Publisher, Rural Fiction Magazine; publisher, The Chamber Magazine; founder, the Farmington Writers Circle. I have written short stories and poetry for many years. In my careers as a Naval officer and in the federal government, I have written thousands of documents of many types. I am currently working on a second edition for my poetry collection and a few novels.
Rural Fiction Magazine (RFM) would like to publish more writers from around the world, regardless of your country of origin. So far, RFM has readers and contributors from 46* nations.
RFM wants to develop talent, measuring it in a fair and equitable way to find hidden and disadvantaged talent in a world where not everybody has an equal chance to exhibit their abilities. RFM does not discriminate against anyone. The only personal criterium for publication is talent in use of English and in developing outstanding stories. Because RFM embraces the global community, RFM embraces differences, whether those are race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or physical ability. RFM wants to see diversity in writing from around the world, from all time zones. RFM respects everyone’s voice and strives to create a culture in which people from all cultures, races, and backgrounds feel encouraged to express their ideas and perspectives. You can help our contributors gain exposure by sharing their works widely and also by back linking to them and to RFM’s homepage.
RFM is seeking short stories, poems, reviews and press releases, on rural fiction books that reflect the beauty, tranquility, joys, anguish, sorrows, humor, tragedy, comedy, and drama of rural life. RFM believes that all stories are about people and that genre is secondary. Therefore, RFM is open to almost all genres such as mainstream, literary, romance, horror, western, mystery, thriller, historical, realist, coming of age (Bildungsroman for those who speak German), science fiction, magical realism, dystopian, etc, so long as they are connected to rural life and culture anywhere in the world.
Your work must be in English. It can a translation from your native language, but it must be in English, which is spoken around the globe and gives the work and author substantial worldwide exposure.
Please note that there is no pay for this other than a publication credit and exposure to the English-speaking markets. However, all rights remain with the author.
Currently, RFM is publishing material within a few weeks of acceptance, though this may vary depending on the number of submissions.
Please share this announcement to give it maximum exposure.
Financial donations through either our GoFundMe or Buy Me a Coffee accounts will help expand our global reach by paying for advertising, more advanced WordPress plans, and expansion into more extensive Content Delivery Networks.
*These nations include Canada, United Kingdom, India, Austria, Taiwan, Australia, Thailand, Japan, Ireland, Germany, Poland, New Zealand, Lithuania, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Greece, Singapore, South Korea, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Nigeria, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Romania, South Africa, Mexico, Bangladesh, Italy, Palestinian Territories, Guatemala, Switzerland, Nepal, Portugal, Barbados, Kenya, Malta, Hungary, Spain, Ukraine, Turkey, Oman, Brazil, Estonia, and Pakistan.
Sarah Das Gupta is a poet who has been published several times in both Rural Fiction Magazine and in The Chamber Magazine (both published by Slattery Publishing). Recently, I sent several questions to her for an interview. Below her published works in RFM and The Chamber (following) are the questions I sent and then her responses.
Poems Published in The Chamber and in Rural Fiction Magazine
Q: Correct me if I am wrong, but I have seen in a couple of bio notes for other magazines that you are about 83 years old. So you were born about 1943 and graduated college around 1965 (maybe?). Then I take it you taught for sixty years, meaning you retired about 2003. That period from about 1965 to the present day (assuming you read a lot during that timeframe) was an interesting one for the evolution of literature. Have you seen an overarching trend or tendency in the literature of the English-speaking world during that timeframe? Does anything about this period fascinate or disappoint you? What genres or styles of literature from then or from other periods do you enjoy most?
Q: You have lived in India and Tanzania per your bio notes. Have you read much of the literature of either one or from any other nation(s)?
Q: Did you live in rural areas while in India and Tanzania? What did you enjoy most and what did you find most challenging about living in each? Do you find living there peaceful, idyllic, chaotic, frightening, or what?
Q: While in Tanzania, did you live near Kilimanjaro or the Serengeti plain? These are probably the two most famous landmarks our readers will recognize. What do you treasure or dislike most about living in India?
Q: You taught English in Kolkata and Tanzania. Did you primarily teach grammar and conversation or did you also teach literature? Were you employed by an organization or university? What were the joys and challenges of teaching in these two nations?
Q: Did you learn Bengali or Swahili while living abroad?
Q: What is your writing process? What is a typical day for you as a writer?
Q: How do you come up with ideas for stories or poems? Do you sit and try to think up things or search your memories for something to write about? Or does something trigger a memory (like in A Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust) or an idea and then you write it down quickly?
Q: Are you a disciplined writer or one that basically flows with the stream of consciousness or somewhere in between?
Q: Do you have any works soon to be published that RFM’s readers should watch for and where they might find them? Are you giving any talks, presentations, or lectures?
Responses
Early Background: I was born in 1942 in the middle of World War 11. My father was in command of a team of gunners on the cruiser, HMS Orion.
I saw little of him in the first three years of my life. My maternal grandparents lived near Biggin Hill, the Royal Airforce Air Base from which the Battle of Britain was fought. Apparently, my mother watched
with me in her arms as German aircraft come in to bomb London and then flew over the house, dropping untargeted bombs, to save fuel on the return route.
My godfather was drowned off the Irish coast when his cruiser was tragically cut in half by the liner, The Queen Mary, carrying American troops to Glasgow. Nobody ever talked about him.
I never heard my father talk of the war. In fact, only last year, I discovered his ship, The Orion, was one of two British ships which won the most battle honours in the War.
We lived at the highest point of the North Downs. Our house was a menagerie first and foremost. We kept over thirty horses (some ours, some at livery), every type of poultry, five or six dogs, farm cats and Burmese cats. The garage never housed a car but all the injured wildlife which the locals brought to my father. When you opened the garage door, a falcon would fly at you or a snake slither over your feet! I have remained a great lover of animals all my life.
University:
When I arrived aged 18, at London University, I think it was the first time I had been to central London. I studied medieval and modern history, a subject I had always enjoyed at school. Here I first met a young Indian student whom I was later to marry.
3. Trends in Literature
I became an English and History teacher after graduation and teacher training. Certainly, in the UK at least, I taught Literature and in the course of my work I covered the range of the subject from Chaucer to Joyce. I have always particularly enjoyed teaching and reading poetry. As I only retired at eighty, my opportunity for developing other interests and hobbies has been limited. Certainly, from the 1960’s, Western literature has changed in style, content and authorship. Women have become increasingly important, voices like Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison are not only women’s voices but also Black voices too. In fact, in the post-colonial era the number of Black and ethnic minority writers has increased prodigiously. This perhaps has been most evident in ex- British colonies, specially in India, the Caribbean and African nations like Nigeria. Many of these nations have not only written about colonisation but also engaged with Indian or African cultures more deeply, for example, in novels like ‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth. In much of Europe and North America the voices of recent immigrants have forced countries to look at themselves in a less favourable light as in ‘White Teeth’ by Zadie Smith.
One subject I feel less at home with because perhaps of my age, is that of gender. When I submitted an article for an American magazine, I had to consult the dictionary and the internet to find how to classify myself. I am sorry to admit, I have now forgotten the correct term. Positive discrimination seems to me to be in danger of alienating the majority of the population from the very causes it is trying to promote. That being said, there is no doubt that the causes remain valid and very much worthy fighting for. Therein lies the dilemma.
Not only the ethnicity of authors has widened but also the socio-economic class. Writers from working class backgrounds have had opportunities to be published and have had considerable success which is certainly to be welcomed.
Certainly, the development of communications and technology have challenged the printed word. A whole new band of critics has found a voice on twitter/X, Facebook/ Instagram etc. Writers are expected to maintain a presence on these platforms and face criticism, often from anonymous voices who are without any knowledge or qualification. Everyone appears to have a right to express a view on any subject.
Living Abroad
After my graduation, I married and went to live in Kolkata, West Bengal, India where my husband worked as a journalist on ‘The Statesman’, the main English language newspaper at the time. I taught in one of the main girls’ schools in the city. We had two daughters who were able to attend this school from the age of three as it had a Nursery department.
I taught English language/ literature and all the staff spoke fluent English, as did my husband. This meant I did not learn Bengali, apart from day to day essential phrases. My husband was a great admirer of the songs, poetry and writing of Rabindranath Tagore one of the major figures in the Bengal Renaissance of the mid- nineteenth and early twentieth century. Tagore was a true polymath: poet, short story writer, song writer, social reformer, philosopher, essayist, educationist, artist and the first non- European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. I read many of his poems in translation which never quite captures the lyrical beauty of the original. He died in 1941 so never lived to see India’s independence.
I greatly enjoyed teaching in Loreto House, a school for girls run by an order of Irish nuns which Mother Theresa belonged to, before founding the Missionaries of Charity. At the time, many sisters were from the Irish Republic but on a recent visit, I found most of the Sisters were from South India. It was a great school to teach in where the majority of students were Hindus, a minority were Moslem and a small number of Anglo-Indians, Christians. The academic standard was high, behaviour, exemplary and students highly motivated. English Literature was widely covered, also Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit. We read and performed a number of Shakespeare plays: ‘The Merchant of Venice’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ ‘Julius Caesar’ and a full performance of ‘Macbeth’. In sixty years of teaching, I have never worked with such talented and responsive students and such a friendly and devoted staff. Nearly half a century later, I am still in touch with most of my Loreto students!
Most of my memories of Kolkata are positive, especially my work. Of course, as anywhere, you have problems day to day. A major crisis arose when our ground floor flat flooded, and we had to move to the roof! It was also rather frightening when I had to find my way alone in a blackout to the hospital where my second daughter was born, only a few minutes after I arrived. This was during the war between Bangladesh and Pakistan when my husband was away reporting. Then there was the crisis when my husband’s elderly aunt, threw all our beautiful clay water jars out on the pavement because the bathroom cleaner, from the lowest class in Hindu society, had walked past the ewers in the hallway.
Later in my career after I returned to the UK following my husband’s death. I taught for a short time in Tanzania. This was a very different situation from Kolkata. The children were younger and the emphasis was on language and oral English. Many children came from poor families of agricultural workers. Often, they walked many kilometres a day to and from school. In some cases, they shared a pair of shoes so were not able to attend every day. In one school, the classroom overlooked the Rift Valley. There was an unforgettable view of thousands of bright pink flamingos standing along the river bank. Here, rather than use English text books, I used local African legends or stories which the children dramatized. They all had a remarkable sense of rhythm and great singing voices. They were lively and dedicated to mastering English. I remember, one day, I came back from lunch to see the older children had organised the youngsters into class groups and they were practising the songs I had taught them. When I asked,’ Why?’, they said, ‘So they will remember and sing them perfectly!’ I wondered if you’d ever find this enthusiasm in Europe or the US?
One of my greatest experiences was climbing half-way up Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa. The climb to the summit was a little too much, so I kept to the limited option. I had an outstanding guide who suggested I should extend his English vocabulary and I would learn basic Swahili! His English was already reasonably fluent and he definitely got most out of our agreement. I explained to him I was a geriatric and had to move slowly. He immediately repeated ‘geriatric’ until he had mastered the word. In return he advised me to go ‘slowly’, ‘polepole’ in Swahili. That evening he came to the hostel and left a red and white t-shirt for me with the slogan written across the front!
I also stayed in a hotel in Tanzania which looked over a water-hole. At night we saw elephants, buffalo, giraffes and monkeys come to drink. On one trip into a forest, a herd of elephants with young calves passed across the track. The driver whispered to us to ‘be quiet’; he later explained there were two huge bulls in the group and they were likely to attack when calves were in the herd.
Writing
I started writing two years ago after an accident. Unfortunately, this left me only able to walk a few metres without help. My elder daughter, an established writer, tossed me a booklet with a list of writing competitions with the throwaway comment, ‘You’re never too old!’ I was in a geriatric ward where most of the patients suffered from dementia. I started writing at night as a distraction from the screaming, crying and general disturbance in the ward. My first short story, was set in the early nineteenth century, the age of stage coaches. I started researching the subject and suddenly the uproar went unnoticed. I then started writing poetry, my favourite literary form. I will always be grateful to an East African magazine, ‘The Flying Dodo’ sadly now defunct, for giving me my first chance!
I start writing most days at ten am and, apart from short breaks, go on to ten or eleven at night. I now write poetry, fiction, flash fiction, creative non-fiction, essays and expanded articles on historical subjects. These have been published in over twenty different countries and in three hundred magazines and anthologies. I have become interested in genres like horror which I had never previously read. I have been reading earlier writers like Lovecraft and Dennis Wheatley and re-reading ‘Dracula’. As, at the moment, I write for many different magazines, the subjects/themes are not usually chosen by me. I have recently written stories/ articles on beavers, surviving in geriatric wards, zombies, time travel, cats, tea gardens, Bay of Bengal, piers, King’s College Cambridge, murder of Archduke Rudolf, the Sun Temple at Konark, Edgar Allan Poe to name but a few, as they say.
As you can imagine, inspiration comes in many ways. Poems usually come through a line or single word which suddenly goes round and round in my head, or I think of a particular form like the Villanelle or Triolet. In regard to short stories, often an event or experience sparks ideas. Yesterday we were having dinner when my daughter produced a key and gave it to my grandson. She had accidently dropped it down the lift- shaft and a maintenance man had retrieved it. I immediately said, ‘That’s a good beginning for a short story. Suppose it’s a key to a different flat or a cupboard or ?’ Of course, at my age memory plays a major role. I can’t remember phone numbers or where I left my glasses but I can re-call very small details about places, events and people
For example, I was writing the other day about ‘chicken’ and I could picture the mud and foot prints around the duck pond at home seventy years ago, in precise appearance and colour. In many cases I need to read around the subject. I enjoy researching but the only problem is, I become too involved and finish up reading a whole book.
I still have many unrealised ambitions as far as writing is concerned. I wish I had started earlier. At the moment my main hopes are to have a chapbook of horror poems published and to publish a series of short stories about a cat which speaks fluent French and can fly, no I haven’t been drinking, I’m a teetotaller.
Favourite poets: Tennyson T.S. Eliot Sylvia Plath
Favourite novels: ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ Thomas Hardy
‘Emma’ Jane Austen
‘Beloved’ Toni Morrison
Drama: Shakespeare ‘The Tempest’
‘A Street Car Named Desire’ Tennessee Williams
‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ Eugene O’Neill
X/twitter @SarahDasGu42181
Thank you, Sarah, for being a dedicated follower of and contributor to both The Chamber Magazine and Rural Fiction Magazine.
If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.
Please share this story to give it maximum distribution. Exposure is our authors’ only pay. You can also help our contributors gain exposure by back linking to them and to RFM’s homepage.
Financial donations through either our GoFundMe or Buy Me a Coffee accounts will help expand our global reach by paying for advertising, more advanced WordPress plans, and expansion into more extensive Content Delivery Networks.
Doug shook one of the pea-sized white pills from the bottle into his quivering hand and pushed it under his tongue. The panic that always came in the moment between taking the pill and the two to three minutes it took for the pain in his chest to subside was when he prayed. This time he was making general apologies for what he had just done. He was feeling guilty about hitting Sunny in the head with a paving stone, but not guilty enough to regret doing it. She kept moaning and trying to crawl after the first strike, so he had to bash her head twice. That was what he regretted. He’d never been the type to want anyone or anything to suffer. Doug wanted his wife’s death to be efficient. To be kind.
There on the garden sidewalk at the rear of the house, Sunny’s body lay bundled in her favorite tablecloth. Doug thought she would want it that way. She’d bought the white cotton cloth at Dicky’s Antique Barn in Cave Spring, just outside of Rome, Georgia, one of her favorite summer getaway spots when the weather got too hot to bear in Alabama. He’d become nauseous walking from the parking lot to the spring, and they had to sit at a picnic table waiting for his nitroglycerin tablet to kick in, but Sunny never complained. Later, he drank a beer right after eating a cherry-chocolate ice cream cone and threw it all up right next to the RV. It had been a shit day, but Sunny got her tablecloth.
Her feet hung out the bottom, and Doug noticed one of her Keds had come untied. He wanted to retie it, but the thought of bending down was too much at the moment. “Hey, is it really done?” Marjorie came running around the house, her sandals clicking too loudly on the stone sidewalk.
Doug put up a finger to shush her. “Keep it down.” He pointed at Mr. Wylie’s house across the field. The lights were out, but old Mr. Wylie was a light sleeper. Doug and Marjorie stood side-by-side looking down at Sunny wrapped up like a Christmas popper. Marjorie swung her arms around Doug. “I told you she’d go down easy, baby. What did I tell you?”
Doug hesitated, but then he smiled and pulled her close. “I know.” His heart was settling down, and holding Marjorie close made him forget, for a moment, the sound the stone had made when it impacted Sunny’s head. He had anticipated a crack, a loud one like in the movies, but the sound was just a dull thud, like dropping a sack of flour on the ground. The second one was even softer and slightly wet.
“Alright,” said Marjorie, stepping back. She took his hand and tried to pull him toward the back door of his house. “Let’s have a drink to celebrate.”
“Shouldn’t we,” he motioned toward the body. “We said we’d bury it.” The sound of it made a discordant twang, and he put a finger in his right ear to dislodge the weirdness inside.
“We will, but dang, honey. We’ve waited two years for this moment. Let’s have a drink first. We deserve it,” she purred and put a hand on his chest. “And then after that, we deserve something else, huh?” She rolled her fingers over his sweaty chest until she reached the flesh near his neck. Marjorie had never before touched him in front of his wife, and Doug felt a need to take a few steps back out of what he perceived was his wife’s line of sight.
Inside the kitchen, Marjorie put her hands on her hips and surveyed the room. Sunny’s collection of pig salt and pepper shakers lined the shelves of a cabinet. Stacked in the sink were lasagna smeared bowls, plates, and forks in a heap from supper. Sunny had been about to wash them when Doug called her to the backyard saying, “Honey, come out here and see this.” And she did.
Marjorie opened the pantry and spotted a bottle of cabernet. “Can you get us a bottle opener?”
Doug stood at the window over the sink, staring out. Sunny lay on the stones, her form shining dully in the backyard safety light. He pulled back from the window and looked down at the sink. Why didn’t I wait until she finished the dishes?
“It’s done. She’s not going to get up and walk away,” said Marjorie.
Doug pushed his hands in his pockets and turned away from the mess. “I know. I just don’t like having it, having her out there where anybody can see.” He handed her a bottle opener from a drawer and pushed it shut quietly.
Marjorie rolled her eyes. “How many times have you and I had to worry about somebody ‘seeing’?” She rocked her head from side to side in a gesture that said the whole thing was an inside joke.
“This is different.” Doug took the wine glass from Marjorie and drank a big sip before remembering the nitroglycerin tablet in his system.
“For two years we’ve hidden and looked away anytime we made eye contact for too long. I mean, shit Doug, let’s enjoy all this for a minute before we have to separate again. Please?” She placed her wine glass on the table and wrapped her arms around his waist one more time. “You know,” she whispered, “when the six weeks goes by, the first thing I’m going to do is buy me some new lingerie.”
Doug was beginning to feel dizzy. He pulled a chair from the table and eased himself down. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Do you need your pills?”
“Already took one.”
“I thought you were doing better. You said you hadn’t needed one in weeks,” said Marjorie, taking a seat next to him.
“I hadn’t killed nobody in those weeks! Hell, it’s stressful,” said Doug. His forehead was broken out in sweat and he was sure he was going to throw up. “Just give me a minute.” He laid his head on the table and focused on breathing.
For several minutes, Marjorie quietly sipped her wine and rubbed Doug’s back, scratching between his shoulder blades with her lacquered nails, just the way he liked. Then she said in a soft voice, “I guess we need to get it done.”
Doug replied without lifting his head. “Now you want to get her buried. Geesh.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes, groaning lightly. “You weren’t here for the hard part. It just wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I hope I never have to do that again.”
Marjorie’s face made an involuntary little tic, but she didn’t reply.
“We just, we just have to stick with the plan,” he said, repeating what they’d said a dozen times over the past few weeks. “Stay apart for two months.”
“You said six weeks,” said Marjorie.
“Well, you know what I mean, six weeks. Two months. ”
She smacked her hand on the table. “Two months is longer than six weeks. It’s two whole weeks longer.”
“I know how long it is. I’m just saying we have to give it time. There’ll be lots of relatives coming over bringing food and whatnot. You know how family can be.”
“They’re not going to stay six weeks, are they?”
“Of course not, but we’ve got to keep up appearances for as long as it takes. We talked about this ‘til we were blue in the face,” said Doug. He reached for her hand and held it tenderly. “Let’s finish this. I got the shovels out already.”
“And you got the money for me?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Something in his voice made her stop. “You said you’d have it tonight. I was going to make that down payment Monday. That real estate agent’s supposed to meet me out at the lake house so we can sign the paperwork. There’s all kinds of stuff I’ve got to sign and—”
“I know all about buying a house. I bought this one.”
“You said you’d have the money. I’ve been wanting one of those lake houses for five years. That was the fucking plan, Doug! I buy the house ‘cause no one’s paying attention to me. Then later, when we get married, we sell this shit dumpster and the lake house’ll be our house. That was the plan!”
“I know it was—” His chest was hurting, and he felt as if his chest was bandaged up in a heating pad. “I know the plan. I came up with the plan if you remember. But I had a problem.”
“What problem?” Her face had turned hard the way it did at work when she was irritated with a customer. Her forehead scrunched together and made an “11” between her eyes. Doug imagined how it would look in twenty years of irritation.
“The account. The savings account is in Sunny’s name. I didn’t know it until I tried to get the money Monday. If I try to get it again now that she’s dead, they’ll get suspicious.”
“Wait, you knew this before you did it?”
Doug shrugged and kept his eyes on the floor. “Sunny’s always made the deposits. I just never paid attention.”
“I’m beginning to think Sunny wasn’t nearly as dumb as you always made her out to be.” Marjorie pushed up from the table and refilled her wine glass. “How do you run a tire store and not even know where your money is?” Before he could answer, she interjected again. “Take the money from the store. It’s your business.”
“The tire store doesn’t have that kind of cash.”
“What if somebody else buys that house? The real estate agent’s not going to hold it for me,” said Marjorie.
“Then you’ll find another house.”
“I don’t want another house. I want that house and I want you! That was the plan. I’ve been patient for two years. You promised!” Her eyes smoldered with anger but there was something else; she was afraid. He hadn’t seen her this way since he had to cancel their weekend together in Atlanta because Sunny had emergency gall bladder surgery. It was beginning to occur to him that Marjorie was being a tad unreasonable.
“Look, it’s temporary. I can front you,” he calculated for a few seconds, “two thousand. You cash out your savings and do the down payment. I’ll get you the rest when things get sorted out. We’ve got two months to wait anyhow.”
“Six weeks!” She slammed the wine glass down in the sink so hard the stem broke in two, and then she stormed out the back door.
“Marjorie? Where are you going?” He hurried out after her.
Marjorie was by the lawnmower shed, grabbing the shovels he’d propped against the door. The ground was saturated with spring rain, also part of the plan. Kill her when the digging is at its easiest. Put her way out in the pasture next to the old hay barn where the cows tromp around the watering trough and the ground is always pocked by a hundred hooves. No one would ever know the ground had been dug up.
Marjorie shoved her cell phone in her back pocket. “Let’s do it.”
“I can’t carry her,” said Doug. “My heart.” He put a hand over his chest as if he were saluting the flag.
Marjorie rolled her eyes and dropped the shovel on the ground. “Don’t you have a wheelbarrow or something?”
In minutes, they had Sunny’s body folded over in a wheelbarrow and Doug pushed it, bumping her along over the uneven pasture ground to the area behind the barn with Marjorie following, carrying their two shovels. Away from the artificial lights of the house, it was almost too dark to see the ground where they planned to dig. Doug halfway wished he had thought to bring a flashlight, but then decided it was a bad idea. A flashlight would have been a beacon to old Mr. Wylie should he decide to get up for a late-night pee.
Marjorie dropped her shovel on the ground and held his toward him, handle side out. “You get the first digging shift.”
“Why me? I’ve done every bit of this, so far,” argued Doug, taking the shovel.
“Except the getting the money part,” said Marjorie.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, will you give it a rest?” Doug dropped his shovel. “Did you think this was going to be easy?” He took a calming breath and closed his eyes, willing himself to relax before opening them again. “We’ve just had some setbacks with the plan. That’s all. Everything’s going to be okay.” His eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Marjorie’s blonde hair shined even in the gloomy light of the pasture.
The woman he had killed for stared into his eyes. “Doug? Do you love me?”
Baffled, he shook his head. “Why would you even need to ask me that? After all I’ve done?”
“I just need to hear it.”
“Now? While we’re burying my wife?”
“Especially while we’re burying your wife.” The night wind came down from the pines and lifted her bleached hair playfully around her cheeks. She was as beautiful as the day he hired her to run the front counter at the tire store.
“Hey, are you even listening to me?” she asked.
“Of course, I love you. I.” He was going to say he killed Sunny for her, but somehow voicing that part uglied up the ‘I love you’ part. He wondered if he’d ever be able to say ‘I love you’ to Marjorie again without thinking of Sunny growing stiffer by the minute in her tablecloth. He was glad he couldn’t see her face.
“I know you do.” She cupped his left cheek with her hand, and he felt so relieved to feel her warm fingers on his face. He was in love with Marjorie Scarborough, and in that single instant he would have killed Sunny ten times over for her. “It’s okay. I’ll take the first shift,” she said.
After half an hour she had made a shallow place a body length long and nearly ankle deep in the mud. She leaned on her shovel and took a deep breath. “We might should have included a backhoe in this plan.”
Doug motioned for her to move aside so he could take over. She stepped out of the muck she’d been digging in and stood next to the body. He stabbed at the ground with his shovel and after a while he began to sweat despite the cool night air. A light breeze blew in every now and then, bringing the distant lowing of a distressed cow from the next property over. Doug wondered if she was in labor, as most cows were quiet in the night. The sound was comforting to him, like a train whistle in the night, or the way cars sound when they pass on wet highways. He paused to listen.
“Why’re you stopping? You’ve hardly made a dent,” said Marjorie.
The digging was harder than he had anticipated despite the days of rain that preceded the culmination of their plan. He had to kick the step down hard with his boot to get the blade more than a few inches into the ground. Ideally, he wanted to get Sunny at least six feet under, as the saying went, but he was beginning to think getting a hole long enough to lay her out in flat was not a feasible idea. He put his shovel down and leaned over her body, pushing her knees toward her chest. The tablecloth prevented him from folding her up completely.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Marjorie.
“I thought if we could put her in a ball, she’d be easier to get in the hole. We wouldn’t have to dig it so wide,” said Doug. He got down on his knees and began unwinding the tablecloth from around her, but he hesitated, his hands hanging in front of him like a man about to plunk out a tune on a piano. “I have to take her out of the tablecloth,” he looked at Marjorie as if asking permission.
“So, do it, then,” she replied.
He lifted the corner, revealing his wife’s left hand. Her nails were yellowed and stubby with snags. Somehow, even with only a few hours of death, her flesh looked oddly drawn around the fingers, and her wrinkles looked even more pronounced across her knuckles. The one and a half carat diamond ring on her finger was what he’d given her as a replacement for the miniscule engagement ring from their youth. The new ring had been his way of making a guilt payment without her knowing the reason during the early days of his affair with Marjorie. He flipped Sunny’s hand over, but it was too late. Marjorie had spotted it even in the dim light of the pasture. “Take that off,” she demanded.
“What?”
“The ring! Take it off. I can sell that in Birmingham. It’ll go a long way to help make up some of that missing money for the down payment.”
Doug lifted Sunny from the ground and unfurled the cloth from her torso. “Can’t. That ring could get traced back here.”
“Nobody’ll know where it came from. I’ll tell them it was my old wedding ring.”
“Records are kept on stuff like that,” said Doug. “Appraisals by the sellers. There was paperwork on that ring from the shop where I bought it. Cops trace stuff all the time through pawn shops and diamond dealers. Don’t you ever watch TV?”
“Doug, there’s no diamond police out there. I could sell that ring all over hell and half of Alabama and nobody’d know where it came from.” She bent down to reach for Sunny’s hand sticking out of the tablecloth, but Doug pushed his dead wife’s hand back underneath the fabric. “Doug, let me have that ring,” she hissed. “Leaving it on her finger’s nothing but throwing money in the ground!”
“It’s asking for trouble. You, going off selling a ring worth eight thousand dollars right after my wife disappears? Maybe not now, but later, after we’re together, somebody somewhere is gonna get suspicious and put two and two together.” He pulled the tablecloth from around Sunny’s legs and laid her back down on the ground. Pushing her knees up to her chest, he pulled her skirt down neatly over her knees. If only she’d put on capris this afternoon after returning from her trip to Lowe’s. When he had her body folded into the fetal position, he pulled the tablecloth back around and over her like a burrito.
“That’s why you didn’t get me the cash from that account, isn’t it? If anybody’s going to put two and two together, it’s when a man withdraws money the same time his wife disappears. Am I right?” Marjorie put her muddy hands on her knees and waited.
“We’ve come too far to get impatient now and make a mistake we’ll both regret,” he said over Sunny’s body.
“What I’m going to regret,” said Marjorie, her nostrils flaring in anger, “is losing that house, my dream house, because the man who said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me in that house is too damn cheap to pay up like he promised!” She snatched the corner of the tablecloth and grabbed Sunny’s left hand lying across her chest. Doug’s hand shot out and took Marjorie’s wrist and held it firmly. The two of them wrestled in a death grip over Sunny’s inert hand.
Surprised at Marjorie’s unrelenting grip on his wife’s hand, Doug gritted his teeth. “I said you are not taking that ring. I can hide it somewhere and we can sell it later,” he said, fighting Marjorie’s twisting arm.
“That’ll be too late. I need the money tomorrow!”
“Marjorie! Let go,” he grunted. “You’re gonna ruin the plan!” Still holding tight to the ringed palm, Marjorie pushed Doug with her free hand and he lost his balance, falling over his wife’s body and nearly bumping into her bloody head with his own.
Doug felt pressure in his chest like a boulder had been dropped on top of him. “Marjorie,” he said, and released her hand. She yanked Sunny’s diamond ring off her finger and clenched it in her grimy left hand. “My pills,” he whispered. His body shook and his face had gone as white as Sunny’s. He lay gasping on the ground next to his wife. Her skirt, now muddy from the struggle, was wound up in the tablecloth.
Marjorie held the ring up and tried to view it in the moonlight, but it was too dark to make out any sparkle. She’d clean it as soon as she got home. How a frumpy, homely woman like Sunny ever should have scored a big diamond ring like this was beyond her.
“Doug? Doug, get up. I can’t do all this myself,” said Marjorie. She shook his shoulder, but he lay there, his eyes open wide. “Doug?” She pulled her hand away instinctively, still clutching the ring against her palm. His face shone a dull blue in the night, and his cheeks glistened with perspiration. She pressed a finger against his flesh with her free hand and jerked it back. “Oh God, Doug. You ruined the plan.”
She slid the ring into her jeans pocket. Careful to pick up the shovel she’d been using, she placed the other one next to his arm, now flopped out on the dirt next to his dead wife, and she headed back across the darkened pasture as the rain began to fall.
Cathy Adams’ latestnovel,A Body’s Just as Dead, was published by SFK Press. Her writing has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. She is a short story writer with publications in The Saturday Evening Post,Utne, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Barely South, Five on the Fifth, Southern Pacific Review, and 55 other journals from around the world. She earned her M.F.A. at Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University, Washington, and currently teaches at the American University in Bulgaria.
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The tintinnabulation of cash registers cha- ching! down Byron Street, an asphalt wave of trendy that has carved itself across the swell of old farming land.
Here, eco-friendly motors (some idling, some still) all bumpertobumper, clutter the narrow street, shiny modern bonnets dazzling in the sunshine.
Cashed-up clusters of cotton clad ladies dot the boutiques, discussing organics and… difficult friends who are, “a bit self-obsessed which disturbs my chi.”
At ciggie o’clock, a flamboyant owner ducks out of his gallery to fabulously confabulate with beddable tourists and the odd local ‘darrrrling’. Perfectly put together, tongue tripping the light fantastic, he performs a cadenza of compliments accompanied by the artful waltz - thrown gesture, articulating fingers, quick drags on his rollie.
In a prime position, two shops down, a blight on the gentrified landscape, squats humbly between swanky homewares and overpriced emporiums. A homage to the past, to the original farmers, to a time when people were sparse and friendships were forged over knitting and jams.
I am lured by their monochromatic tea cosies, and venture inside to find cream-filled sponges, a few rock cakes, square slabs of lamington, perhaps preserves? But it is bare of baked goods and the pickles are sold out. So is the jam.
Nicola Pett is a Literature and Media teacher in Cairns, Northern Queensland. Her poetry and short stories have been published online by Writing in a Woman’s Voice, The Chamber Magazine, Grand Little Things and Rural Fiction Magazine.
Please share this story to give it maximum distribution. Exposure is our authors’ only pay. You can also help our contributors gain exposure by linking to them and to RFM’s homepage.
Financial donations through either our GoFundMe or Buy Me a Coffee accounts will help expand our global reach by paying for advertising, more advanced WordPress plans, and expansion into more extensive Content Delivery Networks.
