Katherine Schweitzer-Carney

Cactus Carpenter

Jesus Gonzalez lived quiet in the border village of Cactus Hollow. But then again, the village was quiet and its colors were quiet--a scattering of small homes and businesses of pastel hues nestled amongst dirty white sand and parched foliage.

Jesus had worked as a carpenter there, having learned the trade from his father he told Billy Bob Mullins one day, adding that his name was pronounced “Hay-Zeus” not “Gee-zus”. His mother, Jesus told Billy Bob, “was a saint,” and that Billy Bob should always respect and love his own. That’s likely why the carpenter spent several afternoons making an oak picture frame with detailed carvings for the boy to give his mother.

A few of the townspeople thought Jesus to be a tad mentally disturbed, working with only hand tools and having no electricity running to his home which was the same building as his shop. They brushed off their reservations, though, because many in their village were poor—that and Billy Bob’s mother showed everyone the beautiful craftsmanship of the gift. It was big city art gallery in quality, not small town in a desert.

No one in Cactus Hollow knew much about, or cared as to what the INS was until the day some suit-wearing strangers showed up in their town driving a dark car. They parked outside Sheriff Gomer’s office. “We aint got no detaining facility,” some heard the sheriff tell the pair as they began walking down the road towards the carpenter’s shop. “Aint no need for that sort of stuff here. Aint nobody a problem.”

The INS strangers didn’t listen, but the rest of Cactus Hollow heard and came out into the street from homes and small shops. Dusty men and women in denim and boots along with their sandy –haired children watched as Jesus Gonzalez was awkwardly dragged from his shop in handcuffs.

“I’m Jesus! I’m Jesus!” he hollered.

“We know Mr. Gonzalez,” said one man grasping the carpenter’s elbow

“And, I’m the Virgin Mary,” said the other escort.

The carpenter planted his feet and spat at the head of the second.

“Did you see that, Mamma?” Billy Bob said. Mother and son watched from across the street. The woman didn’t respond, but stood with her eyes glued to the sky over top of Jesus Gonzalez’s shop. Dark clouds were rising.

“Go inside! Away!” the carpenter called out to the scattered townspeople. Strong winds began whipping through the street, turning tumbleweeds into weapons and they listened. The strangers jerked him forward. People ducked in buildings. And the sky opened up like a dropped sack of coins.

“What the…” one of the suited men began to ask turning towards the other. A quarter had imbedded itself deep into his skull. The other fell shortly after, copper and silver coins flecking him with shrapnel.

Coins clinked off tin roofs and pelted windows for eight minutes straight. Two inches of change and two dead men were left in the storm’s wake. Aside from this, the streets of Cactus Hollow were empty and quiet again. Billy Bob scooped up as many coins as he could, putting them in his shirt knotted up like a sack.

Dustin Grella: A Meditation


This morning I walked past a church with a sign out front that read, “Prayers for Peace.” Stretching the entire length of the church was a wrought iron fence with long thin yellow ribbons draped across. They looked like ties on a clearance rack.

I noticed that some of the ribbons had nametags attached. As I walked down the sidewalk I thought the ribbons must be for donors or sponsors or patrons of the church. It was one of those beautiful old stone churches on Fifth Avenue.

The front of the church was long and the ribbons were many and bright yellow and dancing in the December wind, so they easily kept my attention. I read another nametag. This one was of a soldier; the third, also of a soldier. That was when I realized that these must all be names of soldiers; soldiers who had died in Iraq. Thus the yellow ribbons; thus the prayers for peace. I stopped. I started searching for PFC Devin J. Grella.

There were thousands of ribbons. I wasn’t going to be able to just randomly find his, but then I saw that they were in a sort of ad hoc alphabetical order Greka, Gonzalez, and after a long while, Grella.

A heavy cold wind blew through me, tossing the ribbons high off of the fence. I cried. I don’t think of him that often anymore, even though it has only been three years. Even though someone in Iraq was just killed yesterday, someone’s son, someone’s father, someone’s husband, someone’s friend. I miss him. I wish I could say I think of him more than I do.

I wiped the tears from my face and started walking back down Fifth Avenue, crossing through Madison Square Park. I thought immediately of the sound byte on the laptop when his clothes and personal belongings were returned. I thought about that sound file, guns firing in the background, his innocent twenty-one year old voice, oddly more mature since he’d left for Iraq, three months ago. An IED would be detonated beneath his diesel tanker days later, killing him instantly.

I can remember when our family got the laptop out of his personal effects. We were in the funeral home, closed casket wrapped tightly with a flag on the other side of the room. We all huddled around the monitor, as if we were looking into a crystal ball that could deliver a message from beyond the grave. There they were, pictures of Devin and his friends, videos of soldiers in a sporting boxing match, and a sound file of him delivering a tanker of fuel across a Persian desert. We listened to it over and over. We cried. We wanted to know, to be a part of, experience what his life (a life that we all knew so well before he’d left for Iraq) was like those last few months.

We knew that he was somewhere, but it wasn’t until we heard the machine gun fire in the background that we realized he had been off in a very foreign place. Maybe before that we didn’t want to know. Maybe we were in denial. It definitely made it easier to sleep at night.

At that moment, gathered around, listening to his voice, I tried to imagine Devin as something I’d never considered him, a soldier. I knew him as a little brother, an athlete and a sports fanatic, a musician, slightly girl crazed and able to spend hours gaming, but never as a soldier.

He’d only been there three months, hardly enough time to write back home. He’d only been in the army for six months, and honestly, I’d never really spoken to him about it. It wasn’t how I identified him. But here, at the funeral were hundreds of men, dressed in uniforms, straightening collars, and saying what a brave solider my brother was. And there I was, keeping my mouth shut, for fear of dishonoring him.

Tara Kaloz

One Week Later

Ten fingers. Ten toes. I wondered how many would have to be amputated after tonight. I cleared away enough snow to reach the concrete floor of the balcony. Thank God for the shovel. I had to keep as low as possible to block both the wind and any possible eyes that would still be up and looking out windows at three o’clock in the morning. Indiglo can’t keep a body warm, that much is true. I tried sitting on the shovel but was afraid of what the sharp metal edge might do to certain sensitive parts. Forget the fingers, forget the toes. I had to keep warm if only to save any potential progeny.

Once in a while, I would tap on the glass and try the door. I didn’t want to yell. Neighbors might wake up. She might turn on the light. Like hell I was getting in anytime soon. I felt like a bad dog, minus the fur and, therefore, in a shittier position.

The snow of the day was turning to sleet and vagrant bits of ice stinging at my face. My taps were less interspersed and more desperate. Had she actually fallen asleep? I hadn’t heard any movement from inside for a while and figured she was calling the police or writing a note or something along those lines of dramatic. Irrational as she often was, tonight she had some justification.

Exactly where had I been last Tuesday? I thought she hadn’t noticed, had swallowed my lame Wednesday morning lies. Maybe I thought she was stupid, though I knew otherwise. Particularly when just minutes ago I was being stripped naked and pushed against the wall, I thought she had forgiven me.

Where was I? Well, okay, so I wasn’t on one of those late-night sting operations that seem to happen only in movies and crime thrillers. I wasn’t on the corner of Fifth and Vine, but in between Holly and Mona. How often do these opportunities present themselves save for dreams? “It’s not like we’re married for God’s sake” were my last words.

I now know different definitions for blue balls and woman’s scorn. When more and more of you starts to go numb, you don’t care about the screaming, don’t care about the light shining on your full moon, don’t care about the neighbors in bathrobes on their front porch yelling at you to shut up, again, like some bad dog.

“Elizabeth! Lizbeth. Lih-beh.” My tongue was forming icicles, I swear.

Panting now, gasping, coughing out staccato clouds of the remaining heat in my lungs.

~
When I woke up I was under the blankets, still naked, but I could feel my toes, my fingers. Veins everywhere surged the fresh, hot blood through my body, letting me know I was still alive.

Her silhouette was in the doorway. I could tell she was only halfway satisfied. More would come another day, probably much in the same way it had tonight. They never forget, not goddamn elephants, not jealous live-in whores.

“Some negotiator you are,” she said. “I would’ve let you in sooner. All you had to say was sorry.
What the hell’s wrong with you?”

Mike Geiger

Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed

Keystone wandered through the door smiling like any twenty-five year old that had one hour previous been in the process of ending his relationship of four years upon a tie-formal dinner on the edge of the end of the world. Olive had said that it was time to move on. He had said that there wasn’t anything to move on to, and she replied that if they were all going to die, she didn’t want it to be with him.

.
He situated himself before his piano. He looked up to wave to the audience, then cracked his knuckles.
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Perched on the piano bench to one side of him was a half-drunk bottle of wine. To the other side was a plate of peppers. He was allergic to peppers- they caused him to have a violent outbreak of rash. And hours after, his airways would begin to constrict. He took in a mouthful anyway.

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Humanity was going to end tomorrow. It was a bad joke: an asteroid was about to slam itself into the third planet like some kind of angry arpeggio. It left one asking, where the hell were all the engineers? The missile-launchers? The astrologists, the pessimists... did not anyone have a telescope? But it was too late for these questions now. No matter what anyone did, the world would crash.
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"This will be in fortissimo,” Keystone announced. “Because you people love noise. Can’t get enough of it. Make it loud, right? No, make it louder. Noise, noise, noise.” He slammed his fingers violent-down on the keys each time he said “noise.”

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He loosened his tie from his neck and his collar swung free. “I call it, ‘All the Fish in the Sea Could Not Even Manage, a Movement in However Many Parts It Takes.’”
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With a stony face staring straight ahead, his fingers began to race into keys, and a deep, discordant harmony filled the room like a flowery black shrapnel.

.

Midway through his fantasia, he looked out into his audience again, and now noticed Olive among the faces. It was at this point that he realized: no one was going to remember this. No one could even see it! The whole world out there was so busy running in panic that they were missing it, all of it. And even in a million days, it would never happen again.
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This made him sad. But it was a beautiful sad. It made every note that much more fragile; that much more lonesome and needed in its own world. And meanwhile, the peppers had begun to cause a rash. But the peppers tasted good and thanks to the wine all he could feel was a sort of red liberation.

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“It’s the notes you don’t,” he said without saying.
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Instead of fortissimo, the piece came in pianissimo. The bright white keys came off softer and softer until not even he could feel them. He might have been proud, but he did not smile and neither did he frown. It was important that it was only music now.

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He and Olive were lying side by side on a grassy campus hill a few years back. They remained, looking up at the fluffed sky with vacant mouths, until Olive spoke:
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“What do you think it’ll be like we die?”

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“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t want to think about that.”
.

“I mean,” she said, disregarding his reply as if he had never said it, “How do you think it’ll feel? Do you think it’ll hurt? Or do you think... maybe God gives us a break?”

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“I don’t know,” he repeated, sighing. “All I know is that I don’t want to be awake when it happens.”
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She giggled, eyeing a particular cloud from the hill. He closed his eyes.

.

It hadn’t really sunk in yet that he was now, for all intensive purposes, dead to his once-lover. It was better this way.
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He picked up his bottle of wine.

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“And for my next piece, I give you this one called ‘A Fish with Suntan in All Keys Minor.’” He slammed the keys with an immovable quietness and resumed.

Marcia Stamer

Song of the Dayshift Manager

Trainees! Trust all transactions only to me. Trace my train of thought as I transfer to you the trivial tricks of the true art of trafficking French fries and tremendous sandwiches that the traitorous tyrant who owns this travesty thinks are made-to-order. Transcend your trashy selves and the tripe of your invented travails. It will not be traumatic with me as your talented trainer. Troglodytes!

These simpletons couldn’t slug their somniferous selves out of a secured paper sack. Simpering sops! They slink around here in their sappy suits, one similar to the next. How can I sustain my sanguine self and advance my sagacious search for my sincere assignment in this insufferable swamp? These swine are supposed to secure skill in their supremely simple situations from a superior intellect such as myself? Absurd! My significance is supreme.

Observe as the broad bunch of brutes broods as they behold the blue broth out the bedecked breach in the opening of the building’s barricade! They have no bull’s eye attention or basic business sense at all. Why do I try to build up their befuddled brains? It’s of no benefit to me. How boorish! Am I to believe that they are only busting their humps because I brandish the brawn? This betrays the brilliance of my edifying briefings! But I have no broker to browbeat these brutes. Buffoons!

We must pull off perfection! We provide the paramount in fine dining picks. No pink petit fours here! Simply the preeminent in expediently produced sandwiches and fried potatoes known to patrons anywhere. Super-size that repast, pronto! I am prominent in my profession here. I am purely the epitome of perfection and prowess. Perhaps the proletarians in this province will one day appreciate my propensity for genius and promote me. Night shift person in power is my purpose. Prodigious prize, as is only prudent.

Katherine Schweitzer-Carney

Stifling Commitments

John was none too happy when he finally made it back to his apartment, yet regretful just the same for flying off the handle at Kara when she mentioned moving in together. At twenty-eight, John had never dated someone he considered attaching himself to. Kara was the first. Her body stunned and she was intelligent to boot. Still, the reality of sharing his life on a fulltime basis with anyone other than his golden retriever felt stifling.

Buddy greeted his owner at the door with a wagging tail and the cord from John’s plasma TV dangling from its mouth. Colored wires poked through its end from where the dog had chewed it free. “Damnit, you stupid dog,” he screamed. The dog pranced around him, its head and tail low. “What the fuck did you do?” He reconsidered his opinion about sharing his life with a dog.

John threw his cell phone and keys on the counter and inspected the damage. Not good, but manageable he convinced himself. He’d call Kara’s brother later and see what could be done to help him out. Maybe he could get him to talk some sense into his sister, as well.

The sun streaming through the window beside his television dulled then faded into the dark clouds of a cold front the radio weather report had promised was heading their way. “Come on,” John said. He grabbed a leash from a peg near the door. “We’re going to have to make this a quick because I’m not walking your stupid ass through the park in a thunderstorm.”

The dog wagged and slobbered, its pink tongue dangling loose out the side of its mouth as he trotted along the sidewalk toward the end of the block, a veteran at these daily trips to the park, though usually it was John and Kara walking with him. The dog didn’t seem to miss the lady’s presence as much as he missed the Frisbee John threw from a bench nearby. Kara kept a collapsible bowl and bottled water handy. The dog would miss this later.

“Sorry, dog. No Frisbee today,” John said to the wondering eyes of his companion staring up at him. “It’s going to rain,” he reasoned. “Look.” John pointed through a line of tall oaks along the asphalt path. It was darker than before. “Now go play,” he said unhooking the leash and coiling it up in his pocket.

The dog dashed, barking at a flock of pigeons roosting on the back of bench, the one John and Kara always occupied. It was at the quiet end of the park, far enough from the playground and skateboard ramps so as to keep Buddy from thinking he were a kid too.

The dog made chase of a squirrel and then another when the first escaped up a tree. He took chase after pigeons picking through trash, shifting from can to can heaped high. John took note of the bird poop covered bench that was his and opted for a seat at a picnic table chained to a tree. He would call Kara and at least apologize, he decided. Maybe explain to her how he just wasn’t ready to be tied down—or maybe not. Women are sensitive when guys say they aren’t ready. He had learned this from a girl he knew in college. “You guys always say that when you don’t want to be responsible,” she had said.

“Quit picking at the trash, you stupid dog,” John said. He walked across a path towards a distant can. The animal barked as he rummaged through fast food wrappers and newspapers spilling over its top. “We gotta get going before the lightening gets here. “Come on, boy,” he called, hoping the dog would listen and bound back his direction. Instead, the dog whined and ignored him, pawing at the can.

As John struggled to catch the loop on Buddy’s collar, he heard a squeak. Then, a black bag threatening to fall wiggled. The dog whimpered. “What stupid fucker leaves a bag of puppies in the trash,” John said, yanking it out and setting it on the ground at his feet. He untied the square knot sealing it shut and exposed a ragged bath towel with blue flowers on a crème-colored background. Blood stains were interspersed. His hands jittered in contradiction to the slow motion scene unfolding. The pigeons had returned to the bench where Kara wasn’t sitting, but where he wished she was. Some roosted and a few strutted across its seat.

“Damn,” he said, folding back the damp towel to a newborn squeaking through bluish lips. “Jesus.” The child’s body was filmy and its fists were clenched, flopping up and down on the umbilical cord and afterbirth stacked on its belly. The dog sniffed first then backed away, whining and barking in agitation over John’s discovery. It was a girl and the rain was getting closer.

Sharon Cebula: Two Stories

The Lesson

Dale made her way up to the attic while Emma-Jean, who was supposed to be watching her, was elbow-deep in ironing down the hall. The attic was Dale’s favorite place in the great big old house, filled with treasures and hiding spots and creepy shadows. At almost five years old, Dale felt she was quite old enough to explore on her own; but it was only when she could escape Mama’s watchful eye that she was truly free to root around among Grandma’s many memories in the attic.

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Today, Dale discovered some old clothes hanging from a low rod suspended between rafters under the eaves in the far end of the attic. She ran her hands along wool jackets, silk dresses and soft furs. Halloween was fast approaching, and Dale was finally big enough to go trick-or-treating with her older cousins. She wanted an especially good costume.

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As she pushed apart two garments to get a better look at the fur, a flash of white fell to the floor. Dale picked up the pale cloth for inspection. It was coneshaped, actually pointy at the narrow end, only open at the bottom, about three feet long. A hat maybe, or a bag? As Dale turned the cloth over she discovered two holes had been neatly cut about a third of the way down from the conical point. A ghost costume! And just exactly her size! How perfect! Dale slipped the cone of fabric over her head, right over her cotton dress, and found that it just skimmed the floor with the eye holes in just the right places for her to see. Pity there were no arm holes. Maybe Mama could make some before trick-or-treat night.
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She wanted to hurry downstairs to show Grandma and Mama her find but she couldn’t grasp the railing, as there were no armholes in her costume, so she scooted down the stairs, one at a time, on her bum. Just as she reached the bottom step, before she could run to the kitchen or call out, she heard a shriek and a crash. Mama had come out to the hall and dropped a plate of cookies and screamed when she saw her little girl in the Klan hat. Grandma came rushing out from the kitchen. Before Dale could say a word, Grandma snatched the white hat off her, took hold of her arm and dragged her out to the back yard. She strode directly to the barbecue pit at the end of the long yard, not saying a word, Dale stumbling along in her tight grip. She was too scared and confused to cry.
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Grandma threw the white material onto the barbecue grill and fished in her apron pocket for a box of matches. She lit one and held it to the cloth. As the fabric curled and blackened into red and orange flames, Grandma stood back to watch with Dale. She was quiet until the flames had fully engulfed the hateful garment. Without turning from the fire, she spoke.

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“The only thing you need to know about those people is this: When your mother and I were starving, they brought us food.”
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The flames dying now, Grandma turned to walk back to the house, leaving dale there to puzzle over her words.

Crazy Dream

I ride on the night wind, a gust of light and air rushing me in. I shrug off the cold, breathe in the smoke, exhale my other life. The lights cast color on romance under the current. The opening act still spins. The night just barely begins. All the Usuals are here tonight, all the inhabitants of my world, all the creatures in my crazy dream. Crazy, man; crazy. I spy my bartender, her skin still tender but her eyes made of glass. She sets up the medication, brown liquid in my glass. I survey my domain, my home away from home, if I had a home at all. Standing nearest the stage, to absorb the rage of music in a trance, to escape her cage, the redhead sways and lip-syncs, in matching crimson lipstick. In the booths at the back, slapping buddies on the back, stacking beer cans like a trophy: fuckin’ frat boys.That old wino down the bar tries his line on more young girls. Never know when it’ll work. He’s more than just another jerk: saw him take a sax once and really make it work. That was the good old days, before my life was in this haze of crazy, jumpin’ nights. I need more juice to keep up this pace. Can’t just observe the human race. Gotta go, gotta get! Gotta whop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lap-bamboom! She swings my way and swims through the smoke, through the colored lights and dizzying heights of heartache long remembered. I’m blinded by her lips, their memory trips me into smiling despite in spite of myself. A solar eclipse as she rotates her hips and throws me a dagger of hello. I turn my back, take a different tack, and ask the happy wino for the time. Band’s gonna start soon, blinding us from a hidden moon, reminding us the tune’s the thing. Let her ring, baby; let her sing.