ampersand magazine

Staff

Fiction Editors

John Cartwright

Kristen Ritterbrush

Colin McNerny

Jordan D. Sousa

Lacey McKee

Amy Worob

Poetry Editors

James D. Ardis

Max Gutierrez

Whitney Ginn

Copyright

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You may only use Ampersand Magazine for educational or entertain-

ment purposes.

You may distribute Ampersand Magazine as you see fit, as long as

you don’t sell it.

If you use Ampersand Magazine, you must credit the editors.

Messages from the Chief Editors

James D. “Jimmy” Ardis

Chief Editor of Poetry

John W. “Jesus” Cartwright

Chief Editor of Prose

Last semester, I got a poem published in a magazine I’

d been sending submissions to for over a year. I was

elated, of course and did everything short of throwing

a parade in my own honor to make sure everyone knew. I

posted a link to the online copy on Facebook, and the

same supportive group of friends that always comments

on those types of posts commented on this.

The next day, somebody told me their friend didn’t

understand my poem. She wanted me to explain it to

them. I asked her why she didn’t explain it to them

herself, at which point she broke down and admitted

that she didn’t have the slightest clue what the poem

was about. After years of reading and writing I had

finally created something that, sadly, blends in quite

well with the current institution-based state of modern

poetry. I’d begun writing inside jokes for the couple

hundred people who have read the five different books

necessary to understand it.

We young poets are all imitating someone. Some of us

our young Eliots or Pounds and compare the figure of a

woman to the intricate first letter of an illuminated

manuscript. Some of us our young Dadaists and feel the

urge to grab a reader’s attention through shock

phrases. While it’s absolutely vital to understand

other poets before developing our own poetic voice,

sometimes I feel that we, in particular young, burgeon-

ing poets, use overly obscure allusions or shock words

in order to mask the fact that our poem has no meaning.

The voice of a magazine is never fully developed in its

first issue. However, I feel that this first group of

poets is a prime example of where I want this magazine

to go. The following is good advice if you plan on sub-

mitting to this magazine, or really, if you write po-

etry with the intent of having it seen by other people.

In poetry, don’t talk above me. Don’t talk below me.

Talk to me. Break my heart.

There’s this great band I listen to called Counting

Crows. You might know them for their smash hit “Mr.

Jones” or for their pop abomination called

“Accidentally in Love”. I’ve spent the last few

months scouring the world for rare and unsold Counting

Crows songs. I’ve got to say it’s the best music

I’ve ever heard and the world has never heard. Adam

Duritz, the frontman and lyricist, is nothing short of

a lyric god. Years from now, poets and writers and

songwriters are going to be invoking him as a Muse in-

stead of that stuffy Greek chick. He writes from the

inside and doesn’t really care what the music world

wants him to write (except for the songs he writes for

soundtracks, most of which are still great). I think

you people should take that attitude. Reader and

writer, you should write about what you care

about. Don’t follow every bit of advice to the let-

ter. Absorb them and metabolize them and then use

them how you wish. There’s a lot of advice from

writing teachers that can be destructive. “Show,

don’t tell” is overhashed and misused. Psycho-

sexual character dramas (those oh-so-pervasive short

stories that you find spewed upon the faces of every

creative writing class ever) can be good, but they can

also be very, very bad. Plot is important but your

characters can get lost in them. So take all the ad-

vice you get in moderation, like candy. Eat too much

and you’ll get sick and puke it all out into a jum-

bled mess, but eat just enough and you’ll get a brain

rush that’ll give you the energy to write more. And

if you want to, check out Counting Crows for some in-

spiration. Hearing that silver syrup flow from your

speakers can only do you good. Congratulations to

everyone who got published in our magazine - I hope to

see you in here someday too.

Authorial Gibbering

Adam Clay is the author of The Wash. His sec-

ond book, A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the

World, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions.

He co-edits Typo Magazine, curates the Poets

in Print Reading Series at the Kalamazoo Book

Arts Center, and teaches at Western Michigan

University.

I was able to rent out a copy of your MFA thesis from

the library and I know that your debut book of poetry

“The Wash” was based mostly on the poems included in

your thesis. How do you feel you've grown as a writer

since this first collection of poems?

I think my work has changed in a lot of ways, but

one of the major shifts I’ve noticed is that my

work has become much more narrative. I grew up in

Mississippi and wrote narrative poems, mostly. Af-

ter moving to Arkansas, I wanted to shift a bit

away from this approach—my poems used other

voices (John Clare and Roethke, to name a few),

but when I moved to Michigan, I decided to return

back to my own voice and write about what I saw on

a daily basis. I really feel that changing ap-

proaches is key—it helps me stay interested in

what I’m writing. Right now I’m working on a

book-length poem, something I thought I’d never

do.

Is there anything in your first book of poetry ?the

Wash? that you would want to go back and change? And if

so what would it be?

Absolutely. But I think that’s entirely normal. When I

read from the book now I change words or cut out lines.

I don’t ever see the poems as being done, per se. I

think they’re constantly changing, depending on where

I’m at when I’m reading the poems and how I feel

about lines or images.

I noticed in your thesis you became interested in

breaking the standard form of a stanza and employing an

almost Marianne Moore-esque system of breaking the

lines up to match the flow of the poem. Is this a tech-

nique you still use and if so, how do you decide when

to employ it and when not to?

I use it some, but again I really prefer to vary my

approaches up. My forthcoming collection has a very

long, almost prose-like, sense of line. For The Wash I

really wanted a more lyrical approach and that particu-

lar style of line seemed to work best in terms of com-

municating that lyrical sense. I firmly believe content

and form should be inseparable, something I learned

when I studied Philip Larkin with Jim Whitehead.

In the poem “Tautology of trash”, you use lines so

long that the poem as a whole blurs the line between

stanza of poetry and paragraph of fiction reminiscent

of fellow Arkansan poet C D Wright's work of poetry/

prose “Cooling Time”. Are you of the school of

thought that poetry is at its core cut off lines of

prose?

Absolutely not. I’ve tinkered with prose poems some

here or there, but I’m never very pleased with them in

the end. I liked having them in The Wash to have a bit

of relief from the other poems, but I don’t know if

I’ll ever have any prose poems in a collection again.

It’s not that I don’t think the form is legitimate; I

just feel that the line break—and the line itself—is

one of the most important poetic tools. James Tate

talks about how a prose poem is a nice way of fooling

the reader into reading a poem. Somehow a paragraph

doesn’t feel as threatening. I am really interested,

though, in how the content of a prose poem can often be

wildly varied from lineated poems. They seem to lend

themselves to a certain type of experimentation that

suits the form.

You leave the majority of your poems without a specific

title and instead use the first line of the poem as the

header. How do you decide which poems to title and

which ones not to title?

The first two poems without titles are in the voice of

John James Audbon, using lines from his journals. I

didn’t see them so much as needing titles; I pre-

ferred that they stand on their own as brief journal

entries. Something I’ve always thought a lot about is

how a poem is really another line of a poem—I try to

use the title in a way that does something new or pro-

vides an additional insight into the work. I can’t

say I always succeed, but I think more and more about

the role of titles in poems and how a title can really

impact a reader’s experience of what follows.

You begin your MFA thesis with a quote from the Bible

and use God as a constant motif in poems such as ?

Prayer for Winter Solstice? and ?His Ashes Con-

verge?. Do you believe spirituality is important to

your poetry? And if so, in what way? I did consider spirituality important in “The Wash”.

I grew up in the South and spent a lot of time in the

church. A lot of the poems really felt like opportuni-

ties for meditation or prayer. My new work has moved

away from this, but the notion of poems as prayers was

something I thought a lot about.

For many people being published in the U of A literary

magazine will be their first publication credit. Where

was the first place you were every published and how

did it feel? “Caught No Fish Last Night” from The Wash was one of

the first poems picked up from the manuscript. Black

Warrior Review expressed interest in it. I can remem-

ber feeling validated in a lot of ways, though looking

back I don’t think it was that important. Sure, hav-

ing some poems picked up helps towards publication of

the manuscript, but having edited TYPO Magazine and

working as an editor at Third Coast, I’ve learned

that so much of publication is arbitrary. Matt Henrik-

sen and I sometimes find great poems, but occasionally

they don’t work with the issue of TYPO we’re piecing

together. I haven’t had many of new poems picked up

lately, either. It’s all a matter of timing, but it’

s probably more about luck than that.

How do you go about setting up a book of poetry? Do

you put the best poems in the front, the back, or do

you take the Heffernan approach of putting the best in

the middle to give your book a rising action, falling

action feel?

That’s a great question. I can recall a class at Ar-

kansas with Davis where interviewed writers about

their first books. Quan Barry’s approach to organiza-

tion as what struck me the most. She alphabetized her

poems by title. I like the randomness of that. I tried

a similar approach by grouping the poems into catego-

ries (the first two sections had poems with birds in

them and the other didn’t). Then I alphabetized them

by the last word of the poems. The random association

gave me a great starting off point. I could tell if a

poem didn’t work well up against another one or if it

didn’t feel like a poem that needed to be in the

opening section. I liked being initially detached from

the process. Obviously I didn’t keep that order, but

it was a nice starting point.

What techniques did your thesis director, Davis

McCombs, teach you that you still use today?

Something I always liked about Davis’ class was how

he would provide specific assignments. I can remember

him asking the class to write a verb-less poem. Before

that point, I always thought of writing as this type

of thing that one had to wait for inspiration to write

a poem. Looking back, that seemed really naïve. Start-

ing back in April, I wrote a poem a day through the

end of June. And now I’m writing a page a day through

July and August of a longer poem. I think we have to

give ourselves exercise to force our way out of a rut.

That’s something I was always struck by when we went

on WITS trips. I was able to get a few new poems out

of the exercises we had the students do. There’s

something about writing everyday that really does help

one set the table for the muse, as Denise Levertov

says. That was by far my favorite part of the MFA pro-

gram: learning to write every day—or at least as of-

ten as possible. It’s something I try to encourage my

students to do. Heffernan talks about how the best re-

vision of a poem is often the next poem. The more I

write, the more true I think it is.

Poetry

Megan

Blankenship

We Are Old Children

I love the rise and walk of morning

when the dove spies the sun, the cow

spies the bucket and comes running to be milked.

Dew about our ankles, knotty pumpkins hide

in the last cut of hay, grasshoppers eat what’s left.

We pilfer brown eggs from the bases of fenceposts,

from the asparagus bed grown to a

silvery forest. The fox took another goose last night.

The pigs loose again, we coax them in

with a bucket of potato peels and cornmeal.

Up the hill, the cemetery aches with conversation

of whose apples are ripe, when the snows will come

and how many. The well is deep.

Compassion is stone-ground, baked into biscuits.

Megan Blankenship

Sam’s Work Hat Stiff with

three thousand days

of sweat, I know

this brow,

cut deep by sun and toil.

He wears his honor

on his head, righteous

in rows of red dust

and sunburned stalks, staring

at the ass-end of a mule.

I am worn out from

defending so much.

Dusk I’m hung

on a rough hickory peg by

the screen door, waiting for

daybreak while he

cleans his rifle, loves

his woman, and talks,

sometimes, to his god.

Andrew

Childress

Sequence #1 I.

that this romance just seems so flimsy

like a skirt made out of transparent plastic

like a cheap chinese umbrella on a lake in a storm

like pixie sticks in a baby's hands

wet and sticky, upside down

the colored sand is leaking out

like this ribbon on our shoes, another whimsy

another one of those contracts we're gonna have to re-

tract

function, biology, the resurrection and death of form

my thighs are giving out, watch what they demand

some day soon I'm gonna hump this town

come into the dark and leave you out

II.





tract









III.







tract







IV.





tract









Kris

Mastin

The Night Went On

The world spins and slows like I give a damn,

the rest moves about, forgotten.

The sky outlasts everything that dies

to live on in want of sparkling eyes,

like the rest of us.

And the nights just go on,

bleeding life into meaningless, unconnected

scenes.

***

The night went on selling me.

I watch her dance and drift from arm to arm

as a man passes in under-things...

Decide a drink to endless misery is in order:

She changes to mist in a soft black light,

(oh romantic to romance at left, at right).

I slip, further, out toward the moon,

as I lose my humanity in the crust of a room.

The night went on.

I had had the song.

I was off in New Zealand shooting WWII:

A first rate production,

a tragedy:

A swirl of ungodly emotion in the wail of a

crowd.

Now it’s back to wine and moments inces-

santly ruined with words,

blurry screen wipes and dream sequences—

—to the true, fiendish state of things.

Everything begs to be remembered frozen on a

turning screen:

She’s immortally a pair of tits, another

washes his hair.

But I’m not watching me, small in the stars,

I’m looking on apace as they swallow city

cars:

The hunter Orion there,

who’ll trace the Great Bear,

no more than white dust in that sky some-

where.

The night went on.

I saw scores of meaning in absent dialogues.

I saw a light drizzle make a scene in the

rain,

as lovers draw mist through colors and

frames.

Really it is like poems when they move—

through dull crowds or out cold rooms—

past bright lights, into the full moon,

into an endless night or a spiraling stair,

into the fading shapes of a cloud somewhere.

The night went on.

Now I’m shooting a summer blockbuster with

PG tits

and lies about romance.

The stage stinks of cologne and perfume,

but drifts away, poetically, as you wander

the roads,

through light wind the soft sky throws,

following street-stars with wands of golden

hair,

as they click off in puddles when your feet

get there.

***

Kris Mastin

Is there no more wine?

Look, here come more cougars and wolves

licking wits!

(The night moves on while I get drowned,

too heavy in the sauce, if not sentimen-

tal).

The last time I was here,

I woke feeling like a dirty, used whore

from Singapore.

My that’s a thought for a swig down me

scotch!

Everything must go in its traveling

clothes,

But...

There is the world, in sink and lift,

though I feel none of it.

I see, like a man gone wry, where the sky

goes miss,

as it circles again and again all this.

S

H

O

R

T

F

I

C

T

I

O

N

Jacob

Mosier

A Short Walk Down a City

Street

He twisted the key in the lock and

pulled the door handle until he heard the

click of the bolt sliding in to place.

Slowly, he turned toward the street, and

looked out from under the faded red awning

into the pouring rain. It wasn’t a hard

rain, but it was steady, a leaky faucet, con-

stantly dripping but never flowing, just

enough to wet the city’s streets but never

enough to make them clean. Already he was

running late, but he hesitated a moment

longer, reluctant to go and meet the woman he

loved. She was waiting for him, in the café

where they always met down the street, eager

and no doubt near to bursting with questions

about his day and stories about hers, her

blue-green eyes so full of life and love. He

could not bring himself to face such loving

adoration.

A faded chip of black paint fell softly

and settled into the mud and moss as he

brushed his hand across the top of the rail

bordering the concrete steps. Setting his

foot onto the first step with a deliberate

reluctance, he realized he would need to

paint that rail again before too long. He

stepped into the falling rain and pulled the

low brim of his hat over his eyes, the drop-

lets of water spilling off and running down

his coat until they fell to the ground below,

adding to the puddles already covering the

sidewalk. What would she say if she really

knew him, knew what he was on the inside,

knew his true character as well as he himself

did. If she saw the weak, faltering man un-

able to resist even the slightest tempta-

tions. With a final sigh, he turned his bent

head and, feet dragging through muddy flyers

and sodden wrappers, began the short walk

down the city street.

A passing car splashed brown water and

greasy magazine pages as he trudged along,

head down, eyes distant. During the summer

months the street was clogged with the odors

of a living city, the smells of vendors and

garbage drifting strenuously through the air

in those few moments when the wind was blow-

ing, settling down and seeping into every

doorstep and alleyway when the still air was

heavy with summer heat. But during the win-

ter, when the cold rains fell and soaked the

stains of summer, the street smelled of noth-

ing but rain and mud.

Up above, the warm light of a kitchen

window illuminated the silhouette of a wife

greeting her husband, highlighting their gen-

tle kiss as she asked him about his day. Down

on the street where he walked, he passed the

corner where women of less luck and looser

morals stood every night and waited for des-

perate men ready to sell their souls for a

bastard love.

Jacob Mosier

At the next street he turned, passing

by the women’s clothing store without a

second look. He had learned to never let his

eyes wander, to keep them always on a more

pure path. Anything less would be nothing

short of treachery. He didn’t even spare a

glance for the pictures in the window, the

tapestries bearing lithe models dressed in

the latest laces and gowns, their beauti-

fully smooth airbrushed skin softly re-

touched to perfection. Years of patient self

discipline and love had made him accustomed

to ignoring their longing eyes and beckon-

ingly Hellenic figures

Ahead, he saw the café where she

waited, her wavy brown hair swooping down

and crossing her brow, half covering her

eye, the way he always remembered it doing.

Maybe she was stirring her coffee, or maybe

she had decided to wait for him to order,

fending off the eager waitress, promising

“Oh, he’ll be here soon enough. He’s

never late.” But he was always late.

He stepped off the curb and into the

street, putting on his best smile so she

wouldn’t see the pouring rain behind his

eyes. She never did. In him she never saw

anything but sun and warmth and love and

strength. He was the light that gave her

life, her Apollo and her Venus, her protec-

tor and her lover. But he knew it was a

sham, knew he was no more worthy of her love

than were any of the other lowlifes and bums

in this city.

True, he had never been with another

woman, never acted on those passions which

had brought other men to their knees. But

it was the thought that counted. Even with

a lifetime of diligence, no man ever es-

caped that hubris fully; no man ever com-

pletely freed himself of that killing

weakness.

His boots sloshed through a dirty

puddle as he stepped from the street to

the sidewalk in front of the little café

where she sat, waiting for him. Inside he

could see the elderly couple at their

booth by the window, sitting as they had

for years, watching the time go by in

blissful togetherness. He wondered what

secret self doubts they shared, what hid-

den misgivings and worries they felt but

never spoke. At the counter was the week-

night crowd of steelworkers and account-

ants, truck drivers and attorneys, some

stopping for a quick cup of coffee before

going home to a warm dinner and loving

wife. The less fortunate stopping here, as

they did every evening, to waste away the

time in a clean and well lighted place be-

fore going home to empty beds and broken

dreams.

The bell rang with a homely sound as

he opened the door and slipped through,

trapping the cold and rain outside. In-

side, the cafe was warm and filled with

loving smells of home and comfort. From

Their Table near the corner window, he saw

the flash of her smile, its radiance mak-

ing him forget the cold and wetness cling-

ing to him and soaking to his soul, shed-

ding his burdens and his pain in an in-

stant. Without even taking off his coat,

he hurried to her.

“I was worried something had happened, this

weather is just so awful.”

“Sorry dear, I was just a little slow on the

walk over.”

“Here, take your coat off, it’s drenched. I

can’t have you freezing to death on me! Oh

waitress, we’re ready now.”

Jacob Mosier

Zachary

Henderson

Rabbit Trails

The snowfall the night before was

heavy. In the woods beside the red river

floodway just outside of the city, you could

measure all sorts of things about the snow,

so long as you knew how. On days like today,

the skeletal white poplar trees seemed almost

to have retreated partway into the ground.

You could tell just how deep the snow was by

comparing the closeness of birds’ nests to

the shimmering white beneath their bark-

stripped precipice platforms.

Today was a day for snowshoes. The boy loved

walking in them – loved the feel of the snow

as it grudgingly accepted his weight, dis-

persed across a web of bowed wood and treated

sinew. His mother had bought them for his fa-

ther a few years ago during a school field-

trip to a tourist-centric Indian reservation;

they were about ten years too big for him

then, and at eight years old, he still had to

walk like a cowboy, knees bent and legs

spread wide so as to keep his steps from

overlapping and sending him face-first into

the snow. He carried a walking stick that his

father had helped him carve and stain. The

snow shoes kept him from using it to any ef-

fect, and so it rested easily in his hands

like a hunting rifle while he walked.

He tried to remember where the first one was;

it was always the most difficult for him to

find. He knew that as soon as he found it, he

would know automatically which direction to

go in order to find all of the others.

At the beginning of November, once the first

permanent snowfall had guaranteed the win-

ter’s colors for the next seven months, his

father had taken him out to show him how to

set rabbit snares. “The freshest tracks are

always best, son – that means the rabbits

are still using that trail.” The boy mar-

veled at the idea that just like people, rab-

bits choose to take the same paths to get

from place to place. He would imagine small

families of rabbits following one another

through the woods on a well-beaten trail, or

rubbing their ears with their paws in a si-

lent greeting as they passed one another on

their way through the forest.

His father bent down, pointing out the ever-

strange indentation of a rabbit’s gait in

the powdery snow. “You can tell this is a

fresh trail, because even though it snowed so

much night, the tracks are still deep.” The

boy wasn’t so much listening to what his fa-

ther was saying as he was listening to his

voice. His father’s voice was deep and calm.

When he spoke outside in the quietness and

crispness of the morning, you could almost

feel his vocal chords rubbing together, as

though an ancient king bee was buzzing in his

throat. “The first thing you want to do is

find a place where the trail passes by a

tree; that’s where you’ll tie your snare.”

His father reached into one of his front coat

pockets and withdrew a spool of thin, gold

Zachary Henderson

wire. He unraveled a length of it, and then

twisted it in a particular way so that it

broke cleanly. His father fashioned a loop,

and showed him the proper way to tie the

slipknot with the wire so that it would

slide freely but remain tight; he watched as

his son secured the wire to the tree. After-

ward, his father told him to go find four

small forked sticks. The boy found them

quickly, and brought them to his father, who

hadn’t moved from the place where he stood

beside the rabbit trail. The big man took

the sticks and bent over at the waist, lean-

ing them against one another over the trail

so that any passing rabbit would have to

walk underneath them. They reminded the boy

of croquet loops; he thought that it would

be fun to play croquet with sticks like this

instead of wires, and how challenging it

would be to hit the balls through them with-

out knocking them over. He watched as his

father carefully set the wire to rest on top

of the sticks, with the loop hanging per-

fectly in the archway. The boy finally found

the “X” his father had scratched into the

tree with his knife that day in November to

indicate the location of the first snare. It

was empty; so far, they had been empty each

day.

Every morning he would wake up early and eat

a bowl of cereal as fast as he could. By the

time he saw the first hints of the sun over

the tree line behind the house, he would al-

ready have his snowsuit on, the hand-knit

tuke his mother had made for him over the

summer pulled down just below his ears. As

he went out the back door each morning to

check his snares before the school bus came

out to their country home, he would think

about how amazing it would be to actually

catch a rabbit. He thought about how proud

his mother would be when he brought dinner

home – how delicious his catch would be

in a stew with carrots and potatoes and

onions. He thought about how his father

had promised to teach him how to tan the

hide; he had told him to think about what

he wanted to try to make when he had

enough rabbit pelts. The boy had decided

on a pair of mittens.

The second trap was also empty, as was the

third. His heart raced as he came upon

each snare; he remembers this feeling from

beneath his bed sheets on past Christmas

eves. The fourth snare was near the edge

of the woods close to his house on the op-

posite side of the forest from the first.

The sun was fully above the trees now, and

made the fresh snow glisten like diamonds

in the branches above him and on the for-

est floor all around him. As he came

across the last trap, he was thinking

about warm mittens; after thirty minutes

outdoors, his fingers always started to

tingle inside his Made in China gloves. He

looked down at the wooden croquet arch

over the rabbit trail to make certain the

loop was still in place; it wasn’t. The

sticks were strewn about, and in the mid-

dle of the rabbit trail was a swirl in the

snow, as if some small animal had made a

snow angel, and then in embarrassment had

smeared it away. The boy’s heart raced.

His eyes tracked toward the tree where the

snare line was secured.

Years later, he would wonder what he

Zachary Henderson

actually expected. Anything, he supposed,

but the lifeless form of the rabbit hanging

as from a gallows, its body contorted from

multiple spasms, its neck broken from the

struggle. It must have moved around and

around the tree in its death dance, winding

the wire about the trunk so that when its

life finally fled, the golden snare held it

up against the tree. Its neck glinted red

where the line had cut into its skin; pink

icicles clung to its fur like ruby rain-

drops.

The boy fell backwards, more tripping than

sitting because of the long wooden backs of

his snow shoes. He stared at the rabbit for

a long time. He tried to imagine the rab-

bit’s last thoughts as it struggled; all he

could come up with was fear and pain. He

wondered if it was a he or a she; he knew

how to check, but he was afraid to find out

– afraid to worry about bunnies starving

and freezing a hundred feet away in a burrow

he had no chance of finding. His fingers

were warm once again inside his gloves; he

could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips

as the adrenaline began to disappear. After

a while the boy stood up, still shaking. He

looked upward at the sun; he had missed the

bus, but he couldn’t care today. He took

out his pocketknife-pliers combination that

his father had given to him; it was old and

rusty, but the pliers still worked and the

main blade was still sharp. He worked the

pliers on the wire attached to the tree un-

til it twanged and separated. He tried to

use the wire cutter part of the pliers to

release the slipknot from the rabbit’s

neck, but there was no slack to work with;

the wire collar was now as much a part of

the rabbit as its fur.

The boy leaned his walking stick against

the tree marked with the “X” that he had

carved as his father had shown him; he

cradled the rabbit in his arms, and walked

slowly home. As he approached, he could

see his mother in the kitchen window. He

wasn’t prepared for her to find out about

the bus just yet; he would welcome her

punishment soon – be grateful for it even

– but for now he had more important busi-

ness to take care of. Carefully, he set

the body down on the stack of wood next to

the tool shed and bent over to clear the

new snowfall from the front of the doorway

so that he could work it open enough to

slip inside. He found the shovel that was

small enough for him to use leaning

against the right wall. He closed the

door, hoping that no discovery of his

snowshoe tracks would interfere with the

work he had to do. Gingerly, he lifted the

body from the wood pile and with shovel

over shoulder, once again walked in the

direction of the first snare.

He disarmed the trap and wound the wire

into a ball which he shoved into his coat;

he had taken his tuke off of his head and

placed the body inside of it, letting the

rabbit rest on the soft snow while he

worked. His ears were freezing, but it had

seemed the proper thing to do. He did the

same with the second and third traps, and

then went to a clearing nearby that he and

his father had camped in the summer be-

fore. The shovel cleared the snow away

easily, but the frozen ground beneath it

seemed harder than the spade head.

The twelve-inch-deep hole had taken him

hours; he couldn’t feel his ears, but the

rest of his body was hot with sweat and ef-

fort. He placed the body in the cotton hat

in the center of the grave. He sat down, and

tried to recall a prayer; he couldn’t

think, but he remembered his father’s

strong baritone, and could almost feel his

vocal chords rubbing together in his mind.

The boy cleared his unsteady yet unbroken

voice, and tried to remember the words his

father would speak tonight over dinner as he

did every evening: “Give us grateful

hearts, O Father, for all thy mercies, and

make us mindful of the needs of others;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Zachary Henderson

Bently J.

Fisher

As the Crow Flies

Every night before Benji lays down, he

records the difference in good things and bad

things he has done for the day and logs the

number in the journal kept underneath his

mattress. Things like cursing, hurtful words,

burglary, and violence earn negative points.

Things like honesty, caring, and kindness

earn positive points. A mental note of pluses

and minuses is made throughout the day. If

the disparity of total bad things is greater

than five, then the next morning, he runs a

mile for each point over the allowed five

point spread. The runs are good occupational

exercise and they help to calm him.

Benji makes his living by stealing. The

work suits him. He makes his own hours, he is

his own boss, and he determines his own sal-

ary. Though he is a criminal, his crimes are

done with conscience. Truthfully, he is only

partly fraudulenthe has a code. His parents

taught him to find redemption through the

church, but there he only found Sunday morn-

ing professions and deathbed confessions. He

now finds absolution through strained calves

and a tight chest. On this morning, he is

scheduled to run three miles.

“Get away from my window you stupid

fucking bird!” was how Benji’s morning be-

gan. Minus. In fact, as of late, most all of

his mornings began like that. He’d set his

alarm for 8am, but he would be awakened at

sunrise because of the crow. Not only did the

crow interfere with his sleep, he stole

things as well. Benji was missing a red pair

of boxers and a black pair of briefs that he

had hung outside on the line to dry. The crow

had also taken a white headband, a nearly new

roll of duct tape, an old gold-plated neck-

lace, and at least a few dollar bills. If he

were to leave something on the hood of his

car or porch, or drop something on the way

inside his rickety house, the crow would

swoop down and swipe it up. That crow was an

excellent thief. Perhaps it was this common

trait that made them hate each other.

After the crow woke him that morning,

Benji decided he would kill the crow. Minus.

The bird presented a challenge to his other-

wise uneventful day, so he set out to follow

the crow.

The crow had flown off for a while af-

ter he yelled at him, but the bird returned

as Benji made himself a breakfast high in fi-

ber to get his day moving. He looked out the

bedroom window and noticed the crow jumping

around on his car, pecking and pulling off

chips of paint.

Benji put on a pair of mesh shorts and

a t-shirt, slipped on his old running shoes,

and snuck out the front door. The driveway

sat on the south side of the rental and his

front door faced east, so, he had a long wall

to hide behind as he crept closer to the

crow. He carefully planned each of his steps

and avoided any small pebbles or shards of

glass that may make a noise. At the corner of

the building he knelt down low and slowly

turned his head past the corner bricks to see

the damned bird just staring straight at him.

Benji stood up—the crow didn’t move. He

took a few steps forward and the crow flut-

tered his wings a bit, threatening flight, so

Benji paused and looked at him.

The crow stared at him with his black

eyes and hopped. Benji stared back until the

bird’s eyes melted into his ugly, black

face. If they had been cowboys, they would

have been ready to draw. Benji could almost

see the crow hiding a six shooter beneath his

right wing. He envisioned himself pulling

first on the bird, blasting him square in his

black chest, watching dark feathers explode

into the air. But they weren’t cowboys, and

just as Benji got ready to make his move, the

crow drew and squawked, “faggot!” and flew

away.

Benji chased him down 3rd Street and

across Magnolia and Orchard Rd. He lost the

bird behind an old plastic plant and decided

to turn back. The early morning sun crept

over the rolling hills and the cool breeze

brought a chill to his perspiring skin. He

had three miles to run today and he figured

he might as well get it over with.

The run felt good, really good, so

Benji continued on to the square. As he came

to the corner of the donut shop he crashed

into a lady in a wheelchair. Because of the

unexpected impact, his body was thrown into

the air and he wasn’t able to brace himself

for contact with the salty pavement. His el-

bows and knees made a sort of absent thud,

followed by the scratching sound of his skin

erasing itself in layers. Before he could get

up from the ground, the middle aged, handi-

capped woman yelled, “Watch it!”

Benji jumped up and shouted, “Why

don’t you watch where you’re walk” but he

stopped when he noticed that she was bound to

a chair. This revelation led to Benji’s own

momentary paralysis as he looked at one of

the most beautiful women he had ever seen, at

least in the face, stuck in a motorized

chair. He was mesmerized by her large green

eyes, silky brown hair, and luscious red

lips. She looked just like one of those pin-

up pulp cartoon broads from the forties.

The woman began to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Benji asked.

“The look on your face. Nothing,” the

woman tried unsuccessfully to suppress her

giggling, “it doesn’t matter.”

Benji stared blankly at her. She fi-

nally stopped laughing, sighed, and wiped her

brow. He was glad that she wasn’t angry at

him but he couldn‘t understand her reaction.

“I’m really sorry,” he said as he

continued staring at her.

“You act like you’ve never seen some-

one in a wheelchair before.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Not many people do; at least they

pretend not to. Why are you out punishing

yourself this early in the morning anyhow?”

Benji looked out into the empty street,

pinching his lip and shrugging as he replied,

“It’s what I do.” He smiled and

looked back at the woman, “I was out chasing

something.”

“You alright? You’re skinned up

pretty bad.”

Bently J. Fisher

“I’m okay. Are you?”

“Boy, I’m a tough old broad.” The

woman paused and looked down at his bleeding

knees and up at his bleeding arms. “Why

don’t you walk with me back to my house?”

Benji waited for her to begin laughing again,

but she didn’t. “I’ll get you some ban-

dages. I’m Andrea.”

Something about the old woman put him

at ease.

“I’m Benji.”

On the way to her home, Andrea rolled

along the sidewalk while Benji walked beside

her in the grass. He had an urge to grab the

handles of her chair and push her, but he

took her for a fiercely independent woman,

and he wanted to stay on her good side.

“What is it that you do Benji?”

“I’m in acquisitions.” Minus.

“Oh. I used to be a nurse. I retired

early though and moved here.”

“To be closer to family?”

“To die.” She started laughing and

then said that she actually moved to be far-

ther away from family, and then she laughed

some more.

As the two neared Andrea’s home, a

little boy came down the sidewalk in front of

them. Instead of wearing his backpack on his

shoulders, he was dragging it along the pave-

ment. Benji saw him and smiled.

“Hey honey, you headed to school?”

Andrea asked.

The boy shook his head up and down in

reply. He never looked at Andrea, just kept

his head cocked over his right shoulder and

stared at the ground.

“You sure are cute in your little

cap,” she said. Andrea lurched forward in

her chair and reached out to brush the boy’s

cheek. He jerked his head away and continued

walking to school. “He’s my neighbor’s

kid.”

“Seems a little strange.”

“It’s sad. He’s slow. I think he has

Down’s.” Benji didn’t recognize it at

first, but the boy did have a really round

face and unusually small chin. “Well, this

is me,” Andrea said as she wheeled up the

porch ramp of her house. “Listen, I need

some help moving the rest of my things around

in the house. I’ll pay you if you’re inter-

ested. It could be at night, so it doesn’t

interfere with your work.”

He was interested in her so he ac-

cepted. “I’m actually on vacation this

week. I can help.”

“Alright, on two conditions: you show

up when you’re supposed to and you never ask

how I ended up in this chair.”

Benji nodded his head and waved at her.

“Be here tomorrow around nine. Have a

good day and enjoy your run,” she said.

“You too,” he said. Minus.

When Benji returned home, he found pa-

per stuck in the frame of his front door. It

was a past due rent notice. He had been try-

ing not to work too much lately, and he would

have went to work that night if he didn’t

have the money for helping Andrea to count

on. He crumbled up the paper and threw it out

into the side yard. As soon as the paper

landed in the grass, the crow swooped down

and picked it up. The bird landed on the

neighbor’s roof and pecked and chewed the

notice into shreds.

Bently J. Fisher

The next morning began more naturally.

The crow did not wake Benji.

Benji had a good time helping Andrea

that day. He thought it was strange that she

didn’t want any pictures hung in her home.

She only allowed one picture, a photo of her

with legs that worked, to be set out. There

was a box marked “photos,” but she told

Benji not to look inside it and to put it up-

stairs, out of her reach. He felt sorry for

her and did what she said. Plus. One of the

boxes he carried upstairs was incredibly

heavy, and he looked inside it.

The box housed an old coin collection.

One coin in particular interested him. It was

a newer quarter, but it had been double

strucktwo George Washington’s on top of each

other, like being “kinged” in Checkers.

Benji thought about putting it into his

pocket in case he needed some quick cash, but

he didn’t. He put all the coins back in the

box and put the box in the corner of the up-

stairs room. Plus.

While having drinks together the next

afternoon, Benji became transfixed by the

lone photo of Andrea in the living room. It

didn’t appear to be a very old picture. She

was outside an old building, smiling, holding

her pony tail in both hands, standinga cap-

tured memory, a glimpse into her pastalone,

but happy. She looked very sensual. He won-

dered if he were to make love to her, where

he would need to start and what he would need

to leave out.

“I jumped.”

He turned to see Andrea at the edge of

the room, also looking at the photo.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t know what else to

do.” She smiled at him and lit a cigarette.

Benji saw clearly, for the first time, how

much difference there was in what she said

and how she said it. He continued looking at

the photo thinking she would say more.

When she didn’t, he said, “Bet you

never do that again.” Minus. Benji’s face

reddened. Andrea laughed hysterically. “Are

you okay now?” he asked.

“I’m fine honey.” Andrea smiled

again, but Benji wasn’t convinced. “It just

wasn’t my time I guess.”

Benji regretted what he said and he

wanted to make her feel better. He ran up-

stairs to grab the box of photos that she was

too embarrassed to show him before. He wanted

to look through the albums with her and as-

sure her that she is still the same beautiful

lady. As he searched through the upstairs

room, Andrea began yelling and coughing and

shouting for him to come back down and to

stay out of there.

Benji found the box and opened it. He

saw the pictures and felt like someone had

swung a sledgehammer into his stomach. His

body grew light but his feet wouldn’t move

from the floor. In place of the old photos of

a younger, more beautiful, magnetic Andrea

were photos of young boys, sad looking, and

naked. He closed the flaps of the box and

went downstairs.

“I was going to find the box of old

photos of you, but I couldn’t,” he said.

“Well good. They’re not good pictures

anyway.” Andrea smiled at him and offered

him another drink. He didn’t want another

drink. He didn’t want to see those pictures.

Bently J. Fisher

He didn’t want to know anything more about

her. He told her that he needed to go and he

left.

On the way home, Benji saw the little

Down’s boy slowly walking down the sidewalk

with an old Labrador.

The boy’s hi-top shoe laces were un-

tied and clicking along the pavement as he

walked. His jeans were too big and stuffed

into the tongue of his shoes and he wore an

old wool cap that was pulled down too far on

his head, making his ears fold forward like

two tiny satellites. The old dog drooped

along beside the boy. His nails scratched the

concrete every time he lifted his tired back

legs. The dog stopped and lifted his big al-

mond eyes up to meet Benji’s.

“Hi,” said the boy.

“Hi yourself.”

“Wanna pet him?”

“Sure.” Benji moved over to the dog

and the dog stepped back, stuck his chest

out, pointed his tail up, and appeared to be

chomping at the air, his teeth clacking each

time his jaws closed.

“I don’t think he likes me,” Benji

said.

“He’s not trying to bite you, he’s

barking.”

“Why isn’t any noise coming out?”

“He’s never barked, he can’t. Well,

he barks, just no noise comes out.”

“Isn’t that strange?” Benji tried

again to pet him, but the dog sidestepped and

hid behind the boy. “He’s a one owner dog.

What’s his name?”

“Bodie.”

“Wonder why Bodie can’t talk?”

“I don’t know.”

Benji liked the kid and wanted to ex-

cite his imagination. “Maybe someone told

him a secret and he can’t talk so he can’t

say it.”

“Maybe. I tell him all sorts of

stuff,” the boy said.

“See, he’ll never tell on you.”

Benji paused for thought and then said,

“Maybe God told him a secret.”

“Like what?”

“The secret of the universe or the

meaning of life or something.”

“Prolly, he knows a lot.”

Benji laughed and the little boy smiled

back at him while he and his dog wandered

away. Plus.

When Benji returned home he found a

second notice on his door. It was new notice

stating that he would be evicted within two

weeks if he did not pay his past due rent in

addition to his next month’s rent payments.

While he reread the notice, he heard a

rustling in the trees east of him. He could-

n’t see any movement in the leaves, but as

he looked, a black shape began to form midway

up the tree. It was a dark presence and it

made Benji uneasy. After the noise settled,

Benji saw light reflect off of two black,

beady eyes and he heard a squawk, “qu-een.”

Benji grabbed a palm-sized rock and

reached back and chucked the rock as hard as

he could at the crow. The rock was deflected

by a branch below the crow’s stoop, and the

crow flew off across the street. Minus. Benji

went inside.

He thought about what he saw upstairs

at Andrea’s house. He thought about how she

Bently J. Fisher

talked to the little boy. He wondered about

those boys in the photos. Benji didn’t un-

derstand her. She couldn’t run enough miles

to make up for what she must have done to

them. Splattering herself on an asphalt

street wouldn’t change what she did. He de-

cided that he would go back to her house one

last time and then never see her again.

A couple of nights later, after ignor-

ing Andrea’s calls and busying himself

fighting with the crow, Benji sat a little

ways down from her house.

After the streets had cleared, Benji

walked over to the side gate of her house,

quietly unhinged the latch, and walked into

the backyard. The backyard was overgrown and

bare of any semblance of a garden, or land-

scaping, or outdoor entertaining.

There was a poorly built deck that ex-

tended to the corner of the house. Benji

climbed onto the railing, deftly balancing on

the rotting wood, and lunged half of his body

up onto the roof. He had to claw and maneuver

quite a lot before he was able to lurch his

right leg onto the sticky roof but he finally

made it up, with more noise than he’d have

liked.

He stepped lightly along the overhang

of the roof toward the second story window.

As he neared the window, the crow landed on

the roof. The bird squawked a little, but

Benji ignored him.

Benji lifted on the window. It slid up

a little before becoming stuck. He pushed on

it and quietly beat on it to loosen it up. He

started to sweat. The window finally loosened

and he crawled inside the room. As he turned

to push the window back down, the crow

flapped his wings and squawked, “bitch.”

“Ssh,” Benji commanded.

He went to the corner of the room and

opened the box of coins. He put the double

stamped coin in his pocket and quietly walked

to the edge of the stairs and looked down.

Minus. In the living room hallway, Andrea’s

wheelchair lay turned over on the floor.

Benji leaned down to look through the banis-

ter, but he couldn’t see anything more. He

slowly walked down the stairs and saw that

the front door was slightly ajar. He picked

up her chair and sat it upright. A couple of

empty pill bottles rolled from underneath the

chair. He looked around the room and took a

deep breath.

Benji walked out the front door and sat

down on the porch ramp. He saw the crow fly

down and land on the mailbox post. He waited

for the bird to squawk at him, but the crow

was silent. The crow looked at him, looked

almost sad, and then flew away. Soon after,

Benji saw the boy walking down the sidewalk

on the opposite side of the street.

“Hey,” Benji said as he ran across

the road to meet the boy.

“Are you waiting for the lady?” the

boy asked.

“Yeah, have you seen her?”

“She’s gone. The red truck took

her,” the boy said.

Benji wasn’t surprised, but it hurt

him to know. He pulled the coin from his

pocket.

“I need you to give this to her when

she comes back.”

“I can’t. Mom told me to stay away

from the lady. She’s not nice to kids.”

Bently J. Fisher

Benji nodded his head. He knew Andrea

wouldn’t be back. Benji knelt down beside

the old, mute Labrador, cupped his hands

around the dog’s ear, and whispered a se-

cret. The old dog turned to him and slurped

his big, wet tongue on Benji’s cheek. The

boy smiled widely and Benji started towards

home.

When he came to a gutter in the street,

he stopped and reached into his pocket. He

rubbed the old coin between his fingers and

tossed it into the black drain. Plus.

Benji began to run, but he slowed him-

self and walked the rest of the way home.

Bently J. Fisher

A Most Interesting Fact about

Cups and Seashells

Air bubbles rush upward toward the top

of the cooler and the lower tray quickly

fills with fresh water of alternating tem-

peratures as she presses each release lever

one at a time – red first because it matches

her sun-baked curls much closer than the blue

cold-water switch. A puddle builds at her

feet while impatient glares from all direc-

tions let her know that no one else in the

waiting room thinks she’s very cute anymore.

But then a familiar bearded smile rises

steadily from a group of seats just to the

side of the water cooler and he confidently

stretches his arm toward a small tube at its

side. He locates a Styrofoam cup tucked

safely inside and he pulls down slowly to re-

duce any possible cracking, because after

all, it’s supposed to be a gift and every-

thing has to be just perfect. She stretches

an innocently wide grin and fearfully studies

his movements, confused to find no punishment

for having gone ahead with her plans to build

a neighborhood swimming pool on the linoleum

floor.

“Quite a mess you’ve got going there,

huh?” He holds back a laugh while pretending

not to notice the row of angry faces behind

her.

“How could anyone stay mad at that

smile?” He relents softly while pushing his

pinky finger in the gap between her unevenly

spaced molars and her newly developing inci-

sors.

“No, not that again!” She giggles ex-

citedly, still not quite adjusted to the

small white bump pushing up through her gums.

“I’m sorry! I just can’t help my-

self.”At a loss for excuses, he admits his

fascination.

She has no patience for that sort of

business.

“Are you going to do that every time I

lose one?” New experiences can be a mixed

blessing to someone so eager for a challenge.

“Sorry - last time, I promise!” He

agrees for now, but they both know that par-

ticular game still has a few more years left.

He grabs a stack of paper towels from the

counter beside the water cooler and attempts

to soak up any evidence of her creative dis-

aster. She quickly notices the cup in his

hand and groans at the suggestion that she

might not be old enough to know the proper

way to pour a drink.

“I don’t need it.” She asserts her

independence at an early age. “I’m not

thirsty. Sorry I made everyone mad. I didn’t

mean to, honest. I can be quiet, I promise.”

Guilt sets in slowly as she rocks gently back

on her heels and immediately forward again on

her toes. She leans her back against the wall

and her eye lashes blink innocence back into

her nervous smile.

“What – you mean that puddle over

Andrew

Hincapie

there?” He looks over his shoulder at the

sparkling wet patch of linoleum just waiting

to initiate a customer lawsuit and they head

toward two empty chairs in the far corner

away from the cooler. “It’ll be fine, sit

down. Hardly anyone noticed. Besides, it’s

so hot outside I bet they were all wishing

they could jump in with you.”

“But it’s so boring here.” She re-

luctantly sits in her own chair, having al-

ready moved on from the possible threat of

punishment. “When will it be ready? I want

to go home.”

“I told you – all four tires have to

be changed.” He looks out the small window

in the waiting room and locates a familiar

greasy blue shirt rolling several large black

rings toward the far corner of the garage.

“You just have to be patient.”

“But I’m tired of being patient.”

Her attention span falters from a few years

of training mostly with commercial breaks

during early morning cartoons. “Why do they

have to get changed? Why can’t we just keep

the old ones and go home?”

“It’s like when you wear out your old

shoes and we have to buy you knew ones.” He

taps his fingers against her small feet and

smiles proudly. “The old ones are no good.

Everything needs changing sometime.”

“Well I don’t care.” She crosses her

arms in defiance and sits restlessly in her

chair with her legs tucked up underneath her.

“This is boring and I want to go

home.”

“Well here – listen.” He advocates a

second attempt for the success of Styrofoam.

“Listen to what?” Confused but inter-

ested, she takes the small cup from his out-

stretched hand and tries to decipher what

could be so fascinating.

“Here – like this.” With an encourag-

ing nod, he takes the cup from her tiny hand

and places it comfortably around her equally

tiny ear.

“What do you hear?” He watches pa-

tiently, hiding his smile to keep her curios-

ity.

She holds the cup evenly around her ear

and waits attentively, hoping for a hidden

music box or even a special radio inside.

“I can’t hear anything!” Frustrated,

she surrenders the cup to its former owner.

“Sure you can.” He devotedly convinces

her of her natural ability and offers the

necessary moral support. “Let me try. Maybe

it’s not working right.”

He places it confidently over his own

ear and fumbles with several imaginary fre-

quency knobs with his index finger on the

bottom of the cup.

“There, see!” He smiles and hands the

cup back to her while she watches intently in

deep admiration of his newfound technical

skills. “It works just fine.”

“Wait, what? It’s not doing any-

thing!” She grows increasingly frustrated

and looks at the bottom to determine if the

invisible switches and knobs need any further

adjusting.

He takes a moment to relate to her cu-

riosity. “Do you remember last year when we

visited the family and you got to see the

beach?

He recalls his sister’s black dress

and stuffing a ball of tissues in his pocket

Andrew Hincapie

while his mother huddles quietly with several

nameless mourners on a bench just outside a

tall stained glass door. His eyes follow the

black station wagon with the oversized back

hatch door as it leads a group of slow moving

vehicles around the front driveway and out of

sight. He pictures the bridge splitting in

half and raising up so the boats can pass

through on their way back to the harbor while

he finds a much needed retreat and a quick

opportunity to share the Atlantic Ocean. He

can smell the cool eastern breeze blowing

gently over the crashing waves while a noisy

seagull plants its feet firmly in the sand

next to his daughter’s bucket and shovel –

her first experience of real loss and she

didn’t even know to react, but then life is

always easier with your feet in the sand.

“I remember!” She yells proudly so

that everyone in the waiting room looks up

from their distractions. “We went to

Grandma’s house and I got to play in the

sand and we chased all those birds and then I

ran out into the water but it was too cold to

go in and the waves chased me back and I ran

back to you so they wouldn’t catch me and -

“Yes, exactly.” He laughs affection-

ately, relieved that she hadn’t saved a mem-

ory of all the watery eyes of the relatives

she had only met once telling her how closely

she resembles her Grandfather, even if he

wasn’t there to prove it to her.

“Well, do you remember what all those

waves sounded like?”

“Oh yes, I remember, I do.” She imi-

tates the explosions of a wave crashing in on

itself and pretends to scout a safe route

back to the top of the shore line like she

had done so many times before.

“Perfect.” He grabs her waist before

she can run out after a third invisible wave

and race the incoming tide of the muffled

waiting room. “That’s exactly right.”

Guilt flushes his skin red to match her

flailing curls as he recognizes that they

still haven’t been back since last winter.

He knows he should have made the trip down

much sooner and no amount of dedication can

make up for lost time, but an hour in the

cold sand was the first moment he realized

that she really would be just fine, and maybe

she wouldn’t need him as much as he knows he

needs her.

“Told you I remembered!” She yells out

excitedly, having all but forgotten about the

Styrofoam cup in her father’s lap.

“Now, listen,” He tries to calm her,

brushing a bright red curl away from her

eyes. He raises the cup gently back to her

waiting ear. “Try it again. What do you hear

this time?”

She takes the cup in her hand and holds

it firmly over her ear, confident in her fa-

ther’s instructions. She waits and impa-

tiently swings her feet under the chair, but

then a smile slowly stretches from the tip of

the cup all the way across her face and up to

her other ear.

“I hear it this time! I can hear it!”

She swings her legs back hard and kicks off

from the chair with the cup still pressed

firmly against the side of her head. Her left

foot pounds on the untied shoelace of her

right foot and sends her tumbling down toward

the still-wet linoleum floor where her col-

lapsing knee crushes the source of her ex-

Andrew Hincapie

citement.

“Oh, no! Are you alright?” He helps

her get back on her unreliable feet and

brushes another red curl out of her eyes.

A small tear builds in her eye and she

reluctantly hands back the destroyed cup

while wiping the remaining curls from her wet

eyes.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,” he

comforts her. “But what about those feet of

yours?” He sits her back down in her chair

and moves a white shoe string in each hand

while reciting a story about rabbit ears

looping around each other.

“But I did hear it this time, honest.”

She has more important things to worry about

than the safety of shoelaces. “I heard the

waves and the ocean just like at Grandma’s.

But I broke it!”

“Go look in there.” He points back to

the white tube attached to the water cooler.

“I bet you we can find another one just like

it.”

“But that one was special.” She holds

back a wave of tears and sniffles back to re-

ality. “Now we can’t hear the waves any-

more.”

He walks deliberately across the dried

up riverbank commissioned moments earlier and

reaches for the white tube on the side of the

water cooler. He locates a single lonely Sty-

rofoam cup tucked safely inside and he pulls

down slowly to reduce any possible cracking,

because after all, it is the very last one

and he must be careful with it.

“Ah, here we go.” He adjusts another

set of invisible buttons and dials on the

bottom of this new cup and signals its effec-

tiveness with a confident smile. “Try this

one. I think it’s working.”

“That’s just like the last one.” She

doesn’t let anything get past her. “It’s

just a trick, isn’t it? It’s not real.”

“You’re always too smart for me.” He

points affectionately at his own forehead and

hands her what might now be just another cup

from a waiting room water cooler. “Well, I

hear it anyway. We can just pretend it’s a

seashell and we’re visiting everyone and

we’re all playing at the beach.”

“I can hear it too, but I still wish we

had real seashells.” Her small hands barely

cover the Styrofoam surface as the familiar

muffled hum of the crowded waiting room flows

the welcoming coastline directly into her se-

lective memory. “When can we go there again?

It was so much fun and I miss Grandma and

everybody.”

She swings her legs back and jumps up

out of her chair again – both shoes tied

safely this time – with both of her hands

clasped tightly around her new treasure. Her

feet trace out the path of the water moving

across the shoreline and she runs back to the

safety of the chairs before the rumble of the

waves can catch up to her.

“Still didn’t get you, just like last

time.” He allows a heavy sigh behind his

soothing grin and kisses each one of her

hands held so tightly around her new discov-

ery. His eyes lower to the now dry linoleum

tile in front of the water cooler and he ap-

preciates how lucky she must feel to experi-

ence life so honestly with no concern of loss

or failure. But then it isn’t so easy as all

of that anyway, and there will always be cer-

Andrew Hincapie

tain experiences that no amount of prepara-

tion will resolve. She will rush head first

into every experience worth having, and some-

one has to teach her how to carry on. But she

still has her father’s present, and that’s

good enough for now.

An older couple near the waiting room

entry way finally stands up from their rest-

ing place and heads toward the front counter

where a voice behind the main desk drones

through a series of documents to sign and

technical terms to misunderstand. Everyone

has their backs to the wall with their eyes

pointed downward and their phones tied to

their ears. A student wrestles with a book

and some papers in the corner. No one else

speaks to each other or makes any sudden

movements, but like a parent visiting a pe-

diatrician for the first time, she won’t sit

still knowing that the car might be sick.

“So what’s wrong with those old tires?

Is the car broken?” She sits back down in

her chair and shows an impressive attention

to detail while expecting a better answer

than just shoes.

“I told you already.” He laughs again

and shakes his head. “The old ones are worn

out. We need new ones so it will run better,

that way we can make it home safe.”

“How much longer?” She does her best

to keep her one-track mind focused at all

times, despite the temporary distraction.

“See that man behind the desk in the

next room?” He points toward the older cou-

ple who still haven’t gotten their keys back

yet. “When he calls our name, the car will

be all ready to go.”

“Good.” She sighs and raises the cup

back to her ear. “Then can we get dinner

too?”

“Of course we can.” He offers a truce

and the distraction resumes.

“I want to go somewhere special.” Her

insistence impresses him. “Like on my birth-

day when I had the balloon and they gave us a

piece of cake with my name written on it.”

“But it’s not your birthday.” He

tilts his head slightly to the side and puts

his hand on her dropping shoulders.

“I know!” She protests the calendar

with a quick stomp of her toes. “Well,

when’s your birthday? Maybe they’ll let you

because we have to fix the car so they’ll

give us some extra help.” Her world falls

into order and everything makes perfect

sense. “And we can show them the ocean cup

you made for me so they’ll have to give us a

birthday dinner!”

“But that’s a present just for you.”

He gently taps his finger on the side of the

cup and the waves in her ear roar much louder

for a brief moment.

“I know, and I’ll take good care of

it, honest.” She smiles and rocks gently in

her chair.

“Make sure those shoes are tied so you

don’t fall down again.” He points down to

the bunny ears on her feet and smiles. “That

was the last one so we can’t make anymore.”

The older couple at the front counter

finally walks out the main door and the boom-

ing voice summons another blank face from the

waiting room.

“Why don’t you go see if it’s almost

ready?” He looks back through the window

from the waiting room into the garage and

Andrew Hincapie

catches the familiar greasy blue shirt rising

to his feet and handing a clipboard to some-

one near the front office.

“By myself?” Her bottom lip pushes out

just past the top and her eyes droop down

just enough to get a reaction.

“You’ll be fine, I promise.” He pic-

tures her carelessly playing in the sand and

offers himself to whoever in his head is lis-

tening so that she will never have to change

her shoe size and never cry over anything

worse than broken Styrofoam. But then he just

smiles and knows that she can handle the

challenge, so he pushes her forward as she

leans back on her heels.

“Don’t worry - you can see me from

there. I’ll watch you, honest.”

“Can you hold this for me?” She

stretches out her arms as far as she can

reach with her palms flat up and the seashell

cup rested perfectly on the edge of her fin-

gertips. “Don’t keep it, I’ll be right

back.”

“I don’t mind.” He offers a confused

grin. “You can take it with you if you

want.”

“No, can you hold it for when I get

back?” Her eyes spark genuine concern. “I

don’t want to lose it. And besides, I broke

the last one.”

“Good thinking.” He nods in agreement.

“Just planning ahead, huh? You sure you

still want to go check on the car? I can go

with you if you need.”

“No, I can do it.” She stretches up-

ward to look as tall as possible. “Just ask

the man sitting there if it’s ready yet?”

“Think you can handle that?” He raises

an eyebrow and puts his hand on her shoulder.

“I’ll be right back.”

After a quick look over her shoulder,

she darts full speed through the waiting room

door and weaves between several stacks of

tires and a pricing display board where she

jumps forward to a halt just in front of the

main counter. She stretches up on her toes

and pulls her fingers in along the edge of

the counter to raise her eye level just high

enough to see the familiar greasy blue shirt

signing a clipboard and pushing some buttons

on the desktop computer.

She looks back toward the waiting room

at the friendly bearded smile waiting eagerly

to hear the latest news, and they make eye

contact just long enough to help her build up

the confidence to turn back toward the

counter instead of rushing for the door. He

nods in approval as she runs out the door to-

ward life and responsibility, and although

she may rush head first toward a new chal-

lenge, she will always stop to put her sea-

shells aside – if only so her father’s pre-

sent won’t get crushed in all the excite-

ment.

Andrew Hincapie

Attention writers! Do you want to be published? Send your poems,

short stories, and short plays to [email protected]. Send

as much stuff as you want. No word limit on short stories or short

plays. Send your submissions by March 16th.

Attention artists! Do you want recognition for getting a work of art

published? We need artwork to decorate our pages. If you think

you have the chops, send in at most THREE pieces of your art that

you think can be well integrated into the layout of our magazine.

Cover-art submissions are not needed; we handle that ourselves.

Email your submissions to [email protected]. Send your

submissions by March 16th.

This product is copyright Ampersand Magazine. Do not use without permission from the editors.

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