Contributor: Dan Slaten

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It is a perfect day. The sun is shining, but it’s not too hot. A slight breeze is in the air.

I’m sitting outside a café, and across the table is the girl I love with all my heart. She’s wearing sunglasses, and she looks oh so cool, like a model or a movie star.

I sip my tea as she talks. It’s perfect, just like this day. Sweet, but not too sweet. Cool, but not too cool.

Her voice is like music. She says she doesn’t like the way it sounds, but I like it so much I could listen to her read the phone book. Sometimes she sings, and even though she can barely carry a tune, I love to listen to her. I don’t think she knows this, but how can I tell her? She wouldn’t do it anymore if I told her.

I am going to tell her, I decide.

I’m going to tell her how I feel about her. How could I not on a perfect day like this?

I’m going to tell her how much I love her voice and how I love to hear her sing.

I’m going to tell her how much I love her smile and how seeing it makes me smile too.

I’m going to tell her how her hair looks like it’s made of sunbeams and how every time I see her she makes the day seem brighter.

I’m going to tell her all these things that only someone blind and stupid with love could say with a straight face.

I’m going to tell her because today is a perfect day.

“Oh, guess what,” she says before I can open my mouth. “I met the perfect guy, but I don’t think he likes me.”

Oh, but he does, I think to myself, then realize she isn’t talking about me.

I feel my stomach tighten, and her words blur together in that voice I could listen to for hours on end. That sweet, perfect voice.

I wish that clouds would swoop in, the sky would turn dark, and rain would come down and ruin everything.

But it doesn’t.

It is a perfect day.


- - -
Dan Slaten's writing is fueled by heartbreak and Mountain Dew. "A Perfect Day" was written late one night on hotel stationary.

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Author: Dan Slaten

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Wally Anderson, father of three daughters, was not pleased after reading an email from Shelly, his eldest, a week before Father's Day. He thought she might be coming to visit for the holiday. Instead Shelly told him of her sudden wedding to a man he did not know. A Google search told him that her new husband had two names and that he had married Shelly under the most recent one. However, Google also said his new son-in-law had a good job and apparently leads a respectable life.

The wedding had taken place on an island in the Pacific. The ceremony had been conducted by one of an indigenous chieftain under a gigantic coconut tree. Shelly had studied anthropology in college with an emphasis on indigenous peoples so Wally understood why she might choose to marry in that environment. But the more Wally read about her marriage, the more he felt as if a coconut had fallen on his head.

This was not the first time Shelly had surprised him. She had married her two other husbands on the spur of the moment as well. One was a drunk and the other a gambler. After two marriages of less than a year each, Shelly moved on with life. And now she had a new husband, albeit with two names. The first two husbands, whatever their flaws, had only one name. No confusion in that regard at least.

So after his daughter sent him a photo of the happy couple on their honeymoon, Wally did another Google search and discovered not only did her new husband have two names but photos of him available online revealed that he resembled the late Ted Bundy, a mass murderer and rapist executed some years ago. This prompted Wally to reply to his daughter's email by asking why her new husband had two names, giving full credit to Google for disclosing this information.

"Shelly, as your father, I have a right to know," Wally wrote.

In half an hour, Shelly sent her father a long email with attachments attesting to the character and accomplishments of her husband but without any explanation as to why he had two names. Apparently, he had taken the second name as an adult, tossing out the possibility that he was an orphan adopted by some nice couple in Iowa, the state from which he hailed under the first of his two names. According to Google, he had earned two degrees from Yale under that first name.

In his next email to Shelly, Wally mentioned that he was still confused by the whole situation and needed further clarification.

"Shelly, if your mother was still alive, she would want to know as well," Wally said as imperatively as he could. He didn't want to set Shelly off because she might disappear again as she had when she was fresh out of college. She had spent three years island-hopping in the Pacific, getting to know the terrain and the people. She really enjoyed her time there.

In her reply Shelly said she would "tell Daddy all about it on Father's Day" when she was coming to see him. Her new husband, however, would not be coming with her since he was going to visit his father for the holiday.

"They are very close," Shelly added in a postscript.

Wally replied right away, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

"Which father might that be--and which name does he go by? And does he live in Iowa or is he somewhere else? A concerned father wants to know."

Shelly wrote back and bubbled that she would tell him everything on Father's Day and bring him some fresh coconuts to boot.

Wally realized that all he could do was wait and see. So he wrote back and said that he'd wait for Father's Day so she could tell him everything in person.

Shelly replied right away and said that if it's a boy, they might name him Walter.

It was obvious to Wally now that this would be a Father's Day like no other.


- - -
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Author: Donal Mahoney

Contributor: Eric Suhem

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“They are so disturbing,” Lottie said to Sol when they were both 14 years old, rejecting his footsie advances, and staring at his toes, which she found strangely misshapen. It was a comment that would stick with Sol for years, causing him to develop a complex about his feet, for which he would compensate via career achievement as a podiatrist.

After years of study, Sol received numerous degrees related to the foot, and started a successful practice. To advertise, he had a large electric toe sign set up near the medical building in which he worked. After a typical day seeing patients work he’d sit alone in his office to do research, but instead dwelled upon the girl from his childhood who’d said his toes were disturbing, as the electric toe blinked on and off, casting a reddish light.

Lottie, meanwhile, embarked on a career as a professional bowler, though for her it was a lonely life, driving down bleak deserted highways to various tournaments, staying at desolate motels, often with no companionship except her bowling ball. When feeling extremely lonesome, she would set the bowling ball on top of the television set to keep her company, its finger holes resembling eyes, and its thumb hole looking like a little mouth. Lottie fought through the isolation and worked her way up through the rankings, succeeding on grit and moxie.

“Your toes went over the line, a foul!” screamed Lottie’s competitor Lois during a crucial tenth frame roll. An argument ensued, and Lois angrily dropped a bowling ball on Lottie’s foot, before stalking out of the bowling center to the parking lot. Showing steely resolve, Lottie went on to win the tournament, but woke up the next morning with swollen and disfigured toes. The swelling eventually went down, but her toes remained permanently twisted, reminding her of Sol, that boy from her past.

Lottie began a comeback on the women's bowling circuit, rolling in small-money tournaments, though she was unable to find bowling shoes that fit her bent toes. Even custom-made bowling slippers did not wrap comfortably around the contours of her feet. “I'm not going to let this stop me,” said Lottie determinedly, clawing her way back to the top of the circuit, earning a finalist spot in the national championships in Las Vegas.

In Nevada for a podiatrist convention, Sol was channel-surfing in a hotel room as his crooked toes wiggled comfortably on a vinyl Ottoman. He tuned in to a bowling tournament, and was amazed to see Lottie, rolling strike after strike. His heartbeat quickened when he learned that the bowling tournament was near the hotel.

The next day, Sol sat in a lounge chair by the hotel pool, staring at his crooked toes after giving the keynote address at the convention. He was recognized worldwide as a leading figure in the podiatric world, but as he sipped his Mai-Tai, batting the little paper umbrella back and forth in a carved-out coconut, he could only think about how to find Lottie. He watched the lounge chairs by the pool fill up with other conventioneers, and pro bowlers.

Lottie wandered over to the hotel pool after a strenuous practice session, relieved that her toes were no longer confined in the bowling shoes. She sat on the lounge chair and spread her tarsal digits freely in the summer air, slowly noticing the foot in the lounge chair next to hers, a foot with the unforgettably contorted toes of Sol. He was having a flirtatious conversation with Lottie’s bowling nemesis Lois, ensconced on an adjacent lounge chair. Under the sun’s glistening rays, Lottie rotated her foot to the left and made toe contact with Sol. When their feet merged a lightning bolt sensation burst through their bodies, the toe friction transporting them into the cosmos. Lois recognized their bond, and slinked off scowlingly to the tropical-themed bar.

Sitting by the fire, near his podiatry certificates and her bowling trophies, a half century after their poolside encounter, Sol said, “They’re looking a bit long, it’s time for your trimming.” Lottie smiled as Sol wielded the toenail clippers.


- - -
Eric Suhem lives in the orange hallway (www.orangehallway.com)

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Author: Eric Suhem

Contributor: Elizabeth Brown

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Gula said she was a ghost. It was the last two weeks of summer.
“So how did you die?” I asked. We were sitting under a willow tree in the pasture, making a list of supplies we needed for our hideout. The sun blazed like a scourge.
“I climbed out the window.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“I crawled over to the edge and slipped off.”
“What did it feel like?”
“It was like floating.”
“So are you an angel now?”
“I can’t say. Not allowed.”
We shook our heads, chuckled. The sun moved behind a cloud. A crow cawed in the distance. Katydids chirped. A mother called a child home. We lived on Sigourney Drive, all three of us—Gula, Trey and me. We clung to each other like timid mice, convinced terrorists were invading soon. Trey was the only boy. But we never thought about that. He seemed like one of us, until he pulled out his penis. “Hey, my dad said men can do it this way.”
We were eleven-years old, on the cusp of puberty. We spent our remaining days of summer in the pasture behind our homes, up a hill, under the barbed wire fence, a mile or so from Peterson’s Farm, and Ronald Peterson, the senile old man who once shot a trespasser. That was scary enough, but innocuous. The war in the Middle East, on the other hand, with blood and gore, real images we glimpsed on the news, was something else.
The terrorists were coming. We were building a hideout. “It’s only a matter of time,” Gula said. She was the deciding factor. Gula was born in Afghanistan and lost her parents and most of her relatives there. She was the tallest and skinniest of us. She barely ate. She said she was named after Sharbat Gula, a famous girl who had her photograph on National Geographic. “We have the same eyes, and her parents were murdered like mine.”
“That’s sad,” I said, unsure of how to respond.
“That’s why I don’t eat much. I think I should honor her. She never had food."
"Can you eat chocolate at least?" I asked. Gula shrugged her shoulders and smiled. She rarely showed her teeth and always wore a scarf she called a hijab. It was pale green and matched the color of her eyes.
“Why don’t you wear a different color?” Trey asked one day. I wanted to hit him.
“Like what?”
“Maybe yellow?”
Gula smiled. She was so forgiving that way. And a few days later, she wore yellow. But on the way to our hideout, we got attacked by a swarm of bees. Gula was stung four times—she was the only one that couldn’t run fast enough. We didn’t wait for her. I kept thinking she was a clumsy American, not at all like Sharbat Gula. I never told her that though. It was Trey’s fault. He kept poking at a bee hive. But, Gula blamed the yellow hijab, and went back to the green.
The hideout was in the beginning stages. We found an upturned tree to use for the base and started a pile of downed limps and brush for the wall. It was the last day we were together. Gula had stuffed a tarp and some twine in her backpack and Trey brought his pocket knife. He kept taking it out of his pocket and opening it.
“You’re not going to cut anything with that,” I said to him, smugly.
“You know how sharp this is?” He took it out again. “See the hair on my arm?” He grazed his arm with the blade. “Look…look how clean.”
That’s when we heard a loud popping.
“The terrorists,” Gula said.
“It could be fireworks,” I offered.
“No, I know," said Gula. "I’ve heard it before.”
“You’re an American,” I said.
“It’s in my subconscious mind. I know by instinct. I know the sounds of enemy fire.”
“Do you think they’re here?” I asked. I felt my heart in my chest. Even though I knew it was all a game, and I was placating Gula, some part of me imagined it could be real.
“Not the terrorists, you idiots. But maybe that crazy old man,” Trey suggested.
“Either way, we need to hide.” My eyes darted, nervously. The hideout wasn’t built. I considered climbing a tree.
“I’ll stay here. I’m dead already. Ghosts can’t die,” Gula said. She wasn’t laughing.
The popping sounds grew louder.
“There’s no time.” Gula started gesturing madly as if some unseen force was about to rain down on us. Her hijab was slipping from her head. She struggled to adjust it; her hands shook—too much so for a ghost, I decided. But, I trusted her. She had Afghan blood. She was born there, like she said, born into strife, war, so maybe she had a stronger sense about it all.
“Let’s go!” I yelled.
It was dusk. The air was heavy, a fever of heat bore down on us. We ran. At one point, I looked back and saw Gula; she was a smudge of green. She was not even trying. Did she actually think she was dead?
“Gula, come on!” I heard Trey yell, saw the vein bulging on his neck. I noticed he was crying. We were a mile or so from Sigourney Drive, just a bit more and we’d be safe. The popping didn’t let up.
I envisioned enemy soldiers behind us, closing in, clad in camouflage, guns strapped, pointed, flushed faces, boots stained with blood and dung. I knew then, our hideout was ridiculous and that nowhere was safe. I looked back before crawling under the barbed wire. Gula was gone.
When I finally did see Gula, a few weeks later, we passed in the hallway of Saint Ives Middle School. She was wearing a purple hijab. I smiled at her. She cast her eyes downward and walked right past me, as if I were the enemy.


- - -
Elizabeth Brown has short fiction appearing or forthcoming in Linguistic Erosion, Barleby Snopes, The Milo Review, Sleet, Apocrypha and Abstractions, among others. In addition to writing short stories, she is currently seeking representation for her novel, a psychological thriller. This story originally appeared in Pithead Chapel.

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Author: Elizabeth Brown

Contributor: Reese Scott

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At night the sermons would begin. As I lay in bed and listened, I was unable to locate where the sermons were coming from. I did know they were close. One night I went outside to see if I could find out.

I followed the voices through the back gates of homes, made sure the dogs didn’t start barking to wake up anyone, until finally a few miles away I came to a place in the forest that was much darker. The Moon was out and it gave some light to the darkness everywhere else. But here it was as though the Moon’s light was not allowed.

As I walked closer, I could see shapes of bodies through the trees. I didn’t feel nervous but at the same time I didn’t feel safe. As I crouched below a large bush I could barely make out the figures. There was a fire and most of the people were just sitting around drinking tea and cooking marshmallows.

“I guess this isn’t a sermon.”

As I watched I began to recognize some of the people. One looked like an old school teacher. Another looked like the mayor. Others looked familiar, but I couldn’t place them.

Everyone around the fire became quiet. They were not moving now. Instead all their heads were lowered as if they were avoiding looking at someone. I was so focused on the people around the fire I forgot to pay attention to anything else. When I turned around I was face to face, not with a beautiful woman or a scary looking man, but just a dog. A very small dog. I knew what a small dog does and doesn’t do. So I took my belt and tied it around the little dog’s mouth. I have never trusted dogs. For some reason they remind me of people.

After I had taken care of the dog, I started to wonder why I was even here and what I thought I was supposed to do. I could hear people around the fire talking again. They were telling jokes. Going from one person to the next. Each joke was a knock-knock joke that did not make sense. But the less sense they made, the more they laughed. Then the fire began to burn brighter and the flames were now reaching high into the air.

An elderly lady suddenly appeared. She was with her daughter and what looked like her daughter’s son. The young son took the elderly woman’s hand as they walked toward the fire.
When they were close, the elderly lady let go of his hand. She looked him in the eye.
“Don’t believe what anybody says.”

Then I watched the elderly lady walk slowly into the fire. She did not scream. She did not cry. It was almost as though she had done this before. But I knew this wasn’t possible. Then the elderly lady was hard to see because of the flames. I thought I saw a smile.

After it was over, I went home and went to bed. I knew I couldn’t leave. I knew I didn’t want to leave. But I knew something was wrong. I just wished I knew what it was.

After the fire, I packed up a small suitcase and planned to leave sometime in the middle of the night. When I was leaving I heard another sermon. This time I was not intimated. If anything I was furious. I walked right through the bushes until I was in front of the people sitting by the fire. Everyone turned and looked at me. I had no idea what they were thinking, but obviously it wasn’t good.

A man came over to me. The man must have been the mayor or leader of the group. As he came up to me I became more and more nervous. The man was now in front of me. I didn’t know who the man was, but he asked, “So where’s your dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“I can’t remember. Years.”
“Would you like to see him if you could?”
“Yes.”
“Okay wait a few minutes.”

The man came back later and I realized something. This guy was my father. I don’t know how I knew this but I knew it was true. My father walked toward the fire. His expression was one of determination.

My father turned to me.
“You’ll get to see Mom.”
“I don’t want to see Mom.”
“She wants to see you.”
“Do you want to see her?”
“I already have. Dozens of times.”
“Okay fine. What do I need to do?”
“Nothing really. Just go by the fire and I’ll take care of the rest.”

As I looked I saw a child walk into the fire. The child looked neither nervous or angry and his screams sounded like screams of joy.

I trusted my father. Even though we were not close. I knew my father knew more than I did.

Then something went blank. Suddenly my thoughts and my memory seemed to fold into each other. It felt like I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew I could walk away. But I didn’t. It felt wrong for some reason. So I followed my father, holding his hand. Where he took me made no difference. Holding my father’s hand was more important. My father walked me to the fire and kissed me on the lips. It was the first time I had heard him say goodbye.


- - -
Reese Scott is from New York. He is currently residing in California.

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Author: Reese Scott

Contributor: Victoria Elizabeth

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He worked 70, 80 hours per week, but never missed a track meet. He grew a beard overnight, yet he was the one who braided my hair every morning. He held me when I cried, succumbed to my puppy eyes, and believed the lies I would weave about unfinished homework and missed curfews.

I knew if my mother said no, my father would say yes.

She always said no. He always said yes. Yes.

Affirmation was our language, a shared secret. He was my mountain, the foundation on which I built my childhood.

Under my father’s approval, I casually drank my first beer as a teenager. With my father’s encouragement, I spent my afternoons in a shithole bar playing pool until the smoke burned my eyes and my hair smelled like ash. With my father’s unspoken consent, I learned to hate my mother.

An affair turned serious when an unplanned pregnancy declared my existence. My mother’s ultimatum: leave one family to start another. A sacrifice or his attempt at a second chance, I’d never know. He told me he loved his daughters all the same.

I knew he loved me more.

The cancer started in his kidneys, metastasized to his lungs before the results could return for my donor test. A perfect match. We always knew we were the same person occupying two bodies, but the cancer was too fast.

Strong, indestructible, my father couldn’t die. The man who carried me off the softball field when I sprained my ankle couldn’t be the same skeleton looking up at me from those crisp, white sheets. Shallow breaths, glazed eyes; the rubble of a broken body and a man unprepared to die.

A mother I hadn’t talked to in years suddenly knew the right words to say. A woman gave an approval I’d long forgotten I needed. She wasn’t him, but she was there – concrete and whole – when my foundation crumbled at its core. A god fell so she could fulfill her role.

We’ve never shared a beer, but she saw me walk down the aisle through blurred eyes. I never felt the victory of beating her at billiards, but she cheered when I gave the speech at my college graduation.

She wasn’t him, but she was there – and that was what I needed all along.


- - -
Victoria Elizabeth Ann is a lifetime student of the arts, literature, and life as a whole. She completed her BFA in Creative Writing in October 2013 and is a current MLS student at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fl.

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Author: Victoria Elizabeth

Contributor: Egbert Starr

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Some of the losers looked around and saw the other losers. They had all lost. And they had all lost, and been losing for a long time. Once, for sure, they had all begun as all begin: like small, hairless, practically featherless birds begin cracked open in their springtime shells, practically pretty much the same. Now some had beards, and others had hand-me-up-skirts that girls half their age could wear with aplomb. But these? Like Mennonites that were not Mennonites, like young girls who were old. They continued to plug into electrical sockets where the electricity was free, and, like me, kept spending down the principal of their meager inheritances until they were dead or there was nothing left. Awful things were overheard: glassy-eyed conversation between two look-alike chaps over "Garamond" or something about a garbled font name. The women, who'd whelped a couple of kids along the way, could pull off a pretty convincing simulacrum of middle-class play-date talk with another female on the other end of some 4G cell phone elsewhere, arranging their days like bankers who'd made fortunes and stashed the loot on-island. Some kid making a macchiato was spouting yesterday's nonsense about Godwin's law while doping the top of my coffee with a smudgy swastika impression. The five-spot I gave him I didn't bother with looking at the change. Somewhere in the miasma, you could hear what must have been a reference to Pete. From Beacon, right? Who must have been Seeger, right? And Bob, who must have been, well, I'm not saying. The only folks who'd had a thing going for them were a couple of young ladies making public talk too loud for public talk over a mosaic coffee table that had no picture in it at all in its broken colored chips about 403K's that'd be full of money in three and a half decades when they were fat and divorced and done being mediocre in their teaching jobs, as from the general sound of their discourse, I could tell in a beat they both were going to be for thirty-five years. "Hey," I heard my friend go. "Hey." She pointed with her head to get out of the coffee shop, and I didn't feel like killing myself anymore.


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At a certain point, one's anonymity-obscurity, that second greatest of all gifts, turns out to have served its purpose. Not doing so betokens narcissism and vanity. And so, I think it's time to let go of one's pretty darlings.

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Author: Egbert Starr

Contributor: Shannon Yule

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The skies were grey, the sea was rough, all in all it was perfect weather. Perfect weather for John McCook, captain of a small fishing boat named Indigo Rose. He was out looking for his latest catch, Tuna; he wasn’t after anything record breaking, just something big enough to sell to support himself. He wasn’t going to lie to himself though, he was out for more than just fishing; he was out because the ocean was the only place that he felt at home. He had never really felt right ever since his wife had died three years ago.

It was a normal day, just like any other, he was home from fishing, and his wife was in the kitchen making dinner. He had just kicked back and turned the television on when he heard a huge crash from the kitchen. He ran into the kitchen and found his wife unconscious and on the floor. He shook her and called her name, but she was already gone.

She had died of heart failure, it was a disorder that she’d had since birth and it was just a random act of fate. That was the real reason he was out fishing, because home was too painful of a place to be.

The sky started getting darker, and the sea started getting choppier, causing the boat to pitch.

“Just my luck” he sighed, irritated as he began to pack his equipment up.

He went into his cabin, starting the engine, well, attempting to. No matter how much he tried, the engine was dead. Dead like his wife, and, if the storm kept getting worse, possibly dead like him.

#

The minutes had melted into hours, the ship violently pitching in storm; it was a miracle it wasn’t at the bottom of the sea by now. He clung to the nearest thing that he could, the safety vest hanging on the wall, his wife’s vest that she used to wear all the time.

Suddenly, light broke through the clouds and shone through the windows of the cabin, the sea calmed to a gentle rolling pitch.

He stepped out onto the deck, the warm sun hitting his skin, feeling the crisp air of the sea. It was so calm. But he could see that he was merely in the eye of the storm, and it was a small one at that. A terrifying wall of storms surrounded this small piece of peacefulness, and they were quickly approaching his small vessel.

He looked up into the sky, at the sun and smiled at the warmth on his skin. He could feel his wife in the sun’s warmth; see her in its glow. He was tired of missing her, tired of feeling the pain of separation.

He wanted to be with her again.

Determined, he returned to his cabin, steering the ship towards the dark wall ahead of him. He knew what he was doing was suicidal, and that was the plan.

As he plunged headfirst into the roaring winds of the hurricane he knew that his ship, his body, would both end up on the ocean floor, but his spirit would be with his wife again. This time, however, it would be for good.


- - -
Shannon Bower-Yule is currently a student at Full Sail University working on her Masters in Creative Writing for Entertainment.

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Author: Shannon Yule

Contributor: Reese Scott

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While his mother went next door, he was in charge of watching his little sister in the bath. She was maybe over a year now. He wasn’t sure. He had a small piece of paper by his knee. It was a short list of what he was to do and not to do.

1. If she starts to cry or if anything happens just call the neighbors. The number is on the bottom of the page.

2. If she starts to get upset or if anything out of the ordinary happens call the number on the bottom of the page.

3. If you feel nervous call the number on the bottom of the page.

He sat on the floor. He put his hand in the bath. The water felt nice. His sister was staring down at her feet. She looked up at him and smiled. The smile looked like any other smile. He imagined he could hear other little feet running up and down the stairs, running through the kitchen, out the door, then back in again. He looked at his sister. She looked dumb.

He continued reading the list his mother had given him.

4. If she starts to cough call the number on the bottom of the page.

5. Remember if anything goes wrong, I mean anything, call the number on the bottom of the page.

He looked at his sister in the bath. She was a baby. But it wasn’t his baby. It wasn’t his sister. At least not to him. To him she was just something. But something that bothered him. He didn’t know why he hated her. He didn’t know why he didn’t like holding her. Maybe it was because his mother wouldn’t let him. Or maybe his mother knew he didn’t want to. But he knew that wasn’t true. Since his sister had showed up he felt like he didn’t know his mom anymore.

It was hard enough watching her walk around month after month talking to her pregnant stomach. Telling her how much she loved her. How special she was. How happy she was going to be. How everything will be wonderful. During this period, he couldn’t remember his mother saying very much to him. The only thing he knew was he now walked himself to school and had to be quiet all the time. They no longer had dinner together. She no longer read him stories when he went to bed. When he couldn’t sleep he couldn’t go into her room. When he had bad dreams he no longer had somewhere to go to help him hide.

As his mother’s stomach grew so did everything else. The food was either cold when it was supposed to be hot or hot when it was supposed to be cold. There were no more cartoons allowed on the television and they celebrated his birthday a day late because his mother wasn’t feeling well.

He felt warm. Like he was getting a fever. He took some water from the bath and put it on his head. His sister began to cry. Some of the water must have gotten in her eye or she was probably crying because he took some of her water. He didn’t like her. He didn’t like her at all. She continued crying. He put his hand in the bath and took some more water and put it on his head. She began to cry more. He took more water until his clothes were now wet. His sister kept crying. So he took more water until there was hardly any water left.

He looked at his sister. He looked at the note. None of it made sense. He turned the water back on so his mother wouldn’t notice. He watched the water fill up the tub until it was over his sister’s head. He counted the bubbles as they floated to the top of the water. He liked counting.


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Reese Scott was born in New York. He is currently living in California.

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Author: Reese Scott

Contributor: Donal Mahoney

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Timmy McGinty had many important teachers over the years but the one who changed his life was Sister Coleman, who taught him in 8th grade back in 1952. She prepared Timmy to thrive in high school and, if a scholarship became available, perhaps in college as well. It's lucky for him she worked so hard because another nun might have given up on him. After all, he was "incorrigible" (according to one of his previous teachers) and the only thing he did well was spell, punctuate, write sentences and compose complete paragraphs. Otherwise, he was fairly useless academically. His main delight was mischief. In that field, he had no peer among his classmates.

Like many of the 16 nuns housed in the convent near the school, Sister Coleman was an immigrant from Ireland. She had been brought to Chicago, Timmy learned later in life, because she could manage roughhouse children, many of them the offspring of blue-collar immigrants. Couth, you might say, was not rampant among the otherwise decent people in that neighborhood. Fathers worked as laborers, although a few managed to become policemen or firemen. Mothers were homemakers although some took in laundry to make a few dollars.

In the first week of eighth grade, Sister Coleman plucked Timmy out of the last seat in the second row and plopped him in the first seat in the third row. He would spend the entire year in that seat, right under her wolverine gaze. She had sat Timmy there because she suspected he had been rolling marbles down the aisle from his back row seat. As always she was right but Timmy did his best to maintain his innocence.

"Timothy McGinty," Sister bellowed, "that was you, wasn't it, who rolled the marble down the aisle. It had to be you. That marble made a long trip and you were in the last seat in the second row, covered with freckles and full of buncombe. Do you know what buncombe means, Timothy? Well, you will by the time this year is over, let me tell you, and you will be able to spell the word as well."

Timmy denied everything, pointing his finger at Eddie Sheridan, a slight lad who wished he could do some of the things Timmy did but he simply didn't have the nerve. Besides, Eddie was good in math and he spent most of his time working on algebra problems, something no one else in that eighth grade would have touched.

"I think Eddie Sheridan did it, Sister. I saw his arm move like he was bowling."

Sister took it from there and told Timmy he was not only full of buncombe but balderdash as well and if he didn't start behaving himself and studying hard he would grow up to be a blatherskite always in search of a job.

"I have a brother like you, Timmy, back in Ireland, 40 years old now and still helping out on the farm. My father sometimes says he's not fit to sleep with the pigs but my mother says he certainly is. He's always misbehaving, Timmy. Maybe we can send you over there to help him."

As a penance for his marble escapade, Timmy not only had to sit in front of Sister Coleman but he also had to diagram 30 sentences a night in addition to his regular homework. In fact, Timmy had to diagram 30 sentences a night for the entire year. And these were not "simple sentences." They were "compound sentences" and "compound complex sentences," both of which many of his classmates were not yet ready to diagram. But Timmy McGinty had a way with words and Sister Coleman knew that. As a result, she decided that working with words, perhaps as a writer or editor, might be one of the few ways Timmy could some day earn a living.

Sister Coleman stood right in front of Timmy when she lectured--and she did lecture--and spittle would spray from the gap in her teeth onto his spectacles. Timmy was one of very few boys who wore spectacles in the school, either because myopia was not rampant among the students or because their parents simply never thought about taking their children to an eye doctor.

Timmy got his first pair of glasses in third grade.

"Mom," he said. "I don't want to wear them. Nobody else wears them at school. I'll get in fights."

And sure enough the first three days back in school, Timmy had three fights in the playground as some other boys wanted to see if the glasses had changed him. Maybe he couldn't fight anymore, they thought. But Timmy won all three fights and had to stay after school three nights for "defending himself," as he told his father. Decades later, he could still name the three boys who had accosted him and he would have loved the opportunity to punch them once again, just to clarify that his new glasses had not made him a wimp.

In fact, Timmy told his wife when he finally turned 80 that he would beat the hell out of those "three curs with his cane" if he could find them. After all, he would never have had to stay after school for three nights if they had left him alone.

Timmy liked Sister Coleman, despite her discipline, and he liked her even more ten years later when he had earned a master's degree in English, which in 1962 was a respected major that could lead to a good job. English majors were considered trainable in many occupations that did not involve math or science. Often they were put into management trainee slots and primed to run departments and eventually sometimes an entire company. No one knew exactly what English majors knew but most of them could talk and write and seemed to have a good understanding of people.

With his master's degree diploma in a briefcase, Timmy went back to his old grammar school to find Sister Coleman and show her that one of her incorrigibles had accomplished something. But, alas, he was told in polite terms that his favorite sister was in a home in Florida, and she was there not so much because of her age, but for other reasons. They wouldn't tell Timmy the reasons but he summarized the situation for his parents when he visited them.

"I'm afraid Sister Coleman went bonkers and they shipped her out. They should never have let her teach all those years at that school."

Later on, Timmy found on the Internet that Sister Coleman had died but only after she had returned to Ireland and recruited a niece, also a nun, to teach at his old school. Timmy would have bet that the niece was as tough as her aunt. She would have had to be to govern the miscreants in his old school.

Sister Coleman succeeded with Timmy because she had chosen to teach through and around his behavioral problems. Indeed, Timmy today would probably have been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or some other such disease and put in a school offering special education classes. They had no schools like that back when Timmy was in eighth grade. If a kid acted out more than Timmy did, he was sent to military school. Timmy remembers fondly three of his classmates who were taken away and never seen in the neighborhood again. His mother had seen one of them for the last time on her way to Mass on a hot Sunday in July. Bobby was sitting on his front porch eating the night crawlers he and his father were supposed to go fishing with later that day.

"I would never eat night crawlers, Mom. You don't have to worry" is what Timmy told his mother at Sunday dinner.

Timmy was lucky to have Sister Coleman and the other nuns as his teachers. They knew they were there to turn out children ready to go to high school and perhaps then to college and maybe law school or medical school if scholarships could be found. Those nuns had big plans for their charges because a good education was the only way they as adults would ever find good jobs to raise families of their own.

As did all the nuns back then, Sister Coleman wore a habit that signaled to all that she was in charge. That didn't mean boys like Timmy always behaved--far from it. But when they got caught, they had no problem accepting the discipline and extra homework that misbehavior incurred.

"I deserved all the punishment I got," Timmy told his wife many times in their 50 year marriage. "I asked for it and the sisters doled it out. They had to survive, didn't they, even if poor Sister Coleman didn't make it. I wish now I had never rolled that marble down the aisle."


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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

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Author: Donal Mahoney