From the Editor

My brother and his fiancée threw a joint “bach” party in Bar Harbor. Their college friends own a house two blocks from the village center, a cute white cottage with red shutters and a mountain view. Shiny hardwood floors, wrap-around deck, sheets and blankets soft as kitten fur. Three hours from the closest city, probably swarming with tourists when the clock strikes midnight on May first. Seven-dollar kiddy cones, eleven-dollar milkshakes.

I like to weigh the pros and cons of all the places I visit as if the housing market will one day collapse and I’ll be able to buy any house I want (or any house at all). By the end of the weekend, I concluded I’d be willing to give Bar Harbor a try. It was far, but not too far, expensive, but hey, I was pretending. Being an island boy, the bridge from Mount Desert Island seems a fair compromise between ferryboat commuting and city living. And I do love the mountains.

After a night of corralling the over-drinkers and feeling awkward around Millenials I’ve never met, the “men” climbed Door Mountain, while everyone else stayed behind painting nails, drinking nine-o’clock vodka sodas, eating waffles (or so I heard).

We rose quickly. Trees turned to shrubs, walking to clambering. Soon we could see Bar Harbor below us and the islands beyond. Fog swallowed parts of the bay, hiding islands for a few minutes at a time before rolling on. We reached the top and sat. Someone asked if we were ready to descend. Everyone said no.

“Glaciers carved the softer rock out, shaping the valley between Door and Cadillac,” said Andrew.

We started arguing about whether dogs or humans could run further. The humans would have to be in peak condition of course, but I think they’d win.

Anyway, some of the following stories made me cry. Welcome back, I hope you cry too.

J.B. Marlow

 Contributors 

Fiction

Eliza Frakes (“Cello”) is a writer and performer currently living in Los Angeles, though her hometown will always be Belfast, ME. Her poetry has been published in The Portland Review and Albion Review, and her original pilot won the student branch of the Wildsound film festival. In 2021, she was selected as a young playwright in residence with the Echo theater in Los Angeles, where she debuted her original play Moleman. Her short film Murky is currently in the festival circuit, and her new devised play Certain Death and Other Considerations is premiering at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023.

Elizabeth Gauffreau (“The Chet Arthur Five Play Jeffersonville”) is a New England fiction writer in poet’s clothing. She has published fiction and poetry in literary journals, including DASH, Natural Bridge, and Woven Tale Press, as well as a novel, Telling Sonny, and a poetry collection, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance. Learn more about Liz and her work at https://linktr.ee/egauff.

Robert Diamante (“The Anatomy of a Snowy Owl”) is a writer and photographer who makes his home in Maine. His fiction and essays have appeared in Adornment Magazine; The Waking (Ruminate Magazine blog); North by Northeast: An Anthology of Writers from Maine; North by Northeast 2; The Dillydoun Review; Maine Women Magazine; Maine Seniors Magazine. His photographs are part of the permanent collection at the University of Southern Maine, the online Maine Museum of Photography, and the Brown University Library. He is frequently host of Littoral Books’ video series Littorally ALIVE! interviewing Maine authors or moderating discussions and readings.

Christian Surgenor (“The Lawtons’ Little Mystery”) lives with his wife and three daughters in Southern Arizona. When not writing and reading he cares for the chickens, ducks, geese, pigs and goats on his small hobby farm.

Peter Faziani (“Hiking Up and Down River”) is the author of Warning Shots (2017), The City as Modern Mausoleum (2019), and has numerous poetry and fiction publications. Most recently, "Blue Mornings," a piece of flash fiction, was published in the Red Brach Review. He teaches writing at Michigan State University and as well as 10th grade English at a mid-Michigan high School. He is also the editor of Red Flag Poetry. 

Hyten Davidson (“Are You Lost”) is a writer an actor based in NYC. Her short fiction has been published in The Maine Review, Landlocked Magazine, and New Reader Magazine. Her short film, "The West Virginian Starfish", which she wrote and co-directed, won last year's "Best Short Film" award at the Long Island Film Expo and Bergen International Film Festival. For more, check out www.hytendavidson.com. 

Nonfiction

Twain Braden (“Unlocking The Spring”) lives on Peaks Island.

Amie McGraham (“A Judge, A Postmistress, and a Photographer”) grew up on an island in Maine where she summers as curator of family ghosts and recipes. Her writing has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including Brevity, Hypertext Review, Maine Magazine, Wild Roof Journal and Exposition Review. Her essay was chosen as winner of the 2022 Intrepid Times "Wrong Turns" travel writing competition. Currently cooking up new stories for her foodletter Cook & Tell, Amie also produces the micro mashup, a 100-word newsletter.

Visual

Kimberly Flynn (Cover: “Brigham Hill Road”, “Goddard Park”, “Kure Beach”) (born in Cambridge, MA, 1985) began photographing at the age of sixteen when she used her first paycheck from the local movie theater to purchase a 35 mm film camera. Kimberly is the founder of Starlight Art Consultancy where she is a leader whose goal is to inspire artists to see their full potential and put it to use helping them with the business side of their art life. She will be starting her new photography project entitled Hints of Happiness which will explore mental health through portraiture. This project will take her to 5 different national and international artist residencies in 2023 with the expectation to exhibit this body of work in the future.

GJ Gillespie (“Wellerman”) is a collage artist living in a 1928 Tudor Revival farmhouse overlooking Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island (north of Seattle). In addition to natural beauty, he is inspired by art history -- especially mid century abstract expressionism.  Winner of 20 awards, his art has appeared in 57 shows and numerous publications.

Kelsey Erica Tran (“Tea Ceremony”) is an aspiring photographer and poet. Studying photography for two years in high school, she developed a passion for the art and hopes to turn it into a future career. Her first piece “Illuminate” was published in Apricity Magazine.

Cello Fiction

Eliza Frakes

You meet her at a frat party. She is a splatter of vintage pastels in a wet, black mold basement, dancing like a bird in a flock of men. Her PBR spills around her like champagne. It lands on your shoes. She doesn’t notice.

She says she likes your pin. It’s a figurine of ET wrapped in a flour tortilla. You say thank you. She laughs. She asks what you’re drinking. You say beer, like an idiot, and she gets you another.

You are both drunk at a frat party, and you talk all night, end up stumbling down cobblestones in the early morning with your shoes in your hand like a cliché. You say how far are we from hoooome and she laughs again, a big, barreling laugh that heaves her chin up toward the moon. You are awash in it: the laugh, the night sky, the streetlights, her leather sandals smacking against her heels. She holds your arm to keep steady.

You’re drunk at a party, and you end up sleeping together. Not sex, obviously, you aren’t someone who has sex, obviously, but you do sleep together. Her dorm room is all purple and blue, lined with dried orange slices and pictures of cute children and graying dogs.

When she clicks open the door she spills into the room, filling it with herself like a liquid. You feel as though you are swimming inside of her, and also with her? You are drunk. Now you are drunk in her room. You might also be high.

You can crash here if you want.

Are you sure?

It was polite to ask, but you really have to stay. The room is spinning, and you just see her, her, her, and you know you can’t get back to wherever it is you came from. She drops her vintage dress to the floor and changes into pajamas. You study the print of the quilt on her bed, little diamonds, one connected to the next, and then she is there with you, lying next to you.

Thanks for letting me stay here.

Of course.

This quilt is super nice.

Thanks.

My grandma made it.

Aw.

She must love you a lot.

Her breathing cuts and falls like a dead rose.

Are you ok?

I’m sorry.

Shit. I’m sorry.

She’s crying. She is crying because you are an idiot and you brought up her dead grandma. She is crying because her grandma died and then she is crying because she’s drunk, because she’s homesick, because she doesn’t know what to do with her life, and then she’s crying because she’s so happy she met a friend like you.

Now you’re crying, too. You watch the tears roll across the bridge of her nose and onto the sheets.

This is why men think we can’t be president.

You laugh. You tell her you would vote for her for president. And then the two of you are laughing, trying to remember that song from second grade.

George Washington was number one, John Adams, he was next...

You both fall asleep before Hayes.

You meet her at a party and now she is your island in a sea of garbage. She is your Pacific Garbage Island. Or maybe you are the Garbage Island, and she is a bird who’s managed to make a nest upon you. Either way, she is your best friend.

Now, at wet frat parties, you both dance like birds, surrounded by flocks of men. You pee together and take pictures in the bathroom mirror and compliment all the women who come through on their fishnets and bold lipstick. You go to the gym together and watch each other sweat. You share meals. You know her favorite cereal, favorite spot in the dining hall, favorite song, favorite path to the library.

She insists that skipping is the most efficient way to get around, and so you skip with her, everywhere, anywhere she wants to go. You have never skipped before, but you skip with her.

On a Friday, you go to her orchestra concert and listen to her play the cello. She is wearing a black blazer and a floor-length maxi skirt, which stretches against her knees to accommodate the instrument. She plays with her mouth open, her eyebrows knit together at the front, her whole body swaying slightly left and right like she’s on a boat. The music is tragic, mournful, it cuts into you and lingers. It stings. You like it.

You cry, obviously you cry. When the concert ends, she bows and finds you to ask how it

was.

It was fucking great!

What you want to say is:

It was like crawling into your chest and listening to your heart beat.

You both decide to go somewhere with more beer and less depressing music.

Weeks pass, months pass, and you are happy. She is happy. You are best friends, of course you are happy!

You are best friends and you meet her aunt and uncle when they visit. They take you out for dim sum. You are best friends and you dream about her. You are best friends and you go with her to visit her step-dad in the country, play cards with him, drink tea together in her childhood bedroom. You take a bus on the way back and she falls asleep with her head in your lap. You stay perfectly still for her, your best friend, and stroke her hair as the forest blurs in the window.

On a Monday, you get accepted to your program in Portugal. You leave next week–– a month back home with family, then packing, all of your things to get in order, visas, passports, new luggage. It’s the last week of the semester. You are both cramming for finals you couldn’t care less about. You get lunch in the dining hall between exams.

I got in.

She is so excited for you she screams, scurries around the table, and holds you in her arms. She is bouncing up and down, oh my God, oh my God, she is holding you, she is smiling so close to your neck it tickles.

I’m so happy for you.

And she is. You see joy crawl across her face and into her eyes. You want to scoop it up with your hands and swallow it. You are both quiet as morning snow.

You have to write to me every day, obviously.

I’ll have a WhatsApp. We can just text.

I want letters!

You see her only once more after that, when you’re packing your brick box of a room into smaller, cardboard boxes. She sits on the twin bed and drinks everything you left in your mini fridge.

You know she is there because she is singing a John Prine song you both like, but her voice sounds quieter, like she’s already walking through the long hallway, down the stairs, and out the door. You are wrapping tiny glass animals in socks and placing them gingerly in the box. She doesn’t look at you.

You try to speak to her telepathically, like a child.

What do you need?

You say it in your mind, but you are certain she can hear you.

What do you need?

She finishes the cheap vodka.

For the first few weeks, you do write to her. You send her letters with polaroid pictures of the ocean and Pastel de Nata. You call when you can. She sends you messages about her new classes, how the weather’s gone from down-puffer to more casual-fleece.

For those first few weeks, you miss her so terribly your stomach hurts all the time. You pop Tums and go dancing every night, flitting like a bird among a new flock of men, new music, new drinks, new language, but you are lonely. You are unbearably lonely.

You want nothing more than to listen to her play the cello. You want to hear the smack of her sandals, to be drunk in some horrible place together and wake up in a tangle of quilts. And then one night, dancing among your new men, you realize you want nothing more than to kiss her, your best friend, who is so far away. You want her to ask you to kiss her, and you want to say yes, yes, of course, to your best friend, who is so far away.

You feel sick in a new way, up in your chest.

She never tried to kiss you. She never led you to believe anything like that. Right? You can’t remember now, and you decide it’s better not to ask. The messages fade, and eventually, you run out of ways to ask about the weather.

By winter, the longing becomes unsustainable, and time washes your memories into an orange haze. Now, when you try to remember what she was like, what you did together, you can only think of the quilt, and the skipping, and the cello.

If she did tell you, somehow, with her eyes or her hands or her body, you didn’t know how to answer. You didn't know you could. Some nights you still try to think to her, at her.

I wish I knew how you wanted me to love you, and I wish I loved you just like that.

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Goddard Park by Kimberly Flynn East Greenwich, Rhode Island

The Chet Arthur Five Play Jeffersonville Fiction

Elizabeth Gauffreau 

Sam’s mother Lorraine smelled of Evening in Paris and mouthwash when she showed up at the high school to pull Sam out of algebra class. As soon as they were out of the building, Sam turned to her and said, “What is it this time, Ma? I was taking an algebra test, for Christ’s sake!”

“We need you to drive, Sammy. Jimmy’s been drinking.”

“Yeah, so?”

“He’s been drinking since yesterday afternoon, and I can’t get him to go home. He wants to stay with me.”

“Well, can’t he stay with you at the house? Jesus, Ma, I was taking an algebra test.”

They had reached the end of the walk, where one front tire of Jimmy’s battered red Saab had been driven up onto the curb. The rest of the car jutted into the street. Jimmy was slumped in the back seat with his head resting against the window, dressed in his usual green Dickies. Jimmy appeared to be asleep. Sam had the fleeting thought that if Jimmy were dead, he could go back to his algebra test. He’d been well on his way to getting a perfect score on this one, the variables so easily becoming constants under the confident direction of his sharpened No. 2 pencil.

Sam started the car and gingerly bumped it down off the curb, with a raucous clinking of empty Genesee bottles from the back. When the car was level again, he pulled a U-turn, drove to the end of the street, and stopped. “All right, Jimmy, where to?”

There was no answer from the back seat.

“Where to, Jimmy? I don’t have all day here. There’s somebody coming up behind me.” 

Jimmy spoke for the first time since Sam had gotten into the car. “Vergennes. I need to see a man about a part.”

“Do you know where this place is in Vergennes, where you need to see a man about a part?”

Lorraine answered him. “Of course he does, Sammy.”

Jimmy’s voice from the back seat echoed Lorraine’s. “Of course I do, Sammy.”

“I don’t want to get all the way down there, and he says, ‘Oh, I don’t think it was the guy in Vergennes. I think it was the guy in St. Johnsbury. Or maybe it was the guy in White River. Or the guy in Grand Isle.’”

“You know that only happened once, Sammy,” Lorraine said.

Sam didn’t answer her. He pulled away from the stop sign and headed down Main Street out of town, still with the beer bottle accompaniment from the back seat. “Can’t you do something with those damn empties?”

“No,” Jimmy said. “Ain’t nobody empty around here!” He laughed and nudged the back of the driver’s seat with his knee until Sam yelled, “Quit it!”

Lorraine twisted around and reached her arm behind her. “Gimme one of them, will you, Jimmy?”

“Ma, if he doesn’t cut that out, I’m going to turn this car around and go back to my algebra test, and you two can find somebody else to drive you around.”

As expected, when they got to Saint Albans, Lorraine directed Sam to stop in front of her sister’s house, where she blubbered for several minutes and refused to get out of the car because she didn’t want her sister to see her in such a sorry state.

Sam, who had left the car running this whole time, put it in reverse and backed out of the driveway into the street. “Are you sure you want to go to Vergennes?”

Lorraine nodded and dug a Kleenex out of her pocketbook. “Yes,” she said dabbing at her eyes, then her nose. “We’ll get the part Jimmy needs, and then we’ll go home. Okay, Jimmy? Is that okay, Jimmy? We’ll get your part and go home, Jimmy?”

“So long as we get that fuel pump. A car can’t run without a fuel pump, Sammy.”

Lorraine started crying again, and Sam reached his hand behind the seat until Jimmy put a beer in it, which Sam passed to his mother.

When they reached Vergennes, Jimmy directed Sam to an auto salvage yard, with only two wrong turns. Several minutes later, as expected, Jimmy returned to the car empty-handed. “He didn’t have it. It musta been the guy in Grand Isle. But I coulda sworn it was the guy in Vergennes, I coulda sworn it was–”

Sam interrupted him before he could say that Sam now needed to turn the car around and drive to Grand Isle. “I am not driving you two to Grand Isle. It’s getting dark, and by the time we got there, the place’d be closed.”

“No, Harlan stays open late. And if he’s closed, we’ll go to his house. I know where he lives.”

Sam lowered his voice and leaned over to Lorraine. “Forget it, Ma. We are not going to Grand Isle.”

“But, Sammy–”

“No.”

Sam still had not started the car.

Lorraine looked over her shoulder. “I think Sammy’s right, Jimmy. It’d be too late by the time we got there.”

As Sam headed north out of town, Jimmy said, “Are we going to Grand Isle to see the guy about the fuel pump?”

“No, Jimmy. Sammy says it’s too late.”

“But what am I gonna do? The MG won’t run without a fuel pump.”

“You’ve got plenty of other cars that run.”

“Yeah, but the MG won’t run without a fuel pump.”

Lorraine didn’t say anything for a few minutes, lighting a cigarette and drinking from her beer. Just as Sam was about to turn on Route 7, she said, “No, wait. I know what. Let’s go to The Sap Bucket. Somebody told me there’s a real good country and western band playing there. I can’t remember the name of them, but they’re supposed to be real good.”

Sam turned the blinker off and put his foot on the brake. “What? What do you want to do?”

“I want to go to The Sap Bucket.” Lorraine’s voice rose. “To listen to country and western music!”

“All right, all right. You don’t have to yell. Where is this place?”

“Jeffersonville.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Jesus Christ, Sammy, do I have to repeat everything I say to you?”

When they arrived at The Sap Bucket, and Sam saw the Volvos parked outside, he knew they had the wrong bar, or the wrong information, or something.  “Are you sure this is the place?” he said to Lorraine, who was buttoning her coat.

“Of course I’m sure.” She opened the car door and scrambled out. “You think I’m stupid or something?” She continued talking as she pushed the driver’s seat forward and reached into the back to help Jimmy out. “This place has been here for twenty years.  I know where the hell I am.  Don’t I, Jimmy?”

“Listen to your mother,” Jimmy said as he followed Lorraine out of the car. “She knows where to go, she wouldn’t steer us wrong.”

“All right,” Sam said, not wanting Jimmy to get started. “I’ll stay in the car and wait for you here.”

“You will not!” Lorraine said.  “It’s too cold.  You’ll freeze out here in the car.  And anyways, I want you to listen to this band.  This is a good band.  You like good music.  You come in with us and listen to the band, and we’ll dance, won’t we, Jimmy?”  She stumbled and clutched Jimmy’s arm. The thin soles of her high heels slipped on the icy surface of the parking lot.  Jimmy lost his balance, and they both went down, laughing.

“Shit,” Sam said.  He locked the car, put the keys in his front pocket, and picked up Lorraine and Jimmy, who were both still laughing.

“Shit,” he said again, this time to himself. 

As soon as they walked into the bar, Sam knew for certain they were in the wrong place.  The band, warming up on the tiny stage, was a bunch of aging hippies.  One was leaning over a stand-up bass, tuning it.

Lorraine found a table near the small dance floor, in front of the band, and they got themselves settled, Lorraine laughing and repeating herself to no one in particular, Jimmy just sitting there mouthing his cigar and looking glazed. When the waitress came to take their order, Lorraine asked her how they had got the wood inside the plastic table.  The waitress informed her that it was the other way around. 

“Well, it don’t look that way to me,” Lorraine said.

She and Jimmy ordered a pitcher of beer, and Sam ordered a Coke. He thought briefly about going out to the car and getting his books so that he could do his algebra homework for tomorrow, but the bar was so noisy he knew that he would never be able to concentrate.

To his dismay, Sam saw that his mother was crying again.  Loudly. Wetly. Profusely. Her nose had turned red and her cheeks had mottled.

He hissed across the table.  “What is your problem?  Why are you crying?”

Jimmy said, “It’s my fault.  My fault.  I asked her to marry me.  I was just joking, you understand. But I meant it.  I shouldn’ta done it.”

Sam knew that the only thing to do was to distract them, one way or another.  Bringing up the fact that Jimmy was already married was pointless. Sam was sure that neither one of them knew what the other was talking about anyway.  Jimmy didn’t know why Lorraine was crying, and Lorraine didn’t know why Jimmy kept asking her to marry him. 

Lorraine was still sniffling and Jimmy now had tears in his eyes. “I been hurt,” Lorraine explained to Jimmy. “I been away too long and I come back hurt, and I don’t want you to know about it because we was such good friends in high school, such good friends.  You’re a good man, Jimmy, and you have a good wife and a good marriage and two good sons.  Me, I got no husband, no marriage.  I’ll never marry again, never.  It’s too much pain.  I got four little kids with no daddy, a big baby so damned foolish he stays in trouble all the time, two growed-up boys with shit for brains that don’t have half a brain between ’em.  And Sammy. Sammy is my only son, my only boy.  He is so good to me.”  She began sobbing loudly.

Jimmy was looking a little pale, and that distracted Lorraine’s attention for a few minutes.  Would he puke or wouldn’t he puke?  Sam assumed that he wouldn’t, or if he did, he would have the decency to make it outside first. He was not a puke-on-people’s-shoes drunk.

The band was warming up under the soft glow of muted lights over the small platform that served as a stage. When they were through with the plunks on the bass and the honks on the saxophone and the blatts on the trumpet, another aging hippie, this one dressed in faded bell bottoms and an embroidered muslin shirt, came out from behind the bar and went up to the microphone, tapping it with his finger.  If he said, Testing, testing, like some dipshit school principal, Sam decided he was going to get up and leave.  He would just go out and sit in Jimmy’s car, turn on the dome light, and work on his algebra problems.      

Sam was watching the guy in the embroidered shirt say, Testing, testing, and sure enough, he even said, One, two, three.  Sam started to get up, but then he noticed that Lorraine had stopped crying, and Jimmy looked less pale and more alert. 

“Welcome,” said the guy in the embroidered shirt, now that he was sure the microphone was working properly, “to The Sap Bucket. We are proud to present for your listening pleasure, The Chet Arthur Five.”

The crowd had quieted down as soon as the guy in the embroidered shirt stepped up to the mic and was now suitably mellow to applaud The Chet Arthur Five when they took the stage. This band of rejects had better be good, Sam thought, to take the name of his favorite president–although it was damned rude and disrespectful to call themselves Chet instead of Chester A.  Ever since he had first gone to see Chester A. Arthur’s birthplace, a tiny four-room farmhouse stuck way out on a dirt road in East Fairfield, he had been a great admirer of Chester A. Arthur.  For a man to be born and raised in East Fairfield, Vermont, of all places, and become President of the United States was nothing less than a wonder. Such a man should be admired and esteemed.  

The Chet Arthur Five played jazz, some blues, a few cheesy songs.  They weren’t bad, and they weren’t good, just some guys getting together who could play, who knew some weird old songs, songs from before their time, some from their grandparents’ time, the lead singer announcing the history of each song as though he were giving a lecture at school.  Lorraine was quiet through the first set.  Sam could see that it was taking a while to sink in that this was not the country and western band she had been expecting to see.  After the break, when they swung into a syncopated little number called “Java,” about all the different ways you can prepare and drink coffee, she objected.  “This band is shit,” she said.  “They can’t play for shit.  Now if Hank Williams hadn’ta died, we wouldn’t have to listen to this shit.” As it splatted loudly on the wood floor, each shit was as loud and as noticeable as if it had come from a cow herself.

“It’s all right,” Jimmy said. “I like it. They don’t do the songs as good as the originals, but they’re pretty good.”

“See what happened when Hank died?” Lorraine continued.

Now that she had a stupid idea in her head, she was going to beat it to death, and if she bored her son insensible and embarrassed the rest of the people in the bar, that was no concern of hers.

“Music has just gone to shit since Hank died.  To shit.  The only one now who even comes near to taking his place is Patsy Cline.”

“Patsy Cline is dead,” Sam said.  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them.

“No, she ain’t,” Lorraine said, raising her voice.  “She sings all them good songs. I’ve got three of her tapes, and one of ’em’s brand new.  She ain’t dead.  You’re thinking of Hank Williams, Sammy.”

“O.K., Ma.”

“Don’t you ‘O.K., Ma’ me.  You still think she’s dead, but she ain’t.  Is she, Jimmy?”

“Who?” Jimmy said.

“Patsy Cline!!”

“What about her?” Jimmy said. “She’s dead.”

Sam put his hands over his face. He couldn’t listen to any more of this. He wouldn’t listen to any more of this. He would just sit there with his hands over his face and listen to The Chet Arthur Five play their weird old songs until his mother finally took it in her head that they could leave. 

After a few minutes, he heard Jimmy stand up and say, “Time to go. My show’s coming on.” Sam took his hands down from his face and watched as Jimmy mentally counted the glasses on the table, took a bill out of his wallet, and dropped it on the table.

When they walked out to the car, Sam unlocked the driver’s side door, but when he pushed the seat forward so that Jimmy could get in the back, Jimmy put out his hand and asked for the keys. “I’ll drive, Sammy. I don’t want to miss my show.”

Sam looked at Lorraine across the roof of the car, fully expecting her to object, but she didn’t, saying instead, “It’s all right, Sammy. Give him the keys.”

Sam turned to Jimmy, then back to Lorraine, his hand closed in a fist around the keys. “He shouldn’t be driving.”

Lorraine walked around the car and gestured for the keys. “Jimmy’s going to drive so he don’t miss his show.  He’s going to have to hurry to make it back to the house in time.  You’re going to watch it at the house, ain’t you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy nodded. Sam handed over the keys and climbed into the back seat. As he fastened his seatbelt, he wondered almost idly if this would be the night he would die. Jimmy backed the car out of the parking lot with little trouble, easing the front-wheel drive over the snow. 

The road from Jeffersonville to Enosburg was narrow, winding, and dark.  Each time they met another car coming towards them, Sam flinched, telling himself it was from the car’s headlights suddenly shining in his eyes, not from the knowledge that Jimmy was driving the little Saab over eighty on the narrow winding road.  Even though the heater was on in the car, he could tell how cold it was outside. Little drafts of cold, dry air came in through cracks around the rear and side windows. The blackness of the road and the pine trees beside the road made it seem all the colder.  He could see snow on the trees as they drove, glowing dully in the darkness but with no sparkle when the car headlights shined on them.  The road was dry with a thin white layer of salt visible in the headlights, the occasional patch of black ice sliding under their tires giving no indication how treacherous it was.     

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Kure Beach by Kimberly Flynn Wilmington, North Carolina

Unlocking The Spring Nonfiction

Twain Braden

This spring, here on the coast of Maine, we experienced the usual horror of March, cold blasts followed by balmy days, and then back again, often on the same day. April wasn’t much better, although a few unseasonably warm days sent us all scrambling for rakes and shovels to get an early start on winter cleanup and the first flails of laying out the garden. But then the gray skies and winds swept us all back inside, gritting our teeth and grudgingly turning on the heat or stoking the woodstove. There’s a desperation to it, since we know a 55-degree day in March or April can be followed by a foot of snow or, worse, a sleet storm that coats your cheeks and clogs your ears. Vermont writer Noel Perrin called this time of year “unlocking” – a separate season as distinct from winter and then spring, which, as everyone here knows, really doesn’t occur until May, those perfect days of warmth and color, birds chattering with a vibrancy that truly banishes the freeze. The hold that winter has eventually releases its grip, slowly unlocking for a good eight weeks in March and April, but only grudgingly and with a prolonged fight that feels personal and involves wildly swinging temperatures and bitter wind, sprinkled with an occasional day when the wind is quiet and the sun able to assert itself.  

Verlyn Klinkenborg, in The Rural Life, described spring in the woods of his Upstate New York farm as a visual chaos, an “indiscriminate tangle,” with “metabolisms, cross-conspiring, begin[ing] to slip out of dormancy about now.” To which he added, “It was spring and it wasn’t. The bees droned in the sunshine, hovering near the lengths of wood I had just finished cutting. In this still early season, the sap that oozed from the heartwood was the sweetest thing to be found.”

For this reason, the confused and lonely grayness, I tap trees and boil sap just as soon as I can and have done so, off and on, for at least the past 25 years. Not every year, since we live on an island with few sugar maples, but whenever I can slip away to New Hampshire where a small group of friends run their sugarhouses on a small hill in view of Mt. Monadnock. This year, we had made an early foray west in January and set up the evaporator, cleaning the mice nests out of the buckets and piles of hoses before pressure-washing everything to a shine. We thought we were getting a jump on the season, but then we heard that one neighbor had not only tapped his trees but was boiling as well. In January. This is unlocking at its most fickle. Six weeks later, the dog and I were back and the sap had begun to flow in earnest. And so had the beer at each of the sugarhouses we visited. At Camp Glen Brook in Marlborough, my old friend Grant and I drew off ten buckets of syrup before the day was out, occasionally mixing a taste with a splash of bourbon, the sharpness of the liquor mellowing the heat and sweetness. The day was alternately cloudy and breezy with brief patches of sun. Perrin again: “[T]he more capricious the weather—the more spring seems to come and then dances away again—the better the sugaring.”  

Perrin had a horse named Dr. Pepper who would nose his way into sap buckets and slurp them dry; I have an Australian shepherd named Georgie, whose trick is to slyly slurp at the sticky buckets when my back is turned. He chases sticks and rolls in the snow, keenly aware by the brightness he sees in my face, that the rising warmth is cause for celebration.

When I was a young father of two boys, we gathered sap around the island neighborhood with a little red wagon and a plastic bucket, one boy pulling and the other pushing, with me ferrying the sap buckets to their jaunty sap-caravan. We collected it on the shady side of the house and on weekends rolled downhill to the beach, where we had driftwood fires and boiled it off, filling beer bottles and whatever we pulled from the recycling bin. We plugged the tops with cork. 

As they grew older, and we migrated around, my wife and I multiplied, adding a curly-haired girl and a toe-headed boy, and eventually graduated to a real sugarhouse. The Dominion & Grimm evaporator, 150 buckets and miles of hose became my new axis mundi come spring. I used a hydrometer and wool filters, a canning device, and real bottles that came in boxes of 12, and little bags of screw-top lids. We were in business, selling 12-ounce bottles for $10 apiece to supplement the camp’s revenue. I stapled drawings and poems and diagrams to the wall, celebrating the strange miracle that each year gave shape to our world for six weeks. 

I’m about to be a grandfather, the son who pulled the wagon will be pushing a baby stroller soon; and soon after that, the eventual toddler will wobble around after me at the sugarhouse if I am so lucky. The inconstancy of the unlocking of winter and the emerging spring will give way to full-blown summer, the passing months dimming the memories of the joy of sap flowing from trees and releasing the world from darkness. 

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The Anatomy of a Snowy Owl Fiction

 Robert Diamante

Along the road winding down the eastern side of the peninsula there is a point where the lane curves sharply right and the woods are pushed back. At this elbow is a worn half-moon of gravel tattooed with the treads of many tires, now covered by a light unbroken layer of snow. For knowing eyes, the turnout hides a threshold to a long-overgrown path leading into the forest: the scar of an unused camp road. No name is posted at the roadside, no mailbox, and no sign warning strangers away. Locals are familiar with this hidden entrance to the neck, and it is usual any time of day to see a car or two parked there.

Ray stared into the patch of forest illuminated within the triangle of the truck’s warm headlights. Its tires bit into the crisp snow and its brakes complained as it rolled to a stop. After a moment came the rattling cough of the retiring motor as Martin turned off the ignition. The forest became a dense and impenetrable wall of darkness. Ray closed his eyes and yawned.

 “You good?” Martin asked.

Ray was mid-yawn. He exhaled sharply and nodded. “Once…” but the words caught in his rusty throat. He coughed, “…once the cold air hits my face.”

Martin was gripping the steering wheel like the captain of a boat heading into a squall.

“I’m fine,” Ray assured him, “really.”

Actually, Ray was exhausted. They had gone to bed shortly after his return the night before, and most of the night he had been awake on the opposite side of the bed. Finally, he did doze, though it felt like only minutes had passed before he was awakened by Martin’s hand on his waist. He remained still and listened to the cadence of Martin’s breath. How much he wanted to roll over, touch his face, taste his morning breath. He had missed him. But instead, he whispered the idea of this walk into the dark. Without a word Martin withdrew his hand, dutifully rose, and began to dress.

Ray yawned again. Maybe they should have stayed in bed after all. Two middle-aged men in the arena of desire fighting it out with flesh. Both would have risen victorious on some level, the deep needs housed within their aging bodies knocked out cold for a time. Ray looked over. Martin was staring bleary-eyed through the windshield, his dark hair spilling out from beneath his plaid cap and rolling over the collar of his coat. His beard had also grown bushier and saltier during Ray’s absence. The truck’s cab was fragrant with his musk, the same scent that saturated his pillow. No, Ray thought, sexual attraction was never an issue for either of them. But that wasn’t the problem, anyway; it never had been. Besides, it was too late to turn back, here they were, parked by the entrance to the neck. Ray put on his hat and took a deep breath. “Ready,” he said. Each man gathered his warmth then stepped out into the chilly morning air. They were about to enter a different arena.

Above the trees, the brightest stars were still shining. Ray rolled his collar higher and adjusted his hat to cover the tips of his ears. He looked down to check that his boots were tied, then walked around to the other side of the truck and stood beside Martin.

“Well,” Ray said, “at least there’s no wind.” The vapor of his breath mingled with Martin’s, who gave a slight nod sideways then began plodding through the snow toward the trail. Ray followed without another word.

Locals who walked the promontory felt no sense of trespass. Each maintained an unspoken stewardship of the land, loving and protecting it in proxy of the long-absent owners. Rarely would anyone feel the right to disrupt another’s sanctity by questioning their presence on the uninhabited spit. The community on the peninsula was small and people mostly knew one another, if not by name then by sight. If ever a stranger were encountered on the trail, a conversation would be struck. Names would be passed back and forth like cards in a game of chance, and it usually wasn’t long before an acquaintance—or even a distant relative—was matched. But if the person were truly an outsider, they would be ushered off the land in some subtle way. Methods of communication any more direct would have been considered rude. People in the community preferred common ground to confrontation. Ray had met many of them already, Martin’s presence always providing an instant and undisputed guarantee of passage.

Martin blazed the trail into the forest. His heavy steps shattered the icy veneer with a faint crackle followed by a hollow tamp as the snow beneath his boots compressed. Echoless and intimate, the sound mesmerized Ray. He followed Martin’s earnest gait by stepping into each of the depressions his boots left behind. When the trail widened, he stepped sideways and began to emboss his own bootprints. After several hundred feet, the trail widened again then became two indelible ruts that the forest had not reclaimed: the old camp road. Covered by an unbroken layer of snow, the ruts glowed blue with first light. On either side of the trail boney maples, slender birch, and naked hobblebush shivered within the understory of fir. Ray stepped over the mound of brittle grass between the tracks and increased his pace to keep up with Martin. Then, where the camp road curved deeper into the woods, he stopped and listened for the pitch of the ocean. The cove was not far off.

“It’s low tide,” he announced.

Martin, who had taught him this skill, simply nodded without stopping or looking back. It was difficult to know if he were angry. Ray suspected he was not. Martin was a complex lamination of rationale and cerebral intensity who rarely—if ever—bent to mood. His patience during the past several months had been astonishing. It was not a trait Ray had experienced with any man in the past.

Sunrise began to stretch through the forest. When they rounded the final bend in the trail, a dark silhouette came into view.

The cabin stood near the tip of the point where the trees tapered off and the land rose upon a crag of bedrock. Its weathered shakes, once deep green, had long ago faded to gray and were now patinaed with circles of tanned lichen. The north side, where the light barely reached, was covered by a soft verdigris that molted upward to the slope of the roof covering it in a comforter of soft green down. Low-bending fir boughs brushed the apex. On the southeast side of the sagging pitch several shingles had come loose revealing the dark tar paper beneath, which leered up like missing teeth. Every day the filtered sun baked the south side dry making it impossible for the moss to migrate. Frost and dirt clouded the cabin’s windows like old eyes. Time was against it, yet the cabin was always there, stalwart and dependable like an old friend.

Ray paused at the porch stairs. Martin continued to the edge of the promontory. He stopped and waited patiently for Ray. This was their ritual. Ray climbed the narrow stoop, approached the door, then leaned over and rubbed a small circle onto one of the frosted glass panes. He peered inside.

Everything was in its place.

It was just a year ago when Martin introduced him to the promontory and the cabin. There hadn’t been snow then, yet the cold had been blistering. Wind from the surrounding bay scourged their cheeks once they set out on the trail. But their complaints had been weak, and neither had cared enough to suggest turning back. They tried to hold hands, and Ray exaggerated the impossible task of weaving their thick-gloved fingers together. They were laughing when they rounded the bend, and the cabin came into Ray’s view for the very first time. He gasped. “It’s perfect!” Martin led him up to the porch to escape the wind. “Are you sure we can? We won’t get arrested or anything?” Martin had nodded toward the door and said, “Look inside.”

The cabin became an instant fascination for Ray. He was rapt. It was a reliquary, a shrine to simple, uncomplicated living. It illustrated a version of life apart from any he had ever experienced. Throughout summer it became a game to discover what, if anything, had changed inside: the kettle on the cast iron stove; the salt and pepper shakers on the wooden table in the center of the room; the wear on the buffalo plaid couch against the side wall.

Ray had thought a lot about the cabin and its humble contents during his drive back to Martin’s the night before. He was wary that his return was prompted by nostalgia and the false hope that he could be satisfied with the settled bliss Martin’s world offered. Now, as he studied the cabin’s interior, the scene comforted him in a way it hadn’t ever before. He felt a meaningful proprietorship for it, his presence a form of bearing witness to something inexplicably real that he was a part of despite any of his misgivings.

Ray took a step back from the door and looked over. Martin was at the edge of the spit staring out toward the bay. A salty breeze rose up and rustled the skeletal witch hazel around him. Their yellow flowers flickered like tiny flames.

“All good,” he called out.

Like a soldier obeying a command, Martin stepped forward onto the hill and started down the trail to the beach. When his head disappeared below the edge of land, Ray descended the porch steps and followed.

He found Martin standing at the shoreline squinting east. The sun had just breached the horizon. To their left, the broad cove hugged the eastern shore of the peninsula before curving in a graceful arc northward where the mainland river spilled out into the cove. The river’s outflow calmed in the estuary before mingling with the brackish tide ripping past them at the tip of the reach. Three rocky shoals and a clanging marker stood guard within the current as it flowed into the bay then out toward the open ocean.

“Low tide,” Ray confirmed.

Martin raised his eyebrows and gave a slow nod yet continued looking out toward the horizon.

Low tide on the reach revealed a collar of sand along the shoreline where it met the rise to the forest. Bronzing strands of rockweed, dried tufts of Irish moss, worn driftwood, and tumbled beach stones adorned its neck. The low-tide beach was broad, a promenade of firm sand. Its easternmost tip unfurled into the bay like a hook worked to its shape by the hammering tides. The day after a storm, it was common for the locals to scavenge the neck for whatever gems the river had sent down, and what pearls the ocean had coughed up.

A thin, clear wave washed across the shore in front of them. Sunshine glistened on the mottled crystalline faces of a few embedded stones. Filled with a sense of arrival, Ray watched the sand around the stones bubble. When another wave washed in, he closed his eyes. He was thinking back to a warm morning last spring when he and Martin walked the shore.

A fog bank had rolled in. They were enveloped. Socked in, Martin had said. Then came the foghorn’s rhythmic chant floating over from the opposite peninsula, a single dolorous tone to answer the discordant clang of the harbor’s lone buoy. The sounds were hypnotic, and they stilled Ray’s mind. Light from the climbing sun amplified within the fog, and he thought, I am socked in by light. His sense of space disappeared, the sand beneath him evaporated into a cloud. He felt weightless. The light around him brightened and he allowed himself to drift. Then suddenly he shuddered as if he had been struck. The temporal world vanished, and he became suffused by an overwhelming euphoria, a beautiful rapturous heartbreak. Freed from his body, he had become a part of all things at once—the ocean, the trees. He swooned and fell to the sand. When he regained consciousness, he was in Martin’s arms and Martin’s lips were pressed lightly to his forehead. The fog was gone. Once he was able to stand, they walked on as if the moment had not happened.

But it was just a few months ago when he and Martin last walked the beach. By then Ray’s sense of isolation had become unbearable. The ocean, the forest—and Martin—had witnessed his awakening. But that glimpse into the sublime that warm Spring day had been more perfect than his soul was able to sustain. There is no truer despair, he thought, than to discover that such encounters with the divine cannot be summoned. When a heavy snow began to fall, the sound of the waves dissolved into a howling, pitiless gale. Unlike the fog, which had been illuminating, the storm brought Ray a dreadful absence. Devastated, he insisted they leave, but even before the confused Martin could react, Ray was hurrying toward the trail. Within moments of arriving at the house, he packed a bag and departed with the inexcusable promise, it isn’t you, Martin.

Now, here they were, standing where both his opening and closing had occurred. It was no surprise that Martin was tacit and wary.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

Ray held up a hand to shield his eyes. He was looking out toward a lobster boat glinting in the sun as it slid across the orange sea. “I stayed with Linda,” he said.

“Linda,” Martin repeated fixing his gaze on the boat as well.

Linda, who had worked with Ray in New York, introduced them through email. Her stories from small-town Maine used to fascinate Ray. One evening over cocktails, as they were discussing their single lives, she told him of a man she knew back home.

“There isn’t anyone else, in case you’re wondering, Martin. I mean, another man.”

Martin shook his head, “I didn’t think there was.”

Their courtship through email had been brief. Just over a month later, Ray told Linda he was flying up to meet Martin. She was surprised, even suspicious. The two men were nothing alike. But the aesthetics of otherness can either repel two people or inspire attraction. Ray and Martin both felt an immediate bond that was fraternal, instinctive, and wildly sensual. If asked why, neither would have been able to explain it. Both had accepted it fully.

Seagulls were now swarming the lobster boat, their insistent squawks part of the symphony with the slattern craft’s sputtering engine. “She did warn me, you know, when I told her I was moving up. ‘People romanticize Maine,’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful. But it isn’t easy.’”

 Martin adjusted his cap and frowned, “Well, it’s been a leap for both of us,” he said.

Watching the boat slide across the water filled Ray with a sense of familiarity, much like what he felt when looking through the frosted pane into the cabin. How idyllic it had been for him and Martin at the start of summer. But by fall the complications of their changed situations had ripened. By the first snowfall, the space between them was so fractured that both had become stranded apart.

And yet each continued to feel a deep and inexplicable longing for the other.

“Linda says we’re together, but we just don’t know it yet.”

“Sounds like her.”

The lobster boat finally rounded the southern tip of the reach and disappeared into the opposite harbor. “She didn’t take sides.”

“Sides?” Martin turned to Ray, “Is this a battle? Are we fighting?”

Ray instantly saw the wound he had inflicted.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I just…”

But Martin wasn’t listening. He was looking over Ray’s shoulder with his lips parted and head tipped sideways. His forehead was furrowed into a cascade of wrinkles. It was a familiar countenance that Ray understood, so he turned to see what Martin was studying so intently.

Below the promontory where the rise met the shore was a stuck log. Softened and bleached by the tides, the log was steaming awake beneath the mounting sun. However, what had captured Martin’s attention so suddenly lay just beside it. There was an odd figure leaning against the rocks.

Ray gasped.

They hurried toward it, but as they drew closer each expressed relief when they realized it was not a child as it had first appeared. Rather it was a large bird interred within a nest of seaweed and frozen between two stones. Its wings were crooked and pointed outward, and its remarkably long legs were knocked in a grotesque vaudevillian pose; it looked as if it were poised to shuffle off a stage.

“Is it a seagull?” Ray asked.

Martin bent to inspect it. After a minute he shook his head, “It’s a snowy owl.”

Most of the large bird’s feathers had been stripped off, but frozen near the tips of its wings was a sparse collection peppered with short black dashes. Gnarled black talons looked to be grasping for some invisible prey but were tangled in fishing line. The owl’s head was cocked backwards, and its dark, clouded eyes gawked with a startled, pained expression; the blunt, ash-colored beak was frozen mid-screech. If not terrible enough, there was a hole in its distended chest, a red heart-shaped opening just a few inches wide.

“Is that a rifle hole?” Ray asked, “Or a shotgun?” Ray didn’t actually know the difference between the two.

Martin shook his head, “A shotgun would have blown ‘em clean apart.”

The owl’s body had been hollowed out with a doctor’s precision. Taut scarlet fascia stretched across the inner contours of its ribcage. Seaweed poked through a larger hole in its back. Ray was horrified. For him, an act so treacherous felt close to murder and defiled the sanctity of its setting. “Who could do such a thing?”

Martin picked up a small stick and ran it along the edge of the hole in the snowy owl’s chest. “These are bite marks,” he explained. Then he poked the stick into the clear nylon threads binding the owl’s talons. “That’s a right tangle of line.” He threw the stick aside and stood up. “Fisherman must ‘a lost a catch and it washed in. The owl dived for it, got stoved up in the line. Some critter on the bank heard the fuss and took it out. Something lanky. A weasel, I guess.”

“Should we report it?”

“It’s not tagged.”

“Bury it?”

Martin shrugged, “Let nature have it. Turn it into what she wants.” He bent to pull the tangled line away from the owl’s legs, held up the hook to punctuate his assessment, rolled it all into a ball, then tucked it into his jacket pocket without a word more.

There was a dispassionate logic to the way Martin saw the world. Answers to any problems came to him unfailingly. How often Ray had watched him frown over a puzzle or stare at the intricacies of something broken—whether it be the engine of a boat, a hard drive unable to boot up, or a section of the eaves in need of repair. Without fail, he would find its solution. In his capable and naïve way, Martin understood the implicit processes of the mechanical world, and most especially those from nature. His accounting of the snowy owl’s death was no different.

Martin backed away from the corpse and began walking toward the water. But Ray could not help but stay behind in rapt wonder. He continued to study the intimate and revealing scene assessing for himself the obscure message of the snowy owl’s death. Finally, after several minutes, he freed himself and hurried to catch up with Martin. They cut across the beach to the tideline at the southernmost point on the spit, then began to trace the blunt granite escarpment jutting out toward the ocean. They stopped when their boots met the farthest reach of an incoming wave.

 “So, why did you leave?” Martin asked. He removed a glove, bent over, and began to pull at the rockweed near the waterline on the granite ridge.

Ray leaned his back against the stone, tipped his face to the sun, then closed his eyes. The warmth was welcomed. Finally, the question had come. It was not a demand, nor was there any hint of anger in Martin’s tone. While away he had constructed several feeble excuses, none of which had a thing to do with Martin or any of his idiosyncrasies. In fact, he had pined for Martin during the months he was gone. The answer had begun to coalesce as he was staring down into the hollow body of the snowy owl, though it had come as a feeling and not the single most perfect word he felt Martin was due. Then it occurred to him. He opened his eyes.

“Surrender,” Ray announced.

Martin stood and turned. Ray could see him struggling with this illogical, even enigmatic answer, one he could not have solved with any amount of scrutiny.

“You have been a sympathetic witness to something that was happening to me. It was never you, Martin.”

“But we both made changes.”

“I know,” Ray could not help but smile. The moisture of Martin’s breath had frozen the tips of his mustache into tiny icicles that dangled over his upper lip. He appeared vulnerable, which endeared him to Ray even more. “You’re just better at change than I am. At first, I thought I was angry with you. The way you would look at me, trying to figure me out. I saw you struggling to make a place for me, this very high-strung man from New York who landed inside your very private life. I was afraid that one day you would realize how much I’ve disrupted your world and finally throw me out. But you didn’t budge. You never did. You did nothing but accommodate me and try to understand me. And the weight of that trust was overwhelming. It had nothing to do with you, my running away. Honestly. But the answer is simple. I left my past, but it hadn’t left me.”

The curl of a small wave crept up to the heel of Martin’s boot. Ray took a step back.

“You and I have never been at war.” He looked over Martin’s shoulder and saw a more aggressive ripple of water coming at them. He reached out and took Martin’s ungloved hand, “I was at war with myself,” then pulled him forward. “But I have surrendered.” Ray released Martin’s hand. “And now you’re safe as houses.”

Martin replaced his glove and brought his hand down to rest at his side. “I want to be more than safe.”

Ray nodded, “Great. Because, as it turns out, I am dangerously in love with you.”

The wave was more earnest than Ray had anticipated. Water washed beneath Martin’s boots, who held out his arms to balance himself as he sank into the softened sand.

“Tide ‘s turned,” Ray said stepping backwards. He suddenly felt freer than he had all year. He retraced their steps and began to follow the shoreline until he came to the log where he paused to inspect the snowy owl once more. He was crouched when Martin caught up with him. After a moment he straightened, and he and Martin slowly and silently walked back to the trail that led up to the cabin.

The air was warmer on the bluff, now carpeted with a low, downy mist. The trees were lit by the cheerful pips of birds. They started to follow the trail past the cabin but stopped when they saw a small bruise-colored silhouette coming towards them. It was a woman with a pointed hat and a long stick probing the pathway before her. Soon she was standing before them.

“What a morning!” she said pushing back her peaked cap and raising her chin towards the sun. Stippled light filtered down through the trees illuminating her creased cheeks and damp nose. She took in a deep breath and exhaled meaningfully. When she opened her eyes she looked up at Ray, then over to Martin and—perhaps sensing something large between them—turned toward the cabin and nodded. “You know, I was friendly with the family who owns this camp. Some of the grandchildren were my students. One of them was in your class, Martin, one of the boys. Isn’t that right?”

Martin, who was digging the heel of his boot into the frozen earth, nodded but did not look up.

“Who knows, maybe one day one of them will come back,” she said turning to Ray, “put back what it wants most.”

 Maybe, Ray thought to himself, a cabin becomes a camp the way a house becomes a home. It was a saccharin thought, but reassuring. “It just needs some love,” he said.

The woman raised her eyebrows. Ray liked the way her large eyes probed his face discerning answers before questions were asked. How very much like the owl she appeared to him then. Not in its death but in the majestic vitality he imagined the bird once possessed.

“I haven’t seen you around town since there were leaves on the trees,” she said to him. It was a polite way of asking where Ray had been for the past few months.

“I went back to New York,” he explained.

“Oh, dear, I hope everything’s alright,” Her concern was delivered with the immodest curiosity of elders.

 “I just needed to tie up some loose ends.” Ray nodded, “But I’m home, now.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. We can’t afford to lose any more young people down here.”

Nearing fifty, Ray did not consider himself young anymore. But in that moment he felt like a child. And the way Martin was digging his boot into the frost-bitten ground seemed to confirm he too was feeling younger—and maybe more liberated—than when their morning walk had begun.

“Did you see the owl?” she asked, “Is it still there?”

 “Yes. Still frozen in,” Ray confirmed.

“What do you suppose happened to it?”

There existed for Ray in the horror of the grand bird’s demise an association with own trajectory through the past year, an allegory illustrating his initial feeling of capture, his unavoidable boring out, and his new sense of freedom. But for him to have arrived at the place he was today—in that moment, where he stood with Martin by his side and the woman probing his face inquisitively—he understood he must fully accept the necessity for all of it to have occurred. Opening himself to Martin was the easiest choice he had made within the greater scheme of choices that led to his ultimate surrender and transfiguration. He began to explain the circumstances of the snowy owl’s death, attempting to apply the same logic to the events as lucidly as Martin had. But it was an awkward account and more difficult to describe than if the woman had asked him about the current state of his own soul, or the depth of love he felt for the man beside him bashfully pawing at the frozen earth with his boot. It was no surprise that she was staring back at Ray as if he had just spoken another language.

“A weasel got it,” Martin finally said with his usual precision.

“Ah, yes,” the woman nodded. She pulled down her cap and put her hand on Ray’s arm, “nature can be so damned ruthless.” She pulled away her hand. “Take care you two,” she said, “Take care of each other for goodness’ sake.”

She started along the path past the cabin with the long stick before her then carefully negotiated the trail leading down to the beach. When the tip of her hat disappeared below the top of the land, Ray turned to Martin, whose forehead was furrowed into a cascade of wrinkles. He was staring at Ray, his eyes large and wet and filled with something about to overflow.

“Martin? Is everything alright?”

Martin shook his head. “Just looking.”

He reached for Ray’s hand, and they continued down the trail towards home.

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Wellerman by GJ Gillespie

A Judge, a Photographer, a Postmistress Nonfiction

Amie McGraham 

They arrived in December. The first, early in the month. The other, after Christmas. She’d forgotten to wrap them but it’s not as if I didn’t know what they were; my mother had mailed me one every year for the thirty years I’d lived out west. The annual “Around the Harbor” calendar in all its glossy technicolor glory. Glamour shots of Boothbay Harbor, outlying islands, sailboats and lighthouses, photographed by the region’s resident shutterbug.

My mother dated the photographer the year after my father left. She’d survived the harshest winter in most locals’ recent memories, carrying in armload upon armload of wood, feeding the fires, feeding eleven-year-old me, barely feeding herself, just the two of us sleeping through the frigid darkness of those long winter nights. In spring she emerged, tentative as the daffodils peeping through the snowbanks in our backyard. Fifteen pounds lighter from a season of self-doubt. Frye boots still reeking of new leather, popularized by the only other divorcée on the island.

“You’re a walkin’ skeleton,” the postmistress remarked when we picked up the mail. “Men like their women with a little meat on their bones.”

Those days, there were three post offices on the island, each run by its own postmistress—a term almost as antiquated as the concept of mail itself. Those days, culture was not cancelled; stamps were.

Eventually, my mother regained enough weight and confidence to place a personal ad in the weekly local newspaper in the form of a clever limerick.

Responses poured in, along with the regular stack of fan mail and recipes from the readers of the monthly newsletter she wrote and illustrated for nearly forty years. She narrowed the candidates to the two she found most witty and dated them simultaneously: a judge from a town up the peninsula, and the photographer who lived a mile down the road. Both candidates were a decade younger than my mother and both were fun while they lasted, but neither was marriage material.

Mr. Right, it turned out, had been right there all along: the vice president at another newspaper where her newsletter was printed. No limericks were needed for this union; they tied the knot two years later.  

She and the photographer remained neighborly—how could you not on an island? He shot my senior class photo, the backdrop our cove’s jagged coastline and spruce trees. And after I left Maine for the West Coast in my early twenties, my mother sent his “Around the Harbor” calendar every Christmas.

The year she sent it twice, that final year of her newsletter when she wrote teasingly of eating ice cream for breakfast and making August last as long as possible, neither of us could have imagined that the following summer, she’d have a meltdown in that very kitchen where she savored each spoonful from the bowl of black raspberry ice cream.

“I’m having trouble understanding August,” she told me, eyes downcast. One the once-white Frigidaire, now dingy and yellowed with years, the calendar glared at us and in that moment I understood. I understood that her concept of time was slipping away. I understood that my mother was slipping away. And I understood that those lighter-than-air Augusts we’d shared—those breezy summer days of counting fireflies and collecting sea glass—would eventually slip away, too.

The photographer still sells his calendars. The island’s only remaining post office is run by a new postmistress. The judge has faded from view, along with my mother’s recollection of the limerick that started it all.

And as her days slowly slipped away like the fluttering pages of a calendar, we measured our time together in the quiet serenity of moments, not months.

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The Lawtons' Little Mystery Fiction

Christian Surgenor

Cooper Lawton lowered himself into the driver's seat of his '83 Buick Riviera. He sat his old, cream-colored Stetson, an heirloom of his late father, on the dash and pulled out onto the dusty road. As he drove, his gaze kept returning, almost involuntarily, to the strange new object on the passenger's seat. Each time he noticed, he'd force his eyes back to the road. Moments later, he would find himself staring once again at the perfectly round metal sphere.

He turned into his gravel drive, drove just a hair too fast, then came to a sudden, hurried stop before he fully reached his usual parking spot. He got out, swung around the other side of the Riviera, scooped up the sphere, and started toward the house to tell Anne Marie. After a few steps, he remembered his hat on the dash and spun on his heels to go back for it. He threw on the Stetson and lengthened his stride to make up for the time he'd lost.

Entering the house, he called out, "Woman! Anne Marie! Where ya at?"

His wife's response came from the kitchen, though Cooper didn't give any attention to her actual words.

"Have a look!" He sat the sphere on the kitchen table. Anne Marie took her time drying her hands on a small towel. She threw it back in the drawer next to the sink.

"Come on, woman, you'll get a kick out of it."

"Oh, Coop, where'd you pick that up at? Don't tell me you were at the damn Picker's Place again?" She scoffed and leaned on the round wooden back of one of the chairs.

"No, I didn't. I was heading back from Jem's and seen it on the side of the road. Take a look at it! Ain't it odd?"

Anne Marie shrugged. "I guess." "Well, pick it up, go ahead."

She slid the chair sideways and took a half step closer to the table. As she reached for the metal sphere, the couple's calico kitten jumped on the table.

"Oh, shoo. Get going, Jeffery." She swatted at the kitten, then tried to pick the object up. With some effort, she lifted it slightly then sat it back down.

"Heavy as sin, ain't it? And look! Look how clean the darn thing is."

Anne Marie shook her head, she smiled politely, but Cooper knew the object's wonder was lost on her. She went back to the dishes. He sat at the table and began to roll the sphere from hand to hand.

"It just don't seem that interesting, I guess. Sure it's different but I can't figure no damn purpose from it. May as well be a damn honeydew," she said, still facing the sink.

"Ya can't eat it, Anne Marie."

"Hell, I don't eat honeydew neither." She gave her husband a playful grin over her shoulder.

"Well, woman, that's the interesting part of it. It's different. And to just be, you know, cast aside like that, well– why do you figure that would be?"

Anne Marie came to the table and pulled out a chair. She sat across from her husband and folded her hand neatly in her lap. "I don't know, Coop. Why do you think?"

Cooper rolled the object to her. She readied both hands to catch it, but just before it reached her slender fingers, the sphere stopped, rolled sideways toward the edge of the table, stopped again, then returned to Cooper.

The husband and wife looked at each other in silence. Anne Marie's breath quivered a little. A sly, satisfied smile creased Cooper's face. He rolled the object toward the other side of the table.

The sphere once again stopped near the edge, changed direction, rolled as far as it could without falling off the table, then returned to him.

Anne Marie raised her fingers to her lips as if to shield her amusement. "Well, I'll be." "How about that, woman?"

She shook her head, conceding to her husband, "Well, I still don't see a purpose in it, but I'll be damned if that thing ain't fascinating. Who do you figure we should tell about it?"

"I can't rightly say, Anne Marie. I mean, I'm about to tell everybody, but as far as finding someone who can tell us something about it? Well, I ain't got the first idea where to look for them.

Four weeks passed, and the mysterious sphere sat on a windowsill in the sitting room of the Lawton's home. The occasional guests would get roughly the same show and have roughly the same, bewildered reaction. Cooper Lawton told everyone he knew about his strange new object every chance he got. Nobody believed him until they saw the thing for themselves.

Eventually, though, he ran out of friends to tell and as the cycle of usual visitors reached its end and started anew, the mysterious object became a largely forgotten curiosity.

On an unusually mild day in late June, Cooper switched on the radio of his Riviera. Art Bell was finishing up a recap of the previous day's baseball game. The radio personality seemed about as interested in baseball as Cooper was. Bell quickly transitioned to other news.

"Also on the docket, we are just learning of this now, and I do, yes, I am hearing this is true– there is a major convention coming to the southern Tucson area. The organizers are calling themselves the Supernatural Investigative Party. S.I.P. Oh, dear. How about that? Look, I know what you're thinking– a bunch of kooks! I agree. But the only reason I bring them up, and it's a good reason– The S.I.P. is offering cash rewards for any proof of otherworldly, or uhm, supernatural entities."

Art Bell went on to explain that the S.I.P.'s conventions had been held all across New Mexico and the western portions of Texas., but this would be their first in Arizona. As he gave the place and date of the Tucson convention, the radio crackled and Cooper realized he was reaching the edge of the station's signal. He flipped the radio off and drove in silence, but made it less than a mile before the gnawing thought of that strange metal sphere got the better of him.

He swung the Riviera around in as tight a u-turn as it would make, forgetting his planned destination, and sped towards his house. Checking the radio again, he found that the signal had returned, but Bell was on to a story about a homeless man who sold braided lanyards. The only other mention Bell made of the S.I.P. was the deadpan quip, "Maybe the Supernatural Investigators should throw some of those thousands to this guy."

Back home, Cooper ran to the sphere and tested it again. He sat it on the coffee table, lifted one edge until the object started to roll. The sphere stopped rolling down the table and, as it had done so many times before, began to roll up the incline as if it did not want to fall off. Satisfied, he lowered the table. He sat on the couch and heard Anne Marie come home.

"Coop? What you doing home? I thought the Henderson's needed–," she came into the room and saw the sphere on the table. Cooper just stared at it, thinking.

"Oh, Coop, you didn't hear that stuff on the radio, did you? You know it's just a bunch of damn fool talk.

He dropped his head. "Now, woman, don't just go off saying that. Look at this thing."

Anne Marie put her purse on an end table and sat next to her husband on the sofa. She slid her slender arm under his. "You know that Art Bell is always going on with his foolishness. There probably ain't even a convention anyway. Besides, even if there is, we don't need that money. We already got every damn thing we need."

"I know, woman. I know." He turned to her. "But remember when I brought it home? What'd we wonder? First thing. Even you wondered it."

"I remember trying to think who we could get some answers from. Who could explain what this thing is."

"That's right. Now, I figure—, look, don't just say no. Let's take this thing up to Tucson. If the convention is in town, we'll see what they say, if not, well then, we'll make a date out of it. Have lunch or something."

"You serious about this?" "Yes, woman."

"Well, fine then." Anne Marie bumped her shoulder into Cooper's and smiled.

Two weeks passed and the Saturday on which the convention was supposed to take place arrived. No other announcement had been made on the radio or television. The only other time Cooper had heard of the S.I.P. was from a friend who had seen the object. They had asked if he was going to take it to the convention Art Bell mentioned, to which Cooper gave the coy response, "Yeah, I figure we'll go ask about the darned thing." But inside he bubbled with nervous excitement.

Cooper put on his nicest Levi's and button-down white shirt. He considered a tie but settled on tucking the shirt in. That and the old Stetson would have to be fancy enough. His wife wore a floral, Audrey Hepburn-style dress that reached a few inches below her knees and swayed breezily with every step. It was nice but casual.

Anne Marie held the sphere on her lap as they began the trip, but by the time they reached the interstate, it had become too heavy for her. Cooper pulled into a gas station and put the object in the Riviera's empty trunk. Several times over the rest of the drive, he would cut the radio and roll the windows up to listen for the sphere rolling around.

He heard nothing.

The S.I.P. convention was supposed to be held in the Sunbeam Hotel on the south side of Tucson. The Lawtons found the place, parked, and Cooper immediately checked the trunk. The sphere sat, unmoved in the center, right where he had placed it an hour earlier. He lifted it, cradled it, and nodded to Anne Marie, relieved.

She led the way into the hotel. The sign above the sliding glass doors and below the Sunbeam logo, where an event might be listed, was blank. At the front desk, the two waited a moment for an employee. There was no bell, so Anne Marie knocked on the green countertop and called out, "Hello?"

Another moment passed before a short round woman with colorful braids and long white fingernails came from the back. Wiping her mouth with a brown napkin, the woman said, "Checking in?"

"No. No ma'am. We heard there was a convention here. My husband has an object he would like to ask about."

"Oh, you mean those space guys. Yeah, they're right down the hall. Any of the three doors on the right. There's a few people down there, you'll see it." The woman behind the desk waved a hand in the general direction and went to the back again.

The Lawtons walked side by side across the lobby and down the red-carpeted hall. Three sets of two blue, plush chairs sat on the right of the hall. There was a small commotion coming from the three sets of open double doors to the left. Cooper entered first.

Inside, a modest crowd of about thirty people, mostly men with tight cropped haircuts and thick horn-rimmed glasses mingled about. Some held cups of pink lemonade, others cans of Coke.

Most wore black or tan slacks and dress shirts. A few wore simple t-shirts and jeans.

"Excuse me, I have this, well this thing I'd like to ask about," Cooper said to a small, mousey man holding a clipboard.

"What? Oh, yes. Right over here. Dennis!" The little man led the way to a raised platform on one end of the room. "You know, I sure am glad someone brought something. I'd hate for our first trip out here to be such a bust. I'm Thomas, by the way. Thomas Chen."

Cooper followed Thomas onto the stage. Anne Marie stayed back. A third man, presumably Dennis, skipped over and hopped up on the stage.

"Well, well. What have we got here? A ball? Ok. A ball," Dennis said. His voice was snappy, but not rude.

"Uhm, well. Yeah." Cooper sat the object on the ground, flushed with nervousness and the strain of carrying the thing. He remained kneeling as he spoke. "I found this thing on the side of the road, just laying in the dirt. I've never cleaned it or anything. Look." He pressed a finger onto the ball's metal surface. "I can't even try to make a smudge on it."

"Alright, sir. That is a—, ok, I'm not sure." Dennis said.

"Also, have a look at this." Cooper rolled the sphere near the edge of the stage. As it had done on his kitchen table, it stopped at the edge, changed directions, then rolled back to him. "It won't fall off an edge. And it always comes back to whoever rolls it. Go ahead. You try it!"

Dennis and Thomas exchange curious looks. Dennis shrugged and knelt by the sphere. He pushed it, and the object behaved the same way. The other people at the convention gathered at the bottom of the stage around Anne Marie.

"Magnets, possibly? Some mechanism inside causing it to return to its original position?" Thomas asked Dennis.

"Maybe."

"Well," Cooper cut in, "that's what I figured too, but if you notice. There aren't any seams or openings on it. Now I figured also that the internal workings of the thing could have been cast inside the metal or something like that, but look."

Cooper rolled the sphere again, then walked several steps to his left. The object rolled, changed directions then came to his new position. He rolled it again, stood behind Thomas. The sphere navigated itself around Thomas's legs and came to rest less than an inch from Cooper's Tony Lama Round Toe Boot.

"You see that? What kind of mechanism can do that? And that it stays so clean? Pick it up, too. The thing is downright heavy." Cooper looked to Anne Marie in the crowd. She shot him a wink and beamed with pride as she held her fingers to her lips.

"Wow. Just wow Mister–" "Lawton. Cooper Lawton."

"Well, Mister Lawton, this is quite the object you have brought us. While I can't say for certain what this is or how it works, I am intrigued!" Dennis raised his voice as if addressing the room.

A smattering of applause rippled in the crowd.

"Now, though, you haven't won yet. We will definitely have to do some tests, maybe an x-ray. We might test a few physical abilities of it as well. Have you ever applied fire to it?" Dennis asked.

"What? No!"

"Alright. Let's talk after the convention."

Cooper demonstrated the sphere's abilities time and time again for the better part of two hours before the crowd dispersed and only Thomas, Dennis, and the Lawtons remained.

"Now, now, we can't just outright give you the prize money. We have no idea how or what this thing might be. Now, if you'll allow us to do some tests. I think you might have a real shot at winning sir. Plus, we might find some of the answers you're looking for," Dennis added. With a nod toward Anne Marie.

"I don't want it ruined. I suppose an x-ray scan is fine, but no cutting into it and no fire or trying to scar it. Maybe some light tests on that, but well, it's mine. I don't want it ruined."

"Perfect! Perfect! I completely understand. Look, give us a week with the object, meet us back here–"

"Maybe the lab?" Thomas chimed in.

"Yes, good. One week, next Saturday, give us the morning, so maybe around two, meet us at the lab at the college. Will that do? I promise no harm will come to this mystery sphere."

Terms were agreed and telephone numbers were exchanged. If Thomas and Dennis could not find a plausible explanation for the object's abilities, the prize money would be awarded to the Lawtons in one week's time.

Anne Marie fussed a bit, then more as the two headed home. Cooper had not taken her out to eat.

"Ah, well, we'll do it a different time." He placed a hand on Anne Marie's thigh. She grabbed it and smiled softly.

The week passed slowly for the two. The telephone did not ring. Saturday came and the Lawtons made the drive back up to Tucson. They left early and stopped for lunch at a small cafe.

Neither could eat.

They pulled into the parking garage of the University of Arizona. They parked on the second level of the largely empty garage and wandered about till they found an entrance to the building.

"Hello," Anne Marie said to an older man behind a desk, "my husband and I are looking for two scientists. One is shorter, named Thomas Chen. The other is Dennis, well, I can't recall his last name. He is taller though. Glasses. They are with something called the S.I.P. and should be running some tests on a metal ball, about that big." She held her hands out to show the man.

Cooper had not considered the two men from S.I.P. might run off with the object until that very moment.

"Oh, yeah. They're quite proud of that thing. Won't stop talking about it."

Cooper smiled from ear to ear in relief. The man continued, "You two are in the wrong place though. Leave this building here. You should be able to walk the last bit of the way. Head down the walkway there. You're looking for the Red Wave Building. That's what it says above the door. It's toward the end on your left.

The Red Wave Building was an unpainted, three-story brick structure, just like all the others. The sign above the door was old and faded.

There was no receptionist inside, only a long, low-ceilinged hallway with brown doors on either side and a staircase at the end. Anne Marie huffed a little.

"It's fine, woman." Cooper led the way, secretly hoping they would not have to search every door. He knocked on the first door and tried to open it. It was locked and no one answered.

They continued with the other doors and as they neared the end of the hall, a voice called from behind them, "Cooper! Cooper Lawton!" They turned to see Dennis strutting toward them. "My apologies, I got so wrapped up in the research I forgot our appointment. Great to see you!"

Dennis led the Lawtons to his office, a modest room with bright lights and a scattering of tools and papers on several metal desks. "Have a look at this!" He held the x-ray results up to the ceiling lights and beckoned the Lawtons over. "You see, the walls are pretty thick, but there is a cavity in the center. And as you see-"

Inside the cavity, in the center of the object, were three black circles. The four stared in silence for a time.

Cooper was the first to speak. "Alright, what's that?"

"No idea," Dennis said in his usual, snappy way. Cooper removed his hat and held it over his chest. Dennis put the x-ray down and went to another metal desk where the object sat. "I can't say for sure what those circles on the x-ray are, but if I had to guess, I'd say they're the key to its odd abilities. Now, we've also been able to find out that this thing is magnetic, yet oddly enough it does not carry an electrical charge."

"What? Did you electrocute it?"

"Oh, not exactly, sir. We included it in an electrical circuit, but the object seemed to absorb the current. Nothing went out. We ran several tests, but I'm afraid we are no closer to understanding this, well, this thing."

"Oh."

"So, we won then? This is, in fact, supernatural?" Anne Marie said, more excited than she meant to sound.

"Supernatural indeed, ma'am." Dennis pulled a folded check from his shirt pocket and handed it to Cooper. "Look, I've got to be honest with you. What you found on the side of the road, well, this thing– well there is just nothing else like it. Nothing on Earth."

"Nothing on Earth." Cooper echoed quietly.

"That's right. I'll be straight with you folks, I feel further testing can really do a lot for science. Mr. Lawton, I'd like to buy this from you, on behalf of the S.I.P. Sir, I'm authorized to offer one hundred thousand dollars. No taxes, as it's a donation to science."

"Jesus. That much, huh?" Cooper liked the sound of one hundred thousand dollars, but something in him was unmoved by the sum. It was as if a certain part of him was attached to the mystery object, and he knew that whether he had all the money in the world or none of it, he'd live the rest of his days wanting that perfectly round metal sphere.

Anne Marie, as she had done many times before, felt her husband's thoughts and answered for him. "Well, sir, we will just have to think on that. Damn generous offer, but we'd just need to take our time with a decision like that. You understand, don't you?"

"Of course. Of course. Hey, I've got to say you two are some of the finest people I've met. I've got a lot of data already, but unfortunately, Arizona does not have the, well, research materials we need. Thomas has gone ahead to the University of Texas. I'll have to join him shortly." He held out a paper to Cooper. “If you change your mind, or if anything new develops, please reach out.”

Cooper scooped up the sphere, Anne Marie took the number, and the Lawtons left the office.

The walk back to their Buick Riviera seemed much shorter than the walk to the Red Wave Building. Cooper sat his prized metal sphere in the trunk. Anne Marie went to her seat.

As Cooper closed the trunk, four men in Air Force Service Uniforms approached. Cooper eyed them in silence.

“Sir. My name is Lieutenant Colonel P.J. McCullum. Do you have a moment?” Cooper took a deep breath and closed the trunk. “Hello.”

“Hello. I understand you have a very fascinating object.” Cooper took another breath, almost a sigh.

“Sir, the United States Air Force respects your sole ownership of the object and in no way are making any demands on you. However, it is our expressed judgment that what you hold is of great importance to national security and quite possibly the security and future of people everywhere. 

Cooper shifted uncomfortably. He tapped his fingers on the trunk of the Riviera. Anne Marie’s cool, slender fingers slid over his. He smiled a little at her. She looked at the men.

“Well, if you would like a report on the sphere, please speak with Dennis and Thomas Chen. They are with the S.I.P. and should be able to help.”

“Well, ma’am, sir, we have reviewed their findings and have copies of their test results. As stated, my intentions are not to make any demands. I only request, on behalf of the United States Air Force, that you allow us to run further tests on the object.”

Anne Marie started to speak. Cooper stopped her with a gentle pat on the hand.

“It’s ok, woman. Slide over.”

He opened the trunk and grabbed the sphere. Slowly, he went to the men. McCullum nodded to one of his men to accept the object.

“Sir, you are doing a fine thing for your country. I assure you our tests will not take long.”

“How long?” Anne Marie snapped. “Four weeks.”

“Make it two. If you haven’t found anything other than what the S.I.P. already found, well, you give it back.”

McCullum forced a smile. “I will deliver it myself. However, if we make significant progress, I can assume you will allow us the full four weeks?”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.” Cooper said. 

The drive home was quiet, and the silence seemed to stretch the hour into four, at least. Cooper spoke first. “It was the Air Force, woman. What if the thing is, well, I don’t know.”

“I do. Those military bastards are all the same. They won’t find a damn thing. They’ll say they found something just to keep it the four weeks. Then we’ll have to demand proof, or they’ll keep it longer. My daddy was in the army. I know how those types are.”

Two weeks passed. The monsoon season had descended upon the Arizona High Desert. Several inches of rain had fallen in buckets in a matter of hours. Wind gusts tore through the blooming mesquite trees. Cooper stood by the kitchen window and watched his backyard’s wood fence sway a little too much. He worried it would fall and thought that he should have fixed it back in June. A loud knock on the front door brought him out of his thoughts.

"I'm coming!"

Cooper opened the door and saw Lieutenant Colonel P.J McCullum, soaking wet, still in his service uniform, and holding the perfectly round metal sphere. A blue and white striped cloth was draped over it.

"Mister Lawton, it seems your wife was correct. Our scientists have, indeed, not been able to uncover any further information about the object. Your country thanks you." McCullum handed Cooper the sphere and a small brown envelope.

Cooper was silent and McCullum went quickly back to his black Town Car. Cooper shut the door before the men had left.

Anne Marie came into the kitchen, wrapped in a white towel and drying her hair. "Ugly out there, ain't it? Damn, I hope that fence don't fall." She stood on her tiptoes as if it gave her a better look out the window.

"Hey." Cooper nodded to the object, still covered in the white and blue striped cloth.

Her eyes widened. "No way! Well, how about that?" She came closer to her husband and slid her bare arm around his waist. Cooper hugged her with one arm and pulled the blanket with the other.

The object began to roll. It reached the edge of the table and toppled off. He heard the heavy thud before he realized what had happened.

Anne Marie was on her knees, staring at the sphere. Cooper joined her. He had no words, instead, he licked his thumb, pressed it into the metal surface, and wiped. A thick ugly white smudge confirmed what they already knew.

"They switched it!" Anne Marie stood and readjusted her towel. "Jesus Christ! Damn. Damn, Damn, Damn!" She slapped the kitchen counter. Cooper was still on the ground.

He tried a few more tests, knowing already they were futile. Eventually, Anne Marie came to him.

"Hey, I'm real sorry, Coop."

Cooper hadn't noticed her leave and dress. She wore a navy-blue t-shirt and black Levi’s. She curled up beside him on the floor and pulled his arm around her.

They sat together in silence.

One of them, or both of them, got the idea to call the Air Force Base in Tucson. Anne Marie grabbed a telephone book and found a few numbers. They took turns calling, but no one had heard of a Lieutenant Colonel McCullum or any testing on a strange metal ball.

"Wait, Dennis!" Cooper ran to his drawer in the bedroom and retrieved the small, folded paper.

Anne Marie dialed the number. It was not in service. The University of Texas was not listed in their phone book. She dialed the operator, who patched them through. A woman picked up the call.

"Ma'am, you're asking about somebody named Dennis, you don't know the last name, and another man named Timmy Chang? Who do you think you called? There has got to be hundreds of men named Dennis on campus and the other one? What do you want me to do? Just go ask everyone about a metal ball?"

Anne Marie slammed the phone down in frustration, then began to call the operator again. Coop placed a gentle hand on the phone.

"It's ok, woman. Easy come, easy go."

Anne Marie sat the phone down and smiled at her husband. Cooper smiled back, as much as he could.

"We'll just have to leave it as our strange little mystery."

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Tea Ceremony by Kelsey Tran

Hiking Up and Down River Fiction

Peter Faziani

“I feel like I’m wearing this humidity,” Mike said, pulling his tank top away from his midsection.

The three friends, Mike, Josh, and David hadn’t been out in the woods for more than fifteen minutes before sweat started to soak into Mike’s shirt. He expected to be sweaty because he was always sweaty, but his yellow running tank top was making it worse. The soft fabric didn’t hide the moisture well and the Michigan summer made everything worse. It had yet to develop the picturesque, salted ridge line that separated the wet from the dry because the sweat was spreading like liquid soaking a paper towel.

“You’re just out of shape,” David said.

Josh thought so too, but he was still feeling out the dynamic. This was his first time hiking with Mike and David.

“Round is a shape,” Mike reminded him.

Josh didn’t comment, but David laughed. Mike hoped that David got the reference: a raunchy and misogynistic comedy blog post in the early days of the internet called “101 Rules and Instructions on Being a Man.” Mike’s mind wandered back to his early teen years in David’s basement reading that list while waiting for a girl David had a crush on to reply to their ICQ message.

Mike and David wanted friends to join them for a while. Mike, David, Josh, and a fourth, Matt, had made plans to bike a rail trail together, but they could never land on a proper weekend. Hiking, though, was something that Mike and David did as often as they could. When they started hiking, about a decade earlier, they went out monthly for day hikes and at least two overnights a year, but that had diminished over the past four years. Each year they’d talk a big game about hiking for longer or on new trails, but it just became harder to plan new trips because they each had kids. Recently, it was mostly the only time that Mike and David had the chance to see each other.

“Was this where we saw the bear?” Mike asked stepping over a log. Alternating his gaze from somewhere in front of him to directly beneath his feet.

“Nah, that was up around 6b,” David said sounding confident.

Mike couldn’t visualize what 6b looked like nor did he care to try. That wasn’t how his memory worked. Plus, he wasn’t sure they’d been up here at this point in the summer before. Nothing looked the same. All the life pushing into the trail. Green and weedy. The silence it created felt awkward and heavy.

“A bear?” Josh asked.

“Yeah, it was a cub. Scared the shit out of us,” David said.

Mike tried to recall whether David had actually seemed scared or if he was just being collegial.

“So a momma bear wasn’t far off then?” Josh asked.

“Couldn’t have been far,” Mike said as the conversation went quiet again. Something about the reality of the mother bear always being near the bear cub made him furrow his eyebrows. He wondered what his wife and kids were doing right now.

They planned to hike up the well-worn path near Lake Michigan to snap a few photos of the Manistee River on their phones, have some guy time, make camp for the night, and then rent some kayaks from the boatman at the top to come back down the next day. There was a hydroelectric dam and a livery where twenty-somethings rented tubes to drink beer and float down river in the summer sun. On previous hikes, Mike and David noticed that many of the big groups of loud and nearly naked bodies frequently had extra tubes for the cooler. They wondered if that cost more. They talked Josh through their previous hikes, favorite campsites, mishaps, and strange experiences like the human excrement they’d found in the middle of the trail. They each noted that the trail rarely looked the same from trip to trip. Mike wondered if it was his memory or if the trail was just subtly changing and growing over the paths of their past.

Although David and Josh were both part of the same circle in high school, they seem to represent different parts of Mike’s adult life. As Mike aged, he compartmentalized his friends more and more. The people he grew up with, the people he hung out with in high school, his college and grad school friends, his co-workers. He felt weird when he mentioned one group to another. He felt that the group he was with would question the validity of the other group. One time he invited a guy from the college paper to a dodgeball game with his high school friends and it had gone very poorly. David still held the inclusion of Cheater Bob against Mike’s judgment from time to time.

“How far do you guys normally walk before taking a break,” Josh asked. He wasn’t breathy, but Mike wondered if he was getting tired.

“I don’t really know,” Mike said.

“Yeah, whenever really. There are a few good places to stop for water or a cup of coffee just coming up. Overlooks or a few streams. They’re also close to campsite… four?” David looked back at Mike who was fiddling with his bite piece on his water bladder.

“What? Oh, maybe?” Mike clipped the bite piece back to his chest strap and stopped as the trail curved with the river below. “It’s crazy to think that we’ll be down there tomorrow. I feel like we’ve been talking about kayaking this river for years, but just didn’t know how.”

They hated the idea of floating but loved the idea of paddling. Freely embracing the river’s chance versus the ability to influence one’s path. The effort versus reward of a current-aided workout seemed like an exciting change to the normal pattern of out-and-back hikes on the same trail.

After he changed into the shirt he’d packed for tomorrow, Mike was a little more comfortable because he didn’t look so wet and out of shape to the other hikers. He couldn’t have imagined how wet he’d be in fewer than twelve hours though.

All three of them grew up on Lake Erie, but even in their childhoods, they couldn’t just jump into the River Raisin and just float for a while. They spent Josh’s bachelor party canoeing down the river only to portage through the dry spots and work through the weeds on multiple occasions. In Mike’s memory, the canoe he borrowed from his future father-in-law was problematic, and he struggled to move the water beneath him at a pace that suited the rest of the party. No matter how hard he paddled he constantly got grief for falling behind.

They hiked for another five hours before deciding to find a place to make camp. They had pushed forward in search of one of the designated campsites that had access to water and lots of open space in hopes of making an easy morning hike to the livery, but the best sites were already occupied by families that had clearly been there for a few hours. Walking by 4c, Mike met eyes with a boy no older than 12. He was propping himself up with a stick in his hand like a cane. Is he calling me old? Mike thought. Nah, kids being kids.

After hiking for seven hours, the three of them didn’t want to climb down to a hypothetical spot that they couldn’t see, but they knew that if a spot existed down there, it would offer them tree cover, access to water, and privacy. Shortly after setting up tents, hammocks, and putting the water to boil, they noticed a group of people on the other side of the river with some tubes. They had clearly been there for a while just bathing in the fading sun’s light and the briskly moving water. Their voices carried without hesitation because they anticipated being alone. As the guys set up camp, Mike went over and acknowledged them. Letting them know that they were claiming the spot. However, they did not leave, they stayed on the opposite bank smoking pot and drinking. Mike thought it strange that they were clearly goth kids this far out in nature. He didn’t mention anything to David or Josh about it because the label seemed irrelevant to conversation, and he would hate to know that his kids were labeled in a juvenile way like that.

When the goth kids had deflated their inner tubes and stored them in the backs of SUVs, they drove off. Nothing left behind and no one to stare down the barrel of the river. Mike, David, and Josh relished the silence for a short time before two pre-teen boys rode their quads down the bank and into the river. They were there for a few hours just riding up and down the bank, getting stuck and powering free. Josh openly talked about how he hoped that they’d stay stuck. Mike’s inner teacher wanted them to have a natural consequence, but each time they’d venture too far out into the current, one would help the other out and they’d speed off into some other fuckery and he’d be secretly impressed.

“Fuck those kids,” Josh said shaking his head away from the smell of their exhaust. “I hate that they come out here with that shit.”

“It’s so loud,” David replied.

“Yeah,” Mike said. He didn’t share that he thought it was pretty cool. He didn’t share that he always liked riding quads, or that riding on the back of his 5th-grade friend, Jeff’s quad was quite possibly the coolest thing he’d done during his youth. Mike watched enviously as the kids fucked around but never found out.

They all knew rain was forecasted, hell, even thunderstorms, but no one had really discussed the possibility of rain-soaked packs, but when Mike woke atM to pee, he saw lightning outline the bluffs from their campsite in the valley even though he never saw the bolt. Among the tall grass, he saw strange patches of lightning bugs and heard the life of the woods. He convinced himself that the animals would be acting differently if a storm was imminent. When he crawled back into the tent, he assumed Josh was sleeping, but he should’ve realized that Josh, like himself, never really slept when hiking.

Mike had borrowed his wife’s mattress pad and just brought his sleeping bag liner. He worried that he would’ve been overly cold, even though it wasn’t supposed to drop below 67 degrees. He was grateful to have her mattress pad though. He loved hiking here in the day because he was moving and busy, but at night, he missed his wife, Marcie, so much. It made it so much more difficult because he never had consistent cell service. He might get a few emails or texts in one clearing, but rarely if ever did he get signal in the valleys by the river where he and David liked to camp. Singing bedtime songs and those last hugs before bedtime were, he realized, just as important to him as they were to his kids.

Mike was glad that he zipped the vestibule shut after peeing even though it was incredibly stuffy in the tent, and the ever-present threat of Josh farting lingered when the thunder echoed into the valley and rain drowned out any hopes of rest.  Somewhere in the deluge, rain started to pool between the tub of the tent and the footprint on the ground. In the morning, Josh joked that somehow Mike had found the lowest point in the campsite even though it was David’s suggestion. That stuff always bothered him about their friendship. In the tent though, he pressed the water forward toward his feet like he did with a tube of toothpaste. 

“Dave, you up!?” Mike yelled as the rain hitting his tent made more white noise than he was comfortable with.

“Yeah”

“Are you dry?”

“As far as I know” David replied.

“Good,” Mike said before adding, “Did you move your pack further under your hammock before going to sleep?”

“Yeah, hopefully, it was enough”

“Yeah,” Mike replied before trailing off again. He wished he could continue the conversation, but what were they going to talk about, the weather? He quietly chuckled and rolled away from Josh. He assumed Josh was awake because he wasn’t quiet when he yelled to David, but he didn’t know what to say. The air in the tent was hot and humid and their packs were probably getting wet from the pooling water.

Mike pulled his phone out of the mesh pocket sewn into the door. He clicked the lock button in hopes that he’d have more than one deceptive bar of service, but he didn’t. Sometime in the past few hours, a text from his wife had come in. It was a simple “love you,” but it made Mike hate the trip even more.

When he slept at home, he often had to play a strange what-if game. He’d ask himself questions like “what if I had $100k” or “what if I designed an energy source that could reach lightspeeds?” Those questions didn’t allow his mind to wander enough though. He struggled to connect with Marcie. He wondered if she felt him missing her. He was sure it was not possible, but there was that time when his kayak flipped two miles out on the Grand Traverse Bay and even though he only yelled once, she heard him. In his sleeping bag, he awkwardly rolled over to rest on his back.

As the rain hadn’t let up, Josh pulled the e-reader out of his bag and started reading. Mike considered asking him what he was reading, but he didn’t have the energy or the interest. He grabbed his phone one more time and typed a long message out.

The next time I try to go hiking overnight, remind me of this text. Copy and paste. I want nothing more than to be at home with you and the kids right now.

He sent the message assuming that it wouldn’t go through and that he’d have to resend it in the morning. He put his phone back into the pocket and closed his eyes. He searched his eyelids for the soft light from the e-reader’s screen to distract himself back into a state of slumber.

At some point before dawn, Josh locked the Kindle and tried to find more sleep. Mike had accepted the possibility that his stuff would be wet in the morning and found some peace in the sound of the rain.

The storm stopped shortly before the sun rose. Mike eagerly crawled out of the tent and surveyed the campsite. It was an unofficial site, so he expected a little more weather damage because the DNR clearly didn’t check this site. That said, he and David often wondered whether the DNR came out here at all.

“Well?” Mike asked looking at David as he stood next to his hammock. It was the first time David had used the hammock on a real hike in a long time and the first time ever in a storm.

“Dry, I think. It was rough though. The light breeze blew some of the rain during the storm, but I think that mosquitos were biting my ass through the hammock before the storm started.”

Josh, who had slept for a few hours during the waning sun of the previous day replied, “That’s terrible. I couldn’t sleep for about three hours during the storm. Just wasn’t happening.”

Mike considered reminding him that he slept during the day, but kept his mouth shut. He also carefully considered the words he used to describe the storm. On a recent outing with Josh and his family, he used the word “sucks” to describe an experience but felt small when Josh turned to his kids and said “We don’t use sucks, right? There are other, better words to describe our negative experiences.”

As they broke their campsite down, they chatted about the possibility of rain on the kayaking trip and wondered whether the livery would be open considering the weather. The pool of water under Mike’s tent was cause for laughter. Even though Mike hated being criticized, it felt good to laugh. They each had a cup of coffee. It was already starting to warm up outside, but even the warmth of a cup of instant coffee made from filtered river water brought some sense of composure to their day.

“How far do we have to walk today?” Mike asked as he examined his wet toe-shoes. He had worn them into the river for traction without considering that they’d take an extended amount of time to dry. He hung them up from a tree hoping they’d dry out quicker, but he pulled them into the tent’s vestibule during the night because of the rain. When he discovered that a fat spider had made a home in his right shoe after putting his left shoe on, he panicked and tore the shoe from his foot. Josh and David stared at him until he explained the situation.

“Yeah, they get into everything,” David said as he rolled his rain fly up into a tight ball and shoved it into the compression sack.

The rest of the hike up trail was spent wondering whether they’d have kayaks waiting, whether they’d be able to find the launch, or if they’d have cell service in case the answers to the first two questions were a no. Mike put his last pair of dry socks on even though he knew the wetness of his shoes would eventually seep through. He tried to find ways to complain about this even though he knew full well that it was his own fault but couldn’t, so he kept his mouth shut.

Around an hour in Josh seemed to notice his surroundings while waiting for Mike to put a granola bar wrapper into his pocket, “That looks like a good campsite.”

“Yeah, it’s got great tree cover and I don’t think it would be impossible to get down to the water,” David commented.

Mike looked around, but he realized that his mood was souring because of the state of his feet, so he kept his mouth shut. He considered asking to stop to make a coffee, but he knew that the coffee wouldn’t change his situation and it would just delay the inevitable. He tried to find some pleasure in this situation. He had, after all, wanted to kayak this river for years. Wasn’t that reality enough to quell the discomfort?

They made it to the top without much conversation. The bridge, they thought, signified the end of their journey on foot. They stopped and took a few photos on the bridge. David cajoled Mike into smiling, but he would always remember that this smile was anything but authentic. He wondered how soft and white the skin on his foot was. Wasn’t a threat of trench foot or the inevitable desocking of a wet foot worth worrying about?

Two of the three kayaks were identical, both having dry wells. They discussed how to best fit all the materials of the pack without damaging the bags. It felt like an unfair Tetris match, but the three friends worked in the mist silently. Mike checked his watch and figured out the hours until he’d be home. Seven. Then another two to unpack. An hour at least to dry out his tent. Then maybe he’d sit with his kids for a bit if he had energy before bedtime. 

“Are you guys bringing your water in the kayak?” Mike asked before launching the kayaks. David and Josh both responded, but Mike was already caught up in trying to decide how to connect the Bluetooth speaker. He wanted music. He always wanted music. Music was the backbone of most things he did. The Heardle was an important part of his daily routine. Marcie often got frustrated with him for his need to play “guess this song” on long trips. He was so preoccupied with the speaker that he missed their response and neglected to put his water, perhaps the most important thing of his hike, into the kayak.

They set off in the rain, it was sprinkling, and it was less than ideal, but the three friends rationalized that there would be fewer people on the river and thus, this was a good thing. The river’s silence felt tense and tangible. Like yesterday’s humidity. He fiddled with the Bluetooth speaker for a bit, but he couldn’t participate in any conversation between Josh and David, so he decided to shut it down. When he powered it off, David was asking if they’d be able to track some of the campsites that frequently overlooked the river.

“I wonder if we’ll be able to find where we camped last night,” Josh asked thinking back to the people with inner tubes or the kids on their quads. While neither group was particularly disruptive, the first group’s pot and the exhaust of the second group carried over. David and Josh bitched about it, but Mike secretly loved it. Something about it reminded him of his youth. He watched longingly as the group just played around for several hours before walking up the bank, starting their cars, and driving off. David couldn’t fathom that it was truly just a day in the water and sun for them without any long drives afterward.

Mike wanted water, but he missed the part where David and Josh decided to put their water in the kayak with them. He’d stored his cranberries and Bluetooth speaker up front, but it was not a replacement for water. This would become another thing he’d tell his kids not to do when he got home.

Home.

Home had lingered on the cusp of his memory throughout the day. He clearly remembered the desire to hold Marcie last night during the rainstorm. It wasn’t a weakness, he rationalized, it was a distinct level of comfort that he didn’t have. It was another series of moments that he’d never get back with his wife and kids. He paddled on at a pace that felt quick. Like he was trying to race back to the car.

Although he had been hearing it for a while, it was only a brief time before he heard the plastic of the paddle dig into the water. His focus had been on keeping pace with the others, but he stopped to roll his shoulders only to hear how quiet it was without music. He wasn’t put off by the silence, but he didn’t like it. Mike thought about the last time he had hung out with them both together. Something in the experience made him simultaneously regret coming and want to stay here forever. The movement of the water was so freeing. With little effort, Mike could easily have sat there and just lived for a moment. That rarely happened during the work week.

“Do you think the groups that just drink in the tubes ever really slow down and realize just how loud they’re talking?” Mike asked.

“What?” David replied, but Mike just waved him off. Maybe no one ever really spoke loud enough out here except the river.

They all quipped occasionally as if they were really talking. Mike would sometimes eat a handful of cranberries with hands that had not been washed in thirty-six hours as if it was a taunt. He considered cupping a handful of the Manistee and dragging it quickly into his mouth, but he’d watched enough Les Stroud to know that it was a bad choice even if the water had been briskly moving. He thought about their conversations yesterday; recalling them strained. In their own way, each of them felt exhausted even though they weren’t. He realized that his memory was tired. The present was tired.

After a short time, Mike’s attention finally clicked off and he realized that although he loved being in nature and that he loved kayaking, he would trade anything to share this experience in person with Marcie, Adeline, AJ, Anne, and Adam. He spent most of the waking time during the week away from them that willingly leaving them on the weekend just affirmed that he had made the incorrect choice.

When they finally pulled the kayaks to shore, Mike only looked forward to hugging Marcie and just getting back to the normalcy of his routine. Nature would have to wait because they were the joy to set his mind free.

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Are You Lost Fiction

Hyten Davidson

It was Thursday, and the Montana state police reported that an Abigail Cox-Trout had been missing for seventy-two hours, which I later learned happened to be on the Autumnal Equinox.  She was reportedly last seen hiking toward Hollowtop Mountain on the day when day and night are perfectly balanced. Every day after that perfect one would be a little darker than the last. At least for a while.

Mr. Trout was on the local news the next evening, forehead sweaty and dripping in nerves, lips puckering like his namesake, pleading for the safe return of his stepdaughter.

Any information, any tip, no matter how small or insignificant it may feel, might mean the world to us…

He broke into sniffles on camera, squeaking like a rusted metal spring being forcibly stretched wide. The news then cut away respectfully and a missing poster flashed on the screen. It was a severely outdated photo, the only one Mr. Trout likely had on hand. A picture from middle school, the girl in the image smiling through thick braces, hand on her tubby waist, hiding beneath her stringy brown hair. Thank God so much can change since middle school.

I can’t tell you why I joined the search party after watching him advertise it on the news. Guilt, most likely. To retrace the past seventy-two hours, maybe. To ensure every turned stone would be restored to its upright spot, as nature would want. And to confirm my suspicion that the weepy man on T.V. wouldn’t be there to help in the search. And sure enough, Mr. Trout himself was nowhere to be found that day.

I arrived late and hung in the back, hood up around my freshly dyed red hair. There was a decent smattering of folks in attendance, none of whom I recognized by the backs of their heads. The head park ranger was wrapping up his half-hearted pep talk and then instructed us to fan out with a wide berth from each other. I obliged, turned away before anyone could exchange a mournful glance at me, and jogged off up a side trail.

Eyes on the ground, tread carefully were the instructions. Which means they knew we were supposed to be looking for a body.

Out of sight of the nearest neon-vested volunteer, I stopped behind a Ponderosa tree and lifted my face to the waning sun. I sucked in the free mountain air flowing down off the peak of Hollowtop, listening. Not a single volunteer bothered to shout out “ABIGAIL!” and yet, I still heard the name echo through the trees back to me.

As the day went on, I recreated the path upward toward the peak, mucking new footprints over old ones. Eyes on the ground, I treaded carefully to erase all evidence of the past.

Eventually, the dirt trail turned to snowy stone as the peak drew closer. I stopped and stared at the white clumps disguising the path forward to the top. Maybe I should’ve waited to do it until winter, in the dead of night.

“Are you lost?” a voice asked, and I turned around. It was a female park ranger. She was smiling at me with deep smile lines that looked like when you throw a stone in a lake and the water ripples on either side. She had gorgeous long, bark-brown hair with cracks of silver that nearly made me regret just chopping mine off.

“Not really,” I said. I’m with the search party, so I don’t have anywhere specific I’m supposed to be.”

The park ranger nodded and scanned the woods.

“I think they’re wrapping up for the day. You’re kind to be helping out. It’s easy to attract looky-loos and gossips, but hard to find citizens that are really committed to getting the person found.”

“Do people get lost out here a lot?”

She turned and started walking back down the opposite direction of the peak. I trotted behind.

“Surprisingly, no, given how many thousands of acres the park covers. We get missing persons reports often, sure. But they’re rarely actually missing. Just got lost for a bit.”

“Are they ever, like, peeved that you found them?”

“What do you mean?” She asked.  

“Like what if they don’t want to be found?”

“You don’t want Abigail found?” The park ranger asked, playfully sizing me up from a simple head turn and eye tilt. But I was more concerned about the way she said, Abigail. It was so familial, so hopeful.

“People run away all the time. Girls in my high school, they talk about it at lunch in the cafeteria like it’s casual conversation. Running away to Canada, to New York, Vegas, whatever.”

“Did you know her?” A logical question to ask.

“A little, not really.”

“When these girls talk about running away, what do they say?” She asked. I didn’t reply immediately and, when she turned back again to look at me, I must’ve been blushing, because she added, “I’m not a cop, you know. Just a nosy old lady. Me, I love Montana. I could never leave.”

She talked just like my mom. Always saying things like Me, I hate the rain and Me, I do not like the way the neighbor’s dog looks at me. Always Me, I, Me, I. It always made me chuckle, even when it ended up being the last thing she said to me. He’ll take good care of you. Me, I trust him.  

“Same here. I think,” I said. “It’d be too hard to just up and leave.”            

The woman slowed to a stop and put her hands together.

“Then it’s time you come home, don’t you think?” The ranger said. I stumbled to a halt. It was as though all the fresh air I had taken in through the day was furiously sucked back out by the mountain.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

At first, I thought I was screaming in reply. But when the ranger suddenly whipped around to the sound and took off into the forest, I realized I had been completely paralyzed. It wasn’t coming from my mouth at all, but some sort of animal shrieking in the distance.

I should have taken the opportunity to flee, but for some reason, I took off after the ranger. For an older lady, I could barely keep up with her sprinting. She dodged branches, leapt over tree roots hidden by piles of leaves, and only turned to shout, “POISON IVY!” back at me when I was about to crash into a patch of it. Finally, she dropped down to her knees as the screaming grew louder.

I landed behind her, hood from my sweatshirt flung over my face as I bent forward to catch my breath. I threw it out of my face and saw it. A rangy cottontail rabbit flipped around like a tattered kite in the wind, whining in pain; its back leg snapped tight in a small steel trap.

“These traps are expressly forbidden…” The ranger gritted as she tried to pick open the trap, quickly pulling her hand back each time the creature jolted upward.  She then looked up at me with beautiful, warm eyes and a motherly sense of determination.

“You need to hold it down while I let it free.”

“No, no, I can’t—” I stammered.

“Yes, you can. Quickly. It’s suffering.”

It’s suffering.

I collapsed down next to her and held down the rabbit right beneath its armpits. Patches of its hair were missing, the naked sharpness of its ribs rubbing against my fingers.

“Hold on… hold on…” The Park Ranger reassured us both. The trap snapped open, the ranger fell backward, and in an instant, the rabbit slipped out between my clutches and vanished entirely.

“Shit! It ran off!” I exclaimed, “Is it okay?”

“I don’t see any blood. So, maybe? Its leg could be sprained, could be broken. I didn’t get a good look.”  She wiped the dirt off her knees.

I looked up beyond the canopy of trees above us. It was just after sunset.

The park ranger slowly rose to her feet, plucking the chain of the trap up like a crime scene investigator collecting evidence.

“Come on, let’s get this thing back to the ranger station. And allow us to call off the search—let the good people go home. Don’t you think?”

She started back toward the trail, not waiting for me to come. I followed behind all the same.

We walked in silence back to the trail, then down toward camp, listening to the sounds of the woods and the swinging chain from the trap.

Soon, the sound of the swinging chain became too much to bear.

“I think… it’ll be okay,” I said aloud.  

“The rabbit?”

“I think she got caught in a trap. And she was suffering, but now she’s free. And she just needs to go.”

She stopped and we looked at each other.

“She got caught in a trap?” she repeated.

I nodded.

“I hate hunters that set traps like these. They just set it up and then are nowhere to be found when the suffering happens. It’s so cowardly.”

I nodded.

“If that’s true then get running. Get out of here. No reason to hang around waiting to get bit again.”

And that was it. Whatever hold was on me snapped open and I could finally run. I blinked and disappeared into the woods.

But as I fled in the darkness, I was glad to hear her voice call out back to camp, shouting, “I found something! I found a trap!”

It was dark now and would be for a while, until day broke.

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