‘Bulwark’, ‘Persimmon Tree’ & ‘Dread Persephone’

Elizabeth Agre hides out deep in the north woods of Minnesota along side the bear, wolves and bobcats

Bulwark

I am a bulwark:

Firm and strong against the forces

Of your enemies, which are

Unyielding in their assault,

Neverending in their vitriol,

Dogged in their pursuit,

Arising from the dark depths of your mind

To pull you under—

I will not let them pillage you

Or plunder your spoils

Nor lay you under siege.

I am your foundation:

Steadfast in my loyalty

Though you have forgotten your promise

And built over me

Breaking me

Lying to me

Erstwhile you sleep soundly.

I am your stability:

Solid in my presence at your elbow,

That you take for granted, leaning on me

Until I break

Beneath the weight of your need

Beneath the weight of my shoulders

Of our friendship that only serves you,

Rending me apart so that I am 

Nigh unrecognizable. 

Of course, that won’t really happen.

I won’t let it.

So go ahead and push,

Today, I will get back up, and tomorrow, too.

Over, and over again, I will take the hit,

Unwavering, solid, grounded, rooted

To the only thing I can really trust.

Myself.

Persimmon Tree

A Golden Shovel Inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ “The Rite of Cousin Vit”

My feet are frozen to the ground. No one helps me. Even 

The swallows abandon me in favor of taller, more fruitful trees now 

Laden with plump persimmons and rotting corpses. She 

Is beautiful, hanging from its bough with her neck at an angle, her toes just tickling the grass and—does 

She know, how I stand here, frozen in my tracks, staring at the 

Cold blue lips, once red and full, and big round hips, those dulcet snake-hips 

She used to tease me with. Oh, how she teased. You’d think I’d feel rage, instead I stand here with 

Indecision rooting me in place, and melancholy weighing me down, a 

Heavier weight than a man’s love—Theirs never compare to your kiss; all I have is the wind’s cold hiss.

Dread Persephone

I am the Dread Persephone,

Queen of the Underworld and Shepherd of Souls

Long gone and freshly sown.

I am the Dread Persephone,

Empress of the Dead and Guardian of the Damned

In the cold dark of Tartarus and the 

Sweet glow of Elysium.

I am the Dread Persephone,

Bringer of Chaos and Mother to

Rebirth and Ghosts,

Mystery and Madness,

Hunting and Nightmares.

I am the Dread Persephone,

Old beyond centuries, powerful beyond measures

Both mortal and immortal.

I am the Dread Persephone, 

Queen and Mother,

Wife and Daughter.

I am the Dread Persephone, 

And I am tired.

I dream of pomegranates and firm hands,

Great boughs and spring laughter

And, all the while, wonder where 

It is I do belong.

To whom it is I do belong.

I am the Dread, Persephone,

And above all, I dread

The lonely nights 

And quiet halls.

The living wights

And green-hedged walls.

Eva Nemirovsky received a bachelors in English Literature from the University of California, Davis, before moving on to a one semester mentorship program with mentor Gayle Brandeis at PocketMFA, and then a week at Tinker Mountain Writer's Workshop. They’ve published both poetry and flash fiction in The Ocotillo Review, and a short story, “Glitter and Gleam” in Pomona Valley Review’s 17th issue. They are a speculative fiction writer, focusing primarily on fairytale fantasy and magical realism. When they aren’t writing, they are rock climbing, drawing, or spending time with their cat, Apollo, in their home in Davis.

‘True Blue’, ‘Flip Side’, ‘Shadow Boxing’, ‘Twenty-one Questions for the Dog’ & ‘Dog Dreams’

Elizabeth Agre lives in the north woods of Minnesota alongside the bear, wolves, and bobcats where she writes, paints, and takes pictures.

True Blue

I woke up this morning

to find True Love in my kitchen

lounging with coffee

in the winter sun of my window.

“Have you seen the new snow?

It came in the night,” she said like a little girl.

True Love? I asked

like I found a lost treasure

I had all along.

After rubbed eyes

came acceptance—

there were things I needed to know

like on the Master List of needs, where do you show?

“After food and water,” she said flatly.

“In subservience to sustenance,

though there is no real list without me.”

She began to loot my Christmas gifts,

pop chocolates two at a time,

overwhelm me

with her lack of self control.

She said she knew me so well

and my fault list was long

(though on the 27th page

she admitted she liked my songs).

She was well adorned:

silver and gold moons and stars

embedded her clothes

and braceleted to the teeth

she reeked of every perfume and cologne

but her eyes scared me if I looked too long.

She said, “I’ve been considering a Nor’easter today

though I don’t know.”

I offered my best pillow then, a shawl

but she just had to go.

She left with my shadow,

ran over the dog in the driveway,

and the wind blew ice and snow

covering up the pine trees until

I never felt so alone.

Flip Side

My shadow sees shadows

like an artist looks at the world:

the ghost-double of flowers,

twin trees that cross streets

—in measured exchanges—

the way dogs notice dogs

and babies notice babies.

It’s a kind of once-over

she checks form and substance,

in the lean of all straight things.

Her world is

a slanted duplicity

down to the slightest:

pine needle, bug wing,

the shadow of an eyelash.

She says, 

Only I will never leave you,

has imagined herself prone

along white satin lining

or ashes, uncountable.

I try to believe her,

but high noon and naked

or midnight on a new moon,

I'm alone.

Shadow Boxing

I liked it better

when she only disliked me

pranked me with projections

of Grim Reaper or Hangman

—a lunging dagger in the moonlight—

she had a knack for startle.

There was a time she danced before me:

late afternoons in the streetlight, winter

a friend when I had none, joined at the soles.

Now she is sullen

a useless duplicity

I drag around.

I can't say when, exactly,

which time I sold out

but we sleep in the light

of a city through my window

and when I bolt-up straight, shaken

she lays still,

posed,

makes me look dead.

Twenty-one Questions for the Dog

I wonder who you’re chasing,

or who’s chasing you?
Running your doggie vagina away

from a lecherous lover,
or defending our teetering A-Frame

as you twitch and yip
on our don'tsitonthecouch.

Your legs jerk and mimic 

your daytime run
when the ducks in the pond 

tempt and torment
stepping slowly into the water
before they swim clear away.

Do you have one by its 

green-black neck

—do feathers fly—

do you swallow?

Do you dream of me
and if you do, am I kind?
Do I stroke your soft black ears, broad head?

Will I dream of you tonight,

disloyal as love, my best enemy?

And don’t I have my own dog dreams?

Dreams where my world is transposed

in a blink, a tremor—

as I plunge down vertical hills

in darkness, or cross narrow ledges in wind

or find myself in that water place

which threatens and beckons—

do my fingers and toes tremble? 

And whose name do I call?

The stars form legends above our quiet house:

swaying constellations of mythological proportions,
night notions rising to a three-quarter moon.

If the dog dreams of me, am I good enough?

Dog Dreams

I never wanted to be the Alpha dog.
I would have settled for the scraps
trickled down the Pavlovian chain
mostly gristle and bone.
I would have been happy to simply follow your yellow scent
sniff aromatic cavities in damp dark.

I'd expose my underbelly
soft and thin-skinned
like any true subservience
caught somewhere between the clenched teeth
of fear and love.

In the black woods then
you would lead the way
and I would sleep easy
while you kept one eye.

And in the cold of winter
you would find 

the meager rabbit
generous raccoon
the feeble deer.

But, King is not always decided by King
and Queen is born Queen without say.

I strive for Epsilon,
get pushed to the front of the Greek alphabet
an unwilling matriarch, 

aching to put my tail between my legs just once.

Penny Freeland is NYC transplant now living on the beach in Cape Hatteras. She has been writing poetry and songs before she could hold a pen and had to memorize the work. Penny holds a BA from Queens College and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her poetry has been published in renowned journals including Rattle, Big City Lit, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Eclectica Magazine, Red Booth Review, Austin International Poets, and other esteemed publications, highlighting her dedication to the craft of writing.

‘when in the moors’, ‘pandora’, ‘saint francis de sales’, ‘hope & a cup of tea’ & ‘the stream of light’

H. M. Heffernan is a 26 year old writer from the Rust Belt city of Akron, Ohio. Heffernan moved to Durango, Colorado for college and took advantage of its access to the desert and the West. Here she cultivated her craft and developed her distinct voice, absorbed in ideas such as the myth of The American Dream, the idea of the West, the abandonment of the Midwest, Modernity, Absurdism, youth and age, the duality and beauty, tragedy, comedy of and in all things, and Vegas baby.

when in the moors 

was it our hair intertwined, entangled together into a sepulcher 

for tenderness that uprooted my understanding of what is solitary? 

was it your cheek pressed tightly against my womb 

that christened, purified the quintessence of what it is to care for myself? would the imparting of my soul into the roots of the chestnut tree 

make it so I may finally not be too little? would the imparting of my soul into the roots of your own blossom my longing to pass through life by your side into what is moral? what is true? what is good? 

I ask these questions to bestow my heart into your hands without having to look at you. 

I cry with the loneliness of a little girl lost while lamenting 

the beldam plea to simply be left alone. how could I ask you to care for me when this heart beats like the graying newborn bud of a rose? 

o wild bird. 

if you would not watch as my petals fragment at the reaching of your own, I pray you do not reach for them at all.

pandora 

she / the all-gifted / becomes in the palm of cruelty’s hand / mistaking him for tenderness / longing to kiss every morsel of goodness offered from his fingertips / daughter looks to father with the stalwart stone of unconditional love / of gluttony / father looks to daughter with the divine hunger of a poacher / a thief / the first fruit cannot be pardoned for it is foreordained to be devoured / she / the ill-fated / the fore-wilting flower / her longing to be everything for him met with shame / a kiss on her unclothed shoulder / a fist pulling at her hair / the ghost of her father’s croon / you must bear the knife to your throat that comes with trying to be good / you must welcome the curse of your roots of your wilt / you must take what I say you deserve / the ghost of her own croon / power as tall as the first fire rests within your hands / and hope as old as the first tree within mine / foretold father torrid and strong / how could they remember you when you offer them no death to emerge anew from? / forsaken daughter her hands stained with his want & his weakness & blood that tastes like the first fire / she carries this cross of dread for you & your father / she calls upon this deliverance of old / a swallow swallowing the sun / to scream hope into the gullets of her children / the soft wrist of a girl lost being held by the first the omnipresent the primordial girl lost / she waits to be donned with the crown of white lilies / to be called rotten and ruined and redeemed from doing it all over again / in her hand is the crown of white lilies / the deliverance of swallowing / the saccharine embrace of the molder the death the / death the sough within the death / to spoil / this is hope that festers in the arms of the daughter of the girl

saint francis de sales 

I am afraid you will let me kiss you only after you have passed away and all that I have left of you is in corner of my room 

I will hold your poor face and trace the scar 

above your right eyebrow because now 

love for you is made yielding my hair does not make tourniquets around your ribs and now I am the one eating I finally understand what you meant when you said to me the tenderness is made bearable for you only when the flesh is rotting so I will try again in another one of our lifetimes 

until you understand that I long for you as you are 

but I know pity has a holy place in love 

and you will always try to make yourself softer 

for me to hold

hope & a cup of tea 

the unknown here festers when / the sun leaves me for the evening / I cannot look at my reflection / there is no sunlight to turn my gray hair / so uneven / so ill-matched / with a face that has not aged with love / into the color of a spritely little rabbit / worthy of an eternal spring / I am heavy in the dark / I am a burden in the dark / I am a girl in the dark and I can feel god / pull at my sleeve to expose the supple healing skin / of my wrist to him / oh my heart I can hear you / crying your laments of a little bird / whose wound is made worse by / struggling in the jaws of fate / you are in the dark / I am in the dark / make haste my dear into / my hand where I will sing to you / where you will unfurl into my song / see the way the flower wilts when / hope becomes too heavy for its petals to bear / I think we are capable of saving each other / just let me hold you soft in my hand and / shield this wellspring from you when your goodness / needs a moment to be / and I watch you take a bite out / of my fear / and it bleeds like a living thing / a loving thing / it becomes a part of you that you keep safe / in your belly / and you say to me / even our fear can be made into light / when we are holding it together

the stream of light 

on this softest summer morning, 

I wrap myself in my shawl of lace that I washed in The Stream of Light the evening before. 

when the dawn sun holds me just right, 

I can feel the fish of The Stream rushing to and fro with a to-do list and the blades of grass bending closer closer closer to the torrent, 

longing to be dreamed away. 

I can hear the first stream that sung a lullaby 

to The Dying Lady as she rushed 

forward forward forward 

for love. I can see the mercy that is the durmast oak offering the drenched bee shelter from the hope she is not quite ready for. 

I can feel the ache of Orpheus as he looked 

back back back 

for love. I too love this softest summer morning far too much not to look back for her, making sure she is following me only to find her lost in The Stream of Light. 

she waits for me there.

Haley Nichole Green is a 22-year-old Appalachian-born poetess and aspiring farmgirl who currently resides in the rural Midwest. Alongside writing and reading poetry, she enjoys sewing and tending to farm animals. Instagram: @softproserpina

‘Summer Mangos’

Aaron Beck is a poet and artist. This work examines the coming into being of a trans person.

Summer Mangos

—After Jose Hernandez Diaz’s The Jaguar and the Mango

The sweetest sunsets remind me of ripe summer mangos

Like those my father would peel gently with his skillful hands

He would show me how to hold the knife, but I was too distracted

Admiring the mangos skin, a spectrum of

Wine blushes and golden ambers

Citrus honey sunbeams with a hint of emerald green

A dash of lime, salt, and chilé to taste

My eyes squinted while my lips smiled wide

Staring into the deep turquoise sky on a late August day

Eating miniature sunsets and embracing summer’s final days

Karina Guardiola Lopez is a New York City-born writer, poet, and educator, now residing in New Jersey. Her work has been featured in Press Pause Press, Acentos Review, Indolent Books, New Brunswick Public Library, Moonstone Art Center and other publications. Karina has performed at notable venues including the New York City Poetry Festival, The National Black Theatre, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Bowery Poetry Club, among many others.

‘Heart-Rot’

Aaron Beck is a poet and artist. This work examines the coming into being of a trans person.

Heart-rot

My bedroom window stared down  an alder tree when I was eleven.

In the first month of 2012, we had winds that made me frightened  of God.

The noise    of the     glass straining drove me, ribs hammering, to my mum’s room

Like a     child in    an old-school   novel, pale and fleeing to Mother’s chambers.

Chest    burning     black        with fear. but she slept alone in there.

Which   meant     there        was room for me 

And there,       we     heard      that alder buckle the fence.

In a few months                          I stopped hearing from my dad.

And we                                               lost a dozen roof tiles at least. 

By the                                                     following March he’d died. 

And                                                          they towed the tree away, 

We                                                             got told it was a heart attack. 

And I                                                          saw it’s trunk was a splintering mess.

Surrounded                                                 by a snow-like blanket of its chipped wood.

See, the                                                      alder had a fungal infection.

That left it                                                  decaying around the center 

And made                                                     it’s bark a thin crusted shell.

So it gave                                                       an appearance of 

Of an ever-                                                     weathering endurance.

But it’s body                                                  fed what was doomed to kill it.

As I grew in that                                           room. It ate, ate, ate.

Where my dad had a                                   broken body with drink, 

my alder had a bit of a                               soft-spot.

                   I looked it up,                        what was wrong with it. 

                             Apparently, they call it heart-rot.

Heather Rankin is a new poet/writer based in Scotland who is currently working towards a masters degree in creative writing. She loves concrete poetry in particular but she doesn't like to box herself in!

‘There’s A Dead Body Under the Pine Tree Next to the Farmhouse’

Rollin Jewett’s varied past includes acting stints in The Bodyguard, Unsolved Mysteries, Miami Vice and others, penning Carmen Electra’s first film (cult classic American Vampire with Adam West), and being a contestant on Jeopardy. Rollin is also an award winning off-Broadway playwright with plays produced all over the US as well as internationally. As an author, Rollin’s short stories and poetry have appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies, including the Night Picnic Journal, Aphotic Realm, Door is a Jar, Coffin Bell, Gathering Storm, and Gravitas, among others.

There’s A Dead Body Under the Pine Tree Next to the Farmhouse 

In…two…three…four…

Out…two…three…four…

Quiet, rhythmic breathing fills the small yoga studio as Aza listens to the soft tick, tock, tick, tock of the mounted wall clock. She lies on her yoga mat and feels the soft, pebbled foam beneath her. She notes the white speckled ceiling tiles that look sadly worse for wear. She hears the soft instructor’s voice telling them to continue counting their breaths.

Azalea Sutherland loves routine. She loves waking up every morning, reading the news, stopping for a pastry on her way to work, and settling into her desk, comfortable and ready to start the day. She loves taking the long, winding road to her grandmother’s house outside of Atlanta every Wednesday evening. She loves sitting on the front porch, drinking iced tea, and admiring the hydrangeas that are just beginning to bloom. 

And she loves her Saturday morning yoga class. But today, Aza’s routine is different. She can’t seem to keep track of her breaths or her heartbeat. Time doesn’t slip away before the hour is up. She doesn’t exchange idle chatter with the tall, older man to her right as he pulls on his shoes and socks as the session comes to a close.

Aza is sure they introduced themselves at some point, yet she can’t remember his name. They normally swap mild pleasantries, never more than that, but she likes him. To her left is a different story. A short woman with a culturally appropriated hairstyle is bickering with the person in front of her. This is normal. She always finds someone to disagree with. Aza avoids her too.

A few small bits of foam are left clinging to the carpeted floor of the studio when Aza rolls up her mat. She makes the short walk a few doors down and purchases a smoothie. She pauses in front of a rosebush to take a photo of her drink, but she stops when she sees the last image in her camera roll. She has done nothing but stare at it for three days. It feels like a shadow–it clings to her. Always present. Always there. Not quite malicious, but dark nonetheless.

Aza returns to her car to see the woman from yoga class bickering with someone over parking too close to her car. She tries to tune out their voices as she shifts her drink and her mat to dig through her bag for her keys. It takes her longer than it should–the raised voices and the memory of the photograph steal away her concentration. At first, the image had been so very normal, full of people she knew well. But Aza quickly came to realize something had been amiss, and that feeling clung to her. 

It takes a moment for Aza to realize her hands, seemingly independent of her own volition, have found her keys and unlocked her car.

Patton Sutherland: Grandfather. 

Aza is inside her car, but the woman is now standing in front of her vehicle. She seems to be trying to block the other person from leaving, but instead she has trapped Aza in her space as well.

Charlotte (Lottie) Sutherland: Grandmother. 

Aza sighs. She wants to go home. She wants to resume her routine. She wants this uncomfortable feeling, this ridiculous foreboding, to simply go away.

Ellis and Wyatt Sutherland: Uncles. 

The woman has other plans. She hasn’t stopped talking, and Aza hasn’t absorbed anything she has said. Her voice, muffled through the metal and glass of the car, is getting higher. More agitated. 

Trina: Aunt. 

Stuck in place for the moment, Aza pulls out her phone, this time with the intent to face the photograph. Patton, Lottie, Ellis, Wyatt, and Trina. The photo is old. Slightly blurry from the haste with which she captured the picture. If she had to guess, the image is probably at least thirty years old. 

It’s summer time. Trina is in a mini skirt, loose peasant blouse, and a braided leather band wrapped around her forehead. The brothers are in shorts. Patton is in linen pants. Lottie is of course in a dress that has some sort of cheerful pattern. It’s not a candid–they’re all lined up and smiling for the camera. They’re outside, maybe at the lake, most likely Lanier. It’s hard to tell.

But that’s not all. There’s one more very important detail.

Aza doesn’t take the key out of the ignition, but she does open the door and stands up.

“Excuse me, can you please move?” she asks. Confrontation is not part of the routine. Neither is running this woman over with her car–although she is mildly tempted.

The woman looks surprised. She looks at Aza’s car and realizes she is in the way. She juts out her chin but moves, as if this request is an inconvenience to her.

Before pulling away, Aza scrolls through her contacts until she finds the name she is looking for. 

“Hello?” a distracted voice on the other end asks.

“Hey Trina, it’s Aza,” Aza says. Despite the use of caller ID, she knows Trina won’t realize who she is talking to. “Are you in the studio today?” she asks. Her aunt replies with an affirmative. Aza tells her she is coming by. There’s something she wants to ask her about. She’ll be there in about thirty minutes.

Woman: unknown.

***

Aza arrives at her aunt’s pottery studio half an hour later. It’s hardly more than a shack, surrounded by flower beds that have had years to become overgrown, but Trina insists it's more akin to a cottage. Aza parks and walks around to the back which has a garage door that Trina keeps open on nice days like this one. She’s sitting at the wheel, centering a large mound of clay. 

Aza feels a sense of unease. She doesn’t quite know what to say–despite never having felt uncomfortable in Trina’s presence all her life. She wants to get to the point, but suddenly questions exactly what that point is. 

Instead, she notices that Trina is not dissimilar to the woman from yoga class. Closer to seventy than sixty, Trina wears her hair in a singular, long white braid. She’s barefoot. Aza thinks of the younger version of Trina in the photograph. She’d been barefoot then too.

Unsurprisingly, Trina does not notice Aza’s hesitancy. She gives her an idle wave but doesn’t stand. 

“Hey there,” she says with the rich southern lilt the whole Sutherland family has, the one Aza never seemed to adopt.

Aza forces a smile and they exchange greetings. Comments about the weather. Work. How Aza’s parents are doing in Germany. Won’t her father’s job move him back to the States anytime soon? Always no. Trina asks her this on a regular basis, but she forgets most things, so Aza always answers her.

The older woman is making a comment about the bowl she is trying to throw for an upcoming craft fair, but Aza cuts her off. 

“I drove up to the farm the other day,” she says before she can stop herself. Trina is still blissfully unaware of Aza’s discomfort. 

“Oh, how was Mama?” Trina asks. She finally seems satisfied that she has centered her clay and begins to shape the piece.

Aza shrugs absently, fiddling with the hem of her shirt. “Fine…actually, there was something I wanted to ask you about. Something to do with Grandmother,” Aza says, noting the slight pitch change in her own voice.

Trina nods, waiting for Aza to continue. She takes a breath. She knows this is absurd. She knows it doesn’t have to mean anything. But something deep within her tells her that it does. 

She paints the scene for Trina: It was like any other Wednesday. When Aza got off work, she drove the hour it took to get out of the city and down to the family farm. Grandmother met her on the porch with a pitcher of tea and an earful of gossip. Dinner was taking a while, so they got out some old boxes of photos. Most of them were familiar.

But in the bottom of a box, there was a photograph Aza hadn’t recognized. At first, Grandmother hadn’t noticed the extra woman in the photo. The back was labeled summer, but the year had been smudged. The names of the Sutherlands present in the photo were labeled neatly. Grandmother remarked that Marigold, Aza’s mother, must have been away at summer camp. That’s when they’d both noticed the other woman. Lottie’s normally bright, cheerful eyes turned cold and hard. She had tucked the photo back into the box and changed the subject. Aza had pressed her for details, and Grandmother had adamantly refused to answer any of her questions. Neither Aza nor her mother (who had been apprised of the situation later) could explain it.

When Aza finishes, Trina takes her foot off the pedal and laughs. She keeps laughing. Aza’s face burns, and she says nothing.

Eventually Trina shakes her head and dabs at her eyes with the backs of her wrists–hands still covered in clay.

“Oh honey, is that what you’re all worked up about? You know what your uncle Ellis was like back in the day. She was probably just some old fling that Mama would rather leave unsaid,” Trina says, putting her foot back on the pedal. She picks up a nearby sponge and begins to smooth her creation. That’s the thing about Trina–she’s flighty and forgetful. Aza’s mother thinks it stems from using too many drugs in the seventies. Most of the time it’s endearing if a little sad, but today it means Aza needs Trina to take her seriously.

Aza shakes her head. “She loves telling me those old stories, especially if Ellis is in the room and can embarrass him. Besides, I’ve seen photos of his girlfriends before. Their names are always labeled.”

Trina shrugs. “Why does it matter?”

It wouldn’t have. If Lottie had brushed it off, she wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But she’d never acted in such a way around Aza. She knows this family has secrets. And based on Lottie’s reaction, Aza thinks she has stumbled on a deep one.

Trina gives her a sympathetic look and shakes her head. “I don’t know what you think you’re digging up, but sometimes you’ve got to just let the past lay. I’d let it go.”

That’s something Trina will never understand. She lets everything go. Aza lets nothing go. 

Aza lets her change the subject, and she sits on a nearby stool. They talk for another hour. Well, Trina talks for another hour, but that’s not new. Eventually Aza makes her excuses.

***

She’s back in her car and making another phone call. The Sutherland matriarch herself answers with a traditional, “Hi sugar!”

Aza asks if she can come over, and Lottie’s voice becomes guarded. This is not part of the routine. Aza asks if they can go through more photographs. Lottie asks if this is about the other night. Aza gives a vague response. Lottie makes up some excuse about the girls from bridge club coming over and says some other time.

***

Two days later, Aza stands in front of the Sutherland family farm. It’s a beautiful old house. Patton built it for Lottie in the early seventies. He’d promised her her dream home, and that’s what she got.

Aza had come in on the long, winding driveway lined with pine trees. The surrounding woods give way to a huge front lawn that surrounds the house itself. The white, two story building looks much older than it is, but in a charming way. Lottie had planted all the flower beds herself back in the day, but now there are gardeners for that–under her careful supervision of course. There are rose bushes, hydrangeas, zinnias, lilies, lilacs, hostas, azaleas and several other plants Aza cannot name. Magnolia and wisteria trees dot the lawn. Wicker furniture and great big hanging ferns line the front porch. It looks more like a photograph than a real place.

Aza should get back in the car. She knows she should get back in the car. Trina has taken Lottie to a doctor’s appointment in the city. The housekeeper doesn’t work on Mondays. The house is empty. 

Get back in the car, get back in the car, get back in the car, Aza chants to herself as she walks up the aggregate walkway.

Get back in the car, get back in the car.

She puts the key in the lock and turns the handle.

If she’s going to be stupid, she might as well be smart about it.

Despite not having any mud on her shoes, she takes them off, just in case. She calls a quiet, “hello?” and when she receives no response, she hurries up the stairs.

She makes a beeline for Wyatt’s old room first. He’d been the quiet brother. She’d never heard a wild story about him. She knew the secret could be his, but telling his stories was something they all loved. It kept him alive. She’d been following her gut so far, and she wasn’t going to question it now.

Aza finds nothing. She didn’t expect to. 

She moves on to Ellis’ room. Here, she takes her time. She knows where her final goal will lead her, but she won’t leave any stone unturned first. There are dresser drawers full of report cards and old school projects. Boxes under the bed full of toys and books. Aza is painting a picture of his life, and this room has all the colors she needs.

Ellis Sutherland is a judge. For much of Aza’s life, that’s what she has called him–the Judge. He had attended the University of Georgia and graduated summa cum laude, then got his law degree from Emory. He’d advanced quickly in his field–Aza doesn’t know his exact title now, but knows he makes a lot of money. He is a good ole boy through and through.

Once, when Aza was a teenager, she’d been left at the Sutherland farm while her parents were away. Her grandparents were out, and so she did what many teenagers often do. She snooped. Under Ellis’ bed, she’d found a loose floorboard. She’d wiggled it until it finally pulled away. She’d shrieked with laughter and with fright when a magazine covered in naked women stared back at her.

But now, ten years later, Aza thinks...What if there’s more? What if the bones of this house hide more than a silly secret from Ellis’ youth?

She isn’t wrong. She shoves the bed a few inches to the right, lifts the floorboard, and removes the stack of magazines. Beneath them is the smoking gun: a large, yellowed envelope. Aza doesn’t bother to go through it. She can return it later if she needs to, but she won’t risk getting caught. She returns things to where they were and hurries downstairs. She pulls on her shoes and opens the front door.

Grandmother is staring at her. Aza knows immediately that she isn’t surprised. 

“Grandmother—”

Lottie holds up a hand. Aza doesn’t say anything. Trina is standing next to her, stunned in a way that she wishes Grandmother was. 

She tries again. “I only just got here…”

Lottie just stands there. It was never her way to yell or cause a scene. 

“I just want to talk about it,” Aza pleads, letting a little of her desperation creep into her voice. She wishes she could explain it. She wishes she could forget about it. But she can’t. If only Grandmother could understand that. 

Lottie shakes her head this time. “Go home, Aza.” She doesn’t say anything else. She brushes past her. Trina stands frozen, glancing between them, until she follows Lottie into the house. The envelope remains safely down the back of Aza’s pants.

***

Aza sits on the floor of her small living room. Papers are strewn around her. It’s almost midnight. Ever since that fateful Wednesday evening when she had found the photograph, she has been building the story, piece by piece. 

It takes a certain amount of imagination, but Aza can now see the timeline of events so clearly. The contents of the envelope–letters and photographs and check stubs– fill in the gaps, round out the tale she’d already begun to tell. Everything she suspected, everything she feared, was right. 

The woman had been an old flame. She and Ellis had fallen fast, and they’d fallen hard. Ellis knew she wasn’t right but didn’t want to admit it. Patton told him to get rid of her. She didn’t want to be gotten rid of.

So they’d killed her.

***

It’s after midnight. Aza knows that after Patton died, Lottie had some sort of security system installed. She wonders just how extensive it is, but finds that she doesn’t particularly care. 

The Sutherland farm is nearly two hundred acres of field, mountain, and forest. Aza knows Patton and Ellis could have buried their transgressions anywhere. She’ll come back if she has to. She’ll come back every night for the rest of her life.

She starts at the south end, well away from the house. The Sutherlands never had any neighbors, so she doesn’t worry about the wide beam of her flashlight. She wanders. She doesn’t go into the trees–Aza had seen enough black bears out here to know better. She’ll try there during daylight. 

She first walks the perimeter of the south fence. It’s worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s looking for a confession that was never uttered. She doesn’t give up though. The full moon helps guide her way. 

Aza then moves north, closer to the house. Grandmother doesn’t keep a vegetable garden anymore, but the large plot remains tilled in tribute. Aza feels slightly sick when she thinks about what might have fertilized the plants that grew there. She is fairly certain she is still far enough away from the house to remain undetected, but she extinguishes her beam anyways. 

By the lunar light, Aza spends the next two hours inspecting every fence post, every rock, every mound of dirt that could possibly be out of place. She uses a pitch fork to shovel away all the hay in the barn to see the dirt floor. 

It’s not quite morning, but Aza can feel the air beginning to change. She has moved in circles until she is close enough to the house to see it clearly. It stops her in her tracks.

The flower beds. 

Grandmother’s beautiful, perfect, lovely flower beds. Flower beds that for almost all of Aza’s life, she wouldn’t let anyone touch. She can’t do it now, but she’ll come back with a shovel and rip up every single plant that dares grow there. She will shred every flower, tear every leaf, cut every root. She will dig until she hits magma if she has to.

Aza returns to her car.

***

A shower and very little sleep later, Aza is standing in front of the library. It’s hardly more than a harsh cube with odd lines and a severe expression. She’s never thought much about this building’s appearance other than its ugliness, but today it feels like an omen.

Aza spends the next few hours scouring the internet and the library’s rolls of microfiche. Patton would have been the architect, but Ellis was the kingpin. 

She goes through old local newspapers and college yearbooks. She inspects every blurry, pixelated photo and compares it to the one on her phone. None of them match the woman. They erased her from existence.

***

Aza stands facing him. They don’t bother with pleasantries. He knows why she’s here.

She has never been in the Judge’s office before, but it is exactly as she pictured it. Everything is rich, warm tones–from the burgundy leather seats to the mahogany desk he sits behind. He’s in an expensive, perfectly tailored pale gray suit. There isn’t a hair out of place on his head.

On the wall, there are rows of legal books. On some of the shelves are pictures–his petite blonde wife and his petite blonde daughter–sandwiched between his diplomas. In the corner there’s a coat rack with his robes and an old election sign tucked behind a filing cabinet.

Ellis motions for her to take the seat across from him. She stays where she is. 

“Now why are you here, Aza?” he asks, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth. His voice is too casual. But that’s Ellis–there hadn’t been a day of his adult life where he hadn’t been in charge–hadn’t been the one giving the orders. He’d never had anything to be afraid of. It’s clear he isn’t afraid of Aza now, either. 

She’s proud of her calm exterior. It hides the maelstrom of emotions inside her.

“You seem to have some idea why I’m here, Ellis.” They like to pretend that there are no secrets in their family. Aza knows that in this, Ellis will be well informed. By Lottie, or Trina, or even her own mother. He’s been tipped off, that much is clear. 

He studies her for a moment. She refuses to flinch.

“Yes, but I want to hear it from you.”

“Who is she? The woman?”

He nods. This is expected.

“I’ll answer you if you tell me something first. Why is it you want to know so damn bad?” He points a finger at her, accentuating the last three words. 

They’d never been close–she and Ellis. And even less so as she got older. When she was younger, the Judge had scared her. Now, she distrusts him.

Aza stands a little straighter. She says, “Because I think I know what happened to her. I think I know who happened to her. But I want you to say it.” She wants to let her gaze turn into a glare, to let him feel the anger she feels for this woman. But she doesn’t.

“I’d like to hear it from you.” His gaze is steady and cool. 

“I think she was an old girlfriend of yours. I think she wasn’t ‘suitable,’ but she ended up pregnant anyways.”

“Keep going.”

Aza’s voice is rising. The words she’s been building up inside her come spilling out as if they’d been pressurized.

“I think you or Grandfather or both of you tried to pay her off. I think you tried to force her to get rid of it, and when she wouldn’t, you took matters into your own hands. I think you knew what it would do to you, to the family name, to your career. You made it so she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.”

For a long, taut moment, silence hangs between them. Neither moves. They’re playing a game of chicken, and they’re both determined to win.

“Azalea Sutherland,” Ellis finally says, “Are you accusing me of murder?”

“Are you denying it? Are you going to pretend Grandfather did all this behind your back?” There’s a slight crack in Aza’s voice, but her resolve is final. 

Ellis shakes his head. “Shit, Aza. You’ve decided this whole family is goin’ to hell in a handbasket, haven’t you?” He lets out a short, hard laugh. He keeps going.

“You seem to know the story better than I do, but let me fill you in on a few little details. You’ve got the beginning just right, but it’s the ending where you need a little help. She was an old girlfriend of mine, and she wasn’t right for the family. I wanted to marry her anyways, despite the fact that we were too young, and especially when those two little lines turned pink. But good ole Patton paid her off, and here’s where the story might get a little murky for you. She took the money. She had the abortion. And when she came back two months later asking for more because she had cancer, he paid that too. He paid every damn hospital bill until she died, which of course wasn’t even a year later.”

The world stops.

“You’re lying.” 

Silence fills the room. Ellis lets her sit with his words. Aza can hear her heart beating. It’s getting faster. The story she’d told herself– she’d armed herself with–is fracturing around her.

Ellis smiles grimly. “Now let me ask you something. If you really thought I was a murderer, why did you come storming in here and confront me? Why not go to the police?”

Aza opens her mouth, but he doesn’t stop.

“Maybe, just maybe, you didn’t even believe it yourself. Maybe you’re still so damn mad at this family, that you’re just looking for another crime. Something, anything, to ruin the Sutherland name. Am I getting a little closer?”

Aza says nothing. His words slice through her like a white hot iron. For a moment, she can’t breathe. Those fragmented shards puncture a hole in her.

She doesn’t even realize it, but she’s moving. She’s pressed up to his desk, and she stops herself before she leans over it. She can’t even form words. Her mind is blank as emotions take over on autopilot. He waits. So does she. She’s afraid she might cry. 

“Are you saying I made all this up because of him?” her voice is barely audible. His face remains calm. 

“It’s one theory.”

Aza turns on her heel to storm out, then pivots again to yell at him. She wants to hit him. Maybe she will. 

He starts speaking again, and she’s not quite aware of what she’s doing with her body. She thinks she’s moving.

“You sat this family down when you were eighteen and said he put his hands on you. That he’d been putting his hands on you all your life. Then he had the gall to up and die two days later. What bothers you more–the fact that he paid for that woman’s hospital bills not because it was blackmail but because he felt bad for her, or that the rest of us can’t seem to hate him as much as you do?”

The world stops turning, or at least Aza thinks it does.

In…two…three…four…

Out…two…three…four…

She isn’t sure if she actually took the breaths. She can’t seem to feel her own body. Ellis only stopped speaking a mere second ago, but Aza feels like she’s been caught in a flytrap and cannot move.

She pulls at her muscles, urges her arms and legs to move through the molasses of slowed time. There’s a delayed reaction, but finally her body seems to wake up, and the force of his words hits her.

Aza leaves without another word.

***

Aza returns to her routine. She wakes up, reads the news, buys a pastry, and goes to work. She does not take the long winding road through the hills of Georgia to visit Lottie, but maybe that’s just not part of the routine anymore. She goes to yoga class and exchanges pleasantries with the nice man to her right and is very careful not to park anywhere near the woman to her left. She buys her smoothie and doesn’t think about photographs.

She pretends everything is as it was. Her phone rings, but she pretends it doesn’t. It’s her mother. It’s Trina. It’s Grandmother. She doesn’t know if they’re going to disown her, berate her, or comfort her. She isn’t sure which would be worse. So she pretends.

It’s easy, for a while. A few weeks have gone by, and Aza thinks maybe it’s even getting easier. It’s a Sunday, and Aza has her windows open, and a pleasantly warm breeze filters through the curtains. She’s putting away produce from a farmer’s market when her phone pings. It’s not the first voicemail Aza has received of late, but the time stamp tells her it’s the longest. It’s from Lottie.

Aza finishes putting her purchases away and tries not to think of what Grandmother might say. She alternates between shame and rage and a deep chasm of hurt. 

Aza knows that she has compartmentalized the people in her family. Patton and Lottie have always been in very separate boxes–Patton in the small, dark obsidian box that she never, ever touches. She’s hidden it away so well sometimes she even forgets that he existed–forgets that he walked the halls of the farmhouse she loves so well.

But then there’s Lottie. Lottie is in this big, bright shining box that takes up a beautiful space in her life. Aza never blamed her for anything, but now, she sees that there is more connecting those two boxes than she’d ever let herself admit. 

Aza doesn’t know how to face her grandmother. She doesn’t even know if she wants to.

In want of distraction, Aza rolls out her yoga mat and lies down. After counting her inhales and exhales a few times, she completes a series of well practiced poses. She stretches her arms over her head towards the sky. She extends them out from her sides, parallel to the floor beneath her. She moves to the ground and crouches so that her forehead is pressed to her mat.

Across the room where she has left it, her phone stares at her. She can’t ignore it, but she can’t acknowledge it either.

***

It takes another two days for Aza to finally listen to the message.

Azalea Sutherland. I will spare you the many lectures you deserve, both for tearing up my farm and for confronting your uncle in his place of business. Instead, I would like to tell you about your grandfather. I was married to Patton Sutherland for most of my life. We stopped counting the years after fifty. He built me this house. He gave me my children. He provided me with a comfortable life, even after he was gone. He would have never tolerated anyone even breathing in my direction if I didn’t want them to.

But you don’t spend more than half a century with someone and not know who they are. I knew he could be a cruel man just as he could be a loving one, and I knew he kept as many secrets from me as you think the rest of the family keeps from you. I didn’t even know what happened to that woman until years later. You resent him, and you have a right to. You expected this farm to be covered in dead bodies. Instead our closets are just full of skeletons. Maybe it’s time to let them rest.

Call me back. Bye Sugar.

***

Patton’s grunt of exertion is followed by a dull thump. Ellis’s ragged breath is the only sound that fills the warm night air. It’s autumn, but the weather won’t turn cold yet for some time. A few solitary leaves have begun to yellow, but there are no other outward signs that the season is in change. The only light that illuminates their efforts is the full moon.

They don’t risk using a tractor to dig the hole. No one would hear them, but they take no chances. They have about six more hours of darkness, and they use every single one. Later, during the daylight and the normal working hours of the farm, Patton will cover the dirt patch with equipment to disguise the lack of grass. Neither Ellis nor Patton ever speak of that fateful night again.

***

Aza had believed it. She had believed it in her core. But she wonders…had the story been even more nefarious? Maybe they were more clever than she had given them credit. Maybe, the story goes like this:

Patton and Ellis know the woman is sick. They are giving her money for her hospital stays to ensure her silence, but they run the risk of the worst happening: her recovery. Her recovery means years of hoping money is enough to keep her silent. They both know the real danger is basic human emotion. She will never truly give Ellis up. 

Patton uses his connections. He has friends at the hospital that won’t ask questions. They can’t risk a missing person, and this is so much neater anyways. Ellis even sends flowers to the funeral.

It feels so true. The letters between Ellis and the woman had been so tender, but had grown so hostile. She had loved him. The letters made Aza realize this wasn’t a fling. It was all consuming passion. The woman adored Ellis. She wanted to get married and be the perfect wife he needed. He’d wanted that too. But Patton made him break it off, and she wouldn’t let it go. She begged Ellis not to give her up. She would prove she was worthy of him. Ellis grew cruel. 

When she found out she was pregnant, she thought the Sutherlands would change their minds. Instead they gave her a tidy sum of money with the understanding she would no longer be their problem. 

It was all so heartbreakingly cliché.

But now, a few days later, as Aza looks out over the backyard of the Sutherland farm, she wonders if these stories are selfish. If she is robbing this woman of the truth by implicating her further into the quicksand of the Sutherlands. She had wanted to see guilt in their eyes–Ellis, Trina, and even Lottie. 

Aza uses one foot to move the swinging bench gently back. The momentum propels her lightly forward. On a nearby table there is a pitcher of sweet tea and a plate of cornbread muffins. Lottie is inside. Aza can see most of the fields from here, and she can hear the soft trickle of the creek hidden by the line of pine trees.

The day she’d told them about Patton, Lottie’s face was the only one she remembered. There was deep hurt, but no surprise. It was clear that Lottie hadn’t known what was happening, but neither was it a shocking revelation.

When Aza first saw the photograph of the woman, it ignited something within her. It smoldered into the sense of dread she has been carrying around with her–the unshakable sense that something was wrong. Something had been wrong, but it went back much further than that Wednesday night when Aza had discovered the photograph. The very roots of the Sutherland name were warped and twisted into this rotten thing inside her. Aza didn’t know if she would ever be able to clear away that rot. 

Bodies or skeletons?

Bodies or skeletons?

She will never know which is worse. She takes a breath. In…two…three…four…

Rachel Noli teaches high school English where she spends her days talking about reading and writing and wishing she spent more time actually reading and writing. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts through Middlebury College. Her work has been featured in The Bread Loaf Student Journal and Grim and Gilded.

‘The Mask Vanishes’

Todd Lift

The Mask Vanishes

“It’s nice to meet an adventurous reader.”

Arthur’s compliment brought a warm smile from his host. He could hardly take his eyes off the books filling the shelves in the largest room of Janice’s flat. Rarely in his thirty-two years had he felt such awe, and it was not only for the books. There were readers, bibliophiles, then people like this young woman who collected any and all works that she might have a use for in the future.

Just after arriving in the South American capital, Arthur had responded to an ad in a paper seeking a tenant to sublet this place for three months while Janice vacationed abroad. He had a room at a hotel a few blocks away. As he gazed around, Arthur knew he could go through all his life responding to classifieds and never have another experience like this one. 

As Janice talked about the lease and the landlord and the neighborhood and all the other matters he needed to weigh before subletting, Arthur struggled for balance on the ruby carpet scored with silver, gazing at the books, some with cracked spines, others well preserved over the centuries. 

He wondered who were the authors Janice admired, which of them fed her wanderlust. There must be a few here they both liked. Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dinesen, Calvino, Weldon Kees. Though Arthur was not close enough to read the spines, their number made him think that somewhere there must be a handful that would give them a common currency if they sat down to talk in a café. 

Janice showed little sense of the awe that had all but overcome the visitor. 

“So, Arthur, do you have pets?

It took a moment to snap out of his reverie. 

“Ah, no. No, Janice. As you know, I just moved down here, and I wouldn’t think of bringing one into so refined a space. Please tell Manuel he doesn’t need to worry.” 

She laughed lightly.

“Well, now, you could have rowdy dogs and cats and I don’t think he’d care. The issue would be the safety of my rare and exotic figurines. He wants this stuff in storage. Anyway, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing down in these parts. I mean, beyond what you said in your email.” 

Now it was Arthur’s turn to laugh awkwardly. He had come to this city to cover the election and had explained all this in his email. 

“I told you when I reached out, I’m in town to cover Paredes and his vision for the country. But, hey, I know, every other guy you meet tells you he’s a writer. And I don’t fault you for wondering what’s behind the claim.”

Janice nodded. He went on, feeling hope rise modestly.

“But may I remind you that this country may be right about to elect a libertarian candidate who will send things in a totally new direction and foster digital innovation and get millions of people out of their rut. The world will be watching the election results come in, and I want to be here, on the ground, talking to voters, getting their insights and thoughts and ideas down, and reporting on events that have so much significance for the rest of the world.”

Janice nodded. The sunshine streaming through one of the tall windows between a pair of high bookshelves accentuated the lushness of her golden hair with a tinge of copper, the paleness of her supple cheeks. The light on the bare skin of her arms threw into relief every crevice, pore, and goosebump. What most captivated him was her intelligence. He thought of the writer Paul Fussell’s description of soldiers who die before you get to know them as unread books on a shelf. At this moment he felt Janice had shown him the room to plant a notion in his mind that she was a book he would never read beyond a page or two, or a country he could only just begin to explore. Arthur felt enchanted with her and with a nation he came to feel was not Argentina or Chile or Peru, but a province of his oddest dreams.  

 “This could make my career. But look, however this turns out, it’s better than editing an investment bank’s marketing copy. And I would like to stay on the premises of a cultivated, smart person if I can at all arrange it. I’ve been in this country for five days and it’s all like a dream, yet nothing else has inspired the wonder I feel just standing here in this library, talking to you.” 

He swallowed hard, knowing he had said too much, not sure whether his honesty was commendable or his innocence contemptible. 

Janice smiled again, making him realize how silly was his anxiety.

“Well, Arthur. I’m truly sorry we won’t have any time before I set out into the world to test the truth of that statement. This trip came together at the last minute, and I’m still looking for somewhere to put my more valuable things in storage before I head off. Anyway, I sense that we do have things in common, or the wording of my ad wouldn’t have spoken to you the way it did. Let me show you around a bit more.”

She led him from the room with the wall-to-wall bookshelves and ruby carpet and down the hall to a chamber with a display of wealth and artifacts that enlarged Arthur’s sense of the term conspicuous consumption. If Thorstein Veblen were here, he might have passed out at the sight of the ancient Persian rug with its images of sorcerers and elixirs and battles at the end of the universe, the ornate chandeliers, the ivory Nok statues from West Africa and the ones purporting to channel Giacometti at his weirdest, the rows of votive candles, the red banners and dragons from an age of China you might die to inhabit for a day, the dull red and ochre Japanese Nō theater mask, the bamboo curtains, the framed poster from a Dresden opera production of Boris Godunov, the canvases painted or inspired by Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, Degas. 

The young woman seriously meant to hold out the offer of this room to a stranger. He thought that even if he suppressed any doubt as to the authenticity of the items filling the space, he could not help wondering about her grip on reality. Maybe this country really was a place untouched by the traumas of the cities where Arthur had grown up, perhaps people did trust one another and hold out hope for a friendlier social environment.

Then again maybe she was crazy. But in the most liberating sense of the term, in a way that made him want to get on his knees and propose to her right now. This sublet thing is all well and good, Janice, and I’ll be a great tenant and take out the trash twice a week, but I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the moment I walked in here and I really need to continue our conversation. 

She led him through a corridor with more bookshelves and an alcove from which a dark marble bust of the nation’s first president looked out at passersby. As they reached the lobby, Arthur thought of showings in Boston years before where the host was unimpressed with him. 

But as they faced each other in the lobby, Janice spoke in a kind voice.

“You have excellent references, Arthur. I am looking to make a decision soon. Thanks very much for stopping by this afternoon.”

Just before he turned to head for the door, Arthur noticed another presence in the lobby. A young man with Che Guevara hair and John Lennon glasses stood waiting. Pegging him as one of the most radical types of intellectual, maybe a young professor or a teaching assistant, Arthur guessed he was from one of the outer suburbs of this huge city and wanted to be closer to his university. He had little doubt that this stranger could do a better job of relating to Janice, of charming her. 

Arthur was not so vain as to think he was the only applicant she could have invited to take a tour of the flat. Or to assume that he could not be one of a number of people booked for back-to-back showings. Still, for reasons he could not put into words, the sight of that handsome stranger, looking at him with equanimity as he got ready to leave, provoked him in a strange way, made him sense a transgression.

Arthur stepped off the lift in the lobby and marched out into the bright day. For all the sunshine it was cooler than the seasonal norm. Crowds filled the streets and as he made his way toward the quarter where his hotel stood, he saw banners and posters, some for the rightist candidate, some for the socialist, some for the libertarian whose campaign had generated so much buzz. 

He reached his hotel, went up to his room on the third floor, showered, dressed again, and went out to have dinner at a sidewalk bistro. After four glasses of wine, he grew content to watch strangers pass and listen to the live music from a café up the street, as his thoughts returned to the blonde in the apartment full of books and fine things. 

The next morning was bright but cooler still. Arthur went out to get a coffee and brought it back to his room. He sat at the small desk with his laptop out and light streaming through the windows with parted beige curtains. 

As he browsed the online news, headlines repeated and bled into one another. Oscar Paredes, the libertarian, believed in cryptocurrency, flipped his middle finger at those who called it a scam and a fool’s dream, and thought the nation closer to the beginning than the end of its dalliance with new asset classes. 

But Paredes had his critics, including members of the military who said he was not equal to the challenges of resurgent terrorism and rogue states. The Maoist insurgency in the hills would graduate from firing at buses on remote roads to blowing up skyscrapers unless the country elected the strongman-in-waiting, Yukio Hata, who had served in Japan’s armed forces, had studied military history all his life, knew how to uphold order.

As he ran a search for Janice’s name once again and pulled up a page full of interesting results, the sense returned that she and Arthur were alike in so many ways. She had left her job at a Manhattan literary agency specializing in self-help books and ghostwritten celebrity bios and had come down here to live a life that answered her self-schemata. Arthur had walked out on his job at a global investment bank, had foresworn dignifying himself as a journalist when writing all day about promotions, lateral hires, and office openings, had come down here to report on an election that captivated the world.

For the rest of the morning and the early part of the afternoon, he browsed news sites and set down observations about the scene in a leather-bound journal. Soon his thoughts would have crystallized enough to make pitches to editors. The contest between Paredes and Hata was getting fierce.

As the afternoon wore on, Arthur decided he had spent more than enough time in this room, doing what you must never do in a foreign locale. He could as easily have read online pieces about this nation’s struggles and its election in a room back in Boston. But Arthur knew that, whether or not he could bring himself to admit it, he had craved a space where he could answer his phone in privacy when he saw Janice’s name and number flash on the screen. It killed him that she had not come back yet with her decision. Maybe she never would.

He went down to the lobby and sauntered out of the hotel and up the street, then turned left on the corner and headed toward the district with a lot of cafés and wine bars and galleries and theaters. The streets were getting more crowded as people began to leave work. He ignored a few beggars who made pleas to him and one who cursed him out in Spanish. A truck rumbled by in the other direction, speakers on its roof blaring that Hata was the choice for anyone who wanted to rout the insurgency in the hills forever and ensure a peaceful future for the nation. Hata was more popular in the working-class districts.

He passed a music school, a bakery, an occult bookshop, and a gallery with a minimalist décor before pausing outside the entrance to a beer garden with knots of people standing around inside. This was not at all what he wanted. He pressed ahead, covering five more blocks, before he spied the façade of a quiet café with a dark interior.

The inside was bigger than someone on the street might think. As a server led him to a table, he fingered his phone, weighing whether to keep it on just in case Janice called or texted. Then he turned it off. His table stood in an alcove in the middle of the place and to your right as you walked in. Further down near the back entrance were more tables and a small stage where bands played in the evening. 

A waiter appeared and he ordered a glass of one of the enticing reds grown in the regions that rebels kept threatening to overrun. As he sat there sipping the wine, gazing through the façade of the café at the dimming light, he thought of Janice, the intelligence in her eyes, the wry quality of her tone that hinted at knowledge she had no need to deploy in the moment. 

Arthur sipped the sweet wine and closed his eyes so nothing could disrupt his reverie. He ignored the clacking of shoes in either direction as people came into the left the café. Soon the place would be full, they would all be eager for the flamenco band. Arthur just wanted to drink more wine while savoring his thoughts of Janice.

More people came and left as the light outside faded. The server brought another glass of the dark rich red substance. Now he heard a couple of voices on the far side of the alcove, near the back of the dimming café. 

“You can’t be serious, Gabriel.”

“Oh yes, I am. I did it, bro. Moved like lightning the moment she turned her back.”

“You’re joking, man.”

It sounded like a pair of young men enjoying a ribald story. Then Arthur listened further.

“Hard to believe how naïve this lady was,” said the first voice.

“Oh, she screened me, all right. Poor lady thinks I’m a theater director.”

The other laughed long and hard.

“A theater director! Good one.” 

“Naïve as they come, brother. Dumb Yank. Thinks we’ll all greet her with love in our hearts, like the Dirty War never happened. She comes down here and puts out an ad for a sublet and I show up like I’m seriously looking to sublet from her, when I really want to help myself to what she’s got. And I took that mask and it’s going to pay my rent for a long time.”

The two young men laughed hard. Arthur could not believe what he was hearing, the frank, jocular tones as this Gabriel described his modus operandi for filching expensive things. 

“That’s a nice mask, get you a few thousand.”

“Unless Hata wants us to host a Nō performance.”

More laughter. So that was it. The prospective tenant had stolen the Nō mask that Arthur had glimpsed and forgotten just before his own tour ended. 

 Arthur thought it was not yet six and he was drunk. He imagined that he had dozed off and woken in the midst of a fantasy that would expose him as the dumbest American of all for believing any of it. 

Suspicions drifted through his mind, ones that would never forgive him for not resolving them. He rose and moved in a roundabout way toward the restroom on the other side of the space, giving the table where the two young men sat, directly behind the alcove, a wide berth and keeping his face at such an angle that they could not see it if they tried. He doubted they noticed him at all. After a minute in the restroom, he reemerged and got a profile view of the first speaker at the table on the far side of the alcove. There sat the young man with the spectacles and the Che Guevara hair, talking to a guy with a construction worker’s build.

As he returned to his seat, he felt certain neither had noticed him. It was quite dim inside the space now and he had taken deliberate moves, one of a dozen people moving about. All he had to do was sit here and stay calm, though now the wine in his blood made him feel like a self-indulgent idiot at a college party, giddy and hot and prone to say moronic things. 

He sat there waiting nervously until the two young men passed on their way to the front entrance. Then he took bills out of his wallet, dropped them on the table, followed the two outside, keeping his distance. It was dark out now, but he made himself stay far behind them amid other pedestrians. Even so, he had little trouble following their progress as they moved up the street to the corner and crossed the street to the next block, toward what was, if you believed the tourist guides, an iffy part of town. He noted the satchel bouncing at Gabriel’s side, weighed calling the police on him. But he guessed police lacked probable cause to stop or search Gabriel, or whatever legal principle applied in this country. More importantly, Arthur thought that he must be the one who got back what Janice had lost. 

He followed them until they reached the next corner and turned to hug each other. Once again Arthur heard the stocky youth address the thief as Gabriel. They split up, the friend heading north as Gabriel continued east. Arthur looked straight ahead so that, on the off chance that Gabriel turned abruptly back, he would not see Arthur looking at him. Still he kept Gabriel in sight until the latter turned north at the next corner. Arthur hurried to the end of the block, peered around the edge of a department store at the perpendicular street, saw Gabriel cross the street and vanish into a two-story hotel.

Arthur held off, timing his entry to the lobby of this new hotel to limit the chances of encountering Gabriel in the hall or on the stairs. When he walked in, he saw the place was a bit seedy, with framed images of waterfalls and mountains and one potted plant in the lobby, but the young clerk was friendly enough. She affirmed that a room with a single bed was available on the second floor. If it seemed odd to her that Arthur had only a briefcase with him, she gave no sign.

On entering room 204, Arthur took out his laptop and wrote five hundred words about the race for the presidency and the growing desperation, as he saw it, of the rightist faction. “Interest rates are low and the local currency is in the gutter. Here are precisely the conditions that breed authoritarianism, but the people of this city have a choice. As they plan their trip to the polls next week, they look ahead to a couple of possible futures, one prosperous and democratic, the other averse to innovation and running on deep fears and fierce hatreds.” 

Having barely reviewed what he wrote, he sent it off to the editor of a news site he had freelanced for in the past. You did not have to be here, on the ground, to write what he had just written, Arthur knew. His coverage would be much stronger when he had interviewed people on the streets. It needed a bit of time. 

He asked himself whom he was kidding. It was impossible to think about any of this right now. He got up and tiptoed out into the hall. Then he made his way out of the hotel, stole back to the one where had stayed since arriving in the country, and collected his things but did not check out. After stopping to have dinner at a sidewalk café with wistful and sad music flowing from the speakers, he headed back to the seedy hotel. 

The second floor was quiet and empty. With painstaking care, he moved down the hall and stole a glance at the crack under every door. Only one of them, 212, had a light on inside. He went into his room, arranged his things, turned the light off, stood waiting at the peephole. Arthur knew he could wait all night if it came to that.  

Just after midnight, Gabriel passed by in the hall, as nonchalant as ever. Arthur heard a door open and close. With infinite care he slid out into the hall, edged down a few inches in the direction Gabriel had gone, noted the light filling the crack under the door of 217. He quickly went back into 204 and shut the door without a sound. 

In the morning, he did without caffeine, needing to see Gabriel pass by outside on his way to the stairs. Gabriel left at 8:47. Arthur hoped that Gabriel was not just going on a coffee run, that he would be gone for at least an hour. Happily, not everyone was as habituated to morning coffee as he was. Gabriel still had not returned when Arthur heard the cleaning lady’s cart roll up the hall. In deference to the sign on Arthur’s door, she skipped 204. Breathing heavily, sweating a little, he opened the door a crack to follow her progress down the hall. If Gabriel came back now, it would sink everything. 

Wearing only a towel, Arthur went into the bathroom and spread shaving cream on his face, then quickly shaved his neck and his right cheek. Gazing into the mirror, he thought he could pass for a man in mid-shave. He turned the hot water faucet as far as it would go, then slid back to the door and looked out again. The maid was not in the right place yet. He waited for a while and gazed out again. The maid had opened 217 and gone inside. In Arthur’s bathroom, steam rose from the basin and the hiss was loud. 

With an effort, he snapped off the left faucet handle. Then he dropped it next to the basin and ran out of his room and down the hall, calling for the maid as loud as he could. She came out of 217 with a startled look. He told her that the handle had come off in his hand and he could not shut off the scalding water. As she hurried up the hall, he darted into 217 and to his surprise located Gabriel’s satchel right away. It lay on a small table before a closed curtain with a floral design. He flipped it open, reached in, freed the Nō mask. 

In other circumstances he would have stood admiring the smooth ochre likeness of a face, the subtleties of its look and the elegance of its design. Now he slid it between the towel and his buttocks and went back out into the hall, thinking the hardest part would be to get back into the room and hide the mask without her seeing anything. But the maid had already left to get help for the gushing water. 

Luckily, fixing the sink was the work of a few minutes for the maintenance guy the maid had fetched. The guy and the maid even spared Arthur the questions and eye rolls he thought he was in for. With the sink fixed, they left and the maid resumed her rounds. 

Arthur could not give up this room. The other hotel was the address he had put on his sublease application. For now, Janice could not know where he was. Sitting at the little table by the window, with the blinds open just a crack, not widely enough for anyone to see him from the street, he studied the thing he had rescued for Janice. Holding it in his hands now, he could not imagine Gabriel raising the alarm, saying Hey, someone stole the mask that I stole. 

When night fell, he stole out of the hotel again and ten blocks away found an empty bench. He pulled out his cell phone and entered a number.

“Hello?”

“Janice. Arthur here. Remember me?”

The pause before she answered was faintly ominous. Could she have forgotten him already?

“I . . . I do remember you, Arthur. I’m sorry, I’m just a little distracted right now—” 

“—because Gabriel took your beautiful Nō mask.”

“What? Gabriel! How do you know this?” 

“I heard him talk about it, Janice. But don’t worry. I have the mask. You’ll have it back very soon—”

“You have the mask? Where are you? Return it to me now!” 

“I just said, you’ll have it back soon. I had to call you. You might have thought I stole the mask. Or that I’m trying to sell you something you own, like the con men in that O. Henry story. I needed to call and explain—” 

“Nothing you’ve said so far in this call makes the slightest sense. How did Gabriel get his filthy hands on my Nō mask? How in the hell did you get it back? Is this even Arthur I’m speaking to?” 

“I’m going to call you a bit later when you’re calmer, okay?”

“No—no, please, Arthur. I’m sorry. Please take your time and explain.” 

He described the incident in the café and following Gabriel up the street. Beyond that he told her nothing. If she imagined that he had confronted the thief, and bested him physically, he saw no need to correct her. 

“Now, I’ve got the mask and you will have it back quite soon. I just feel that—I don’t know, exactly—in order to appreciate the full significance of this victory, I need to understand you a bit better. I’d love to know how you came to acquire this mask, and all your books and paintings and figurines and carpets and necklaces. Does that make any sense at all?”

“Oh, you why to know why I’m intellectually curious. I don’t think I can answer that, any more than I can tell you why some people have higher sex drives than others.”

Nice choice of a metaphor, Arthur thought but did not say. 

“I’m not going to lie and say that I didn’t notice this about you. And think, wow, what an extraordinary person I’ve met.”

“And here we are in this strange city, two American fish out of water, so why I wasn’t acting warmer to you. You really like having incurred a moral debt from me. Come on, Arthur, I’m not stupid.” 

Arthur sighed.

“Well, I guess I expected a bit of gratitude after—” 

“Is Gabriel okay?” 

Now he relished the heights that he occupied after getting the mask back.

“He’s okay, Janice. I didn’t mess him up too badly.” 

He thought she would detect the irony in that last bit, but it was not clear she did.

“Arthur, I leave Wednesday. When can I get the mask back, please?” 

“Tomorrow.” 

“Call me tomorrow.” 

The next morning Arthur rose early and went out to canvass one of the working-class neighborhoods for views on the election. He took copious notes in a journal. At ten a.m. exactly he found a bench in a small park and dialed Janice’s number again. Arthur had begun to think that Janice was still figuring out how to talk to him, that he needed to present his most relatable self.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Janice.”

“You know, Arthur, I’m beginning to wonder whether you have my mask or this is some cruel ruse.” 

“Do you want me to describe it?” 

“You saw it the other day.”

“I saw it without seeing it, Janice. Your books were on my mind. And the fact you’re obviously smart and cultivated and complex and interesting. Look, I can come over this afternoon and return the mask.”

Again the pause before she answered discomfited him.

“No, don’t do that. I’m . . . I’m taking legal advice about how to handle this.”

“What? I get one of your most prized possessions back for you and you don’t even want it back—” 

“Of course I want it back, Arthur. That mask has tremendous sentimental and spiritual importance for me. Way more than you know. But I have to be a little careful about how we proceed here. I don’t want Gabriel going and telling people that I sent a mercenary out after him—”

“Gabriel is fine, Janice. I didn’t hurt him. He has no idea who took the mask from him. I was careful about that, let me tell you. I want to return the mask. I’ll bring it to your lawyer. Just give me the information—” 

“Are you stupid, Arthur? Or, a better question: do you think I’m stupid? You could be working with Gabriel. This could all be an elaborate scheme to blackmail or embarrass me.”

Arthur felt as if he had swallowed a rat.

“How on earth could I—we—profit from taking your mask and giving it back to you?”

“You might give me back a fake and sell the real one. Or wait till the fake is in my place and then go online and say I patronize a black market for forgeries. Or come out and suggest that I owe you something pretty substantial for getting the mask back. Or the one you give back might be stolen from somewhere and then I’ll really be fucked. There are so many scams and schemes in this great big rotten world, and if I’ve heard of one I’ve heard of a billion. So please be patient here.”

They broke off the chat in mutual exasperation. Arthur went back to the seedy hotel and sat in his room reading notes from his journal, typing on his laptop. He sent off three articles featuring extensive comments from people on the street with strong opinions about the election, most siding with the libertarian candidate, a few with the strongman. 

“Esmeralda Flores, a sixty-nine-year-old grandmother, said Paredes will legalize and promote the adoption of new asset classes offering her family a way out of poverty in this faltering economy.” 

“The innovator Paredes brings a youthful charm and Kennedy-esque luster to the country’s hidebound political scene, said Diego Martinez, a forty-year-old mechanic.” 

“Cryptocurrency and spot ETFs are stepping stones to real engagement with the global economy as financial institutions pull back from China and look for new markets for their cutting-edge products, said Sandra Escobar, a university student.” 

After sending off the last article, he closed the laptop and covered his face with his hands. He was here as that venerable thing, a foreign correspondent. Most newspapers and magazines did not have boots on the ground. This could make his career. But never could he have imagined the frustrations that his act of heroism had brought on. The gulf between him and Janice was as wide as ever. 

In the evening, he found another bench and dialed her number. He feared she would hang up on hearing his voice, but her tone was civil.

“Janice, I really have tried to do the right thing here. You can have this mask appraised. It’s not a fake and I’m not going to blackmail you. And, you know, I don’t fault you for imagining an elaborate scheme. The country is going through turbulence and it affects the way people think.”

“Thank you, Arthur. I regret some of what I said earlier. And you’re quite right, maybe the election is affecting my mood. The choice really is stark and riots are not impossible after election night. People want order. They don’t know what Yukio Hata really represents. I know.”

This was not the first thing Arthur expected to hear.

“I don’t understand. What do you know?”

“I’ve met the candidate, Arthur. I was at a gallery opening drinking wine and he came right up and started talking to me. He said he could relate to my ‘fish-out-of-water’ status because he’s from Japan and he’s experienced some pretty ugly racism here.” 

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And I tried to convince him that I have a serious interest in Japan and its culture, I collect things, but he was just like, yeah, sure, whatever.” 

“But it’s true.”

“Obviously, but he thought I was patronizing him. Yet he persisted, he got my number from someone and called me a number of times until I found a polite way to ask him to stop. I didn’t like how he acted, his assumption that I would welcome him into my life, but I think I really offended him.” 

“You are perceptive. About the mask. I really am acting in good faith here and would love just to return it, no questions asked.”  

“I know, Arthur. You’re a kind and curious man. I need to speak to my lawyer again, but we’ll arrange it. Please understand it may need to happen after the election, things are just so crazy.”

He guessed that was not so bad. The election was the next day. Still, it rankled a bit. He felt she was stringing him along and setting up an anticlimax, where the lawyer would accept the mask from him, hand him a bit of money for his troubles, and say goodbye. 

The sour mood did not hurt his productivity. Yukio Hata was ruthless, there were rumors about his unsavory connections, including mobsters, he was the last person this nation needed as its leader, and Arthur wanted him to go down in flames. He wrote four more stories and pressed send each time with satisfaction. The world would know what to think of the strongman-in-waiting who had moved in on Janice and belittled her knowledge of Japan. This Hata was a thug, a pompous buffoon with no real grasp of economics, Arthur’s articles made clear. 

Toward midnight he drifted off quickly in spite of horns honking and people chanting slogans in favor of one or the other candidate. In the dream that came now he wandered on a vast field with miles of swaying grass and snow-capped mountains in the far distance, a scene like those where he imagined battles in the Falklands war to have played out. The winds whipped his hair and grew so strong he thought he might fall over, but he pressed on, scanning the desolation for smoke or dancing cloth or any other sign of another person. 

After wandering for what felt like many miles, he paused at the sight of a narrow ditch scoring the expanse of grass. It ran perpendicular to his route and could almost have passed for a crude path. He thought any sensible person would follow it, because if you pursued it far enough you would end up somewhere, but as he looked in both directions a sense rose, a queasy feeling that anticipated the corrupt choice he was on the verge of making, and he looked in the direction opposite the distant peaks, at the fringes of field on both sides of the ditch, and something told him if he dared go that way all existence would recoil. As he pressed on the same way and the monotony of swaying grass did not yield, he began to count his paces. Somewhere after ten thousand he lost track, worn out, desperate. Arthur could not know whether his judgment was right or wrong, whether it was self-interest or a vestigial morality that had driven him on this way. He was aware only of a face, the size of a small moon, filling the vastness in front of him, daring him to continue. Or rather it was the outlines of a face, without features he could describe and all the more terrifying for that.

He woke with a start. The horns were louder as light streamed through the gap in the blinds. It was a day like no other in the nation’s history, everyone was on the way to the polls. Before he headed out, he thought of calling Janice, but that would happen after the election was over, that was how they had left it, and she already had concerns about him. Arthur was so eager to get out onto the street that he almost forgot the protocols for avoiding Gabriel. He did not even know that Gabriel still stayed here. 

Arthur roamed all over, visiting the voting stations, talking to strangers in cafés and on the street, getting heaps of comments, pulling out his laptop at odd moments to file live updates. He managed to turn out four full-length articles which appeared on various websites. Finally, at the end of one of the most productive days of his career, he headed back to the hotel to watch the returns come in and knock out a couple more stories. By ten o’clock Paredes was the clear winner, with sixty-eight percent of votes cast. 

In the morning his work was far from done, what with the victory parade starting just after lunch, but there was one person in the world he wished to speak to right now. After three rings Janice answered.

“Janice! Isn’t this the best news you’ve ever had in your life?”

“Oh, Arthur. Is there anything you won’t do for my attention?”

“Ah, right, that’s it. Like my elaborate plan to steal your mask and give it back to you. Speaking of which—” 

To his utter dismay, Janice said she could not stay on the phone and read out the address of her lawyer’s office. She hung up. Arthur felt so mad he feared he might run out into the street and attack someone. Here was what his decency had got him.

The parade started at the base of the Avenue of Martyrs and would end a mile away at the biggest park in a city full of them. Arthur found a spot on a block not too far from the starting point. People cheered and pushed against the police barriers and doffed their hats as the vehicles began to glide past at a leisurely pace. The first was a converted van with huge speakers mounted on top, blaring the election results. Then came an open car with several campaign officials in it, though not Parades himself. Then a pickup with a screen mounted in its bed on which scenes from campaign headquarters the night before played. Some of the people in the second car also appeared on that screen, opening champagne bottles, hugging, giving impromptu speeches. Next there came another truck with a really long bed on which a mariachi band played with vigor. The vehicle that followed was a buggy-driven open carriage where two people sat, one them a man in a conquistador outfit sipping champagne, the other a woman in a gorgeous white dress and a Nō mask.

Arthur rubbed his eyes and stared hard at the woman in the carriage. His first thought was that all the strain and anxiety of recent days had made him hallucinate. The carriage advanced up the street and he almost lost sight. Then he began to make associations and thought, Janice is mocking me. Showing me that I went to so much trouble for nothing at all and my life means nothing. That I was a fool for thinking my possession of the mask gave me some kind of leverage, more foolish still for thinking I could be of interest to her. I do not exist.

It had to be her. It must be. 

He climbed over the barrier and ran toward the carriage. People shouted and screamed though some of the cries were jocular, as if they took him for a good-natured fan. He panted and ran faster and nearly fell. In his peripheral vision more strangers yelled and pointed and he half expected a bullet.

Then he was at the side of the carriage. The masked face did not turn. Arthur reached in and ripped it off with all his force, revealing the visage of a startled young local woman. Arthur dropped it, turned, and ran as fast as he could toward the base of the avenue. 

Screams followed him and he heard footsteps pounding, but to his amazement no one caught up with him. He turned and ran north and got onto a parallel street that would take him almost to the seedy hotel. People must have thought he was crazy but so many were exuberant in the city today, nothing was normal. At first it seemed incredible that no crowds pursued him, but then maybe in the eyes of these people he was just another drunk idiot. You couldn’t stop them all, so why try. He thought of the woman in the carriage. People in this country feared Yukio Hata and sending her out in that mask was a small olive branch to the loser who still commanded vast influence in the police and military.

Especially the police.

Panting, sweating, on the verge of falling down, he slowed his pace as he reached the hotel. No one appeared to notice him as he passed through the lobby and went up to the second floor. He went into 204, closed the blinds all the way, then picked up his laptop and slammed it on the desk as hard as he could. 

As he sat with his face in his hands, weeping and cursing himself, his cell phone rang. He reached for it warily.

“Hello?” 

“Arthur? It’s Janice, how are you? I wanted to let you know that I’ve made a decision.”

Now he heard voices outside, and boots on pavement, and realized he had been wrong. People had followed his progress from the Avenue of Martyrs. 

“Okay, then. Tell me.”

“I’m going to sublet the place to someone else, but as a consolation prize, I think I’ll let you keep the Nō mask.”

“Hah. That’s rich, Janice. Do you know—” 

“Honestly, Arthur. I avoided saying this, but you’ve missed too many clues. You assumed that Yukio Hata was wrong about my knowledge of Japan because I owned the mask. You never guessed that he might have given it to me after the gallery opening, as a small step toward curing my cultural ignorance.”

Boots thundered on the steps. Within seconds they would be at the door.

“How very kind of him.”

Janice laughed. That light, breezy sound. 

“No, Arthur, dear. Kind is not the word. Hata thinks of himself as a deity. When that man gives me a mask, he means it as a profound, spiritual gesture binding us together forever. Hata has evil connections, let me tell you. The only way I could ever extricate myself without ending up on a death list was to make him think someone stole the mask. Which should not be hard to believe when the police find you with it. So you’d be on a certain list even if you had not helped Hata lose. Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be you just now.”

Arthur felt as if his lungs were on fire and he could barely see. Hard knocks came at the door.

“Gabriel. He had the fucking mask. He took it from your place.”

“My exquisite lover Gabriel and I have followed your every move since we met, Arthur, dear. He was going to plant the mask on you, but you made his so life much easier. And mine.” 

Janice hung up. The police burst in just as Arthur was trying to flush the mask down the toilet.
 

Michael Washburn is a Brooklyn-based writer and journalist and the author of five short story collections. His short story "Confessions of a Spook" won Causeway Lit's 2018 fiction contest.

‘Warring’

Rollin Jewett’s varied past includes acting stints in The Bodyguard, Unsolved Mysteries, Miami Vice and others, penning Carmen Electra’s first film (cult classic American Vampire with Adam West), and being a contestant on Jeopardy. Rollin is also an award winning off-Broadway playwright with plays produced all over the US as well as internationally. As an author, Rollin’s short stories and poetry have appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies, including the Night Picnic Journal, Aphotic Realm, Door is a Jar, Coffin Bell, Gathering Storm, and Gravitas, among others.

Warring

Sgt. Edwin Stahl carefully edges forward, crawling to the edge of a granite outcrop overlooking Cochran Shoals along the Chattahoochee River, east of Vinings, Georgia. He grunts, wallowing upon protrusions of scrub brush and weathered rock. The heady incrustation of sweat and dirt imbedded in the reeking wool of his uniform render him an easy target for horseflies and sweat bees. Sgt. Stahl is unaccompanied. Loneliness has clouded his thirty-three years, like southern summer storms batter resilient trees during prolonged downpours. Never fulfilling his unending yearning for affection, he remains in watchful anticipation. An aching combat injury compounds his desolation.

Applying highly honed surveillance skills, the stocky and swarthy Union soldier expertly slithers forward, scrutinizing the rapids below and the ridges opposite. As a Harvey Scout, Edwin forges ahead of the Union Army’s southerly trajectory, seeking tactical information on enemy position and strength. Having, for decades, successfully camouflaged his secret desires and deflected revelations of his true nature, he is adept in clandestine operations as a prized Union scout. Under the anxious command of Union General George Thomas, Stahl’s keen observational prowess is crucial to the impending siege of Atlanta, following the Confederate rout at Kennesaw Mountain to the north.

The river below, with its shallow cascades and deep emerald-green pools, appears free of human presence, though life’s experience has taught him to avoid assumptions. The clues, such as suddenly silent birds, chattering squirrels, abrupt river splashes, distant puffs of smoke, neighing horses, far-off bells, yells and cries, scents of burnt gunpowder, cooking odors, rattle of wagon wheels, unexpected movements in the corners of his eyes, snaps of twigs and rustling of leaves, horse dung, human stink, resonant rumblings of ground, metallic taste, and even the sense of being watched, all appear absent. He tentatively concludes that the Rebs have assumed fallback positions miles south near Atlanta and that the river can be crossed without resistance.

Briefly standing, Edwin abruptly dives onto his hardened belly, detecting sudden movement along the river below. His pulse races … armpit stench arrays a betrayal of budding fear. Easing up, he gently removes his hat as he again scans the scene below: he spots a lone figure casually splashing within a quiet river pool several hundred feet below.

Mid-day July Georgia heat stifles Stahl with its heady humidity, burdening his breath. Edwin notes a strange stillness surrounding him … nearby yellow pines fail in their usual whispering, revealing only sounds of persistently battering and gurgling water flow, falling and colliding with rock protrusions. Cautiously creeping ahead, he spies the bleached body of a lanky young man, naked save for a crumpled gray felt hat.

The man is taut-skinned and lean, likely from persistent dietary deficiencies. Save for an outcrop of dark brown hair protruding the decrepit hat, the young man displays pasty white skin that heartily reflects the harsh sunlight. On a granite jut near the man rests a disheveled pile of filthy gray wool clothing, a pair of partially disintegrated boots, and a single rifle awkwardly perched beyond the owner’s reach. Spooked by his earlier observational failure, Edwin watches and waits predatorily.

At length, Edwin reckons that the youth is isolated and unaided, yet he maintains caution. Assuming a motionless position, he studies the river scene patiently. No unexpected sights are evident save for the unclothed and seemingly lost lad. Stahl is puzzled: the young man should have fled the approaching Union Army but seems oblivious to his surroundings and as well as the looming peril.

As a scout, Edwin is prohibited from contacting the enemy or, if encountering a rebel soldier, to take prisoners … gathering military intelligence is his sole objective. Avoiding assumptions serves as his leading principle, but he reasons that a lone naked man with an out-of-reach rifle is of negligible threat … he cautiously advances. Fixated on the detached figure, Stahl carefully scales the granite overhangs to confront the mystery man below.

Though violating his orders in confronting an enemy agent, Stahl justifies his actions by promising himself extraction of key enemy information. But his motivations stealthily outflank his conscious pretenses: his mind denies that his eyes are infatuated with the nakedness before him.

“Stand up and hold your hands way high, soldier, so I can see them plain and good,” Edwin commands the startled young man as he springs around a large boulder. As the youth jerks about facing Stahl’s loaded pistol, terror etches his dirt-smeared face. The soldier momentarily stumbles.

“I said stand up, damned it; and I mean it now … toe the mark!” As the lad apprehensively stands and extends his arms into the air, Edwin notes tears streaming down the lad’s face. Stahl kicks the enemy rifle away from the grubby pile of clothes and unintentionally ejects the weapon into a nearby blackened pool. The gun rapidly sinks.

“What’s your name and rank, son, and why the jezus are you sitting out here by yourself with na’er a stitch of clothes on your hide?”

Edwin searches a pale and angular face spotted by a scrappy beard and patches of grime rubbed into the pores of still pimply skin. Surmising his shivering prisoner more a boy than grown man, he guesses the lad no more than eighteen years. Boy soldiers are plentiful among the Fed bluecoat army … he suspects the Rebs have even more. Pity for this disheveled excuse for a warrior surges through Stahl, who reluctantly recognizes the ongoing duel between duty and desire.

“Private Callander Hill of the 2nd Kentuck Infantry, sir; an’ please don’ be shootin’ me as I’m a far fetch from my unit,” the youth spouts anxiously, his quaking unrestrained.

“Where you from in Kentucky, private, and why’re not fighting for the Union?”

“I hail from Scott County, Kentuck, sir, and folks thereabouts don’ think too highly of the Fed’rals, not like those bushwhackers in them Appalchin’ hills east-wise. Me, I don’ care much for one side nor the other, but pa and my brothers all signed for the Johnny Rebs. Kinda’ did what I wuz supposed to, I guess.”

“You on French leave then, Private? Damned coward then … gonna’ absquatulate, I suspect! Then where hell’s your others, then? Takes more than one boy ta’ make a regiment, soldier.” Edwin quizzes his charge while continuously scanning his surroundings for others, chiefly enemy agents. His scouting acumen signals alarm … he senses the presence of an unaccounted party. He critically doubts himself.

“Guess I kinda’ got loss from my unit a time back … then I don’ recall more. Things kinda got confusin’ up there at Kennesaw way with hard fightin’ and all, and I skedaddled from where you Fed’rals were a comin’ … thought I wuz’ with my own, but it turned out otherwise. All I know is that I’m afar fetch from my own and don’ know where they is.”

“ Guess I kinda got lost; well ain’t that a sorry excuse for a soldier. How the jesuz do you get lost when there’s a swarm of troops all around you? Don’t make much sense to me. But I guess that’s how a Reb does his fighting, as y’all appear losing all the way to Atlanta town.”

Looking at the stark and submissive figure standing before him, Edwin perceives the lad’s past, a likely bleak life. Maybe three quarters a foot more than 5, the boy tips little more than 130 pounds. His ribs are menacing protrusions, and the caps of his hips extend outward from his thighs like tabletop edges. Isolated patches of dark hair sprout from his chest in sparseness that matches his meager beard. Hill’s prominent genitals, crowned by a thick patch of pubic hair, sway above two slender and hairy legs. Stahl’s prurient gaze is unstoppable. He has spied upon many an unclothed lad, most far cleaner and better fed than this specimen; however, secluded opportunity bolsters his calculating interest. Edwin is progressively gripped by longing and fantasy that shatters his otherwise cautious nature.

“So, why’re you all neck’ed like that, Soldier Hill?”

“It bein’ so hot an all, I was thinkin’ a gettin’ cool and a might cleaner in this here water. This Chattahooch sure’s got some chill water likened to home.”

“My take is you’re about to run to the Bluecoats like a coward, or maybe a Secesh spy more likely, Private.”

“Kin I cover up or sumthin, sir,” Hill pleads, concerned with his captor’s ceaseless focus on his nakedness. “Don’ feel right a standin’ here all neck’ed front’a every jaybird in these here parts.”

Abruptly, the young private bends, reaching for the splayed pile of shabby clothing.

“You just keep those hands up toward high heaven and don’t make another move, damn it, ya’ dumb jackass! Ya’ hear?”

An alarmed and speedily focused Edwin methodically meanders toward his captive and quickly raises his now cocked pistol, placing the barrel at his slumping prisoner’s temple.

“Dang it, I don’t just know what you’ve got in that pile of rags now do I? Now don’t move a stitch, you hear? Your being at unease ‘cause you got no clothes ain’t exactly no fault of a soul other than yours, now is it?”

Edwin watches intensely as the young man, expecting a bullet at any moment, begins shaking wildly. Stahl’s sense of excitement flourishes. The surge of mortal power over another, especially a naked man, begins to stir other passions, none in keeping with his scouting orders. As he looms over his prisoner in a dominance-festered, life and death posture, the private begins to whimper, unable to control the stream of piss running down the bleached flesh of both legs. The sight and stench of urine edges Edwin toward a jumble of anger and remorse. He cruelly strikes the back of Hill’s skull, buckling the hapless man to a fetal position.

“Oh, for lord’s mercy; why’d you go do that? Look at what you made me do.”

“Don’ know, sir, I guessed y’all was gonin’ to shoot me as sure as the day I was birthed! I was fearin’ to die … I’m too skeered to die jus’ now. Don’ shoot me, bless no, sir!”

Tears cascading down the private’s scrawny cheeks yank Edwin from near viciousness to icy concern. His rapid emotional transitions disgust him … his embittering hidden life conceives a vein of malice that disarms his judgement. Reassessing his stance, he surmises that Callander might have been handsome had he’d been better fed … as is, even without the boy’s pitiable loss of bladder control, Stahl’s perceptions of Hill wander erratically between repugnance and overpowering carnality. Shackled by years of sexual starvation, he’s torn between mercy and retribution.

************

High above Stahl and his captive, a secluded witness to the ongoing riverside conflict prepares to intervene. His pistol is cocked, ready to fire. Corporal Aaron Resh, a fellow Union scout, has secretively trailed Stahl throughout the day … though not assigned to the sergeant, he follows without apparent motive. His fascination for the naked soldier below matches Edwin’s. Observing the commotion below, Resh is torn between protecting Stahl and savoring the struggle.

************

“Lord, ya’ stench so,” Edwin screeches. “For chrise-sake, get yourself in that water and wash the piss off yourself, Private … into that pool behind you and wash that stink before I sicken of your sorry behind. Hell, it’s like reekin’ babe nappies in this bakin’ sun right now. Come on, git down there and splash yourself off, and don’t try anything tricky when you do!”

Humiliated and terrorized, Private Hill is paralyzed by his captor’s fitful behavior. Confused, he timidly turns toward the water, feverishly anticipating a gunshot-induced demise. He accepts the old Yankee’s grip over his life but is baffled by Stahl’s intentions … he senses a man in conflict … he detects both loathing and longing. Sluggishly, he lowers himself into a seated position and immerses himself in a pool of swirling, teal-tinted water, resting with his torso above the water line.

“Sweet jesuz, ‘tis ice-cold! Jus’ let me splash a bit an’ git outta here so my privates don’ shrivel to nothin’.”

“I said get your arse full inta’ that water, Private, and I mean business on that matter, hear?”

In renewed weeping, the mortified youth edges deeper into the pool, his shoulders at river level. Whirlpools dance about his plunged body, striking the surfaces of his rapidly bluing flesh. The prisoner trembles intensely … he’s tempted to flee the stream’s biting chill.

“Deeper, Private, I say … deeper. Get into that water ‘til you can scarcely breathe, you hear?” Stahl barks as power-fueled fancies surge within, his member swelling uncontrollably.

Without alternatives, Callander aversely complies, wandering hesitantly into the pool’s depths. He briefly searches Stahl’s face for a possible stay in sentencing; however, he perceives only menacing insistence. He falteringly edges forward.

With his mouth barely above the surface, the young man’s head suddenly disappears, remaining disturbingly out-of-sight. Initially presuming an escape attempt, Edwin shortly grasps that the boulders corralling the deep pool would stymie flight. Stahl points his revolver in the direction of the private’s last sighting, yet Hill fails to resurface. Edwin’s heart trebles.

Horrified by the debacle he triggered, Edwin shrieks toward the bluffs above, crying heavenward as in desperate prayer. His Union duties are set … he fathoms that saving the Reb is forbidden. Seconds lapse. Debate roars within his soul. Like a video clip under pause, indecision freezes all motion. Two choices have governed his stifled life since puberty: hide or escape. Yet, as the seconds flee, he rejects both.

Abandoning duty, Edwin removes papers and a compass from his rank tunic, sets his revolver upon a rocky ledge, and dives, fully clothed, into the dark pool where Hill vanished. Below the surface, an overpowering current slams his skull against a submersed rocky protrusion … he retains consciousness but loses his orientation. The water’s thrust and clouds of silt steadily sap his vigor. Quickly resurfacing, he resubmerges within shimmering bands of sunlight penetrating the pool, spotting in the water’s green glow the blanched white of an arm thrashing in the torrents.

Stahl’s sodden boots stabilize movement like underwater weights, allowing him to slowly shift toward Hill. He heists the drooping and slackened shoulders but fails to eject the soldier’s slumped head toward the surface. Hill remains submerged. Though terrified of water Edwin discounts his hazard and races toward the inert soldier like an enraged bear … he grabs but fails to dislodge a slab of rock trapping Hill’s foot. He repeats his actions, but the rock remains. Stahl’s tenacity ignites unremittent rage. Rapidly resupplying his lungs, Edwin ferociously leverages the rock, adjusting it sufficiently to release the unconscious private. Grabbing the youth’s scalp, he heaves the limp body onto a nearby outcrop. Hill’s skin is ashen, devoid of life signs.

Edwin drifts within an undercurrent of denial, refusing to accept Hill’s death, but simultaneously disavowing his ongoing deviation from duty. He wreathes within waves of ill-founded affection for an enemy soldier, stinging stabs of tenderness that, in combat, warrant a firing squad. Stahl’s attentions founder within a slurry of urgency and despair … conflict reigns … warring forbids empathy, cover extended to a rebel soldier. Devotion … death … duty … desire: each muddled within a cauldron of grief.

“Please … oh please, Callander … don’t, don’t … oh dear God, don’t go this way right now … you’ve come too far in this damned war. Breathe; I said breathe ... I’m ordering you; don’t you understand?”

Edwin ragingly pounds on the youth’s rapidly bluing chest, causing the unconscious man’s ribs to forcefully heave and fall. Hill fails to breathe. Losing hope, he seizes the youth’s shoulders and hips, turns the naked frame along its side. Laying along the inert man’s length, Edwin hooks his arms around Hill’s back and squeezes mightily, chest to chest.

Callander’s life fades.

With every passing second, Stahl’s will to survive subsides, his soul fleeing inevitable suffocation. His mission abandoned in quest of unspeakable ardor, he desires only not to be.

************

From afar, a baffled Resh follows the riverside commotion from his granite bluff outpost above. While certain of Stahl’s dereliction of duty, he resists reaction … his intentions for his fellow scout are elusively complex. Edwin has been in his sight for months.

************

Without forewarning, a surge of brownish slime ousts from the young man’s mouth and nose, plastering a slippery dollop of putrid ooze onto Edwin’s face as the youth coughs and gags violently. Though nauseated by the ejected cloud of rank mist, he gleefully embraces the private with revived aspirations.

As Callander’s breathing stabilizes, Edwin sobs hysterically as he agonizingly uprights himself and positions the private’s slumping head within the hollow of his lap … rocking the private like a Madonna mourning over her beloved. The day’s life and death encounters have numbed his perceptions of existence and meaning; yet he senses a path forward … an escape. The day’s encounters are his and Callander’s alone … their survival serves as a sign of redemption. He and Callander have resurrected.

Startlingly, the young man’s eyes open, fixing on the drained face of his captor.

“Em I dead?” a disoriented Hill garbles. 

“No, you cussed fool, you ain’t dead, though it appeared you were for a stance. Oh God, dear God … I believed you were gone for certain, but you’ve come back to me bein’ alive like you were before … you’ll not be goin’ out of my sight. I’ll take care of you and make darned sure you get back to Kentucky like you want. you hear?”

Neglecting his scouting obligations, Edwin sets a new course that includes a promise without means of assurance. But promises and hopes sooth his heart … his affection-bound aims flounder in absence of his proficient reasoning skills. He neither knows nor cares that Callander may be of another mind.

Looking upward, Hill spies Edwin’s tears. Comforting conclusions embraces him … notions foreign to a middle child of eleven hard scrabble kids, more in need of food and shelter than human nurturing. His dirt-poor existence had been daunting and with few frills, particularly affection. Hugs were unknown. Reaching an additional birthday was the sole luxury for the Callander siblings … being loved and giving love were never offered nor afforded. 

Callender looks into his captor’s eyes and winces, wondering what fate has befallen him. Is the old Yank his savior or executioner?

“Did ya save me, Sir? Will ya shoot me anyways?”

“I guess I had a hand in it … I’d have done anything to see you’d come back to me. I’m gladdened to see you a’living so, no, you darned dupe, I’m shootin’ nobody today.”

Sensing Stahl’s good will and eager for a life beyond scarcity, Callander gambles his future. In tiny increments he elevates a hand toward Stahl’s dampened face, mindful of the consequences of rejection.

Delighted by the young soldier’s tepid overture, Edwin gently lowers his head toward the scrawny face of the spent youth, maintaining a watchful eye on the enfolding interaction. He hesitates as foul bodily scents confront his passions, giving him pause … he ponders his ongoing dereliction of duty. Embracing this pathetic figure constitutes shielding an enemy combatant, a court-martialing offence. Throughout his adulthood, Edwin has scorned the long-locked instincts that are ushering him toward forbidden and uncontrolled affection. But his resistance is disabled as he grasps the enfolding joy about him, undeniable happiness he has long believed unapproachable. Even the stench of festering bodily fluids fails to quench his yearnings. He presses his lips against Hill’s, preparing for a final rebuff. But Callander lovingly accepts Stahl’s advances, relishing and furthering the evolving alliance.

Wound in delight, the two cling to one another like reunited mates, separated during protracted warfare. Craving trustworthy bonds of affection, they embrace with abandon … vulnerable … untried … alone.

Like an emboldened schoolboy, Callander abruptly flips himself above his captor and, prepared to usher forth his suppressed expressions of endearment, lifts his head toward the sky in a celebratory gesture. Smiling like two children positioning for sweet treats, Stahl and Callander initiate their daring engagement.

Edwin gazes longingly upward as his unanticipated lover, fleetingly pondering the precious reality of a yearned-for soulmate. Gratefulness engulfs him.

Edwin reaches for his lover’s face when a loud crack emits from some distant and hidden point.

Fixing his gaze in the direction of the report, Stahl fails to spot a source; however, he watches, as though in slow motion, as Callander’s body sluggishly slumps aside and toward the river’s edge … a thick mist of sticky gray and pink descends upon his face. Callander’s eyes are fixed and unmoving as though suspended in eternal contemplation, but his presence slowly saps away with a blank expression.

Edwin shoves his lover’s limp body aside and leaps to his feet, his mouth formed into an unutterable scream. Panting wildly, he pounds his chest in anguish, responding in agony to the carnage before him … the emotional impact of Callander’s slaughter sidelines the immediate horror of violence. Stahl’s brain commands piercing yelps of revulsion that his voice refuses to form. He subconsciously smears the revolting film of death from his face and onto his hands, spreading it across his tunic.  Eventually Edwin slams to his knees and onto the rock prominence, staggering within sobs that stunts his breath.

************

“He was gonna slaughter you for sure, Stahl!” yells an approaching figure in blue, stepping down from a rock ledge overlooking Edwin and Callander’s corpse. “Can’t tell if that fellah was a Reb or not, nekkid and all, but he sure was fixin to pound your skull as I could tell.”

Edwin looks toward the ledge, staring at Aaron Resh, a fellow Union scout walking toward him. A still smoking pistol remains in his grip. Edwin’s visual world passes in half time, as though floating in a dream world. The immediate events remain incalculable … that which proceeded Resh’s arrival refuses to mesh with the present. Viewing Callander’s violent end cripples his mental capacities.

Within his malfunctioning memory, he recalls Resh’s jealousy of scouting skills he couldn’t match. Suspicious of the junior scout’s reticent nature, Stahl steadfastly avoided Resh’s recurring attempts to befriend him, fearing familiarity. But, in his ongoing emotional fog, Edwin identifies Resh as his sole adversary. Anger surges.

Recognizing Resh as the instrument of Callander’s death, Edwin leaps to his feet and lunges toward his adversary like a hungered leopard springing for its prey. 

 “You son of a whore, you took him … you took him away from me … why’d you do that … why?  You didn’t have to … you could have waited … see if he was hurtin’ me! He was mine … he was my prisoner, only mine!”

“But he’s just a Reb, Stahl, and a buck nekked one at that! What the b’Jesus is wrong with you … why you frettin’ for the likes of him?”

“Dammit … damn you to hell you arse … I loved him … “.

“Not by a jug full, Stahl … hell, you paid me no interest these months. Why? Since Murfreesboro I gleaned you for a possum, all for naught. Why him … what was I but hankered down to you? I’d be the Union side and a might cleaner. Ever did ya’line with me, always dodgin’my ev’ry move t’ward you and us?”

“He was all I had … you took him … I’ll not it lapse that you did.”

Abandoning lucidity, an unarmed Edwin feverishly grabs a startled Resh by the neck like a frenzied madman, without restraint … as an aggrieved Achilles seeking atonement for his lover’s slaying. As his grip on the corporal’s neck slowly restricts Resh’s windpipe, the corporal swings his still free pistol-holding right hand and, after several unsuccessful attempts, places the gun’s muzzle against Stahl’s temple and fires. Stahl’s grip ends. As he slumps, Stahl looks up and gasps, “Callander.” His breathing labors briefly and then ceases.

************

Resh inspects the grisly scene, incapable of squaring his affection for Stahl with his wretched demise. Rech grieves, the dead distorted before him.

Hours pass as the evening’s light embraces the ravine. Certain of his inability to justify Stahl’s demise and fearing retribution, Resh wearily commits the day’s relics to the river’s cascades.

“Stahl … Stahl, why this … why this way?” Resh agonizes, watching the blood-streaked contrails flowing downstream as the bodies bob over the river’s outcrops.

Shattered, he crumbles and weeps.

Michelo Isola is a gay man who has longed to write meaningful short stories, but fearful rejection because of age (76) and identity. His pen name came about as the result of significant criticism from conservative members of his family.