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“Damn Charlie” Epistolary Short Story by Ed McConnell

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Rural Fiction Magazine: "Damn Charlie" Fiction by Ed McConnell

What follows is a statement written by Enoch H. Bock, former resident of Valley Junction, Iowa. He recounts certain events which took place in Valley Junction (now known as West Des Moines) during 1898. Retrieved from a time capsule opened in 1998, this unedited document, is part of the Local History Collection of West Des Moines Public Library. 

Some experiences are remembered because they are enjoyable. Others, because they are not. This story falls into the, not, category.

    In the early spring of 1898, I graduated from the Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts. Returning home to Valley Junction, Iowa, I went to work in my uncle’s general store. The job allowed time for me to read the law in preparation to take the bar exam. My family was proud that I had a college degree and was studying to be a lawyer.

    Before sitting for the bar exam, I met Sadie Stageman, a young lady from Granger, Iowa. Reverend Philip Coles, pastor of the Body of Christ Apostolic Church, introduced us at the Valley Junction Spring Social. 

    When I first saw her, I stopped in my tracks. With long brown hair and a shining personality, she was the apple of every young man’s eye at the event. I was smitten, but I wasn’t the only one with a bead on that beauty. 

    Del Hyer, one of the most personable people in our town, was thunderstruck by Sadie Stageman. That evening, when Del and I took turns dancing with her, we fell under her spell. 

    Given the feeling I could not live without her, I determined, then and there, to  win her heart and make her my wife. As such, the contest for her hand, was on. While Del seemed to have the inside track. I resolved that the outcome would go my way.

    Since Sadie lived in Granger, getting to visit her was no easy matter. A trip to that town was a time consuming journey. Granger was reachable from Valley Junction by rail, on foot, horseback or a horse drawn wagon. The distance between the towns was about sixteen miles by road. 

    The rail line was the faster route. It was a straight shot north, eleven miles, until it reached the outskirts of that town. The line then turned northwest, for a mile. The depot was one block from Sadie’s house. 

    Because of the cost of train tickets, I preferred taking the road to Granger. Others suitors visited Sadie from time to time. I would see them on the road and knew where they were going, but didn’t feel they had much chance at gaining Sadie’s hand. My main competitor was Del.

    Of all the young women I met, up to that time, Sadie proved to be the most enterprising. Given the number of suitors she attracted, to see who most wanted her hand in marriage, she devised a contest.

    On the Fourth of July, at the Granger Summerfest, Sadie announced that on August 25, she would entertain a proposal of marriage. The flyer advertising the contest read, in part, 

. . . She would consider the first proposal of marriage presented. She had the final say on whether it was acceptable. Any proposal would take place on her front porch. No potential suitor could arrive at her home before eleven a.m. on that date. The contest would close when the clock struck noon . . .

    Sadie set up a committee to control the arrival of suitors that she expected in Granger on that date. She did not want a pile up of young men on her porch. To maintain order, there was a contest signup sheet. Entries closed one week before August 25. 

    Sadie set up a welcoming committee. It split into two groups. One located where the road from Valley Junction entered Granger, another at the train depot. Any would-be suitors would have their names checked against a sign up list. As it turned out, only Del and I put our names on the signup sheet. At the time, I didn’t know we were the only ones. I figured the list to be long. 

    With the rules in place, the contest commenced. People in both towns had their favorites and placed bets on who they thought would win. This whole affair was turning into great sport. Anyway, Del and I made our separate preparations to get to Granger on the appointed day. Given the stakes, neither of us wished the other well.

    I was up early on August 25 when I ran into Reverend Coles. He greeted me with, “I saw Del Hyer, in the last hour, heading out of town toward Granger. He has no horse and is trying to cover the sixteen miles on foot.”

    Surprised by that news, I was also relieved. As it turns out, the night before, my horse came up lame. I wasn’t worried, though, all I had to do was rent a horse from Bill Cookson’s stable. Hurrying over there, I encountered a sign, Closed for illness. I thought, “That must be why Del’s on foot. He can’t get a horse either.” Crestfallen, I now had to find another means to get to Granger.

    Then it occurred to me, I could get my Uncle Ike’s buckboard from the general store. I ran to the store’s loading dock. It was sitting there. Seeing him, I said, “I need that buckboard to get to Granger before noon.”

    Uncle Ike knew why and was sympathetic, but replied, “Sorry nephew, I have to make a delivery this morning to the County Home. I wish I could help. Good luck.”

    I was miserable. Del was going to get to Sadie first. He had too much of a head start for me to make up on foot walking on the road. 

    Hoping there was an early train to Granger, I hurried to our town’s depot but the train had already departed. As I stood there, wondering what to do, Charlie DuBois, a friend of Del’s, approached me. 

    People around town, called him, Damn Charlie. An incessant talker, Charlie did something every day to scare or worry the townsfolk. He would sneak up behind some unsuspecting victim. Then, either, make a loud noise or claim there was some sort of varmint about to take a chunk out of their ankle. He was quite impressed with how funny he thought his sneak attacks were. Every time he pulled one of his stunts, the object of his unwanted attention said, “Damn Charlie”. The nickname stuck.

    I knew he was going to be a pest and was not in the mood to deal with any of his shenanigans. To my surprise, though, he came up with a reasonable suggestion to help me out of my conundrum.

    “Why don’t you walk on the train tracks? It’s four miles shorter than the road to Granger and it’s almost a straight shot. I can go with you.” Damn Charlie was the last person I wanted with me on this journey. Still, his idea was a good one. 

    I was confident that I could walk over three miles per hour for that distance. At that rate, I could make the trip to Granger in under four hours, even on the tracks. I figured it would take Del more than five hours to go sixteen miles even with a head start. I looked at my watch, it was a little after seven a.m. Del’s head start would make this a close race.

    Walking the tracks would not be easy, especially as fast as I had to move. If there had been another means of getting to Granger before Del, I would have taken it, but there wasn’t any other way. 

    Checking my pocket to be sure I had the engagement ring, I stepped onto the train tracks and headed north. When Damn Charlie started to follow me I turned and said, “I prefer you don’t come along.” Pressed for time and looking at my watch, I resumed walking down the tracks. At first, he seemed to heed my request because I didn’t notice him following.

    Soon, I heard the sounds of footsteps behind me. It was Damn Charlie. I didn’t want him tagging along but I didn’t have time to stop and argue with him. Since I could not prevent him from following me, I tried to ignore him.

    We were on tracks laid across the flat Iowa prairie. As I looked ahead, the rails seem to stretch into infinity. A barbed wire fence, set fifty feet on each side from the center of the track bed, lined our route. The only breaks in the fence were for occasional road crossings. What remained was open prairie, thick with tall grasses, or farm fields full of corn or soybeans. 

    To me, it all looked the same as I pressed down the line. The only man-made features were the barbed wire fence lining the track bed and a few, randomly placed, signal marker poles indicating when an engineer should blow his whistle as crossing were approached. There were no distance or direction markers along the tracks.

    Damn Charlie was still keeping pace with me. Up to this point, he had been pretty quiet, then I heard him say, “So you’re taking the bar exam, huh? That’s gotta be hard. Shouldn’t you be home studying instead of doing this? Even money says you fail that exam.”

    I could see why people thought he was annoying. His irritating comment distracted me from keeping watch of my feet. I had to be careful as I placed my feet on the ties between the rails so as not to trip, but Damn Charlie kept talking. 

    “You’re gonna get to Granger with an hour to spare, why don’t you slow down? You’re gonna be too tuckered out to make a proposal.” Ignoring his comments, I kept walking as fast as I could go, concentrating on what I would do when I got to Granger. 

    I knew how important it was to be the first suitor to arrive. I had little doubt I would be the winner. I could picture myself making a successful offer of marriage when my concentration was again interrupted by Damn Charlie’s voice.

    “Remember, I’ve known you all my life. I don’t think you’re smart enough to be a lawyer.”

    I let that comment pass because I knew I was about halfway to Granger and needed to keep going. I had to stop paying attention to Damn Charlie but he was aggravating, not going away and he wouldn’t shut up.

    It was then his voice changed tone, it became more urgent, downright dire. All I heard was, “Watch out for that bull snake by your foot.”

    I’m afraid of any type of snake. Knowing bull snakes can deliver a nasty bite, I jumped in the air hoping not to step on that earthly representative of the Devil. Landing, my left foot caught a gap between one of the ties and the crushed limestone filler. I twisted around, causing me to stumble and fall. 

    I don’t recall much of the next few minutes. Given the lump growing on the side of my head, I must have bumped it on one of the track rails. I wasn’t down long, but when I got up, Damn Charlie was running, as fast as he could, ahead of me, down the tracks. He was getting farther away from where I was standing.

    I thought, “There was no snake. It’s another of Damn Charlie’s tricks. That fool must think he can propose to Sadie if he gets to Granger first. I’m not letting that happen.” 

    I was still a little dizzy. I didn’t want to run, but figuring it would get me to Granger even quicker, I took off after Damn Charlie. I raced down the tracks trying to catch him.

    With effort, I overtook him and started to pull away. I was happy to be leaving Damn Charlie and his tricks behind. After some more time passed, I could see the town ahead. I was pretty sure I was arriving ahead of Del. 

    As I approached the train depot there was a crowd waiting. It had to be the welcoming committee. Excited that I got to Granger first, with raised voice, I said, “I made it. I’m here.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the new, shiny diamond engagement ring. I started waiving it and was yelling, “Get me to Sadie’s house right away.” 

    The eyes of the crowd focused on me. To my surprise, Reverend Coles, stepped forward out of the assembled gaggle of people. With a curious look on his face, he asked, “Son, why did you come back? Why aren’t you in Granger?” 

    Confused, I looked around, then felt sick. I recognized every building and most of the people. It was then I realized the terrible truth, I was back in Valley Junction. Damn Charlie tricked me into turning around. Del must have sent him to keep me from getting to Granger first. 

    As I stood there, I thought, “Right now, Del is probably on one knee proposing to Sadie.” Standing in the crowd at the Valley Junction depot, I must have looked like someone stole my horse.

    From across the street, standing on the steps of the Frontier House Hotel, I could hear the late arriving, Damn Charlie DuBois laughing. He played his role well.

###

Not long after, Sadie and Del’s engagement announcement hit the papers. It was then I began to think about marriage to other eligible young women in the county. 

    I had taken and passed the bar exam in September and had set up a law office in Valley Junction. Considered an eligible bachelor and quite a catch by the townsfolk, I thought finding a new girl would be easy. It was then I remembered Sadie had a younger sister of marrying age, Bessie. I thought her attractive and would make a good wife.

    One fall day, while contemplating whether to ask Bessie to a church social, I saw an article in The Granger Gazette. The headline read, “The Wedding of Miss Sadie Stageman and Mr. Del Hyer.” The paper described it as “the social event of the year.” 

    According to the paper, “Miss Stageman, now Mrs. Del Hyer, wore a flowing white gown with a garland of baby red roses. Mr. Hyer, wearing a black top hat, gray, double breasted vest and a black tailed tuxedo, cast an adoring gaze at his new wife.”     

    The paper went on to report that, “Mr. Charles DuBois of Valley Junction was the best man. Miss Bessie Stageman, sister of the bride, was the maid of honor. Each looked resplendent in support of the newly minted husband and wife.” The Gazette even mentioned that Mr. DuBois and Miss Stageman hit it off so well “there are rumors he has started sparking her.”

    Upon finishing reading that news item, all I could say to myself was, “Damn Charlie.”

Enoch H. Bock

Valley Junction, Iowa

November 14, 1898

End Note:
Damn Charlie is an adaptation by Edward N. McConnell from the original story by Ambrose Bierce, Mr. Swiddler’s Flip-Flap, first published in “Fun” (London), August 15, 1874; Reprinted as by “B” in “The Wasp” (San Francisco), July 7, 1882. The works of Ambrose Bierce are now in the public domain. See also, “Index of the Project Gutenberg-Works of Ambrose Bierce”, Compiled by David Widger, Release date, February 1, 2019. gutenberg.org

Edward N. McConnell and his wife, Cindy, own McConnell Publishing, LLC. Their first project was to publish a short story anthology, Where Harry’s Buried and Other Short Stories, now available on Amazon Books. In addition, to date his work has appeared in Literally Stories, Terror House Magazine, Mad Swirl, Down in the Dirt, Rural Fiction Magazine, The Corner Bar
Magazine, Masticadores India, Drunk Monkeys, The Milk House and Refuge Online Literary Journal. He lives in West Des Moines, Iowa with Cindy.

If you would like to be part of the RFM family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.

If you like dark fiction, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.

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“Bodies Bent with Work” Short Story by Steve Sanko

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"Bodies Bent with Work" Fiction by Steve Sanko in The Chamber Magazine

Odours hover low in the arena, pungent with nervous urine; horse, cattle, sheep, any beast that can realize a profit. The auctioneer’s repetitious phrasing rings shamelessly to those listening and tedious to those who are not. His timing neither falters nor retires. He cannot allow himself to appear uncertain; not to his earnest buyers he can’t. That is the nature of his task.

 The auctioneer might well have been pitching caskets to corpses as far as I am concerned.  I am neither earnest nor a buyer and his ‘oo’ll gi me 40, 40, 40’ sounds like an engine missing far down the road. Today I am consumed by misfortune. That’s why I came to the sale barns. I didn’t want to bear the weight alone.

The same work bent bodies are here today as with every sale, some to buy, some to neighbor and sip coffee. Men and women that bend their bones with beasts’ work, can feel legitimately idle for a couple of hours. They lean the rail with their forearms, fingers laced, heads stooped from familiarity with strain; mighty workers clad in farm garb. 

I was leaning. I was leaning next to a neighbor whose great bent hands and work worn frame declared his right to be leaning as well. The Guthrie’s persevered as a cow/calf operation in spite of owning good bottom land, north of the assumed limits of good Ontario farmland. He and his wife Violla were stockmen not land tillers. He stood pushing his finger at the tear hole of his cup. I expect he had seen the worry in my face and needed a detour for his eyes. He could see that I had been bit by our neighbor’s trouble.

“See anything you like, Elmer?” I ask to let him off the hook.

“Sellin; not buyin.” He says and he draws involuntary circles on the lid. We stand awkwardly for what seems too long, knowing that there is a question that needs asking. 

“You heard?” He asks. I sense he hopes I have not. 

I acknowledge his question with a nod but have a gnawing one of my own. Why I am so spooked by this tragedy. This isn’t the first-time injured beasts had to be put down. Every guy here probably had to do it himself at one time or another. But that business. That was the saddest waste of animal flesh I had ever known. Those poor horses. Ran full out, probably for the first time; ran until they perished. I had gone over every possible reason why and not one of them offered any comfort. The reason I had suspected was hard to swallow. 

Guthrie twisted himself so he was facing me full on. He was still fingering that cup.

“You were there?” He asked it and raised his eyes till they were fused on mine, retiring yet persistent.

“No. Not me. You?”

“No. Walker told me.”

I scanned the men abreast of Guthrie, searching for Walker, as if that was going to settle anything. I watched Guthrie study me.

“Hell of a thing…” I said. “…just to bolt like that, full out.”

Guthrie made a spitting noise. “It would have only taken one of them to start.”

I listened to Guthrie’s explanation. I could see he had made his sense of it.

“Just bolted.” I repeated. “Ran clear to the swamp.”

Guthrie reached to an inside pocket. His hand emerged holding a small bottle. Under the cover of his coat, he tipped the bottle into his cup. He made a gesture. I waved the offer away.

“Those animals never saw anything like open spaces before…” Guthrie’s tone was looking for blame. “not in the years I knew Able to own them. They were either hitched and working or corralled in that shoebox paddock.”

Guthrie was probably right, but still, Able hadn’t been in the ground long. A dead man can’t answer to insinuations.   

“You ever keep horses?” Guthrie asked. He was implying, that if I had, I’d know. 

  “I’ve never taken a notion to want a horse.”

He looked to me as if there should be more.

“No need of horses.” I answered. “As a pet maybe but I wouldn’t want to find myself here selling a friend. Would you?”

Guthrie sniffed a brief laugh at my logic.

A big strawberry roan mare got led out into the ring. She looked like somebody flung red paint at her white body through a sieve. Striking. She held herself proud and bobbed and shook her head in protest. The auctioneer began his trill and I could read the worry in that animal’s lines just as Guthrie had seen it in mine. 

Able’s team had spent a lifetime in the company of soulless drudgery, no indulgences, no pasture land to kick up and play. They bolted out of the sheer joy of it; an opportunity they’d never known.  That’s what I convinced myself happened.  That’s what made it unpalatable. It’d be like watching fledglings getting picked off by predators on their first flight. Turn a guys’ guts just thinking about it.  

Every day Able would hitch his team and they’d draw whatever he had been hired to haul and when he was done cooling them down, they’d be confined to that small paddock, only spitting distance from the comings and goings of the road. Those poor beasts could only witness the world’s disposition: passing dog fights, lightning storms, kids playing on the road. Imagine it; them cut loose for the first time. They probably hit full gallop in three strides. Rash enthusiasm ended up a very ugly thing indeed.

It took Guthrie and I less than an hour to learn the authentic details of what happened to that team: When Able Cromptom passed from the ailments that had plagued him, his team had needed care and feeding. Able was a bachelor. Gossip had it that he had been orphaned although no one knew that for sure. That was before my time. It was agreed within the community that his team should be pastured by his neighbors until the estate was settled. It was intended to be a charitable undertaking.  We look after our own. 

Mr. Angus Brown agreed to be the temporary recipient of the team. He offered the pasture fronting on the Mallard quarter line. They were loaded in a trailer and transported. A crowd of helpers showed up, mostly for the laughing and telling of stories, unaware that they were to become witnesses. Upon being unloaded both horses became hard to handle. The gelding reared and snorted and the mare resisted the men as they removed her halter. Those horses knew something was up. Both immediately bolted. Neighbors shouted, encouraging the team to freedom. The animals took separate trails for the first time in their lives like they were rebelling against years of pointless toil. They eventually both broke the rise that led to low ground and descended out of sight.  The first sign that something had gone wrong came to the crowd on the wind. It was a dreadful sound, “Panicked whinnies.” That was how it was described. That sound got everyone running.

 Some said they had bolted because of being skittish of the unfamiliar ground. Little Jenny Brown thought the same as me. She swore she saw raw impatience in their trusting faces. Both animals were dead within thirty minutes of their release. The mare ran head on into a leaning dead tamarack and broke her neck. The gelding broke a leg in the swamp muck. There was no decision to be made over the animals’ future. It took half of that thirty minutes to fetch a rifle.

Guthrie left the auction barns forgetting to collect his earnings from the sale. Me; I thought to offer the guy who bought the strawberry mare more than he had paid. I let that thought pass.

 From a body of work that includes thirty short stories Steve has placed two pieces: ‘Hardly Worth the Telling’ with DASH, English dept., California State University, and ‘Burying Jacob Muscrat’ with the now defunct Danforth Review.

If you would like to be part of the RFM family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.

If you like dark fiction, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.

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“The Contract” Short Story by Doug Jacquier

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"The Contract" Fiction by Doug Jacquier in The Chamber Magazine

He was up early and well gone to his work on the farm, as always. She found the envelope on the kitchen table, propped up against the tomato sauce bottle that was already attracting flies in the burgeoning heat of the day. Well, that’s a bit romantic, she thought. Hadn’t picked that up in their limited conversations to date. She put the kettle on and added fresh tea leaves to the pot. They were both old-fashioned that way.

Sitting down at the Laminex table, she opened the envelope and began to read.

Kate (no Dear she noted)

Talking’s never been something I’ve had much use for and the only way I know what I think about anything is if I write it down.

Unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, you’d like this occasional weekend thing to become a permanent arrangement. I can see the sense in that but I want you to be clear about what that will mean for our future. Women say they want honesty in a man but in my experience they don’t really mean it. Now’s as good a time as any to find out if you’re different. 

I don’t want to marry you but I do want to spend my life with you. Instead of getting rubber-stamped by the Government or the Church, we’ll have this contract and we’ll have each other’s word that we’ll stick to it. Without that, life together would be pointless. And, besides, nothing about me will ever change. There will be no negotiation.

I’ll work hard all the rest of my life to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. You will be responsible for the household. I’d prefer you didn’t work but if you do, the household mustn’t suffer. I want plain traditional food. You can eat whatever your like.

If you want children, that’s fine with me but you will raise them. I will never mistreat them but I will not coddle them, because the world will not when I’m gone. They will learn tasks appropriate to their age and take responsibility for their actions.

If you have visitors or relatives to our house I won’t be interested in talking to them. You and the children will be all the society I need except for necessary business arrangements. 

We will continue to have sex as long as we both want it but I won’t be ‘making love to you’. 

I will never say ‘I love you’. I have no idea what ‘love’ is except people say that there wasn’t much of it around in my house when I was growing up. I guess you can’t miss what you never had.

We will be faithful to each other. I know myself well enough to know that will be true for me for all time. If you are ever unfaithful to me, the contract is ended.

I will almost certainly not remember occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries and I will ignore all attempts to rope me into Xmas.

There won’t be any cuddling on the couch and watching TV and I won’t be interested in going anywhere to be entertained.

There won’t be any deep and meaningful conversations about books or what’s in the news.

You must be thinking, “Where are the good things about this contract?”

You will have financial security as long as you live. The farm produces well and is pretty much drought-proof. If I die before you I don’t expect you to keep the farm and the place will fetch a good price.

You will have children (if you want them) to love and nurture as you wish and they will grow up knowing how to be resourceful and resilient, putting them well ahead of the pack.

You will have a faithful and respectful partner that barely drinks, doesn’t smoke, is rarely ill and will stay strong for years to come.

You will live in a community that has kept its values and its connections tight and in that sense you’ll never be alone.

And we will sit on the back porch at dusk and look over our land and not have to say how much it means to us. We will know what we’ve done together and that’s enough peace for anyone.

So, if that’s a contract you can live with for the rest of your life and never reproach me or yourself for the choices you have freely made, let me know tonight. 

She put down the letter, made herself a pot of tea, took it out to the back verandah and sat in her favorite cane chair, gazing at the landscape that could be hers forever.

As Kate sipped her tea, she mulled over what he’d written, let the landscape in to her mind until the horizon was clear and mapped out how she would provide her answer.

She returned to the kitchen, poured a second cup of tea, sat at the table and began to write. She didn’t bother with a salutation; who else would she be writing too?

I’ve heard people say that honesty can be a weapon. However, in your case I think you’re using it as insurance or, at the very least, assurance that I won’t try to change you.

Life doesn’t work like that. No matter how we isolate ourselves, the world will have its way and we have to deal with the consequences. Even for people like you who don’t follow the news, either the grapevine or the bank will tell them when there’s no longer a market for what they grow or what stock they raise; at least not at a price that they can live on.

You talk about the farm being drought-proof but you know such a thing has long gone and last year was the driest on record. In that sense, I’m not assured by your promise to keep a roof over our heads and provide well for me and any children we may have. To be blunt, that’s the sort of promise I’d expect from a townie, not a farmer.

Like you, I can take or leave marriage. It doesn’t seem to have made relationships any stronger or otherwise amongst people I’ve known. The fact that you want to spend the rest of your life with me fills me with peace and hope. But I won’t have a life without love from my partner and promising to be faithful entirely misses the point.

You know I don’t mean romance novel love or love that has to keep telling itself over and over again that it exists. That would scare me even more than what you’ve proposed. However, at the very least, I would expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you love me enough to want to spend the rest of your life with me and promise to let me know if that ever changes. (By the way, the sex doesn’t need to change – no complaints in that department.)

But here’s the real rub. We (as distinct from me alone) need to decide if we’re going to have children. And if we decide we will, you will be their father in all the important ways; comforting them, tending to their needs, teaching them patiently and defending them to the death. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly happy to take on the traditional mothering roles but I’m not going to let the cold distance of child-rearing that you inherited from your father and grandfather enter my bloodline.

How you are with others is fine with me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not much different. Besides, think of the money we’ll save on presents. But we will talk, especially about the important things and we will talk about them at the time it’s needed, not when it’s too late. 

I’m all for meaningful silences but when they end I want to know what they mean. 

I want this life. Since the beginning I’ve felt I’m coming home when I come here and I feel lost when I’m not. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, provided you are prepared to accept what I’ve asked for in your ‘contract’ (that word is so wrong my first impulse was to take off, forever.) If that much is too much then it says a lot about our chances of survival.

I think you will because I believe you are the strongest and most honest man I have ever met and that you have finally met the woman that you need to survive what’s coming.

You can give me your answer, face to face, when I come next weekend.

Signed, guess who?

Flynn read the letter several times over, climbed on to the ancient TD-18 International Harvester tractor with its metal seat shined by three generations of ample backsides and drove out to do some ploughing. His plan was for the concentration on straight lines to bring him the peace to think clearly about what Kate had said. What wasn’t helping was the ‘love’ part. 

His father had been a hard and harsh taskmaster and he found it difficult to recall any words of praise passing his lips. The most anyone could hope for was the odd grunting nod and a mumbled ‘Not bad’. His mother was only slightly better, with hugs disappearing by the time he went to school and a relentless ticking off of tasks when he came home. 

He understood they were hard years when they were trying to get the land into the condition that it needed to be in for long-term sustainability and there was little time for anything peripheral. And as he grew older he imagined that they thought that leaving him the legacy of the farm was, in the end, the only love that counted.

Breast cancer (deliberately left untreated he discovered later) took his mother in her late forties and five years later he found his father dead from a heart attack while repairing fences on a boundary paddock. When he picked him up, he half expected to be told to bugger off and get back to his work. Flynn made the necessary arrangements and stood dutifully solemn at their funerals, accepting condolences, but felt nothing. One day they were alive, the next day they were dead. That’s how life worked.

On his first night alone, he went through some old photos and lingered over a picture of his Mum, clipped from the local paper, holding one of her prize cakes at the annual regional agricultural show. Mum’s recipes were a local legend and she kept them, written in immaculate copperplate script, in a re-purposed school exercise book, kept from her teaching days. He decided to keep it safe, without knowing why.

Women rarely entered his mind as he continued to develop the farm, with some occasional hired help. Those he had met at school seemed weak or unapproachable. After he left school, he would see them again in town, usually either flaunting what he imagined were country town fashionable clothes or pregnant or walking along with a tribe of whining kids trailing behind them.

A couple of girls had pursued him (or his property) and once he had found himself suddenly engaged to Cheryl Clarke, not that he could recall popping the question. The next thing he knew was that has being paraded around the district like a prize bull with a ring through his nose. He hibernated for weeks before that blew over.

Then one day, when he was collecting his mail from the post office, in strode a statuesque female stranger. The coat and slacks could only belong to a city type and her long red hair hung in waves down her back. Her face contained eyes and a fixed smile that spoke of openness while still conveying concealed steel. 

Having collected her mail, she strode out again, unfolded herself into a dusty, dented hatchback and sped off. In the background he could hear fragments from the tongues wagging. ‘ … new schoolteacher  … not married … bit of a tyrant in the schoolroom I’ve heard but the kids seem to like her … asked for wine in the pub the other day… drives like a maniac’. This woman had certainly entered Flynn’s mind and he was totally uncertain as to how to deal with that.

Up until then, he’d go into town for the mail and shop at random times, when the opportunity arose between jobs. Now he found himself on schedule to be there, coincidentally, when she came into the post office. She’d started nodding to him, as country people do, but with an odd, crooked smile on her face when she did it.

Kate made the first move. Instead of nodding, she asked him ‘I’ve heard that sometimes you take animals for agistment.’ After a moment, from the side of a barely opened mouth, he said ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I have an ageing horse that I’d like to have close at hand.’

‘One horse?’

‘Sum total.’

‘Not sure my fences are high enough to contain a horse.’

‘Oh, her fence jumping days are over. Besides, you could ride her. If you wanted to.’

They pretended to haggle over an agistment fee and then Kate said, ‘I’ll bring her up at the weekend.’

And so it began.

And now here he was, sitting on his veranda, waiting for Kate, who was waiting for an answer.

Kate’s traveling car wreck pulled up at the veranda. She emerged, climbed the steps and sat in his Mum’s rocking chair and waited.

‘Not sure where to start’, he said.

She offered no help.

Silence.

‘I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you’ he blurted, as if fearful that if he didn’t get it out quickly his words would be strangled at birth.

Silence.

Kate smiled but said nothing.

‘About kids’, he nervously continued, ‘I want to be able to leave the farm to a next generation. I’m just not sure I’d be much good at the raising bit. You might have to give me a few tips.’

Kate laughed and said ‘I can always work with a willing pupil’. 

They watched a pair of kookaburras land in the giant redgum that dominated the front yard.

Kate’s voice softened and she said, ‘That’s settled then.’

Now the silence between them was easy.

Later, she said, ‘Thought I might make a cake tomorrow. What did you do with your Mum’s recipe book?’

Finn smiled and said ‘Think I might have put it somewhere in the bedroom. Want to help me find it?’

Doug Jacquier has lived in many places across Australia, including regional and remote communities, and has travelled extensively overseas. His poems and stories have been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and India. He blogs at Six
Crooked Highways

If you would like to be part of the RFM family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.

If you like dark fiction, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.

blog, Fiction

“Love Tokens in the Sunflower Field” Short Story by Billy Stanton

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"Love Tokens in the Sunflower Field" Fiction by Billy Stanton

What, in the end, is the difference between a field of sunflowers and a field of brick-built houses? Both live for a while, both eventually die, it’s just a matter of time doling out unequally heaped bowls of itself one to the other to push the whole thing along. The rot’s different with both, sure, but nothing lasts forever. One grows by itself once the seeds have been sown and the other takes a man’s hands a lot of labour to stand tall for its allotted period. Labour and time, those are the things that count.
            Luke Johnson has taken eight pay-packets and two broken love tokens from the field. One is for labour, the other is from time.
            There’s been a lot of anger since it was announced that Wimpey had bought up the field. Some said it was the last beauty spot on the face of the county being levelled; a final dereliction of duty by the local wardens of the greenbelt. But there had been a rickety garage jutting out into the field as long as Jack could remember: two long and low concrete buildings with rusting doors, a swamp of a forecourt and the obliterated chassis of trucks and hatchbacks and the tops of Range Rovers. People are able to overlook ugliness when it suits them. Thirty homes won’t make for a lot more people around. The quiet won’t be too badly broken. The new commuters might even save the train station, a forlorn branch-line stop threatened with closure that the current station master has given up on. The lilacs he planted long ago in the soil boxes have rotted. They stink. A dirty protest against GWR.
            It is only Luke’s second big job on a building site. Times are different now; it used to be that smart lads in the village could become models of social mobility, heading away from the farms for offices in the capitol or the county seat. Parents swore against their offspring having to sweat and suffer like them; but this western Akenfield no longer offers cannon fodder for the plush new industries because there are no plush new industries. No more silver-lit plexiglass lives. Everywhere in the county seems to be on its knees. Luke tried for a job where the last bit of money was flowing. However, he noticed the head of the local branch of the prestigious estate agents wore a signet ring on his little finger and Luke thought that a bad sign. He saw the landowners themselves wearing those sometimes, like they were all in a little cult. Luke supposed they were. The interview was over quickly. The estate agent’s brochures showed in their advertising blather the names of the schools that would have gotten Luke a job if only he could have put them on his CV. Some things have a steel ring around them, just like the city of London.
            Luke counts out time via his labour. Each round of cement mixing, each new foot of stacked bricks or deepness in the foundation holes, has a portion of more-or-less precise minutes or hours fixed to it. When Luke is with the strict workers he doesn’t ever need to look at his watch. When he is with the bad it’s more tricky, but he’s managed to find the rhythms even in their chaos.
            Most the rest of the men roll in in Mercedes and Ford transit vans at around five or six each morning. They come from the cheap hotels in town. Adrift and alone apart from each other, divested of an individual life for long, long stretches and underpaid, they drink and drink all night. They stagger and stumble over the site when they come in. The site managers take lines of cocaine in their jerry-built office to make sure they have the energy to carry on controlling the doing. Sometimes they share.

            But Luke is okay. Okay for now. He has the money and he has the love tokens. He supposed the sunflower field hadn’t always been a sunflower field; long before it had been enclosed, he imagined, it might have been some lover’s glen or meadows, a meeting point for sweethearts just outside the confines of the village proper and on the far side from the old church. It was all fumbling in the long grass back then. Luke had heard old songs on the pubs’ Trad Nights (the area had a history for it; scholars still turned up occasionally); half of them seemed to be about men back from wars at sea or on the land, testing their betrothed’s loyalty in their absence by wearing disguises and making clumsy passes, before revealing their identity by the brandishing of half a broken token of devotion when the woman acquiesced or demurred. One of Luke’s tokens was broken in half in this manner; it was an unimpressive old copper ring, definitely worn not for show but simply for symbolism. It had a simple engraving that ran along and over the split: “When I’m gone from you”. Luke had found both halves buried together when he’d been digging; he assumed the couple had left it in the ground when their had separation ended. He liked that. It was like planting a sunflower seed.
            The other token was a coin, bent inwards on the edge of each side. It had two sets of initials, overlapping in the centre of a love-heart with an arrow shot through it: A.J. and S.H. Luke had seen one like this once in the county museum on a school trip. It had fascinated him because there was nothing on it then but an engraving of a stick figure hanging from a noose, with the label ‘1814’ beneath. He’d never been able to decide on who that souvenir was for.

            Luke treasured these droppings more than the real money he was collecting. He figured that would be the way for most when they dug up something deep and forgotten from the ground of their homestead. Besides, time mattered more to him than labour. He’d be labouring his whole life, no doubt, except for when things were really rough. But the labour would never be for him. He helped build nice houses for other people; nice even though they didn’t have a proper garden in order to make room for more plots on the development. Someone would build him a home or had already built it, but it would be smaller and cheaper and nastier than these. That was the way it went. But no-one ever had enough time, right at the final point, when all that labouring for others had been got through.
            The love tokens were a sign that this village, maybe itself on its own long and slow deathbed with its family nowhere to be found to help support it, had held glorious life in its allotted period. Once, Luke had read that God was spread in all things; that he was in man, earth, bud, branch, cattle, beam and bell. Most people would agree that God is in a sunflower, but not in a Wimpey home. Luke wasn’t so sure of that. It all seemed much of a same to him. Men might hide that truth sometimes, but the love tokens were a reminder. There were currents of life and light beneath everything. That was pure religion; a godless God or millions, billions of Gods. Older than Christianity, that way of seeing things. On an evening a few years ago, he’d been watching a documentary on television and when the presenter started talking about “history buried in the ground”, the light that always turned itself on banged itself instead hard three times against the side of his parent’s bookcase. Knock, knock, knock. Luke thought maybe he’d find a third token, too. Things move in synchronicity in that way. They have their own strange rhythms.
            Dig for Victory. That was a war slogan, emblazoned across different posters. There was a stark sepia-toned one with a boot digging a spade into a mound of earth, a spade that stood true and straight and proud to suggest to the pliant observer a nation remaining resilient; there was one with a beaming healthy farm worker in white shirt-sleeves puffing on a pipe and carrying a laden bucket of vegetables; there was another showing the back of a small child in sunhat and short trousers carrying a spade and redolent more of train company adverts for the seaside than the struggles of wartime. Luke didn’t like any of them much. The first seemed almost fascistic; the red background and the earth made him think of that ‘blood and soil’ Nazi line, which wasn’t helped by the man’s footwear being reminiscent of a jackboot. The second’s farmhand didn’t look like any that Luke had ever seen; he was a pink-cheeked gentleman in dress-up, keeping the best produce for himself. The third seemed to suggest the imminent re-introduction of child labour and the final puncturing of all daydreaming. But he liked the slogan- or, at least, he had come to, once he’d managed to shorn it of its propaganda and put it in a new place.
            Dig for Victory. Aye, he could do that. He could keep on doing that. He could go on finding things. He had to. As long as he could work out what victory actually meant in the final reckoning. That was the hard part. Harder than it had been for decades, probably. That would take real time and real labour and that pure religion.

Billy Stanton is a young working-class writer and filmmaker based in London, and originally from Portsmouth. His story ‘Screwfix’ was recently published in ‘New Towns’ (Wild Pressed Books). His short fiction has also appeared in Horla, The Chamber, Tigershark and (soon) Wyldblood magazines. His latest short film ‘Noli is currently in post-production. His blog can be found at: steelcathedrals.wordpress.com

If you would like to be part of the RFM family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines.

If you like dark fiction, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.

blog, Poetry

Six Poems by Alan Catlin

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Alan Catlin is primarily known for poetry but that doesn’t prevent him for mixing and matching prose and poetry as the subject allows.  He has published dozens of full-length book and chapbooks, mostly poetry, over the years. Although he is not a genre writer, he has somehow managed three Rhysling Prize nominations and a Bram Stoker Award nomination He didn’t win either award.

Climbing

I said we were
going to climb
that mountain

all the way
to the top
some day

Show
him what it
feels like to
touch the sky

Heart

In the courtyard
I read aloud
the inscriptions
on the tombstones:

"Tobias Hart
Born 1801 Died 1874
 
Never too old
to die of a broken
heart"
 
 "Dad, isn't
 that kind of funny,
 died of a broken heart?"

 Yeah
 kind of

Waterville N.Y. 1968

Late April, the earth
reveals furrowed rows, 

seedling corn stalks,
barren trees sprouting

leaves, flocking black
birds that eat the coming

water colored Spring.

Covered Bridge

Hiking Adirondack trails
we paused, resting between

pine trees, down below,
a ruined covered bridge

overgrown with vines and
brush, loose hanging rotten

boards, sunlight spearing
worn, sagging wood, a pulsing

rain swollen river pressing
through jutting, fallen

cliff rock, washing out links,
networks of roads that lead nowhere

Deserted Homestead Still Life, Remsen, N.Y. 1970

Rising smoke layers endless
fields of long thin weeds,
blown close to the earth,
once rich furrowed fields,
rows of cultivated crops
a farmer watched turning grey
at dusk: "Down there," he would
say to his family, "Is something
solid. Life."  Overturned,
dispatched by world wars,
bad years without rain, years
beating back governments,
bank foreclosure notices
with shots of whiskey 
and beer.  All land becomes
a yard that leads nowhere
between weathered split rails.
From the collapsed, unpainted
porch, looking down through
the broken windows, fallow
fields are full of fire,
a dead man's hands turns
the earth with a horse drawn
plow, one lost soul among many,
at home, at last, feeling
the land fill his fallow
bones with heat.

Deserted Barn at Night

Dried, split bales of hay
spill out from the barn

wrecked by years of bad
weather and neglect, 

sinking into the earth,
awaiting more wet rotting

rain or drought, awaiting
the black bats that color

the sky, that fill sagging
rafters, hanging down,

a dark eye, skin
of the night.

Alan Catlin is primarily known for poetry but that doesn’t prevent him for mixing and matching prose and poetry as the subject allows.  He has published dozens of full-length book and chapbooks, mostly poetry, over the years. Although he is not a genre writer, he has somehow managed three Rhysling Prize nominations and a Bram Stoker Award nomination He didn’t win either award.