so. I needed gas.
I didn’t hear any Voice saying “This Is It” or “Yes it’s open.” I went in anyway.
The screen door creaked. It was too dark to see much of anything. Just a long row of dusty cans and a soda cooler, the kind that looks like a box freezer with its own bottle opener set into the side. Way in the back, something moved. Something was coming out from behind a counter and heading my way.
“Hep you?” a squeaky little Southern lady voice said. A face popped out at me like a tiny Cabbage Patch doll.
I almost ran.
Instead, I said, “I want a Diet Coke and a place to live. Cheap.”
“We got RC,” she said, and shuffled back to the cooler to pull one out for me. It wasn’t Diet, it wasn’t even in a can. It was in a chipped up old bottle like they had in the fifties. It had ice on the outside. I took a swig. Cold. Sweet. I missed the chemical taste of Diet, the way it sizzles on your teeth like it’s zapping the enamel.
I paid her for the RC and she said, “Place to live? They’s an empty house for every one’s got people in it here. I know one you could have. Fifty dollars a month.” She said it like fifty dollars was too much. Like it was a lot of money. Like she was trying to get away with something, hoping to. “It’s got furniture already in it,” she added.
She didn’t even come up to my shoulder, and I am none too tall. She kept clicking her dentures, big yellow teeth. But she had sharp blue eyes. She was looking me over like I was some kind of unusual beetle that just crawled out from under a rock. Staring at my arm band tattoo and my hand tattoo and the white place where my wedding band used to be—I’d long since put it in the ashtray. She stared at my bra straps sticking out and ear studs, Okay, I have multiple piercings, want to see my belly button?
The Voice said, Rent the House.
“Sold,” I said. I went out and pumped some gas. She watched me from the porch. Making sure I wasn’t going to run out without paying. Looking hard at the “New York” under the mud on the license plate, not knowing that for me, that meant Utica.
What the hell was I doing in the South? It was all crazy rednecks here and little old ladies and banjo pickers. I was thinking this was all a mistake, but then I remembered the Voice was in charge and I got my confidence back.
I flipped my hair so the cracker lady could see just how dark the roots were and how cheap my earrings were. She looked. I reached behind the front seat and pulled out six ten-dollar bills. Went up to her and put it in her hand. She took it. Yankee or no Yankee, my cash was good.
She smiled. Stretched those lips wide enough to see all those teeth and bright pink fake gums at once. “It’s just up the main road and take the left fork at the river. Second house on the left. They’s a dog likes to sit on the porch. They ain’t no lock on the door, but I can put you a padlock on it if you want.” She looked out the window and then back at me. “Looks like you come a long ways in that car of yours,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, sucking down the cold sweet pop. “About a thousand miles.” I slipped that old chipped-up bottle that must have been around since 1959 into the wooden case of empties on the porch.
“You got a dime coming to you,” she said.
I took it. No point wasting dimes.
I got the ’Stang to chug up that road to the house. I knew which one it was right away. White paint, green shutters, screen door hanging open. Scarred-up, three-legged dog blocking the door, but nobody home.
The dog thunked his tail and hunched over to the side to let me pass. This was his porch, apparently. I was just visiting.
Inside, slat wood walls had gaps between them that looked like they were filled with dirt. One room on the right, and one room on the left. Kitchen in back. The floor boards had places where knots had fallen out and bugs could crawl in. Maybe snakes. Spiders had made a web all across one of the windows. It shone like silver hair in the sun. I walked to the back door. Flung it open.
You could see the river shining down there, through all the purple vines. It was such a high, rushing sound I thought airplanes were going over at first. But it kept going, changing key sometimes, but playing mostly the same tune. You could hear it all through the house with the door open. It was a lonely sound.
“This is It, Nina,” I said out loud. “This is the Place.”
I had never been in a place like this before, that felt like someplace you loved when you were two years old, too young to really remember anything but how it sounded, how it smelled. Dirt and mud and grapes and old paper. It smelled musty and old and sweet. My shoes felt good on the floorboards.
I was getting used to lonesome.
“Wonder what Tyler’s doing now?” I said out loud. “I bet he’s pissed.” I said it like it was a joke, like I had gotten away with something. But then I felt an awful twinge. I had done something terrible. I had run away from Tyler, stolen his Bitch ’Stang, and left him to die in his own private hell.
All the way down here, I’d put off thinking about it. Every time it came up that I had screwed him, I would listen, and the Voice would say, “Keep driving.” But now that I was holding still it caught up with me. I could see him sitting on our bed, crying, making phone calls, going into the closet for his gun, putting it against his head. He used to talk about that being the way to go. He used to talk about how we could go together that way. One after the other. Right there on the bed.
“Go,” the Voice said now. Only one thing to do. Walk to the river through the bushes and trees just to get away. I wasn’t far enough yet. Many rivers to cross, Jimmy Cliff used to sing, can’t find my way over. Yeah, fellah, I know what you mean.
The weeds slapped my jeans, I stumbled over hidden rocks and stumps, got caught in brambles until they held me, completely stuck, in one place. Just when I was about to give up and start to cry, I saw a path. A path like deer would make, or Indians. Just wide enough for one foot at a time. The brambles gave way. I stepped down the path and followed it all the way to the side of the river, rested my hand on the trunk of a huge old tree with white bark. The trunk of the tree rose up above my head like a long, smooth, white muscle, with scars where someone had carved a heart and initials in the skin. Below, the river was ridged and riffling. Were there alligators in rivers like this? I had no idea. The water made a chattering sound, like waitresses gossiping in a coffee shop. I couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but I listened anyway. It made the vision of Tyler dead go away.
* * *
There’s one thing I’m good at, besides running away, and that’s cleaning up. That house needed cleaning and I went crazy doing it. I cleaned the petrified mice out from behind the stove. I cleaned the toilet ring with a pumice stone from my nail kit. I swept off the front porch. Somebody across the street opened a curtain and peered out. I swept off the back stoop. I could hear a TV talking next door and saw some laundry hanging that hadn’t been there before. I had neighbors. They were so close by they could watch my every move. It creeped me out. I wanted to be alone, just me and my Voice, dammit. I had come all this way to get away from people.
I went back inside and sat on the chair. There was one stuffed chair, two straight-backs, a small table, and a bed with a bare mattress, crackling plastic cover on top. “What are you doing, Nina?” I said to myself. “Did you come all this way to hide inside your house?”
I answered my own question: “Yes. Yes I did. That’s exactly what I plan to do.”
* * *
I took the plastic off and slept on the bare mattress that night, blue ticking lines like shadows across the musty cloth and hard buttons. I had run away without bringing any sheets. I curled up under my jean jacket. One of those buttons kept digging into my ribs. I tossed and turned. Dreaming about Tyler. Tyler had caught up with me.
I dreamed about Tyler smoking, his face gray and dead. I dreamed about our wedding day, his face pink and eager at the end of the aisle. I dreamed about his kiss, his tongue, frantic in my mouth as if he had something to say that he could never quite get out. I dreamed about the time he went with me to my parents’ house in Fairfield, and how he held on to me in that little bed they gave us while I cried and cried, hating them for who they are, for getting old and staying the same, for making me just like them, old fuddy duddy boring Nina. How he brushed his hand up and down my spine, kept whispering, “Nina, Nina, you’re not that bad. Not that bad.”
I woke up with the moonlight spangled all over my legs and arms. There were strange sounds in the night, frogs and howling dogs, and something that might have been a lion’s roar. Or was it the river? A hoot owl called, then stopped. I listened for it. But it was done calling.
* * *
That morning I opened my eyes and remembered that somebody said, the week before I left, they saw him with that bartender chick, a brunette.
Let her get her ribs crunched.
Let her play possum and feel like dying. See how long that lasts.
* * *
I took all the old newspapers out from the cracks around the windows. Started a list of things to get: Caulk. Mister Clean. The paper came out in bits and pieces, yellow crackling wads. I read some of them. People dying in 1917. Refugees escaping Europe. I put the papers in the wood stove and lit a match, and just as it flared, a flock of black birds flew down the chimney into my face and tore around the room. Black ashes and wing marks all over the walls, my shirt, my face. Finally one of them found the open door and the rest followed. I stood there, mouth open, tasting cinders. “Watch what you do here, Nina,” I said out loud. “There are live things in the chimneys.”
I went to the board wall and listened. Things were living in there too, I was sure of it. It was humming.
Nobody knew I was here. Girlfriends, mom, Tyler, nobody. I would sell the car on eBay as soon as I could, keep the cops from tracking it. I would sell the ring, six diamond chips and a sapphire, worth maybe a hundred bucks. I was going to start over. Just then a bird sang on the back porch. It sounded so happy.
I sat down on the floor and cried my eyes out.
* * *
After a while I went out and sat on the back stoop. My face felt like the balled up Kleenex in my hand, dried into a hard crust. The three-legged dog came hunching around the side of the house, hopped up and sat next to me. I wanted to kick him but I was too tired. Then I saw it. Somebody had left a note under a plate of pie on the top step:
I come by to see if you wanted some strawberry pie but you cudn’t hear me with yr TV on I guess. — Yr. nebor Ruby.
P.S. Dont mind my dog Roger, he likes yr. porch better than mine.
My next door neighbor’s name was Ruby. The dog’s name was Roger. I was sitting on a porch that belonged to a dog.
Anybody with any sense would have known that wasn’t a TV.
And what in the hell is strawberry pie? In Utica, we had blueberries and lemon pie and apple pie. I’ve never seen a ripe strawberry there before June. But this was a wedge of red whole berries, some kind of clear glaze on top, toasted crust underneath. I picked a fat red berry off the top and popped it in my mouth. Such sweetness, melting on my tongue. I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before, or breakfast this morning. I guess I was on a starvation diet, trying to disappear. But suddenly I was hungry.
I picked the pie off the plate and shoveled it in. Crumbs falling down my shirt, red glaze dripping. The dog, Roger, wagged his tail, raised his head, and sniffed. I gave him the last bite. “Well, Roger, I guess we both like it,” I said.
He licked his chops and grinned.
I was finally talking to an actual living thing who lived on the material plane. I said, “If I talk to a dog, I’m not crazy, right?”
Roger nodded.
I didn’t need the Voice to tell me what to do. You eat somebody’s pie, you’ve got to thank them.
I went over and knocked on the door. Roger stood there beside me, wagging. It didn’t seem like he had any trouble getting around with only three legs. He was happy just to be alive and visiting with the living. I could hear somebody coming. I took in a breath, felt my ribs expand. The door opened. The cracker lady stood there smiling, her pink gums shining.
I could not speak, but then a voice came and finally said, “Hello.”