The White Mistress
By Thomas Sanfilip

Perhaps she did not intend to reveal so much, but her story came spilling out like so many seeds waiting to take root. The room went silent, though the sky, so dreary and overcast when I arrived in the early afternoon, came alive with the sudden appearance of the sun. A sudden splash of several golden rays found their way into the interior of the apartment facing the Hollywood freeway, so close you could hear the traffic, a continual hiss and underlying roar that made it nearly impossible to think. She opened the door wearing a skullcap and looked up at me. On a small coffee table sat several cups of tea. I took a seat opposite her in the living room on a threadbare chair. The apartment was completely barren, a floor rug worn to threads, everything dead green, the walls, the coloring, the air.

A small, shy, elderly woman, at times sanguine, at other times bitter, she was eager to talk about herself, like a tableaux calling for a final reckoning. I detected some hesitancy on her part, assuring her I was harmless, interested only in seeing her collection of paintings by a painter completely unknown to me. A chance telephone call to the gallery where I worked led to conversation and permission to visit and see for myself the paintings of Ashkenazy who had no provenance either past, present or future. She was searching for more information on him, some catalog of his work that would give some idea of their value at auction, but I could find nothing.

“I’m trying to find one of his paintings now,” she said, “a very special painting of me I thought no one would ever see. A woman says she owns it, but cannot find it. I'm afraid she just doesn't want to part with it. The work is beyond description.”

I was certain Ashkenazy was a myth, found no mention of a Russian artist by that name in any book, past or present, which made me think he was pure invention. That this little wizened woman before me was living some kind of delusional fantasy I found not uncommon for those stranded for years on the west coast. I met many of them hanging on to some tattered shred of life. There was Lenore, once an assistant director at Columbia studios with dreams of making it as a scriptwriter. She wound up with stomach cancer and a heart pacer, living a hand-to-mouth existence after losing her membership to the screenwriters’ guild, hoping for calls that never came from old writing pals. Then there was fat David who won an Obie for one golden performance on the New York stage sometime in the 1950’s, thereafter, straight downhill, ending up the road manager for some third-rate Hollywood lounge singer. He stayed all day in his two-room apartment surrounded by everything Snoopy, stuffed dolls, ashtrays, until losing both his legs to diabetes. What made this old woman’s story any different?

“I could tell by your voice over the telephone you were very young,” she said looking at me from the opposite side of the coffee table. “I knew you’d be disappointed when you saw me. I’m not the beauty I once was.”
     
She was mistaken to think the ravages of old age carved into her face were offensive to my aesthetic sensibilities, but my curiosity was piqued at the idea of seeing her collection of paintings by an artist who left little or no trace of his existence, except for his works supposedly languishing in the recesses of her rundown Hollywood apartment.

“I’ve never seen your kind of expression before,” she said looking at me intently. “I want to say something, but it wouldn’t be right.”

“But where are your paintings by Ashkenazy?” I asked.

She pointed to her bedroom.

“Every day I sit and look at them. They’re in that room, but I don’t sleep there. I sleep here on
the sofa.”  

She paused long enough for me to ponder that fact, but before I could ask why, she confessed
she modeled for him many times for many of his paintings.

"It was after one of my symbolical dances," she said. "I was very interested in dance and did so only for Russians. They're funny people. They come to America and think they’re aristocrats.  I was a star among them. I had agents who wanted to make me a miracle of the world because I combined dance with words. One of my best agents wanted me trained right away.

“‘You cannot be more ready than you are,’ he said.

“‘No, no, I'm not ready,’ I said.

“I did three different versions of Salome. One was pantomime, one without, and another only dance. My teacher came to me one day and said, 'My God! You're such a breathtaking beauty, your body, the way you move!'

“'Everything for art,’ I said.

“I started writing poetry and fairy tales for the movies. A Hollywood director saw me on stage one night and was very interested in a fairy tale I wrote. He wanted me to play the role on screen. “‘No, I cannot do anything but dance,’ I said. When he came backstage, he introduced me to a Russian friend. ‘This is the artist Ashkenazy," he said. ‘He would like you to model for him.’

“I had no idea who he was or why he was even interested in me, but his eyes were so sad and he hardly said a word, but for some reason I did not refuse his request. It was all done very quietly, very formally, as if we were meant to fall in love.

“At the beginning there was nothing between us. I was older than him, but it made no difference. There was something about his expression, the way he handled himself, very self-effacing, intense, full of self-control, relaxed but underneath aware of everything. He looked at me with curiosity, as though trying to understand me with his eyes. Everything I was emotionally and physically was his, as if he saw more of me than I saw in myself. I was beautiful, but did not know how beautiful until he began painting me. No man ever worshipped me the way he did.

I never thought a man could love a woman in such a way. His friends said he studied the stars. I just knew I wanted to be with him.

“'You are one of the rarest women I've ever met,' he said. ‘You have two natures. Luck will fall into your hands, but you'll end your stage life only when you fall in love.'

“I didn't know what he meant, but little by little I turned away from my symbolical dance and found his worship enough to gratify my yearning for artistic expression. He called me ‘angel’ and wanted to change my hair red for a painting. I said no, but did it anyway because I loved him. He gave me the painting and another of me sitting with my back turned, dressed in an elaborate white, silk Chinese gown.

“At first his paintings were modest, but one day he asked if he could paint me nude. He said he would die if he couldn't. I wasn't afraid at first when he started painting, but then I ran away and said I would never come back. Talent, you see, is like a chain. One links to another, until you are so entangled there is no escape. I was never so vulnerable and weak as I was with him. I couldn’t refuse him anything, even my body.

“When I came back, I asked him, ‘what do you want me to do?’

“He gave me a pair of white gloves and asked me to sit in a chair with only a coverlet draped over my hips and legs. The next painting, he asked me to sit nude next to a white, floral bouquet, in another next to a white cockatoo on a perch, and in another simply with arms folded. But each painting seemed to make me more and more vulnerable. He asked me to pose in unspeakable positions and I was afraid and ran away again, saying I would never come back, but I did. Still he was never satisfied because he said there was something missing, something about me he couldn't express.

One afternoon, he asked me to pose in a particularly obscene position. Even after all his other requests to pose in the nude, I could not refuse. When it was over, he looked gratified in a way that went beyond anything artistic. What did my beauty matter then? The next day his mother called and told me his son was seriously ill.”

“‘His son?’ I said. “‘Didn't he tell you he was married?’ “I was shocked. “ Didn’t he tell you about his heart problems as well?”

“I was stunned. The man I loved was unattainable from the very beginning and I gave him everything.”

She paused and looked out the window. "I talk too much, take too much of your time," she suddenly said in a voice tinged with embarrassment.

I glanced toward the bedroom. "May I see Ashkenazy's work?"

She looked into my face measuring my sincerity. Did she fear I would take away something from Ashkenazy that she herself secreted all those years gazing at herself the way he saw her? Was it all idealism and nothing more on Ashkenazy's part, or did he really believe there was something eternal to beauty? After decades of devotion by the one object of his obsession, this wizened little woman who could barely walk, who poured out her story to me in vindication for a life of trials and unhappiness, even with my hand on the door knob ready to enter the bedroom, I felt some profound understanding of beauty that had eluded me up to then, a novice and innocent who, like Ashkenazy, revered the enigmatic, but compelling beauty of women.

For several seconds longer I stood before the door without making a move to enter the room.

"What's the matter?" she said.

​I feared there was nothing there, or something too profound to see, as much an illusion for me as perhaps for her. It was impossible to say. I felt the sky's softness and realized, leaving the old woman standing at the door of her apartment, wondering why I never entered the room that I probably would never see her again, but promised I would and found out by chance she died six months after my visit. I set off instantly for her apartment, hoping to salvage something of the old woman's letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, anything to validate the truth of her story, but when I arrived, no one had saved a thing, or even knew if she had a family, the management having disposed of all her possessions, including the paintings of Ashkenazy.

Thomas Sanfilip is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in the Shore Poetry Anthology, Thalassa, Ivory Tower, Nit & Wit, Tomorrow, Ginosko Literary Journal, Maudlin House, Feile-Festa, Per Contra, and Brilliant Flash Fiction. Five collections of poetry have been published, in addition to a collection of short fiction, The Killing Sun (2006).

* * * 

The Christmas Zephyr
By David Watson 
 
December, 24 1941

Otto grabs the Zephyr’s frosty handrail and eases himself down the steps.  He tightens his grip, takes a deep breath and thrusts his head out into the icy wind.  The cold dampness smacks him square in the face.  With tears from the frigid air welling in his eyes, he sees the fast-approaching lights of Monmouth.  They sparkle like polished jewels on the dark Illinois prairie.   He slips back into the shelter of the vestibule, pulls out his watch—right on time.  He snaps it shut and stoops to pick up the step stool.

The high-pitch whine of the engine fades and the streamliner slows.  Otto squeezes the stool tight against his chest and leans back, letting his body melt against the swaying train.   He closes his eyes trying to block out the worry jabbing inside his stomach.  All because of a letter, thinks Otto—a goddamn letter.

It arrived in the mail before his run out east—a government letter telling him to report on the day after Christmas.  The inhumanity of it all, the day after Christmas, how could they do that?  The cold seeps around Otto’s neck, and he pulls the collar of his navy blue jacket higher.  He hadn’t told his wife Kitty yet.  How was he going break the news?

The brakes on the train hiss.  More tears sting his eyes, and this time not because of the cold.  The Zephyr eases to a stop and the engine’s air horn sounds. The shrieking whistle startles Otto.  He bites his lower lip and shakes his head.   He smacks the stool against his chest trying to gather himself.  He’s got a job to do.  He wipes the tears from his eyes, jumps to the ground and places the stool.

A soft light glows inside the station.  Otto looks through the window.  A Christmas tree stands with a slight tilt squashed against a wall.  Its branches are covered with silver tinsel thrown in jumbled clumps, colored glass balls hang precariously from bent branches, a child’s paper chain is draped around its crown.

Two passengers emerge and stride up to Otto.  A tall man with an overcoat wrapped tight at the waist, hoists his travel bag onto the first step.  His clerical collar is visible under the lapel of his jacket. 

“Evening Father,” says Otto.  The priest climbs aboard without speaking.

A young soldier, his uniform pressed and polished, is next.  “Hello, bud,” says Otto.

“Is this the train to Fort Madison, sir?”

“Yes, of course.”  The soldier lifts his duffle bag and pulls himself aboard.

Otto turns to the station and sees a young woman struggling to carry a suitcase across the cobblestone platform.  A little boy follows her.  Even in the dim light, Otto notices the young woman’s bouncy hair, her long, slender legs, her bright red lipstick.   He leaps across the platform.  “Can I be of some assistance ma’am?”

The young woman, Sarah Dressden, nods.  Her olive colored eyes meet Otto’s.   A jolt of excitement seizes Otto’s soul.  He reaches for her suitcase, their hands touch as he slips his fingers into the handle. The corners of Sarah’s lips curl into a smile.  She turns, grasps the small hand of her son and the two climb aboard.  Otto stands frozen watching Sarah’s figure twist up the steps.

The engine’s horn sounds.  Otto lets out a low whistle under his breath.  He lifts the leather suitcase into the vestibule, picks up the step stool and signals the engineer with a wave from his flashlight.

Sarah is waiting inside the warm coach.  The train lurches and she reaches out and steadies herself on Otto’s arm.  “Thank you,” she says.

Otto shoves the suitcase into the luggage rack.  “No problem, ma’am.”  He bows and notices the diamond ring and wedding band on her left hand.  He glances at his own left hand.  A gold band fits snug on his finger too.  A wave of nausea swirls inside his stomach.  The weight of an invisible hand presses on his chest.  He labors to take a breath.  Otto straightens himself, and before Sarah can say anything, tips his hat and leaves the car.

Sarah leads her son down the aisle.  She walks slowly, steadying herself against the sway of the Zephyr that reminds her of the roll of a ship.   By habit, she chooses the seat at the front.  She removes her brimmed hat, letting the curls of her dark red hair fall onto her shoulders.  She slips off her black wool coat and turns slowly hoping to catch a lustful gaze.  Except for a priest and a soldier boy, the car is empty and both are looking out the window and not at her.

Sarah lets her body sink into the plush seat, and her son, without her assistance, climbs into the one next to her.  Her husband, Ethan, has been gone only two weeks—off to training camp—and here she is, nearly back to her old self.    She looks down at her hand with the rings, wraps both arms around her waist and squeezes.  What is she doing? Four years of marriage should have changed her.  She thought it had.  With Ethan home it was easy to suppress her longings, but now, with him gone…
Sarah takes a deep breath.  She lets her arms fall onto her lap.  She smoothes out the seams of her checked tweed skirt then closes her ringed hand into a tight fist.  Why had he enlisted?  He knew how she was.  He’d get leave and come to see them, he promised.  That wasn’t going to be enough.  She lets out a low sigh
Sarah unfastens the clasp on her purse and pulls out a compact.  She flips it open and looks into the mirror.  Only, she loves Ethan unlike any other man she has ever known.  But when they ship him overseas?  What if… a horrendous thought slips into her mind.  She grits her teeth forcing it away before it can gain a foothold.

She snaps the compact shut, turns and looks at her little boy.  Her face softens.  He is a picture isn’t he?  His cap tucked over his ears, he looks so much like his daddy.  The little boy looks up into Sarah’s eyes and for a moment she thinks she might melt.
“Can I sit with you?” he says.

Sarah nods and her boy climbs over the seat’s arm and into her lap.  He slips his warm hand into hers. She relishes the soft touch.  She takes her free hand and reaches into her purse.  She pulls out a handkerchief, pauses, then wipes the red makeup from her lips.
The door in front of the car slides open and in walks Otto.  “Tickets please, tickets.”  He stops next to Sarah.  She pries her boy’s hand free and reaching into her purse, hands Otto their tickets.  Avoiding eye contact, Otto punches them and hands them back.

He moves to the young soldier, Tyler Burton, who hands him his ticket.  “This is the train to Fort Madison?”

Otto looks over the top of his glasses.  “The last stop on the run.”  He hands the ticket back to Tyler who promptly drops it to the floor.

Otto fusses with the gold chain attached to his watch.  “Your unit shipping out soon?”

“Yes, sir, next week.”

Otto’s face wrinkles into a frown.  That queasy feeling stirs inside again.  He winces and tries to shake it off, but it’s entrenched in his gut. He lets out a sigh, then reaches out and slaps Tyler on the back.  “Stay safe,” is all Otto can think to say before heading off down the car.

Tyler frowns.  Everyone’s been telling him the same thing.  Stay safe, how the hell is he going to do that?   He’s not sure where he’s getting shipped to, but he knows damn well it isn’t to go on some Boy Scout hike.

Tyler closes his eyes.

It was supposed to be over now.

He wasn’t planning on going to war.

He should be on his way home for good, getting ready for college, getting ready to live his life, but now…  It had been a mistake listening to his buddies.  One year in the service, what adventures they’d have.  And the girls—girls loved guys in a uniform, they’d be all over us.  It all sounded good when they talked about it that summer after high school.

But there hadn’t been any adventures.  And what girls had they seen?  The little time they did have in town, those girls weren’t Tyler’s kind.   And now, thanks to the Japanese, the army’s changed one year into two.  Hell, the next thing they’ll change two years into four.  Four years is an eternity.  There was no way around it, his life is over.

Tyler picks up his duffle bag and traces his finger over his last name embroidered in the canvas.  Instead of coming home for good, his trip is to say good-bye.

He sets his duffle bag on the empty seat next to him and sees the priest across the aisle.  The priest looks familiar, but Tyler’s not sure.  An invisible force seems to pull him to his feet.  He moves down the aisle for a closer look.  Even though the air inside the coach is warm, the priest is bundled tight in his overcoat.    His hands are clenched laid one on each leg.  Tyler moves closer.   The man’s face is drawn with tight lines, his skin a pale white.

“Good evening, Father.”

​Father McConnell turns toward Tyler and grimaces.  He knows what the boy wants.  It’s what every soldier boy wants to know since they bombed Pearl.  Lord, enough have stopped him on the street.  What makes them think he can read their future?  He’s an ordained Catholic priest, not some psychic fortune teller.  Father McConnell can’t even manage to lift his eyes into Tyler’s face.
“I…I just wanted to say…Merry Christmas,” says Tyler.

“You too,” is all Father McConnell can think to say.  Tyler nods his head and walks back to his seat.
Father McConnell turns and looks out the window seeing only his own reflection and the sight sickens him.  The years in college and seminary he had done his best.  He prayed for guidance.  He prayed for a path to follow.  But for reasons he can’t explain, his calling never came.  He should have never taken his vows.  The bishop was wrong, being ordained hadn’t changed anything.  His heart, instead of softening, had grown thick with callus.

Father McConnell looks over his shoulder at the young soldier fidgeting in his seat.   He turns back and lets his chin fall onto his chest as if to pray, but it’s too late for that now.  The humiliation of being wrong, of being a failure, was too much…too much.

He sighs and tries to swallow, but has no spit.  In a short while, it will be over. He’s gone over his plan for months.  He places his hand on the breast pocket of his coat and feels the square envelope resting over his heart.  When Christmas Eve Mass starts at St Catherine, he’ll have time to slide the letter under the Monsignor’s door without being noticed.  The Monsignor won’t understand, but at least he’ll know how to deliver the news.

From St. Catherine, it’s only a short walk down the street to the river.   How many times he’d made the trip when he was a kid?  He’d cut across the city park, down the alley next to Krueger’s hardware store and follow the dirt path behind McGuilly’s bait shop until he came to the double decked girder bridge that connects Iowa to Illinois.

Father McConnell squints looking out the window.  The train is up alongside the river, the girders of the double-decker tower above the river.  Bright lights from the bridge shine into the blackness of the Mississippi illuminating chunks of ice floating in the current.  On the edge of the structure, he makes out the jutting steel platform, where as a kid he used to dive from into the river.

The railroad men would yell at him and his buddies.  But, they’d just lie in the weeds along the bank and wait for them to leave.  It was a safe place to dive, deep water, but you had to be a strong swimmer to get out of the current.

Father McConnell feels a hard hand on his shoulder and his insides lurch.   He turns his head. It’s the soldier boy.  “Excuse me, Father, but I think I know you.  Aren’t you John McConnell?” Tyler sits down in the seat next to Father McConnell.   The door of the car slides open.
“Next stop, Fort Madison,” says Otto.  He looks at the young woman who has fallen asleep with her son on her lap.  He nudges her gently and her eyelids flicker open.

“Fort Madison’s the next stop ma’am.”
He pulls out a red-striped candy cane from his pocket.  “For your son?”
Sarah smiles.  “What do you say?”
“Thanks,” squeaks the little boy, and he reaches out and takes the candy cane.
Otto tips his hat and moves out the back of the car.  Standing in the vestibule, he sees Fort Madison casting a hazy glow.  Specks of light, lit homes and street lamps rising on the river bluff, seem to fly like burning embers into the sky.  He feels the train slow as they twist on the lead up to the bridge.  Otto moves down the steps, and clinging to the railing feels something soft and cold bounce off of his cheek.

He thrusts his hand into the wind momentarily then yanks it back.  Glistening snowflakes cling to his navy blue sleeve.   Snow on Christmas Eve, thinks Otto, what a nice gift.
The Zephyr pulls to a stop in the siding next to the station.   Otto jumps to the ground and places the stool.  The young woman, clinging to her son’s hand, climbs down the stairs.  “Merry Christmas,” says Otto.  The young woman doesn’t answer, only smiles.  Otto watches as the two disappear in the swirling snow.

The priest is next standing in the vestibule.  His face is stained with tears.  “Is everything okay, Father?  Can I call you a taxi?”  Otto is about to climb aboard to help, but the young soldier grips the priest around his shoulder, whispers something in his ear and helps the man down the steps.
“Thank you sir, but I’ll make sure the Father makes it home.”  Otto nods and listens to their feet scrunch in the new fallen snow, then climbs back onto the train.  He walks through the whole train like he always does at the end of a journey and returns to the last car of the Zephyr.  The engine falls silent and the lights in the train flicker before going out.

The bells of St Catherine ring out in the distance calling the town to Christmas Eve Mass.  Otto flips open his watch. Kitty will be in church, and she won’t be expecting him.  He’ll make it on time if he hurries.   Won’t she be surprised.

He eases himself off the train feeling the smooth railing slide against the palm of his hand.  He stops and looks one last time at the Zephyr.  He was a good conductor wasn’t he?  No matter what happens, at least no one could take that away from him.

Otto steps into the falling snow that, for the moment, covers the world’s imperfections in a soft blanket of peace.

Dave is a large animal veterinarian from southern Wisconsin. When not attending to the needs of his dairy cow patients, he finds snippets of time to write fiction. He is currently working on a young adult novel.

* * * 

Via Dolorosa
By Fred White
 
Donna Vale always seemed to be smiling, even when her dark-brown eyes were sad. Ryan Pritchard, who lived next door with his mother, wondered if Mrs. Vale’s husband might be the reason behind those sad eyes; a moving van driver, he was on the road for several days at a time.

One Friday, Donna Vale invited Ryan to dinner, aware that his mother had to work late on Fridays. Mrs. Vale was lighting candles when he arrived. “Please help James set the table, sweetie,” she said. She wore a red satin blouse buttoned to the neck and a gold crucifix which swung like a pendulum as she placed bowls of potatoes and vegetables and a platter of halibut on the table.

Once they were seated, she reached for Ryan’s and her son’s hands, bowed her head, and began reciting a prayer. Her hand was soft and warm. Ryan felt uneasy not knowing the prayer, and recalled how his father started praying after joining A. A.  “As if praying can make up for all the misery you caused!” his mother had shouted at him just before he walked out of their lives for good.

Ryan complimented Mrs. Vale on the halibut, even though he didn’t much care for fish. She thanked him with a radiant smile. Then she dabbed her lips and said quietly, “We live in a dangerous world, boys. That is why we must open our hearts to receive God’s grace.” James nodded absently, not pausing in his eating. It seemed to Ryan that she wanted to say more because her perpetually smiling mouth suddenly tightened. She turned to Ryan, “You’re friends with Marie Rankin, the one-armed girl, aren’t you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Yes, James said you were, but I wanted to make sure.” She closed her eyes. “Last Wednesday morning Mr. Vale found her stretched out behind the back wheels of his truck.”  She touched her crucifix. “She had wrapped herself up in an army blanket. It looked as if—as if there was nothing but a rumpled old blanket behind the wheels.” 

James said, “It’s too bad she only got one arm.” 
   
“Do you have any idea, either of you, why that poor child would do such a thing?”

Ryan felt queasy. “Did your—did Mr. Vale—I mean, did he—?” 

Donna Vale stared at her tightly folded hands. “Mr. Vale had actually switched on the ignition and was about to pull out when Providence intervened, urging him to jump out to retrieve the morning paper that he suddenly noticed on the lawn.  That was when he saw the blanket . . .”

“Marie likes to pretend she’s dead,” said James. “Maybe she’s depressed about having only one arm.”

There was a moment of silence. “I . . . don’t think that’s the reason,” Ryan said.

“Yeah, Marie does like to brag about how she can do more things with one arm than most people can with two,” James said.

Donna was staring hard at Ryan, as if she could sense that there was more he wanted to say. He took a deep breath. “I think she hates her dad.”

Three days earlier he, James, and Marie had been playing basketball at Our Mother of Sorrows parochial school. Ryan loved to watch Marie, with her long slender legs, dance with the ball, and then, using her stump and normal arm, make one spectacular basket after another.  Later, they walked to the nearby park where they took off their shoes and splashed in the brook. Afterwards, while James chased squirrels, Marie and Ryan climbed an oak tree with lots of perches. At one point, Marie scuttled over him. A dirt-stained foot grazed his neck. “Hey, what the heck are you doing?” 

“Hold still!  I’m trying to get onto that branch above your head.”  After several false starts that nearly sent Ryan toppling out of his niche, Marie leaped up into her new roost; then she dropped her legs down and squeezed the sides of his head with them.  “See how strong my legs are, Ryan?  Who needs arms anyway?”  He reached up and clasped her calves. 

“Ryan Pritchard! Are you feeling me up?”
   
He tried to push her legs away. Suddenly she started groaning.  “Oh-h-h-h . . . I’m gonna faint!” 

“Wait, let me help you down.”  He kept an awkward grip on her as she worked her way out of the tangle of branches.  At one point she clutched his arm and pressed her face against his. 

“Are you my lion, Ryan?”

“My what?”
   
“My protector! Or are you just a beast who’s gonna eat me?”
   
“Grab that branch, Marie.”

“Let’s run away!  I’ve got seventy-three dollars saved up from baby-sitting.”
   
“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Marie let go of the branch she was holding, slid to the ground, and lay on her back, arms and legs splayed. James rushed over.  “What the heck happened? Is she hurt?” 
    
“She got dizzy in the tree. I think she’s okay now.”
   
“She don’t look okay,” said James, reluctantly inspecting her. “We’d better take her home.” 
    
“No!” snapped Marie. She kept her eyes shut and was breathing heavily. “Ryan?”

Ryan put his ear to her lips.

“I’m dead,” she whispered.
   
“That’s not funny.” 
   
“Feel,” she said, louder this time, grabbing his hand and slapping it between her small breasts.  “No heartbeat!”

James pulled him away. “You’re not supposed to be horsin’ around like that.”  He tried to pull Marie to her feet but she yanked herself from his grip and flopped back onto the ground. “Beat it, James. Better yet, go beat off somewhere.”
   
Ryan bent down to her again. “C’mon, Marie, we’ll walk you home.
   
She twisted away—then turned back to face him. “Promise you’ll come inside with me.”
   
“No,” said James.
    
“I’m not talking to you, pansy.” 
    
“I promise,” said Ryan. As they began walking out of the park, he could feel her stiffen. By the time they reached her house, she was trembling.
   
Her father was laying sod.  He glanced up when he saw the three of them and wiped his bald head with a rag. His eyes darted from Marie to James to Ryan, then back to Marie.  “Where the heck have you been?”
   
Marie pressed her body against Ryan’s.
   
“I asked you a question.”
   
“Tell him,” Ryan whispered. 
   
“I was in the park, Daddy,” said Marie.
   
“I told you to ask me before you go runnin’ off.  G’wan inside.”
   
Marie stayed put.
   
“Got a hearing problem, Missie?”
   
“Don’t call me that!” she screeched, and then darted away.

“Get your ass back here!” Rankin started after her—but stopped after reaching the sidewalk. He turned to Ryan and James. “Did you just tell her to run off like that?” 
   
“No sir,” said James.
   
“What’d you say to her?”
   
“Nothin’”
   
“Like hell.” He glared at Ryan. “I saw you whisperin’ in her ear.” 
   
“I just told her to tell you that we were only playing in--”
   
“Go find her; tell her that her old lady’s been bitching her head off for her.” 
   
“We don’t know where she went,” James said.
   
Rankin scratched the back of his neck. “She likes to hide in weird-ass places. Found her under my car once.”
   
Ryan and James returned to the park, but she wasn’t there. They yelled for her up and down four streets. They looked for her under cars. They searched the alley behind her house.
    
It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

After dinner Ryan asked Mrs. Vale if he could help clean up, but she shook her head. She put her hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “Why do you suppose Marie hates her father?”
 
He shrugged. “It’s just the way she avoids him when he’s around.”
   
“Has she ever explained why she avoids him?”
   
Ryan shook his head.
   
James was leaning against the refrigerator, staring at them. “Maybe,” said James, “she acts strange because that car accident she was in affected her brain. Isn’t that how she lost her arm? I know I’d act strange if something like that happened to me.”
   
“Something happened to her mother in the accident too,” said Ryan, “I saw Marie’s father helping Mrs. Rankin into a wheelchair once.”
   
Donna Vale gazed out the kitchen window for a long moment. “You pray to the Lord don’t you?” she asked Ryan. 
     
Ryan felt his face redden. “Yes,” he lied. His father used to try to get him to pray.  “Life is too damned tough to go it alone,” he would say. “That’s the first thing they teach you in AA. You gotta acknowledge a higher power.”
   
Ironically, Ryan would pray—he would pray for his father never to drink again, never to lose his temper again; but he vanished into thin air instead.
    
“Then would you and James do something charitable for Marie this evening?  Would you walk down to the church and pray for her? I would come along, but Mr. Vale promised to call me this evening from wherever he plans to stop for the night.”  

“Well . . .” said Ryan.  He should have kept his big mouth shut about praying.

“Sure,” James said, elbowing Ryan. “Come on!”

They walked in silence in the cool dusk to the Mother of Sorrows church at the opposite end of the block. “I’ve never come here this late before except for midnight Mass,” said James. “Have you?” 

“No,” said Ryan, remembering how his mother used to get into a shouting match with his father because she didn’t want Ryan being brainwashed by religious fanatics, as she put it.

James was explaining how he liked being inside a church when it was dark and empty. “I sometimes come here just to pray for a few minutes,” he whispered. “I had this little conversation with God about my dad, who has to deliver stuff from one end of the state to the other, and was always in a bad mood when he got home.”

Ryan detected a faint, sweet, smoky smell inside the church. James explained that that was the smell of incense, what the priests used to spread holiness through the church.  They walked down the aisle, and Ryan waited for James to kneel and cross himself before entering a row of pews. James pulled down the kneeler, crossed himself, and mumbled a prayer. Ryan sat tensely next to him, waiting.

“There,” I just prayed for Marie to be okay. What about you?” 

“We should be out there looking for her.”

“Okay, but you gotta say a prayer for her first.” 

I don’t have to do any such thing.” Ryan fixed his eyes on the bronze crucifix above the altar. “I want to start looking for her now before it gets too dark.”

“But if you prayed for that, God—” 

“Praying is dumb.”

James look mortified. “So you’re calling my mother dumb, and all the priests and nuns dumb?”

“No, I said praying is dumb, not priests and nuns or your mother. You don’t listen too good.” 

“Don’t you believe in God?” 

He wanted to tell James to shut his mouth. 

“I wouldn’t want to live if God didn’t exist,” said James. 

Ryan tried to stifle a laugh; but it burst out anyway. James stared at him like a frightened cat. “If God does exist, I wish he’d give me a sign.”

“You gotta pray for that,” persisted James.

Ryan pressed his palms together and raised them over his head. “Hey, God, drop whatever you’re going and send me a sign that I’m not just talking to myself, okay?”

James pushed him. “Stop it. You’re being sacrilegious inside a church.”

Ryan was convinced there was no such thing as God, or the Devil, for that matter, but had no doubt that evil existed. There was plenty of evidence for that. Evil was as real as gravity, and just as difficult to pinpoint. Evil cast terrible spells over people, making them do awful things without caring or even understanding how awful they were. 

“I remember once during catechism,” James was saying, “how Sister Ann told us about people who couldn’t decide if God existed. She used a word, not atheists but ag –  something or other. “I bet you’re an ag…nog . . . are you, Ryan.”

“No, James, I am not an egg nog. The word is agnostic. I’m not an agnostic, but a creepy-crawling atheist. Woooo-wooooo!” Ryan made claws.

James shrunk away from him and started wandering up the side aisle of the church, gazing up at the walls. “See those, Ryan?” his voice echoed through the empty church. He pointed up at the rows of bas-reliefs. “Those are the Stations of the Cross.”

“What are they?”  Ryan knew what they were; he just wanted to hear James struggle with an explanation.

“Uhm, they, uhm, you know, show the path that Jesus took on the way to where he was, uhm, crucified. It’s called the Path of Tears, the Via . . .  Dolorosa. Mom says she wants us both to go there someday and walk that very same path that Jesus took.” He continued to move along the wall. “Look! There’s Simon; he helped Jesus carry the cross for a while, before the Roman soldiers forced him to stop.”  James suddenly crossed himself. 

“Is that what you’re supposed to do when you look at Jesus?” Ryan taunted.  
 
“Gosh, Ryan, can’t you feel his suffering?”  

“I’m too worried about Marie.” 

James walked over to the last Station, where the dead Jesus, wrapped in a blanket, was being placed inside a tomb. Ryan shuddered. It reminded him of Marie, wrapped in an Army blanket, lying behind the wheels of James’s father’s truck, waiting to be crushed to death. He clutched James’s arm. “I’m going now.” 

“But you should—” 

Ryan hurried out of the church, fearful that something terrible had already happened to Marie. He ran down the block, calling out her name, peering underneath every car—in the street, in every driveway.  He scanned the next block and the next. He scoured a nearby alley. Where could she be?  He prayed that she was still hiding, and not crushed under the wheels of a truck. He prayed that he could find her before it was too late.

Fred White's fiction has appeared most recently in Limestone, Mad Hat Lit, and Rathalla Review. He lives near Sacramento, CA.

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