Category Archives: blog

blog, Poetry

“Wilderness” Poem by Carl Sandburg

Leave a comment
Carl Sandburg 1878-1967
Carl Sandburg 1878-1967
There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.    

There is a fox in me . . . a silver-gray fox . . . I sniff and guess . . . I pick things out of the wind and air . . . I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers . . . I circle and loop and double-cross.

There is a hog in me . . . a snout and a belly . . . a machinery for eating and grunting . . . a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun—I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.

There is a fish in me . . . I know I came from salt-blue water-gates . . . I scurried with shoals of herring . . . I blew waterspouts with porpoises . . . before land was . . . before the water went down . . . before Noah . . . before the first chapter of Genesis.

There is a baboon in me . . . clambering-clawed . . . dog-faced . . . yawping a galoot’s hunger . . . hairy under the armpits . . . here are the hawk-eyed hankering men . . . here are the blonde and blue-eyed women . . . here they hide curled asleep waiting . . . ready to snarl and kill . . . ready to sing and give milk . . . waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.

There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird . . . and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want . . . and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes—And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.

O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart—and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where—For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.

Source: The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Harcourt Brace Iovanovich Inc., 1970)

Phil’s note: Granted, I am familiar with only a few of Sandburg’s poems, but this format took me by surprise. Also, although Sandburg’s poetry is usually “deep”, the almost Asian feel of this poem, showing the mingling of the narrator’s existence with that of nature and the environment is something I did not expect. This is almost Taoist in some ways. The fusion of man and nature is also reminiscent of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Poet Carl Sandburg was born into a poor family in Galesburg, Illinois. In his youth, he worked many odd jobs before serving in the 6th Illinois Infantry in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. He studied at Lombard College, and then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he worked as an organizer for the Socialist Democratic Party. In 1913, he moved to Chicago, Illinois and wrote for the Chicago Daily News. His first poems were published by Harriet Monroe in Poetry magazine. Sandburg’s collection Chicago Poems (1916) was highly regarded, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Corn Huskers (1918). His many subsequent books of poetry include The People, Yes (1936), Good Morning, America (1928), Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922), and Smoke and Steel (1920).

“Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg,” said a friend of the poet, “is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black and white snapshot.” His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend, Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg “the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music.”

from Poetryfoundation.org

If you enjoyed this poem, you might also enjoy “Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry.

blog, Fiction

“Stripling Chapel” Fiction by Alan Caldwell

Leave a comment
"Stripling Chapel" Fiction by Alan Caldwell--Rural Fiction Magazine

I found her, an older beagle mix, but more white than brown or black, lying in the ditch next to the dirt road. I was about ten at the time, so almost half a century ago. I don’t know the road’s name, but I do know it turned North off Stripling Chapel Road and ran for about a quarter of a mile before ending in a thick copse of red oaks. My Aunt Eunice and Uncle Benjamin lived down a rough dirt and rock driveway in a rough and sagging house in those oaks.

I knew the beagle was a female because her teats were long and dark from being suckled by many litters. I had seen her before in the road and in the red and washed-out yards of the poor black families that lived on that nameless path. All their dogs and the children were gaunt, almost equally so. The children stared at me when I walked by, but they never said anything. Well, one little boy, maybe four or five, did call me a “cracka,” and throw a handful of pea gravel at me one time. His throw came up a bit short, and he turned and ran away and joined the other older kids who laughed at his effort.

I was clear on what had happened. The beagle had gone to the blacktop, maybe looking for something to eat, and had been struck by a passing car. The exposed roots and washed-out ruts made the nameless road a slow medium for travel and thus safe for both animals and children. In contrast, the cars on Stripling Chapel were a menace.

A small stream of blood ran from her nostril, and though the November climate was crisp and breezy, she panted as if burning up in the August sun. I reached to stroke the small heart-shaped patch of dark fur on her head, and she snapped at me, not particularly viciously but sufficiently to make me withdraw my hand and take a step back. I reached towards her again. She growled. I could hear a wet gurgle in the raspy snarl. I recalled my grandfather making a similarly wet gurgle not long before the adults made the children leave the room.

I decided to leave her in the ditch.

I walked back to my uncle’s house. I told him about the beagle. He informed me that even sweet dogs will bite you if they are hurt badly enough. Uncle Benjamin was old, very old. He leaned far forward when he walked, his legs as stiff and straight as planed lumber. Rheums and agues plagued his dotage. His hands shook so badly that very little of Eunice’s tomato soup made the journey from his bowl to his mouth.

He agreed to walk with me to see the dog. Before we left, he reached under his sagging living room chair and produced a small black Iver Johnson revolver with ivory grips. Eunice brought a ragged string quilt and handed it to me. I don’t think either item made sense to me at the time. I understood that Uncle Benjamin usually concealed the revolver somewhere in his faded Duck-Head overalls. The purpose of the quilt was less clear.

Uncle Benjamin walked so slowly that it must have taken us twenty minutes to make it up the driveway and the road to the broken beagle. I’m not sure what I expected my uncle to do. I knew that a dog that seemed unable to move most of its body was pretty badly hurt.

Uncle Benjamin reached down and stroked her head. She didn’t offer to bite him. She didn’t even growl. I guess she had lost the strength or the will. As a general rule, I hate personification, but the dog’s eyes seemed to be pleading for help. Benjamin told her, “girl, yo back’s broke, ain’t nothing I can do for ya.”

He then pulled the Iver Johnson from his pocket and aimed carefully. His hands, for once, were completely steady. I turned my head when the shot rang out. I waited for a few seconds before I looked back. When I did, she was still, no more ragged breaths.

I took the string quilt and wrapped her in it. I picked her up and we took her to one of the houses where the black kids played in the yard. They watched in silence. I laid her on the sagging wood porch. The oldest of the boys, maybe thirteen or fourteen, walked up, opened the quilt, and looked at her. I said, “we didn’t have no choice; her back’s broke.”

By now the other kids had circled us. The bigger boy’s eyes welled up with tears. Some of the others cried openly.  He said, “thank y’all for taking care of her.”

My uncle and I walked back to the road. I stopped and looked back. The bigger boy was carrying the dog away, toward the woods. The smaller children followed behind. One was dragging a shovel.

Alan Caldwell has been teaching since 1994 but only began submitting writing in May. He has since been published in Southern Gothic Creations, Level: Deepsouth, oc87 Recovery Diaries, Black Poppy Review, The Backwoodsman, You Might Need To Hear This, The Chamber, Biostories, Heartwood Literary Journal, and American Diversity Report.

Follow this link to the Submission Guidelines.

blog, Fiction, Stories

“Pay at the Pump” Fiction by Kay Summers

Leave a comment
"Pay at the Pump" Dark Fiction by Kay Summers for Rural Fiction Magazine

The killer pulled into the gas station slowly, tires crunching over the loose gravel dotting the asphalt. The station was small, one of those old stations right outside small towns where the prices are posted on signs with numbers someone changes by hand. It sported two pumps of an elderly vintage, and when the killer pulled alongside the first one, he saw the paper, handwritten sign taped over the handle: “Out of Order.” Sighing inwardly, he pulled ten feet forward to access the second pump. A similarly scrawled sign taped over the credit card slot read: “Pay Inside.”

With another sigh, this one audible, the kind that fills a given space with the weary frustration of its owner, he put the car into park, popped the gas tank open, and turned off the engine. The killer preferred to pay at the pump rather than walking inside ahead of time, waiting on whatever patron was buying scratch-off tickets and beef jerky, and then estimating how much he’d need to fill his tank. It was an inexact science at best, and it’d inevitably leave him with a gas gauge hovering just below the full line, as unsatisfying ending to a gas transaction if ever there was one.

He’d never understood people who said things like, “I’m just going to get five dollars of gas,” or shit like that. How could you possibly keep track of your fuel with a gauge that was forever short of full, never stopping at the top, just floating somewhere between half and three-quarters of a tank?

The door to the store was glass with one of those metal handlebars bisecting it. The kind that leaked heat in the winter and AC in the summer, which wasn’t the killer’s problem, but he did ponder the wasted money and energy for a second. The door swung easily, and the small bell hanging from a string on the inside tinkled to announce his entrance.

The clerk was seated behind the counter. This station was small, of course, and in one of those towns that liked to think it had low crime, so there was no glass barrier protecting the employee. More likely than a low crime rate was the chance that there was a shotgun underneath the counter, just by the man’s knees, providing assurance as he read the newspaper, drank coffee, and conducted the odd transaction or two that probably occurred no more than twice an hour; three times, tops.

Peering over his paper, the heavyset man, dressed in blue work chinos and a striped, short-sleeved button-up with his name stitched on the pocket—Stanley, it said—sighed as well, folding his paper carefully and setting it on the counter before regarding the killer over the bridge of his reading glasses.

“Fill ‘er up?” The man asked.

So, he wouldn’t have to guess how much to pay. That was a plus. He nodded, and the man pushed a few buttons on the console to his left, nodding back at the killer and grunting, “Go ’head, then.”

The killer didn’t know gas stations still existed where a person would be trusted to come back in and pay after filling up the tank. But apparently, here in the wilds of Georgia, they did.

Post fill-up, the clerk—Stanley—was friendlier. “That a hybrid?” he asked with genuine interest. “How many miles you get?”

Twenty years ago, the version of this man would’ve no doubt viewed such a car with suspicion, but now, with gas prices spiking, everybody and their grandma was interested in hybrids—what kinds of batteries they took, whether or not it had any pick-up, if he’d ever topped 50 miles per gallon, you name it.

“Averages about 45 on the highway,” the killer replied. “More than 38 in town.”

“That right? That’s the opposite of what you read about them,” Stanley quizzed.

“Yeah, I know,” the killer answered. “They got it all backwards, at least with mine.”

Stanley had a few more questions, and the killer, whose name was Tod, pronounced Todd but with just the one “d,” indulged him. Tod normally hated small talk—not because of his profession, though. He’d always been bad at it, not like those kids who could chatter away to a stranger in the aisle of a grocery store, telling some stranger all their momma’s business while she stood further down the aisle, trying to remember if they needed Pop-tarts or not. Tod had been the kid who stood, mutely, while some random adult asked random questions about what grade he was in and did he like his teacher and what not.

But in a strange town, with a job to do, it paid to be a little friendly, because in the South, you stood out more if you weren’t. He was known to be quiet in his own hometown down by the Gulf in Alabama, but here, he was more likely to be remembered if he didn’t converse than if he did.

Also, it was possible Stanley could help him.

After it was clear that Stanley’s curiosity about current hybrid technology had been sated, and he began to pick up his paper again, Tod ventured, casually: “Got any motels close by around here? I’ve got a long drive tomorrow, and I’d love to rest up, watch a little TV, catch a few zzz’s.”

Stanley, he knew, was likely to recommend the kind of place he was unlikely to find on hotels.com—a one-story motel with doors that opened right to your parking spot and clerks who didn’t mind taking cash with no reservation. Stanley did not disappoint, directing him to a homely establishment just about two miles down the same state highway and on the right. The Olde Towne Motel, it was called, and Tod knew the stylish nature of the extra “e’s” wouldn’t be reflected in the accommodations, but that was more than fine. Places like this catered to people who maintained a very small footprint in this world, whether they stayed a night or lived here, and they were unlikely to notice him or care if they did. They all had more than enough worries to occupy their time.

The room was gross, of course, but Tod had stayed in many worse places while in the military. A place that had a bed, even if he needed to don a Haz-Mat suit before lying on it, was superior in every way to a dugout in the mountainous desert or a back room in some shot-up house in Baghdad.

There was an flat-screen TV, the free-standing kind that you could get on the after-Thanksgiving Day sales at Wal-Mart if you were ready to take your life in your hands and do battle with all the heavyset ladies, Black and white, who’d crowd into surging hordes of shoppers against the closed doors, sprinting—their big chests heaving and bouncing—as they grabbed shopping carts and ran like hell for the electronics section as soon as the floodgates opened. It was scarcely bigger than the flat-screen monitor the killer used in his workstation back at his house, and the color on it was flat, garish, home-video quality circa 2006, making everything he tried to watch look like an episode of “Cops.”

Passing time in places like this required patience, and Tod had that in abundance. He was waiting on a call from his handler, Whippet, a man he knew from their mutual time in the military. Whippet was the guy who’d hooked him up with this gig, in those first disorienting, lonely days after he returned from his final combat tour with too much time on his hands and too much stored-up adrenaline and banked hypervigilance to enjoy it. Whippet had started his own business, helping people rid themselves of troublesome neighbors, acquaintances, and the occasional husband, when he returned, and his recruitment pitch to Tod had been simple: “Hey, man. Remember how they kept calling us ‘trained killers’ and all that bullshit? Well, I say stick with what you’re good at. Fuck trying to make it in the straight world. They trained us, and fairly expensively, wouldn’t you say? Might as well use it.”

And it had been, in the end, that simple. There was no shortage of small-town people with petty grudges they’d been carrying around for years. Being able to unburden oneself from, say, the anger one might feel at the snooty prep who’d called you fat in junior high, then grown up and married some Tuscaloosa business school graduate with a beer gut who golfed, an ever-present dumbass visor on his head, and moved to his wife’s town to open his own investment business, keeping selfsame preppy girl in Vineyard Vines and Lilly Pulitzer shifts until the end of time, was an appealing prospect for some. All Tod had to do was the take the contract from Whippet and figure out a way to make it look like an accident. Just by way of example, the middle-aged preppy girl-now-lady had succumbed to a freak accident involving the machine that pumped out tennis balls for practice on the courts at the club. She must’ve gotten distracted, the police said, and the machine’s last hit had been right at her heart, stopping it cold. Bless her heart; she’d always been so graceful on the court, too.

Anyway, that’s the kind of work that kept Tod busy and had done so for a number of years, taking him from those first awful days in 2005 all the way through to these current days more than a dozen years later.

When the call from Whippet comes, his boss-turned-handler sounds aggrieved, his usual disposition these days. For Whippet had succumbed to the same plague that, in his words, had “diluted the quality of everything from music to meatballs”: the buy-out. His upstart business had been spotted by a much larger outfit out of Atlanta working basically the same market, and he’d taken the big payout and rolled his smaller, south Alabama standalone into a conglomerate. Tod had told him it was a mistake; what did people in Georgia know about this business that Whippet did not? But Whippet’d had his head turned by the money and the vague idea that he would retire before 50, living the life on some beachfront property and keeping a place in the mountains in North Carolina so he could see whichever part of the seasons he chose.

Like Tod knew, Whippet couldn’t hang it up. He had nothing else in his life, and without the constant influx of jobs to manage and assets like Tod to wrangle, he’d been bored silly. So, Whippet was back within six months, working as an employee for the new, larger business. It was ok, he’d mused to Tod—all the big management headaches were taken on by others, and he had plenty of money, so he was just working to have something to do.

The killer had never understood this mindset. Tod didn’t understand what was wrong with people these days. Everybody was always retiring and then talking about how they were bored and then coming back and doing the same damn things they’d done for decades. To him, it spoke to both an immense insecurity in people—who ARE we if no one needs us to work?—and a profound lack of curiosity about the wider world. When he, Tod, had enough to retire and see him through whatever elderly ailments his body could possibly present—when he felt secure in the amount of digits in the number he saw when he logged into Fidelity—he was going to walk away, no question. He had a big stack of books and a long queue of movies and shows waiting on him, and he didn’t plan to miss this grind one bit. When he traveled in retirement, he’d make reservations ahead of time in places the guidebooks recommended; he’d stop all this find-an-anonymous-fleabag-motel stuff and travel like a civilized person.

Anyway, Whippet’s major discontent with his new lot had less to do with not liking his work and more to do with feeling like he’d been deceived by the people who bought him out. Said he’d been approached by a big Black dude, a tough guy whose service took place in Vietnam and who still looked like he could break heads using only his own hands, and he’d thought this dude intended to stay in charge. Didn’t know that less than a year after the buyout, the whole business would be turned over to a woman. Nothin’ against women, he said, but still, it didn’t seem right not to have told him, Whippet, the plan.

Now, on the phone, Tod listens patiently through the usual prefaces, tinged with resentments and can-you-believe-this’s that now accompany all his calls with Whippet.

“Well, the lady in charge has sent down the orders for the little people, you and me,” Whippet begins. “You ready for this bullshit?”

Tod mentally sighs and wishes Whippet had stayed retired.

“Yep. Let’s have it.”

“Now, I’m sure she knows what she’s doing, and I would never presume to question the boss lady,” he continues. “I mean, what do I know? I only got an MBA and years of experience doing this while she was probably watching soaps and shopping online.”

Whippet had completed his MBA online with the GI bill a couple of years ago, and he never fails to bring it up at least once in every conversation now.

“But anyway, the target is maybe a little more visible than usual.”

Here Tod’s ears perk up. For all his whining, Whippet does know the business, and when he’s on point, he gets more understated. So “maybe a little more visible” is important.

“The guy’s name is Guy. No shit, couldn’t make that up,” Whippet chuckles. “But you maybe seen his name already on your way into town.”

Tod reaches back to the recent memory of approaching this small town, thinking through billboards, road signs, stretches of road named after local celebrities, until it comes to him.

“The mayor? That Guy?”

“That’s the one,” Whippet sighs heavily. “The fuckin’ mayor. Runnin’ for re-election. Should be out and about a lot at least. County fairs, Rotary Club meetings, that kind of bullshit.

“But there’ll be people around him, Tod. Hangers on and such. So it’s a tricky one.”

That’s definitely an understatement. Even if Tod can isolate a local politician in the midst of an election season, nothing that happens to the man will go unnoticed. His death will be all over the local papers and probably get picked up statewide.

“Damn.”

“That’s right, bud,” Whippet commiserates.

“There a good reason?”

One of the things that Whippet always insisted on—his “defining difference,” as he put it, for marketing’s sake—was the requirement that the buyer provide a motive. Didn’t have to be a good motive or even a particularly strong one. They just needed to know why, exactly, someone wanted this person dead. Gave them leverage over the client, hedged against a future guilty conscience in the form of anonymous calls to police that would expose their organization, and, most crucially, helped Tod and those like him figure out a way to off the person most subtly. Think of it this way: if the person who puts down the money hates a woman because of how she acts at work, then killing her far away from work, in location and manner of death, will be safest to protect them all. So, this was Whippet’s one requirement when he sold the business: at least for his guys, the motive requirement stays in place. To his surprise, the larger organization liked the idea and adopted in for all the contracts.

“Yeah,” Whippet murmurs. “Yeah, there is.”

A recorded voice comes over the line. It’s a woman’s voice, low and choked off, like she can barely get the words out. 

“My husband is an angry man,” the voice begins. “He’s angry at the world, but he wants the world to love him, so all his anger is reserved for his family.

“It used to be just me, and I thought I could handle it. Calling me names in that low, hissing voice that no one else could hear, telling me I was fat, useless, ridiculous in whatever clothes I had one—it was bad but bearable. I married him when I was right out of college and just wanted to get out from under my parents. I figured his behavior was the price I would pay for being careless, for jumping without really looking, and it wasn’t so bad, really. We’ve got a nice house, plenty of money, and everyone thinks we’re a perfect family.

“I thought I’d kept most of it from my kids until the night he locked me outside, naked, and I had to knock on my daughter’s window after he went to sleep so I could come back inside. She was ten, then, and I tried to tell her it wasn’t a big deal, that Mommy and Daddy had just had an argument and needed to be nicer to each other, but she looked at me with her big eyes, and what I saw there was pity.

“That was five years ago.

“Guy’s been mayor for a few years now, and it’s not a full-time job, so he has to keep working, selling real estate, and it’s a lot. I know it’s a lot. He wants us to have everything, wants everything to look just so, and it’s hard for me to keep everything just so with two teenagers leaving stuff lying all over the place. But, you know, it’s bearable. I know there are other women who have it really bad. Mostly all he ever does to me, other than insult me, is squeeze my upper arms so hard he leaves marks. But I don’t really have good enough arms to wear sleeveless dresses—Guy says my upper arms wiggle like a turkey wattle—so I just cover up the marks and drive on, you know?

“But then I overheard my son talking to his girlfriend on the phone. He was in his room, and I usually can’t hear anything, but he must’ve been upset, because his voice was louder than usual.

“He was telling her how much he hates his dad. How scared he is that he’ll be just like him. How he wishes he could protect me, but he gets pissed because I won’t lift a finger to help myself, and he thinks I must be the weakest person alive. Then he feels guilty, and all he can think is that he just wants to kill his dad.

“I’ve not been a good mother, I know. A good mother could’ve figure out how to keep all this away from my kids, keep their home together better so they wouldn’t know any of this was happening, but I’ve failed them there. They both know all about their dad and me.

“But when my son said he wanted to kill his dad, I almost threw up. Hit me like a punch to the stomach, and I do know what one of those feels like. The reason I got so sick was that I realized that if my son killed his father, I’d just be relieved. But my son’s life would be over, too. I knew, in that moment, that I had to do whatever it took so that my son wouldn’t walk around feeling like he wanted to kill. I want my son to think about leaving for college next year, about meeting new people and not worrying about me, and one of these nights, if he gets upset enough at his dad, I won’t be able to stop him. I’ve never been able to stop any of them from doing whatever they want to do.

“This is the only way I can think of stop the whole thing from happening. This is the only way for me to help my kids. I want someone to kill my husband.”

Tod pauses as he considers. Truth be told, he finds himself thinking this woman is pretty weak, too, letting this go on for years and years, but you know, her heart’s finally in the right place.

Doesn’t change the fact that this’ll be one of the trickiest jobs he’s ever done. A visible target, and him on unfamiliar turf, too.

The killer finishes his call with his handler quickly and gets off the phone to think. How can he accomplish this? A prominent man—the mayor, for God’s sake—in a small town, a town he himself doesn’t know at all. An accident is always the best way to go; an unsolved murder would be disastrous, because though the primary objective would be accomplished, the resulting attention would be unfortunate and might, ultimately, make Tod a liability to his organization, which would prove bad for his own health.

An accident, then. Problems abound. First, there’s the issue of access—how will he get close to this man? And knowledge of his habits, his lifestyle, his routines—this is all foreign territory to Tod, who’s only worked on familiar turf with people he’s known for years and motives that help him construct a plan. This guy—Guy—all Tod knows about him is that he’s an asshole. That hardly narrows down a sensible method of death.

Tod isn’t given to fits of pique or temper tantrums; the killer was always known in his unit as even-keeled, the kind of guy you wanted around when shit started to get real, because he never loses his head. But this assignment is so far afield from his comfort zone and so potentially hazardous that his head is spinning a little. Grabbing the ice bucket, he leaves the room and goes in search of the ice and vending machines. There’s never been any situation that an ice-cold Coke didn’t make at least slightly better, that’s for sure.

The ice machine being located in its usual place by the stairwell and the Coke machine having delivered the goods without eating his change, Tod returns to his room, the can balanced atop the pile of ice in his left hand while he manages the key card with his right. Opening the flimsy door, he stops abruptly at the sight of a woman sitting at the small table in his room. Noting the handgun placed casually beside her neatly folded hands on the table, he’s considering whether to back out or lunge for the weapon when she says, quietly, “C’mon in, Tod. Just here to talk.”

The woman gestures at the seat across from her at the small, round table. Hesitantly, Tod places the ice bucket down, pulls out the ugly brown chair, and sits carefully down. The woman looks at the soda perched on the ice and says, “Grab a few cups, would you? I could use some caffeine, too.”

Tod, not knowing what else to do as he tries to figure out what the hell is going on, walks over the to the bathroom vanity where the obligatory flimsy plastic cups are stacked, each wrapped in shrink wrap. He pulls two apart and brings them back to the table. Placing one in front of the woman, she raises an eyebrow and asks, “You mind?”

She’s clearly not going to engage her hands until she wants to, and there is something in her eyes that tells him he won’t be able to get that pistol in time. He upwraps both cups, fills them to the brim with ice, pops open the can, and pours them each some soda, letting it fizz down and pouring more so that both cups are full.

Placing one in front of her, he sips his own.

“Thanks,” she says. “Glad you like lots of ice. Nothing worse than a restaurant where they bring you a Coke with, like, three cubes of ice floating on top.”

Tod nods in agreement. “I hate that. When there aren’t many cubes, they all seem to melt really fast and—”

“Then you’ve got watery, lukewarm Coke,” the woman finishes, nodding vigorously.

They sip their Cokes in silence, the woman’s eyes never leaving Tod, who finds it difficult to maintain eye contact in the best of situations, which this isn’t. Instead, he looks with great interest at his cup, glancing up occasionally to make eye contact with the woman and then quickly returning to his drink.

The woman is average size, with a compact bearing that reminds Tod of a coiled spring. She’s anywhere between 35 and 55, one of those people whose appearance doesn’t announce their years of life in a loud voice. Her hair is a soft brown, sprinkled throughout with grey and cut in a straight line at line of her chin.

Despite the strangeness of this encounter, Tod finds himself feeling oddly comfortable. The woman is clearly ok with silences, and they sit, companionably enough, for a few minutes.

Finally, the woman speaks.

“Got a tricky one lined up, huh?”

Tod’s confusion shows.

“The mayor. It’s a tricky assignment, no?”

The killer is a man who is rarely surprised. The feeling is unfamiliar, but this day is only getting weirder, right? He may as well roll with it.

“Yeah,” he replies. “Trying to figure out a good approach. Not my typical gig.”

“I know,” the woman says calmly. “I wanted to see if you could handle something a little different.”

This is the woman, then. The mystery woman running the organization that bought out Whippet’s. How she found Tod’s exact location he does not know and won’t waste time asking.

“But I don’t want to leave you floundering,” she continues. “That’s not the point. I came by to help out.”

Tod works alone. That’s been the single best thing about this job—not having to work with other people. The killer always hated group work in school—one kid assuming leadership whether the others wanted them to or not, at least one other doing nothing and acting as a dead weight for the others to carry, the whole thing a joyless slog that resulted in a product owned by no one, loved by no one—and his military experience had been much the same. But this job allows him to work by himself, controlling the steps and assuring the outcomes. This woman, whoever she is, wants to “help”? That’s going to suck. Tod sighs and wishes once more for home.

“Don’t worry, Tod. We’re not going to hold hands, and both our names don’t have to go on the report cover,” the woman says, not meanly. “This is your job. I just have intel.

“The mayor is a hard guy to isolate, but he does like to ride his bike. Has an expensive custom job he rides, wears all the goofy tight clothes—the jersey and the padded shorts and what not—and likes to ride on the back roads here.

“Tries to ride three times a week,” she continues. “Always early in the morning. Tomorrow morning, I believe.”

With that, the woman places a piece of paper on the table. It’s a map of some sort.

“His route,” she states. “Joker maps his routes and tracks his workouts—his peak heart rates and what not—and he’s as predictable as farting when you eat beans.”

Standing up and picking up the gun—not too carefully, not carelessly, the way someone does when they know their weapon as well as their car keys—she moves toward the door. Before opening it, she turns back and says, with the finality of someone walking away, “He always leave at six a.m. Asshole doesn’t like it if his routine gets off in the slightest.”

She’s walking out the door when Tod says, not expecting an answer, “Might if I ask your name?”

The woman grins and instantly looks on the younger side of the supposed range.

“Susie. My name is Susie, Tod. Nice to meet you.”

And with that, she’s gone.

The next morning, Tod plans his route out of town carefully. The back road preferred by Guy, the mayor, really is a winding thing. Tod drives the same couple of miles a few times before he spots Guy coming toward him. He raises his hand in greeting, but the man on the bike ignores him. Once he turns the next corner, the killer quickly turns around, being careful not to slide the car on the narrow shoulder. Seeing the bike ahead of him, the killer speeds, makes contact, and then pulls over, gets out, and checks the pulse. The mayor is dead, so Tod gets back in his car and carefully drives away, the deserted back road looking back at him impassively. As he heads out of town, the killer makes sure to take a route that doesn’t take him past Stanley’s gas station.

He should be home in time for an early lunch. Driving the speed limit, he wonders when and if he might see his new boss again. He’s surprised—again—when the prospect doesn’t sound too bad. Turning his wheels toward Alabama, he selects a podcast, one of those true crime things that really are addictive, and heads for home.

Kay Summers is an emerging fiction author with a 20+ year career in communications. She’s written on behalf of others for so long that she started writing fiction to make sure she still had a voice. She does. 

If you enjoyed this story, you may also enjoy Kay’s story “12 Items or Less” over at The Chamber Magazine. You may also enjoy “The Cambridge Dancer” published here at RFM.

blog, Fiction

Now Accepting Examples of Oral Storytelling

Leave a comment
Storytelling--Rural Fiction Magazine

Rural Fiction Magazine (RFM) is going to try an experiment. RFM is now accepting submissions that exemplify the rich oral tradition of storytelling.

What we term fiction today is one of the current forms of the ancient storytelling tradition. Storytelling has been around since before the invention of writing. In fact, storytelling has probably existed since humans first developed the ability to speak. Most, if not all, cultures have some tradition of storytelling, which for most of human history was the only way to communicate and preserve concepts, experiences, and a culture’s history before the advent of writing. In some modern cultures, oral storytelling has developed into an art form. Oral storytelling competitions and organizations keeping the tradition alive are prevalent in many areas today including in many rural and agrarian societies where it is an important and intricate part of the traditional culture.

For these reasons, Rural Fiction Magazine is going to veer a little off the usual course for a literary magazine and will accept submissions of traditionally oral stories. These can include stories that have been passed from generation to generation, folklore, tall tales, stories told around a campfire, and any other type of story which has traditionally been circulated with the voice. These stories may be on any subject but should be an example of the oral storytelling tradition. They may be written or submitted as a video or podcast or in any medium that reflects the oral storytelling tradition.

Questions and comments can be sent to the publisher via slatterypublishing@gmail.com.

Follow this link to the RFM Submission guidelines.

blog, Fiction

“The Gift of The Magi” Classic American Short Fiction by O. Henry

2 Comments
Rural Fiction Magazine: "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name “Mr. James Dillingham Young.”

The “Dillingham” had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called “Jim” and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim’s gold watch that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: “Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.” One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the “Sofronie.”

“Will you buy my hair?” asked Della.

“I buy hair,” said Madame. “Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of it.”

Down rippled the brown cascade.

“Twenty dollars,” said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

“Give it to me quick,” said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends—a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

“If Jim doesn’t kill me,” she said to herself, “before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?”

At 7 o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: “Please God, make him think I am still pretty.”

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

“Jim, darling,” she cried, “don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It’ll grow out again—you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say ‘Merry Christmas!’ Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you.”

“You’ve cut off your hair?” asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

“Cut it off and sold it,” said Della. “Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m me without my hair, ain’t I?”

Jim looked about the room curiously.

“You say your hair is gone?” he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

“You needn’t look for it,” said Della. “It’s sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too. It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,” she went on with sudden serious sweetness, “but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?”

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

“Don’t make any mistake, Dell,” he said, “about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first.”

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: “My hair grows so fast, Jim!”

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, “Oh, oh!”

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

“Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.”

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

“Dell,” said he, “let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em a while. They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on.”

The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

From Wikipedia: William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry and non-fiction. His works include “The Gift of the Magi“, “The Duplicity of Hargraves“, and “The Ransom of Red Chief“, as well as the novel Cabbages and Kings. Porter’s stories are known for their naturalist observations, witty narration and surprise endings.

Porter’s legacy includes the O. Henry Award, an annual prize awarded to outstanding short stories.

If you enjoyed this story, you might also enjoy “Cambridge Dancer” by Edward N. McConnell.

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.