Slice: Issue 9
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Transcript of Slice: Issue 9
a room full of voices
into the wild
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fall ’11/winter ’12 Issue 9
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Slice, Issue 9
Copyright © 2011, Slice Literary, Inc.
Slice magazine is published by Slice Literary, Inc.,
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ISSN 1938-6923
Cover and interior design by Amy Sly
Cover illustration by Jing Wei
Illustration on previous page by Daniel Zender
Photos at right by Amy Sly
PUBLISHERSMaria GaGliano
Celia Blue Johnson
ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNERaMy sly
MANAGING EDITORaMelia KreMinsKi
FICTION EDITORSsarah Bowlin
TriCia Callahan
POETRY EDITORToM haushalTer
ASSOCIATE EDITORian ruder
ART/DESIGN ASSISTANTSTess evans
saMuel ferri
BLOG EDITORS
saBa afshar
C.a.B. frederiCKs
READERS saBa afshar, MaGGie
Beauvais, sarah Bowlin,
aManda BulloCK, lissa
edMond, sean Gordon,
luKe hoorelBeKe,
MerediTh Kaffel,
ian f. KinG, aMelia
KreMinsKi, Karen Maine,
liz MaThews, JaCKie
reiTzes, ian ruder, iris
roBerTs, Paul TaunTon
COPY EDITORS/PROOFREADERS JosePh BeninCase,
elizaBeTh BlaChMan,
aManda BulloCK,
TriCia Callahan, ToM
hardeJ, anGie huGhes,
Karen Maine
LITERARY EVENTS EDITORian f. KinG
ASSISTANT LITERARY EVENTS EDITORMaGGie Beauvais
BOARD OF DIRECTORSMaTThew lansBurGh
david liaTTi
susan riChMan
KiMBerly ThoMPson
shane welCh
adrian zaCKheiM
Very special thanks to the following supporters of Slice:
Lori Bongiorno
Walter & Kathy Callahan
Antonio DiCaro
Carmine & Rosalia Gagliano
Joe & Katherine Gagliano
Grand Central Publishing
Sal Gagliano & Linda Lagos
Scott LeBouef
Carl & Patricia Johnson
Christian Johnson
CJ Johnson
Colin Johnson
Heidi Lange
Charlotte Sheedy
Mark & Laura Feld
lifeTiMe suBsCriBers
slice
deAr ReadeR:it’s rare that anyone drifts into the wild. Most people hurtle toward the
mysterious territories that lie beyond the borders of their respective norms.
some are driven by curiosity and a sense of adventure, while others are dragged
kicking and screaming into the overgrowth. They set out to embrace the
unknown or are held captive by it. and that dynamic, between us and the wild,
whatever the wild might be, fits the art of writing perfectly.
issue 9 of Slice celebrates writers who have ventured into the wild—some
literally and literarily. each writer in this issue, the bright new stars and the
established greats, took a chance, ventured into uncharted spaces (fictive or
real), and recorded their journeys on the page.
The result is a collection of interviews, poetry, and prose that will rustle even
the most stoic imagination. you’ll meet the original “wild things” that inspired
Maurice sendak’s beloved children’s book (hint: they’re from Brooklyn),
discover breakout novelist Karen russell’s alligator-wrestling family, and peek
into the world of post-apocalyptic vampires created by bestselling author
Justin Cronin. you’ll experience a glimpse of the wild life as told by middle
school students in the Bronx, visit a house overrun by bats, and encounter some
more unexpected elements of life outside our comfort zones.
whether these writers dove into the unknown uninhibited or tiptoed in with
caution and curiosity, these pages reveal what happens when we break away
from everyday life and begin to explore.
enjoy!
Celia Blue Johnson & Maria Gagliano
Co-publishers
Slice magazine
celia
maria
spotlighther own sPeCial TouCh 135Jackie Shannon Hollis
fictionnoBody’s MaKinG you sTay 10Jackie Thomas Kennedy
CondolenCes 25Kathryn Ma
lord of The flies 39John F. Kersey
CounTry Miles 56Colin Fleming
on BeinG lonely 83 and oTher TheoriesCarla Panciera
liKe The lizard 103Maya J. Gammon
in this issue interViews
with
maurice sendak
justin cronin david
grann
karen russell
TourisT season 108Courtney Maum
honey 114 Rachelle Bergstein
savaGe 125Maggie Murray
winTer harBor 130Elizabeth Bevilacqua
interViewsJusTin Cronin 16Paul Taunton
david Grann 48Tom Hardej
Karen russell 68Maria Gagliano & Celia Blue Johnson
MauriCe sendaK 94Celia Blue Johnson & Maria Gagliano
nonfictionThe Buddha Bird 22Swaha Devi
The Journey hoMe: 34 a Brief faMily hisTorySaba Afshar
iT’s a JunGle ouT There 54Aaron Bir & Andrew Goletz
MounTed MeMories: Can 92 TaxiderMy BrinG us Closer To naTure? Liz Wyckoff
Born of The wild 112Tim Mucci
poetryhouse arresT 15Sara Afshar
hiTChinG 33Josiah Bancroft
a Garden in olneyville 47Andrew Sage
sleePers 66inTroduCTions To BoTany 67Gina Keicher
PaGe of waTer 100sTarwheel 101Rae Gouirand
BildunGsroMan 110lasT resorT 111Annie Binder
TreMor Cordis 122The whiTe doG 123Matthew Daddona
rising VoicesThe wild 74Khady Gueye
inTo The wild 78Lesley Ramos
The wild ThinGs 80Jaslynn Salado
inTo The wild 81Fabiola Cruz
16
An IntervIew wIth
paul taunton
Justin Cronin was best known as the author of literary works like Mary
& O’Neil and The Summer Guest when he made a surprising mid-career
leap to an epic speculative trilogy beginning with The Passage. now, he’s
gone from writing about the human condition to writing a story in which
human survival is . . . conditional. But his creative shift didn’t merely come
from an author’s decision to play with fantastic elements—it came from the
kind of imaginative vision that has given us The Stand and other classics
to which The Passage has been compared. What followed were frenzied
publishing auctions around the world, a major film deal, and an extensive
publicity tour that included a stop at the twenty-first century entertainment
mecca of Comic-Con. Slice caught up with Justin to find out what has
changed along with his new narrative territory, and discovered that the
seeds for The Passage and its upcoming sequel, The Twelve, had been
planted long before.
Justin cronin
17
To many the acts of writing and publicizing a book
are diametrically opposed. were you prepared for the
extent of publicity you’ve done for The Passage?
It’s true that writing and publicizing are
fundamentally unlike each other. Writing is
very contemplative: I rarely leave my house. I don’t have
to talk to people—I don’t get to talk to people. I work
alone for long stretches of time, and time moves in a
different manner when you live like that, actually. Then
for publicity, you go out into the world, and it’s airports
and hotels and talking to people. I was actually pre-
pared for it in some ways by having a day job that
required me to be a performer. I’ve been a teacher of
one kind or another for twenty-five years, and a lot of
teaching is showmanship. You have to know what you’re
doing, but you have to make people pay attention, too.
Speaking in public, going on radio, doing television,
doing interviews—I was pretty well-prepared for it by
my other career. And it’s a nice break in some ways.
phoTogrAph © gASper TrIngAle
end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html
3434
this is a piece of my family history. one day it
will be lore among many other colorful stories that dot
the Afshar family history—a grandfather’s tale about his
great-grandfather. But today it is my tale, about my par-
ents, and it is as factual as their memory and my retelling
allow.
It’s 1983 and an airplane lands in hamburg, West
germany. A young family deplanes. The father, from Iran
and just under thirty, presses on through the terminal.
he moves with purpose, following german signage he
doesn’t understand, masking any jet lag, confusion, and
fear that should be overwhelming. his eyes do wince
in pain occasionally as he does his best to hold his left
wrist steady while he gently guides his rambunctious
two-year-old son with his curled fingers. he can feel
the shrapnel press against nerve endings in his wrist
and hand, curling his fingers tighter. A suitcase is in his
useful hand. he looks back. his wife, from India and not
quite twenty-three, is two steps behind, carrying not
only a suitcase but their six-month-old son, whose skin
looks even paler in the lighting of the airport than it did
on the plane, only a faint smear of blood on his lips as he
quietly sleeps, as if he weren’t throwing up blood just an
hour ago. The mother’s eyes are fixated on the two-year-
old, watching him walk with all the energy one would
expect from a toddler, despite the fact that he clearly
favors his right side. She begins to guide him with her
voice, protecting him from more danger in yet another
foreign land. protecting her husband from having to suf-
fer through any more pain.
There is no real plan once the Afshar family has
landed in hamburg. They only knew that they had to
get there. It was their only salvation. They immediately
go downtown; from there they will have options, they
think. From there they will be able to find a hospital, a
room, someone who could at least speak a common
language—english, Farsi, Urdu; it doesn’t matter at this
point. like the moth to the flame, they are drawn to the
hamburg hauptbahnhof, one of the busiest transporta-
tion hubs in europe. They pause on the curb outside
the station. hunger pangs. hooshmand, the father, sets
in alone to better navigate the crowds in the search for
food. The mother, Zarrin, is left alone with the luggage
and kids. She doesn’t give fear and anxiety a chance to
wrap their heavy fingers around her mind, for the sake
of her children. She keeps those thoughts at bay even
while they wait and wait and wait for hooshi to return.
« . »
return. two months earlier, that was all Zarrin could think about in that walk home after it all happened
in nigeria. I want my baby to return. I want my baby in
my arms.
The Afshars had just come off a different plane, this
time in the northern nigerian city of Kano. They arrived
in the hot, dusty, old city that had been their home for
the past year. For hooshmand this was a long time com-
ing. Zarrin had been with the toddler, Suraj, back in her
homeland of Kashmir, India, to give birth to their second
son, Saba. She had needed to be somewhere comfort-
able, somewhere where she was not lonely. Understand-
ably, the twenty-two-year-old woman wanted to be
with her mother. hooshmand had remained in Kano as
the engineer overseeing the completion of a bridge. he
missed the first three months of his son’s life. The bridge
complete, he finally was able to go to India, meet his
second child, and bring his family back with him.
the Journey homeA Brief fAmily History
Saba afShar
35
the journey home saba afshar
They landed in the middle of the night and took a
taxi home. no one noticed a beat-up car carrying two
desperate, reckless men, but the two men noticed this
foreign family and the large amount of luggage they had
loaded into the cab.
As is the nature of so many violent crimes, the car-
jacking came out of nowhere. This began with a bullet,
shot toward the cabdriver to get his attention. The cab-
bie left the keys and fled. hooshi, who had his toddler
son sleeping in his arms, was simultaneously removed
from the backseat by a second carjacker. Zarrin was
then pulled out of the car as she was reaching for her
baby son, only months old. In the pitch dark, the thugs
assumed it was a valuable she was protecting (not an
invaluable child!). hooshmand then made the bold but
rash move to rescue his youngest in the face of drawn
guns. This was more than the instinct of a father protect-
ing his family. This was a result of training while serving
in the Iranian military under the Shah. This was strength
gained from a life of poverty, from leaving his homeland
and never returning. This was the action of a man whose
faith in god superseded all else.
his lunge toward the backseat of the car was cur-
tailed by a volley of lead. If there was good fortune to
be had during the events in Kano, the first of two such
fortuitous incidents occurred here. The ammunition used
was not bullet rounds. Instead, the gunman who opened
fire on hooshi and the sleeping Suraj was carrying
birdshot. The spray of lead balls ripped through hooshi’s
arms, with a heavy concentration on his left wrist and
hand. he was brought to his knees. As he bled, feeling
his son still breathing in his arms even though Suraj had
not made a sound—had not risen from sleep—the same
gunman emptied hooshi’s pockets, taking his wallet,
keys.
Zarrin watched in abject terror as one of the carjack-
ers sped away in the taxi with her baby. hooshmand,
with a child held even tighter in his arms, chased after
the car. Zarrin, begging her husband to stop, ran after
him. She was scared of further damage. She was scared
of being raped. Foreign women were targeted in the
violent nation. In the increasingly oppressive dark, even
as she watched the second thug run off in the dilapidat-
ed car that crashed the Afshars’ homecoming, she felt
danger around her. She saw more strange men carrying
weapons. She saw them in the dark, on the back of her
eyelids, lurking in windows. She saw them everywhere
until she left nigeria.
When the short, futile chase for their baby ended,
when the dust and noise settled back into a quiet mid-
night, the couple with a still-sleeping child found that
they stood only five blocks away from their home. They
jogged home quietly in silence. Shock clears your mind.
hooshmand and Zarrin only focused on the task at hand,
not allowing grief or panic to waste any crucial time. As
they approached their home, a floodlight switched on.
Zarrin’s eyes went to her child in her husband’s arms.
There was blood everywhere. For a moment she thought
the blood was all coming from hooshi’s lacerated arms.
She stepped in closer to them. Suraj’s shirt was shredded,
and what remained of it was soaked in blood; seeping out
of little holes that lined the side of the toddler’s torso and
left arm. She fell to her knees and shrieked, grabbed the
collar of her white blouse and tore her shirt in half.
This is how they arrived at the city hospital: a young,
short woman half-naked, with the remains of her blouse
dangling from her shoulders and no expression in her
eyes; a man carrying a breathing but motionless child,
desperate to hold him despite the pain registering on
the father’s face. There was blood caking both father
and son. A nurse rushed in and covered Zarrin, surpris-
ing the couple. They had forgotten about her exposed
chest, or the social importance of covering it up.
For the first time since getting out of the cab, Suraj was
removed from his father’s grasp as they were led to sepa-
rate rooms. Zarrin followed her son. The room was dirty;
the nurses and doctors were hesitant to act. A Swedish
friend, Mr. Widegren, arrived, a fellow Baha’i they had met
in the religion’s local community. he found Zarrin and Suraj
in the hospital room. no word on Saba yet. Zarrin left the
room to check on her husband. his room was just as dingy
as Suraj’s. The doctors told them that they didn’t have the
facilities, technology, or ability to perform the fine surgery
necessary for his arms, to give hooshi the use of his left
wrist and hand back, to alleviate any of the pain. Zarrin left
as they began to dress his wounds.
When she returned to Suraj’s room there was com-
motion: Mr. Widegren was assisting a nurse washing out
end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html
Country Miles
ColIn flEMInG
PAINTING By RyAN MCLeNNAN
58
slice issue 9
i think that out of all the ways of saving some- one, pushing them out of the way of something is prob-
ably the best way to go. It’s the easiest, I reckon, and
you get the same amount of credit for it.
It’s probably even better if there’s snow on the
ground, which isn’t very realistic where we live. What
worries me is how a girl might take it, if things ever got
to the point where you had to prevent her from getting
run down. A guy would probably understand and thank
you and you’d hang out a lot after you had saved him.
he’d probably say that he would have done the same for
you. I guess he’d have to. But you might be stuck with a
friend you don’t really like, depending on what he’s into
and if his parents have a furnished basement or not with
a high-def TV and an Xbox.
My parents would probably try to get us to enact
plays. My mother teaches drama classes to rich kids.
We are not rich, but I think she likes to pretend we are
when she makes me and a couple other kids—the kids
who have nowhere else to be—hop around with wooden
sticks between our legs while my dad works at his video
business in the back of the house.
The teacher of this class where I am currently being
held hostage is from england. Maybe that’s why she
gives us ten minutes of work to do and then we just sit
here until the bell rings. Are they lazy over there? My
dad said they’re a bunch of hooligans, but it “ain’t never
no mind” because the poles (that’s a funny name for a
polish person) there are some of his best customers.
“The sick fucks.” Quite a thing to say when you’re having
meat loaf and Tater Tots at supper. “Your daddy has his
pressures,” as my mother puts it, and then he sort of
waves at me and everyone goes back to their meat loaf
or reaches for more Fanta.
Anyway, if I was going to save someone, the person
I’d like to save most is Summer. She sits in front of me
in a bunch of classes because we practically have the
same last name and it goes alphabetical. hers is hutch-
ens and mine is hutches. It’s kind of my first name too
since everyone calls me hutch. Summer gets called
Summer, as you’d expect. She comes over to the house
after school three days a week, which is embarrassing.
And not just because of how dirty everything is and how
small our house is. The kids call it the Cracker house,
and that got me pretty upset, but I took out a book
from the library on architecture and, sure as shit, it’s a
Cracker house, technically. When my mother’s students
come over there’s hardly anywhere for me to be except
in the kitchen where the class can look in and see me,
or with my dad in my room. he works in there with all of
his video machines that get kept under my bed. So that
doesn’t really leave anywhere for me to be.
My dad’s a film editor for the local TV station. “The
only one who gets to work from home,” as he’ll tell you.
I’m not allowed in my parents’ room—my older brother
Billy went in there once before he left home with his
girlfriend. They snuck in when our parents were out and
when I asked him what all the big deal was, he told me
to mind my business, and he left not long after that. ever
since they’ve had it locked, which my mother explains
by saying I’m at that age where I start trying to extend
my boundaries. She is always saying things like that that
ought to embarrass me, but no kid would understand
her anyway, so you learn not to draw any attention to
her remarks.
Summer pushes her feet back under her desk a lot,
but not today. She has her bag stuffed under her desk
instead of on the side. We touch shoes sometimes. Soon
she won’t be wearing shoes because all the girls wear
sandals when it’s hot. She takes her feet all the way out
then. I’ve touched her that way too.
We’ve never really talked much to each other,
though. Just some little stuff. It’s never my intention just
to talk about little stuff, but when I do, I end up feeling
better that I didn’t try and say more. I don’t really know
any of her friends, and that’s what girls like to talk about.
They all sit at the same table at lunch, and it reminds
me of the times I’ve seen C-SpAn when we had cable,
and I remember watching all of these important-looking
people being so serious at their tables together. There’s
a few guys there too. I’m sort of friends with some of
them from little league, but maybe “former teammate”
would be a better way of putting it.
The ones that are in this class are drawing things
now. Mostly sports stuff—the majority of the kids root
for Duke so they draw the little blue devil guy with his
pitchfork and some of the more famous players like
grant hill and Christian laettner and Bobby hurley. The
59
more old players you know the cooler you are, but there
are some Tar heels fans too because one kid’s older
brother walked on there, wasn’t even recruited, and
he made the team. That’s usually how the teams break
down on the basketball court after school too, pretend
Dukies versus pretend heels.
I’m not good at drawing so I don’t bother. The one
time I tried I was stupid enough to use the back of a
quiz. Mrs. gallagher had everyone send them down the
row facedown so no one could see the answers, and this
kid that everyone calls Souza—his real name is Arthur
peetes, so don’t ask me where Souza comes from—said,
“Did Cauley the retard draw that?” Cauley is regularly
considered to be the retard in our class. he’s not really
retarded but he is kind of like an animal. My dad had a
retarded brother, but I never met him. he climbed out
on the roof of their house when my dad was a kid and
fell off and broke his neck. That was hard on my grand-
mother, but to hear my dad tell it, it was even harder
on him, because she gave him hell about everything he
did after that, even when he got good marks in school.
When she died a while back—after giving my dad five
or six stepfathers and me a bunch of different people to
call grandpa for a spell—I heard him tell my mom that
it was good and that the old slag deserved it. That kind
of sounds like a word Mrs. gallagher would use, but you
could tell from the way my mom reacted that I probably
shouldn’t ask Mrs. g. what it means.
My dad slapped my mom’s ass and came out into the
hall and saw me standing there after I’d retreated a little
bit and asked me if I was in the mood for ice cream. We
normally don’t go out together to get ice cream, but
that day we went all the way to raleigh where there’s
the state’s biggest Dairy Queen. I asked my dad why we
went so far just so I could get ice cream and he could
get some beer, but he just said that he had something
to think on, now that grandma was dead, and now
that she didn’t have anything to leave us, after all. My
mother would call this way of talking my father’s “mode
of expression,” but I just found it confusing. I guess he
thought we had something coming that we didn’t.
“That’s not your concern anyway, little man,” he said
to me as we pulled up into our driveway, and he looked
in the backseat to see if there were any beers left. “A
man’s gotta kill his own snakes.” now, I know he wasn’t
talking about something like that copperhead nest I
found last summer, or the black racer that bit our dog
Kylie. But I’ll be damned if I knew what he was on about,
to put it like Mrs. g. would. I wonder if she’s partial to the
Blue Devils or the Tar heels.
« . »
My dad is the biggest Atlanta Braves fan you can
find. or he was, before their announcer Skip Caray died.
It’s like he didn’t care after that, which I didn’t under-
stand at all. They were about as good a team as usual,
fighting it out for the wild card or the division. one night
after Summer and the rest of my mom’s class of as-
sorted wankers—another Mrs. g. word—left, my dad was
slouched down in the la-Z-Boy really tucking into some
wings and washing them down with his beer. he’d been
off with Summer for a couple hours, doing whatever it
is they did. “Special lessons, pistil,” as my mom puts it,
never mind that I would prefer to be called Ass Master,
Blow King, or lord Stool before being called pistil, which
is the thin part of a flower that comes out of the top. I’m
thin. I’m her flower. get it? Bitch be killing me. So that’s
why I listen to rap—the ’rents can’t stand it. Anyway,
Summer had been off with my father and now she was
gone and he was right knackered in g-speak—that’s how
a bunch of us describe how Mrs. gallagher talks—but
I thought, okay, we can bond a bit and maybe he can
give me the d-low on Summer and I can make my play.
like, maybe she’s a massive Blue Devils fan, and my dad
would know because he’s with her so much and I can use
that to my advantage. Dads dig this kind of bonding shit.
But I barely got to open my mouth before he started
ranting. You would have thought he was comatose
slouched there, but when the Mets hit into a double play
and the Braves announcer got all excited my dad went
nuts, raving with a lot of thong words, which I looked
up later. “You’re blurring your diphthongs! Stop running
those syllables together! Skip Caray never would have
talked this way. Blue-blooded murder of the english
language! oh good. At least you got that monophthong
right, you lazy-ass motherfucking joke of an announcer.
how the hell is the youth of today supposed to learn
country miles colin fleming
end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html
94
An IntervIew wIth
Many of us remember crawling into bed, blankets tucked in firmly, and
looking up as someone’s hand slowly turned the pages of a picture book. in
that magical moment our bedroom would transform, the images on those
pages eclipsing the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Maurice sendak captured
the power of a child’s imagination, to transport them into the wild recesses
of dreams, in his most famous book, Where the Wild Things Are. And so he
was a natural fit for this issue of Slice. We had the opportunity to chat on the
phone with Maurice, who lives in Connecticut, a week before his eighty-
third birthday. he took us back to the wildest place he ever went to, the place
that inspired the adventures of his mischievous character named Max. it
was his childhood home, located in Brooklyn, the same borough as Slice ’s
headquarters. so it turns out that the wild can take root in your backyard,
or if you don’t have one—as is the case for many city kids—in the nooks and
crannies of your apartment.
CElIa bluE johnSon & MarIa GaGlIano
MAurice sendAk
95
This is the Brooklyn magazine, right?
yes. This is Celia Johnson and Maria Gagliano, from
Slice.
good, okay.
Maria is actually from Bensonhurst.
oh my god. Well, she lived through it.
our first question is actually about Brooklyn. you were
born in Brooklyn, which is where we are based, and we
were wondering what some of your favorite childhood
memories are.
let’s see if I have any. I guess there were my
friends, the kids I knew. It was a good time
for me. The trees were healthy and shady. I guess I say
that because there was an article in the paper today
about how all the trees in this poor little town, all the
trees were blown away. It made me think of Brooklyn
where all the trees were wonderful, so thick, heavy. I
know there are trees elsewhere than Brooklyn, but I only
knew the Brooklyn trees. And the stoop where every-
body sat and chatted and talked and hollered, yelled
and threatened. Skating with my brother.
These are ordinary childhood memories, nothing
special. There were mysteries that we hid from our
parents, but that’s what all children do. We only told
them a little bit about life. We didn’t want them to get
nervous. So we kept things from them. But that’s not
Brooklyn, that’s just childhood. All I can really tell you
is, I had a good time.
PHoToGRAPH ©JoHN DUGDALe
end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html
130130
Winter hArBor
ElIzabEth bEvIlaCqua
Pop gives me a salute and puts a cigar in his mouth before closing the kitchen door. he’s headed to
Jack’s for shotgun shells. pop’s teaching me to shoot. got
me an air rifle. Don’t matter that I’m a girl, he says. Says
I got a better shot than him when he was twelve. I watch
him from the sink window as he gets in the Jeep. We’ve
got time on our hands since it’s summer for me and pop
says it’s perpetual Saturday for him since the fire.
Soon enough, ginger comes in and she’s on the hunt
for pop. I don’t know why she’s friends with pop now,
except maybe that she feels bad because it was her ex-
husband that laid the finish that set our house afire. A
whole house, just like that. And Mum and the boys, too.
Bad product. Wasn’t the first time, either. That’s how we
got the lawyer from portland. Should have been discon-
tinued years ago, he said.
Mum and pop had a new kitchen put on our old
house. It was just about done—walls up, windows in,
floor down—and ginger’s ex-husband laid this high-
gloss sealant to protect the hardwood. he was the
contractor. At the end of the day, he threw the rags in
the trash under the sink and overnight they sparked. It
might have been an electrical spark or just the pressure
and heat built up under the sink, but the rags and the
barrel went up and the whole place caught fast. It was
an old wood house and all that new sealant on the floors
made the smoke bad.
I give ginger the eye and shake my head to let her
know pop’s not here and never will be for her, but she
hollers his name a couple times up the staircase. She is
dressed like a truck driver except that under her open
flannel she’s got on a tank with a deep vee charging
down her bread dough boobs. looks like someone
cut her dough chest in half with a butter knife and
the crooked line jiggles side to side when she clomps
around calling for pop.
I’ve known ginger my whole life. She runs the gener-
al Store in town. It’s penny candy and milk and eggs and
soda and beer and there’s some crap for tourists, too.
lobster-shaped maple candy and buckwheat pancake
mix with a moose on the package. Me and reedy and
Todd would ride our bikes down and get Slush puppies
and salt-and-vinegar chips.
reedy and Todd were two years younger than me—
twins. I was eight when the fire happened. It was the
smoke that got them. Mum, too. Funny how the body
is. You breathe too much smoke, you die. You lose too
much blood, you die. Your heart doesn’t thump enough,
you die. Simple as that. Could happen anytime.
ginger looks at me again.
“not here, ginger,” I say. “he went out.”
“You tell him I came by,” she says.
I don’t want to tell her I won’t, but I won’t. And I don’t
want to say I will because I have a thing now about not
end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html
ILLUSTRATIoN By JULIe MoRSTAD
135135
All the towns we lived in were small ones but the
one we moved to when I was nine was smaller than any
of them. papa was sticking with small towns because
they were the best place to raise a son, even if people
tended to snoop into each other’s business. he was sure
Springs would have some boys my age to play with even
if it was small.
The yard around our new house was just a patchy
square of grass. It was springtime and there had been
rain, but most of the grass was brown. There were
no flowers or shrubs or much of anything in our yard,
except for a bendy low-to-the-ground tree in the front
corner.
A few weeks after we moved in, Mama and I were
on the porch. We were taking some sun after the rain.
The people at little’s grocery said the rain was good for
farmers. papa said the wheat farmers were the heart of
this town. Still, it was good to have some sun, even if the
farmers would have problems.
The street was quiet because all the kids were in
school. I didn’t know any of the kids yet because papa
decided I could wait until next year to start school. “It’s
almost summer,” he said. “Anyway, you’ve got enough
smart in you for the year.” he cupped his big hand over
the stubble on my head. “It’ll be good for your Mama to
have you with her for now.” I made a sour face and papa
made a frown.
papa was at work at the highway the day Mama and
I were in the yard. he’d worked all over oregon for the
highway. It was a good place to work, because it was
easy to get transfers and they had a pension. I hoped we
wouldn’t get a transfer from Springs because I’d seen
some boys at the park when he took us on a car tour of
the town. Those boys looked like they were my age.
her oWn speCiAl touCh
jaCkIE Shannon hollIS
PHoToGRAPH By eRIN HANSoN
138
slice issue 9
I got up off the porch and walked over to the little
red tree. I tipped my cowboy hat back off my head and
squinted at Mama. “It looks awful scrawny,” I said. The
leaves were soft. I rolled one between my thumb and
fingers.
Mama came over and bent down to the hunched tree.
“That’s a maple tree, little Cowboy.” There was a sigh in
her voice. Mama wore herself out in Milton and papa told
her she needed a good long rest and should take her
time to get to know people in this new town. She was
doing that, getting a good long rest in our new yard.
The red leaf between my fingers turned into red dots
and goo. I wiped it off on my jeans and tugged the string
catch that kept my hat tight on my head. I made a line of
heel marks with my cowboy boots, in the dirt. The dirt
was damp from the rain and my boot marks looked like
some kind of hoof animal had been there.
Mama made a sigh again and straightened back up.
She looked around the rest of the bare yard. “This yard
is one big patch of nothing.” She put her hands on her
hips so her arms made triangles.
I heeled my way over to the cement porch and sat
on the second step. Mama turned away from the yard,
toward the street. her shoulders and elbows were sharp
points and she was still. When Mama was like that,
still and pointy, it got inside me and made me still and
pointy too.
« . »
the day we took that car tour of springs, the day
I saw those boys who might be my age climbing on the
monkey bars at the park, I’d counted that there were
eight blocks on either side of Main Street and twelve
blocks going out either way. I’m pretty sure that was the
least blocks of any town we’d been in.
Mama was quiet that day. She was in the front seat
but she was clear over by her door, not next to papa like
she sometimes was.
papa said, “This town is a good one for a boy to grow
up in, Mary Anna.” That was when we drove by the blue
house that was four blocks down from us. “We don’t
need to worry about what other people in this town
have,” he said.
Mama’s face was turned away from him. She was
looking at the blue house.
papa said, “We have enough on our own.” he looked
back at me and winked. But there was a wrinkle between
his eyes and it made the wink look sad.
The blue house had a big tree and lots of pink and
purple flowers. Mama turned her whole body to keep
looking at that house. The side of her face went soft and
the little lines she called crow feet almost disappeared.
“oh,” she said, “that’s a pretty garden.” She ran her fin-
ger on the window and it left a smear. She perked up in
her seat. “Well, sure.” She wrapped her arms like a hug
for herself. “This will be a fine town for a boy to grow up
in.” her voice had a singing sound in it.
papa had both hands on the steering wheel, tight,
like he was wringing a washrag.
« . »
right before we left Milton, our last town, Papa
got mad at Mama. I was supposed to be sleeping but
they were making noise. “This has got to stop, Mary
Anna.” he was trying to whisper and yell at the same
time. “This thing, it just takes you over. You disappear.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that. I never saw her
disappear.
« . »
in the yard, when Mama was still and pointy, she
didn’t see the yellow-stripe cat peeing in the opposite
corner. he scratched dirt back with his front paws and
looked over his shoulder at Mama. I pulled my pistols
from my holsters and pointed them at the cat. “Bang,
bang.” If I’d had a real gun he would’ve dropped dead
sideways. That cat scratched one last time over the wet
he’d left in our yard. he went on across the driveway
into the neighbor’s yard where there was a good long
stretch of green grass.
« . »
the next day, i was in the front room playing G.i. Joe when Mama came out of her bedroom. She had
end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html