When the noisy clock sounded nine times, the open bar was drained to a trickle. This roadside bar in the middle of the woods was the last thing I expected in my long ride. There must be a hamlet nearby, I thought, and parked my car beneath the giant banyan.
Just two of us—a stranger and me—dipped our sadness in our brimming glasses. He finally broke the silence between us: Would you play a game, gentleman? I didn’t offer a second glance.
and pretended to put my head in the glass. Game of dares? It’d be fun! His voice as loud as the clock, as close to me as my shadow. Then the touch of his arm in my shoulder.
I’m in no mood to play, I shrugged.
Your face reveals you’re also broke. Why not lessen the load a bit? Let’s make it a deal of interest. The one who fails will pay the bills.
My reluctance yielded to his relentless pestering.
He then took out an empty bottle and gave it an angry spin. It danced on the table for a minute or so and finally died, pointing its head toward him.
Ask me anything and I agree to oblige, he said.
I had no idea in my head. I wished him to go away. But I didn’t dare to flare his fury!
Walk on the bonfire if you can, I said instead, pointing my finger to the outside.
He followed my instructions like a zombie and gingerly walked over the fire as though it was a carpet of roses. No frown, no fear, no agony—he was completely insane!
My shock had no time to culminate.
Let’s start it again, he said.
The bottle poked its finger to my face and he jumped from his seat: half in excitement, half in madness. It’s my turn now to test your prowess.
He took out a knife from his pocket like a nice little secret and kept it on the table.
Stab me, he said.
What the fuck? I am not playing anymore.
You can’t quit. Rules are rules.
I was trying to escape in haste but he held my hand in his grip. The smile turned to ferocity. Rules have to be obeyed.
You never said, one can’t quit, I bawled with indignation.
I may have forgot. But rules are rules.
I yelled for help but the bar owner and the lone waiter were nowhere.
I nervously picked the knife, closed my eyes, and tried to thrust it into his belly. The knife went through him and pierced the leather as if he was a shadow. His body was only air.
His smile reappeared with ghostly intensity. You can’t kill a dead man, can you?
Debasish Mishra is a Senior Research Fellow at NISER, India. He is the recipient of the 2019 Bharat Award for Literature and the 2017 Reuel International Best Upcoming Poet Prize. His recent work has appeared in 𝑁𝑜𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝐷𝑎𝑘𝑜𝑡𝑎 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, 𝑃𝑒𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑟𝑎, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑑𝑙𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤, 𝐴𝑚𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑑𝑎𝑚 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, 𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑎 𝑄𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑦, and elsewhere.
The party would have been over, if someone hadn’t brought along marshmallows as a party food, which in turn, brought up the suggestion that when the sun would set, and it would start getting dark, we would build a fire, and roast the marshmallows above the open flame. It was in town, this party to which I had been invited for some reason (as it was not customary for me to be invited to any shindigs, and so, was not in my habit to attend), and most of the attendees were military brats.
And a good deal of them were army air cadets – a sinister organization into which I once had been drawn. Being a metalhead I fit in very little with their spit-and-polish types. The type of people who pretend to be cleaner than their neighbours, and who judge you on sight. Who think that shaving means that you are respectful, and who see disagreeing as a criminal offense (as, in the military, it often tends to be).
(When I say I had been drawn into it, it was for a rather short period, as when looking at my shaggy black hair they said “above the ear”, and when I had it cut to “above the ear”, it still was not short enough to their liking; they postponed giving me my uniform leaving me singled out, most purposefully – noticeable, that one who doesn’t have a uniform, doesn’t have a buzz cut, and wears metal band Ts – and that day they wanted us to parade around for some officer, behind the Foodland by minus forty, I said “no sir, enough of that!”, and never went back. I had been lured in by the prospects of a free piloting license – because the government is willing to spend money on youths to have a free piloting license if they spend hours every week drilling, but it wouldn’t do the same for youths who spend their time reading, or studying. But a free piloting license wasn’t worth the wasted hours. One of the last times I had gone to cadets, was one time we could finally do some shooting. They handed me an air riffle and a pair of protective glasses, to shoot targets at the end of a range, while lying flat on our fronts. Some pipsqueak leading air cadet half my size was assigned to supervise me (to be a Leading air cadet, one needed no qualifications, one needed only to be with the organization for at least six months). I was laughing. “What’s funny?” he asked. “What the hell is this?” I replied, “I’m from the countryside, I’ve been shooting with live ammunition since I’ve been ten. What’s the deal with these glasses when we’re gonna shoot pellets at the end of a range?”. “They can bounce back and hurt you” he said. “How do you suppose it could bounce back from the end of that range?” I insisted. Smart mouth, the L.A.C. said “Either you comply or you don’t shoot”. Fun stuff – so I was lying down with my glasses becoming foggy from my body heat, and I was trying to aim properly. After a first shot that hit somewhere along the blue line, I took off my glasses to wipe them. “Put those back on! You need to have your glasses on at all times when on the range!” he yelled. “I’m just wiping them clean – they’re foggy; I can’t see shit!” I said, showing him the goggles. “Okay, but do it fast” he whispered. As soon as I had put them back on, it started all over again – it was damn hot, how they were heating that building in mid-November! Another half-miss. I had enough of that – I reloaded, stood up, took off my glasses, and shot. Dead center! That’s how hillbillies do it! I went back and turned in the “weapon”. That was it for me and the “air cadets”).
And here was I, outside a house in the town suburbs, with a bunch of those fanatics, and we were going to start a fire. They – the owners of the house – had a fire pit all ready, arranged, prepared. “Perfect!” I though, until the cadets went in, to try to apply what they had learned in “survival training”.
During the first ten-or-so minutes, they argued about how to set up the wood. “We have to put all the branches in one direction, so the wind gets through! The flame needs air!” said the first. “No! We have to Cross them in different directions, so that it leaves room in between! Air pockets!” Said the second. “No, the branches should be standing, I mean, they should be like a cone, like a teepee. That way there’s room underneath, and the flames are high” said the third. Impressed by this elaborate design, they got to work. Standing there, I remarked “It all depends on the weather you have, but none of it really matters as long as you get it started right”. “Shut up” they said “we got this. We passed our survival training. This is easy”.
And so, I sat at the table where the ladies were steering clear from the macho quarrels, or admiring them. Another excluded male, whose name was Gabriel, honestly stated “My grandad always got his fires started with a gasoline mix. That’s how he showed me. Said it helped, like with barbecue fluid. So don’t ask me nothin’ about building a fire other ways!”. Clean, unassuming, honest. He stayed seated and chatted with the ladies.
It was a hilarious scene where the distinctions between the expected typical males and the expected typical females were put into stark contrast. These scenes, we’ve all had them. I recall a story from my school music teacher with whom I got along, because neither he nor I fit into an “expected typical” category. Once after class once, he reminisced about a soiree he had been at, while explaining to me how Schoenberg’s 12 tone method worked. “All the men were in the living room, talking about cars, hockey, and boobs, so I went into the kitchen where the women were, who were talking about gossip, tv. series and books, which in comparison was vastly more interesting, but they shooed me out because they didn’t want any guys there, so I had to stay and be bored, listening about cars, hockey and boobs”.
In the backyard, where I was, the girls, who were all of military upbringing, were fundamentally different. Maybe because of the branches in the military. With only one of them, Sophie, was I acquainted – we had been in after-school clubs, and I suspected it was through her that I had been invited. Her family was military, but worked in Search and Rescue – so, not cannon fodder. Actually, I had a huge crush on her, and not only because she was one of the rare girls who talked to me. I wouldn’t have asked her out because I valued her friendship too much, and I feared the same thing would happen as with this other girl called Jenny. She and her best friend Marie had started hanging out with me and my friend Peter, who was nicknamed Peter built because we both expected to become truckers, and he was so large that he had something of a peterbilt. They had hung out with us some, and we had enjoyed their company, until Peter, who had more guts and more self confidence than I, asked Marie if she would like to go on a date with him, maybe even, if Jenny wanted to, a double date, the four of us. She politely declined, and they ignored us for the rest of the school year.
And so I valued Sophie’s friendship too much to ask her out, which is ridiculous since she stopped talking to me anyways. She stopped talking to me largely due to another girl who was there – named Daphne – who was as superficial as they can come, all the opposite of Sophie. As that evening was one of the only pleasant encounters I had with Daphne, I would have never suspected her – the low-witted make-up covered gossip queen – to become friends with the socially engaged and very literate Sophie. Nonetheless, the worst is often to happen. I’d never know why Sophie preferred Daphne’s company. Maybe they went to some same church or something – I wouldn’t know about any of that.
Two girls remained, and they were Angel – a tall black girl, who was an air cadet, yet instead of the air of superiority most of them hailed, was a shy and polite girl, who liked to take pictures, and who envisioned becoming air reconnaissance photographer (or something along those lines) –, and Jane, a short baptist who was very nice as long as no one mentioned any religious subject (I learned that surprisingly enough, she would later convert to Catholicism and become a nun). We sat there, and joked for a while, about trying out Gabriel’s technique, about driving a car around for a few blocks and roasting the marshmallows under the hood, or about going to the beach to roast the marshmallows, as it would take less time than waiting for the dudebros to succeed in building a lasting fire.
The three dudebros huddled around the fire pit had abandoned the idea of arranging the sticks like a cone. In fact, they had found other ways to rearrange the wood, so that it would supposedly burn better. They had debated matches; safety matches (or Swedish matches as they’re sometimes called), vs. other matches, or a lighter.
“Does anyone have a lighter?” asked the main alphaalpha – the kind of guy who you knew would peak around our age – “I forgot mine. I didn’t think I would need it”.
“I can just get the fire started,” said I.
“No, screw you, we’re doing it,” he affirmed.
“Okay,” I backed down, relaxed, largely also because I thought it was funny to watch them try, and put so much effort into it.
“Just let him do it,” sighed Sophie.
“No, Sophie, we’re gonna have it lit soon,” said the second one.
So we sat pretty while they used up a pack of matches, and we talked about projects, about activities, about cooking, about food, about the fact we were hungry, about night that was getting dark, about mosquitoes… And the dudebros talked about how they could place the sticks they had gathered as firewood, and I was asking them if I could do it, and they gave me the same response “No, screw you, we know how to do it”, and I tried to give them tips “Place some of those dry leaves at the bottom, get some more fire starting material”, and they would tell me to shut up, and Gabriel would make jokes about getting some gasoline, and I would say that build small fires it all the time on the north mountain, and they would ignore me. Daphne wanted to go in to sing some Karaoke, and Sophie wanted to go to the beach; Angel and Jane wanted to go home, but they didn’t have a ride. “I can give you a ride” I told them. “How do you know where I live?” asked Angel not shocked, but amused. “Don’t you remember? You saw me coming out of Nanette’s place – she’s my band’s drummer, that’s where we practice”. “Right!” she said, before Daphne asked “You’re in a band?”. “Yes” I answered. “Oh”.
And as we were about to leave I asked for the last time “You sure you don’t want I should do it?”, about the fire, to which the dudebro who had non-verbally established himself as the leader of the pack, burst out “Fine, you think you can do it, go ahead!”, and the third one warned me “It’s these matches, the problem”, though they were using up a second pack, as the first one had been used up.
Not changing how they had placed their wood, I stuffed dry leaves wherever I could – as dry leaves were all over the ground, no more fire-starter needed to be found ; I lit a match and put it to the middle of the base I had established. Within a minute a fire was roaring, and I handed them their matches, of which one single I had used. Frustrated but glad to have a fire, and for the party to have come back to life, the others gathered around the flames, sticking the marshmallows on sharpened sticks. One of the guys only muttered to me “You redneck bastard”, to which I didn’t care. Having a sun-burnt neck means that you work hard under a harsh beating sun. You work hard, you also know your stuff. And you need neither to show off, to be called leading cadet, or to wear a uniform. All I had needed was time in the country to try things out for myself, and if I didn’t manage myself, to ask from people who knew. If the government wanted to invest into these military brats, who went from town to city to town, and give them free piloting licenses in exchange for standing straight in lines, and getting haircuts, then my behind would stay in the country without any of their privileges. At least I knew how to build a fire.
Born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1993, Thibault Jacquot-Paratte writes in both English and French. Recently he has served as literary editor to the anthology Il y a des bombes qui tombent sur Kyiv. His novel A dream is a notion of and his short work collection Souvenirs et Fragments were published in May 2022. Previous publications include his poetry collection Cries of somewhere’s soil, and three of his plays. More of his work has been featured in reviews and anthologies. He enjoys spending time with his wife and their daughter, and finding new creative projects. He is a regular contributing journalist to Le Courrier de la Nouvelle-Écosse, his play Il y avait des murmures sous le sol will premier in February 2023. He is currently employed as Script writer at Bored Panda Studios.
The father’s breathing sounded like marbles rolling on a hardwood floor. The boy had heard this comparison used to describe the death rattle before. The old people always said this, like people on the news always said that a tornado sounded like a freight train. The boy had heard tornados that sounded like trains and now he heard death that sounded like marbles.
The nurse said this sound rarely lasted for more than a few hours. She saw death almost daily. She was a clean and pretty lady, an expert in human exits. She said this at 5pm. It was now 3am. She also said that this rattle caused no pain, but those who might confirm this never did. It sounded like it hurt.
The mother slept on the couch, soundly, not ten feet from the rattle while the boy moved from seat to seat, the foot of the father’s bed, and kitchen chairs, and even the floor.
The boy thought of the last few days, and then the last few months. He thought of the father’s questions about what sins Jesus might forgive and which ones might preclude pardon. The boy quoted the relevant red passages from memory. The father admired the scriptures and the boy who memorized them. The boy knew them all, but believed only a few. The father liked believing in the boy and the reassurance he gave, and the boy liked giving the reassurance he himself would never receive. It was a small lie, he thought, smaller than those the dying father and sleeping mother told.
Then the boy thought mostly about promises. The father made those he didn’t keep, but the boy always believed he would have kept them if he could, and he always believed he might keep the next one. It was here that he saw his faith disappear like wisps of holocaust smoke, every future lie reflecting an original one.
The boy also thought about his own promise. The father feared suffering more than retribution and made the boy promise that he would end his suffering when the time came. Believing in mercy, the boy had agreed, though he knew others had begged the father for mercy he never gave. The boy sat for two long hours, his back against the kitchen wall. The rattle never changed in tone or volume. Then the boy nodded asleep and dreamed, or remembered, the father putting his pistol to the head of the boy’s dog, his back broken, his hips twisted topsy-turvy by the car’s impact.
The sound of the shot awakened him, and something inside him.
The boy walked to the father’s bed. He placed his palm against the father’s scalp. It was cool to the touch, like the hood of a car left sitting in the shade, its engine having been shut off for hours. Cool, and yet the rattle continued.
The boy unfolded a damp cloth and wiped the father’s face one last time. He lay the cloth over the father’s face, covering his eyes. He clasped the father’s nose between his left thumb and forefinger and pressed his palm over the mouth. The process reminded him of a child forming a snowball from cold white powder.
The boy loved the father and hated that he loved him.
But, most of all, he hated the sound of the marbles, and then there was nothing left to hate.
Alan Caldwell hs been teaching for 29 years, but only began submitting my writings last May. He has been published in almost two dozen journals and magazines since.
A great resumé. Law review editor. Opinion writer for the state Attorney General. Chief counsel for the state legal ethics board. Assistant counsel for the state highway commission. Senior assistant then Chief of Staff to the Attorney General. Married. Two children.
Then a death. An off-year election. And now, Attorney General in his own right with marble-walled offices and parquet floors on the second floor state capitol building.
Political debts incurred were repaid with subtlety-slanted findings and fresh staff. Young, bright, connected, tempting.
One stood out. Given an office with an empty desk. Accompanied him on trips. Accommodating.
Restaurants. Baroque hotels in neighboring states. Reservations under assumed names lasting days longer that the scheduled meetings. Poolside. Sunglasses. Shadows.
One newspaper.
One front page.
One resignation.
One divorce.
One damn photograph.
Thomas Elson’s stories appear in numerous venues, including Blink-Ink, Ellipsis, Better Than Starbucks, Bull, Cabinet of Heed, Flash Frontier, Ginosko, Short Édition, North Dakota Quarterly, Litro,Journal of Expressive Writing, Dead Mule School, Selkie, New Ulster, Lampeter, and Adelaide. He divides his time between Northern California and Western Kansas.
In the space between heartbeats, Lacy Bonner decided to run away. As she gripped a cup of dark roast, all fifteen years of her life, lived in a Holtsville, New Hampshire trailer park, nestled mountainside near route 93, itched like coffee grinds in her throat. She coughed, listening as Paul asked her to go to Rhode Island.
Sitting in his old Chevy Silverado, parked in front of Moby’s Diner, she sucked in the cold February air, feeling it leave a sliver of frost in her lungs.
“Chuck Densen found a job for me at a paint depot in Warwick,” Paul said, waiting for her answer. His dark hair was pulled into a ponytail; it almost touched his shoulder. His eyes reminded her of Shoal Pond in winter; the blue water always visible beneath the ice, as if an internal heat source kept it from freezing over.
She huffed on her hands to warm them. Paul bashed the heater with his fist and it moaned back to life. He turned up the radio, and Eddie Vedder’s voice filled the cab. Lacey felt the lyrics like beacons aimed at her soul: I know that I was born and I know that I’ll die. The in between is mine…I am Mine.
A cold wetness nudged the back of her neck. She turned to pat Joe, her chocolate Lab. “Don’t worry,” she said, “You can come too.” Joe had been her shadow ever since she led him from her mother’s grave two months earlier.
Marilyn had died during a fireball of fever. She had been getting noticeably better; after a long stay in the hospital, and two more weeks of taking care of her at home, Lacey was hopeful her mother had finally turned a corner. Her cough had subsided, she was able to keep food down. Still weak, but she had gotten up that morning and taken a slow walk with Lacey to the mailboxes near the entrance to the park, to post a birthday card to a friend. Lacey had bundled her into two coats and even wrapped a wool scarf around her face so that the cold air wouldn’t trigger the cough. Marilyn’s bright eyes peered out from behind the wrap like a mummy suddenly waking from a thousand-year sleep. She pointed to the mountain range to the east, rising above the vast Pemigewasset wilderness. “Bondcliff,” she sighed.
“You’ll hike it again, Mom. You just need to get your strength back.” Lacey felt a surge of hope. If Marilyn had a goal for the future, something to look forward to, it meant she had a desire to fight her way back to health. But it would be a tough road back. Her lungs had taken it hard. If they got to that point, though, Bondcliff’s trail was wide, and straight, and they could follow the old railroad bed, and camp out overnight to break up the more rugged section of the hike into two days.
But that night, things took a sudden, terrible turn. Lacey woke to Joe’s nervous whining and her mother’s relentless coughing. She went to her bedroom, saw Buzz piling on extra blankets; Marilyn was shaking beneath the pile, her teeth chattering out a percussion solo.
“Can’t warm her up,” Buzzy said, wearing a frightened look that Lacey had never seen there before. He called 911 as Lacey drew a hot bath; she poured in a heavy dose of Epsom salts. Together, she and Buzz undressed Marilyn and lifted her into the bath; she was so alarmingly thin, so light, Lacey knew she could have lifted her by herself.
“Try to breathe in the steam, Mom. It will help.”
Marilyn’s face was beet red and shiny. After a while, her shaking subsided and she went still. She tried to smile at Lacey. She wanted to say something. She was so weak. Lacey moved closer. “You’re my sweet baby girl, don’t ever forget it,” Marilyn whispered. Joe whimpered at the bathroom door. Buzzy went to the front door to wait for the ambulance.
Lacey gripped the edge of the porcelain tub as the light in her mother’s eyes suddenly went out. That light never returned, not after all the CPR Lacey did, not even after the paramedics arrived and took over.
Joe wouldn’t leave Marilyn’s grave. Waiting and watching, a lone sentry, he stayed there in the snow, day and night, refusing food, stubbornly refusing to be led home. “That dog’s not right in the head,” Buzzy said, but Lacey knew otherwise. Seeing Joe’s body starting to waste like her mother’s, Lacey took action. She walked to the cemetery, carrying a bulky sleeping bag, bottled water and several cold hamburgers.
She found Joe asleep on a bed of frozen flowers. Lacy unrolled her ground pad, then her sleeping bag, and lay beside him, curling her body around his. He was stiff with cold, but soon warmed in her embrace. In the morning, she awoke to find Joe licking her upturned palm. Two of the burgers were eaten, even the wrappers. She stayed with Joe that whole morning, her arm around his back, talking softly to him, explaining that Marilyn had gone away but she would always be near them. She would watch over them. She really wasn’t all that far away.
By the afternoon, he followed Lacey home.
#
Paul raised his voice above the music. “What about Buzz?”
Lacey shrugged, knowing that he would be relieved if she left. Buzzy was almost a stranger anyway, engaged to Marilyn for less than a year before her death. He was nice enough and everything, he was a kind man, he had loved her mother, but she felt the weight of the growing awkwardness between them; she was like a visitor who had outstayed her welcome. Marilyn sold their trailer when she met Buzz, and he owned this one. And Lacey wasn’t his kin. People would talk. She didn’t really care if they did. But there was something else. Just yesterday, he’d opened the bathroom door accidentally when Lacey was inserting a tampon. She saw his face pucker and fold in on itself, and she yelped and jumped back, yanking out the tampon as if caught in a sinful act.
She only hoped he wouldn’t think she was leaving because of that.
Work was so scarce these days. Most places were shut down because of the pandemic. Paul had been unemployed since the shoe factory closed. Buzzy was good at fixing things, so he still worked as a handyman, doing cash jobs whenever he could. There would always be work out there for Buzz. He would survive. People trusted him.
Lacey’s school was all online now, but she had missed a lot of it when she took care of Marilyn. Their satellite Internet was slow and unreliable. And when it did work, Lacey would stare at her Zoom-face and wonder if that was really her. She didn’t like that face. She looked so different than in the mirror, so hollowed-out and strange.
“Is Pearl coming?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. Paul nodded, exhaling smoke through his nose. Pearl was the only complication; the one thing that stood between Lacey and Paul. Maybe their six-year age difference did too, but she never worried about that. Pearl was almost nineteen; a tall, willowy blonde with a great body and a sweet singing voice. Lacey envied her for all of it. Weeks ago, when Lacey was visiting her mother in the hospital, she also visited Pearl.
A doctor explained to Lacey that Pearl was “pregnant with cancer.” Lacey stared at the swelling in Pearl’s belly, thinking he meant there was a tumor growing in there instead of a baby. But later that afternoon, Paul came in and cupped both his hands around the mound, his caress seductive and his eyes leaking love.
The doctors tore out a chunk of Pearl’s left breast and stared at it under microscopes. Then they told her to swallow a cocktail of pills that made her heave and puke up her insides. Her beautiful hair snapped off like brittle stalks of wheat, her skin grayed and flaked like snow.
But Paul still loved her.
Lacey brushed her own straight chestnut-brown hair until it shown, applied a heavy amount of eye liner, swung her hips when she walked, and bit her lips to make them swell. But Paul never seemed to notice any of it. She was still his little elf, and Pearl his goddess.
#
They left that night, the back of Paul’s truck piled with suitcases and coolers. Lacey decided to tell Buzzy at the very last minute, so he wouldn’t worry about her. She was surprised by the stunned look on his face. He had tears in his eyes. It made Lacey feel guilty. Even Joe was leaving him. He would be all alone now. She hadn’t really thought about it until then. She hugged Buzzy’s right arm for a second or two, told him she would call. She had tears too. She blinked them back and closed the door behind her.
When they finally got onto the highway, Pearl quickly overheated in the cramped cab and asked Lacey to roll down the window. The wind stung like an icy slap. Pearl opened a bag full of pill bottles and flung them out – Lacey watched the pills spin like candy in the wind. “Fly away,” Pearl said, and fell into a drooling sleep against Lacey’s shoulder. Her warm belly pressed into her side. Joe snored at her feet. Paul followed the yellow lines on the road, and Lacey watched him drive.
When they arrived at Chuck’s motel right at dawn, Lacey already missed New Hampshire. She missed the pink light reflected on the snowy mountain, the comfort of wood smoke curling into the morning sky. It was at least ten degrees warmer down here; the ground covered with just a torn sheet of snow.
The motel was low and flat and painted gray. A squirrel skittered across the gravel. A dumpster overflowed with empty beer cans. There were a few other pickups and vans in the parking lot. Paul got out of the Silverado, stretched his long limbs and walked to the office. A curtain parted, and a fat man with a masked face stared out at them. Pearl stirred, flicked open her wide eyes and dry heaved a few times. She pulled a wool cap down over her ears. Her blonde hair blew around her face, and when she smiled, Lacey saw how beautiful she was.
Lacey watched Paul go inside, then took Joe out to do his business. He sniffed the edges of the building, lifted his leg against a fence post. He caught sight of the squirrel and stiffened, but Lacey grabbed his collar just in time.
It seemed like an hour went by before Paul came out. He walked over, his eyes lowered. “Change of plans.” Paul stuffed his hands into his pockets. Pearl scratched at her wool cap with a fingernail. Joe leaned into Lacey’s legs, and she bent down to hug him. “The job at the depot…well, it’s not available anymore.” Paul lit a cigarette and punched out the smoke.
“But he promised!” Lacey cried, and she hated the sound of it.
Paul sucked in a long drag, pondering their next step, his next words. “We can stay. There’s work here for you girls. And Chuck will give us the room next to laundry.”
Pearl’s shoulders relaxed, but Lacey was still on guard. There was something more. She could feel it. She kept her eyes trained on Paul, trying to read the truth in his face. “What is it?”
Paul ground the burning butt into the snow. “No pets allowed.”
Lacey felt herself fill with rage. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t right! They had come all this way to start a new life. She stormed over to the office door, yanked it open and gave Chuck Densen a piece of her mind. She didn’t like him one bit. He wasn’t a nice person. She knew it the second she saw him. He lurked behind the counter, sweating, watching her with little rat eyes as she yelled at him about his dirty, rotten betrayal. He wasn’t used to being screamed at, especially by a girl, she could tell he was mad about it, he was shocked, in fact, he pulled his mask down to get some air. She wanted to leap over the counter and dig her fingernails into his jowls, and she probably would have — she was already pressed against the counter and lifting herself over it, when Paul rushed in and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Hey, hey, Lacey, calm down, shit, it’s okay,” and then she heard him saying something to Chuck, a rushing train of words, “not her fault, look, she just lost her mother, really, this isn’t her, she’s not like this, I’ve known her my whole life,” and Chuck screaming get her out of here, y’all get out of here right now or I’ll call the police, I don’t need no fucking lunatics in my motel!
But somehow, Paul smoothed things over. He made Lacey apologize to Chuck, and she did, but it made her nauseous and she kept her eyes downcast. Paul told Chuck that Lacey was a great cook. That was how he clinched the deal. Joe could stay in the room with them at night, and Lacey would make home-cooked meals. During the daytime, she’d keep Joe outside and away from all the guests. It was a strict no-pet policy, so Chuck was doing them a huge favor by making this exception. And Lacey really wasn’t a great cook, but she knew how to make a few things. She had started cooking when her mother got sick. Buzzy never complained about anything she made; he seemed thankful that she made the effort.
Their motel room was small and had one window. Above them, a tiny skylight leaked long ribbons of water stains. The air was heavy with mildew and stale cigarettes. Paul pushed together the two single beds, then rolled a cot in. Lacey felt a sting of happiness in her heart. They had a place to stay, Joe was safe, and everything was going to work out.
The next day, Pearl started working in the office. She wedged her belly behind a mountain of neglected paperwork. Paul drove off in the truck to find a job, taking Joe with him. Lacey had to clean all ten motel rooms, because the other cleaners had quit after getting Covid. She took to it with remarkable energy, determined to make everything sparkle. By three, though, she began to tire, and she still had to make Chuck’s dinner. The thought of food made her stomach growl. She stored her cleaning supplies in a bucket and walked to over to his room. She saw his car was gone. She turned the knob and the door opened.
His refrigerator was filthy. What little food remained was covered in mold. Gagging, she returned to the office. Pearl was asleep with her head on a pillow of receipts. Lacey padded around the room, searching for a cash box. When she knocked into the desk accidentally, Pearl lifted an eyelid.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Got any money? We need to get food.”
Pearl wrestled a wrinkled twenty out of her jeans pocket. She winced as she handed it to Lacey. “What is it? The baby?”
“No…my boob. It hurts.” She lifted her oversized sweater, and pointed to the left one. “Is it bleeding?” Lacey stared at the puckered flesh, so black and blue it looked like pulp. A gauze bandage was stuck to it, and a trickle of pus leaked out around the edges.
“No. But we need to get you to the hospital.”
“Nope. Never going back there. We can fix it; it’s not that bad,” Pearl said, looking at it with her phone, clenching her teeth and peeling away some of gauze. Lacey ran to the bathroom, rifled through a cluttered drawer. She found some clean bandages, tiny scissors and a pair of tweezers. She rinsed them in scalding water. Hands shaking, she returned to Pearl’s side. She took a deep breath, and snipped away the remaining gauze. Most of the stitches looked okay. There was just one leaky, swollen spot on the incision. She dabbed at the pus with hydrogen peroxide and watched it bubble up. “I think it needs to drain,” Lacey said.
Pearl reached up and squeezed the bruised fruit.
Later, Pearl smiled, her face relaxed. “You’re so lucky,” she sighed at Lacey, “yours are still perfect.” Lacey glanced down at her flat chest and shrugged. Paul was pulling into the parking lot; Lacey gazed out the office window and watched him approach, a hint of a smile on his face, Joe wagging by his side.
“No,” Lacey said, “you’re the lucky one.”
Paul drove Lacey to Wal-Mart. She put on a clean mask, went in, and stuffed the cart with groceries. By suppertime, she’d made a respectable beef stew. Chuck grunted and took his meal back to his room. Lacey made a mental list of all the meals she knew how to make: beef stew, spaghetti and meatballs, and macaroni and cheese. Oh, and she could fry hamburgers and steak. Maybe that was enough. And there was decent Internet here at the motel. She could find plenty of new recipes online.
Things were looking up. A few days later, Paul found full-time work at a factory over in Cranston. That night, they shared a giant chocolate bar for dessert and Paul cracked open a six-pack. Lacey didn’t like the taste of beer; she drank it anyway, because she wanted to be grown up, and they were celebrating. Pearl took a small sip, then switched to orange juice because of the baby. Joe was curled up on her cot, in a deep, twitching sleep. Lacey looked out the window, at the snow blowing like lace curtains. It made her long for home. She wondered if Buzz was doing okay by himself.
The fresh blanket of snow beckoned them. They wandered outside and gazed at the dark sky. Paul popped open another beer and danced around in the parking lot. Pearl sang an old lullaby, her voice so pure and sweet. Soon the three of them were holding hands, moving in a circle, giggling and sticking their tongues out to catch the snowflakes. They ventured behind the motel, climbed a small knoll. Lacey flung herself into the snow, arms outstretched, scissoring her limbs into snow angels. Paul and Pearl soon followed, rolling around like drunken children, laughing and making out. Pearl’s cap fell off, and the snow frosted her hair like a sugar kiss.
It was a near-perfect moment; she only wished they had brought Joe with them, so he could leap and bark and catch snowballs in the moonlight. Just as she held that image, she heard Joe barking. They rushed back to the motel, where Chuck was standing in front of their room, arms crossed, jowls flapping. “Stay here,” Paul warned. Pearl and Lacey held back, as Chuck waved a fist at Paul.
“That god-damn dog shit all over the room,” he yelled. Lacey ran over; seeing their door half-way open, her heart froze.
She reared back at Chuck. “You must have scared him!”
“Fuckin mutt!”
As Paul tried to reason with him, Lacey frantically searched the parking lot, calling Joe’s name. Finally, by the dumpster, she heard a whimper. “Joe!” There he was, cowering behind some boxes. She coaxed him to her, wrapped her arms around him and soaked him with her tears.
After cleaning up the mess, she decided to stay in the truck with Joe for the night. Paul said they’d be too cold out there, but she insisted. They couldn’t risk any more trouble with Chuck tonight. The temperature soon plummeted; they shivered in the cab. The full moon rose, huge and bald. Joe lapped at the frost on the window.
“Take a walk?” Joe thumped his tail against the dashboard. Lacey pushed the blankets into a heap. She’d been using her mother’s tattered cashmere coat as an extra blanket, but now she decided to wear it.
They hiked behind the motel, moving past the knoll and into the woods, following a moonlit trail. The snow was crisp and clean and crunched underfoot. They walked until the sound of trucks on the highway faded into a distant whine, and a soft hush of mist rose over a wide pond.
Lacey smelled pine and frost. Joe burrowed his snout into promising mounds, searching for rabbits and squirrels. They trekked on, the moon lifted its face, and Lacey thought how lucky they were to be together, sharing this special moment.
Then — a snap of branches – a startle of wings. Lacey turned and saw a Canada goose flap into the air.
Joe saw it, too.
He slingshot across the pond.
“Joe! No!” Joe slowed, turned, then slipped on the ice and splayed out on all fours, sliding to the center of the pond. Lacey did the terrible math: Joe was seventy pounds; the ice not nearly as thick here as it was in New Hampshire.
“Joe! Come!” He scampered to his feet, and for a moment Lacey thought he was going to make it back to her. But the pond cracked open like a silver mouth and grabbed Joe in its teeth. He whimpered as he sank, chopping at the ice with panicked paws.
Instinctively, Lacey threw off her coat and boots and tested the edge of the ice. It held her, so she got on her belly and slid forward, her arms and legs tracing reverse snow angels on the surface. “Hold on, Joe! I’m coming!” She slid ever closer to him, so close, almost there.
The ice hissed under her weight.
Near the lip of the dark hole, adrenaline exploding in her veins, she reached out her right arm, grabbed a hold of Joe’s neck and got pulled down into the icy black.
She surfaced to the shock of cold, anchored Joe against her body. She pushed him up and onto the ice. He slid for a few yards, scrabbled to his feet and raced to the edge, barking furiously. He howled and barked as she tried to get out, but her hands were so numb she couldn’t push herself up. She heard him barking as he crashed down the trail, and for a while, Lacey held onto hope, held onto a wide tongue of ice.
Lacey! The moon wore her mother’s face. She felt her heart slow like a tired watch. Her elbows began to slide, and suddenly there was nothing left to grasp onto. She kicked her legs, pushed herself forward and got her torso wedged against the ice. She pushed forward, getting both arms out of the water before she started to slide again. She thought of Joe, and how he’d sit on her coat and wait for her, and that he’d be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. She wondered how long he would wait for her. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want to leave Paul or Pearl, either. They were her family now.
She needed to change Pearl’s dressing tomorrow. She wanted to hold Pearl’s baby. She wanted to see Paul’s handsome face again.
She wanted to live! But — it was so cold. She thought she heard someone screaming her name from far away. Lacey!
Lacey couldn’t believe how much it hurt. She tried to pray, but even her thoughts were frozen. She could see the words of her prayers hanging like letters on a sign. Then the letters fell away and she heard someone whisper in her ear the wind blows where it w-w-will…and her numb lips mouthed the words but you c-cannot s-see from where it comes or where it is g-going…The wind stirred the mist into a tinkle of glass flutes. You’re my sweet baby girl, don’t ever forget it. In the distance, a deep rumbling like gathering drums, a percussion of rising voices. Lacey! Lacey! Joe’s barking was getting louder. Lacey forced herself to kick her legs. Lacey! I’m coming! At the moon’s command, the barking reached a crescendo, and then the trees joined in, lifting their branches to an orchestra of shattering ice.
Kate Bergquist has an MA in Writing and Literature from Rivier University in New Hampshire. Insurance agent by day, dark fiction writer by night, her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and other periodicals. She finds inspiration along the Maine coast, where she lives with her husband and several old rescue dogs.
