Burnt Offering

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Burnt Offering

The old marketplace, the center of the gathering, could be dated back to the glorious Romans so many years ago. Cauchon squirmed uncomfortably as he stood in his white robes outside of the church in Rouen. Standing there, he thought of how those ancient warriors, that red legion, would honor their pagan, heretic gods with burnt offerings. He wondered doubtfully,
with the silent weight of guilt like a tomb balanced on the tip of his pointed mitre hat, if he was not doing the same.

They brought her out, head shaven and in men’s clothing. This heretic fool. He had tried to save her from this, tried to bring her back from demonic damnation at that trial. But she was
insistent, persistent in delusion. She heard voices, she had said, as though the tongue of Satan flapped from between her lips. She stated it was the saints in her ears; Catherine and Margaret.
She claimed that God almighty, in France’s great time of need, would speak to this peasant farm girl.

What true God spoke to women? None. This was not Genesis nor the book of Luke, where God and his angels would send the golden voices of divinity to speak truths to humankind’s ears. This was France, four hundred years had passed since the First Holy Crusade. If anyone, God spoke to the Pope, but to filthy girls like her? No. It is just not so.

One or two of the armed English soldiers stifled a laugh as the pale young woman squeaked slightly in pain as they shoved her forward into the old market square. Only nineteen they believe, a beautiful girl, even with her hair gone and that gap between her teeth, she had done so much―too much―too quickly. From peasant to leader of all the armies of France, shining in armor underneath bloody banners at Orleans and Patay―Cauchon thought she was a half-witted girl who was lucky in leading some good fighting men forward. No hand of God, no voice of the Almighty blessing her ear. Yet, as she staggered forward bound in the malice of others, Cauchon thought that her bald head and her ragged men’s clothes shimmered with the same metallic glint of steel armor she had worn only a month ago.

Cauchon looked down at his white tunic and patted at the wrinkles on his chest. Yes, yes, his conscience was clear. No woman would hear the voice of God―she had to be lying, she was
a fool, and no God would support the French over the English and Cauchon’s own Burgundians. He had captured, tried this girl, and thus, God had to be on his side. Who was ending their story
bound and put to death? Not him―it was her― if that didn’t prove guilt enough, then what did? He thought of another being he had studied who had been bound before, but shook the example from his memory― he sniffed loudly, this was nothing like that. He looked down and spat. Some of the crowd looked up to him. He thought he could smell the burning scent of Roman offerings―the scent of frying pork skin riffled through his nostrils. He spat again. No. The drunk English men tied her to a tall stone column built long before anyone could remember. The soldiers started singing in English as they gathered wood in front of the murmuring crowd:

“Our King went forth to Normandy With grace and might of chivalry; There God worked marvelously for him, Wherefore England may call and cry out: Thanks be to God!”

The girl’s eyes pierced through the thundering silence which roared even under the drunkard song of the English. A mountainous stoicism bound to the unnerved frame of this pale, bald, gap-toothed girl. Cauchon could see her teeth from his position above the crowd. Was that a smile? Or was she wincing? He saw the whole universe in the gap of her teeth and he looked down again to spit.

He shook his head. A heretic deserves hell. God would say so, God had said so. From Revelations: “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those
who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” Had this girl not been cowardly and sexually immoral by dressing in men’s
clothing? Had she not been idolatrous, by pretending to hear voices? Of course. This was holy practice, Godly practice. The will of the Lord, the want of the Shepherd. Cauchon knew his responsibility, and he too had a flock to keep, to herd from danger and hell. The girl smelled coarsely of hell of wrongdoing, of vulgarity. He could smell it from all the way over here, her wrinkled face almost like a moon in the water of time. That scent―that burning pork again―again he thought of those red Romans and their burnt offerings.

His white robes ruffled in the light breeze as he heard a pile of wood clunk against the base of the column the girl was tied to. She remained motionless as the pile of wood grew around her feet―she was a fool who deserved this. He looked down to spit again but he saw at the knee of his glowing white gown, a smudge of mud. It must have splashed up from the mud of May in
Rouen’s streets. It was a brown and black pupil that sneered upwards, a smudge of filth. There was that pugilent smell again―and then the thought that came with it: what had she said,
through that gap between her teeth at her trial? What were those words she had said with the spite and skill of clerical expertise?:

His tail had tightened between his legs as she had gone on and on of the voices of Saints Catherine and Margaret and the love of God above. The jury of
clergymen had shaken their heads in unison, a forest of disapproving skulls. Cauchon was onto her; he knew in her heart was the heart of the false shepherd, the idol of darkness sewn tightly into the fabric of her soul. His patience had run out and so he had asked her, this peasant girl who knew not her letters nor anything of royal courts nor law, he had asked: “Do you know, in fact, that you
are in God’s grace?”

And the clergy at the trial squirmed in excitement, a law they had learned in their universities, in the instruction of logic on the will of God. Surely the girl who had sworn to have heard the female saints above in her ear knew she was in the grace of God. The question was a tricky one, a trap to show her as the dark idol he had known her to be. If she said yes, he’d call her a heretic―only God Himself can know if one is in God’s grace. If she said no, she’d be admitting that she was a false prophet, a liar mincing the words of saints for witchly powers. But the silence of the room felt hollow, like a rotten trunk in a forest. The many heads in their white gowns of purity pierced the girl in her mannish clothes as she stood pale as snow in the center of the room. Her hands were bound, her eyes trembling, her body as calm and quiet as mountains of southern France. Cauchon, himself, felt the roaring impatience of the ocean breaking upon Normandy’s shore, chewing at timelessness and silence with bereft, incessant motion.

“Answer the question;” he said with shark teeth, “Do you know, in fact, that you are in God’s grace?”

The girl exhaled as though the very tome of patience was being written in the breath winding out over her tongue, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” She said this slowly, her enunciation like the great royalty of old, the clarity of doctrine thundering through her quiet, yet powerful words. The forest of clergy rocked in the wind of her deposition, and Cauchon splashed in the suddenly calm waters of her profundity, his shark teeth dulled in her iron stoicism.

He had had her jailed anyway. Looked the other way as Englishmen had their way with her. Punished her when she had stripped herself from her dress and put men’s clothes back on. She was guilty, in every action, she was a heretic at best, at worse, a witch. The scripture was very clear. Fire. Fire. Fire at the stake. He realized now, the memory flowing through him, that that had been the moment when he first smelled it: the burnt offering smell, that stench of roasting pig fat broiling on a spicket. That flashing visage of red Romans uttering some mantra to a pantheon of dead heathen gods. That was the first time, and he smelled it again now as the torch of the sacrifice―no, breathe,

Cauchon―the torch of the sacrament of God was being lowered down around her feet. He had apparently missed the announcement of her wrongdoings, her public sentencing, and he refocused now as the orange torch spread the flames which began to lick around her ankles. Her mouth finally found its anxiety, its concern, its devine doubt as the kissings of flame found her bare skin and the small hairs populating her legs began to scorch black. Small shrieks were splattered out from that gap between her front teeth, and though Cauchon was certain he saw a flash of summer sunshine emanate from between them, her words became partnered with steaming tears as she squirmed and wriggled against the column holding her firmly to her sacreligious punishment.

She moved like the worm she was as she shouted out the name of the lord, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” as the flames turned her bald white skin pink and as pink began to ebb into black. The smell was putrid, it was overwhelming. Cauchon looked away from the sacrif―sacrament and back into the black iris-stain on his robes. He felt his smile fade, like it was yanked downward and away from him. He closed his eyes but the Romans shouted their mantra at him beneath his eyelids.The thunder of drumming banged along as he heard her high whimpers and the hushed gasps of a hungry crowd.

The fire was short yet cruel and the screechings of the witch passed like the May breeze. The crowd shuddered at the squealing of this girl, once the proud knight of the people, the banner of the crown of France. The vigorous body slumped into crooked black cruelty, a charred remain bent in holy prayer folds, like a large pair of prayerful hands clasped black from the ash of holy incense.

The smoke was worse than the flame. Cauchon thought so as he stared at the smoldering pile spit its black color into the blue void of the sky. He thought he saw faces in the smoke.

Female saints? A gap-toothed woman? Eternity was above, yet also, eternity drooled below in the pits of hell. That black smoke, as he walked over to the pyre through the crowd leaving the site, past the drunken English soldiers, seemed to smolder so quickly into the heavens. He looked at the charred body, the white skull beginning to glimpse through the falling ash of burnt flesh. The Romans in his brain were shouting now, their mantra of polytheism berating like a drum on the inside of his skull. He saw the white set of teeth peer through the ashen black, smoke whispering in whisps from a jaw still unclenched from the world’s cruelty.

He fell, knees first, into the ash. His white robes soaking in the soot. He stared at that small gap between the ruin of her skull. He smelled the burnt flesh of pig skin. He heard the hammering of drums, he felt a strong current anchoring him downward beneath the stonework. His ashen knees began to bleed and blister upon the hot cobblestone.

Two clergymen saw Cauchon’s fall and they ambled over to him. Try as they might, they struggled to lift him from his knelt position, a position almost as in prayer, so close to the still hot ash and coals of the public execution. He started shouting, hardly words at first, and then his words fell to a constant incoherent mumbling as yet more clergymen pulled Cauchon from his troubled kneel. They brought him to the infirmary. His mumbling never ceased.

He was blanketed and someone lit a fire in his hot room to sweat out the demons from his body. It was probable that devils had made him sick in the first place, they suggested, being in such close approximation to the witch’s death.

Cauchon’s eyes stared at the little fire in his little room, his eyes unsleeping, unwavering from the coals replenished and replenished by concerned clergymen of Burgundy. But as they cleaned his sheets and changed him, as they fetched him french water and bled him from disease, they heard him ask a quiet question to himself, over and over as the fire continued to flicker. It was a question none of them answered nor interrupted, nor wrote down. One they ignored, for though they would not say, they felt it too:

“Am I in God’s Grace?”

He would shiver with each inquisition as the words rolled from his tongue. All the while, his eyes watched the fire and his nostrils smelled the burnt flesh of burnt offerings to pagan gods as he laid in his shadowed monk cell sweating through his sheets.

Peter Randazzo has a bachelor’s degree in Social Studies Education from SUNY New Paltz and a Master’s Degree in Curriculum Instruction with a focus in Literacy from SUNY Empire. He teaches history in upstate New York, is a poet with Dead Man’s Press, runs the Clever Name Collective writer’s group in Albany, and runs the No Poet blog on WordPress. He has published in the anthologies of Eber & Wein, Hidden in Childhood, Penumbra, and has self-published "Dandelions & The Right Notes" on Amazon.

Kenny-Boy

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Kenny-Boy

Mary wasn’t born in Alabama, and she knew she certainly didn’t want to die there, either. The landscape flickered by outside her car window, longleaf pine trees streaking into a single flare of green. The smudged skyline of Birmingham faded behind them, its squat, gray buildings a miserable excuse for a skyline, and Mary’s throat tightened with disappointment. Her husband, Randy, nodded his head to the radio, drumming his hand along his upper thigh. He was off-beat, and though he pretended not to notice, Mary knew it bothered him. She heard it in his exhale. In the sudden, frustrated click of a tongue. A chorus, half a bridge, then the meaty staccato of his fingers stuttered. Paused. Began again. The 80’s station was punctuated with bouts of static and Mary felt the slow tendrils of a headache begin to tighten at her temples. She spoke.

“Could we change the station?” She asked.

Randy kept his eyes on the road.

“No,” he said, “I like this song. You know I like this song.”

Mary pressed her forehead against the cool surface of the window. This was a celebratory vacation. It was meant to be a grand hurrah. They had just left their forties behind in a fanfare of silver party balloons and a shared birthday cake, too many candles haphazardly stuck in its frosting. Their friends had hugged them close and left wine-stained kisses on their cheeks before heading home early to care for dogs or children or newly minted teenagers, of which Mary and Randy had none. Instead, they answered the summertime siren’s call of the beach and packed their suitcases.

They hadn’t been married long. Just a handful of years. Mary, her hair frizzled by years of bleach and ragged at the tips, struck up a conversation with Randy at the local pharmacy. She held a prescription for thyroid-support medication, her body recently gone soft amid middle-aged hormonal famine, and Randy palmed a blue-printed hand cream. He was nice enough. At 47, tired and the sole 2 owner of a 1500 square foot split level, nice enough was all Mary was looking for. They went on a date to the local pizzeria. She learned he hated fishing but loved trout at a restaurant, was kind to waiters but winced behind their backs, paid for dinner but only in $50 increments. He called her the next week, and they were married in six months.

The trip to the coast was cheap. With retirement looming, Randy was less willing to fork over a handful of cash that could be earning interest in their 401(k)’s. Mary hoped they would pack a few of their lightly used suitcases for a trip to Maldives or even spring villas in Tuscany. She wanted to lick marbled salt from her fingers after dinners of fish-and-chips in London and sear the top of her mouth on pizza in New York City. Heck, she said, one evening when their discussion reached an argumentative pitch, “I’d choke on a pita if it was on a cruise in the Mediterranean!”

Instead, they were driving down the hard-drawn center of the United States, leaving the leafy summer suburbs of Chicago for the wind-scraped beaches of the Gulf Coast. To his credit, Mary knew, Randy did make it sound exciting. Exotic, no. Glamorous? No. But quiet, and good. He did make it sound good.

He asked her before bed: “What do you think about driving down to the Alabama coast?”

A crossword puzzle was open across the hairy plain of his belly. His legs were spread long across bed, creating dual humps beneath the comforter.

“We could rent a car, grab some sandwiches or something and make a go of it. We’ll drive straight through the meat of the country.”

Mary chewed the inside of her cheek. Her face was soft, still damp from her evening moisturizer. She took off her glasses and placed them on the nightstand.

She answered, “I haven’t been all the way through the South. It might be nice.”

“Might be?,” Randy laughed. “I’m going to make it the best damn trip you’ve ever taken.” He sighed long and slow before humming to himself in a self-satisfied pulse. Mary rolled over and bit his shoulder, kissing it quick.

They left early on a Monday morning, striking the US hard through its greened middle on I-65. They drove through the sweeping cornfields of Indiana, stopping at a small barbecue joint for lunch and sharing cornbread by the whirr of an undulating fan. Their car was an old BMW model, a deep green with broad fenders. It looked formidable, the kind of impressive vehicle someone would have been proud to own in the 1970s, but the air conditioner was on the fritz and neither had remembered to get it serviced before they left town. It froze over quickly, until there was only a buzz from the air vents. Randy turned it on and off in spurts, their underarms and the tender place at their lower back growing damp. The American South bloomed across the state of Tennessee, an experience that spanned a quick few hours spent eating an early morning breakfast in Nashville and stopping for gas downtown. Mary knew her husband hated to be low on fuel, so she bit her tongue when he stopped every few hours.

By mid-afternoon on Tuesday, just past Birmingham, the creased lines of Randy’s neck had grown red with sunburn. The radio crackled in and out, unbidden stanzas broken and disjointed. Mary twisted herself over the passenger seat and stretched her arm backwards in search of the brown sack of snacks she had packed just that morning. The biscuits and gravy from breakfast left her body heavy and sodden. Randy barked at her, sweat dribbling down his temples.

“What did you bring?”

“Hold on.”

Mary felt something in her shoulder pop and she breathed in hard with pain.

“I’m freaking starving here. C’mon, babe.”

Randy’s eyes cut towards her then back at the road.

“Fine.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and shifted herself entirely over the seat, leapfrogging her hand over empty water bottles and warmed soda cans before locating the half-crushed sack under the seat.

“It’s kind of messy back here.”

“I didn’t ask for a sermon, just something to eat.”

She handed him a bag of cut apples and Randy’s jaw jutted forward, mouth open.

“Really? Apples? Do you even know what they do to your gut?” “There’s fiber in them. They’re good for you.”

“They’re full of sugar, and if I’m going to have sugar on a road trip I’d rather it be some sort of piece of crap candy.”

A blue sign painted with fast food symbols streaked by the window, and Randy merged hard. The car vibrated as it jumped the rumble strip.

“Candy sounds great.”

They stopped at a Trucker Travel Stop. The brown, yellow and fleshy pink branding reminded Mary of the thick carpet and wood paneling at her grandmother’s house, forever frozen in the 1970’s. While her husband perused the candy aisle, Mary wandered towards the fountain drink station against the back wall. It was tattooed with soda; sugary liquid lacquered the metal countertop and grey tiled floor. A tray of hot dogs steamed next to it, sweating sausages spun between slick metal cylinders. She filled a dented Styrofoam cup high with ice before spurting streams of Coca-Cola on top. It fizzled and popped, the excess bubbles tickling at her nose.

“You ready to go, sourpuss?” Randy held two bags of sour gummy straw in his hands.

Mary never knew if he meant it, the nickname. She never laughed. He never stopped using it.

“Yeah, hold on.” Mary turned towards the waist high wall of snacks and knit the tender space between her eyes together.

Her eyebrows were thin and fair, so they never quite met. Still, the ridges were deep and spread from her hairline almost to the bridge of her nose. She chose a bag of sun faded cheese popcorn before second guessing herself and snatching a small carton of Goldfish crackers instead. She took a moment to straighten the forgotten popcorn back on the shelf before following her husband to the cash register. There were still a few more hours of sun before they would stop for the night, and the sugar cocktail or perhaps strange effects of the candy dye had Randy talking.

“You know, my parents listened to the radio all the time. Talk radio, you know. The occasional baseball game when we were out camping. But otherwise, it was just talk, talk, talk, all the time.” Mary murmered her assent.

Alabama was seeping towards Misissippi outside the window, the weeping kudzu stretching towards the road in sage, sweeping arcs.

“My dad, he was a real man. He’s why I drive so well,” Randy took both hands off the steering wheel and balanced it between his knees, jolting the car before he straightened it back on the highway. “I wish you knew him. You know, I know, he was a truck driver. Which I guess makes me a professionally trained driver. Taught by the kind of guy who can’t mess up.”

Mary realized she was gripping the doorhandle. She loosened her grip, her knuckles reddening with blood flow.

“He was smart. I like smart people, you do, too.” Randy bowled over her concerns, smiling. “That’s why you fell in love with me, right?”

Mary smiled tightly. Ruefully, she thought? Was it a rueful smile? Was there something dark in it, something bitter? She didn’t question Randy’s intelligence. Still, her was brash. Brazen. Unliked. The ebb and flow of electronic impulses in his brain were hardly governed by societal expectation or emotion, and instead he relinquished his ideas on unsuspecting audiences with little thought to their digestion. Brash and loud spoken, he hid the ugly flare of his self-doubt behind her. He could transfix a room with sordid tales of death culture in Central America or lighten a party with jokes that teased at the political dealings of the host. Even so, and perhaps because, he treated his mind as if it would suddenly dissipate. Sometimes the loudness of his voice was too brash for the moment, revealing sweat at his hairline and the untamed stench of insecurity. The air conditioning wheezed, and Randy turned it off to defrost. The cab boiled. Mary tapped her fingers at her temples, drawing her legs up onto the car seat, crossing them like a child. She noticed newly painted veins of dirt across her white tennis shoes.

She spoke. “If you would’ve known better, would you have wanted something different? With your life?”

Randy didn’t answer. Mary saw the tension build in his jaw as he clenched his teeth.

“Would you have wanted kids? To live somewhere else?” Mary’s voice was small, but there was an ache to it. Something tender and small, a question that required an honest answer.

Randy said nothing. The radio continued to play, the sound a tinny, country twang. Thunder growled in the cloudclotted sky. The storm muted the springtime sprawl of color outside the window. The craggy hills of the north had long since softened into flatlands, and even those were giving way to the Gulf region. Just past Montgomery, the highway rose above a streak of swampland and straddled the Mobile River. Trees cloaked in kudzu reached brazenly over the road, eerie, monstrous things. Outrageous, craggy, lifelike as they clawed at the cars speeding down the empty highway. The storm clouds trapped the heat low along the road. Randy glanced at the fuel gage once, twice, three times. No one had spoken in an hour.

“Let’s stop quick,” Randy said.

Mary pointed at the GPS. “We only have a half hour to go,” she said. Her voice was low.

Randy smirked. “A half hour is better spent with a full tank.”

A fleck of candy clung this right canine. The exit was almost hidden by the overhanging heft of tree branches, the blistering orange of synthetic lighting just beyond a bend in the road. There were two gas stations across from each other, each boasting empty bays. Tom & Jim’s Gas Stop boasted a slick tin roof, slanted at an impossible angle and pockmarked with dirt and uprooted vines, but light burned from inside. Mary saw an older man at the counter, leaning backwards with his arms crossed, head tilted towards what she was sure must have been a television hung towards the ceiling. It was too lonely, Mary thought, and she wordlessly pointed at the Chevron across the street. Randy obliged, turning the car hard into a brilliantly lit gas station chain, the concrete scabbed with spilled condiments and oil stains. The Alabama forest hung heavy behind the stark white and silver metal of the place, bending over the clean lines of capitalism as if bowing in reverence. The seat belt alert pinged as they both unbuckled, opening and closing their doors in unison, the staccato sound loud against the chatter of cicadas from the trees. Mary wondered how many were there, their beady eyes black against the night. Randy looked at her, eyebrows raised.

Mary said, “I need to stretch my legs.”

“Don’t go far,” Randy answered, tapping at the pump keypad.

Mary stood on the passenger side of the car; arms folded on its roof with her chin on her hands. She watched her husband’s back flex beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, noted the new lines that streamed across the back of his neck. She hardly knew his body. She’d only seen it for the past few years, already quiet and tempered by middle age. She didn’t know how the tautness of youth had calmed across his chest, small patches of fat cropping up at the bend in his waist and along his upper arms. Youth had long since left him, twisting his physical self towards someplace softer and unknown. Mary felt a sharp twinge of love for the person he must have been. The softer, kinder self. The emotion was easily overwhelming and just as quickly gone. Was it even real, she thought? This kinder person? The stranger walked out of the forest with little fanfare. He wasn’t there, then suddenly he was fully formed and breathing, just beyond the line of gas pumps, as if he’d been split from the earth. He walked with the slope of a wounded animal, tangy and wild with presence. Everything moved. His fingers plucked at one another, bloodying cuticles into crusty lumps, and his tongue worked behind the pockmarked stretch of his cheek. Haggard eyes darted back and forth, from Mary’s tight face to Randy’s curious scowl. “Well hey there, you two.” His voice was raspy with disuse.

“Hey, man.” Randy towards the man, pulling his hands from his pockets.

“You got a couple bucks to spare?” the man said.

He tapped his foot against the ground, the sole of his boot loose and flapping. Rap rap, it went. Rap rap.

“We don’t have anything,” Randy said.

“You expect me to believe that, with that high-oh car you’re drivin’?” There was expectation in his voice.

“We can’t help you out. Sorry.” Randy leveled his eyes at the man inching across the asphalt, incredulous with his defiance.

The man tilted his head and smiled, revealing a mouth full of straight, white teeth. The man’s right canine was broken, leveling the point into a jagged line.

He spoke, louder this time, “Hey man, you know who I am? My names Kenneth, Ken, Kenny-Boy. I live out past the tree line there.” He held his hands up in a mock surrender. “Pretty sure I was born there, too, but who knows? It was a long time ago.” His breathing hard and oddly distinctive, each exhale accompanied by a grating wheeze.

Kenny-Boy continued. “All I need is a couple bucks to get me through the night.”

“We don’t have anything for you,” Randy said. “But you sure as hell better stop right there.” Randy’s hackles were raised, the air lit with primitive territoriality.

“What’re you going to do?” Kenny-Boy stopped. “Hurt me?”

Randy pocketed his credit card and unhooked the pump nozzle from the car, placing it back in its cradle. Kenny-Boy moved closer, his voice wheedling. Dangerous. “Hey buddy. I’m talkin’ to you.” Kenny-Boy jerked his chin up, his left nostril twitching.

“Look man, I don’t have anything. I have a card. Do you want a card?” Randy sucked in his cheeks and squinted his eyes, incredulous. “Even if you get the damn card, I’m not tellin’ you my zip code, so good luck using it here.”

Mary breathed out, her body weakening against the car door. “Randy…”

Kenny-Boy spit. “Shut up, lady.”

Randy fired back. “That’s my wife, asshole.”

Mary couldn’t turn her gaze, couldn’t look at anything but the stranger’s face. It was sunburnt, but it couldn’t hide the leathery complexion and dirt-speckled expanse of it. The corners of his mouth bubbled with spit and blood, and thick flakes of skin peeled from his lips. Mary couldn’t smell him, but she knew he would be earthy and pungent with sweat.

“You give me some money, and we’re all good. And don’t offer no fuckin’ food. I don’t want it, I don’t need it.” His words fell hot on the pavement.

Randy sighed and turned back towards his wife, who was frozen on the passenger side of the car. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, his smile pitying. “Do you have anything?”

Ken, Kenneth, Kenny-Boy clucked his tongue once and his nostrils twitched in unison as he turned towards her. “Yeah, baby, you got anything?” He bit his lip and shrugged his eyebrows up and down suggestively. “I don’t have anything, he’s right. I’m sorry.” And she was. She was sorry, that she was meeting this man at a gas station in god-knows-where Alabama. That he’d walked out of the forest, the remote tropics of the American South, and had run into the brunt of her husband’s insecurity. She was sorry that he was alone and she felt alone. No one was guilty of anything but the accident of proximity, and she realized it just might be enough to ruin them all. Mary’s quickly escalating panic punctuated her words as she apologized again.

“I’m so sorry.” The edge of her sentence broke, and she felt the muscles in her stomach clench. She suddenly missed the five-dollar bill she spent on Goldfish and Coke that afternoon. Randy mistook her tone for fear, perhaps for panic and, he reacted hard.

“You hear her? She doesn’t have a damn thing. Neither of us do. So get the fuck out of here.” Mary thought about that night for years. Maybe if he’d sounded more apologetic, the man would’ve made off with a scowl and thick wad of phlegm spat to the pavement. Maybe if he had acted like the man mattered more, like his unwelcome presence held weight, that they would have ended up at the beach like they planned. Their world would have continued like they planned.

Kenny-Boy held out his hand. Grime striped his palms.

“Give me the keys,” he said. “I get the car.”

He jerked his head towards the forest, “you get the woods.”

“Are you fucking kidding me -”

Time moved quickly. It stumbled over itself, losing minutes to seconds as Ken, Kenneth, KennyBoy pulled a knife from the deep pocket of his cargo shorts and stabbed Randy in the stomach. Both men gasped in unison. One hand was sunk deep into another’s torso, where the thrump of blood, pushing and pressing onward, spilled up and around the blade. It was a secret place no one was meant to touch, perhaps only the being that knit blood to bone, but here they were. A colony of germs spread through Randy’s gut, latching onto blood vessels and spilling into tiny capillary canals. The blade, unseen and deadly, nicked the abdominal aorta and skewered his right kidney, unleashing a torrent of blood into his stomach. The delicate balance of Randy’s internal organs was upset and violated.

“Lady don’t you touch him! Don’t you move!” Kenny-Boy screamed across the car, eyes still trained on the gory scene in front of him. Mary held her hands up, bent at the elbows, pale fingers shaking against the clouded sky. The convenience store lights flickered, and the world went dark, the scene lost in the night for a moment before Ken, Kenneth, Kenny-Boy, the man from the swamp, the man from the woods, ran. If Mary had known any better, she would have prayed to the croaking depths of the Alabama wilderness to open its jaws and swallow him whole. She would have pleaded with the swaying kudzuchoked trees to tear the limp threads from his emaciated, tobacco-stained limbs, to leave them in shreds on submerged cypress branches. She would have prayed for a belch from the bayou, summoning alligators on their nocturnal night flights to train their eyes on his circuitous course through the trees. For their hunt to be silent but their enjoyment to be long, drawn out, the screams from their prey unwholesome to the human ear. If she had known, she would have sent a fiery strain of energy towards the sky, electrifying the tunneling wind channels and constellations with an arc of lightning so bright it would crack the darkness straight through the middle, igniting the man’s body with celestial fire.

Such is the grief of a woman, when a woman comes to know grief. Randy cradled his stomach and met his wife’s eyes with a rounded look of surprise. Pain seeped from the corners of his mouth, visible in the white strain of his lips, tunneling down his neck in a trail of wildly pumping arteries. Mary dropped her arms and sprinted around the car, hand skirting the dirty green hood. She gathered a crush of bug corpses in her palm. She caught her husband as he began to slide towards the concrete, wrestling the crook of her elbows underneath his armpits to soften the slump. Her arms burned as they sputtered awake, blood suddenly racing towards her fingertips.

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.” She repeated herself, her words rote and meaningless.

She tossed them towards the gash in his belly as easily as if she was comforting a child, knees red from the itch of summertime grass. What damage could it have done, she thought, her mind clicking back and forth in time, dredging up models from high school anatomy class and off-base chemical equations. The kidneys, heart, liver and lungs, all nestled around each other in perfect pink and purple hues had seemed so approachable when they were flattened against the stretch of a poster board. It was so different from the sweating, bleeding, oozing body in front of her. Adrenaline sped through her limbs and ignited her throat as she screamed. Guttural and harsh, over and over again. She screamed. Kenneth, Ken, Kenny-Boy, did he hear her, Mary thought later? Did the sound of it twist itself around his chest, squeezing his heart as thoroughly as hers broke? Her screams, didn’t they sluice through the trees, gathering weight as they crackled through the saw grass and alligator weed? Grief was grief was grief, Mary thought. For the kind and the unkind. For the dead, the dying, and the ones who should be.

Meghan O'Brien is a graduate of the University of New Orleans MFA program, and works in the publishing and digital media industry.

By the Cherry Tree

Photographer - Tobi Brun

“By The Cherry Tree”

Prudence Dickson did not mean to be defiant, truly she didn’t. Somehow however, her tone, or her look, or her choice of words always seemed defiant to her father, and Thomas Dickson tolerated no defiance. His wife and his other children soon learned to keep their heads tucked in, especially when he had a mood, but Prudy had never mastered the skill. In truth, in her 17th year, they had clashed more than ever.

“My child, will you never learn that a soft answer turneth aside wrath?” Clara Dickson asked, as she surveyed the results of the latest thrashing Prudy had suffered, dabbing the welts with an ointment of willow-bark, plantain leaves, and calendula. Her daughter hid her face in the pillow and tried not to wince or move too much as her wounds were dressed.“I didn’t mean to,” Prudy answered.

“You never mean to, child,” Mrs Dickson said. “You never did. But it’s never stopped the consequences, has it?” She placed a square of light linen over the belt marks and bound it lightly in place. She shook her head, sadly. 

“How do you bear Father, Mommy?” her daughter asked. “It’s not like he’s never beaten you or the others. How do you stand it?” 

“My parents decided I should wed your father,” Mrs Dickson replied. “He’s a good provider, and well-connected. Yes, he has a bad temper, but he does not drink to excess, or scandalise our family, like some men do.”

“But do you love him?”

“Love is just for novels, Prudy,” her mother said, with resignation in her voice. “It’s fine for the characters in Miss Austen’s books, but in real life...love doesn’t often fit into marriage.”

“That’s awful,” Prudence said, sitting up and turning to face her mother. “I can’t imagine it.” Her mother smiled at the folly of youth.

“In time, you will,” she said. “Your father will find you a good match and, if you are lucky, he’ll be a good man. Who knows? You might even grow to love him.” In truth, Mrs Dickson doubted her words and if she suddenly recalled, fondly, a young man’s face from her own youth, she did not say so.

Thomas Dickson was well-respected in the village of Queenston. Starting with his own land-grant of 300 acres, through connections, luck, and 150 acres Clara had brought him as a dowry, he’d become a wealthy man. His home – the Stone House – was the largest and best appointed all along the frontier. As collector of customs, and the owner of a large estate, he had only a few equals, and no real rivals. His family sat in the first pew at St Saviour’s Church, and even the curate looked to him for approval as he delivered his sermons, rather than the deity he served. No one would have dared call him a petty-tyrant to his face but, in that small corner of Upper Canada, he was never gainsaid.

As the family left the church on the next Sunday morning, Dickson greeted the curate, who was pleased to have received the great man’s approbation; he had wondered why Mr Dickson had requested that particular topic for a sermon, but gathered from his face and handshake that he was not displeased by the result.  After that short delay, Dickson turned aside to address the real goal of his socialising, today.

“Mr Chase! Just the man I was hoping to see,” Dickson said, as he drew aside the older man. Nearly 60, and recently widowed, Uriah Chase had no children who had survived, and Thomas Dickson was not one to miss such an opportunity. Chase owned nearly 400 acres of land, had a grist mill, and a smithy that he ran at a considerable profit.

The two men chatted for a while about assorted local matters, before Thomas Dickson got to the point.

“You know, I was listening to the sermon, today,” he said. “When Reverend Dawson reached the part about ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him,’ I must admit, my thoughts turned to you, in your bereavement.” He smiled at the frail, old man.

“What am I to do?” Mr Chase asked. “I am robbed of my support and succour. I suppose I shall go to my death unmourned and forgotten. Alas.” Chase evidently thought his wife’s decline the most extravagant of self-indulgences, and the resultant loss as a personal attack on himself and his position in the world.

“It’s very sad,” Dickson agreed with him “Have you thought of looking for someone to ease your burdens and gladden your closing years?” He glanced over at his wife and daughters, as if by chance.

“Oh, I’ve no time for courting,” Mr Chase said. “Such a foolish waste of time is suitable to the young, but, an established man, a man of business, can’t be engaged in such frivolity as paying calls, and taking women to dances, and the like.” Dickson knew that Chase had been making inquiries, but his disagreeable and miserly nature had led to him being rebuffed by many of the older women – spinsters and widows both – that might have afforded him a suitable match. No one with a modicum of independence would likely yoke themselves to such a man, and those with no dowry or inheritance stirred no passion in his avaricious heart.

“I do understand,” Thomas Dickson said. “If only such matters could be conducted like a business transaction.”

“As they were, in the old days!” Chase said with some vigour. “The parents would decide such matters, the partner would be chosen, and the matter set to rights on a proper basis.” Mr Dickson, certain Mr Chase meant on the basis of the property each partner brought to the altar, smiled to himself.

“I hear your wisdom, sir,” he said. “And having only daughters left, I am much concerned that they marry into substance. I have not been well myself, and worry lest all I have built up be scattered on the winds.” This last was a total invention, but he suspected an intimation of his own frailty might bait a trap for the older man.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Uriah Chase said, insincerely. “But I’m sure your eldest girl  – what’s her name – doesn't lack for suitors. Half the bucks along the frontier must be vying for her hand.” He gazed at Prudence, appreciating the view of her slim waist set off by the full skirts of her dress. Thomas Dickson did not miss this glance.

“Silly boys, wastrels, mostly,” Dickson said. “I’ve seen several off. No, I would have her wed a man of substance, someone with judgement. Someone who’s demonstrated sound sense in cultivation and business…Well, in short, someone like yourself, Mr Chase.” Mr Dickson gave a deep sigh, as if the frustration of finding such a match weighed heavily upon him.

So it was that Mr Chase was invited round for Sunday dinner at the Stone House. He lingered afterward and, between sips of port, appraised the four young daughters of his neighbour: Prudence, Charity, Emma and Maud. The last two – 13 and 11 – were, of course, too young to be marriageable, nor would it do for Mr Chase to make his suit for the 15 year old before her 17 year old sister was wed or, at least, engaged. As it chanced, Prudence had a bosom that he found most pleasing, especially when set off by her slender waist. The prospect of a fat dowry –  and a fourth of Thomas Dickson’s worldly goods should he die, God forbid – was even more pleasing to Uriah Chase.

If Clara Dickson was surprised when Uriah Chase was invited to stay for supper too,  she did not say so. Only Emma noticed the funny way in which she looked at her daughters that afternoon, but she did not know the reason until later. After dinner, the two men concluded their arrangements in Thomas Dickson’s office.

“Mommy, I will not marry that man,” Prudence said, when her mother told her. “He’s so old! And he looks at me as if I were a prize pig that he wished to fatten for slaughter.” Clara had not known, and did not commend what Thomas had decided, but there seemed little chance to evade it. She stroked her daughter’s hair as Prudence buried her face in her shoulder. 

“My child, you had to know that your father would pick you a husband, soon,” Mrs Dickson said. “And though Mr Chase is older, well, that means he will not trouble you so very much, as a younger man might. He will not stray with others, and you will be a rich widow, soon.” She realised that might not have been the best thing to say, when Prudence began to sob again.

“I do not wish to be a widow at all!” Prudence said. “And I would rather be a poor widow, and have been truly loved, than a rich man’s widow who never loved her husband.” 

Mr Dickson, however, was unreceptive to any such arguments. He had made a good match, one which would see his eldest daughter well settled. Then, should Mr Chase happen soon to die – which event Thomas Dickson fully expected – then his daughter, knowing little about land and business, would of course turn to him, and he would gather all that Uriah Chase had scraped together over 60 years, into his own hands and to his benefit, although he would never say such a thing, openly.

The next Sunday, which was as pretty as a May Sunday can be in that part of the World, Mr Chase sent a carriage round to fetch Prudence to visit him. Mrs Dickson went to chaperone but, taken with the pretty day, and the blossoms on the trees, she did not seem to notice that her daughter and the young driver exchanged looks, both going and coming.

Over the following weeks, Prudence took many long walks out to the edges of Thomas Dickson’s fields, and lingered beneath the black cherry tree, along the road to Durrand – a hidden spot that the girls had often visited when avoiding their father. If Emma discovered her older sister’s visits there,  she never breathed a word to her parents. Thomas Waters, the young drivere who worked for Uriah Chase, came often to the spot, and brought flowers he picked for Prudence. Their meetings seemed to Emma like a scene from one of the novels she loved to read. And Clara, if she learned of them, did not hinder Prudy’s frequent trips to the cherry tree, though she wondered if her daughter had ever noticed the initials and heart carved into the bark, almost hidden after many years, and forgotten by all but her.

One morning in June the household woke to find that Prudence had left a letter at her father’s accustomed place at the family table. What it said, exactly, none of them were sure, but the scowl on Thomas Dickson’s face as he tore the missive to shreds was one they long remembered. Emma was not surprised by the event, but Clara Dickson’s curiously dry-eyed weeping managed to distract the ire of Thomas Dickson from noticing any conspiracy.

“I’ll thrash the girl until she cannot sit for a week,” Dickson thundered. “How dare she throw herself at trash like this Waters? I’ll have that young puppy put in the pillory! How dare he sully my name?”

“You will have an apoplexy, if you do not calm yourself,” Clara Dickson told him. “No one has been put in pillory since before Prudence was born.” Even though this was true, Thomas Dickson did not wish to be calm. He swore out a warrant for the arrest of Thomas Waters and, as justice of the peace, he signed it. He sent men after the pair but, as they had set sail from Newark in a schooner, there was no prospect of apprehending them. A disappointed Thomas Dickson realised that, by the time he could find Prudence and bring her back, she would be ruined; Uriah Chase was not the sort of man to accept his hired man’s leavings.

So, with the blackest ink he could find, Dickson crossed the name of Prudence out of the family Bible. He tore the silhouette and pencil sketches her sisters had made of her to fragments, and burned the family portrait he’d once hung with pride over the dining room fireplace. He forbade his daughters – his three and only daughters, as he said – to ever mention the name Prudence again. When, in due course, a letter with familiar handwriting  arrived for him he consigned it to the fire, unread.

It was the same when other letters came, whether sent to him, or Charity, Emma, or Maud, he inspected them closely and, if there was the slightest suspicion in his mind as to who had sent them, the letters were burned. If any letters that came to Mrs Dickson, she kept that secret to herself and read them in some quiet moment, committing them to heart, before disposing of them.

It was not possible to forbid all mention of Prudence by those outside the Dickson home, of course. The girls heard from others that their sister had married Thomas Waters, and that they were living in Durrand. If Thomas Dickson also knew, he never mentioned it, but he did send letters to every substantial man in that district and beyond, traducing the name of Thomas Waters, and enjoining them never to give him gainful employment. 

Thomas Waters had guessed that his father-in-law’s wrath would be exceedingly great, and had made such plans as a young man with little money and few connections could. His strong back served him well, and he managed to persuade the Board of Police in Durrand to take him on as the new gravedigger before he had even run away with Prudence. A cabin went with the position, since the burial ground was some distance from the village. A relic of fortifications from the late war with the States, it was rough, dirt floored, and small, but sturdy enough.

Prudence might not have been used to such rude surroundings, but she did not complain. She took in sewing, and from scraps of material her patrons did not wish to claim, she made little curtains for the paper windows, and a quilt for their marriage bed. She walked the three miles to the village, and the three miles back daily; sometimes more than once. She swept the floor and did the cooking and the laundry, carrying the basket of clothes and such linen as they had down the steep banks to the creek and washing  them on the  stones. Had she married Mr Chase, such chores and many more besides, would all have been done for her, but she did not dwell on it.

Over the months, rumour had come that Uriah Chase had wed, and she worried it might have been Emma who was forced to be his bride. All Prudy’s letters went unanswered, and she needed to know more than the rumours occasional travellers brought. In due course, little Thomas Waters was born, yet still no word came from Queenston. When May had come again, and the boy was three months old, Prudence decided that she could bear the silence of her family no more. She kissed Thomas Senior and, carrying little Thomas on one hip, with a pack of needful things on her back, she set out to walk the 50 miles; they had no extra money for her to take a stagecoach nor a schooner.

“I should go with you,” Thomas Waters told his wife. “It’s cowardly for me to not face your father.”

“If you leave,” Prudence told him, “Then you might lose your job. It will take days to walk so far – longer, carrying little Thomas. People will complain if their dead go unburied for a week or more.” Thomas knew she was right; people had complained in the Winter, when the ground was frozen, and the bodies had to wait in the brick charnel house for a thaw to come. 

“Could we not wait?” he asked. Thomas Waters loved her dearly and the idea of Prudence being gone for five days or longer bothered him. He did not fear she would stop loving him, but he was not sure what Thomas Dickson might do; he’d seen the marks her father’s belt had left on Prudy’s back.

“It will be hotter in the Summer,” Prudence told him, her eyes steady and her chin slightly tilted upwards to look at him. “And the baby will weigh more. It’s better to go now.” Thomas kissed her and watched her as far as he could, until the road took a sharp bend around the earthworks of the old forward battery, and he could see her no more.

Prudence had walked the distance from her cabin to the centre of the small village of Durrand more times  than she could remember, and it was not long at all before it was behind her. From there the King’s Highway ran out generally eastward, although it wandered a little from south to north, on occasion, to find a footing on the driest land between the escarpment and Lake Ontario. It had been a well travelled route even before the first settlers had arrived and, although but a dirt road, it was the best and quickest way to walk the long distance.

Twice a day, stagecoaches passed along the highway, from Queenston all the way to York, or the reverse. The whole journey took some 17 hours, but none could not stand the bumping and lurching that far, and horses and drivers were both changed at Durrand. Half such a trip on Upper Canada’s roads was no joy for travellers in those days. A barefoot walk would spare Prudy and the baby an ordeal, nor would the girl be much wearier at the end of it.

At Big Creek Prudy faced her first real challenge; ’til then, the road had been mostly level, but that stream lay at the bottom of a deep gorge, about a quarter of a mile wide. The road ran steeply down to the water, and then climbed again quickly on the far side of the ford; she felt a little breathless by the time the road levelled out again. Less than a mile to the east lay the Gage’s farm; a fine piece of land, their front garden marked the high-watermark of the American invasion that was beaten back just before Prudence was born. Their house lay on the far side of the Stoney Creek, as they called it, but the Gages had built a bridge across the small stream.

People had begun to plant fruit trees on the farms that lay beyond that, and the road was scattered with fallen blossom; the scattered petals and fragrance were some relief on the long and dusty walk to the next hamlet. It was called Fifty, since it stood on the banks of the fiftieth creek between that spot and the great Niagara River. Prudence was a little worried that she might be recognized and handed over to the justice of the peace there, to be returned to her father. John Willson knew Thomas Dickson well, as both sat on the bench, and in the Legislature, but Prudy’s fear was childish. The pampered young lady who had fled the Stone House a year before little resembled the barefoot mother in homespun cloth who was trudging along the King’s Highway. The gossip as she passed through Fifty, was not about her, for that was old news, but about Willson’s son, Hugh; John had his own family troubles to attend to, without getting involved in her father’s.

By the time she reached Grimsby, it was late in the day. She had no money for lodging, so she found a spot beneath some bushes at the edge of Robert Nelle’s fine farm, and spread a blanket there. There was water from Forty Creek to drink, and the baby nursed quietly; Prudence ignored her own hunger. In the morning, she rose at first light and walked on. 

Prudy’s resolution to walk the whole way wavered when a passing farmer and his wife offered her a lift on the back of their wagon. She hopped up in back of the buckboard, which rattled and bounced along the road until they reached Thirty Creek, where the couple turned toward their destination. Prudence thanked them for their kindness as she set out, again. Though little Thomas had not enjoyed the rough ride, she was less footsore than she had been, and the farmer’s wife had given her some bread to eat. 

From Thirty Creek it was a long walk to Glen Elgin. That stream ran down the valley, from the mills at the edge of the escarpment into the broad and safe harbour that opened onto Lake Ontario. People had started to call that pretty spot Jordan, and Prudy wished she could tarry there to enjoy the Spring day, but whatever balm or gall awaited her in the Gilead of her fancy, it lay beyond Jordan’s shores. 

Beyond Glen Elgin, the several creeks that flowed down into the Black Swamp were a bigger obstacle; all of them had to be forded, and they swarmed with biting flies that tormented Prudy and little Thomas. Twelve Creek – the largest of them, more like a river than a stream – ran down, deep and wide, from the escarpment to the Great Lake, and the bridge over it had a toll which she could not afford. To cross over Prudence had to make her way up to the village of Beaver Dams, a steep climb to the top of the escarpment. Weary at the end of a long-day’s walk, she lingered in the village and watched a woman beating her rugs outside a substantial house.

“That’s a big job,” Prudence said, with sympathy, for beating rugs is dirty and tiring work. The woman looked Prudy over; seeing a barefoot young woman with a child, both dusty and tired from the road, she guessed that the girl might be in need.

“If you help me finish beating the rugs, you might have supper and a place to spend the night,” she offered. Prudence was quick to agree, although she had never done such work herself. Still, she’d seen the hired girls at the Stone House do it twice a year, and she knew what to do, and the dust of the task added little to the dust of the road. Thomas lay on a mossy spot and watched his mother work, not understanding in the least why she was doing something so funny.

In the morning, Prudence and Thomas set out once more. From Beaver Dams, it was an easy, downhill walk along the Limestone Heights, past Stamford and St Davids.  It was only 13 miles to Queenston, but Prudence found she was walking slower as she neared her destination.

“Thomas,” she said to the baby, “I don’t know how your Grandfather will act when he sees us. It would be wrong not to give him the chance to meet you, or to deprive you of your grandparents but…” She struggled to put her fear into words, while little Thomas gurgled and paid no attention. 

It was just before 11 in the morning when she first saw the Stone House. Her memories of growing up there flooded back; although she loved her mother and sisters, it had never been a happy place. It did not feel like home, the way the cabin did. It might have fine floors, glass windows, and a grand staircase, but she did not envy those who lived under Thomas Dickson’s roof. She stopped and put on her shoes; she was not going to stand before her father barefoot. Then, bracing herself for any storm, she walked up the long drive to the door. 

It was time for luncheon Prudence realised as she knocked. It would take a minute for someone to come from the dining room to answer the door, so she waited patiently. She expected it might be one of the hired girls and, since they never stayed long, it was likely that whoever answered might not know her. But it wasn’t a stranger whose face appeared; it was her sister, Charity.

“Prudence!” Charity said, her hand rising to her mouth in shock. Her wide blue eyes took in her sisters’ road-worn appearance, and the small child she was carrying. Behind her Prudy saw Emma, Maud and her mother crowding the door from the dining room, and staring at her. Their expressions ran through surprise, wonder, shock, envy, joy, and worry, but no one dared to say a word before Thomas Dickson passed sentence.

Then, pushing past the women, her father appeared. His face was expressionless as he approached. Prudence moved slightly, holding up the baby as if in offering; showing her father his namesake. Thomas came to the door and Charity stepped aside. Without a word he closed the door in Prudence's face.

Prudy Waters took a deep breath; later there would be weeping, but she would not do so here, not on the doorstep of the Stone House. She would not give Thomas Dickson the satisfaction of driving his wayward daughter from his door in tears. She held her head high and walked down the drive. Her steps were firm, and no one watching would guess that she was worn from the long road she had walked, and heart-broken from her reception. 

The road could be seen from Stone House for some way, and she kept her pace steady but, as Prudy came over a small rise, Emma was waiting for her by the cherry tree, where once they had hidden from Thomas Dickson’s rages. Down in that hollow, they could not be seen from the house, but they were not too far to hear if Emma was called. Prudy smiled as her sister came toward her, carrying a loaf of bread in her hands. Emma’s presence was a comfort; the sisters had always been close.

“Mother told me to bring it,” Emma said. There was a slight hesitation in the younger girl’s voice, as if she wasn’t sure if the gift would be accepted. There was a steel in Prudy that was new-tempered, an edge she did not recognise.

“Why didn’t Mommy come, herself?” Prudy asked.

“She’s making sure Father is distracted,” she answered. There was something in the way she said it that made Prudy realise the source of her hesitation.

“Has it been worse since I left?” Prudy asked; she could not keep a note of fear from her voice. The question hung for a moment, and Emma’s eyes looked bright with tears.

“Yes,” she answered. “His temper is worse, and he demands greater obedience.” 

“I didn’t know, I’m sorry,” Prudy said.  She wondered if she was telling her sister the truth; she knew her father well enough to know her defiance would goad him. The guilt she felt was relieved, a little, by the knowledge her sister wore no wedding ring.  “You didn’t have to marry Mr Chase?” Emma shook her head.

“Father spoke of it, but Mommy said she was not going to lose a second daughter,” she answered.

“I was afraid Father might make you,” Prudy said. “I wrote to ask, but never heard a word.”

“You wrote?” Emma asked; she’d thought her sister had forgotten her. Prudence nodded.

“Whenever I could find paper, and a coin to pay someone to fetch a letter to you,” she said. Emma looked at Prudy and realised that could not have been as often as she wished. Emma relaxed a little, then hugged her sister. 

“I’m glad you escaped,” she said.  “He’s wrong to drive you away.” 

“I never expected he’d welcome me back, but I had to give him the chance to see his first grandson,” Prudence said. Emma came closer and looked down into the boy's eyes; he looked back with the thoughtful gaze of a child seeing someone new, but still safe in his mother’s arms. “Does he know you’re here?” Emma shook her head. 

“He went into the study and locked the door,” she said. “Mommy gave me the loaf, and told me to come. I didn’t know she knew this spot.” Prudy looked at the old tree; there were many initials she did not know carved into the trunk, her sisters’, too, and her’s and Thomas’, set into a heart. 

“You must have run, to catch me” said Prudence. “I wasn’t walking slowly.” Emma grinned and Prudence knew her sister had hiked up her skirts and torn across the fields to arrive ahead of her. Then the smile faded.

“Does he hit you?” Emma asked, and they both knew whom she meant.

“He’s never hit me,” Prudence replied. “Thomas isn’t perfect, but he loves me, and I, him.” Prudence looked in the direction of the Stone House. The rough cabin she shared with Thomas was not a fine house; no one riding out on the York Road would ever stop and admire it as passers-by admired the Stone House, but within it dwelt no heart of stone. It had something her birthplace would never know.

“Mother worries that you’re penniless,” Emma said.

“I am,” Prudence replied. “But I have a roof over my head, my husband has a job despite Father, and I can sew or do laundry. We get by.” Emma ran her hand down her own silk dress as she looked at Prudence’s rough homespun; it looked the worse for the dirt of the long road on it but Prudy did not seem embarrassed by it. The younger girl watched her sister sit on the dirt to take her shoes off; she could tell that Prudy’s feet were most often unshod, these days. Emma wondered whether she could make such sacrifices.

“Will you come back?” Emma asked. She put the loaf – still warm from the baking – into her sister’s bag. Prudence smiled at her; she appreciated the kind gesture.

“No,” she answered. “Never, as long as Father is alive. But you can write to me. So can Mommy, and Charity, Maud too, when she’s old enough to keep a secret. Mrs Waters, in Durrand, on the York Road. Just don’t let father know.” Emma hugged Prudy, a strong embrace that ended in a sob, before she turned away.

Standing still under the cherry tree Prudence watched Emma, until she disappeared back toward the Stone House. The tears she had feared just a little while before did not come; there was no longer a cause for them. Prudence Waters looked up into the tree’s leafy boughs; there would be many cherries, this year.

Peter McGuinness recently retired after teaching History, World Religions, Philosophy and Visual Art for nearly 30 years. Before becoming a teacher, he was an editor and a journalist. He have a B.A. in History and Politics, a B.A. and an M.A. in the History of Art, and a B. Ed. He recently had a story published online in Grim & Gilded.

The Machete Yelp Reviews of Sebastian’s Seabiscuits

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Jonathan D.

Davis, CA

3/5

Sebastian’s Seabiscuits was fine. I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I feel for the staff. But would I

come here again after what happened? Not a chance. I mean, I didn’t really see it. I was pulling

out of the parking lot when the guy got there. I think I saw the knife for a second. But still. Also,

racehorses aside, I still don’t have a clue what a “seabiscuit” is. The crab wasn’t half-bad though.

Rachel F.

Santa Cruz, CA

5/5

Please please please please please support Sebastian’s Seabiscuits! Like I’m begging! They need

support now more than ever! I get the criticisms– like sure, how did the guy get in? But what,

you expect these minimum wage high schoolers to risk getting beheaded so you can eat your

lobster mac and cheese? They’re such nice people. Would give 6/5 if I could. Great service! The

experience wasn’t their fault. Oh, and the food was pretty good too iirc!

Barnabus M. (Food Critic and Top Reviewer)

Sacramento, CA

0/5

Davis, California has a new restaurant and if I can say so based off of my experience (and I

really do feel like I need to say so), it’s a total f*cking death trap. Don’t eat here! It’s supposedly

a “new” restaurant, but it already has mold in the corners. The silverware looks old and has water

stains. The décor is old-fashioned if I’m saying it politely, and the breadsticks were stale.

Disgusting. And what on earth is a seabiscuit? Look, I’m not saying the deaths were their fault,

but clearly, they’re into the drug trade or owe money to the wrong people. So, actually, probably

is their fault. I didn’t even get to sprinkle some crackers in my bisque before blood was squirting

all over the place. And before people start sending me messages again, yes, this is my real name.

Delany J

Davis, CA

2/5

This place was a really weird way to start college. My roommates and I just wanted to get some

food after we got our nails done. We’re tired of our room already. I mean, three bunks in a 12-

foot space? What is this, the military? The university is totally abusing us. Anyways, we got the

grilled prawns for our appy and it was actually pretty good. Maybe too salty. I’ll have to drink a

lot of water before my workout in the morning. But not bad. I was really excited for my eggwhite

whitefish omelet. They said it comes with tomatoes, spinach, a mix of cod and haddock, and

avocado optional, but y’all know I’m a California gurlie so OF COURSE I’m getting my

avocado!!! And a good price, I think. $25. I grew up in Nevada and we don’t get a lot of seafood

out there, so it seems fair enough to me. Anyways, the guy with the sword walked in right when

my omelet got set on the counter thing where the servers pick up the food. He was dressed nice.

Sort of like Daniel Craig <3 But then he started hacking away at people and the servers just ran.

They just ran! They didn’t seem all that dedicated, and the omelet never came. Not sure if I’d

come here again. Depends how well they clean up the stains.

Curtis L.

Pensacola, Florida

1/5

Listen I paid for a f*cking service man, this stuff happens in real cities all the times but these

townies just freaked out and ran off like a bunch of rabbits or whatever. I paid for a service!

Where are my salmon tacos? They talked up the avocado drizzle. Well, you know what? I never

tasted it. They didn’t even give me a voucher for free food next time or nothing. Not that I’d ever

come back. Shouldn’t food be part of the service? Like, shouldn’t a comfortable sword-

murderer-free dining room be part of what we’re paying for? How the f*ck they gonna let some

dumba** with a machete in. Block the door. Say he didn’t reserve a table. HOW BOUT CALL

THE COPS. But no. California hates police. Let’s just let everyone take a machete to the neck

instead of trusting our bravest heroes. AND GOD FORBID WE HAVE A GUN ON HAND TO

PROTECT OURSELVES. I don’t know why my daughter wanted to go to school here.

#givewaitorsguns #impeachNewsom #f*ckcommunism #landofthefree #nationalguard

#f*ckliberals #demsrcowards

Dave

San Francisco, CA

4/5

Jeez. That was a crazy experience. I think they handled that psycho pretty well. Minor injuries, 2

deaths. But that’s the police’s fault for not getting there quicker. Machetes aside, the food was

good. I really recommend the lobster tarts. Sounds weird, but it was really good. Also, the Clam

Juice Monterey Mule was surprisingly refreshing. Yeah. I feel bad for the owners. Gonna be a

rough few months for them. I’ll go back next time I’m in town again though. I feel good

knowing that my son is going to college here given how kind the employees were to us after the

cops arrested that dude. Also, though, I’m really unclear about what a seabiscuit is. “Seabiscuits”

weren’t even on the menu, so I decided to google it, but the only thing that comes up is that

Tobey Maguire movie.

Jake Johnson is a writer based out of Davis, CA. They are an MFA Candidate in the Creative Writing Program at UC Davis and have an adorable dog named Bandit. Their work has been featured in Rain Taxi Review of Books.

The Revenge of the Potato Man

Photographer - Tobi Brun

You almost wouldn’t consider Captain Sandwich a superhero. Almost. But if you saw how fast this guy could throw a sandwich together, it would blow your mind. I mean, you can’t even see it. It’s like… like… If you’ve ever been unexpectedly hit on the head and your eyes black out for a split second. It’s like that. It’s not painful to watch. It’s just that fast. 

I first met him when I started working at Fatty’s Sandwich Shop downtown. They didn’t even have the guy train me because he’s too fast. He’s physically incapable of slowing down. At least, that’s what he says. I just don’t think he likes training people. 

“Oh, and this is Captain Sandwich,” the grease-aproned owner with the bulging belly said to me as an afterthought on my first day. I must’ve looked confused. 

“Y’see,” he started to explain. The whole time, Captain Sandwich worked away, making sandwiches, stocking the line, filling sauce-bottles. All extremely fast. 

“The p’cyoolur thing ‘bout him is: he’s only this fast with anything sandwich related. Can’t run for shit, can’t beat anybody up worth a damn. But man, when he makes a sandwich…” he drifted off and raised his hand towards Captain Sandwich, still working away. 

Mitch trained me. He was a cool dude, laid back. I thought he was my age. I was nineteen then. Later when it came up (I forget how) I was shocked to find out he was ten years my senior. I was also shocked to find out that not a hair on his head was real. One day, when he was walking into work, his hat (part of the uniform) blew off and took his hairpiece with it. He chased it down as I watched out the window. When he finally caught it, he placed it swiftly on his head and neck-snappingly looked around to see if anyone saw. I quickly averted my eyes and continued making sandwiches. 

Mitch and Captain Sandwich and me and Fatty (the owner). They really didn’t need anybody outside of Captain Sandwich, but he had recently converted to Catholicism and wanted

Sundays off. Mitch worked Sundays now even though he didn’t like it. I asked him why he didn’t like working Sundays and he shrugged and said: “just don’t.” Anybody else who responded in this manner could be psychoanalyzed to determine the root of this dislike. Maybe a dislike of being deprived of a morning of sleeping in during their youth. Maybe something traumatic and repressed regularly occurred on Sundays in their youth. Maybe they had been forced to work Sundays against their will their whole life. But Mitch could be taken at his word. If he just didn’t like something, he just didn’t. 

Sundays were the only day of the week I worked which was fine because I was in school. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and felt like I was wasting my time and money in school. Or somebody’s money. I wasn’t involved with the tuition payments. My parents and the government handled things. But I was wasting somebody’s money and that didn’t sit right with me. 

The only reason I had gone to college right after high-school was because that's what I was supposed to do. That’s what everybody else was doing. All the people that didn’t follow this pattern were on Skid Row, or so they’d led me to believe. “They” meaning the adult influences in my life. So it was off to school. 

My first semester I had no friends. Well, there were people you could call friends, technically. People I would talk to in passing or in a certain class, but it wasn’t like we were hanging out outside of that. 

I remember Frankie Midnight (his actual name, I’ve seen his license). He didn’t have anybody in his social circle in our sociology class and we happened to sit next to each other, so we’d exchange comments at the beginning of class. All the talk was limited to the class, though. As much as I desired to break beyond that talk, I never could. I didn’t know too much about him. Maybe I could’ve come up with something. Asking him about a movie or an album or

something. But I never did. I’m pretty sure he was content with the limitations of our conversations. 

I was doing the credit-required classes first and falling deeper into depression. I found refuge in the library. The third floor was the silent floor and there were stacks and stacks of classics to look through. I buried myself in A Farewell to Arms and A Wild Sheep Case as well as several biographies or autobiographies of my favorite writers. The bio/autobiographies depressed me though. Keouac had met all of his lit’ry buddies in college while I was sad and alone. Rimbaud had completed his works by seventeen. I was two years older and hadn’t written a worthwhile thing. Hemingway was on the Italian front at eighteen. I dove deeper into fiction. 

The sad thing about reading was that the library would always close at some point and whenever I put the book down I’d be alone again. Wisps of the characters and their worlds would comfort me in my mind, but confronting the sidewalk by myself as others around me walked laughing in twos and threes always brought me down again. 

Working Sundays was a welcome escape. Fatty’s was far enough away from campus that nobody would pass up the other options along the way to get there. Fatty’s wasn’t renowned or locally legendary. It was just another sandwich shop in the city. The only people that came in were traveling through or lived on the block. 

I’d work other days as needed. My social life was nonexistent and my free time was spent reading, so I was available to work whenever. Fatty would call me and ask if I could come in and I’d always say “yes.” I’d get to witness Captain Sandwich at work. 

Whenever I worked a shift with Captain Sandwich I never had to make anything. Well, sandwiches anyway and that’s mostly what we sold. We only had two salads and they were the simplest things in the world to make. Just a Cæsar and a Greek. People hardly ordered them.

They weren’t even listed on the menu and most people weren’t brave enough to ask for something they didn’t see. But once in a lucky penny (how often do you find those?) someone would ask. 

The thing I noticed about Captain Sandwich was that he was incredibly slow doing anything else. I mean, Fatty had told me so, but to actually see it? It was the craziest thing. There would be a rare instance, say he went to the bathroom and I had to make a sandwich. He’d come back and notice the wallet-clutching customer and decide to cash them out. He would punch the numbers at a flat tire’s pace. Beep…… beep…… beep…… enter… “your total will be $13.74.” He’d slowly take the money, like he was reaching through frozen syrup, gather the change like someone after coming stiffly inside after a freezing day, and hand it back through the syrupy barrier. 

Whatever sandwich I had made would be long done, waiting on its anxious owner to get their change and devour them. Then he (Captain Sandwich) would smile the biggest smile in the world. It looked like it hurt, with his eyes squinting and all of his teeth showing, and bid them a good day. He’d hold the smile until they walked out the door, casting uncomfortable or shivering glances over their shoulder, then he’d sigh and let it drop like the final rep at the gym. His face would return to normal, he’d pat me on the shoulder without looking at me and then return home to his station. 

I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I knew what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to be a clock puncher or a pencil pusher or a corporate drone. I didn’t know exactly the meaning of these phrases at the time, but I understood the idea they represented: conformity to a single thing for a lifetime. Whiling away the time until retirement, then being too tired to do anything when retired and wasting away prime years of life. Thinking of doing any single thing

for the rest of my life terrified me. The only things I really wanted to do was… well, I didn’t know. 

I didn't want to be a rockstar or an actor or a lawyer or doctor or teacher. All I wanted to do was be left alone to read and write. Whatever I wrote and submitted was rejected. Maybe my time to be a writer was gone. Maybe I wasn’t even born to be a writer. What did I want? Maybe I could just marry into money and become a house-husband. That’d be easy if I knew any rich women and how to talk to them too. 

My second (which would be my final) semester ticked away. I was already wasting time in life. I needed to get out, I needed my freedom. Time was freedom and if I could control my time I could control my life. That’s what I thought then at least. Why was I learning things I didn’t care for or had already learned in high-school? I was planning on going on leave to sort things out. I needed to know what I wanted before I wasted any more time or money. 

Fatty’s grew on me. If I was spending time doing something I didn’t want to, at least I was making money doing it. But I enjoyed Fatty’s. All sorts of interesting people came in and Captain Sandwich was there too. I’d become mesmerized watching him work on any large orders, the way his hands moved, the way the ingredients flashed away. It was like watching something in fast-forward, but about a thousand times fast. 

One Sunday, Mitch told me the origin of Captain Sandwich’s powers. It had been itching away inside of me, the need to know. I waited and waited until somebody told me, but as time went by, nobody ever did. I finally asked Mitch. His eyebrows raised and he nodded. 

“You’ve been here so long now that I didn’t realize you didn’t know,” he said. I was leaning against the sandwich line and he leaned against the salad line opposite. There were no orders and everything was clean enough. He looked off, thinking…

He looked slowly back at me. 

“Apparently he was born like that,” he said with a shrug. Just then, a customer walked in and Mitch nonchalantly walked over to take their order. I was left incredulous and disappointed. I planned on asking Captain Sandwich (real name unknown) myself one day, but never got the chance. 

After a month of mentally building myself up, I finally decided to ask him. I finished class and skipped the library. Fatty had asked me to come in when I could. That was in the morning before my class. In fact, his phone call had woken me up. 

“Busy today kid?” he asked. Fatty was straight to the point. No ‘hello,’ ‘good-morning,’ or ‘did I wake you?’ I didn’t mind it. 

“Not after class,” I responded, equally to the point. 

“Come in when you can?” He said with a slight note of asking. Somewhere towards a demand like a speeding car, with the added question like hitting the brakes too late when passing a cop. 

“Sure” 

“Thanks” 

He hung up. 

When I arrived at Fatty’s it was no longer Fatty’s. There were fire engines lined all down the street, cop cars, ambulances, lights flashing, hoses spraying and misting. Ironically, the mist from the fire hoses made a rainbow in the air. Before the remains, outside of the emergency responders buzzing about, were the infuriated, fist-clenched Captain Sandwich and the greasy-aproned fat-bellied Fatty, trying to hold back tears. 

Before I could say anything (I had no idea where to start), Captain Sandwich’s

fire-eyed gaze met my helpless and confused one. 

“Come with me,” he said and began to walk. I followed behind. Fatty stared at the smoking blackened remains of his once not-so-renowned restaurant, oblivious to anyone else. The sun glinted off of Captain Sandwich’s blackout ‘77 Mustang. He got in and reached over to open my door. I slid in. It smelled like a new car. The leather interior was spotless and the sun gazing down from the blank blue sky hardly penetrated the tinted windows. “It’s about time I ended this,” he said, staring forward angrily and firing up the engine. Before I could ask what we were ending or what happened or if he was really born like that, we were peeling out and zooming down the street. 

When I said he was slow at everything else, I was wrong. Apparently he was a fast driver. Captain Sandwich was an enigma full of surprises. And not only was he a fast driver, he was precise too. He drifted around corners on a dime. He weaved in and out of honking cars, his only focus on the road ahead. I felt at ease, despite the speed and ferocity with which he was driving. “Potato Man,” he brooded, “Po-tay-to Man.” 

He rounded another corner and there was a long empty straightaway. At the end of the straightaway stood the city’s renowned restaurant “Potato Man’s: Burgers, fries ‘n stuff.” “What makes you think he did it?” I asked, unease creeping up on me. The packed parking lot of Potato Man’s lay ahead. We entered and Captain Sandwich slowed, stopped, then reversed quickly into an empty spot. 

He put it in park and fished in his pocket for something. 

“THIS,” he said, removing his hand dramatically from his pocket to reveal a single french fry. I didn’t get it.

“THIS,” he said, bringing the fry slowly in front of him, his gaze focused venomously on it, “Is the Potato Man’s calling card.” 

“We’ve been enemies from the start,” he said to himself, then looked me in the eyes, “But today I end this.” 

We marched in. Captain Sandwich marched straight to the front of the long line. Several people raised voices in objection, but we paid them no mind. Well, Captain Sandwich didn’t. I gave them apologetic shrugs and helpless hand gestures. 

“Bring me to the Potato Man,” Captain Sandwich demanded the freckled, potato-hatted cashier. The cashier nodded nervously. 

We were brought through the busy kitchen to a door that looked like the door to a walk-in cooler. 

“He’s through there. Or, uh, he should be. I gotta get back to work.” 

He quickly moved away. 

The door opened inward to a dark wood paneled and floored hallway. It was lit overhead by warm lights hanging at intervals from the ceiling. Captain Sandwich entered and I followed. The door shut behind us. 

At the end of the hallway there was a potato-skinned door with a golden plaque that read “Potato Man.” We entered without knocking. 

The Potato Man (I assumed) was behind his desk. He stood when we entered and between the short time between him standing there and him raising the revolver, I gathered that he was short, fat, bald, and wore a white suit with a Potato Print tie. He fired and I winced, shutting my eyes. I heard a thud. It was a gut shot to Captain Sandwich. 

My mouth hung open. My mind raced. What the hell was–

There was a second shot and the bullet thudded into my gut like a boxing glove hitting a heavy bag. I was down for the count. I looked over to Captain Sandwich and he looked at me. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth. Is this really how it ends? I thought. Captain Sandwich smiled. I was confused. 

“Y’see,” he strained, “he thinks he’s won.” 

The Potato Man still stood, only the top of his bald shining head visible over his desk from where we lay on the ground. 

“But he’ll never, never–” 

There were two more shots and everything went dark.

Riley Willsey is a 23-year-old writer and musician from Upstate New York. His short story, "Bus Station," was published on Half and One's website. Sporadic posts and bursts of creativity can be found on his instagram page, @notrileycreative.