Contest of June 15, 2007

FIRST PRIZE

MR. DEARBORN'S BIG VACATION

by Philip Loyd

     The ocean waves crested against the Caribbean sky, swirling and sudsy behind Anna as she came splashing to the shore. She smiled and waved to Richard, stretched out on the beach, sipping his margarita. He waved back. She was a vision of loveliness, the image of simple virtue and supple charm altogether. She was everything he had ever dreamed of. Seeing her smile as she kicked up sand running towards him, he wished this moment would last forever. But just as all good things must come to an end, so too must all honeymoons.

     This is what Mr. Richard J. Dearborn remembered as he sat daydreaming behind his busy desk. For the clutter of penholders, picture frames, and paperweights, there wasn't even room for his feet.

     The door to his office opened abruptly and in the same motion a woman of great bearing came bursting through, the secretary saying "Good morning, Mrs. Dearborn," all the while Mrs. Dearborn yammering on and on, as was her way.

     "Oh the traffic--frightful. Why is there always such a crowd down below? Bums. Oh, they call themselves musicians, or artists, or some other clever names like bohemians, or avant-garde, but they're all bums, just the same."

     "Now, dear," said Mr. Dearborn.

     "Don't dear me," snapped Mrs. Dearborn. "This city has gone to hell in a handbasket, overrun by hoodlums and hooligans alike."

     "But--"

     "But never you mind," she said, changing moods at the drop of a hat, as was her way. "How has your day been, dear? Are you ready for the Gates merger? Everything in order?"

     Mr. Dearborn walked over to the window.

     "Why, look at your desk," said Mrs. Dearborn, "you've not even your papers together."

     Mr. Dearborn looked out the window toward the park.

     "How do you expect to..." Mrs. Dearborn began, and Mr. Dearborn tuned her out altogether.

     Down in the park, a dog was barking, running, jumping, and catching a Frisbee. Richard had a dog when he was a boy, a bright-eyed Beagle named Smokey; but Mrs. Dearborn would have no part of it, said she was allergic to the dander. A thirty-something couple strolled along hand in hand, pushing a baby carriage. Mr. and Mrs. Dearborn had tried to have a baby once, but after the miscarriage they never spoke of it again. Mrs. Dearborn had never been fond of children anyway, though she did often donate money to several orphanages and literacy programs. A college student lay beneath a sprawling oak, his head resting upon his backpack while he scribbled something in a notebook. Poetry, most likely, Richard thought. Richard used to write poetry. In fact, people used to tell him he was quite good. That was back in college though, when Anna and he first met. Mr. Dearborn saw a young couple playing footsie on a blanket below. It reminded him of Anna. For their ragged jeans and wrinkled T-shirts, they couldn't have had more than two dollars between them. Oh, how wonderful it must be to be penniless and in love. But Mr. Richard J. Dearborn didn't know about such things anymore.

     "So how do you?" said Mrs. Dearborn. "How do you expect to be prepared for the Gates merger when you've not even your papers together?"

     "Dear," he said, "we need a vacation."

     "A vacation?" she said. "You've the Gates merger in less than an hour. Your papers are a mess. How do you expect to..." Mrs. Dearborn began, and Mr. Dearborn's eyes drifted to a picture on the wall. It was a photo of Anna and him, and her parents. It was taken on Thanksgiving Day at their estate in the country. Anna's father was a banker, her mother the head of the local garden club. Both played bridge religiously and never drank. Richard dreaded the inevitable meeting, but Anna and he were now going steady now.

     That time in the countryside was the first vacation Richard and Anna had ever taken together, and it wasn't until dinner Thursday that the conversation took an uncomfortable turn for him. The unavoidable questions had finally surfaced.

     "So what are you studying, Richard?" asked her father.

     "English," said Richard.

     "English, why that's fine. Of course, you plan on attending graduate school, then attaining your Ph.D. There's no real money in teaching unless you obtain a professorship at a university. Then what, perhaps make dean, or chancellor maybe?"

     "No sir," said Richard, "I want to write."

     "Write?" said her father. "What, like for a newspaper or a magazine?"

     "No sir, poetry, short stories perhaps."

     "Poetry?" snapped her father.

     "Richard's an excellent writer," interjected Anna, "everyone at school says so."

     "But a man can't make a living writing poems. Why, you might as well be a juggler, or a mime on a street corner. I hear the new president of Czechoslovakia is a poet. Is that what you want to be, Richard, president of Czechoslovakia?  Maybe you could learn to play the spoons, or get a monkey and..." and until they left her parents house on Sunday it went on like that. He didn't mind though, not really. He knew this was the girl he was going to marry.

     "Well," said Mrs. Dearborn, "how you expect to be ready for the Gates merger when you've not even your papers together is going to be a fine feat indeed?"

     "Dear," said  Mr. Dearborn, "we really do need a vacation."

     "You're not going to start all that again, I pray."

     "We could go to your folks' place in the country. Remember the lake, the moonlight?"

     "I don't understand you," said Mrs. Dearborn. "You know as well as I that the Gates merger is our biggest deal yet. How on earth could you be thinking of vacation at a time like this? They'll be here in less than half an hour. Honestly, Richard Jonathon Dearborn, I just don't understand you sometimes. How do you intend to..." she began, and as she did his eyes wandered toward a paperweight on his desk, a smooth, flat rock he had found while they were hiking out West one summer while on break from school.

     He had been completely out of breath when inspiration shot through him like the cold, thin air burning in his chest. "Wait," he had told her, "don't move an inch."

     He scurried about, looking for what, she didn't know.

     "What are you up to?" she said.

     "Anna," began Richard, "I've loved you since the very first time I laid eyes on you."

     "What are you doing?" she said.

     "I'll never forget that day. You were wearing a white sundress that was hiked up just enough so I could see your legs. Your hair was resting on your shoulders and you turned and smiled at me."  He knelt before her.

     "Oh, my God," she said.

     "Anna, I've known ever since that day, we were meant to be together, always."

     She was about to cry.

     "Will you please do me the honor?" he said, and she said YES.

      Richard placed the rock in her hand.

     "What's this?" she said.

     "Well," he said, "I know it isn't the rock you were expecting; but right here, right now, it's all I have to give."

     "It's perfect," she said.

     Richard made her promise they'd come back every year.  Anna thought it was a splendid idea. They never did come back.

     "Well," said Mrs. Dearborn, "how do you intend to absorb all the merger information before the Gates brothers arrive?"

     "Dear," said Mr. Dearborn, "we could go hiking."

     "Hiking?" exclaimed Mrs. Dearborn. "Richard Jonathon Dearborn, have you lost your mind?"

     "We could go out West, the mountains, remember?"

     "This isn't the time to be playing Sir Edmund Hillary," said Mrs. Dearborn. "The Gates brothers will be here in fifteen minutes. How do you think you can possibly..." she began, and as she did he looked over her to the mounted sailfish on the wall. They'd caught it on their honeymoon.

     Richard was talking to the boat's captain about something in Spanish, something he didn't fully understand, when suddenly Anna's line caught, nearly yanking the pole from her hands while she hooted and hollered, hopping all around. Richard came running to her side. "Give it some slack," he said. "Let it run with it."

     Nearly two hours later, working in shifts and sometimes together, Anna and Richard reeled in the great fish. It had put up a valiant fight, and it was still fighting now; but its death was not so glorious, now flopping on the deck as the captain clubbed it repeatedly.

     They danced all night.

     "You know what?" said Anna, "We should just stay here."

     "What, for another night?" he said.

     "No, forever."

     "Forever?"

     "We could open up a cafe, or a cantina. I have money. Then we could fish all day and dance all night. We could sip margaritas on the beach and make mad, passionate love until sunrise. What do you think?"

     "I think you've been in the sun too long."

     "You don't like my idea."

     "Sure, I like it; but what would your father say?"

     "Oh, phooey on him."

     "Well, you're not the one who is going to have to see him every day. He expects me there bright and early Monday morning. It was your idea, remember?"

     "Yes, I remember," she said. "It was a wonderful idea though, wasn't it?"

     "What, me taking a job with your father?"

     "No, our staying here forever."

     "Yes, it was divine."

     "Well then, let's make tonight last. Let's watch the sunrise one more time."

     They spent their last night on the beach. There was a full moon.

     "How do you think you can possibly be prepared for the merger?" said Mrs. Dearborn. They hardly ever made love anymore, only after hostile takeovers and auspicious mergers.

     "Dear," said Mr. Dearborn, "we could go south of the border, to that ocean-side village where we honeymooned."

     "Richard Jonathon Dearborn, now I know you've lost your mind," said Mrs. Dearborn. "The Gates brothers are surely on their way up as we speak. If daddy were only here, why he'd... Now straighten your tie; you look a mess."

     Mr. Dearborn turned toward the window. "Dear," he said, "we must take a vacation."

     "Lord have mercy," said Mrs. Dearborn, "we just went to London not even a month ago, the Bigsby merger, remember?"

     "A real vacation, just the two of us."

     "We're going to Japan next month," said Mrs. Dearborn, "you know, the Hioto deal."

     Mr. Dearborn just stood there, staring out the window over the tall buildings across the park.

     "You're just tired, dear," said Mrs. Dearborn. "Tomorrow is Saturday; you can sleep in.

     "Now," she said, "get your papers ready. The Gates brothers are surely in the lobby by now."

     "Yes, dear," Mr. Dearborn said, but he didn't need to go over any papers. What is that old cliche about a fool and his money? Oh, yes. The Gates brothers had a lot of money, and they were quite the fools.

* * *

     If you were to walk through the door of Mrs. Anna Dearborn's house on 1 Stanford Lane at or around four p.m. that Friday you'd swear there was a riot in progress. Imagine a hundred chickens in a room, beating their wings frantically and bouncing from wall to wall with their heads just having been hacked off, or the frenzied floor of the New York Stock Exchange as the numbers plunge amid widespread panic. Now imagine somebody moving slowly in the midst, someone who could not only make sense of it all but was in complete control. That someone was Mrs. Dearborn as she gave orders here and ordinance there: the flowers in the foyer, the settings on the tables, the food, the wine, the lighting, the music... She said something to the caterer, then like a shot from a cannon exploded through the kitchen door. Her caterer wondered why she hired her at all. She was the most expensive in the city, but had barely lifted so much as a finger. No matter. When Mrs. Dearborn was in the cast, she directed the show. You dare not get in her way.

     After a short stint terrorizing the chef and his staff, Mrs. Dearborn came bursting back from the kitchen. She rearranged the flowers again, checked the lighting once more, and wondered if her new drapes really matched her carpet, or if the carpet went with the sofa, or if the sofa complemented the chairs. She lined up the waiters, busboys, bartenders, cocktail waitresses, and coat-check girls like a drill sergeant and inspected them one by one: comb your hair; trim your nails; brush your teeth; tie your shoe; change your panty hose; and to the last, trim the hairs in your nose, and your ears. Everything was ready. Everything was in place. Nothing could go wrong. Tonight would be perfect. What could possibly go wrong? 

     Tonight would be a disaster, she thought. She went over everything again. She would get her husband on the governor's committee and he would forget all that nonsense about a vacation. She was determined that this night be special. It would indeed be a night they would never forget.

     The phone rang and a young, professional woman came shouting through the ranks, "Mrs. Dearborn, telephone Mrs. Dearborn."

     "I'll take it in my study," said Mrs. Dearborn, staring all along at the foyer as if the Queen of England herself would soon be passing through. "And what have I told you about shouting?"

     "That its very unprofessional."

     "And most unladylike."

     "Yes, ma'am. Sorry, ma'am."

     Mrs. Dearborn stood statuesque, arms akimbo, then removed one daisy from a vase while saying "There," to no one at all.

     "Yes, this is Anna Dearborn," she said into the phone at her desk. "No," she said, "I ordered two, one for the pool and one for the gazebo. Lord in heaven, can't you people get anything right?"

     She spun the daisy between her fingers as she listened, staring at Richard's portrait on the wall.

     "I don't care what your invoice says;" she said, "I ordered two."

     Richard's eyes stared right back.

     "Just a moment; it's in my purse," she said.

     She took a piece of paper from her purse. What's this, she thought?  She then dropped it on the desk. "Here we are," she said, unfolding the invoice. "Two, it says right here, two."

     She picked up the strange piece of paper from the desk.

     "Well, you had better, otherwise I'll see to it you never work in the Free World again, or the whole world for that matter."

     She unfolded the sheet of paper.

     "Yes, that will do fine.

     She read the title.

     "Apology accepted," she said, hanging up the phone, hypnotized by the words on the paper. It was a poem Richard had given her long ago, and not just the same words, but the actual poem, the very same piece of paper, now wrinkled and yellowed. But how did it get into her purse?  He must have slipped it in there. He must be suffering from fatigue, what with all this talk of a vacation and all. And now his slipping this poem into her purse? Maybe he did need more than just a good night's sleep. Maybe he did need some time off. Just get him through tonight, she thought; just get him on the governor's committee and then they would take some time off, perhaps even an entire week. Anything, just get him through tonight. She wondered how the Gates merger had gone.

     She dialed her travel agent. There. Everything was set. They would spend a week in Hawaii before the Hioto meeting in Japan. There was a hotel in Waikiki she had been thinking of buying for some time now. She stormed from the office, almost knocking over the caterer.

     "Mrs. Dearborn, we still have to finalize the--"

     "You take care of it," Mrs. Dearborn said on her way out the door. "What am I paying you for anyway?"

     The caterer did not know.

* * *

     When Mrs. Anna Celese Dearborn came to the revolving door at 1136 4th Avenue--she felt like saying--no, she felt like screaming it. Bums! And the crowd had grown even larger, now stirring about as there seemed to be some commotion in the mix. She would have called the police, as was her way, but she just didn't have time.

     Bolting out the elevator, she blew by the secretary--as was also her way--the secretary saying "Good evening, Mrs. Dearborn" as Mrs. Dearborn burst into the office.

     "Marsha," shouted Mrs. Dearborn

     "Yes, Mrs. Dearborn."

     "Where is Mr. Dearborn?"

     The secretary said something, but Mrs. Dearborn couldn't make it out for the noise below.

     "Speak louder, dear."

     "I said, he should be in his office. He hasn't passed this way since the Gates meeting."

     "Well, he's not here."

     "Maybe he's in the bathroom."

     "No, dear. The door's wide-open. He's not in there."

     "Then I don't know. I'm sorry, ma'am."

     "All right, then," said Mrs. Dearborn.

     "Is that all, ma'am?"

     "No," said Mrs. Dearborn. "I want you to call the police. I've had it with all the commotion below."

     But someone had beat her to it. The sound of police sirens now drowned her out.

     "Never you mind," said Mrs. Dearborn. "Just put Mr. Dearborn through if he calls."

     Mrs. Dearborn walked over to the window. The fumes from the cars below burned her eyes. She never did understand why Mr. Dearborn always kept the window open.

     She looked to the street below. Bums! Now, they would get theirs. There were two police cars and an ambulance. Strange, she thought. She leaned forward and, with one hand on the rail, brushed against a piece of cloth. It was a torn piece of shirt. What? It was a blue pinstripe strip of starched cotton. It was just like the shirt Mr. Dearborn was wearing today. She knew; she had picked it out herself. Her heart began racing. Her face became flushed.  She screamed in horror.

     "Have a nice day, Mrs. Dearborn," said the secretary as Mrs. Dearborn tore through the office toward the elevator, faster than was her usual way. Did Mrs. Dearborn still want her to call the police? She didn't know; she couldn't make out the last thing she said for all the noise below. She would close the windows on her way out the office, just like always. Those two really do need to take a vacation, she thought as she went about her paperwork.

Copyright 2007 by Philip Loyd

SECOND PRIZE

YOU CAN'T HATE ME FOR LONG

by Annie Neal

       When my friends meet Roy he always wants to know if they, on that particular day, are sober. They inevitably raise their eyebrows in surprise and ask, "Do I look drunk?" 

       "He just wants to know how you're doing." I whisper and they nod and smile and are grateful to get away from my crazy grandfather who has his own lingo and is proud that he's scared them. When we make our escape I can see their mental wheels hard at work. They're trying to figure him out. They want to pin him down, but I have no advice.

       I've been working on the same thing for twenty-one years. It's taken six of those for me to accept how incomprehensible he can be. The last six years without my grandma have taught me two concrete things about my grandpa. He is capable of anything, and if I am infuriated by his actions then he will probably enjoy them all the more, just as he enjoyed annoying his wife.

       She had been dead two weeks when I found him ripping a bush from the corner of her flowerbed. "What in the hell are you doing?" I screamed at him, but he didn't even look up. "They're not your bushes. What are you doing?" I tried again.  I hated him, because I knew he wasn't going to answer me. All my spring memories include this same scene. Roy picks one living thing out of the yard, and he wages war with it. We've lost two cherry trees, a peach tree, a red tip, and a cactus. Now my grandma was gone, and it seemed like this poor boxwood was just the opening act for his reign of terror.

       As he's cutting the limbs from the stump, one by one, I know I can't stop him. You can never stop him. Still I don't have to help him, either. I sit on the porch, my grandma's porch, and watch the carnage. It's always like this with him. He's a movie I can't pause, and sometimes the subtitles disappear but the sound keeps going.

       He cuts another branch. The subtitles are nonexistent now. I am without translation, my interpretation of the plot is shot to hell, and all I can do is infuse the scene with my own meaning. He's taking over.

       He finishes his destruction of the bush and hauls all its parts to the brush pile. I never move to help, and he doesn't ask. Usually he would tell me how lazy I am, or at least point at the limbs and mime laborious action. Now, as if to confirm my worst fear, he ignores me completely. I have no control.      

       As the weeks go by he checks off more of his list. He goes looking for all her secret hiding spots for everything from twenty dollar bills to candy she kept for her low blood sugar. He gets down her Bible and pulls money from between the pages like he had put it there himself. I catch him wearing her coat to the mail box one evening, and even though her injured back had forced them into different beds before I was born the light is on in her bedroom every night when I look across the yard from our trailer. I spend most of my time cursing him under my breath while I spy on his every move. At least no more bushes have been sacrificed to his insanity.

       "Pauline is going to come back and haunt him if he doesn't stop," I tell Mama.       

       "Maybe he wants her to," she says. This hurts. I think about Roy opening the two twenty dollar bills that my grandma had folded in her Bible, and I become newly enraged that he was undoing what she had done and could never do again. Only then I think about his fingers working so slowly, smoothing the creases back, so carefully, tracing her invisible fingerprints. We're in the same world of hurt with two different maps.

       The first week after the last frost I find Roy out in the flower bed again. His back is to me, and I sneak up on him slowly, afraid of what I'll see. There's a tiny green stalk encompassed in earth, its skinny body the replacement for the murdered shrub. "Where'd you get that?" I want to know.

       "Somebody up at the church." He doesn't tell me the whole story, so I don't ask.  

       "It needs some water," I offer.

        "Done gave it some." 

       He pulls himself to his feet and goes in the house. I'm left staring at this plant wondering how the same man who conveniently forgot to water my grandma's violets and who is systematically ridding our yard of all things leafy has purposefully sustained life. The months turn my disbelief to amazement when the plant doesn't die but instead gets taller and finally becomes recognizable as a flower with actual honest-to-God blooms clinging to its stem.

       We're half asleep one morning when Roy bangs on the trailer door and comes in.

       "Well did you see it?" he asks Mama without specification. She looks at me blankly.     

       "The flower." I tell her.

        "Its got five blooms," Roy says without skipping a beat. "Bet you can't get one like that."  He's proud. So am I. I'm learning his language.

copyright 2007 by Annie Neal

ANAMIKA

by Shivaji K. Moitra

     When you are young and alone and you come to an unfamiliar corner of the country to earn your living and face the queer world all by yourself, you're frightened of loneliness, which creeps into your heart as soon as you have finished your work for the day. The dusk and the leisure that comes with it are a perennial source of concern when you are new to a place where you do not know even a handful of people of your taste and predilections and where the avenues of entertainment are rare and rudimentary. So you have but one thing to do between dusk and dinner--maunder along the river or just hang around some public place such as the marketplace, the jetty, or perhaps the temple to look at the people go about their business, talking and laughing and may be the pretty girls in colourful dresses, giggling and discussing animatedly their latest affairs with some spectacular flourish of their mehendi-decorated palms while their beautiful faces lightened up with bizarre expressions of mock anger, joy, or embarrassment. It certainly lifted your spirits and kept the suffocating grip of loneliness at bay for the time being.

     There was a fairly wide river flowing by the eastern margin of the town where I had been sent to work. I had been a poor young man not presently in the best of spirits and alone. I was disappointed at my failure to find a decent job which besides coming up to my expectations would allow me to take care of my aging parents. So each evening I emerged from my office after work gingerly as a rat that was still afraid of the last rays of the setting sun and trudged up to my one room apartment to wash up and change into my evening dress. Then I often headed straight for the quaint Radha-Govinda temple standing on a knoll at the bend of the river. It was a picturesque location from where you could get a beautiful view of the town below and its jetty a little down the river where boats of different colours jostled for space and passengers from dawn to dusk.

     The temple was always crowded with devotees who either sat in rows on the long portico facing the alter, meditating quietly or listening passionately to the devotional songs being sung from time to time, or just milled around the veranda to relax in the heavenly peace and tranquillity that surrounded the place. Mostly I sat facing the river on one of the long marble stairs leading to the temple to spend the evening perfunctorily watching the devotees rather than the deities while listening to the canorous chimes of the temple-bells and kirtans (choir in accompaniment of cymbals). The fragrance of flowers and the perfume of incense sticks offered to the Gods mixed to produce that uniquely mystic aroma which wafts around any place of worship and it rendered me philosophical for the rest of the day. So at times I sat brooding over my future, my chin resting on my palms turned skywards and my elbows supported on my knees.

     It was on such a time and place that I made the acquaintance of Dasanan Pal. Rather it was he who made the acquaintance of me when he said, "Young man, that's what I call an ugly posture! In the prime of youth do not sit thus like an old man who has difficulty in carrying his head over his feeble neck." I was ashamed and I turned towards him shyly. Sitting two stairs below me was an elderly man perhaps in his late 50s, tall and erect and wearing a disarming smile above his white trimmed beard. He had small round eyes set on a big, plump face and his large forehead receded to blend smoothly with his bald head. His fair pate glistened from the reflection of the temple-lights and produced the impression of a kind, wise man. The vestiges of his once robust body were discernable. I returned his smile sheepishly. "I have been watching you for some time, my son, " he continued lightly, "and I hope you didn't take umbrage at the piece of unsolicited advice from this stranger."

     "Oh no, never," I stammered, running my gaze swiftly over him.

     "My name is Dasanan Pal and I have been at this place for a considerably long time. I am an ex-serviceman and I am a bachelor," he went on, "and I come here to watch the Arti (paying homage to the Gods with burning lamps and frankincense) twice a week. Without having the least inclination to snoop into your personal troubles I just want to say that I hate to see morose looking young men and women who appear to have lost all zest for life even before they have reached their thirtieth birthday. They stoop as if with the burden of all the worries of this world. Do not let the small adversities of life snatch the smile out of your lips." He paused ostensibly to make out if I was squirming to escape his speech. But when he guessed I wasn't an unwilling listener, he asked with a twinkle in his eyes, "Shall I tell you a real-life story to drive home my point?"

     I nodded to convey that I wasn't averse to hearing one. "Well then, my young friend," he continued, "let me tell you that in this world full of surprises and contradictions there are people, a good many of them, whose cheerful faces and ungrudging attitude would confound you the moment you happen to get a ring-side view of their immensely tragic and aimless lives. All your pains and troubles then suddenly pale into insignificance before their sufferings and sorrows and you realise how lucky you are.

     Thirty years ago I chanced to meet such a person precisely here. Her name was Anamika. She used to stand here under this old Banyan tree which has been standing since time immemorial with all its myriad arms flung around. Everyday she arrived with her two young sons at around nine in the morning when the fierce Indian sun was still hours away from attaining its threatening posture and the air was cool and the temple had been brimming with activity. Then emptying her baskets of clay idols of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, dolls and the figures of various animals she laid them on a patch of cleared ground beneath the Banyan tree on display before her customers--the devotees and their children. Those days I was a young man and I used to work here in the Postal Department.

     Since the day I first saw her, two curious things about her struck me. The first shocking thing was the very incongruity of her presence here in such a fashion and the other surprising thing was her ability to keep a smile alive on her lips in spite of her many cares and needs. She was too fair and pretty to escape your eyes and I guessed she hadn't yet crossed her 30s.

     It had become a pastime for me to observe her twice a week seated on one of these stairs and every time I couldn't help appreciating her beauty and surmising what great misfortune had befallen her which had brought her to such a state. I pondered how charming she was under the veil of her poverty, her faded raiment and of the dust that collected on her at the end of the day.

     She never seemed to grudge her destiny which she dismissed with a sweet yet restrained smile which always clung to her lips. No wonder, the young and old both liked her and most of them bought an idol or two or a clay animal after a visit to the temple. She earned enough everyday to keep her body and soul together, I presumed. Being a young man those days and moody, perhaps like you, I used to be very much moved and amazed by the kaleidoscopic nature of life, its ups and downs and the unpredictable course life takes when you least expect it to do. I used to read a lot of Somerset Maugham and Maupassant and the lives of people, their aspirations and frustrations, their pains and sufferings, their cowardice and fortitude in the face of tragedy and their love and despair, everything greatly interested me.

     So one evening while somewhat pensively looking at the colourful reflections of the setting sun in the river I decided to take a peek into Anamika's past which I strongly believed could be replete with queer twists of fate and many a surprising event. So in the course of my weekly sojourns to the temple when I had made quite a good acquaintance with her I allowed myself to indulge in short conversations with her, to which she never seemed to object or mind. However, I never pressed her to reveal more than she wished to about her life, her present and her past.

     The fact that I seemed to care about her worries and her past gradually made her believe I was a sort of kind, eccentric person. Flocks of wild birds regularly descended upon the Banyan tree to eat the juicy figs and they made a mess of the ground below by dropping a rain of ripe and decaying fruits. Then it was the job of Anamika's two little sons to hold the broom and clean the spot at regular intervals where she displayed her clay items for sale. But it had been a gang of black-faced Indian langurs that really bothered her from time to time. They stormed the temple premises for tasty handouts from the devotees and scampered across the small garden on the frontage and over Anamika's fragile wares to finally raid the Banyan tree. Sometimes I happened to be there at the right moment and I scared away the animals to save her wares from being trampled and destroyed. No doubt, she thanked me for the endeavour each time.

     She used to live at the edge of the town in one of the shanties cluttering the river bank which was called Mechopara, 'The Village of Fishermen' which has long been devoured by the expanding town. It was a couple of miles from the temple and could be reached only by a narrow dirt-track which during the long rainy season simply vanished under slush and wild grass and weeds. Those days a mile of bush-land separated the temple from the borders of the town.

     Of her two sons the younger one was only three and the older was a boy of nine. The younger had light skin and was a handsome kid while his brother was dark with tribal features. The marked contrast among her children was hard to overlook and one day when she no more felt shy of exchanging a few words with me I casually observed, "Your big one is damn smart and healthy but so much darker than his brother." Anamika smiled. Then she said almost in a whisper, "Yes. I adopted him. He is an orphan and he used to live by polishing shoes at the station and sleep on the platform of Bilaspur Rail Station."

     "Bilaspur?" I exclaimed, "You mean in Madhya Pradesh, 750 kilometers away?"

     "Yes, he's a very good boy. I took pity on him when I chanced to see him one night while waiting for the train as he prayed to the Gods before eating his dinner of just bread with a piece of cucumber. Then he shared his morsel with two mongrels with whom he slept during the winter. I asked him to come and live with me and ever since he calls me mother."

     It's only the poor perhaps who have the courage to help others of their tribe and who in spite of their meagre resources never seem to be short of kindness and generosity, I mused.

     Dasanan fell silent for a few seconds, looking vaguely at a group of strangely-clad ascetics who were smoking ganja, sitting a few steps down before us and shuffling the pipe among themselves. Then having collected the pieces from his rusty memory and sewing them up in order, he began from where he had left.

     "On some Sunday afternoons in the winter months of November, December, and January when basking in the warm sun is a luxury you can enjoy for free, I took Anamika's seat in jest and hawked her wares before the devotees and visitors who reacted with jokes and laughter but ended up buying something each. One day in course of such light-hearted activity I asked Anamika when and from whom had she learnt the art of clay modelling. I knew it was certainly not her husband, who I had come to know was a habitual drunkard and a vagrant sort of person of questionable reputation.

     "I learnt to run my fingers on clay from my former husband; he's a very good sculptor and a famous artist," she said without hesitating. Then looking askance at the furrows of surprise on my brow as if secretly relishing my suspense she embraced silence. But she had already left the door of her past ajar and the smell of some sad event, some nasty betrayal came to my nose.

     It was not my habit to embarrass a hapless woman by making an unwanted intrusion into her personal life and I knew it ill behoved me to be overtly curious. So I dropped the subject that day.

     The call of duty took me to another town more than a hundred miles away and I had almost begun to forget Anamika when the event of a promotion brought me back unexpectedly after a gap of three years. The Monsoon rains arrived along with me and it was not possible to visit the temple for a few days. But upon my first visit to the temple since returning, to seek the blessing of the Gods, the giant Banyan tree quite naturally drew my attention. Immediately I saw Anamika at the same spot where I had been used to seeing her. She had not changed at all in the years of my absence, neither did her warm, interminable smile. But her children had grown bigger and healthier. She greeted me with a 'namaste' and a lot of smiles and pleasantries and told me that nothing worth mentioning had occurred in the last three years.

     Then a month later it happened. It had been raining cats and dogs for the last two days, the type of vicious monsoon rain that has scant respect for time, that disdainfully ignores umbrellas and man-made barriers, that envelops the sky, the earth and the mind in a suffocating haze and hides the sun for days, reducing your visibility to within a metre or two. Then after pouring what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of water for nearly sixty hours at a stretch the clouds cleared at last around noon on Sunday and the sun shone again. The people, exasperated by long hours of confinement within the four walls of their homes and maddened by the continuous ruffle of the downpour, immediately emerged to breathe the fresh air and take benefit of the few remaining hours of daylight to complete their daily chores. I had slept late into the morning like all lazy people do when the rains come as a Godsend excuse for doing nothing and I did not wish to get groggy in the evening by spending the afternoon in slumber as well.

     So after lunch I clutched a book of Tolstoy's short stories and set out for the temple, intending to read it sitting in a serene corner of the temple-lobby.

     As soon as I entered the arched gateway of the temple I found a small crowd under the Banyan tree, a quiet crowd of locals and keepers of the place, that apparently was concentrating on something. Casting an indifferent glance at it I was approaching the marble-paved lobby when Anamika's elder son stopped me. "Uncle, uncle," he cried, "my mother has been bitten by a cobra; what shall I do now?" His voice trembled in fear.

     I saw her sitting calmly on the grass with her left leg folded up and blood was oozing from a spot just above her ankle. Somebody had rightly and wisely tied up her leg at two places above the wound with a piece of cloth and a string but I understood that the first right step was being diluted when someone told me that they had sent for the Ojha--a person belonging usually to the tribe of snake-charmers who is believed by the villagers to wield supernatural powers capable of rendering the venom ineffective and thus saving the victims of snake-bite.

     Without wasting time I took her to the hospital. It eventually saved her life. After Anamika returned home her husband appeared one morning at my door. With trepidation he asked me if I could accept his invitation for a cup of tea at his hut. It was against my nature to disappoint anybody and I assured him that I would come some day. It was the first time I looked closely at his face.

     He was a short, stout and swarthy man in his mid 40s. His large rosy eyes were set upon a muscular face with high cheeks and a high nose and his hair was black, long and wavy which he combed backwards. A brief lull in the spate of rains offered a few days of dry weather and sunshine and the soggy grounds and streets became dry and walkable again. On such a nice day Anamika's man arrived to escort me to his humble house. He and Anamika expressed their deep gratitude to me for the little duty I had done to save her life and then we talked of all those things that concern only the poorest of the poor and which rarely merit more than a moment of thought from people like us. Thereafter, I thanked them for the cup of tea and emerged from their quaint hut whereupon the melodious slosh of tidal waves came to my ears.

     Dusk was closing in and Anamika's husband wanted to escort me back home. On the way I asked him, "Look, you're lucky to get such a good wife; why don't you work hard and become a worthy husband?" "Yes sir," he replied, "she is a virtuous woman and she comes from the family of a rich Sarpanch (village headman). But while in her teens she did the mistake of eloping with a farmhand of his father. The youth was good-looking and was reportedly a good sculptor and painter and somehow she fell in love with him. Then after two or three years of hopping around miserably he went to Bombay leaving her behind. There, Anamika had come to understand through his letters that lady luck had smiled on him and miraculously he grew famous and rich by displaying his talent. But quickly she lost track of him and he never returned to his wife again. Now, you know sir, what happens to a little-educated, forsaken woman, beautiful and alone. I bought her back and rescued her from a brothel I used to frequent when I came to know her plight. I set her free but she said she had nowhere to go. Her parents and her village had disowned her and she thus agreed to be my wife for a honourable life. Ever since, she has stubbornly refused to live upon my earnings until I revealed the source of my income. And I have not done that yet." He spoke not a word more and asked my leave at the gate of my house.

     "A strange family indeed!" I mused. Later however, in the course of my journey through life I realized to my amazement that among the most disadvantaged and ignored peoples of our society such makeshift families of convenience, held together not by the force of money but by the glue of real benevolence and magnanimity are by no means a rare phenomenon.

     Next weekend when I met Anamika again I gazed at her smiling face with awe and disbelief as never before. There was on her mien not even a hint of the storm that ravaged her youth, not even a furrow of disgust or discontent on her brow for the travails of her present. She appeared perfectly in harmony and peace with her destiny. In my eyes she was still pure and innocent as a bud and her life was sublime.

     Life continued without much of an ado for me and for Anamika. But I was getting restless and disillusioned with my uninspiring sedentary job. Then six months later the prospect of an exciting career in the Indian Navy made me resign from the P&T job.

     About a fortnight before I was to embark on a different voyage of my life, a startling news hit the townsfolk in the morning. I heard that a special team of CID officers had arrived from the district at night and had taken away Anamika's husband in a prison van just after dawn. Some of those policemen had told Anamika's neighbours that he was a gaolbird who had escaped from prison and was a notorious highway robber. It seemed so incredible, impossible. I was the last man to believe such crap until the next morning's newspapers unfortunately proved me wrong. A drunkard and a habitual gambler was the worst I could think of him. But it took quite a while for me to imagine the apparently peace-loving man in the garb of a dangerous criminal, a fugitive from law.

     Naturally, you know, from shame Anamika stopped coming to the temple. So on the last day of my stay I went to meet her in her house for one last time.

     Looking at her face now stripped of that inseparable and familiar smile was very very painful. Discreetly, I asked her about her future plans.

     "You know, sir," she said gravely, "after all this shameful incident I cannot think of staying in this town any longer; everybody knows me. Moreover, for a young woman living alone without her man is disgraceful and such women are considered immoral in this society and are often looked down with suspicion." She looked thoughtful.

     "So where do you intend to go?" I enquired.

     "I have an old uncle of my father who used to live at Kharagpur. I will try to find him out," she replied sombrely.

     There wasn't much I could do. I gave her five hundred rupees to facilitate her journey which she accepted reluctantly.

     I landed on the deck to begin a new life that took me across three oceans and many seas, I visited many a distant shore, ran into many queer people and caught wonderful glimpses of their strange lives, I fought a war, fell in love and emerged out of it a couple of times disoriented and puzzled like a man who has just regained his memory after a bout of amnesia and all along newer reminiscences kept accumulating on the older ones, pushing those wilting memories towards oblivion.

     It was only at times when a similar sounding name came to my ears did Anamika and the temple rise from the floor of my remembrance to float before my eyes. Occasionally, standing on the bridge of my ship INS Vikrant and while looking at the limitless expanse of the blue waters before my eyes I wondered what had happened to Anamika. Was she still alive?

     Nearly two decades later, by one of those unbelievable accidents that happen in life I met Anamika again at the most unlikely of places on earth.

     A comrade of mine had died of kidney ailments. Being his buddy I was chosen in keeping with the custom in the Forces to accompany his body to his home at a coastal town called Baleshwar. And in the evening along with his bereaved family members I went to the cremation-ground on the bank of a river.

     A pyre was burning in the gathering darkness and the dom (people who help cremate bodies as a hereditary profession) attending to it came up to arrange another pile of wood in its trembling light for my dead friend. Half-an-hour later my friend was stripped naked (because Hindus believe that a human being comes into the world naked and therefore must leave it in the same form) and laid on the pyre and dedicated to the Fire-God. As the tongues of fire leapt to consume the mortal remains of my buddy, a woman emerged from the surrounding darkness and ambled up to the dom. Her back was towards me but I could clearly hear her speak.

     "Go, your tea and tiffin is ready; I will look after the pyres," she said to the man, who I presumed to be her husband. The man went away and the woman took a long bamboo pole and poked the fire to make it burn properly. Then she turned and immediately we saw each other in the bright orange glow of the pyre. For a moment a thunderbolt of surprise left both of us paralysed as we recognised each other.

     Then she said, "Sir, I never thought I will see you again. But when God wishes to play a sweet trick such impossible things can happen and I am so happy."

     The spontaneous disarming smile so familiar to my eyes still hung to her lips and even in the afternoon of her life the vestiges of a pretty face was clearly discernible. But by no length of imagination could I understand what mysterious event had flung her to such a bleak corner of the world.

     Sitting on a brick platform built under a large Neem tree for the waiting relatives of the dead she told me that she had searched out her uncle who being a man without a family happily gave them shelter. But he retired from service soon and returned to his ancestral place at Baleshwar where they lived together on his pension until he died suddenly just five years later.

     "God snatched away my shelter a third time," she perorated broodily, "and I had nowhere to go again. With the help of a neighbour and my young sons I somehow cremated his body. But struck by the speed of the misfortune I had perhaps lingered a little too long at the gate of the cremation-ground that rainy evening which prompted Vikram, the person who has been making the pyres here to ask me if I really had nowhere to go. He had heard my sobs and wails and when he knew the truth he sent his old mother to persuade me to share his modest hut along with his mother and a deaf-and-dumb sister for as long as I wished. The rest is history and the story of his kindness. He was a very young man then, perhaps younger to me by several years but since then I have found peace and happiness here."

     In the prevailing darkness which was thrust back only by the glow of the pyres I could see the reflection of the leaping tongues of fire in her moist eyes.

     "Your sons?" I whispered.

     "Yes, they are big now and happy. I had a son with Vikram and the three brothers run a kiosk and a shop on the highway," she replied in a happy note.

     What a place to find happiness! I mused with a shudder."

     The clang of the closing temple-doors made Dasanan spring to his feet.

     He looked at his watch and exclaimed, "My God! It's dinner-time. Forgive me brother, for holding you back till this unearthly hour."

     And he rushed down the flight of stairs dragging me along.

Copyright 2007 by Shivaji K. Moitra

AN UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

by Dawn Wilson

     "Bev! Oh, my God, Bev!" He ran down the stairs as quickly as he possibly could to where her body lay lifelessly on the entryway floor. As he reached her, he carefully turned her over, and noticed that her neck appeared to be broken. There was also a large gash on her forehead from where she had hit it on the entryway table when she had fallen. "Oh Bev," he sobbed as he cradled her in his arms. He gently laid her back onto the floor, and after taking his jacket from the coat rack, he rolled it into a ball and placed it under her head. As much as he hated to leave her lying there by herself, he knew that he had to call an ambulance. "I'll be right back, sweetheart," he said softly, even though he was fairly certain she was unable to hear him.

     He went into the kitchen, reached for the phone and quickly called 911. "This is Henry Fallon. I live on 246 Peach Tree Lane," he stammered into the phone.

     "I'm sorry sir, but if you can, please try to compose yourself. I'm having difficulty trying to understand you," replied the police officer on the other end of the phone.

     Henry took a deep breath before continuing. "I'm sorry, officer but it's my wife. She fell down the stairs and now she's just lying there..." his voice broke off as he began to sob.

     "It's okay, sir. Try to remain calm. We'll have someone there as quickly as possible, but just be careful not to move her."

     "You don't understand. I can't feel a pulse and she has a large cut on her forehead. I think she might be..." and he stopped. He was unable to bring himself to say the words.

     "Okay, sir. I understand. We'll be there as soon as we possibly can."  Henry stood there motionless for a few seconds before hanging up the phone.

     As he walked back to the entryway, he stood over his wife, looking for some sign of life. If it weren't for the gash on her forehead, she almost looked as though she was sleeping. He slowly lowered himself to the ground and placed a thumb on each of her eyelids, gently prying them open. "Bev?" He whispered, but as he looked at her eyes, he was certain she was dead. "Don't worry, Bev. I'll stay here with you until the ambulance comes," and he watched as her face became wet with his tears.

     They had known one another since they were just kids and had attended school together. He had loved her even then. He was two years older than she was and he had waited until her sixteenth birthday to ask her out on a date. One date had turned into several, and before they knew it, they were an item. While she had been in her last year of high school, he had enlisted in the service, and before leaving for Korea, he had asked her to marry him when he returned. She had said yes and promised to wait for him, but six months before he returned home, she had sent him a letter, telling him she was marrying somebody else. It had nearly killed him at first, but in time, he adjusted, and he returned home a town hero, having been decorated with a Purple Heart.

     He had never married, although he came close a few times, and ten years after he returned from Korea, he had learned from his sister that Bev had been divorced for well over a year. He took it as a sign and called her, asking her out to dinner. When he saw her after all the years that had gone by, he thought she was even more beautiful than he had remembered, and in a short time, they had become very close. She had two little girls that he simply adored, and it was obvious how they felt about him. Less than a year later, he had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes. Although he had been head over heels in love with her, he had known clearly the reason for her acceptance, and it had had nothing to do with love. She had liked what he had been able to offer her and her girls. Henry had always been level headed, a hard worker and a good provider. But he was crazy about her, had lost her once and wasn't about to let it happen again.

     Life with Bev had been extremely difficult almost right from the very beginning. She had controlled every instance of their life together and was always the final decision maker. Henry had worked hard six days a week before semi retiring and sometimes twelve-hour days. Sunday had customarily been his day off, but Bev had always made certain Henry kept himself busy. Henry had been a carpenter and a good one, too. When he wasn't at work, or fixing their own house, Bev had him doing side jobs for other people. It had saddened him to never be at home in the beginning, especially when the girls were growing. He had wanted to be real father to them, but he was grateful knowing that they loved him and treated him as though he was their real father, so he rarely complained.

     There were many things about Henry's life that upset him. He had been a man with many interests. He had skied, fished, hunted and enjoyed boating and scuba diving, but Bev had made sure that there was no time for hobbies or leisure activities. They had never taken a vacation together, unless it was over a Labor Day weekend, and it had always been some place that Bev had chosen.

     And then there had been the other men in Bev's life. At one point, she was even seeing her ex-husband. It had hurt him to know that people were laughing at him behind his back. He had left her a few times, but had always come back because of his love for her, and eventually had decided to look the other way. They had argued a great deal of the time, and once he had had more than he could take and had given her a beating, which had landed her in the emergency room for a few hours. After that, he had vowed to never touch her again, no matter how angry she made him.

     As far as their intimate life, there was none. They had now been married for over forty years, and he couldn't remember the last time they had made love or even held one another, but he knew that it had been more than fifteen years. Fifteen years ago, they had retired to South Carolina and not once since they had been living there had they even so much as slept in the same bed. They had separate bedrooms right from the very beginning.

     After moving to South Carolina, Bev had mellowed somewhat, and Henry had assumed it was because of the milder weather. Although they fought less, there was still no real closeness between them. Bev had her own life and her own friends, most of whom were widowed. They would often go shopping together and stop for lunch, and every few months or so, she would go away for a few days on some trip they had planned, which was usually a gambling excursion. It had upset Henry at first, as Bev never wanted to spend her free time with him, but as the years passed, he adjusted, just as he had adjusted to everything else Bev tossed his way.

     Although he was seventy-two years old, he had worked until a little over a month ago, doing maintenance at an animal theme park, but it had been something he had enjoyed, and it had seemed like a vacation compared to the work he had done when they had lived in Pennsylvania. Up until four weeks ago, he had worked from eight o'clock until four, Monday through Friday, and had punched out every day at noon for an hour to have lunch. He enjoyed the work, he liked the people and although the pay wasn't much, they offered a health insurance plan, which had become extremely important, especially in recent months. Reporting to work every day had given him a sense of purpose and made him feel needed. And for once, he was able to enjoy himself again, even if it had been without Bev. He had bought a small boat and fished on the lake, and had been on a bowling team with some of his friends from work. He had a dog, and although Sam didn't make up for what Bev didn't give him, when Henry returned home from work each afternoon, Sam would run to the gate, wagging his tail to greet him. Henry would go into the house and say hello to Bev, grab a cold beer and a few dog biscuits for Sam, and he and his dog would sit outside together in the backyard, where Henry would listen to the radio.

     Dinner was always at six oclock, and twenty minutes before dinner, Henry would go in to the house to shower. Once dinner was finished, he'd go back outside with another cold beer and sit with Sam, or do some work in the backyard until it got dark. At about nine o'clock, he would retire to his room and sit in a chair to watch some TV, and when he began to nod off, he'd climb into bed, but not before saying goodnight to Bev, who sat in the den watching television. Every evening was the same, except for Wednesdays, as that had been Henry's regular bowling night. The following morning, he'd be up early and pretty much do the same thing all over again, although he never complained. But the weekends were sometimes a bit different, as that was when Henry would go to the lake and think while he spent his mornings fishing. Although he had asked Bev several times in the past to come with him, she always refused, so he eventually stopped asking. In recent months, the lake had become even more important to Henry, as it gave him the time he needed to be alone to think and make plans for the future.

     You see, in recent months, Henry had been diagnosed with cancer. Although initially the doctors had been optimistic, they had never given him any guarantees, and now, eight months later, the cancer had spread. He had done everything the doctors had suggested, including chemotherapy, but to no avail. He was dying. But the amazing thing was he continued to work because he knew how important the insurance was, and when he was gone, he didn't want to leave Bev with a pile of bills. He tried to carry on as though everything in his life was normal, but he silently watched himself waste away, as did those around him. Although Henry was seventy-two years old, prior to the cancer no one would have guessed it. He was in excellent shape, and was a handsome man, but in recent months, the cancer had eaten away at him, and he had become extremely thin. When he looked at himself in the mirror, what he saw were two huge brown eyes staring back that seemed too large for his face, and the once muscular body was far too thin. His clothes now seemed several sizes too large, and it reminded Henry of a boy trying on an older brother's hand me downs that he hadn't quite yet grown into. Bev had told him on several occasions to go out and buy new clothes, but Henry had never bothered, because he quite simply saw no point to it. Finally, one day Bev had taken matters into her own hands. She had returned home from a shopping trip with her friends, and had thrust a bag at him. When Henry had looked inside, he had been surprised to find four pairs of new pants along with several t-shirts. He had smiled and thanked Bev, but it hadn't taken him long to understand why she had bought them. It had been to save her from embarrassment on the rare occasions that they should happen to be seen together. Even now, Henry tried to be upbeat, but inside he knew that he couldn't run from the truth. He was declining rapidly and there wasn't much he could do about it.

     Although Bev had always been cold toward Henry, she had now become even worse. She snapped at him constantly, and when he was unable to do things that he had previously done, he often saw a look of disgust on her face. One day after lunch, Henry had caught her adding bleach to the water in the sink before washing his dishes. Another time he had watched as Bev wiped off the telephone after he had finished talking on it. Henry had laughed, and asked if she thought what he had was contagious, but Bev hadnt bothered to answer. She just continued with what she had been doing, as though Henry hadn't spoken a word.

     In recent months, work had been kind to Henry. He was well liked, and it had hurt his co-workers to see him deteriorate before their eyes, so they had made sure that they had given him less strenuous things to do, but they had continued to treat him in the same way. They had known that Henry had a lot of pride, and they hadn't wanted to do anything to injure it. Last month, Henry had had an accident. He had been leaving work and had driven his car into a tree on company property. Henry had said he didn't know what had happened, but the truth was he had blacked out for a few seconds. His supervisor had called Bev and had asked her to come and pick Henry up. It was just a short drive and months back Henry could have easily walked home but not on that day. He had hated that Bev had to come drive him home, but he had had no other choice. She had come into the office and had talked politely to Henry's boss, but once in the car she had treated Henry scornfully, belittling him and had demanded that he give her his keys. He had started to offer an excuse, but had quickly backed down, as he hadn't the strength to fight back, especially with Bev.

     A few days later, he had returned to work, but Henry's doctor had advised him to stop working altogether after he had become dizzy and fallen. Although Bev hadn't said much, Henry knew she was angry, and she now treated him as though he was a stranger in his own home, so he spent most of his days outside, with Sam tagging along for company. He couldn't stand to listen to Bev as she talked on the phone, complaining to friends about this bill and that, and wondering what they were going to do with no insurance, now that Henry was no longer working. He especially hated it when the mail was delivered, as he would have to listen to Bev as she ripped open the bills and wondered aloud, how she was going to pay what Medicare wouldn't cover. It made Henry angry to hear Bev talk like that. They had a beautiful home, and several insurance policies, and money in the bank. He had made sure years ago that she would be well taken care of in the event of his death, but it never seemed enough for Bev.

     Last weekend, he knew it would be his last time at the lake. He had become too weak in recent days to continue to go alone, and he knew asking Bev to take him was out of the question. He had thought about killing himself that day but he knew if they discovered he had taken his own life, Bev wouldn't be able to collect the money from the policies they had. So, he came up with another plan.

     As he bent down to hold Bev for one last time, he heard the ambulance off in the distance. "They're almost here now, sweetheart. You dont have to worry anymore. I've taken care of everything."  Gently, he touched the cut on her forehead. "I hope that you didn't have too much pain from your fall, and I'm sorry if I pushed you too hard. I just had to be sure that everything went as I planned."  Henry turned at the sound of the doorbell, and looking back at Bev, lowered his head and softly kissed her cheek. "They're here now. I love you Bev and you'll see. It won't be long before were together again. I think the police officers will understand when I tell them why I had to do what I did. Surely they'll be able to see how much I love you. I just couldn't let you live, worrying the way that you have."

     Henry slowly got up from the floor, and before opening the door, he looked back at Bev, and smiled a sad yet grateful smile. Finally, he had been able to show Bev how much he loved her. Yes surely the police officers would understand -- he was certain.

Copyright 2007 by Dawn Wilson

DOCUMENTATION OF A PHENOMENON

Corey Melin

       They all slowly walked up the hill toward the last standing building of the old world. They all wanted to see the phenomenon. They all wanted to see the days people once lived long ago.

       The group consisted of photographers, artists, writers, and spectators. The photographers to take pictures as quick as they could, artists to draw as quick as they could, writers to document until their hands hurt, and spectators to stand in awe and to shed a few tears. All of them would shed some tears before the phenomenon ended.

       The world had drastically changed since the days of old. Man in his ignorance had treated the land carelessly to the point that the land had decided to spew the man from it, almost wiping mankind from existence. Only a few survived to now live in a land that showed very little of what life for man once was like. Large tracts of land had heaved themselves up and turned completely over, swallowing man and his makings. Mountains blew, covering the land with its innards. The oceans rose up and took chunks of land to lay hundreds of feet below the surface. Even the skies opened up, pouring acid rain, baseball size hail, and even fire onto the land. No one who still survived wanted to remember those days, but by just opening their eyes it would remind them. But then the phenomenon began and it brought hope to man.

       They were nearly to the top, the younger helping the elder, and mothers carried their babies, wanting to see the event that would give them a reason why they brought a child into this forsaken land.

       A few glanced back at their homes down at the bottom of the hill. All they could see was the lights from inside their houses and a vague outline of their place. The time of day was continually stuck on darkness since the days of the wrath on man. Wrath on technology. Wrath on science.

       They reached the top and started walking toward the building. It was quite bizarre that the land was wiped clean of mans doings in this area, but this building survived with little harm. They figured this building was once an apartment building and at one time thought of moving in, but when the phenomenon started they figured it would be a bad idea to live there. If they moved in the phenomenon could end and all lose hope. None wanted that to happen. In fact, all windows and doors were boarded up to keep out disobedient people, but those were few in number since they all knew it was that type of people, which brought the destruction.

       They neared the building and came to the spot where it was best to see the phenomenon. Chairs were all ready set up for the elderly to sit in and blankets lay out, nailed to the ground in some spots. Most of the people brought their own stuff to sit or lie on. People started to do just that while photographers and artists with their assistants set-up quickly. Time of the phenomenon was soon at hand.

       Five minutes later they all stood, sat, or lay, staring up at the top of the building. On top of the building was a billboard. The advertisement had blown away long ago, leaving a white screen. It was this billboard that would display this phenomenon. They all waited in anticipation.

       Suddenly, the darkness in the sky split open and a beam of light struck the billboard, which started emitting bright colorful pictures to the watching crowd. Everyone saw a different picture of things each one of them would love to do just once in their life. To swim in the crystal clear water. To go hiking through the forest and smell the great outdoors. To take their child to a park on a bright sunny day. To just lie outdoors and look up at the stars or the shapes of white puffy clouds. To dance with joy. To see a happy face. They all watched, with the photographers taking pictures to later develop a picture of bright colors, artists drawing what they saw, writers documenting what they saw, and the others just watching.

       For fifteen minutes they watched until the darkness of the sky closed back up. They all packed up and started their return trips to their homes. All had tears running down their cheeks. Oh, how they wished the days would come again like the ones they just witnessed. Maybe one day that day would come. Wished, they all did.

copyright 2007 by Corey Melin

FLOWERS FOR WALTER

by Dan Sullivan

       To Myrtle's way of thinking, they did one sorry job of keeping up the gravesites at "Green Pastures of Southern Maryland."  For the third year in a row, she had to get down on her hands and knees and clip last summer's grass away from Walter's headstone. The plastic trash bag she brought from home was about half filled, and she would make sure she plopped it in full view of the caretaker's office on her way out, and God help anybody who dared say a word to her. To tell the truth, though, Myrtle was just hoping someone would say something. She had been itching for a good fight for years over the care of Walter's gravesite. Shovel-leaning idlers, that's all they were. Must be nice

       Myrtle brushed off her knees, opened her Bible, and read from John, Chapter 20, a favorite of hers. She even had them put on Walter's stone, weathered after fifteen years, part of verse 29: Blessed are they who have not seen and yet believed. Next year, she would see what she could do about cleaning the headstone herself.

       She put the Bible back in her straw carrying bag, said a prayer for Clint Walter's boy, now in his thirties, who had drifted off years ago and then spoke out loud to Walter.

       "Blind your eyes, Walter McCarty. You stuck me with a mailbox full of bills, no insurance, and..."

       Myrtle could never bring herself to say out loud the last words she was thinking, but she remembered. And every time, it felt the same -- like a  slap across the face.

       She remembered finding the magazines down in the cellar within three days after she had buried Walter. She wasn't one who could just sit around and mope. She would go crazy if she didn't stay busy.

       On the day after his funeral, she washed every last window in the house and scrubbed the upstairs floors. On the second day, she washed, ironed, and folded every stitch of Walter's clothes, which she planned to give to the Salvation Army. On the third day, with a bandana across her mouth and nose, she started sweeping the cellar and clearing out his junk. After her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she found them -- the magazines stashed in three cardboard boxes in a closet next to Walter's workshop.

       She pictured Walter just below her at that moment, a lump in the darkness, on his side, pulling a quilt of leaves over his left shoulder, burrowing to stay warm from October. Myrtle stamped her foot twice. She was not about to let Walter enjoy the luxury of eternal repose -- not yet, not when he had left her alone with a closet full of those filthy magazines -- just the filthiest things a person ever laid eyes on.

       And even after six years of marriage, plus the fifteen years since his death, it was the pictures she remembered.

       Without her reading glasses, in the cellar's darkness that day, the glossy photographs from Walters "girlie" magazines at first had been a garish blur of curves and colors -- pink and blonde, tan and chestnut. She had held the first magazine away from her and studied it with shock and fascination -- the way she felt once seeing cars swerve around the body of a homeless man in the middle of a street in Washington, D.C. She turned the pages and glimpsed at Walter's fantasy world of perfect young women, a world that she had been shut out of for the years of their marriage. This is what he must have wanted all along, and she was what he had had to settle for -- a bony spinster in her forties with a bad temper and flab around her middle.  And all those nights, alone, and full of rage 

       On Walter's workbench that day, numb and weak, for only God knows how long, with boxes of dirty magazines at her feet, Myrtle saw her six-year marriage to Walter narrow into focus. Every thought and memory of him became filtered through that moment in the cellar.

       All the nights, she had gone to bed after the eleven o'clock news, to shower and put cream on her face and hands and feet and wait -- wait for Walter. She finally gave up, but she always stirred when Walter, at about midnight, came padding softly into their bedroom. She remembered how careful he had always been to slip into bed and not touch her, turning on his left side away from her before going off to sleep. And the more time Walter spent in the cellar, the fussier Myrtle became, and the fussier she was, the more Walter stayed to himself.  

       So she talked it over with Ruthie, her sister. The verdict was that Myrtle needed to put more spice in her marriage, and Ruthie had "just the thing."  The next day, Ruthie brought by a videotape of a TV talk show on sparking romance in middle-aged marriages. A skinny woman therapist with a New York accent said that women needed to be more assertive and put "the intrigue and the exotic" back into marriage. She recommended romantic nightgowns and perfume, makeup and jewelry, and above all torching those flannel pajamas. But when the therapist held up a can of whipped cream, right on television, and said, "Now, girls, if you or your fella has a sweet tooth..." Well, Myrtle had never heard of such a thing in all her life, and she stopped the tape right then and there. Still, the next week, she and Ruthie went shopping. And after Ruthie called Myrtle a "prude," Myrtle finally broke down and bought a black nightgown from Natasha's Sleepwear in Waldorf. Myrtle also got a permanent that day from Huongs Chopping Block, and, after supper and the dishes, with Clint at his cousin's, she showered and sat on the bed waiting for Walter, waiting with fresh make-up, a new hair style, and sleepwear from Natasha's. When he finally scuffed in, she came over and put her arms around his neck. But he pulled away, gently, with a faint smile, kissed Myrtle on the forehead, then announced that he still had some work to do in the basement.

       He closed the door after himself, and she crumpled on the bed and hid her face. After a time, she balled up the nightgown, threw it in the trash, and stood naked in front of the mirror, regarding her own body with shame and disapproval. She was flat where she should have had some meat, and she was flabby where she had no business carrying weight. She noticed the permanent she had gotten that day, especially the curls above her ears. At that very moment, she looked silly to herself because she had been so hopeful. She turned on the shower so Walter couldn't possibly hear and she stood in the tub, letting the water stream down her body, hearing her own sobbing that made her feel even weaker.

       When she finally stepped from the shower, something burned white and cold inside of her. Later she even pictured her heart glazing over like ice then becoming as hard as enamel. She promised herself that she would never again give Walter or anyone else that much power over her. He had crushed her that night, and she promised herself she would never let that happen again.  Then he went and did it to her all over again down in the cellar three days after she had buried him.

       Well, that was a long time ago, and if you asked Myrtle, Walter had never been anything to write home about either -- a big, heavy man, ten years her senior, with rumpled clothes and scuffed shoes. Mr. Pitiful -- a man whose first wife ran off with a bass guitar player from Hagerstown. She could still picture Walter scuffing in and out of Glad Tidings Bible Church in La Plata each Sunday with his serious little boy in tow.

       Pastor Armel Armbruster and all the ladies at Glad Tidings had felt that Myrtle was just what Walter needed -- Walter and his sad little boy, Clint. Her friends all called her a "firecracker," with enough energy and spunk for any three couples, and of course, for a man and a little boy who both moved about half-dead, Myrtle was considered the perfect cure. She was organized, not afraid of a little hard work, had a good heart, and in her fussy, bustling way, she would, in the words of the pastor's wife, "bring Walter and his little boy back from the grave."

       Myrtle and Walter married in the middle of autumn. Myrtle wore a beige taffeta dress -- a white bridal gown was simply out of the question at her age. Walter wore his navy blue suit, which she insisted he get dry-cleaned before the ceremony. She had bought Walter and Clint boutonnieres of white roses. They honeymooned alone -- over Walter and Clint's objections -- in Ocean City, Maryland. It was Myrtle's idea because she loved the sea. Her sister Ruthie said it would be romantic. Besides, it was off-season, and the price of rooms was less than half the summer rates, which made perfectly good sense to Myrtle. After the first night, Walter apologized, but she told him that it was alright. It was not that big a deal. It had been a busy day and a long ride. She had been tired too. They could wait. They had an entire lifetime together.

       Then once they got back home, they began to settle into a routine that was largely of Myrtle's design -- breakfast at six-thirty sharp, home-cooked supper at seven on the dot, Clint's daily chores and homework done by eight, lights out after the eleven o'clock news. And all the while, Myrtle had held her temper in check. It was her bargain with the Lord to have Clint like her and Walter love her. She knew God was still working with her on that temper of hers, and she never wanted to cause Walter or his son any pain -- they had already gone through enough. Still, Walter scuffed and puttered about, settling in, calling Myrtle "mother," until she felt like she was going crazy.  

       At first, she had felt that the bedroom business could wait. It was all the other little things. Walter would throw his socks and underwear on the floor right in front of the clothes basket! Now how in God's name -- he had to be blind not to know he had missed. He would leave his dishes in the sink after lunch on weekends. At first, she tried to make a joke out of it, "Walter, the downstairs maid called in sick today so you're gonna have to take care of those dishes yourself, hon."  And always Walter would scuff back to the kitchen sink with a weak smile on his face -- Walter, the victim. And Clint of course was taking it all in.

       Walter never helped when he should, and then when she needed a little peace and quiet and space -- usually when she was on the phone with Ruthie -- Walter would start his mindless and noisy puttering about the kitchen, looking inside the refrigerator, opening and closing drawers, rearranging items in the pantry. And just as soon as she got off the phone, derned if Walter, without a word, wouldn't scuff on downstairs to his workshop.

       Myrtle stamped his grave again. She pictured Walter starting from sleep, throwing off his quilt of leaves and sitting up in the casket with a guilty look on his face, afraid to look at her, in his sorry boxer shorts and black socks.

       "Walter McCarty, you left me with a mailbox full of bills, no insurance, and a closet full of dirty pictures."  At that moment she pictured Walter looking down at his hands with that sad little smile on his face -- Walter the martyr.

       "Oh, no, you don't, Walter. Don't you dare pull that martyr bit on me!"

       And then of course there was Clint who long ago had drifted away. Just when she thought that Clint was beginning to accept her, just when her prayers were beginning to be answered that the little boy -- then eleven -- would like her, just when Walter was at least beginning to act a little more like he had some life in him, she had to go and ruin it all.   

       Myrtle covered her face in her hands. Oh Lord Jesus, forgive me for the dern potato chips!

       She had come home one Saturday afternoon, arms full of grocery bags, to find Walter and Clint watching golf on television and eating potato chips out of one of her good bowls. The one thing she had asked Walter to do -- in fact the only thing she had ever asked Walter to do -- was to clean out the cat box, which of course he never did. If Walter and Clint insisted on having cats, which Myrtle personally hated, since they were just about the sneakiest things that the good Lord ever let loose on the face of the earth, then Walter and Clint needed to clean out the litter box every single day. So there she had stood with grocery bags in her arms, with no offer of help from a soul, with the smell of ammonia overpowering the basement, and the sound of the two of them crunching potato chips without even saying hello. She let them have it.

     The blast from Myrtle -- to this day she couldn't remember exactly what she had said -- was so loud that both Walter and Clint started from the couch at the same time, her good bowl took flight, and potato chips scattered about the family room like a flurry of leaves. They cleaned up the potato chips and the cat box right away in silence, but Myrtle sensed she would never have another chance with Clint. After that Saturday, Clint spent more and more time in his room, never again said a voluntary word to Myrtle, only answered her questions. The softness she had been noticing in his eyes before the potato chip business turned back to that scared look, the same way he looked the day she moved in. And Walter of course plodded and puttered about the kitchen whenever she was on the phone, only to return to his workshop for longer and longer periods. In hindsight, maybe if she had been able to bridle her tongue, as Scripture warns, maybe. But lonely and hurt and stung beyond words after Walter had left her alone in the bedroom, like a fool in the forest, Myrtle fussed more and more and louder. It got so that it was almost as if she were living in a rooming house with strangers keeping to themselves behind shut doors, driving her crazy. Then after six years of this, Walter had died in his sleep.

     At the funeral, Ruthie and Mrs. Armbruster both told Myrtle how blessed she had been. Ruthie admitted that Walter was no ball of fire, but he was a decent man who seemed to treat her well. Mrs. Armbruster, the pastor's wife, went so far as to praise him, "Walter never ran around, Myrtle. He never had affairs with other women." 

       The consensus at the gravesite on the day of his funeral was that Myrtle had been fortunate to have such a God-fearing man as Walter. All the compliments and well wishes, though, seemed to crowd and bump against her, but she said nothing about how lonely she had been and how stung and angry she had come to feel, living like a roommate with Walter who had vowed in the sight of God and man to be her husband.

       Myrtle got the image of Walter sitting on the side of his casket, now in his pajamas and slippers, looking up at her, hoping that the memory of his advocates, his witnesses at the funeral six years before, might carry some weight with Myrtle now. She stamped her foot again. Don't dare pretend that you're as pure as the driven snow, Walter, 'cause you're not. The image of herself alone in their bedroom flashed in her mind, and she took a deep breath.

       The wind scraped some rusty leaves up against Walter's headstone. Myrtle stooped to brush them away, leaned forward and, without really knowing what she was saying or why, blurted out, "You didn't have an affair with anybody else, Walter. You had an affair with yourself."         

       Myrtle kept brushing the leaves away from the headstone, but each time she did, the wind would rush more of them over the grave. It was no use; she wouldn't fight it any longer. She just stood there with the wind swirling leaves around her.

       When she finally left Walter, she couldn't see his headstone. It was like looking through glass smeared with oil. She couldn't see the caretaker's office either as she placed the half-filled plastic bag gently on the walkway; still it felt as if she had stepped into a well-lighted room. For the first time since his death, Myrtle let herself remember a night when she and Walter had come back from Glad Tidings. Pastor Armbruster had been holding a revival, and that night Walter seemed softer and lighter. He had even hugged Myrtle and told her how sorry he was that he hadnt been a better husband. He promised to try harder. Myrtle allowed that memory to stay a moment, and then the image of Walter back on the side of his coffin returned. The quilt of leaves was now about his shoulders and Walter sat there with that same soft look she had been refusing to recall for so long.

       Walter, it's o.k.  And Walter, from the bottom of my heart, I want to apologize about those dern potato chips.

       On the bus back to LaPlata, she wiped her eyes and told herself that she would try to get in touch with Clint, just to say hello. And next year, for the first time since Walter had passed, she would bring flowers -- probably a pot of yellow mums.

       She would need a little more time to work her way back up to roses.

copyright 2007 by Dan Sullivan

GUTENBERG'S GIFT

by Alex Weisler

     Don't scoff at my choice of the printing press as the most influential work of art, for there exist entire galleries devoted to industrial design. And no Cynthia Wynn scrap-metal rocking chair and no Walter Dorwin Teague camera is as necessary as the book-maker, nor can any other piece of art hope to claim as potent an impact.

     Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. It's a remarkably lengthy name for the man who engineered a silent revolution by breaking words into their smallest, most fluid components. The printing press's deceptively simple design -- dipping small, carved pieces of wood or metal into ink -- belies the magnitude of Gutenberg's impact.

     The other night, I visited Gutenberg in the dank, German city of Mainz. Gutenberg brought me into his sanctum, the area of his laboratory where he had first printed his vellum bibles. I brought him news from our time -- tales of Harry Potter books selling billions of copies, stories of daily newspapers, of protest novels and of trashy romance tomes. Perhaps I was too eager a raconteur, for Gutenberg began to weep. I asked him what was wrong, and he replied in a voice filled all at once with gladness and bittersweet regret that nothing was wrong; rather, everything was right.

     No piece of art is more intrinsically linked to posterity and to the past than the printing press; for no other piece of art is it as necessary that the government fund and nurture it. It is literacy that brings knowledge, literacy that brings toddlers out of the dark ages of board books and into the rich, fulfilling landscapes of Thomas Hardy and the Bronte sisters. And for those who absorb the works of these grand masters in different ways, the government should focus on enhancing their experience, too; catering to students with each of the multiple intelligences imbues a greater number of people with knowledge in a greater number of ways.

     True, too, is the need to bring a wider swath of America's social and cultural diversity into its classrooms. It sounds foreign (and it is) but English classes would benefit from studying Vikram Chandra's Indian epic Red Earth and Pouring Rain or Uzodinma Iweala's visceral, electrifying Beasts of No Nation. Reading foreign books is like tasting a piquant jambalaya or learning about the intricacies of the Bahai religion; more modalities of thought bring cultural awakening and understanding.

     None other than the humble, faithful printing press engineers this innovation in insight. As it stamps our thoughts into thick, leather-bound volumes, it codifies and exalts human diversity. So as I ponder the most influential piece of art I know, I think, why the printing press? Surely the atomic bomb had more awesome force. Certainly Grand Central Terminal possesses more beauty. And there is no denying that the telephone contains more utility. It is the printing press I keep coming back to because it is the fruits of the printing press that have launched wars and lost them, that have deluded and informed, that have been read at baptisms and read at executions. It is through the filter of words that we define our world.

Copyright 2007 by Alex Weisler

HER FIRST SUMMER

by Mary Best

     Summer had never been her favorite time of year.  For her, autumn had it, hands down. But summer had its joys, and this summer she saw and appreciated its wonders as she never had before. Those eyes to see were one of the blessings of her life.  So many gifts she had so often refused, focusing on the negative aspects of every experience instead of embracing the beauty.  But she'd learned somewhere along the way that there was value in every experience, and she found the symbolism perfectly represented in the dark summer clouds that once would have taken away her enjoyment of the sun. Now she saw the silver lining that ringed those clouds and she gave thanks for the beauty.

       It had taken her years to get here, with constant attention to her own growing consciousness.  Even with that, she could not have crossed the threshold into this place of awe and gratitude without the gift of the diagnosis of a disease that threatened to cease her existence in this world. Looking back on it she could remember no time between her wish to die in the depth of the black hole she had fallen into, and the delivery of that diagnosis. The cancer had been a welcome distraction, giving her a new focus and a reason to pull herself out of the darkness, if only to prove that she could. She never had been able to refuse a challenge. And when it came, the acceptance of the fact that she would cease to be, if not now, then later, became the silver lining that ringed the cloud of threat she might have seen. This was the impetus she had hoped for on her spiritual path, the experience that can turn a belief into a knowing when the rubber hits the road. And so she used it up, facing and accepting the inevitable demise of her ego, and embracing her truth that what she really was would never die.  She found in this a freedom she could never otherwise have known. Now her life was lived in every moment, with "a peace that surpasses all understanding." Now she could see the beauty and the perfection of the plan. And so summer was to her now more beautiful than it had ever been. Yet it was the same. It was she who had changed, for now her eyes could see all that she had taken for granted.

     For her summer was not sunning by the pool, or partying at the beach. It was not baseball games, Fourth-of-July picnics, or outdoor barbecues. Neither was it an excuse for more TV watching due to the incessant heat, as had been the miserable cold of winter. It was in fact none of those things generally associated with summer. For her, summer was appreciated as nature's beauty, as were all the seasons. Each season had its unique gifts to bring, and like people, she found its beauty in that uniqueness. Summer was nature, and as she grew older she had become more in tune with nature and its beauty and perfect balance. Summer was a part of that balance. 

     She was blessed to live in the South, the humid and unbearably hot South, so she could not deny the potential misery of those summer days when the temperature hovered near one-hundred, and the humidity pushed the effect beyond the mark. But she found that the towering pecan and oak trees that shaded her yard would also shade her, and the gentle welcome breeze that played in their branches and cooled her body brought with it a symphony she had never taken the time to hear before.  Even in the unrelenting heat, she preferred lying in the cool grass beneath the trees to sitting in the air-conditioned house where all the comforts she'd thought she needed deprived her of the gifts of nature. She learned to work before the sun exerted its authority over the day, and after it gave it up. She learned to flow with nature that way, and in many other ways. She finally saw the insanity of how she'd lived her life, always struggling against the tide, resisting the natural flow of things. Nature said to follow its lead, and now that meant that she rested in the heat of the day and paid her respects to it. 

     She made herself a glass of iced tea and added a spearmint leaf from her herb garden. She sat in the shade and watched the robins find worms and feed their babies. She watched a squirrel work busily to build its nest in the pecan tree. It bit off one branch after another with its teeth, then carried them and placed them in the fork of the branches. She sipped her tea and knew that she was the most fortunate person in the world for having the eyes to see the beauty all around her. She marveled at the innate wisdom of the squirrel. She wondered about things like whether the squirrel knew what she was doing. Was it thinking, as we think, that this branch must go here, and that one there?  That the nest should be on one side of the tree or the other, for shelter from the wind and rain? Or did it just happen? Was all this busyness just a result of basic instincts, or might the squirrel process thoughts to achieve her goal? Wasn't this worth pondering? For her it was. For her, it was more valuable than all the money she might have made in the hour she spent watching this miracle and considering its implications. 

     When the heat was finally no more bearable, the skies darkened and the clouds burst and threw down to earth the precious gift of wetness, driving her inside. This was the time for a cup of coffee with enough cream to turn it almost white. This was the time to stand by the window in the shelter of comfort and dryness and watch nature throw her tantrum. She heard the thunder and saw the lightning and was again in awe. She wished her lover were there with her, for a storm always awakened something in her, a desire to act out her deepest passions, as nature acted out hers. A storm, she thought, was nature making love to the earth. It went as suddenly as it had come, and when it was over, she ventured outside again to sit in the garden and smell the rain. 

     The butterfly bush was now in full bloom and its denizens obliged, flitting about for her enjoyment. Her thoughts of them were always of their short life and of their magnificence, and she was reminded of the plaque that hung in her hallway, the one her mother had given her for her birthday. It read: "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away".  She knew that this was how she measured her life now, and that she had had more than her share of those moments. She found it interesting that humans felt the need to measure everything. They measured their age, their weight, time, the temperature, rainfall, the cost of gasoline, as if there were some reason to know these statistics. They needed to gain some measure of control over those things that controlled them, she thought, and this was their way of pretending to do that. She realized that she was excluding herself from these judgments, for though she had been one of them for most of her life, she had allowed herself the gift of freedom in giving up that need to measure and to try to control those things she could not. Now she never wore a watch, nor did she even own a clock or a calendar. Learning to live in the present had become one of the gifts she was most grateful for. She had discovered that her life was so much easier if she emulated nature and just accepted what is. She had once prayed for discernment, and finally she knew where to draw the line between surrender to what is and action to change. She saw her inspiration in the butterflies she now watched, knowing that in their perfect peace they were not concerned that they were just born yesterday and had only days left to live.

     They just went about their lives, doing what butterflies came here to do, living in the moment with no care of tomorrow. The magnolia beside her door bloomed and its fragrance was breathtaking. The wisteria that had climbed and entwined its branches no longer displayed its blossoms. Like so many of the most beautiful things in this life, they had been short-lived. Yet she knew that they would come again next spring. Just as the magnolia blossoms had opened to take the place of the clusters of purple flowers that had hung like grapes, she knew that life would offer new beauty in place of that which was lost, if she opened her eyes to see it and her heart to receive it. She understood that if she longed only for the wisteria that was no more, she would miss the joy of the majestic and fragrant magnolia flowers opening to the sun. She believed that this gift was meant just for her. What other purpose could there be for such simple beauty, but to be seen? And she knew too, that nothing of beauty could ever be lost if she held its memory in her heart.

     Outside the fence, the herb garden beckoned with every imaginable herb. She adored the different scents they provided and their willingness to proliferate. The rosemary was there for her hand to brush as she walked past. The scent lingered on her hand and she could not inhale its fragrance deeply enough. She made a mental note that tomorrow she would gather the lavender flowers to make oils. Her tomato plants had been especially productive this year, and their fruits hung from their vines, red and ripe, begging to be plucked.   

     She could spend the entire day just noticing, paying attention, to the beauty of summer, feeling no need to be productive or to do what society said she should in order to be deemed responsible. And so on this day she did just that. Late in the day, as the sun was giving up its reign, she and her lover took a boat ride out on the lake. The water was a mirror, perfectly still, disturbed only by their boat as they glided over the surface. Not one detail was missed in the reflection of the trees and the sky in the water. Close to the shoreline, a heron took flight as they approached, its long legs trailing its body, its size diminished by the distance it traveled. The background of the sky it flew against was lit at the horizon as if someone had switched on a lamp behind the curtains. The clouds that were puffs of white earlier in the day were now colored purple and gold as they veiled the setting sun. It was all too beautiful to express. With the waning of the sun came a gentle coolness and she drank it in, as a tall glass of water that slaked her thirst. Maybe tonight, she thought, she would sleep out under the stars with her lover. She might be bitten by mosquitoes. She might even acquire a tick. Her friends would say that she shouldn't do such things, that she would surely get lyme disease, or be struck by lightning. She wouldn't try to convince them of what she knew. That life is too short and too beautiful to be missed because she was bound to the expectations of society by fear of sickness or death or even of being accepted as "normal". Life was too short, or maybe it was just the right amount. And so too was it true of summer. 

Copyright 2007 by Mary Best

THE LOVE POTION       

by Sanjaya Mishra

       As the sun descended from up above the sky, the activities at the weekly village market waned. The herds of gathered cattle disintegrated, each group escorted by its respective owner. The cheap clothes were again bundled together. The heaps of rice, dal and different seeds were meticulously transferred into the sacks and the vegetables, now losing their shine by the heat, were neatly gathered in the baskets.

       Under the banyan tree, the nomadic salesman still displayed his wares: dry leaves, seeds, barks of different sizes and colours and even stones - all claimed to heal a variety of diverse ailments. Beads of light, created by thin pencils of sunrays streaming in through the dense tree, flickered over them like twinkling stars in a night sky.

       Sitting in the jeep, I could see a girl of around thirteen, in a worn out dress, approaching the nomad salesman and I heard her ask, "Have you got Mohini?"

       "What?" the salesman asked, amused.

       "Mohini," the girl repeated.

       "You know what it is? Why is it is used?"

       The subtle movement of her head was the affirmative gesture - but to me it looked so out of place, so inconsonance with the innocent stare of those two black eyes.

       Two men, gingerly sucking at their biris looked in her direction, their faces displaying bafflement bordering on rage. One of them said harshly, "You devil of a girl, at this early age you already think of roping in a man, can't wait anymore..."

       "Get lost you bitch, you are going to bring disgrace to your family and disrepute to our village," the other one joined in.

       The salesman looked on amused, not minding his prospective customer getting shooed off by these villagers.

       The commotion had started to attract the attention of others so the girl sheepishly turned to go and just then her eyes fell upon me and they looked as pure as the driven snow, betraying no signs of shame.

       One of the villagers drew nearer me and explained as if to clear any confusion, "You know sir, Mohini is a potion that is used to attract men by the women. A pinch of it sprinkled on the man unobtrusively or better still if administered through food by the girl, will do the trick."

       The nomadic salesman waved his head proudly in agreement.

       "And this young girl wants it -- all the morality in our society has been thrown to the dogs," the villager went on sermonizing, his dark tobacco-stained teeth in perfect harmony with the torrent of expletives that were also let loose in between.

       While on my way back from the village in the evening, I found the girl sitting on the edge of the pond; throwing small rocks to the water, with a forlorn look on her face. Still not able to conceive the fact that this girl could behave in such way, I approached her.

       The downcast glance at seeing me coming bespoke of some trace of shame on her part, but she remained where she was and kept on looking at the waves the rocks formed in the water.

       I also took some rocks in hand and joined her in the act, hoping it would put her at ease.

     "I didn't need it for me sir, it was for Pami," she said suddenly.
     "A friend of yours?" I asked.

     "Yes, our cow," she replied, laughing.

     "For your cow!" I exclaimed, bewildered.
     "Yes, ever since she hasn't delivered, we are in dire state, with no milk to sell. I thought maybe this thing would attract the village bull towards her and she will deliver."

       I stood there dumfounded and it took some time for me to comprehend the whole thing.

       She was still throwing away rocks aimlessly to the pond, as I drove on, ruminating about the fallacy of the adult mind.

Copyright 2007 by Sanjaya Mishra

FOREIGN LAND

by Corey Melin

       I crossed the great Negotto River to enter into the foreign lands of Agron.

       "You come from afar?" the boatman asked with a questioning look at my attire.

       "I was born way to the south in the lands of Merith," I replied, getting off my strong and trusted friend, Allanorn.

       Allanorn is a pure white stallion that was given to me as a gift for helping a widow survive a harsh winter. One of the worst winters that has ever occurred in my life. At first, it was quite difficult to handle Allanorn, but after a few days he grew accustomed to me and all became well. Of course, this pleased me for I was able to continue m exploration of the lands around me.

       "Traveled quite far," the boatman said as I looked down the river, seeing it stretch beyond what the eye could see. "Any particular reason?"

       "I like to see the land," I replied. "See the different sites God has created."

       "You picked a good time to explore the wonders for the entire land is experiencing peace. No need to worry about evildoers for the most part."

       "For the most part," I repeated, thinking of the one encounter with a robber, who had to be over six feet tall, but was a walking scarecrow.

       "All your coins now!" the robber, with a high pitched voice, had called out, pointing a crossbow at me.

       I wasn't good with the bow and only sufficient with the sword, but when it came to daggers I was an expert. By looking at the robber, who stood there with a slight tremble, which told me he was new at this, I knew it wouldn't take much to disable him.

       "You sure you want to do this?" I asked him.

       "Do it now!" he screeched out.

       "Fine."

       A second later the crossbow lay on the ground and the robber held his hand, which now had a cut across the top of it.

       The robber cried out, turning around and running off into the woods.

       The only encounter, so far, I had of anyone with evil intent. A poor soul trying to make it through life the easy way.

       "May I ask your name, fine sire?" the boatman asked.

       "James Curstron," I replied. "James the Explorer," I added with a chuckle.

       "Sounds like the exploring is going well."

       "Yes. Yes, indeed."                                                                                   

       It is hard to believe that fifteen years have gone by since I started traveling across the land. The decision was made a week after the woman I was to marry suddenly became ill and died. I was crushed, staying in my quarters for a couple of days with nothing to eat and very little to drink. I wanted to die myself and join my love in paradise. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at first, having been a carpenter. I figured once I married we would move on to a more populated area. We would talk about our ambitions late at night as we sat together by the lake.

       "You will expand on carpentry and I will be expanding physically," she would tell me with a smile, rubbing her stomach area.

       "How many kids are we planning on having?" I asked her, giving her a squeeze.

       "Enough to take care of us when we become too old to support ourselves," she replied with a laugh.

       Unfortunately, those days would never happen. My decision on what to do was made suddenly when my good friend, Santrix, paid me a visit.

       "How are you doing?" he asked when I let him in.

       "Trying to get myself back together," I replied.

       "You probably should try to do that somewhere else."

       "What do you mean?" I asked.

       "Unfortunately, the troublemakers in this town have been spreading the rumor that you murdered Abrilla."

       "What?!" I cried out. "Who is spreading the rumors?" I asked him, grabbing the dagger off the table.

       "Hold up," my friend said. "It's too late to stop them. The word is out and people are wondering now."

       "Leaving would make the townsfolk more suspicious."

       "The family knows you haven't done anything, but the people in this town are a superstitious lot so you will always be looked at with suspicion."

       I put the dagger on the table and sat down in despair.

       "You always wanted to leave this town."

       "Not so soon," I said but it turned out to be that way.

       I wanted to leave the town on a horse, but that was not to be, as I went through town getting many glares from people full of hate. Even the ones I considered good friends treated me harshly, telling me to leave at once.

       "I know you had nothing to do with our daughter's death," Abrilla's mother told me when I went to see the parents before I left. "The townspeople around here are very simple and easily swayed."

       "I must move on," I told them. "But I feel much better that the both of you do not believe in the lies."

       "Where will you go?" asked Abrilla's father.

       "I'm not sure. I believe I will travel around for a few years and eventually settle down."

       "May God be with you at all times."

       "Thank you."

       I left on foot, stopping at different towns and cities as the years ticked by.

       Now here I was going to one of the last lands that were known and considered safe for the most part.