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.

‘These Late June Evenings’, ‘Nyctinasty’, ‘Drift’, ‘February 19’, & ‘Am I The Only One’.

Photographer - Christine Trujillo

These Late June Evenings

This coastal mirage slips its moorings
in the silver late evening light, the diamonds
on the sea dulling as gently as controlled light-emitting
diodes in a newly formed seaside room.
Driving around, parking, watching, I look at the
houses sketched into the hillside, hidden in
overhangs of western Irish rock and root, holding
their contents with gloved hands, curving around
familial ritual. Thriving, occasionally flailing.
How long do we have I wonder aimlessly, noting the
houses emptied out of generations, supplanted naturally
by the next and the next. I strangle a breath and there, just there,
above the white line of the shore, below the hushed bog cotton,
in front of the limpid sun slipping way down, beneath the gulls
screeching retreat,
I see my absence.

Nyctinasty

Yesterday the dawn chorus seemed heightened,
taut, strung out on its own anxiety. Quivered and
strewn it catapulted me from my bed pulsing with
an unknown fear, a shadow partner moving swiftly
alongside me.
Outside in the half light, waiting for my four-month
puppy to show some affinity for toileting, I studied
the ocean to try and fathom the invasion of a near country.
How the people are being corralled, displaced, murdered
at will, how evil achieves a mundaneness, how shock
turns to fusion, becoming part of our DNA.
When I cannot look up or out for fear of blinding guilt, I
look to the ground and am stilled by an armada of daisies
hunched into their own being, closed to all interrogation.
How had I forgotten that daisies close at night.

Drift

When it dawned on me, after all, that life is finite
I shed my carcass body, my soul armour, and went
down to the shore to purify soul in brackish cutting water,
to see where soul would go.
Resting back from awareness further into the shadows
I watch soul break free of me, frolic and swoop in the surf,
Defying and goading the deadly backwash, preening in the glint of the
salt on the sea and screeching along with the careening seagulls.
While soul revelled, I wept. For every time I did not disrupt more, go to
the edge of every bluff and soar. Wept to see what soul was and
how I had not seen the chaotic beauty within. Jackal shrieks came from all
around me, a chorus of fury and lament so deep the sky blackened and roiled,
turning in on itself.
Petrified I ran, calling to soul to come back and unite with me, to write a
chapter that spat courage and would turn the world upside down. Soul was
basking now, moving further away, out to sea in a clamour of foam and hubris
forgetting in its anarchic swing – the fantastical.

February 19

In grief and sinister joy I leaned
Out the window over the river Corrib
Searching for lack of malice as I had become
Used to.
Jealousy & hate darts thrown for so long, sick
Twisted plaits – your ladder to the stars.
Down from the docks, five swans purled their
Haughty way towards the Claddagh.
So blue-white in the dark. Why five? Why not.
Nothing about them begged me, but oh, how
I needed them on that night.

Am I The Only One

who upon waking September mornings inhales the
smell of yesterday fading faster than a meteor or climbs
the air stairs to find a fretty cloud to rest on whilst plotting
the flawless coup
The only one to grieve the imminent departure of burnt
orange Montbretia who nodded and danced for me daily
and asked for nothing in return save admiration which
I gave & gave
The only one to add a suspicion of autumn to my morning coffee
and drink from the poisoned chalice anyway
self-administered not imposed
The only one to know there is a September day that stops the straggly
rivers running through my head and for that one day of your birth
I celebrate wildly.

Marian Kilcoyne is an Irish writer. She has been widely published in Ireland, UK, USA and Europe. She has read her work on National Radio, RTE Lyric FM. Her poetry collection, The Heart Uncut, was published in 2020 by Wordsonthestreet publishers Galway. She lives in Belfast and Co. Mayo. Website www.mariankilcoyne.com

‘An American Fairy Tale’, ‘Whether Patterns’, ‘How to Diagnose Peripheral Neuropathy When You’ve Run Out of Backyards’, ‘Lorraine’, & ‘I Think We Can All Agree That Puppy Mills Are a Bad Idea’.

Photographer - Tobi Brun

An American Fairy Tale

Gone Girl has come undone in a true-life abduction &
rape scheme gone awry that was commandeered by
an otherwise noble Silverware Salesman in dark jeans &
a ski mask who, it was determined by the authorities (only
after all was said & done), acted alone & with reckless
haste, leaving behind evidence pretty much everywhere,
ultimately leading to understandable speculation that,
perhaps, he was hoping to be caught which, in fact,
he was, but only eventually and, believe it or not,
accidentally via an interview at Costco with
The Clueless Stepmother, following a long period of time –
indeed ten months – in which Gone Girl & The Boyfriend
were unjustifiably bludgeoned in the loop-de-loop media
by law enforcement & The Public because, of course,
The Public always seems to jump to conclusions on
the bandwagon of group-think righteous indignation &
moral superiority all over social media, a self-reinforcing
death spiral of truth destruction if there ever was one which,
in this particular case, resulted, through reliable &
predictable polling, in the unfortunate couple being
unceremoniously deposited into The Enshittocene –
through no fault of, or effort on, their own, everything
in existence having been gobbled up by it – where they
got married & are raising two kids on the beach, a boy &
a girl, & where, like all the rest of us in America, they
are just trying to live happily ever after, good luck with that.

Whether Patterns

I can’t help but wonder
whether what is left of me
will be enough for you

as the days pile up one
on top of the other, like an
unbound manuscript consisting

of blank leaves of unread
poetry left carelessly near
an open window in summer,

caught by a sudden breeze &
scattered throughout the rooms
of the house, floating down

the bottomless stairwell
of our lives out onto the
main thoroughfare that runs

east to west &
back again in the ancient
City of the Cloud Queen.

How to Diagnose Peripheral Neuropathy When You’ve Run Out of Backyards

Two years ago today I forgot to remember how to
walk. That’s a First World problem said my friend.
But I live in the Global South! No First World
problems here. Well he said it’s ... complicated.

The llamas near the ruins stomped on the ground.
I will never be able to do that again I thought.
Feeling sorry for myself, I shed a tear or two
because I knew no one else would. The tests and

biopsies proved inconclusive. I blamed it on an
interference of clouds and my failure to file taxes
while living abroad. My friend readily agreed,
equating it all to a sort of cosmic shadow band

phenomenon that is often created during a total
solar eclipse, except in your case the IRS is solely
responsible he said. With him, I felt like I had at
least one person on my side. That I wasn’t crazy.

I know what happened to the third tower. I did
the research, back when I could remember how
to walk. When the silent fireflies in September
filled our backyards with the faint glow of hope.

Lorraine

One fine spring morning
clean-shaven hard-working
Dudley tentatively
approaches me
beneath the sign for
the Lorraine Motel
with a familiar tale
of family hardship
looking for a hand-out
in our 21st-century
cashless society
when there arises
a ripe teachable moment
in which I ask him
where should I Venmo
my assistance mi buen amigo?

I Think We Can All Agree That Puppy Mills Are a Bad Idea

& I don’t even know that much about them.
I’m not a dog person either (or at least I don’t
think of myself as a dog person since I only
officially had a dog as a pet for less than a week

in my entire life), nor really a cat person or even
a pet person if such a thing actually exists (which
I’m sure it does in some odd Facebook group kind
of way I don’t know about & never will). Although I

did keep a fish named Brad in a glass bowl for about
18 months, once. I fed him the flakes every day &
cleaned his tiny home every other week & he
seemed as happy a creature as could be expected

for one who hangs out 24/7 in a small transparent
container for the whole world to see. No privacy
(that’s why they call it a fishbowl, I guess), nowhere
to go except in a circular infinity of what I often

thought of as some kind of aquatic purgatory, &
then of course he was, in the end, flushed down
the commode, replaced in his bowl by a plant that
promptly died as well. So, when the nice young man

with the trim beard from the humane society gently
accosted me outside Walgreen’s this afternoon, I
signed that petition to ban puppy mills as quickly
as I could without ever once making eye contact.

M. F. Drummy holds a PhD in historical theology from Fordham University. The author of numerous articles, essays, poems, reviews, and a monograph on religion and ecology, his work has appeared, or will appear, in Allium, [Alternate Route], Anti-Heroin Chic, Ars Sententia, Deal Jam, Emerge, FERAL, Green Silk, Main Street Rag, Marbled Sigh, Meetinghouse, Poemeleon, Rituals, Scarlet Dragonfly, Winged Penny Review, and many others. He and his way cool life partner of over 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. He can be found at: Instagram @miguelito.drummalino Website https://bespoke-poet.com

Poker with Nanny

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Poker with Nanny

Nanny dealt the cards with a twinkle in her eye,
Five years old, I sat across, a sucker for a lie.
Two unmatched socks, a fistful of coins, my whole fortune there
She raised an eyebrow, muttered a crooked prayer.

Dice rattled loud, a plastic cup on the floor
Nanny with her ciggy, muttering hexes by the door
Snake eyes rolled, my hand shook, a tear welled in my eye
“Bad karma, child” she’d wink with a loving smile in her eye.

And Merle sang in the background
And Waylon played along.

Five years old, knees scraped from climbing too high
Nanny dealt the cards with a twinkle in her eye.
Five card-draw, a lesson with a playful disguise.
Pennies and dimes, a world turned upside down
But poker with Nanny, that’s where love was found.

And Merle sang in the background
And Waylon played along.

And Nanny would yell “Sing it, Merle”
Even when it wasn’t his song.

Pennies and dimes, a world turned upside down
But poker with Nanny, that’s where love was found.

Leigh Ann Raab a Virginia-based photographer and poet. Leigh Ann's creative journey spans over two decades. Her poems delve into themes of healing from an abusive childhood to navigating her own mental health. Known for her constant companions-a pen and a camera- she captures the world through both words and visuals. This poem honors her grandmother, who taught her to gamble at the age of five.