Talespinning

Word Count: 548

She thought it was the bright bright full moon and a chorus of tree frogs that chirped in the pre-morning dark. She looked up and behind her, over the roof of the house and saw that it was instead a hovering flying saucer. She went inside to put on her glasses and pour a fresh cup of coffee.

When she came back out the spaceship was settling to land like a duck on a nest full of eggs. Gently swaying, lowering itself slowly into the clear area of her backyard. She was fascinated but guessed she had time to run in and change into jeans and sweater from her bathrobe. Keeping an eye out the window, she brushed her hair and her teeth.

The engine was just winding down when she got back outside so she waited, leaning up against the back doorway of the garage. Eventually the thing hummed into silence. The lights flickered and went out. A door opened and a stairway extended to the ground. It was just like she’d seen in the movies.

The aliens were small, she guessed about eighteen inches tall, so she sat down on the back step and waited. There were three of them, one surprisingly chubby and the mother inside of her tsked without thinking. They were halfway between her and their aircraft before they noticed her.

“Hi!” she said.

“Hi,” said the one in the lead.

“Welcome to Earth,” she said. “Would you like some coffee?”

It seems they didn’t care much for coffee but did like the milk that she offered along with some chocolate chip cookies. They told her they were from Mars though she didn’t totally believe them. The leader, his name was Groken, was quite talkative though the other two chimed in now and then. He didn’t seem as interested in learning about Earth as much as proclaiming the superiority of his own planet.

“So you think Mars has better weather? Though I must tell you that here in New England, you’ve landed in the tail end of summer and it’s not at it’s best right now.”

Groken made a face, rolled his three eyes and smirked in a rather condescending way. “On Mars, we have no such thing as seasons. It’s 76 degrees and sunsey all year round.”

“You mean sunny?” she asked.

All three of the strange little men harrumphed as one. “No, we have four suns, not just one,” Groken said.

That’s when she knew he was lying.

“I’m really rather busy,” she said, “and maybe you’d better move your spaceship before my husband comes home. He’s due anytime now.” He wasn’t, of course, but now she was a bit wary. She stood up and started picking up cups and plates. Not one of them thanked her for cookies and milk, nor offered to bring their own dishes to the sink.

She said goodbye at the kitchen door and silently locked it after they left. She watched until they’d started the engine and quickly shot up into the sky. She cleaned up the dirt they’d tracked in, quickly washed the dishes and microwaved one last cup of coffee. As she sat and sipped she thought to herself that it shouldn’t be such a surprise; men were the same all over.

Word Count: 296

She chewed deer tendon into string, wove wood fiber into paper, and spun cottonwood seeds into fabric to make aprons and jeans. She’d become a saver of the earth through little choice of her own. She couldn’t afford to live any other way.

She was sixty-three, jobless, and her husband had died last year. She paid off the mortgage then sold the house and bought a few acres of land up in New Hampshire. There she lived in a small cabin she built with the help of her brother over the course of the summer. There was a great room that held a huge kitchen table hand-hewn and splintery, two couches she recovered in flax, and no TV. A small bedroom and bath were at one end and a loft over half the living area was an office and den. She worked day and night saving the earth making fabric and string. Dust didn’t settle long enough to be picked up.

The one thing she’d insisted upon was the internet service to connect to the outside world. She wrote stories she called fiction but each held more than a seed of truth. Friends, family, the apricot-haired lady who ran the small general store in town all wandered in and out of her narratives. She plucked the peccadilloes from their personalities and fed them and grew them into commanding and troubled but very likeable protagonists.

And the stories with their vaguely familiar but creatively enhanced characters struggling to find resolution by page four piled up on her hard drive like carefully shelved macaroni boxes. All wondrously original retellings of the human trials of daily living. All sadly unread.

When she realized that she stopped writing but she learned to braid cottonseed fabric into rugs.

Word Count: 264

She pulled out the beans, shaking the dirt from their roots, picking off the missed beans that hadn’t already grown fat with seeds. Maybe this would be the last time she’d autumn clean her garden, maybe there would be no planting in spring.

Her doctor-estimated rate of survival was still 30%, no more.

At night she sits outside holding onto the day. She dips a finger into the moon and paints baby gray clouds, pokes holes in the sky for stars to shine through. She can do that though she never would have thought to try it before.

She’d refused chemotherapy, tried one round of radiation. She couldn’t justify the expense. If there was a God, then death held no fear. If not, then what was the point of living? She’d borne two children, fulfilling her obligation to nature. She loved them madly, of course, but knew the need to let go.

She brought in a basket of tomatoes shaded from dark green to full sunny red. The one thing she’d miss most, she’d decided, apart from her family and friends, was the warm sun that came in through the window at mid-day, spilling into her sink.

There was little pain, little inconvenience, little change now. The procedures and cures were worse to withstand than the cancer. At the end, she’d accept the morphine. That was her plan.

Meanwhile, she spent her days cleaning, sorting, readying herself and her home. And her nights she spent reading the classics of Faulkner and Blake and such, and sitting under the moon fingerpainting the sky.

Word Count: 471

He delayed his suicide until his goodbye note was read and rewritten a hundred times, tweaked as only a writer could worry words.

Carlson Porter had had enough of life. Three wives and seven children and several Pushcart nominations that meant nothing at all to anyone but him. He had written literally hundreds of stories and published a good percentage of them, some in the last remnants of print literary journals. He had even won a cash prize a couple of times. He thought he’d feel a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. He did, but it was elusive and illusional. Transitory. Transient. The high would last a day or two at most.

The world of writing had always been hard but it seemed to Carlson that if a century ago writers could make a living at their craft without resorting to the photography equivalent of doing weddings, then why not now? He’d even considered writing term papers for lazy college students with too much money and too little time. Instead, he made his income as an accountant. A damn good accountant supporting two ex-wives, a current, and seven children. He felt hollow as a reed.

It built up over the last few years to a point where now he sat, fingers poised at a keyboard, editing his final story. And still, something didn’t flow quite right. He sought the poetics without the drama. The narrative of a life as it enters the tunnel and looks behind to notice that the lights are flickering out.

Carlson worked on it for a few more days. Then, as if to hover above the “Submit” button, he printed it out and signed his name. The rest, the details, the act itself, took little time at all.

His widow and his ex-widows (Carlson’s word, established in a fit of inspiration) sobbed appropriate to their status of years spent married to him. The children bravely held back tears upon the sight of him laying quiet and still, the younger ones squinting to convince themselves a body doesn’t breath. All sat solemn for the requested hour and then snuck outside to smoke (the older ones) or play a game of tag in the parking lot out back.

Carlson’s letter was read quickly once by his present wife the day she found him hanging from the overhead brackets in the garage. Now she showed it to the others.

His first wife and childhood sweetheart noted her surprise that Carlson wrote so well. She’d never known.

His second wife held the letter a long sad time and yet smiled secretly that she’d been so fondly remembered. She knew exactly what he’d meant.

His third and final wife, upon reading the letter more carefully this time, shook her head in exasperation as she noted the misspelling of “farwell.”

Word Count: 226

Coyote shadows through the edges, tasting chipmunk in the air. The moon is sleepy-eyed and slivered, yet watches as the old dog hunts.

He is hungry and he is tired of dodging window lights that flood his path with parallelograms of yellow grass that unhide him in his haunts. And the houses block his vision of his territory and all the cats are gone.

It wasn’t very long ago Coyote loped along with shiny eyes and thick coat of yellow-grey and proud. Strong and fierce, backed by brothers he could speak to through the night in howling calls. He had the females panting in their heat. Their adulation countable in pups brought healthy, squeaking into spring. Once, not long ago, he owned the land.

He stops and sniffs the trees that, like him, do not belong here. His woods have shrunk to planted islands. His hunter now includes a monster who follows trails of stone. He knows his blood has thinned to make the dog his brother. He laughs to think that someday he will mate with cats.

Coyote sleeps through the sun. It is the moon he loves. It is forgiveness of his form he seeks, in this new world where he accepts his rights as needs, and howls in unaffected joy at the scent of chipmunk. For a moment, he is king.

Word Count: 256

Her husband worked on the eightieth floor of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 10, 2001. At 8:30 a.m. he was exiting the elevator and hurrying out the lobby to catch a cab to the airport. Briefcase in one hand, a Starbuck’s in the other, he sprinted across the street without seeing the car rushing to make the green light. He was killed instantly, spilling his coffee.

She was at the hospital by 10:47 a.m. where she identified his body and tearfully made arrangements for a funeral home to pick it up. She called her sister in New Jersey who came over within the hour. That evening, she was calm enough to explain to their two children, ages seven and twelve, that their father was dead. On September 11, she sat with the funeral director to plan out a simple service. He excused himself for a moment to answer a phone call. When he came back, he told her that the eightieth floor along with the rest of the Trade Center was gone.

There was a small obituary in their local paper. The driver of the car that hit him had limited coverage and no assets. A small life insurance policy helped  make up for the loss of income but she still took a second job to cover the mortgage until she could move them to a smaller home outside the city. And every year on September 10th, she remembers how their lives were turned upside-down in just an instant.

Word Count: 590

St. Clotilde’s is tucked away in the hills of Laconia, up steep winding barely two-car-wide roads of stones and dirt. Difficult to get to sure enough; much harder to leave.

Jerome sat in the back seat, afraid to look out the windows where trees blocked the sunlight, their branches tapping the car windows saying, go back, go back now or never see home again.

He wanted to cry but could not. He’d nearly shot out both eyes with a BB gun. He could sense light, darkness, vague shadows but he’d lost the gift of color, the facial expressions, smiles. His parents had said that he’d meet other boys who’d done the same. Because they, like him, hadn’t listened. St. Clotilde, they explained, was the patron saint of disappointing children.

Jerome waved goodbye at the sound of his parents driving away. Father Guillermo’s hand lay steady on his shoulder. They stood on the steps until nothing but the rustling of leaves overhead could be heard.

“Well, Jerome, let’s meet some of the other boys, okay?” The voice was comfortably low as a candle flame yet held a rock edge of authority. He nodded. The priest steered him inside. They walked through long hallways, their footsteps ticking on the polished oak floors. The priest stopped, opened a door into a bright room where even Jerome saw a diffusion of solids and space.

“Here’s Mickey,” said the priest. “Mickey can’t talk because he has damaged his vocal chords. Swallowing watermelon seeds, I believe. Say hello to Jerome, Mickey.” Within the silence of Mickey’s greeting, the priest chuckled.

Father Guillermo took Jerome around the main rooms of the school, the classrooms, the chapel, the headmaster’s office, then upstairs to the second floor to a room he would be sharing with Mickey and two other boys; Jonathan, whose pranks with fireworks and frogs had left him with only three fingers and one thumb, and Kevin, who was missing his ears. “Running with scissors,” said the priest. He snickered and left.

“Can you hear okay?” asked Jerome.

“Huh?” said Kevin, “Oh, sure. I lipread too. Except with Mickey. Let me tell you, Guillermo’s a jerk,” he said. He listed the priests and the boys, noting bullies and crybabies and those who could be trusted and those who could not. “Stay away from Milton,” he warned. “He’s the oldest and nastiest kid here.”

“Why’s he here?”

“Super-glue,” said Kevin. “His finger is permanently stuck in his nose.”

Jerome learned the routine and the layout from his roommates. They called themselves the Four Musketeers. The boys were all bright and mischievous, despite their physical flaws which served as both reminder and an odd badge of pride. Mickey, voiceless and small, was their lookout.

Naturally, within months of their alliance they were planning escape. The woods surrounding the school were the passage. The night the time. Experience the impetus that would save them.

And they made it. Under cover and with a chain of cohesion that was woven from abilities and disabilities both. From Mickey, the silence. From Jonathan, the footsteps that acted as fingers to part their way through the forest. From Kevin, the lipreading of leaves and the flow of the wind. And from Jerome, the sense of the hunt.

And one more; Milton, the bully, who’d learned to be brave.

After they’d left and set off on their own new adventures, after he was convinced they were fine, Father Guillermo checked off their names as successful, and sighed, “My work here is done.”