It was hard to judge and all the entries were very good (well, almost all
). Thanks for writing, for reading, and for making this so much fun.
See page 3 for the Winners.
Competition is closed. Please don't vote anymore.
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Cloven
I was birthed by a shriek from the throat of Betty Crockmeyer--a shriek which rattled Heaven’s cellar doors and sent me sprawling into the baptismal pool.
I surfaced, spluttered, and stared. The startled congregants at Evertrue Nondenominational’s Sunday night revival stared back in stunned silence.
“What?” I asked. “It’s an exorcism. What were you expecting? A puppy? A cherub?”
Betty Crockmeyer was almost blubbering. The Reverend Mr. Hubbard stammered a few times before blurting out “Go ye...go ye,” while jabbing a finger in the direction of a caged pig.
“Fine,” I said, “I’m going.” I unlatched the door of the pen. The pink and brown-spotted potbelly trotted behind me to the devotional rack by the narthex.
I wanted to calm Hubbard down somehow. He looked ready to pop an artery.
“Just chill,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing tone. “I’m not going to live in the pig. Though it’d be better than Betty and her daily shots of ouzo.”
“That was for my vertigo!” protested Betty.
“Still,” I said, “if I even smell licorice again, I’ll puke.”
I’m pretty sure the pig winked at me before trotting into the woods.
I hitched a ride into town with a couple of college kids weaving their way back from a bonfire. They smelled like beer and burnt leaves, but thankfully not ouzo.
“Cool hair,” said the guy, who seemed a bit more impaired than his girlfriend who was at the wheel.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m looking for work. Anyone hiring on campus?”
“Ask at the coffee shop,” said the girl. “My friend Sage is assistant manager.”
Within a day I had a job. Within a week I could make soy lattés as foamy as cow lattés, and within a month I had dreadlocks like the rest of the staff. But no shoes. You can’t wear Birkenstocks when your feet are cloven.
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Annie's Baby
Annie’s baby was due in just a few weeks. She’d sent a message that it was almost time, but still he didn’t come home. She always thought after the first baby he’d want to be with them. That’s where he should be. The small farm was too much for a woman with babies and she was worn out. Her underwear and long dress clung to her sweaty body in the summer heat as she bent over the black stove, stirring soup. She wondered how much more she could do–how long she could keep the chores done and the children cared for by herself. He said he had to work in the mine, that it was the only way they could get by. But it was never enough. Surely the farm would be a better bet. But that wasn’t it and she knew it. Would he ever be able to cure the restlessness that kept him from her side?
She straightened up and stepped to the door to look for the children. The sickly cottonwood tree she’d planted three years before didn’t give off enough shade for a nice place for them to play, but they were sitting on the ground beneath its low branches, playing with one of the pups. The dirt road sent up a cloud of dust as a wagon and team passed.
Day after day she’d worked and waited. Would he be gone again when this one was born? He’d been gone every time–she’d always been alone. Two years before, he came down the road a week after the last one was born. He was pushing a baby carriage. He’d walked 300 miles pushing it for her. She guessed that should have been enough, but it wasn’t. She needed him with her.
Maybe this time. Maybe this time he’d stay. Maybe they could be a real family together.
Annie turned back to the kitchen to finish the dinner.
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Got a Cigarette?
“Sir! Sir! Got a cigarette?”
Jack turned and oriented his eyes to the fellow he had just passed by a few yards already. What was up with that, the delayed-reaction panhandle? Jack always knew when a passerby was a candidate to give him the pitch; he could see it every time, even from a couple of blocks away. Still, he never got used to having people beg while addressing his receding back. It was just plain creepy. Jack took in the figure and decided to give the fellow a smoke.
“Got a light?”
“Sure; here you go, then.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Jack turned to go on his way, and heard the fellow spit.
---------------------------------
Zany Granddaughter
"Where's Aislyn?", I asked, walking into the living room.
My wife, Sue, reclined in her recliner, cross-stitching yet another pattern I hadn't seen before replied, "She's in her room. She's in trouble."
We had our four-year-old granddaughter over that evening and I had failed to receive my usual enthusiastic greeting.
"What'd she do?", I asked, setting my briefcase behind the other recliner. I hoped Aislyn wasn't in a grumpy mood. She's usually so full of jokes and laughter.
My wife raised an eyebrow indignantly and declared, "She called me a leptocardian when I told her she couldn't have a cookie until after dinner."
"What?"
"That's what she said."
"Did you explain it to her?" I was truly concerned now. "Where did she hear it?"
Sue, still sewing, mused, "Probably from some of those shows her mom lets her watch."
I scowled and shook my head. "They don't use words over two syllables on Television. Nope, she got it from home. This is an inside job."
"Well I wish you'd have a talk with Renee because Aislyn's getting confused."
"I'm not interfering in Renee's motherly affairs, though I wish she'd concentrate harder. She called the pine tree out front a magnoliopsida the other day. I said to her, 'Renee, do you see flowers?'"
Sue shook her head. Renee, the oldest of three, had always been rebellious.
At that point I heard the thump of four a year old’s footsteps and Aislyn sulked in from the hallway, scowling, with her arms folded across her chest.
"Hi Aisy!" I said with a grin. She's the rosaceae of her Grandpa's eye.
"Gramma yelled at me." she pouted, looking at Sue accusingly.
I scooped her up and we sat in my chair.
"You know why Grandma punished you don't you?"
No answer.
"Common. Tell me."
After a reluctant pause she said, "I called her a name."
"That's right. You know grandma isn't a leptocardian don't you?"
Aislyn nodded, wrapping me around her phalange with her pitiable expression.
"O.K. What does grandma have?" I asked.
"Jaws." Aislyn replied, albeit with hesitation.
"That's right, and that means she's a gnathostomata doesn't it?"
She glanced up beneath her wrinkled brows and with a mischievous smile, blurted, "No Grampa, she's a marsipobranch!"
Sue rolled her eyes in amusement while Asylin and I laughed out loud.
I love a kid with a sense of humor.
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The Cautious Captain
In a variegated flock jabbering like wild parrots the kids roamed the island. The locals' raucous patois mingled with the French, English, Dutch, Arabic of the children of doctors, executives, expatriates, escaping from Northern winter or to Caribbean isolation.
Little freckled Jen and quiet Davey were the new ones. He’d not said a word but Jen saw it clearly: Her big brother was in love with Angelique, a long-boned, green-eyed Lebanese-French girl who lived in a mountaintop mansion. Her slightly-Oriental eyes seemed to mock him when she looked his way, which was seldom…pale gangly Davey with his thick tortoiseshell glasses.
On the western shore, well off the tourist maps, a wrecked freighter lay careened and rusting in the sand. The locals called it the “Cautious Captain; ” its skipper had hove too close to shore in a hurricane. This day the ship had a new and noisy crew; they swarmed up the flaking hull, clattered up rickety companionways to the main deck, and looked down to a turquoise pool, filled then emptied by saltating surf.
The game required skillful timing: Jump too soon or late, you’d hit sand and bones would break. Leap up and out on the right moment, though, and you got a heart-stopping long fall into azure and a glorious cannonball splash.
Angelique jumped first, running lightly to the gunwale, wavering to gauge the tide, then springing up and out with a whoop. Davey hung back, but Jen jostled into line to dive. She knew Davey would never do it—it was so far down, he was scared of heights, and too abashed by his scrawny whiteness to even take off his T-shirt.
Thinking about how to keep her brother from tattling on her, Jen climbed back up to jump again. Giggling, a little girl pointed: “Deh, Jen, yu brudder! He mek fe jump!” Heat from the metal deck seared her bare soles but she stared heedless, transfixed. Davey, glasses off and squinting like a mole, had clambered onto the gunwale. He teetered.
Angelique, below him at the rail; Jen thought she saw a fleeting moue--or was it a somewhat-smile? Davey turned; swayed irrevocably forward. A yell tore from his throat. Jen bit her lip—she knew he was virtually blind, could not see the water level. He flung up his arms. On his face only pure, soaring joy. And he jumped.
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The Associate
She’s late. No matter: Hedy is a travesty at any hour; half silicone, half collagen, all absurd, even by Palm Beach standards. She totters in on Louis Jourdan stilettos, redolent of designer musk. I regard the sludge in my coffee cup with inchoate nausea. Our secretary, who drinks only herbal tea and believes caffeine is an abomination before God, prepares a pot of java so foully execrable that we’ve actually lost clients because of it.
Hedy perches sideways in the client chair. “You must sue the police at once,” she commands, flinging a doctor’s bill at me. Last night she’d been arrested and rudely flung into a squalid holding cell, simply because she got a little tipsy, draped herself over the piano at the Leopard Lounge, and refused to leave. “I wasn’t sleeping there, I just wanted to sing a little.” Her grotesquely over-collagened lips writhe like two freshly salted slugs as she explains in her faux-French accent how her rights had been violated and her left buttock implant punctured. I hope desperately that she doesn’t plan to show me the drooping corpus delicti. She stands and begins to turn around. I sink into despair.
Hapless Harold, senior partner and captain of this ship of fools, cannily transfers a phone call. It’s Tiffy’s daily demand for her settlement check. From Tiffy I’ve learned that timing is everything: She married an ancient dogtrack tycoon for better, for worse, and for a 7-digit figure in the prenup; six dutiful months later he graciously died. The tycoon’s outraged family settled with her for $450,000 after a brief but intense court scuffle. Tiffy confided in me that she’d done the deed with the dear departed five times during those six months, which I’d quickly calculated amounted to $90,000 per boff. Nice work, if you can get it.
“Goddammit…need that money right now…redecorating… penthouse…” Her distant whine shrieks tinnily from the receiver, which I’ve set down on the desk. I’m busy looking out the window. Thirteen floors below, the August sun mercilessly flays sweating pedestrians on the streets of gold, roasting rich and poor alike. A friend told me yesterday about a firm in Boca looking for someone to do criminal work: Armed robbers, drug dealers, violent sociopaths, like that. Sounds pleasant. I kick off my loafers, suddenly indifferent to the consequences of the effluvium from my socks, and reach for the phone.
---------------------------------
Blueberry Summer
Liz used to love the summertime. Every year, she and her brother, and Mom—sometimes even Dad, would make the annual trip, packing the car so tight there was barely enough room to sit. But they endured the 12-hour drive without complaint, for at the end of the journey, Grandmother would be waiting with a fresh blueberry cobbler. It wasn't bought in any store, it was never made with canned blueberries, or even berries that had been sitting too long in a delivery truck. No, these berries were always very fresh... Grandmother kept 5 bushes in her yard, and always used them to make her cobblers.
Every year, that cobbler would be just about ready to come out of the oven when they arrived. And by the time everyone got unpacked, washed up, and settled in, they could sit down to enjoy the cobbler. Grandfather would often pretend he didn't want any, but truth is, blueberries were his favorite, and he'd always sneak a bite when he thought no one was looking.
It's been 4 years since they had a blueberry summer like that. When Grandfather fell ill, and had to be on a diet which included NO sweets--not even a secret slice of cobbler, Grandmother stopped making the cobbler so he would be forced to follow doctor's orders. Even her granddaughters' pleas to be taught how to make it couldn't sway the old lady to make another batch. A tattered, hand-written note was produced and entrusted to the young lady's care. But it wasn't the same as having Grandmother's cobbler.
Then 2 summers ago, Liz became a young woman when she got married. That ended the annual trip for her, as her new husband did not like to travel as much as she. And they never seemed to have the money she would need to pay her own way for the once-annual trip, since her place in the car had been taken over with things that Grandmother insisted she no longer needs.
Last summer, Grandfather passed away, but that didn't bring a return of the blueberry summers they once enjoyed. Grandmother later sold the house she'd shared with him for 50 years, moved to a smaller one, and didn't take the blueberries with her.
Maybe Liz will be able to enjoy summertime again, but it will never compare to one of those blueberry summers.
--------------------------
Sarah shuffles through fallen leaves of orange and gold, keeping to the foot-worn path from the house. She kicks at a baseball peeking through grass that's a week overlong, and stops under the sugar maple, whose red canopy gives her a ruddy cast against her black dress. She sits on the home-made swing and stares into the pond, trying to see past the shimmering surface to the rock hiding in the murky bottom, where, she imagines, she could still find traces of blond hair and blood, if she were to wade in and plunge her face into the cool water to look.
She feels the board beneath her, worn smooth from years of boys and weather, and it seems to cradle her. She grasp the ropes and closes her eyes and imagines motion. She imagines swinging in ever-increasing arcs without pumping, like the swing misses its master and wants only to play again. She imagines it takes her higher and higher, that it seems to hold her—almost clench her—as if to show her it was a fluke, an accident it couldn't possibly have made. She can almost imagine it weeping, with an ache that comes from the very roots of the tree itself. An ache that's exceeded only by her own.
She opens her eyes and the motion stops. The wind has paused and the pond is still and whole world seems to have taken a breath. She tries to keep from replaying it, the calling out into the evening air for dinner, the failure to answer, the walk around the house, then finally to the swing, then the image, the awful image, of a body floating at the edge of the pond.
She remembers thinking that the water was sucking away his life, that somehow she could make the pond return it to him, if only she had the means to wrest it back. But today they buried him and she realizes the pond will have no change of heart.
There is a brief motion in the water. She imagines it was a heartbeat and waits for another. A tear falls to her cheek, and a leaf drops beside her. Then the tree starts to shake in the stillness, and leaf after leaf swirls to the ground until the tree is bare, like a raw nerve jutting into the sky hoping never to stop the feeling.
---------------------------------
Our Song
"Grandma, Grand-dad, what's with this ‘Autumn Mountain Met' tune?"
<pre>
"Well children it happened like this. 10 years ago..."
"Fifteen"
"I was walkin' along thinkin', ‘Smells clean up here along the trail;
this little hike should be just the thing to ...'"
"Hello Jonathan"
"Hel--lo Reee-becca, 40 years and you're still a sight to behold, a .."
"Jon"
"Yeah "
"Tree."
"AAuugh!"
"Still have trouble walking and talking, I see"
"Only with you, Becca, and always with you."
"What've you been doin' with your life these past decades"
"Lots ... and yet"
"Regrets?"
"Lots. Each of my kids, I envision with your hair, your eyes,
for rest assured they have your sense of the absurd.
Gone to their own families now. You?"
"Absurd?"
"Us together, that was absurd."
"Jon, that's not you talking."
"No, families, your side, my side; all tellin' us daily or weekly..
Hah, or even hourly, when they were on a roll... But always telling us."
"Yeah, we were to good to be true, high school sweethearts,
a connection between opposites, that they couldn't fathom."
"And you, Becca?"
"What?"
"Regrets?"
"Hmm, not for anything I have. Kids, memories of their father,
career, friends, all good. But still ... yes, regrets
for what might have been. We'd have set the world alight.
Wouldn't we have?"
"Yep, a real fire storm."
"Jon, kids but no wedding ring?"
"She past year before last"
"My Tom's been gone nearly a decade."
"And we walked and talked ..."
"And ran in to trees"
"Ahem, well... yeah, well we hiked down the ridge...
"And back"
"Until my Becca stops and says"
"Jon, mayhaps the world needs a light"
"A bon fire?"
"A Fire Storm"
"Ours?"
"If that's a proposal, I do"
"And a lady"
"up Chicago way"
" wrote this tune"
"That put us to mind"
"Of ten years ago"
"fifteen"
"And our walk in the wood".
"We thought about renaming the tune"
"To the Grand Children"
"Of The Absurd"
"But, "
"Autumn"
"Mountain"
"Met"
"Will "
"Do."</pre>
-----------------------------------
Dissolution
“Should we mention sex?”
“Or not,” she said. “I don’t care.”
“Neither do I, it’s just....” I was mumbling and sounding apologetic. Jesus, assert yourself, I thought. Nora was mostly responsible for this anyway.
“We need to be on the same page.”
She turned in her seat, looked at me squarely: “I don’t care.”
Nora stared, but I didn’t take my eyes off the road. Not letting her bully me into making eye contact and thereby acknowledging the gravity, the finality of her remark was a small moral victory.
“Whatever,” she huffed, turning away and looking out her window. “This is stupid ... pointless.”
“But this was your suggestion,” I shot back.
“Jesus, Daniel.”
Not that you’d know it, but Nora’s very articulate. And it comes naturally. Not so with me. As Nora has rightly pointed out—more than once and not always privately—my speech is affected. I too often use what she calls “five-dollar words,” words like affected. But sometimes those words are right on the money: affected aptly described our relationship.
We’d been dating for nearly two years ... and we’d bottomed out. Sometimes you reach a point where you know you won’t (and don’t want to) spend your lives together. Yet you feel duty bound to try to salvage the relationship.
Nora had suggested couples therapy, and driving to Dr. Miller’s office while discussing—or, not discussing—what aspects of our lives should be off limits, I realized her suggestion might have been as half-hearted as my agreement. Maybe all you can salvage is the situation, and maybe that’s enough.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” I said, making a sudden, sharp right off 1st Avenue and heading down toward the waterfront. She sat silently.
“Fine,” she said at last. “Fine. If you want to give up, I guess there’s nothing I can do.”
“No, there’s not.”
Turning my head toward her slightly, I glimpsed a look of real tenderness—the first in a long while.
“Fine,” she said.
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ROBBED I TELL YA!!!!! 
