Adult Author Prose
First Place
Still Life by Karen Stone
The author has requested that her piece not be published.
Still Life by Karen Stone
The author has requested that her piece not be published.
Second Place
Songs of Spring by Naomi Wark
Songs of Spring by Naomi Wark
1906- Onboard the Athlon
From the top deck of the Athlon, Pearl shivered. Sinclair Inlet lay so faint in the distance it faded to a mere speck. A speck. That’s how big Pearl felt as the steamer sliced through the vastness of Puget Sound. Only unlike the steamer, she had no sense of direction, no definite course for her future besides the lofty goal of becoming the first person in her family to graduate from high school. The last time she’d been on the Athlon was two years earlier when she attended her cousin, Charlotte’s wedding, now she was moving into Charlotte’s empty room to attend Seattle High. Waves lapped at the hull of the steamer. A sprinkle of salt hung on the breeze and Pearl licked the salty spray from her lips.
Her teacher, Miss Ambrose, first raised the question about her future prior to the final eighth grade exam. “Have you given any consideration to what you will do next year?”
Embarrassed, Pearl admitted she’d given it little thought. “Since there’s no high-school in Port Orchard, I’d have to go away to school. Mama’s busy with my little sister and the farm. Papa works in Shelton and only comes home once or twice a month. When he’s home, there are chores that require my help. Even though my parents want me to continue with my studies. I don’t think I can leave. My family needs me.”
From the creases of concern across Miss Ambrose’s forehead, Pearl guessed her teacher had heard similar tales from other students many times before. Miss Ambrose placed her hands on Pearl’s shoulders, and gazed at her. “It’s often hard on families, but you owe it to yourself, and your family, to further your education if you can.” Miss Ambrose shook her head without attempting to hide her dismay. “You’re a smart young woman. Think about it.”
Standing on the bow, gazing out over the water, white foam churned beneath the hull like drifts of snow, cold and threatening. Crossing the immense body of water alone, a shiver surged through her as she remembered a sister ship of the Mosquito Fleet, the Clallam, sank two years earlier resulting in the drowning of more than fifty souls. The thought of the passengers leaving home, never to return, washed a sinking feeling of unease over her. What if something happened to her in the strange big city? Engulfed in indecision and uncertainty, Pearl shuddered with the same anxiety she felt last spring talking with Miss Ambrose. Pearl gripped the side rail so tight her fingers turned red and stiffened. Though she loved being an only child, after Edna’s birth, Pearl delighted in having someone with whom she could share her days. Now, moving away, leaving Edna behind, the loneliness she’d known as an only child would be felt again not only by her, but by Edna as well. She closed her eyes hoping to erase the memory of her promise to Edna to always being there. Alone, adrift on the vast ocean, clouded in the unknown, her spirits as damp as her hair from the salt water spray, Pearl went inside to sit and wait for the boat to dock.
A middle-aged man about a decade younger than her father, with a clean-shaven face and a kind smile, scooted across the varnished mahogany bench to make room for her. He nodded. “Please, Miss, have a seat.”
Tendering a smile, Pearl set her luggage down and smoothed the navy-blue twill skirt Mother had made especially for the occasion, and sat next to the man. The cold from the wood bench penetrated her clothing. She shifted her position and clutched her arms to her chest and rubbed them.
“Traveling alone?” The stranger eyed the two pieces of baggage at her feet.
Uncomfortable and uncertain how to respond, Pearl pulled the suitcases closer and glanced around the numerous passengers lining the many benches. She suppressed her nervousness. “Yes sir.”
“Who, or what, takes you to the big city?”
“I’m going to live with my mother’s older sister and her husband, in Seattle, while I attend high school.”
The man’s head bobbed with obvious pleasure. “I believe that is wise. I imagine these modern times are going to require much more education than was required in my day. I consider myself quite lucky. My parents were hardly well to do, but I managed to become the first in my family not only to go to high school, but to attend university. My name’s Lucien. Doctor Lucien Chapman.”
“I’m Pearl Mooney. Pleased to meet you, Doctor Chapman.” Pearl took in the stranger’s dark suit and the top hat sitting on the doctor’s lap, and the black bag at his feet. “Do you like being a doctor?”
“It’s hard work. Long days, but it’s extremely rewarding.”
Pearl nodded her understanding. “Do you know Dr. Wilkes in Port Orchard?”
“No. I’m sorry, I don’t. My practice is in Seattle. I’m on my way back home. I take the steamer once a week to visit the navy yard in Bremerton and help the naval doctor there with his needs.”
Pearl sat enthralled by the accomplished man who put her at ease and spoke to her like an adult, not a child, though she had no clue as to what to say to him.
“Do you know what course of study you wish to pursue?”
Having never considered her future, other than not wishing to become a seamstress like her mother, Pearl blurted out the first thing she thought of. “Do I need to go to the university if I want to be a nurse?”
“Ah.” Doctor Chapman rubbed his chin. “Not at this time. Most nurses don’t have even their high school diploma. Heck, when I became a doctor near twenty years ago, most doctors didn’t attend any university or medical school. Still today, most don’t have medical degrees but I expect it won’t be long until it’s required. The field of medical arts is growing and changing rapidly. Can’t say I’m up to date on the latest, but I can assure you, your high school education will pay off.”
Chewing on her lip, Pearl turned to peer out the window. It seemed a lot brighter outside. The meeting with Dr. Chapman and her memory of Edna’s birth, sparked a thought. Perhaps she would study to become a nurse. The Athlon gently turned. Looking through the big windows, the distant shoreline came into view and reached out to the water like welcoming arms. A short distance beyond the waterfront, steep hillsides rose high above the city. Not far from the Coleman dock, Pearl spied what she guessed was the towering Alaska building which Papa told her stretched over two-hundred feet into the sky and was the tallest building in Seattle. A group of seagulls, keeping pace with the boat, flew alongside, welcoming her to her new life. Now, with the skyline of Seattle within view, a last-minute tremble of fear gripped her.
“You’ll be fine. I’m sure you feel the pressure of not only making your parents proud, but also your teacher and the town.”
Pearl nodded. He’d plucked the words right from her head.
“It’s okay to be nervous. But remember, in spite of the uncertainty, the vastness of your opportunities is endless.”
Out the window, the sound stretched endless. Pearl swallowed. Dr. Chapman was right. Her whole future stretched out before her. She had the power now to sink or to swim. As the Athlon jockeyed into its place at the dock in Elliot Bay, Pearl’s optimism soared as tall as the clock tower of the Colman Terminal building. She thanked Dr. Chapman, lifted her luggage along with a boost of self-confidence, and marched down the plankway. Her stomach churned and her head spun, panicked at the thought of reaching the bottom with no one there to meet her.
On shore, tall stacks from port-side businesses spit dark sooty smoke into the otherwise clear sky. Pearl glanced ahead to the hillside where her aunt and uncle lived. Massive mounds of dirt from the work being done to knock down hills to level the city and make it easier to navigate, rose like misplaced crumbling forts amidst the modern brick castle looking buildings that extended to the sky. Gulls squawked overhead, diving toward the disembarking passengers hoping for tidbits of food.
Above the noise a man’s voice rose from the hubbub of disembarking passengers. “Pearl Mooney.” His arm shot into the air with a grand waving motion. The knot in Pearl’s stomach released as she returned the wave. Stepping out of the crowd, Pearl looked back across the water, past the ships and tug boats, to the mass of land on the other side. Back to where her journey began a mere hour earlier. Yet here in Seattle with its skyline streaked with towers jutting into the sky, Pearl felt a world away. And she knew her journey was just beginning.
Her teacher, Miss Ambrose, first raised the question about her future prior to the final eighth grade exam. “Have you given any consideration to what you will do next year?”
Embarrassed, Pearl admitted she’d given it little thought. “Since there’s no high-school in Port Orchard, I’d have to go away to school. Mama’s busy with my little sister and the farm. Papa works in Shelton and only comes home once or twice a month. When he’s home, there are chores that require my help. Even though my parents want me to continue with my studies. I don’t think I can leave. My family needs me.”
From the creases of concern across Miss Ambrose’s forehead, Pearl guessed her teacher had heard similar tales from other students many times before. Miss Ambrose placed her hands on Pearl’s shoulders, and gazed at her. “It’s often hard on families, but you owe it to yourself, and your family, to further your education if you can.” Miss Ambrose shook her head without attempting to hide her dismay. “You’re a smart young woman. Think about it.”
Standing on the bow, gazing out over the water, white foam churned beneath the hull like drifts of snow, cold and threatening. Crossing the immense body of water alone, a shiver surged through her as she remembered a sister ship of the Mosquito Fleet, the Clallam, sank two years earlier resulting in the drowning of more than fifty souls. The thought of the passengers leaving home, never to return, washed a sinking feeling of unease over her. What if something happened to her in the strange big city? Engulfed in indecision and uncertainty, Pearl shuddered with the same anxiety she felt last spring talking with Miss Ambrose. Pearl gripped the side rail so tight her fingers turned red and stiffened. Though she loved being an only child, after Edna’s birth, Pearl delighted in having someone with whom she could share her days. Now, moving away, leaving Edna behind, the loneliness she’d known as an only child would be felt again not only by her, but by Edna as well. She closed her eyes hoping to erase the memory of her promise to Edna to always being there. Alone, adrift on the vast ocean, clouded in the unknown, her spirits as damp as her hair from the salt water spray, Pearl went inside to sit and wait for the boat to dock.
A middle-aged man about a decade younger than her father, with a clean-shaven face and a kind smile, scooted across the varnished mahogany bench to make room for her. He nodded. “Please, Miss, have a seat.”
Tendering a smile, Pearl set her luggage down and smoothed the navy-blue twill skirt Mother had made especially for the occasion, and sat next to the man. The cold from the wood bench penetrated her clothing. She shifted her position and clutched her arms to her chest and rubbed them.
“Traveling alone?” The stranger eyed the two pieces of baggage at her feet.
Uncomfortable and uncertain how to respond, Pearl pulled the suitcases closer and glanced around the numerous passengers lining the many benches. She suppressed her nervousness. “Yes sir.”
“Who, or what, takes you to the big city?”
“I’m going to live with my mother’s older sister and her husband, in Seattle, while I attend high school.”
The man’s head bobbed with obvious pleasure. “I believe that is wise. I imagine these modern times are going to require much more education than was required in my day. I consider myself quite lucky. My parents were hardly well to do, but I managed to become the first in my family not only to go to high school, but to attend university. My name’s Lucien. Doctor Lucien Chapman.”
“I’m Pearl Mooney. Pleased to meet you, Doctor Chapman.” Pearl took in the stranger’s dark suit and the top hat sitting on the doctor’s lap, and the black bag at his feet. “Do you like being a doctor?”
“It’s hard work. Long days, but it’s extremely rewarding.”
Pearl nodded her understanding. “Do you know Dr. Wilkes in Port Orchard?”
“No. I’m sorry, I don’t. My practice is in Seattle. I’m on my way back home. I take the steamer once a week to visit the navy yard in Bremerton and help the naval doctor there with his needs.”
Pearl sat enthralled by the accomplished man who put her at ease and spoke to her like an adult, not a child, though she had no clue as to what to say to him.
“Do you know what course of study you wish to pursue?”
Having never considered her future, other than not wishing to become a seamstress like her mother, Pearl blurted out the first thing she thought of. “Do I need to go to the university if I want to be a nurse?”
“Ah.” Doctor Chapman rubbed his chin. “Not at this time. Most nurses don’t have even their high school diploma. Heck, when I became a doctor near twenty years ago, most doctors didn’t attend any university or medical school. Still today, most don’t have medical degrees but I expect it won’t be long until it’s required. The field of medical arts is growing and changing rapidly. Can’t say I’m up to date on the latest, but I can assure you, your high school education will pay off.”
Chewing on her lip, Pearl turned to peer out the window. It seemed a lot brighter outside. The meeting with Dr. Chapman and her memory of Edna’s birth, sparked a thought. Perhaps she would study to become a nurse. The Athlon gently turned. Looking through the big windows, the distant shoreline came into view and reached out to the water like welcoming arms. A short distance beyond the waterfront, steep hillsides rose high above the city. Not far from the Coleman dock, Pearl spied what she guessed was the towering Alaska building which Papa told her stretched over two-hundred feet into the sky and was the tallest building in Seattle. A group of seagulls, keeping pace with the boat, flew alongside, welcoming her to her new life. Now, with the skyline of Seattle within view, a last-minute tremble of fear gripped her.
“You’ll be fine. I’m sure you feel the pressure of not only making your parents proud, but also your teacher and the town.”
Pearl nodded. He’d plucked the words right from her head.
“It’s okay to be nervous. But remember, in spite of the uncertainty, the vastness of your opportunities is endless.”
Out the window, the sound stretched endless. Pearl swallowed. Dr. Chapman was right. Her whole future stretched out before her. She had the power now to sink or to swim. As the Athlon jockeyed into its place at the dock in Elliot Bay, Pearl’s optimism soared as tall as the clock tower of the Colman Terminal building. She thanked Dr. Chapman, lifted her luggage along with a boost of self-confidence, and marched down the plankway. Her stomach churned and her head spun, panicked at the thought of reaching the bottom with no one there to meet her.
On shore, tall stacks from port-side businesses spit dark sooty smoke into the otherwise clear sky. Pearl glanced ahead to the hillside where her aunt and uncle lived. Massive mounds of dirt from the work being done to knock down hills to level the city and make it easier to navigate, rose like misplaced crumbling forts amidst the modern brick castle looking buildings that extended to the sky. Gulls squawked overhead, diving toward the disembarking passengers hoping for tidbits of food.
Above the noise a man’s voice rose from the hubbub of disembarking passengers. “Pearl Mooney.” His arm shot into the air with a grand waving motion. The knot in Pearl’s stomach released as she returned the wave. Stepping out of the crowd, Pearl looked back across the water, past the ships and tug boats, to the mass of land on the other side. Back to where her journey began a mere hour earlier. Yet here in Seattle with its skyline streaked with towers jutting into the sky, Pearl felt a world away. And she knew her journey was just beginning.
Honorable Mention
Harley & Gramps by Tom Frank
Harley & Gramps by Tom Frank
Harley didn’t want to go in. Visiting Gramps at the retirement home every Saturday was Mom’s idea, not hers. She loved him, but the place gave her the creeps. The vacant stares, the garbled speech, and the odors–stale coffee, boiled vegetables, cheap air freshener, and the ever-present human wastes. Only fifteen, strangers who mistook her for a relative and begged to be taken home, frightened and embarrassed her.
She shifted the heavy book bag from one shoulder to the other. Each week, Gramps sent her to the library with a scribbled list of titles to collect. Today, the librarian grilled her about the authors and seemed peeved at Harley’s vague answers.
Anyway, it was Gramps’ compulsion. Her lips puckered in an amateur’s kiss, forming one of the week’s vocabulary words. Obsession or delusion. She muttered two more. Either qualified. He always pestered her about the last book she’d read. As if she had time for anything but homework. The Last Book. He said it like an incantation, holy words.
Best to get it over with. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the door open. The lobby was mercifully empty. She followed the corridor to Gramps’ room. A blast of hot air washed over her when she entered. Gramps sat in his wheelchair staring out the window. The book he’d been reading lay face down on his lap, his bifocals perched on top of his head.
“Hey, Gramps.”
“Hi, Harley.”
She held out the book bag. “Only got four today.” She showed him the list. “I put two on hold. They’re circled.”
He pointed to the dresser. “Next week’s list and the returns are over there.”
While Gramps examined the new selections, Harley twisted the thermostat dial. She shed her coat, plopped on the single bed, and ran her hand over the nubbly chenille spread. She shivered, feeling the tingle run from palm to elbow.
“What are you reading?”
“No time this week,” Harley temporized. “Big vocab test coming up.”
Gramps shook his head. “Make time, Harley. Read one of these.”
Some were thick, some slender, like Plato’s Meno. Was he Greek or Roman? How did Gramps come up with these lists? Last summer he read books about a scientist named Feynman, including a weird one with throat singers from Mongolia.
“Maybe next week, Gramps.”
He frowned, knowing she was putting him off. “Don’t wait too long. You’ll miss out, never get to the one that will change your life.”
They chatted until it was time to leave. Waiting for her mother, Harley felt conflicted: relieved her weekly chore was over, but unsettled, aimless, de-sul-tor-y. She wished something would happen to change her life; she doubted a book would do it.
Oskar squinted at his notepad. Either his handwriting had gotten worse or his eyesight had, maybe both, given his age. He closed one eye hoping the letters would come into focus. They did, long enough to add the last title.
He removed his glasses and polished the lenses with a shirttail. The cataract surgery had been six years ago. The eye doctor warned him his vision might soon be uncorrectable. If he couldn’t read, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Would Harley read to him? Keeping the residents entertained instead of wandering away, occupied the staff. Maybe a volunteer; those kids always needed more hours for their college applications.
He tossed the pad on the bed. Who was he kidding? His reading list was too long and he had too little time left to rely on someone else. A sense of impending loss came over him, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since Gretchen became ill ten years back.
He rolled his wheelchair to the nightstand. Inside its drawer lay a cloth-bound book, the blue cover sun-faded to near gray, though the gold lettering on the spine remained sharp. A card three-quarters through marked the last page he’d read to Gretchen. The last book they read together; maybe the last one he’d finish.
Gretchen claimed old books had to be read to sustain their fragile souls. A quirky notion, but he loved her for it. A person had written these words, perhaps spent a lifetime crafting them. She chose authors he would never have encountered, women and men once popular, now forgotten. Together, they assembled the collection in his closet, hard to find volumes most libraries had already culled. What would happen to it after he was gone?
= = =
Harley consulted Gramps’ list. Sometimes she recognized a title from old movies Mom made her watch, like the one about that black bird statue. Never any westerns or thrillers, which surprised her. With little to do beside watch the traffic outside his window, she figured reading was an antidote to boredom, a vaccine, maybe a placebo. Wouldn’t be her first choice.
Where was the last one? Right, in the fiction aisle. She’d never seen so many old books before. Didn’t the library ever weed them out? There it was, a thin softcover book wedged between two fat volumes. Another one-name author–Bryher–like that Greek philosopher from last week (she’d had to look him up). Those old-fashioned writers always went by their last name: Shakespeare, Hemingway, Dickens, Tolstoy, Chekov, Thoreau. She hated English class, nothing but ancient authors and multisyllable vocabulary words.
Outside Gramps’ door, Harley wondered how many books he’d read. Hundreds, probably. He refused the e-reader Mom offered. Said he preferred the heft and smell of real books, the paper’s rustle turning a page, and believed touch could resurrect, resuscitate, revitalize a long-dead writer. Darn, all those words had turned into an ear-worm.
She knocked and stopped in the doorway, surprised to see him propped up in bed instead of in the wheelchair.
“Uh, hi, Gramps,” she mumbled.
“Hi, Harley.”
She didn’t like the rasp in his voice. She dumped the books on the bed.
“Got the whole list, Gramps.”
“Thanks, Harley. Look in the nightstand. There’s a book in the drawer.”
She retrieved the book, another old one; no dust jacket, with a get-well card inserted near the end. She held it out to him but Gramps shook his head.
“Take it and read up to the book mark. We’ll finish it together next week.”
Harley fanned the pages and wrinkled her nose. Even her textbooks smelled better. What made Gramps so insistent about what she read? What did it matter what he read? He was already old. She didn’t want to think about it but the end of his life got closer every day. What would it matter afterward what he read last, or ever?
“Sure, Gramps.” What else could she say?
= = =
Saturday afternoon, Harley returned to the retirement home with Gramps’ book. From the title, she’d assumed it was about chemistry. Instead it was a futuristic novel about firemen starting fires, not putting them out.
Caught up in the story, Harley read past the bookmark to the end. She lay on her bed for a long while, taken by how closely the novel mirrored the world around her. Wall-sized tv’s may not be the norm, but earbuds were ubiquitous, and personalized ads and news feeds flashed on every device, an electronic epidemic, maybe a pandemic.
She envied the young woman, the story’s catalyst, independent in mind and spirit. Able to upend a fireman’s life simply by asking if he was happy. The fireman hadn’t been happy; no one seemed happy in spite of their giant tv’s, fast cars, and amusement parks.
Harley sympathized.
= = =
She read the final sentence, closed the book, and offered it to Gramps.
“Keep it. Read it again sometime.”
Harley slipped it into her bag and felt a thrill imagining it was against the law.
“What an odd idea,” she said. “Firemen burning books.”
“A powerful image,” Gramps agreed.
Harley remembered Gramps’ closet library. He would not surrender it willingly. “That would never really happen, right?”
Gramps sighed. “I’d like to hope not. People try to remove books from libraries and schools all the time. Even that one,” he gestured at her bag, “was on the banned list for a while.”
She bristled at the idea strangers might tell her what she could or couldn’t read. The strength of her reaction surprised her.
“Do you have next week’s list.”
Gramps shook his head. “My eyesight is getting too weak. I’ll need you to read for me. You make the list.”
“I won’t know what to pick.”
“Choose for yourself, Harley. Don’t let others make decisions for you, not even me.”
= =
Harley waited for her mother, excited and anxious over her new responsibility. Pulling any old book from the shelf wouldn’t do. Her choices had to be worth Gramps’ time, and hers, too. She could ask the all-knowing internet for recommendations but that lacked panache, finesse, might be a faux pas. It would be someone else’s list to follow, like the weekly vocab words.
No, she needed to choose for herself.
She shifted the heavy book bag from one shoulder to the other. Each week, Gramps sent her to the library with a scribbled list of titles to collect. Today, the librarian grilled her about the authors and seemed peeved at Harley’s vague answers.
Anyway, it was Gramps’ compulsion. Her lips puckered in an amateur’s kiss, forming one of the week’s vocabulary words. Obsession or delusion. She muttered two more. Either qualified. He always pestered her about the last book she’d read. As if she had time for anything but homework. The Last Book. He said it like an incantation, holy words.
Best to get it over with. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the door open. The lobby was mercifully empty. She followed the corridor to Gramps’ room. A blast of hot air washed over her when she entered. Gramps sat in his wheelchair staring out the window. The book he’d been reading lay face down on his lap, his bifocals perched on top of his head.
“Hey, Gramps.”
“Hi, Harley.”
She held out the book bag. “Only got four today.” She showed him the list. “I put two on hold. They’re circled.”
He pointed to the dresser. “Next week’s list and the returns are over there.”
While Gramps examined the new selections, Harley twisted the thermostat dial. She shed her coat, plopped on the single bed, and ran her hand over the nubbly chenille spread. She shivered, feeling the tingle run from palm to elbow.
“What are you reading?”
“No time this week,” Harley temporized. “Big vocab test coming up.”
Gramps shook his head. “Make time, Harley. Read one of these.”
Some were thick, some slender, like Plato’s Meno. Was he Greek or Roman? How did Gramps come up with these lists? Last summer he read books about a scientist named Feynman, including a weird one with throat singers from Mongolia.
“Maybe next week, Gramps.”
He frowned, knowing she was putting him off. “Don’t wait too long. You’ll miss out, never get to the one that will change your life.”
They chatted until it was time to leave. Waiting for her mother, Harley felt conflicted: relieved her weekly chore was over, but unsettled, aimless, de-sul-tor-y. She wished something would happen to change her life; she doubted a book would do it.
Oskar squinted at his notepad. Either his handwriting had gotten worse or his eyesight had, maybe both, given his age. He closed one eye hoping the letters would come into focus. They did, long enough to add the last title.
He removed his glasses and polished the lenses with a shirttail. The cataract surgery had been six years ago. The eye doctor warned him his vision might soon be uncorrectable. If he couldn’t read, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Would Harley read to him? Keeping the residents entertained instead of wandering away, occupied the staff. Maybe a volunteer; those kids always needed more hours for their college applications.
He tossed the pad on the bed. Who was he kidding? His reading list was too long and he had too little time left to rely on someone else. A sense of impending loss came over him, a feeling he hadn’t experienced since Gretchen became ill ten years back.
He rolled his wheelchair to the nightstand. Inside its drawer lay a cloth-bound book, the blue cover sun-faded to near gray, though the gold lettering on the spine remained sharp. A card three-quarters through marked the last page he’d read to Gretchen. The last book they read together; maybe the last one he’d finish.
Gretchen claimed old books had to be read to sustain their fragile souls. A quirky notion, but he loved her for it. A person had written these words, perhaps spent a lifetime crafting them. She chose authors he would never have encountered, women and men once popular, now forgotten. Together, they assembled the collection in his closet, hard to find volumes most libraries had already culled. What would happen to it after he was gone?
= = =
Harley consulted Gramps’ list. Sometimes she recognized a title from old movies Mom made her watch, like the one about that black bird statue. Never any westerns or thrillers, which surprised her. With little to do beside watch the traffic outside his window, she figured reading was an antidote to boredom, a vaccine, maybe a placebo. Wouldn’t be her first choice.
Where was the last one? Right, in the fiction aisle. She’d never seen so many old books before. Didn’t the library ever weed them out? There it was, a thin softcover book wedged between two fat volumes. Another one-name author–Bryher–like that Greek philosopher from last week (she’d had to look him up). Those old-fashioned writers always went by their last name: Shakespeare, Hemingway, Dickens, Tolstoy, Chekov, Thoreau. She hated English class, nothing but ancient authors and multisyllable vocabulary words.
Outside Gramps’ door, Harley wondered how many books he’d read. Hundreds, probably. He refused the e-reader Mom offered. Said he preferred the heft and smell of real books, the paper’s rustle turning a page, and believed touch could resurrect, resuscitate, revitalize a long-dead writer. Darn, all those words had turned into an ear-worm.
She knocked and stopped in the doorway, surprised to see him propped up in bed instead of in the wheelchair.
“Uh, hi, Gramps,” she mumbled.
“Hi, Harley.”
She didn’t like the rasp in his voice. She dumped the books on the bed.
“Got the whole list, Gramps.”
“Thanks, Harley. Look in the nightstand. There’s a book in the drawer.”
She retrieved the book, another old one; no dust jacket, with a get-well card inserted near the end. She held it out to him but Gramps shook his head.
“Take it and read up to the book mark. We’ll finish it together next week.”
Harley fanned the pages and wrinkled her nose. Even her textbooks smelled better. What made Gramps so insistent about what she read? What did it matter what he read? He was already old. She didn’t want to think about it but the end of his life got closer every day. What would it matter afterward what he read last, or ever?
“Sure, Gramps.” What else could she say?
= = =
Saturday afternoon, Harley returned to the retirement home with Gramps’ book. From the title, she’d assumed it was about chemistry. Instead it was a futuristic novel about firemen starting fires, not putting them out.
Caught up in the story, Harley read past the bookmark to the end. She lay on her bed for a long while, taken by how closely the novel mirrored the world around her. Wall-sized tv’s may not be the norm, but earbuds were ubiquitous, and personalized ads and news feeds flashed on every device, an electronic epidemic, maybe a pandemic.
She envied the young woman, the story’s catalyst, independent in mind and spirit. Able to upend a fireman’s life simply by asking if he was happy. The fireman hadn’t been happy; no one seemed happy in spite of their giant tv’s, fast cars, and amusement parks.
Harley sympathized.
= = =
She read the final sentence, closed the book, and offered it to Gramps.
“Keep it. Read it again sometime.”
Harley slipped it into her bag and felt a thrill imagining it was against the law.
“What an odd idea,” she said. “Firemen burning books.”
“A powerful image,” Gramps agreed.
Harley remembered Gramps’ closet library. He would not surrender it willingly. “That would never really happen, right?”
Gramps sighed. “I’d like to hope not. People try to remove books from libraries and schools all the time. Even that one,” he gestured at her bag, “was on the banned list for a while.”
She bristled at the idea strangers might tell her what she could or couldn’t read. The strength of her reaction surprised her.
“Do you have next week’s list.”
Gramps shook his head. “My eyesight is getting too weak. I’ll need you to read for me. You make the list.”
“I won’t know what to pick.”
“Choose for yourself, Harley. Don’t let others make decisions for you, not even me.”
= =
Harley waited for her mother, excited and anxious over her new responsibility. Pulling any old book from the shelf wouldn’t do. Her choices had to be worth Gramps’ time, and hers, too. She could ask the all-knowing internet for recommendations but that lacked panache, finesse, might be a faux pas. It would be someone else’s list to follow, like the weekly vocab words.
No, she needed to choose for herself.
Honorable Mention
Bird Conspiracy! by Kipling Knox
I want to set the record straight about the notorious parrot, Forked Tongue George.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard of him: the scarlet macaw who helped uncover a sinister network of operatives in the world of ornithology. Maybe you consider him a hero; maybe you think he’s a scoundrel. You may agree with my phrase ‘sinister network,’ or you may sympathize with the network, plotting revenge against this innocent bird. Either way, I won’t know--I’ve turned off comments.
To start at the beginning, I did not seek him out. The cops brought him to me. I was spending the season in southern Arizona doing field work, looking for gila woodpeckers and elf owls (not saucy psittacines from the sub-tropics!). I had befriended the local sheriff and deputy and we shared a few coffees at the diner in town. They listened to my tales with delight. Cops love birders--we spend money and cause no trouble. So when they discovered a macaw stashed in the hubcap of an old Dodge, they thought of me. These folks had never dealt with a smuggled exotic. Neither had I, tbh. But I know birds.
When I saw FTG, I was sure he was dead. His hollow-boned body had flipped in circles for countless revolutions of wheels. His wings were brutally clipped. He was dehydrated, panting. He couldn’t hold himself on a perch. But I gave him the best care I knew--a warm towel, food from a dropper, constant companionship. Miraculously, he recovered, and in a couple days he was flapping around the room, eating fruit, crapping everywhere, and talking nonstop. That’s when I knew we had a special bird. That’s also when I observed that a cruel injury had given him the tongue of a reptile, split down the middle. So I named him. He started to open up.
What did he say? The first phrase I remember was ‘passenger pigeons!’ followed by ‘10,000 in the river!’ I thought that was strange, but not noteworthy, until he said ‘Ivory-billed! I-vo-ry… billed!’ and then ‘Mining town!’ and shortly thereafter ‘Labrador Ducks! Oil rig!’ It kept coming--these staccato vocalizations of extinct birds and remote locations. Once he recovered his strength (and, dare I say, took me into his confidence), he wouldn’t stop talking. He recited these phrases into the night.
This is when people ask me: Why didn’t I contact authorities? Why did I “play” with the bird for days? Let me repeat: The correct course of action was unclear. I had in my hands a rare parrot clearly intended for sale on the black market, discovered in an old car with no clue to its owner (not that the sheriff could find). I also had a bird with an unprecedented vocabulary, all related to a mysterious subject. Whom do I contact? Fish and Wildlife? Cornell? ICE? Of course I web searched what to do with a recovered exotic. The official recommendation was--get this: Contact the police. So. I decided to find out myself where this extraordinary bird belonged.
It was late when I started my investigation in earnest. The town slept. Beyond my screened window, in the far hills, I heard the wail of coyotes and the whinny of screech owls. I breathed the astringent fragrances of the desert cooling down. I began typing in the phrases I’d heard from FTG. And then I saw the great storm brewing in this alternate universe of online birding.
The landscape of the ‘freedom birders’ was different than it is today. There was little debate, only tremendous enthusiasm to uncover a conspiracy. They were unified in the following assumptions:
I know it sounds implausible now, but this alternative community of birders hadn’t crossed with ‘mainstream’ ornithology. There were certainly heated debates on the popular bird blogs, but they involved topics like whether the towhee was somehow diminished, now that its sides were no longer rufous. These two vast groups of enthusiasts were separated by an opaque, impermeable membrane. Only I, it seemed, had managed the osmosis to see both worlds. Only I… and Forked Tongue George.
Burdened by this discovery of a parallel, deranged world of birding, I yearned for someone to talk to. But whom? People ask: Why didn’t I take FTG to animal control in Tucson? Why didn’t I send an alarm to Audubon? Here’s the honest answer: I didn’t know whom to trust. All I knew for sure was I needed to help this poor macaw return home.
So I talked to the bird himself. As the spring migration passed over the low tiled roof of the motel, I appealed to his reason. At first FTG was petulant, stubborn, sarcastic. I asked, ‘Where did you hear about these birds?’ He tipped his head, fixing me with one eye, and replied ‘Polly want a cracker!’ I offered him a slice of apple, stroked his waxy neck feathers, and asked, ‘Who told you these things?’ He replied, ‘Into the salty brine with ye!’
But eventually, I wore him down. By the seventh day, he had begun to speak in the Spanish phrases we know so well. I asked, ‘Who stuck you under the hubcap?’ He replied ‘Que madre!’ I asked again. He replied ‘Que salidas!’ Costa Rican phrases! Now we were getting somewhere.
Then one night he woke me with a strange and beautiful music. Like bells playing a cheerful melody, like a marimba. He repeated it again and again. He danced on the desk, flicking his forked tongue, lifting his clipped wings, and sang. Someone on the internet would recognize this music, I realized. Someone would identify the bird’s home. I knew I was tearing the membrane asunder, that two worlds would pollute each other and birding would never be the same. But I had to do it, and I’m not sorry.
You know the rest. Once I posted the video to the streaming site it took less than a day for a San Jose street musician to comment ‘That’s me, man! ¡Ese soy yo! That bird’s stealing my bits!’ We had our location. Within hours, the Costa Rican police trampled the door of Colton Camoshanter, alias robobird669, in his lair beneath the street where the musician played. They found the criminal in a tiny room with a steel desk, a computer, three monitors, hundreds of cans of energy drinks, and 17 exotic birds in cages, screaming profanity.
And so we uncovered Camoshanter as the primary author of the bird conspiracy. His intention, I believe, was to discredit ornithology so he could sell rare birds without consequences. I had seen his name, even in my short time across the membrane, always spoken with reverence. For the freedom birders, he was the source of truth, braying from his digital pulpit--irrefutable, like a football coach in a rural town.
The Costa Rican police arrested Camoshanter for smuggling protected birds. They gathered overwhelming evidence against him. They rescued his bird captives and put them in sanctuaries. They delivered the criminal to U.S. authorities for prosecution.
But, as of this post, the federal government has released Camoshanter without bail. These authorities consider the evidence tainted. They are considering the validity of his claims to the bird conspiracy. They hold Fork Tongued George in custody.
I can’t comment on the legal proceedings. My goal with this post is only to set the record straight about what happened that spring in southern Arizona, when a misplaced macaw crawled out of a hub cap and told the truth.
Please do check out my posts from this trip in ‘featured stories!’ All photos, #nofilter.
UPDATE: Readers have asked if I’ve heard of Guy Plum, who wrote a piece several years ago, describing such a bird conspiracy. I did message a bit with Guy (nice guy), and he clarified that his piece--now redacted--claimed (satirically) that humans had faked the decline in population and were hoarding the birds. He said when he saw my story, he gave up. ‘These days,’ he said, ‘A satirist just can’t stay ahead of reality.’
Bird Conspiracy! by Kipling Knox
I want to set the record straight about the notorious parrot, Forked Tongue George.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard of him: the scarlet macaw who helped uncover a sinister network of operatives in the world of ornithology. Maybe you consider him a hero; maybe you think he’s a scoundrel. You may agree with my phrase ‘sinister network,’ or you may sympathize with the network, plotting revenge against this innocent bird. Either way, I won’t know--I’ve turned off comments.
To start at the beginning, I did not seek him out. The cops brought him to me. I was spending the season in southern Arizona doing field work, looking for gila woodpeckers and elf owls (not saucy psittacines from the sub-tropics!). I had befriended the local sheriff and deputy and we shared a few coffees at the diner in town. They listened to my tales with delight. Cops love birders--we spend money and cause no trouble. So when they discovered a macaw stashed in the hubcap of an old Dodge, they thought of me. These folks had never dealt with a smuggled exotic. Neither had I, tbh. But I know birds.
When I saw FTG, I was sure he was dead. His hollow-boned body had flipped in circles for countless revolutions of wheels. His wings were brutally clipped. He was dehydrated, panting. He couldn’t hold himself on a perch. But I gave him the best care I knew--a warm towel, food from a dropper, constant companionship. Miraculously, he recovered, and in a couple days he was flapping around the room, eating fruit, crapping everywhere, and talking nonstop. That’s when I knew we had a special bird. That’s also when I observed that a cruel injury had given him the tongue of a reptile, split down the middle. So I named him. He started to open up.
What did he say? The first phrase I remember was ‘passenger pigeons!’ followed by ‘10,000 in the river!’ I thought that was strange, but not noteworthy, until he said ‘Ivory-billed! I-vo-ry… billed!’ and then ‘Mining town!’ and shortly thereafter ‘Labrador Ducks! Oil rig!’ It kept coming--these staccato vocalizations of extinct birds and remote locations. Once he recovered his strength (and, dare I say, took me into his confidence), he wouldn’t stop talking. He recited these phrases into the night.
This is when people ask me: Why didn’t I contact authorities? Why did I “play” with the bird for days? Let me repeat: The correct course of action was unclear. I had in my hands a rare parrot clearly intended for sale on the black market, discovered in an old car with no clue to its owner (not that the sheriff could find). I also had a bird with an unprecedented vocabulary, all related to a mysterious subject. Whom do I contact? Fish and Wildlife? Cornell? ICE? Of course I web searched what to do with a recovered exotic. The official recommendation was--get this: Contact the police. So. I decided to find out myself where this extraordinary bird belonged.
It was late when I started my investigation in earnest. The town slept. Beyond my screened window, in the far hills, I heard the wail of coyotes and the whinny of screech owls. I breathed the astringent fragrances of the desert cooling down. I began typing in the phrases I’d heard from FTG. And then I saw the great storm brewing in this alternate universe of online birding.
The landscape of the ‘freedom birders’ was different than it is today. There was little debate, only tremendous enthusiasm to uncover a conspiracy. They were unified in the following assumptions:
- Birds considered extinct are in fact thriving around the globe.
- These birds have hidden in surprising places--often in mind-boggling numbers.
- Birds have faked their decline in numbers, to garner sympathy from human beings and dupe them into bird protection.
I know it sounds implausible now, but this alternative community of birders hadn’t crossed with ‘mainstream’ ornithology. There were certainly heated debates on the popular bird blogs, but they involved topics like whether the towhee was somehow diminished, now that its sides were no longer rufous. These two vast groups of enthusiasts were separated by an opaque, impermeable membrane. Only I, it seemed, had managed the osmosis to see both worlds. Only I… and Forked Tongue George.
Burdened by this discovery of a parallel, deranged world of birding, I yearned for someone to talk to. But whom? People ask: Why didn’t I take FTG to animal control in Tucson? Why didn’t I send an alarm to Audubon? Here’s the honest answer: I didn’t know whom to trust. All I knew for sure was I needed to help this poor macaw return home.
So I talked to the bird himself. As the spring migration passed over the low tiled roof of the motel, I appealed to his reason. At first FTG was petulant, stubborn, sarcastic. I asked, ‘Where did you hear about these birds?’ He tipped his head, fixing me with one eye, and replied ‘Polly want a cracker!’ I offered him a slice of apple, stroked his waxy neck feathers, and asked, ‘Who told you these things?’ He replied, ‘Into the salty brine with ye!’
But eventually, I wore him down. By the seventh day, he had begun to speak in the Spanish phrases we know so well. I asked, ‘Who stuck you under the hubcap?’ He replied ‘Que madre!’ I asked again. He replied ‘Que salidas!’ Costa Rican phrases! Now we were getting somewhere.
Then one night he woke me with a strange and beautiful music. Like bells playing a cheerful melody, like a marimba. He repeated it again and again. He danced on the desk, flicking his forked tongue, lifting his clipped wings, and sang. Someone on the internet would recognize this music, I realized. Someone would identify the bird’s home. I knew I was tearing the membrane asunder, that two worlds would pollute each other and birding would never be the same. But I had to do it, and I’m not sorry.
You know the rest. Once I posted the video to the streaming site it took less than a day for a San Jose street musician to comment ‘That’s me, man! ¡Ese soy yo! That bird’s stealing my bits!’ We had our location. Within hours, the Costa Rican police trampled the door of Colton Camoshanter, alias robobird669, in his lair beneath the street where the musician played. They found the criminal in a tiny room with a steel desk, a computer, three monitors, hundreds of cans of energy drinks, and 17 exotic birds in cages, screaming profanity.
And so we uncovered Camoshanter as the primary author of the bird conspiracy. His intention, I believe, was to discredit ornithology so he could sell rare birds without consequences. I had seen his name, even in my short time across the membrane, always spoken with reverence. For the freedom birders, he was the source of truth, braying from his digital pulpit--irrefutable, like a football coach in a rural town.
The Costa Rican police arrested Camoshanter for smuggling protected birds. They gathered overwhelming evidence against him. They rescued his bird captives and put them in sanctuaries. They delivered the criminal to U.S. authorities for prosecution.
But, as of this post, the federal government has released Camoshanter without bail. These authorities consider the evidence tainted. They are considering the validity of his claims to the bird conspiracy. They hold Fork Tongued George in custody.
I can’t comment on the legal proceedings. My goal with this post is only to set the record straight about what happened that spring in southern Arizona, when a misplaced macaw crawled out of a hub cap and told the truth.
Please do check out my posts from this trip in ‘featured stories!’ All photos, #nofilter.
UPDATE: Readers have asked if I’ve heard of Guy Plum, who wrote a piece several years ago, describing such a bird conspiracy. I did message a bit with Guy (nice guy), and he clarified that his piece--now redacted--claimed (satirically) that humans had faked the decline in population and were hoarding the birds. He said when he saw my story, he gave up. ‘These days,’ he said, ‘A satirist just can’t stay ahead of reality.’
Honorable Mention
Good Enough for the Gods by Richard Porter
The county council convened on a Wednesday night to decide the fate of the old man’s farm.
According to their agenda, they were meeting to debate the benefits of a highway expansion initiative and explore issues of eminent domain. They would rate contractors, discuss budgets, and levee funds. The public was invited to comment.
Ultimately, the council members would decide whether or not to fund two strips of asphalt for Highway 9. This project would add four new traffic lanes. The proposed expansion would encroach upon the Anders Christmas Tree Farm and Arbor, effectively killing the multigenerational family business.
The council noted that the Anders farm hadn’t generated a significant profit during the past decade. The old man’s strength had declined; the wages of his labor barely covered his property taxes, flood insurance, and food.
If the freeway grew, the farmhouse would be spared, but it would sit close to the newly-expanded road with no buffer of greenery.
Old man Anders sat in the front row of the council chambers.
The tree farmer sat in the the public seating section; his posture was somehow both erect and slouched. Under his chair was a crate of Hosui pears. The fruit was perfect in its imperfections: a pile of dented, freckled, and unassuming planetoids.
He thought that if the council members could taste the Asian pears... well, maybe things could be different. Maybe the well-meaning, well-dressed men and women behind the desks would call off the project or reroute traffic around the valley.
The old man gripped and ungripped his red hands. His hair was shorn to a grizzled stubble the color of sunbleached corn stalks. Deep lines crisscrossed the back of his furrowed neck. There was high color in his sunken cheeks; his pallor hadn’t turned ashen with age. The ruddiness was partly the embarrassment of being seen in public; he was a private man. And it was in part due to the persistent, obstinate blood that burned under the surface of his skin.
Anders sweated. He felt fraudulent and naked without his usual workaday attire: the flannel shirt and barn coat that he wore round the clock and sometimes even to bed.
Instead, he wore a musty tweed suit jacket that he had pulled from the back of a cedar-lined closet in his attic.
His father and grandfather had also been tree farmers in the Snohomish River Valley. These men with hair like sunbleached corn stalks had settled next to a river that flooded nearly every year. The flooding river left glacial silt in the valley soil, adding vitality to the trees not washed away or stricken with root rot.
Anders knew how to grow two things: trees and daughters. Of the two, he felt that he had been more successful with trees.
The old man was an alchemist of soil ratios, a wizard of grafting. He was wholly prescient of impending weather patterns with consideration to wind as it moved across the river valley. He reckoned in complete seasons — seasons that didn’t align with the calendar year. In many deliberations he took into account the migration of geese, the behavior of the moon, and how the Seattle Rainiers were playing.
He felt these things impacted his ability to coax sustained life out of his Christmas trees and curious collection of landscaping plants: Japanese maples, blue spruce, weeping willows, sugar magnolias, and the pom fruit trees of which he was so fond.
His success with daughters was another matter. He had two of them.
Anders’s wife had left a decade into their marriage. She had witnessed the river spill its banks year after year and so had seen the soggy, damp, cold future laid out before her. She foresaw years of pitchforking mulch, scrubbing the farmhouse of creeping mold and mildew, and salvaging canned goods from a flooding root cellar. She fled in May of 1976 without malice.
Anders did his best with his daughters. The raising of them brought a feeling that was equal parts shame and pride, for he knew so little of the feminine. His agrarian lifeways were crude. He was embarrassed by the idea of menstrual blood and prom dances.
Once, he sat two young blonde girls on top of stools in the black-and-white tiled farmhouse kitchen. The girls sat in white tank tops and white boxer shorts as he used his sharpest hedge scissors (typically used for woody shrubs) to cut straight bangs across their foreheads over their wide, almond-shaped blue eyes. They had their mother’s eyes.
He dressed them in barn coats that he bought from the co-op; all he knew of clothing was sturdy practicality.
Anders’ diligent love for his daughters had brought him shame. The large portions of fried pork chops and onions that he cooked, the perfunctory farm clothing, the five and dime Halloween decorations — these shamed him because he was neither delicate nor wealthy.
He was diligent in their care, for he believed that his daughters deserved finer things than his ceaseless tree-labor could provide for them.
* * *
The county lawyer visited Anders six months before the council meeting. It was a March day and Anders was in hip waders, dredging woody debris from an irrigation canal. The old man’s barn coat was spattered with mud. He had been watching geese in the field, looking for patterns.
Spring rains had turned the valley into puddles that reflected the sky. When the old man looked up and across the land he seemed to be standing on a vast mirror of clouds broken up with patches of grass.
He looked up and saw a maroon Caprice Classic parked near the farmhouse. The tree farmer knocked his rake against the ground to dislodged muck. He set off slowly toward his home, rake in hand. He walked in hip waders through the rippling sky-ground, thinking I better put on the coffee.
Then he sat in the farmhouse and drank coffee while the lawyer talked. The lawyer had coarse, stiff grey hair sculpted into a crew cut. He wore a suit that set his thin shoulders at right angles.
The lawyer showed Anders a pamphlet, then several papers in a plastic binder, then another pamphlet, then a map of the watershed. The lawyer talked about just compensation and fair market value minus severance damages. He produced a pocket calculator and worked out some numbers. He showed Anders a figure. This settlement figure, the lawyer said, was the kind of payout that an old man retire on.
Anders listened and understood, though he held the talk at a distance. His opinion was that the people who use the most and biggest words usually have the least to say.
After the lawyer explained what was and what would be, he got in his Caprice Classic and backed out of the driveway. Anders, not knowing what to do, returned to the field work that filled and defined his springtime days.
That night the tree farmer felt lonesome. He fried a pork chop and onions in a skillet and listened to the Seattle Rainiers lose in spring training. At 8:00 he switched off the radio and tried to telephone his daughters. Then he went to bed, wrapped in a woolen cardigan against the damp spring chill.
In the morning Anders woke to a golden light pinning him to the bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept past dawn. He was accustomed to rising immediately after waking in the dark and moving though the first tasks of the day. But on this golden morning he couldn’t think of what to do or why. The tools of his trade — the stakes, the twine, burlap, mulch, and fertilizer — these seemed nonsensical to him. The old man didn’t know what to do with his red hands. He sat up and looked out the window.
Over the top of the back fence his quince tree had grown ragged and was putting out pink blossoms.
Anders remembered a fall day years ago, a day with two blonde girls and their mother in a mackinaw. The girls took turns standing on a folding ladder and putting their plucked quince in a pail. Their mother, a great reader of books, told them about how the golden quince was Paris’ gift to Aphrodite to woo Helen of Troy.
“The fruit that launched a thousand ships!” laughed the woman in the mackinaw.
The girls watched their mother with their astonished blue, almond-shaped eyes.
Anders, too, laughed that day (he now remembered) as he tossed a quince up into the sunlight and said, “If it’s good enough for the gods it’s good enough for me.”
* * *
The old man sat in the council chambers with the box of fruit at his feet, waiting to speak. He could smell the sweet, ripe scent of pears. Maybe, he hoped, these golden orbs could save what was, which was most of what he seemed to be these days.
Good Enough for the Gods by Richard Porter
The county council convened on a Wednesday night to decide the fate of the old man’s farm.
According to their agenda, they were meeting to debate the benefits of a highway expansion initiative and explore issues of eminent domain. They would rate contractors, discuss budgets, and levee funds. The public was invited to comment.
Ultimately, the council members would decide whether or not to fund two strips of asphalt for Highway 9. This project would add four new traffic lanes. The proposed expansion would encroach upon the Anders Christmas Tree Farm and Arbor, effectively killing the multigenerational family business.
The council noted that the Anders farm hadn’t generated a significant profit during the past decade. The old man’s strength had declined; the wages of his labor barely covered his property taxes, flood insurance, and food.
If the freeway grew, the farmhouse would be spared, but it would sit close to the newly-expanded road with no buffer of greenery.
Old man Anders sat in the front row of the council chambers.
The tree farmer sat in the the public seating section; his posture was somehow both erect and slouched. Under his chair was a crate of Hosui pears. The fruit was perfect in its imperfections: a pile of dented, freckled, and unassuming planetoids.
He thought that if the council members could taste the Asian pears... well, maybe things could be different. Maybe the well-meaning, well-dressed men and women behind the desks would call off the project or reroute traffic around the valley.
The old man gripped and ungripped his red hands. His hair was shorn to a grizzled stubble the color of sunbleached corn stalks. Deep lines crisscrossed the back of his furrowed neck. There was high color in his sunken cheeks; his pallor hadn’t turned ashen with age. The ruddiness was partly the embarrassment of being seen in public; he was a private man. And it was in part due to the persistent, obstinate blood that burned under the surface of his skin.
Anders sweated. He felt fraudulent and naked without his usual workaday attire: the flannel shirt and barn coat that he wore round the clock and sometimes even to bed.
Instead, he wore a musty tweed suit jacket that he had pulled from the back of a cedar-lined closet in his attic.
His father and grandfather had also been tree farmers in the Snohomish River Valley. These men with hair like sunbleached corn stalks had settled next to a river that flooded nearly every year. The flooding river left glacial silt in the valley soil, adding vitality to the trees not washed away or stricken with root rot.
Anders knew how to grow two things: trees and daughters. Of the two, he felt that he had been more successful with trees.
The old man was an alchemist of soil ratios, a wizard of grafting. He was wholly prescient of impending weather patterns with consideration to wind as it moved across the river valley. He reckoned in complete seasons — seasons that didn’t align with the calendar year. In many deliberations he took into account the migration of geese, the behavior of the moon, and how the Seattle Rainiers were playing.
He felt these things impacted his ability to coax sustained life out of his Christmas trees and curious collection of landscaping plants: Japanese maples, blue spruce, weeping willows, sugar magnolias, and the pom fruit trees of which he was so fond.
His success with daughters was another matter. He had two of them.
Anders’s wife had left a decade into their marriage. She had witnessed the river spill its banks year after year and so had seen the soggy, damp, cold future laid out before her. She foresaw years of pitchforking mulch, scrubbing the farmhouse of creeping mold and mildew, and salvaging canned goods from a flooding root cellar. She fled in May of 1976 without malice.
Anders did his best with his daughters. The raising of them brought a feeling that was equal parts shame and pride, for he knew so little of the feminine. His agrarian lifeways were crude. He was embarrassed by the idea of menstrual blood and prom dances.
Once, he sat two young blonde girls on top of stools in the black-and-white tiled farmhouse kitchen. The girls sat in white tank tops and white boxer shorts as he used his sharpest hedge scissors (typically used for woody shrubs) to cut straight bangs across their foreheads over their wide, almond-shaped blue eyes. They had their mother’s eyes.
He dressed them in barn coats that he bought from the co-op; all he knew of clothing was sturdy practicality.
Anders’ diligent love for his daughters had brought him shame. The large portions of fried pork chops and onions that he cooked, the perfunctory farm clothing, the five and dime Halloween decorations — these shamed him because he was neither delicate nor wealthy.
He was diligent in their care, for he believed that his daughters deserved finer things than his ceaseless tree-labor could provide for them.
* * *
The county lawyer visited Anders six months before the council meeting. It was a March day and Anders was in hip waders, dredging woody debris from an irrigation canal. The old man’s barn coat was spattered with mud. He had been watching geese in the field, looking for patterns.
Spring rains had turned the valley into puddles that reflected the sky. When the old man looked up and across the land he seemed to be standing on a vast mirror of clouds broken up with patches of grass.
He looked up and saw a maroon Caprice Classic parked near the farmhouse. The tree farmer knocked his rake against the ground to dislodged muck. He set off slowly toward his home, rake in hand. He walked in hip waders through the rippling sky-ground, thinking I better put on the coffee.
Then he sat in the farmhouse and drank coffee while the lawyer talked. The lawyer had coarse, stiff grey hair sculpted into a crew cut. He wore a suit that set his thin shoulders at right angles.
The lawyer showed Anders a pamphlet, then several papers in a plastic binder, then another pamphlet, then a map of the watershed. The lawyer talked about just compensation and fair market value minus severance damages. He produced a pocket calculator and worked out some numbers. He showed Anders a figure. This settlement figure, the lawyer said, was the kind of payout that an old man retire on.
Anders listened and understood, though he held the talk at a distance. His opinion was that the people who use the most and biggest words usually have the least to say.
After the lawyer explained what was and what would be, he got in his Caprice Classic and backed out of the driveway. Anders, not knowing what to do, returned to the field work that filled and defined his springtime days.
That night the tree farmer felt lonesome. He fried a pork chop and onions in a skillet and listened to the Seattle Rainiers lose in spring training. At 8:00 he switched off the radio and tried to telephone his daughters. Then he went to bed, wrapped in a woolen cardigan against the damp spring chill.
In the morning Anders woke to a golden light pinning him to the bed. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept past dawn. He was accustomed to rising immediately after waking in the dark and moving though the first tasks of the day. But on this golden morning he couldn’t think of what to do or why. The tools of his trade — the stakes, the twine, burlap, mulch, and fertilizer — these seemed nonsensical to him. The old man didn’t know what to do with his red hands. He sat up and looked out the window.
Over the top of the back fence his quince tree had grown ragged and was putting out pink blossoms.
Anders remembered a fall day years ago, a day with two blonde girls and their mother in a mackinaw. The girls took turns standing on a folding ladder and putting their plucked quince in a pail. Their mother, a great reader of books, told them about how the golden quince was Paris’ gift to Aphrodite to woo Helen of Troy.
“The fruit that launched a thousand ships!” laughed the woman in the mackinaw.
The girls watched their mother with their astonished blue, almond-shaped eyes.
Anders, too, laughed that day (he now remembered) as he tossed a quince up into the sunlight and said, “If it’s good enough for the gods it’s good enough for me.”
* * *
The old man sat in the council chambers with the box of fruit at his feet, waiting to speak. He could smell the sweet, ripe scent of pears. Maybe, he hoped, these golden orbs could save what was, which was most of what he seemed to be these days.
Adult Author Poetry
First Place
have mercy by Karen Stone The author has requested that her poem not be published. |
Second Place
My PBS Special by Richard Porter Welcome to my new PBS special "Walking Across Norway" In which I don the native garb of my ancestors & trek for indefinite distances on the cusps of fjords & clamber up steaming mountains that were understood by my forefathers (& maybe rightly so) to be slumbering giants & trolls My middle daughter has the platinum blonde waves of hair that can be woven into cables A Norwegian milkmaid by virtue of genetic predisposition Watch while we bake bread & slice apples in real-time: compelling television for the distracted & distractible Catch an episode in which I ride my lone 1980 Schwinn bicycle across some volcanic field A wide shot showing the desolation that was the psychological information that those who came before me had to grapple with Encoded into my genetics: a life at the top of the foggy globe Dreaming of giants Eating simple plain yogurt with raisins & oats & honey Dining upon the fishes Drinking beer but not challenging others to wrestling matches Only combatting myself in my mind, locked into the grip & planting my feet for combat Welcome to my new PBS special where I wander my own rural county Looking for clues of what is now Catch an episode in which I reveal that I am a brindled & wrinkled human-walking-machine of encoded blood-memory Losing my hair at a slow rate, subject to unexplained back pain Peering through thick, smudged lenses encased in yellowing tortoise-shell frames Trembling arthritic in a cardigan Bound in the winter by my proximity to hot baths, saunas, steeped tea Wrapped in itching woolens Behold: Me in a field, by a river called Ocean How’s that for ratings? |
Honorable Mention
Flattening the Curve by Christine Traxler
Lilac leaves unfurl on cue,
Heed the ancient, urgent whisper
Of Light and tilt, wind and rain.
By the fire, hot tea my companion,
I wait out this birthing, in comfort.
Graupel bashes the windows.
Cat curls into my lap and dreams:
He whimpers of the chase, the capture,
the kill. Asleep but awake. Relentless.
Outside, life’s wet entrance is undeterred.
I do not understand why pain is
a prerequisite for something akin to joy.
If I venture out, someone’s gentle breath
can kill me. We plant ourselves, seeds apart
eyes averted, but holy together.
What do I know of life’s wet exit?
For each sweet pea that defies gravity,
Bursts out of darkness into cold, slow, spring,
There is someone whose wet lungs fill,
Whose body heeds gravity’s pull—another ancient whisper--
whose mass folds back into a seed and waits
to be absorbed by a black hole,
or cured by fire’s finality,
alone (as we all are), in the end.
Flattening the Curve by Christine Traxler
Lilac leaves unfurl on cue,
Heed the ancient, urgent whisper
Of Light and tilt, wind and rain.
By the fire, hot tea my companion,
I wait out this birthing, in comfort.
Graupel bashes the windows.
Cat curls into my lap and dreams:
He whimpers of the chase, the capture,
the kill. Asleep but awake. Relentless.
Outside, life’s wet entrance is undeterred.
I do not understand why pain is
a prerequisite for something akin to joy.
If I venture out, someone’s gentle breath
can kill me. We plant ourselves, seeds apart
eyes averted, but holy together.
What do I know of life’s wet exit?
For each sweet pea that defies gravity,
Bursts out of darkness into cold, slow, spring,
There is someone whose wet lungs fill,
Whose body heeds gravity’s pull—another ancient whisper--
whose mass folds back into a seed and waits
to be absorbed by a black hole,
or cured by fire’s finality,
alone (as we all are), in the end.
Student Author Prose
First Place
The Flood by Emma Howlett
The road was awash with roiling, shining rain. It turned the city streets into its own river, the meticulously gridded map turned into a treacherous, soaking delta. It sought out the imperfections in the pavement, collecting in depressions to form vast gleaming puddles. Where the water spilled over, the street was covered in a shallow shimmering creek that was intermittently interrupted by the obnoxious spinning of tires. The cars sludged their way through the waterlogged streets, splashing dirty water onto the sidewalks. The water turned turbid under their jurisdiction, spreading the filth from puddle to puddle as the cars continued their elephantine march. While the cars passed unharmed through the murk, they left the sidewalks in a constant state of turbulence as the pedestrians struggled to avoid getting soaked by a spinning wheel.
The pounding droplets matched the hurried footsteps of resolved pedestrians who crinkled their eyes and hunched their shoulders against the cold stinging water. No longer frantic and fleeing the wet onslaught, but resolved to soldier on through the heavy velvet curtain of rain. An army of black umbrellas formed some sort of barrier between man and sky, but the ground could not be avoided. Those who had not sturdy rain boots tried to nimbly avoid the largest puddles, but there was no dodging the relentless torrent that had taken over the sidewalk. The rain had turned the posters, paper shopping bags, and sandwich wrappers that littered the gutters into a pulpy, unrecognizable mass. Sidewalks were riddled with unpredictable puddles that sunk into the stone only to rise unexpectedly before a foot was to be put down.
The steady stream of pedestrians swirled and eddied with the concrete river, reluctant partners in a ruthless dance that left them wet and tired.
The brick buildings that lined the streets had taken on a dark drenched hue, soaking in the moisture through hungry pores in the stone. The stony, metallic smell of petrichor rose through the air and the buildings breathed it in with a great shuddering sigh. Their windowsills slightly saggy, their hanging signs drooping downward, their outdoor fire escapes creaking tiredly. Shops huddled together, an attempt to conjure warmth but only creating a pool of rain.
A particular coffee shop stood hunched in the middle of 2nd Ave, squeezed in between a laundromat and a dilapidated music store that sold third hand guitars and mandolins. Its face was barely wide enough to fit the rickety wooden door and streaked window that showed its dark cramped interior.
Suddenly, the grimy, crusted door of the coffee shop was flung open into the street. It banged the side of the crumbling brick facade, the building darkened from the rain. A young woman stumbled out, splashing into the muddy sidewalk, her pastel blue uniform and white apron immediately soiled and soaked. Her dark hair, which had been loosely tied back, now fell in weak curls about her stricken face.
An overweight, fuming, very bald man wearing a black collared shirt and apron stepped onto the threshold. His jowls quivered as he yelled at the girl, and grabbed the oxidized doorknob in a meaty hand. As he closed the door, he kicked a puddle with his black leather boots, sending an icy spray into the girl's face. The door rattled shut with a condescending finality that shook the girl even more than the cold and wet.
She tentatively stepped up to the streaked wooden door, and raised a hand as if to knock, but hesitated with her fist before the wood. She could not knock. Not this time.
Finger by stiff finger, she unballed her fist and slowly brought her hand to her side. She stood in front of the door, her shoulders shaking with either rage or defeat, her hands crunching her apron into a million limp wrinkles. With a shuddering breath she turned away from the door to face the crowded gray street. The people rushed by in a blur of black raincoats and umbrellas, trying to outrun the downpour.
The girl stood shivering just under the cafe awning, picturing the red umbrella she had left in her employee locker, that she would never see again. Just above her, the gutter let loose a flow of rainwater, landing squarely on her brown curls to turn them dark and heavy with water. She gasped and blinked away the droplets, hugging herself against the chill. Tucking a strand behind her ear, she took a calming breath, sucking in the sharp air.
She darted into the stream of people flooding down the sidewalk, swept away into the sea of black polyester raincoats, a dot of baby blue. She tried to tiptoe around the gaping puddles, but her cracked leather shoes splashed into their depths, spraying her ankles and the hem of her dress a muddy ombre.
People bumped her elbows and the metal tips of umbrellas snagged at her hair. The rain formed rivulets down her bare forearms, mazing in between her hairs, leaving not a patch of skin untouched. It slithered its way down her neck to lick her spine, sending an uncomfortable shudder down her shoulders. Drops cascaded from her eyelashes, the tip of her nose, and collected in the dip above her lips. Whenever she opened her mouth to breathe, she drank some of the steel water.
As she looked up to cross the intersection between 5th and Wall, her foot splashed shin deep into a vast gray puddle. The deep water flooded up and over the side of her shoe to surround her woolen socks with heavy, inevitable rain. Shocked by the sudden chill, she groaned inwardly and scrunched her eyes closed to stay calm. The rainbow residue of car oil shimmered on the surface, swirling in mesmerizing patterns. She was soaked, inside and out, no longer swimming in the river but a part of it. Releasing the tension in her neck, in her shielding shoulders, in her adrenaline-filled thighs, her toes curled from the cold.
She made to cross the street, but a commotion on the corner across from her caught her eye. No older than six, a child’s wispy gold hair plastered brown across her face as she smiled recklessly. Her small red rain boots stamping joyfully into the silvery water, laughing as she kicked like a dancer on a stage. Her mother, in a black trench coat, umbrella pulled low over her head, grabbing the girl’s small innocent hand, pulling her away from the puddle where she played. Pulling her away from herself.
The young woman watching paused. Remembered her own mother, pulling her away from her dance. From the river. From herself.
Looking down at her flooded shoe, she brought her other foot down into the murk, let the rain invade the weaving of her other sock and fill her low boots with liquid metal. She was cemented to the sidewalk.
Suddenly the puddle gleamed from gray to silver, from dull to brilliant, from icy to exhilarating. Above her the streaked buildings leaned upward, a mosaic of red, gray, brown bricks. Their windows were dark, mournful, but calm amid the rainstorm, looking thoughtfully down on the river below. Before her, the people swam, floundering, moving forward but not quite. And standing still on the edge of the sidewalk, blue eyes wide with wonder, the woman slowly leaned her head back to embrace the flood.
The Flood by Emma Howlett
The road was awash with roiling, shining rain. It turned the city streets into its own river, the meticulously gridded map turned into a treacherous, soaking delta. It sought out the imperfections in the pavement, collecting in depressions to form vast gleaming puddles. Where the water spilled over, the street was covered in a shallow shimmering creek that was intermittently interrupted by the obnoxious spinning of tires. The cars sludged their way through the waterlogged streets, splashing dirty water onto the sidewalks. The water turned turbid under their jurisdiction, spreading the filth from puddle to puddle as the cars continued their elephantine march. While the cars passed unharmed through the murk, they left the sidewalks in a constant state of turbulence as the pedestrians struggled to avoid getting soaked by a spinning wheel.
The pounding droplets matched the hurried footsteps of resolved pedestrians who crinkled their eyes and hunched their shoulders against the cold stinging water. No longer frantic and fleeing the wet onslaught, but resolved to soldier on through the heavy velvet curtain of rain. An army of black umbrellas formed some sort of barrier between man and sky, but the ground could not be avoided. Those who had not sturdy rain boots tried to nimbly avoid the largest puddles, but there was no dodging the relentless torrent that had taken over the sidewalk. The rain had turned the posters, paper shopping bags, and sandwich wrappers that littered the gutters into a pulpy, unrecognizable mass. Sidewalks were riddled with unpredictable puddles that sunk into the stone only to rise unexpectedly before a foot was to be put down.
The steady stream of pedestrians swirled and eddied with the concrete river, reluctant partners in a ruthless dance that left them wet and tired.
The brick buildings that lined the streets had taken on a dark drenched hue, soaking in the moisture through hungry pores in the stone. The stony, metallic smell of petrichor rose through the air and the buildings breathed it in with a great shuddering sigh. Their windowsills slightly saggy, their hanging signs drooping downward, their outdoor fire escapes creaking tiredly. Shops huddled together, an attempt to conjure warmth but only creating a pool of rain.
A particular coffee shop stood hunched in the middle of 2nd Ave, squeezed in between a laundromat and a dilapidated music store that sold third hand guitars and mandolins. Its face was barely wide enough to fit the rickety wooden door and streaked window that showed its dark cramped interior.
Suddenly, the grimy, crusted door of the coffee shop was flung open into the street. It banged the side of the crumbling brick facade, the building darkened from the rain. A young woman stumbled out, splashing into the muddy sidewalk, her pastel blue uniform and white apron immediately soiled and soaked. Her dark hair, which had been loosely tied back, now fell in weak curls about her stricken face.
An overweight, fuming, very bald man wearing a black collared shirt and apron stepped onto the threshold. His jowls quivered as he yelled at the girl, and grabbed the oxidized doorknob in a meaty hand. As he closed the door, he kicked a puddle with his black leather boots, sending an icy spray into the girl's face. The door rattled shut with a condescending finality that shook the girl even more than the cold and wet.
She tentatively stepped up to the streaked wooden door, and raised a hand as if to knock, but hesitated with her fist before the wood. She could not knock. Not this time.
Finger by stiff finger, she unballed her fist and slowly brought her hand to her side. She stood in front of the door, her shoulders shaking with either rage or defeat, her hands crunching her apron into a million limp wrinkles. With a shuddering breath she turned away from the door to face the crowded gray street. The people rushed by in a blur of black raincoats and umbrellas, trying to outrun the downpour.
The girl stood shivering just under the cafe awning, picturing the red umbrella she had left in her employee locker, that she would never see again. Just above her, the gutter let loose a flow of rainwater, landing squarely on her brown curls to turn them dark and heavy with water. She gasped and blinked away the droplets, hugging herself against the chill. Tucking a strand behind her ear, she took a calming breath, sucking in the sharp air.
She darted into the stream of people flooding down the sidewalk, swept away into the sea of black polyester raincoats, a dot of baby blue. She tried to tiptoe around the gaping puddles, but her cracked leather shoes splashed into their depths, spraying her ankles and the hem of her dress a muddy ombre.
People bumped her elbows and the metal tips of umbrellas snagged at her hair. The rain formed rivulets down her bare forearms, mazing in between her hairs, leaving not a patch of skin untouched. It slithered its way down her neck to lick her spine, sending an uncomfortable shudder down her shoulders. Drops cascaded from her eyelashes, the tip of her nose, and collected in the dip above her lips. Whenever she opened her mouth to breathe, she drank some of the steel water.
As she looked up to cross the intersection between 5th and Wall, her foot splashed shin deep into a vast gray puddle. The deep water flooded up and over the side of her shoe to surround her woolen socks with heavy, inevitable rain. Shocked by the sudden chill, she groaned inwardly and scrunched her eyes closed to stay calm. The rainbow residue of car oil shimmered on the surface, swirling in mesmerizing patterns. She was soaked, inside and out, no longer swimming in the river but a part of it. Releasing the tension in her neck, in her shielding shoulders, in her adrenaline-filled thighs, her toes curled from the cold.
She made to cross the street, but a commotion on the corner across from her caught her eye. No older than six, a child’s wispy gold hair plastered brown across her face as she smiled recklessly. Her small red rain boots stamping joyfully into the silvery water, laughing as she kicked like a dancer on a stage. Her mother, in a black trench coat, umbrella pulled low over her head, grabbing the girl’s small innocent hand, pulling her away from the puddle where she played. Pulling her away from herself.
The young woman watching paused. Remembered her own mother, pulling her away from her dance. From the river. From herself.
Looking down at her flooded shoe, she brought her other foot down into the murk, let the rain invade the weaving of her other sock and fill her low boots with liquid metal. She was cemented to the sidewalk.
Suddenly the puddle gleamed from gray to silver, from dull to brilliant, from icy to exhilarating. Above her the streaked buildings leaned upward, a mosaic of red, gray, brown bricks. Their windows were dark, mournful, but calm amid the rainstorm, looking thoughtfully down on the river below. Before her, the people swam, floundering, moving forward but not quite. And standing still on the edge of the sidewalk, blue eyes wide with wonder, the woman slowly leaned her head back to embrace the flood.
Second Place
It & I by Ava Rudensey
It stood there still, untouched by the years its prior, unknowing how many children we’d bore. I longed to be at its summit to touch the sky above. I walked back in silence, my mind devoured by my thoughts, remembrances of when I wasn’t bound to anything but my imagination. How it has grown weak over the years. How I’ve grown plain and simple, brown hair, the color of mud after a storm, wrapped tightly in a bun at the nape of my neck. It itched, I scratched, again and again, we repeated this little cycle, it and I, again and again. Who was I to disobey it? You were always the brave one.
I followed my feet, without the aid of my consciousness, around the last bend of the trail, left they led me, towards the home we’d worked so laboriously on. The one I’d been thoughtfully trying to avoid ever since I’d gotten the letter only last evening. Sitting at the hearth in that chair my sister made for our anniversary, the wicker one, the one with those stains from that night when your mother came over and spilled tea all over herself. Earl grey I believe. The aroma a snapshot of our past. When I ruefully opened the door, it creaked maniacally, mockingly, mischievously; l lurched towards the little chair, the one that had widowed me, or rather had found me widowed; ensconced in despair.
I drifted back to the place I’d so carefully crafted, the utopia living within me, where I’d been living since I heard about your fall from this earth: And there it was again, it stood still, untouched by the pains of the years that would never come, unmarked by the shoe prints of our children; Alice nor Joseph’s delicate feet. But there you were at its summit waving from the sky. I climbed up the tree, its branches smiling as I went. I would never reach you, up there in the heavens, it doesn’t mean I won’t try.
It & I by Ava Rudensey
It stood there still, untouched by the years its prior, unknowing how many children we’d bore. I longed to be at its summit to touch the sky above. I walked back in silence, my mind devoured by my thoughts, remembrances of when I wasn’t bound to anything but my imagination. How it has grown weak over the years. How I’ve grown plain and simple, brown hair, the color of mud after a storm, wrapped tightly in a bun at the nape of my neck. It itched, I scratched, again and again, we repeated this little cycle, it and I, again and again. Who was I to disobey it? You were always the brave one.
I followed my feet, without the aid of my consciousness, around the last bend of the trail, left they led me, towards the home we’d worked so laboriously on. The one I’d been thoughtfully trying to avoid ever since I’d gotten the letter only last evening. Sitting at the hearth in that chair my sister made for our anniversary, the wicker one, the one with those stains from that night when your mother came over and spilled tea all over herself. Earl grey I believe. The aroma a snapshot of our past. When I ruefully opened the door, it creaked maniacally, mockingly, mischievously; l lurched towards the little chair, the one that had widowed me, or rather had found me widowed; ensconced in despair.
I drifted back to the place I’d so carefully crafted, the utopia living within me, where I’d been living since I heard about your fall from this earth: And there it was again, it stood still, untouched by the pains of the years that would never come, unmarked by the shoe prints of our children; Alice nor Joseph’s delicate feet. But there you were at its summit waving from the sky. I climbed up the tree, its branches smiling as I went. I would never reach you, up there in the heavens, it doesn’t mean I won’t try.
Honorable Mention
Red Paint by Kriti Dokania
It wasn’t dark. But it wasn’t light, either. The walls were bare, but they displayed thousands of stories. The room had nothing in it, but it was his entire world. Time melted away, years passing in minutes, minutes passing in years. Nothing happened, but at the same time, everything happened. His memory grew blurry around the edges. Things that used to be disappeared, things that never were appeared. He was no one, but he was everyone. He didn’t know the world, but the world knew him.
He ate food, but he didn’t know what food was. He sang songs, he danced, he talked, and he responded. He jumped up and down, he rolled on the ground. He played games with no rules, he talked to the walls in a language that didn’t exist. He redecorated his room by punching the wall and using the red paint that gushed out.
Every morning, there would be a steel plate with water and stale bread pushed through the gap in the door. He would wave a hello to the goods, before proceeding to eat it. He would tear it slowly, screaming as he did so. He would paint it red; he would talk to the stale bread. He would lick the red off, remembering the only thing he could remember. What it felt like to eat the paint when it wasn’t his own.
One day a year, it wouldn’t be stale bread. It would be fresh bread. Every time he got the fresh bread, he would scream. He would scream all day; he would scream all night. He would think about his life before his life now, but all he could remember was the taste of paint. Red paint. He would laugh, then he would cry.
He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t awake. He didn’t know if he was dreaming, or if he was really real. He would talk to the door, asking it to open politely.
And one day, it obeyed. He was eating fresh bread, and it swung open. Not a soul was in sight. He, hidden in the shadows of his room, looked up at the door. He, thinking he was in a dream, walked out. Fire enveloped the hallway, but he didn’t know what fire was. He walked through the flames, not knowing what heat was. His skin turned brown and crusty, but he didn’t know what pain was. He didn’t know how to feel.
He walked out the iron door at the end of the hallway, looking around curiously. He felt fresh air on his face. He saw darkness. But he didn’t see another person. He walked for miles, away from his burning home. He was free.
He reached a town by dawn, and walked into a store. A bell rang as he swung open the door. He stepped inside the store and grasped the handle again. He opened the door; he closed the door.
“It works,” He murmured.
“It’s a door. Of course it does,” The cashier snapped at him. He walked up to the cashier, stepping behind the register.
“My name is…” He started. But he didn’t know how to end the sentence.
“Breaking News,” came a voice overhead. He glanced up, staring straight into the face of another person, a very familiar person. In a flat screen. “Criminal Jack Rogers, murderer and cannibal, has escaped the Shawshank Prison mere hours ago. Authorities are out looking for him, and advise you to stay inside, lock your doors, and gather weapons immediately. He has escaped solitary confinement, where he has stayed for twenty-four years as of today,”
He screamed and threw an object on the tv. It fell back onto the desk with a thump, and Jack stared at it curiously. A blade jutted out of the shiny object, and he picked it up.
“Please, please, no, no, please,” The cashier whispered, crouching down into the corner. Jack grinned at him.
The he plunged the knife into the cashier’s chest, watching the red paint pour out.
Red Paint by Kriti Dokania
It wasn’t dark. But it wasn’t light, either. The walls were bare, but they displayed thousands of stories. The room had nothing in it, but it was his entire world. Time melted away, years passing in minutes, minutes passing in years. Nothing happened, but at the same time, everything happened. His memory grew blurry around the edges. Things that used to be disappeared, things that never were appeared. He was no one, but he was everyone. He didn’t know the world, but the world knew him.
He ate food, but he didn’t know what food was. He sang songs, he danced, he talked, and he responded. He jumped up and down, he rolled on the ground. He played games with no rules, he talked to the walls in a language that didn’t exist. He redecorated his room by punching the wall and using the red paint that gushed out.
Every morning, there would be a steel plate with water and stale bread pushed through the gap in the door. He would wave a hello to the goods, before proceeding to eat it. He would tear it slowly, screaming as he did so. He would paint it red; he would talk to the stale bread. He would lick the red off, remembering the only thing he could remember. What it felt like to eat the paint when it wasn’t his own.
One day a year, it wouldn’t be stale bread. It would be fresh bread. Every time he got the fresh bread, he would scream. He would scream all day; he would scream all night. He would think about his life before his life now, but all he could remember was the taste of paint. Red paint. He would laugh, then he would cry.
He wasn’t asleep, but he wasn’t awake. He didn’t know if he was dreaming, or if he was really real. He would talk to the door, asking it to open politely.
And one day, it obeyed. He was eating fresh bread, and it swung open. Not a soul was in sight. He, hidden in the shadows of his room, looked up at the door. He, thinking he was in a dream, walked out. Fire enveloped the hallway, but he didn’t know what fire was. He walked through the flames, not knowing what heat was. His skin turned brown and crusty, but he didn’t know what pain was. He didn’t know how to feel.
He walked out the iron door at the end of the hallway, looking around curiously. He felt fresh air on his face. He saw darkness. But he didn’t see another person. He walked for miles, away from his burning home. He was free.
He reached a town by dawn, and walked into a store. A bell rang as he swung open the door. He stepped inside the store and grasped the handle again. He opened the door; he closed the door.
“It works,” He murmured.
“It’s a door. Of course it does,” The cashier snapped at him. He walked up to the cashier, stepping behind the register.
“My name is…” He started. But he didn’t know how to end the sentence.
“Breaking News,” came a voice overhead. He glanced up, staring straight into the face of another person, a very familiar person. In a flat screen. “Criminal Jack Rogers, murderer and cannibal, has escaped the Shawshank Prison mere hours ago. Authorities are out looking for him, and advise you to stay inside, lock your doors, and gather weapons immediately. He has escaped solitary confinement, where he has stayed for twenty-four years as of today,”
He screamed and threw an object on the tv. It fell back onto the desk with a thump, and Jack stared at it curiously. A blade jutted out of the shiny object, and he picked it up.
“Please, please, no, no, please,” The cashier whispered, crouching down into the corner. Jack grinned at him.
The he plunged the knife into the cashier’s chest, watching the red paint pour out.
Student Author Poetry
First Place
i want a billiards room by V. Keteyian my dreams have low ceilings with little low lights. in them i move like a long-armed snake, pool cues for legs, and my laugh sounds like 8-balls clicking. when i wake i am stranded in doorways. amberly i hang. i stand at bottleglass windows, looking out. in my ancestral home the closets are lined with mirrors. there's a boy who lives in there, and i check in on him sometimes. my face doesn't show up in the glass but he smiles. my body was made for this room. my body was made for this room. i promise you, my body was made for this room. in the morning i would varnish the floor, wiping out the marks my boots made the night before. i would turn down the gas all the way every night, screw the kerosene light tight shut. i promise you, i would take care of this room. under the pool table i dream myself, one eye in each window, rowing down the river rhine — but before i am a gondolier i am a footman, and i will wax the floors. i will wipe down the balls and cues with my clean dry hands. a house is not yours when you own it. a house is yours when you care for it. when your ribs stick to the varnish, when you share your ghosts with the house then it is yours. under the floorboards there is a boy in a closet lined with mirrors. i promise i will slither through the keyhole, i promise, boy, when the sun rises we will stand back to back looking through clear glass windows. i will take care of this room. i will dust and wax until the floor lies flat under my feet, until the walls curve to my touch and there's a pool cue through my heart and then and in my dreams: i paint myself red and gold. i sculpt my columns in the greco-roman style. i am surrounded six ways with footsteps and i lie on the floor alone, glittering under the gaslight. |
Second Place
Dear Rain / Petrichor & Pine by Ava Rudensey I was born on a drizzling February evening.
You have been with me my whole life Always tapping on my roof to say hello. Jumping into the puddles you created when I was five or six. When I was eight I would watch you race down the backseat window As I dozed off in my car seat. At ten Hiding from you Beneath the slide at recess. Thirteen-or-so I would climb to the top of the evergreen tree in my backyard With you and the setting sun as my only companions. Now at sixteen I have finally learned. Learned to appreciate you. To opt to leave my umbrella at home And my hood on my back. You are a symbol of my home The smell of petrichor and pine. To acknowledge your power. From the life, you graciously sprinkle onto fields To your floods That carelessly rip through homes. You remind me to not be a raindrop Falling into the sea Lost to its violence Unending. And for that I am eternally grateful. Your silvery voice echoes through my ears There you are on my window once again. Drip. Drip. Drip. |