Gallows 

By R. Hoyte Raney

​

 There were no trick or treaters that year. Not one.

          Lourdes awoke on Halloween morning, drifted down from her bedroom to the first floor and quietly thought of breakfast. After several minutes of deep and oppressive silence she turned on the radio and listened to several more minutes of abrupt and chaotic news reports.

          Death. Dismemberment. Carnage.

          All they could talk about were the many sightings of the Beast—factual and imagined—from the previous weekend. There were portents, superstitions, and alignments in the heavens that coincided with the now waning full moon. There were veiled threats and suppositions that cast ominous shadows upon her family’s landscape. There were fingers pointed, shouted voices and raised torches just beyond her field of vision.

           She finally turned off the radio and let early morning return to what it was, instead of what it would inevitably become. In its place she intuited the spiders and centipedes that lived in the basement and crawlspaces beneath her feet. She pondered how and why they chose their victims.

           Her thoughts turned to her Uncle.

            Experience told her he wouldn’t spare her bad news. Lobo could never hide what he felt from her. When he was concerned, he paced about as if animals clawed at the door. Anger made the clouds darken and color drain from his face. But when he smiled or laughed, birds would often alight on his shoulders and storms drifted off and bothered others.

           Her Aunt, Elmiranda, had thick brown hair that was braided into serpentine vines. Her full lips were arterial red, while her complexion was as white as an October moon. Thin, extreme brows highlighted her wide, green eyes, framed by lashes as black as a bat’s wing.

            After a few moments of contemplation Lourdes opened her eleven-year-old doe-brown eyes and thought over the consequences of her decision.

            It was remarkably easier than it should have been.

            Once dressed she went out the back door, slipped over her neighbor’s fence and planted ragged and fearsome tracks in his muddied yard—like breadcrumbs to the gallows. By the time she had finished, her pale skin was prickled and damp, the sun just shy of risen.

            She went back in and prepared for school.

           Lourdes waited at the bus stop. None of her friends showed up.

           She walked through the halls of her school and listened to the other children, oblivious to her penitence and ruth.

           Not a single person talked to her.

           She ate her lunch alone.

           When school was over she boarded the bus and sat by herself with her school bag upon her lap.

           She arrived home, walked up the stairs, stopped on the front porch and looked off toward the horizon. Orange filtered through seasonal clouds like pumpkins burning. Small, black and gray wisps from a passed storm hung in the air, provoking thoughts of rain.

           Stepping inside, she saw her Uncle Lobo. He sat on the couch, his face coarse, white and worried. His legs were propped up on the table while he studied the floor in front of the victrola.

           He had come home Sunday—after the police had interrogated Lourdes and her Aunt. Once he had finished scrubbing the spot where Elmiranda’s fingernails had melted, he’d sat on the couch. On Monday, all the birds in the city flew away at precisely the same time.

           For two hours, the sky was blacker than pitch.

           He hadn’t moved since.

           Lourdes placed her book bag on the dining room table before going upstairs to her Aunt’s room. When she had finished putting on her Halloween costume, she stood in front of the étagère and studied herself in its mirror until the sun had set and Elmiranda had awakened from the sleep of the Dead.

           She went downstairs and watched Lobo before checking the candy by the front door. The basket was filled to overflowing with a variety of chocolate bars, caramelos and glazed nuts

           Her Uncle wouldn’t meet her gaze.

           Elmiranda offered to go trick or treating with her.

           Lourdes decided to go alone.

           No one answered any of the doors she rang.

           She avoided her neighbor’s house.

           She went to bed without taking her costume off.

           She couldn’t fall asleep.

           She got up walked to the foot of the bed sat down stared at her closet door for an hour walked to the window looked for the moon studied the tracks in her neighbor’s yard went back to bed and fell into restless sleep.

           The police didn’t return.

           The bandage stayed on Elmiranda’s hand for a month.

           Her fingernails never grew back.

           The crowd appeared at 11:55 PM, Halloween night.

           It burned her neighbor’s house to the ground.
 

R. Hoyte Raney is a Paramedic Field Chief for the Chicago Fire Department, and the front man for the Chicago based Alt/Americana band "Drama Junkies". His writing has appeared in N.E.I.U’s the Apocalypse, the Chicago Tribune, the Oklahoma Review (Spring, 2013) and will be appearing in Penduline Press and Emerge Literary Journal (Fall, 2013).

​

* * *

My Daily Dish At Sunshine House

By Mindela Ruby

​

Charlotte’s trembling hand gripped Monday’s penciled, smudged report about her grandson. It galled her, to no end, that his daycare provider obsessed over consumption and excretion. Rather than safety.

April 25

Nathan ate all his beans and rice and made a BM in his diaper. No more diarrhea! We’ll encourage him to try the Big Kid Toilet again next week. Outside, he hid in the Jungle Hut with Chelsea.

Over a hundred of these Sunshine House notes were stashed in Roselle’s top right kitchen drawer. Charlotte had watched her daughter’s eyes brim with tears of joy as she read about Nathan’s developmental accomplishments. Even if mama has to work, these communications reassured, her little darling’s as good as home in the bosom of Tami’s daycare center.

Misleading crap.

But Roselle was a single mother, the sperm that fertilized her egg “donated by a friend”—which is all she’d told her mother about the conception. Roselle was late in launching career and family, and with the burden of house payments and law school debt resting solely on her, affordable pre-school was a must. It wasn’t Charlotte’s place to question her daughter’s choices. Her offer of monetary assistance got soundly rebuffed.

“Big mistake,” Charlotte said to the foolish slip of lavender paper in her grasp. Security must be priority number one. Not forcing the kiddy potty on babies.

Roselle got bamboozled by Tami’s home-cooked lunches and fleshy helpers with shy smiles. She didn’t see the red flags flapping.

April 26

Nathan didn’t eat any veggie macaroni, but he drank some soy milk. He grunted and screwed up his face. We checked and found nothing visibly wrong. Sandi thinks it’s food allergies. He fell asleep cranky but woke from his nap and asked for a cookie.

Charlotte was aghast. Further preoccupation with digestion, yet what did Sandi know about children’s health? She had no medical or Early Childhood Development training. “Sandi” wasn’t even her real name, and “Suzi” wasn’t the other girl’s. Tami made those names up. Her minimum wage workers spoke broken English and lumbered about like overfed sloths. Illegal aliens from Honduras and Chechnya, Charlotte surmised, plucked from society’s margins for low overhead childcare service.

Roselle was deposing an insurance fraud witness in Fresno, three hours away, when a frantic Tami telephoned her. Charlotte was able to leave the design showroom and rush to the daycare in Roselle’s place. Police were on-scene when she parked, the squad car attracting neighbors’ curiosity. A detective dusted the gate latch for fingerprints. Mothers showed up with stricken faces and clung to their offspring, selfishly grateful the kidnapping victim was someone else’s.

The female officer took statements from staff and toddlers. During the incident Suzi was washing lunch dishes and saw nothing. Tami claimed to be in the bathroom. Her irritable bowel syndrome was an impediment to maintaining adequate vigilance—didn’t Roselle see? According to three-year-old Paolo, a “bad man” took “Nay” out of the yard. As for Sandi, she was bent over, gathering spilled blocks, and observed only the back of a male fleeing through the gate with Nathan over his shoulder. She tried giving chase, but the assailant quickly escaped from sight.

Irresponsible! And devastating. Worse, Charlotte’s gut told her Tami was hiding something. But where was her proof?

Charlotte opened the Parent Box and collected the latest reports about Nathan. His sweatshirt still hung on its hook. She clutched it to her face, wishing the drier sheet fragrance would conjure the little boy’s essence.

The male cop instructed her to wait at Roselle’s house. While the “mother of the missing child was in transit” someone had to be on hand in case a call from the abductor went to the home. The officer took the sweatshirt from Charlotte, to bag for DNA evidence. Letting the garment go made her feel helpless.

Now she stared at Roselle’s wall-mounted phone, willing it to ring. She should have demanded a wire tap to trace extortion attempts. She should have insisted the FBI Child Abduction Unit be brought on the case. For the world to be set aright, Roselle needed to return home and declare these measures taken. Or better yet, declare Nathan recovered.

April 27

For Greggie’s birthday the kids ate carrot cake, and Suzi led the Happy Birthday song. When Paulo asked to share the Crocodile Rocker, Nathan bit his arm. During his time-out, Nathan tore a page out of the How Do You Wear It book.

Nathan normally wasn’t a cross child. He must have been sick. Charlotte suspected neglect.

And this morning--did loose poop run down Nathan’s pant legs again? Did someone inflict excess punishment? Hurt him? A complicit relative of one of the babysitters could have whisked him away.

Or maybe Nathan got kidnapped by Roselle’s mysterious sperm donor.  Oh, Roselle. Weren’t you taught to know better?

Whatever the story--random stranger, shifty immigrant, entitled sperm donor--Charlotte felt like she alone bore the brunt of the pain. She folded the last “My Daily Dish at Sunshine House” dispatch over and over, until it was a tiny ball in her hot hand. The tighter she squeezed, the more pressure built inside her chest. She itched to assign fault, unyoke her fury at Tami, the police, someone! But when Roselle came through that door, broken by desperation and guilt, she would rely on her mother’s strength and judgment. Charlotte used every ounce of psychic energy to push the furious urges down.

The telephone at last screamed to life. A development, a demand, deliverance from the agony of waiting.

Charlotte was not to find out. The trills of the phone penetrated her chest like shocks of electricity. Her heart spasmed, burned, choked to a stop. Everything went quiet. Her silver-blonde head hit the bull-nose edge of the tiled counter as she dropped, and Roselle’s house went unutterably blacker.
 

​

Mindela Ruby is a teacher, writer, and culinary explorer. Her fiction has appeared in print, online and in mp3 format in journals including Arcadia, The Binnacle, FRiGG, Melusine, Literary Mama, Jersey Devil Press, and BoundOff. She has written a novel, MOSH IT UP.

* * *

My Word (Play)

By John Vanderslice

​

Characters:

MAN, late sixties to early seventies
BOY, ten
CAPTAIN JENSEN, airline pilot, early fifties
MRS. JENSEN, his wife, mid-forties
DAVY CAMPBELL, off-duty policemen, early thirties
ERICA DENT, his girlfriend, early-to-mid twenties
BRITTANY CAMPBELL, Davy’s daughter, eleven
TWIN MAN, identical as possible in age and appearance to MAN


As the play opens, a spotlight or two illuminates a small section of center stage.  We see there a galley kitchen in a small riverside cottage.  It is not only a functional but a comfortable space, perfect for two recently retired people: a new stainless steel sink; new, black appliances—dishwasher, stove, refrigerator; new wooden cabinets stained a rich honey brown, with pebbly textured cabinet pulls that pick up the earthen feel of the doors without merely repeating the same color.  The countertops are of a marbled black stone variety, with veins of white and silver light the gleaming, polished surface, throwing glints of light and working against monotone.  The dishwasher and sink sit on the left side—as viewed by the audience—of the kitchen.  The backside of the kitchen contains most of the counter space; while on the right side of the kitchen sits the stove and refrigerator.   Track lighting is apparent above each of the three sides of the kitchen, although only the row of lights on the stove/refrigerator side of the kitchen are on.  At the front of the kitchen, thus visible to the audience, on the sink and dishwasher side, are three plastic trash cans.  One, is designated, via Sharpie-scrawled message, as “Trash.”  The second is designated for “Plastic.”  The third, closest to the audience and most visible, is designated for “Glass.”  Approximately, two yards to the right—as viewed by the audience—of this kitchen is a freestanding door.  It is in a doorframe but unconnected to any wall.  This represents the front door of the cottage.

A MAN stands in front of the refrigerator with the door open, soberly examining its contents.  There is a fixed look on the man’s face.  He does not study the refrigerator’s contents because he is wondering what to bring out of it.  He knows what he wants.  He simply is deciding whether to grab what he wants.  MAN, obviously retirement aged and condition, is dressed in ratty white shorts, faintly painted splattered and a plaid, short sleeved, button shirt that at the moment is entirely unbuttoned.  On his feet are a pair of worn, faint gray boat shoes with a holes on each at the front toe point.  He wears no socks.  On his left wrist is a black Casio watch, a lower end variety found in almost any box or drug store.  It could not have cost more than $20 and is presently flecked with the same slight paint splotches as his shorts.

MAN’S head is shaved close to the skull but not completely, his own form of a crewcut, not at all like the military’s but almost as short. The hair is mostly gray but evidence slightly darker patches.  His skull evidences a mysterious bloody purple patch that suggests a former injury or may simply be a birthmark revealed by the crewcut.  MAN’s chest hair is all gray and his skin is spotted in places in the manner of an elderly man.  However, the face, while weathered is not actually that wrinkled.  It is a craggy face, but a naturally craggy one, reddened perhaps and perhaps unshaven, but energized by a natural force of will and irrepressible intelligence.   There should be about this man an air of contained impatience and a desire at all times to avoid boredom.  This is not to say the man fidgets, because he does not.  His movements, when he moves, are more of the erratic rather than the hyperactive type.  He should give the impression of someone who is constantly thinking and who occasionally, suddenly, perhaps when those around him are least ready for it, turns his thoughts into action.  

For the moment, MAN closes the refrigerator door.  He turns toward the cabinets above the back counter and opens them.  He reaches in and pulls out a water glass.  He turns to the sink, fills the glass with water, sips, puts the glass down disaffectedly.  He reels and looks across to the digital clock readout on the microwave.  He checks this time against the watch on his wrist.  He rubs his right hand at length across his stubbly chin, obviously thinking.  He returns to the refrigerator, opens it, and reaches in. 

At this moment, a second and narrow spotlight comes on, illuminating a thin circle of space just past edge of the nimbus of light created by the first spot, closer by a couple feet to the front of the stage.  Inside this new, narrow circle of light is BOY.  His appearance should feel as sudden as possible; literally as if the boy has only that instant materialized inside the scene.  If this proves too difficult an effect to pull off, BOY could simply enter through the front door.  BOY should be dressed as any ten-year-old from the late nineties might be: sneakers and black jeans and a t-shirt.  He should not look conspicuous in any way, except for the fact that he holds in one hand a spiral notebook such as college students use to take notes and in the other hand a ballpoint pen.  He stares at MAN as MAN reaches into the refrigerator.  Almost instantaneous with his appearance, BOY begins speaking.  


BOY: Wait.

[MAN rears back and almost closes the refrigerator door.  He sees BOY.  MAN looks at him momentarily through narrowed eyes.  He seems unsurprised by the sudden appearance of this boy, though it should be apparent that he did not know of BOY’S presence in the room until the boy spoke.  After the few seconds of faceoff, MAN starts again to open the refrigerator door.]


BOY [louder]: Wait.

[MAN, thoroughly unaffected by BOY’S plea, lets the door swing open wide.  He reaches inside with his left hand, while looking directly at BOY.]

MAN:  I’m going to take this now.

[BOY reacts slightly, as if stung.  Then he recovers, holds his head strictly in place.]

BOY:  All right, but if you do that, I will remember it twenty-five years from now, and in a white-blonde classroom littered with molded plastic desks and ten tired students I will write it down to be exposed and thought about.  [He shows the notebook and pen.]

MAN [knowing half-smile]:  But you’ve done that already, haven’t you?

BOY: When?

MAN: In at least a half-dozen short stories; and in that novel you left inside two blue notebooks years ago; and in that self-pitying essay you tried to publish.

BOY [expressionless, hesitates, then speaks]: I’m ten years old.  I don’t know what an essay is. 


[From the refrigerator, MAN pulls a large, dark beer bottle, the glass of the bottle a smoky brown.  MAN shuts the refrigerator door emphatically and sees a bottle opener clinging there by a magnet.]


MAN: You’ll know what an essay is soon enough.

BOY: No thanks to you.

MAN: Every thanks to me.

BOY: That means the same thing.

MAN: Listen to you.  [He turns, set the bottle on a narrow wedge of counter top beside the dishwasher.  He pops off the bottle cap, and lets it fall to the counter, where it skitters.] 

BOY: If you drink that, you’ll want to drink another.

MAN: Of course.

BOY: And it’s only twelve o’clock.

MAN: It’s Saturday.

BOY: What difference does that make?

MAN: Every difference.  [He tilts the bottle back, takes a few deep draughts, as if dearly needing that relief.  When he brings the bottle down, his eyes are watery—perhaps even pained—yet his whole aspect is merrier.]

BOY:  Now you’ll want another.

MAN:  Eventually, sure.

BOY:  By three, at which point you will already be recognizably affected, you will decide you are bored with beer and switch to gin.  Small sips, of course.  Manageable tastes.  That’s what you’ll tell yourself.  And maybe they will be—but how religiously pursued.  By seven you will not be able to walk to the liquor cabinet without lurching from hip to hip, wall to wall.  By eight-thirty, you will feel thoroughly overheated and eager for the delicious air of the Wicomico, the springtime bloom of the wind along the river bank, the subtle burn of the rising moon.

MAN [decidedly less cheery]:  How do you know? You’re in Philadelphia with your mother.

BOY: You can take me at my word.

MAN [studying BOY’S face]: Maybe I can.  [Pause.]  But I can’t help myself.  I’m sorry.  [Lifts the bottle, takes another swallow.]           

BOY: By nine you will be so far gone you won’t see where your feet land, where the grass stops and the retaining wall begins.  The sky will have thoroughly darkened, and the neighbors to your right and left will have no idea that you are wandering, drunk, in your backyard.

MAN:  Jensen will see me.  He’s always spooking around, keeping one eye out--


[BOY motions suddenly to stage left, where in a new spot—perhaps violet toned or even bluish, to suggest the middle of the night--we see a small but cozy hotel room.  Simultaneous with his motion the boy begins to speak.  As soon as he does so, the man in the hotel bed, turns inward so that his face no longer points to the ceiling but toward MAN and BOY. ]


BOY:  Captain Jensen won’t even be here.  He’s in a hotel room in Vienna, four hours from waking and preparing for the long flight back across the Atlantic.


[The two stare at CAPTAIN JENSEN, the boy neutrally, the man more miserably, as if trying to figure a way to pull JENSEN across the water at once.  Seconds of tense silence pass.  Then JENSEN rolls back the other way and the spell is broken.  The spot on JENSEN goes out.  The BOY motions to upper stage right, where in a clear white spot MRS. JENSEN appears, sitting in an ordinary living room chair, a bowl on her lap, staring at the tv in front of her.  The tv is decidedly too loud, its noise dominating the stage for hard moments.  What we hear is the following clip from the 1987 film Three Amigos! :


ACTOR 1: I have put many beautiful piñatas in the storeroom, each of them filled with little surprises. 

ACTOR 2:  Many piñatas?

ACTOR 1: Oh yes, many!

ACTOR 2:  Would you say that I have a plethora of piñatas?

ACTOR 1: A what?

ACTOR 2: A plethora.

ACTOR 1 [after great hesitation]: Oh yes, you have a plethora.

ACTOR 1: Jeffe, what is a plethora?


[As MRS. JENSEN watches, and we listen, the intended hilarity of the clip comes across as tinny and pathetic.  MRS. JENSEN is patently bored.  She lifts a forkful of pasta from the bowl and begins to chew desultorily.  She lowers the fork, looks to her right, and sighs.  Instantaneous with the sigh, the sound from the television cuts off and BOY begins speaking.]


BOY:  Mary Ann Jensen will be here, but inside, watching American Movie Classics, a bowl of microwaveable pasta in her lap and thinking of her husband’s return.  She’ll look forward to not eating alone for another string of days.

MAN [shrugging]:  That sounds about right.

BOY [more forcefully]:  So she won’t see you.  [The spotlight on MRS. JENSEN goes out.]


[There is just enough time for us to see the man absorb this news when ERICA DENT in a mane of cluttered brown hair and offended strut starts across the front of the stage from the audiences left to the audience’s right.  She is followed closely by DAVY CAMPBELL, tanned and crewcut—a stocky, but not exactly overweight man, older than her by almost a decade.  As determined as ERICA is to be offended, DAVY is determined to defend himself.]


DAVY: It’s the fucking law, Erica.  I’m a policeman.  I don’t get to not follow the law.

ERICA [stops mid-stage to face him]: Oh, yeah.  Like you’ve never broken the law in your whole life.

DAVY: Not since I’ve been a cop!

ERICA:  Cops don’t break laws?  How stupid do you think I am?

DAVY:  I can’t deny her a legal right.  It’s in the contract.

ERICA:  That’s not the law.  That’s just what you signed.

DAVY [laughs]: And so it’s le-gal! [He stretches out the word.]

ERICA [impatient with the skirmishing, wanting to get to the point]: I’m tired of her being around here so much, occupying Brittany—and you—all the time.  She’s constantly giving me those poison eyes.


[As soon as ERICA says “Brittany,” loud television sounds can be heard.  Not the sounds of American Movie Classics and not from MRS. JENSEN’s side of the stage. Instead, the sounds are voices of actors in the late 90s tv show Angel.  When we first hear the show, one character, played by an actor with a British voice, is accusing a female character of wearing a pushup bra.  The petty conversation is interrupted by a more subdued Angel and then by a client who comes for Angel’s help.]


DAVY: I can’t help what kind of eyes she gives you; she’s my ex-wife!

ERICA: I don’t like it.  It hurts me.


[CAMPBELL spins away from her, hands on his hand, mouth open, trying to fathom what to say now.  The sounds from Angel blare even louder—uncomfortably loud—across the stage.]

BOY: Davy Campbell, meanwhile, will be inside too, arguing with his girlfriend about his ex-wife’s visiting privileges while trying to ignore the screech coming from his daughter’s television upstairs.  [As soon as BOY says “daughter,” a spot comes on stage left.  On that side of the stage, on a platform suggesting the second floor of a house, eleven year old BRITTANY CAMPBELL sits on a conspicuously overadorned, overpillowed bed, drinking a Diet Pepsi and stares with complete fixation at the television which sits on top of her bureau.  We are allowed just a couple seconds more to absorb the invading noise from Angel before MAN says his next line.  In fact, the tv noise is so loud he shouts it.]

MAN [with a broad grin]:  That’s the Campbells! 

[As soon as he says this, the television noise evaporates, the spot goes out on BRITTANY, and DAVY and ERICA run off stage.  The BOY allows a few seconds for the audience to feel the new silence and the emptiness before he says his next lines.]


BOY: In one of your more ill-advised lurches, your right foot will land in a hole just behind the retaining wall.  [Here the BOY motions to stage right.  At the back of the stage, as BOY speaks, an actor dressed identically to MAN (we’ll call him TWIN  MAN), and aided only by as many props as necessary, acts out the death BOY describes.  It is, of course, necessary, for the audience to view this action as if they are sitting in the river.  That is, when TWIN MAN falls over the retaining wall, he should fall toward the audience so that the audience can see him hang from his broken leg.] Your body will tip and fall over, even as your foot remains stuck, thus cracking your leg and simultaneously causing you to hit your head on a stone at the center of the wall.  [MAN blinks at him, blank-faced.]  The impact will render you unconscious.  While you hang there, dangling by a broken leg, the tide will come in, covering the upper half of your body.


[MAN sets his beer down forcefully on the counter.  As soon as we hear the smack of beer bottle on counter, the light goes out on the pantomimed death.  It disappears.]


MAN: You don’t think I know this?

BOY: No.  I don’t think you do.


[MAN, clearly more agitated now, steps out of the kitchen proper for the first time.  He paces as he talks.]


MAN: What do you care, anyway?  When did you ever?  While I drown you get to be entertained by your mother’s conspicuously well-heeled relatives.   They’ll plow you with taffy and ice cream sandwiches.  They’ll buy you comic books and licorice.  They’ll take you the country club.  They’ll take you to the zoo.

BOY: I already went to the zoo.   That was earlier.  We just got back.

MAN: That’s not what you said in your essay.  You said your father died while you looked into the haunted face of a chimpanzee.

BOY: Poetic license. Besides, I haven’t written it yet.  I might change my mind. I might say I was watching Happy Days.

MAN: You won’t.

BOY:  I might.

MAN:  You won’t.

BOY:  I could.  I haven’t written it yet.  I don’t even know what poetic license means.


[MAN moves back to the kitchen, more or less in exactly his former location, picks up his bottle, and drinks again.  Then he drinks more, as if in a race against himself.  Finally, he lowers the bottle and burps.]


MAN: Oh, you’ll learn that.  You’ll learn that pretty damn well.

BOY [slightly stung]: Maybe.


[MAN laughs: a ragged but still jovial noise.  He shakes his head once, fast.]


BOY: The point I’m trying to make though is this: Do you want to end up twenty-five    years from now as a figment in the memory of my imagination, guzzling beer on the pages of my notebook [shows it] while ten tired students bend heads over their own notebooks, inventing stories just as improbable?  [Pauses.]  Or would you rather remain who you are, in the flesh?  [BOY gives MAN plenty of time to answer, but MAN doesn’t.]  I won’t even ask if you want to leave Mom a widow, if you’ve actually thought about what that means.  The other question is pressing enough.


[MAN takes a few steps toward the front of the kitchen and tosses the bottle into trash can designated for glass recyclables.  Then he returns to the refrigerator and grabs another bottle of beer.]


MAN: The question you never seem to ask yourself is whether I ever cared if I remained in the flesh at all.

BOY: True, but that’s more or less what I’m asking now.

MAN: What do you think?

BOY: I don’t think you ever came to a decision.  But I think you knew perfectly well what you were and were not capable of.  I think you let mom go off to Philadelphia without you because the thought of limiting your intake for three days was unbearable.

MAN: Got that right.  [Defiantly, he pops off the cap of this second bottle.  He drinks.]

BOY:  And I think maybe you figured you’d just play the odds.  Drink as much as you want and let what happens happen.  There was no knowing which day—or night—would be the one.  After all, you dodged plenty of bullets already.

MAN: Bullets?

BOY:  How many times did I hear you fall down the stairs at the other house?  A couple of times you had a gash in your head in the morning.  You look mystified and abashed—no idea how you’d injured yourself.

MAN: But you were older then weren’t you?

BOY [hesitates]: Yes.

MAN: So you aren’t ten when this happens.

BOY: Actually, no.

MAN: But your mother is in Philadelphia.

BOY: Yes.  By herself.

MAN:  How old are you now?

BOY:  It doesn’t matter.

MAN: Old enough to know what “abashed” means.


[BOY, stung, drifts downstage.  MAN waits for BOY to reply.  When he sees BOY won’t, he takes a full, hearty swig.  When he brings the bottle down he stares at it with thoughtful affection.  Then he glances at BOY.]


MAN: So I didn’t actually try to kill myself?

BOY [not looking at him]: No, I don’t think so.

MAN: Good.  That would be unsightly.

BOY [turning to face MAN]: Yes, but what I write in that classroom with those tired students will be as gruesome as any suicide.  I hope you realize that.  And it will be about you.

MAN: You’ve done it before.

BOY: No, I haven’t.

MAN: In the short story—the one about Massachusetts.

BOY: You won’t die in that one.

MAN: Or the other, the family at the beach.

BOY: In that one you’ll die when a ladder falls.

MAN [with a confused look]: Oh.  Oh, well.  [MAN half-smiles, an embarrassed looked that comes out as helplessness.  He moves deeper into the kitchen.  He leans with his back against the counter, lifts the bottle, and enjoys several unbroken swallows.]

BOY [regretfully]:  I’m going to have to write about it.  In twenty-five years or so.

MAN:  I understand.           

MAN: And it will have to be set here.  And you will have to take that walk.  And your foot will slip into that hole.

MAN [shrugs, refuses to look at BOY]: Sure.           

BOY [after long pause]:  Or you can just put the beer away.


[MAN does look at him now, but neutrally, steadily.  Whatever embarrassment he may have felt has passed away.]


MAN: Thank you.  I think I’ve got it figured out.  [He closes his eyes, leans his head back, and presses more fully into the counter.  For the first time, his manner suggests inebriation: the bare beginnings of it.]

BOY: I better go.  Mom’s probably wondering where I am.

MAN: Yes.  [Opens his eyes slowly; stands straighter.] You don’t want to be here, anyway.  I mean later.


[BOY nods, then moves to the front door.]


MAN: Tell your mother that what you saw was like a car crash, an accident.  Just a stupid, thoughtless mistake.  Nobody involved was trying to hurt anybody.

BOY [after a pause]: Sure.  I’ll tell her that.  But it will have to wait about twenty-five years.


[MAN thinks about it, nods.]


MAN: I don’t have much choice, do I?” 


[BOY doesn’t answer, only holds the man’s gaze for several seconds.  When MAN drops his head, BOY turns and opens the door. He leaves.  By the time MAN raises his head, BOY has left.  MAN takes a swig of beer.  All lights go down.]
 

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John Vanderslice's fiction, poetry, and nonfiction has appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Versal, Seattle Review, South Carolina Review, 1966, Sou'wester, Laurel Review, and Exquisite Corpse.

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