Featured Work – Page 8 – Willow Springs Magazine

Two Poems by Annah Browning

Found in Willow Springs 77

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WITCH DOCTRINE

The old ones say to draw

your broom across

the step, then pull the latch.

On the snow's arrival,

witch doctrine says, you bring

the dogs in. No howlers

left alone. The gray muzzled

and the slow-cancered, their

heavy bellies wander home, and

the skinny ones, too, those

you feed dark blood of chickens-

a canine wine. But remember,

daughter: there are nights you'll have

to walk out alone. Know

there's nothing so bad about

a cold wind reaching

through your shirt to your

chest, the strong

contraction of your stomach-

it says, keep walking. A long

winter is ahead, and you'll study it

like a lover. You'll learn

its white sides and its gray

sides, you'll learn branches' pop

and crack, their glassy reflections.

And when one whips

your cheek like a hot blade, you'll

thank it. You'll take

another branch for the fire,

and you will make it.

DEAR GHOST

I am not good at telling
if you are real. Do me
the favor of existing,

please. Press your face
into the burn of the toast,
or clearly film the bathroom

mirror. I would love
to call you ghost, or house
mate, or even house-

is that you in the pipes,
whistle-buddy? I don't
know. I drink my coffee

black as hair. When I
come inside, I cradle
the newspaper like a child,

a gray baby full of new
bad words. Did I say it
out loud, this bit about

the eye cancer that buries
itself deep inside the rods
and cones? A color-

cancer. I think you like
things faded. I think you
love an oatmeal, a wet

sock, the salt line on
a boot. Where the world
licks us, passing by.

Three Poems by James Kimbrell

Found in Willow Springs 77

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FIRST PUBLICATION

I passed out in the barracks
after reading the letter. The ambulance
dropped me at Muse Manor.
I was the charge of one SGT Laughter.
I was all about the heart monitor,
until they shaved my balls. I called
Gordon Lish on a pay phone.
Thanks for taking the poems, I offered,
I'm in the hospital now. "Send us
some more," he said. I swooned.
Suffice it to say, this was a day of great
swooning. The doctor inquired
if I'd done any drugs. Sure, I said,
quick to add, but not since joining
the Army. I just got my first
poems picked up, I explained,
beaming. He returned with a cup,
commanded me to piss. And this
is what it's like to be famous,
I thought, and shrugged it off, and did
the rest of the week on light
duty, policing the barracks
for spent cartridges and comic strips.

APOCALYPTIC LULLABY

Walking across the snow
to the garage behind my house
in Mt. Vernon, Ohio,
crooked and cold garage
where I'd tinker
with this old pawn shop Stratocaster
deep in my post-divorce blues,
I did not expect
to open the door and find
a teenage couple going at it
like sheep in a prospect
of sun-dappled rye grass
between the mower and my erstwhile
weightlifting bench.
It was sweet how he draped
his stomach, his whole
torso over her back as if to shield
her, or himself, from my view.
What could I do? I said pardon.
I closed the door quietly
and walked toward
the house and tried not
to look out the kitchen window
like the envious creep
I didn't want to become,
the one who, it occurs
to me now, might have been trying
to tell me something true, ever
applicable: there's always porn.
Always memory. Always
a good reason to live alone,
to stand outside the radius
of love and witness
the goings-on of shoulders,
breasts, the inimitable
glory and mess of romance
and hair and the brackish
scent that, an hour
later, lingered there.
The world will never end.

ELEGY FOR MY MOTHER'S EX-BOYFRIEND

Let it be said
that Tim's year was divided
into two seasons: sneakers
and flip flops. Let us
remember that Tim
would sometimes throw a football
with all the requisite grip, angle
and spiral-talk. Let us recall
that for the sake of what was left
of appearances, my mother
never once let him sleep
in her bed; he snored all over
our dog-chewed couch, and in
the mornings when I tiptoed
past him on my way
to school, his jowls
fat as a catcher's mitt, I never cracked
an empty bottle across that space
where his front teeth
rotted out. Nor did I touch
a struck match to that mole
by his lip, whiskery dot that-he
believed-made him irresistible
to all love-lorn women.
Still, let us remember
sweetness: Tim lying face-down,
mom popping the zits
that dotted his broad, sun-spotted back,
which, though obviously
gross, gets the January photo
in my personal wall calendar
of what love should be,
if such a calendar
could still exist above my kitchen table
junked up with the heretos and
therefores from my
last divorce.
Let us not forget
how my mother would slip
into her red cocktail dress
and Tim would say,
"Your mother is beautiful,"
before getting up
to go dance with someone else.
In fairness, let me
confess that I pedaled
my ten-speed bike
across the Leaf River Bridge
all the way to Tim's
other woman's house
and laid with that woman's daughter
beside the moon-
cold weight
of the propane tank, dumb
with liquor, numb to
the fire ants that we spread
our blanket over until
I stopped for a second
and looked up
because I wondered if
her mother could hear us,
or if Tim might not
have stood in the kitchen,
maybe looked out
the window and saw
my white ass pumping
in the moonlight,
and whispered
to himself, "That's my boy."

“Open Your Windows in Welcome” by Paige Lewis

Found in Willow Springs 77

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August is split-shinned lurching
into your front yard. It laps
at the dog's water and leaves
a layer of slime that shines metallic
and you know the bowl will never
rinse right. It pushes mangled birds
and browning foxglove through
the mail slot. You don't need this.
You already learned the smells
of flowers through shower gels,
but the birds cave into you. How
careless were their mothers?
August comes in with the landlord,
who pushes the heaping mulch
from your doorway, surveys the black
spreading on your ceiling, and says,
There is mold in every home, what
makes yours worth crying about?

“Honeymoon Bandits” by Nick Fuller Googins

Found in Willow Springs 77

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THOSE OF US PRESENT at the first holdup in January couldn't let the fact be forgotten. Over coffee and donuts, at the barber shop, the nail salon, while watching our children's hockey games, we made tasteful mention of our good fortune. "Remember their jumpiness at the beginning? They seem much more relaxed now,” we told each other. And they did. The Honeymoon Bandits, after a half-dozen robberies, had come a long way. The boy's voice no longer cracked when he addressed us. The girl, who had once lingered by each bank's entrance, casting nervous glances at the street, now floated among us like the host of a holiday party. "Are you staying warm?" she'd ask. "The wind is biting. Any colder and it'd leave teeth marks."

We tittered from our crouched positions.

The girl had become a delightful conversationalist. While the boy conducted his business with the tellers, she smiled and inquired as to what we were reading. She preferred nonfiction, she told us, but wished to expand her horizons. She jotted down our recommendations, offered suggestions of her own. She was an independent young woman, sure of herself without the need for swagger or airs. We could only hope our own daughters would one day possess such poise.

Admittedly, their first robbery, in Woods Hole, had given us a scare. The boy, wearing a Lone Ranger mask, had cleared his throat in the bank's lobby. "Excuse me," he said, his voice catching, then reasserting. “Ladies and gentlemen? We'll only take a moment. But--I'm so sorry--this is a stickup."

We dropped to the floor. Some of us pressed our cheeks against the cool lobby tiles. Others began emptying pockets or purses. The lobby echoed with the clatter of cosmetic cases, keys, phones. A few of us whimpered. If our actions weren't heroic--none of us attempted to flee, capture video evidence, or call the police--it was because we wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. We'd seen enough movies to know that defiance led to hostage negotiations and shootouts. Noncooperation might mean being stuck in the bank for hours. Most of us were on lunch break: thirty-odd minutes to run errands, scarf something down, and clock back in at work. We thought of the apothecary, the grocery store, the post office, the things that had to be done before the kids needed to be picked up from basketball practice and the casserole had to go into the oven. We wanted to live, but we also wanted to get on with our afternoons.

The boy glanced at the entrance, where the girl was shifting from foot to foot, rolling and unrolling her sleeves. Her mask was bedazzled with black sequins and feathers, as though she'd just jumped off a Mardi Gras float. She motioned for him to hurry things along. He cleared his throat. "Dear people, your bank is insured by the full faith of the federal government. Your savings will be unaffected." He sounded like a child reciting lines in a school play. "We're sorry to inconvenience you," he said, "but we require these funds--not for ourselves, but for the environment."

The environment? Our confusion must have been audible.

"Global warming is destroying our planet," the boy stammered.

"Things may still seem fine for now, but the honeymoon's almost over--for all of us."

Timidly, we raised our hands. Were he and the girl going to buy a hybrid? Invest in solar energy?

The boy looked to the girl.

She mouthed the words: Baby, we gotta go.

''Apologies," he said, "but we don't have time to discuss details." He went to the teller's window and stuffed an empty plastic bag through the tray. Mrs. Mamont was on duty. "Sorry to bother you, ma'am--if you wouldn't mind, please give us the money."

The manager, crouched on the floor with us, sputtered. "Nancy, you will do no such thing." A corporate transfer from New York City, he had not won our approval. He snapped at Mrs. Mamont: "They aren't even armed." He looked at the boy. "You aren't, are you?"

The boy, wisely, didn't answer.

We shushed the manager and begged Mrs. Mamont to hand over the money. "Get them on their way,” we said, “before the police arrive. Things could get dangerous."

Mrs. Mamont began to weep. She'd worked as a teller since we were children, sneaking us lollipops when we got fidgety in line with our mothers. We reminded ourselves of her kindness, her advancing years. We tried to be patient.

The boy leaned closer to the window. "Ma'am, I didn't mean to upset you."

Mrs. Mamont sniffled. "I know," she said. "I can see you're a fine young man."

"So what's the problem?" we asked.

She fluttered her hands. "I'm a member of the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club. I contribute to Greenpeace." We snuck glances at each other, wondering where she was going. "I have five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, and another on the way. I want them to enjoy the dunes, the ocean, the piping plovers. We're all on this earth together."

We murmured in agreement, hoping our enthusiasm might encourage her to wrap it up.

"Young man," she continued, "what you two are doing is noble. But you're too late."

"I humbly disagree, ma'am. It's not too late if we all act now."

"I mean too late for you," Mrs. Mamont said. "The moment you spoke, I tripped the alarm. The police are on the way."

We groaned. Mrs. Mamont's crying again filled the lobby.

The girl abandoned her post by the entrance, skipped across the floor and squeezed her hands through the tray at the base of the teller window to grasp Mrs. Mamont’s fingertips.

"Ma'am, you were only doing your job," she said. "If everyone cared as much as you, we wouldn't need to rob banks. We'd all be outside, enjoying the world with those we love."

Mrs. Mamont patted the girl’s fingers. "Aren't you a dear." She smoothed her blouse, took a deep breath, and moved quickly from till to till, filling the plastic bag, then tied it with a bow and slung it over the security divider.

Sirens wailed in the distance. The girl and boy, holding hands, ran for the exit. At the doorway, they stopped. The girl rolled and unrolled her sleeves. "We're super sorry if we scared anyone."

The boy bounced the bag of cash against his thigh. “Like we said, the money isn't for us."

"Not a penny," the girl added.

The wail of the sirens grew sharper. We yelled for them to leave.

Then we stood, dusted ourselves off, and jockeyed for our former places in line.

THEY STRUCK AGAIN, later that week in Brewster, then again the day afterward, in Cotuit. We'd expected them to take the money and run. To Florida, most likely. Key West. Key Largo. One of the Keys. This was Cape Cod in late January, the heart of flu season, our days short and dark, holidays behind us, our registers empty of tourist dollars for many months to come. We dreamt of the Keys. Anything to help endure the Atlantic winds that raked our poor peninsula. The Honeymoon Bandits, bless them, had not abandoned us.

Once it became clear they weren't leaving, we took stock of their character. We compared eyewitness accounts, noticing that they dressed sensibly. Heavy flannel shirts, wool caps, mittens, boots: signs that they respected both the winter and themselves. The girl had an athletic build, as though she'd once enjoyed competitive swimming. She did not display any unnecessary skin. Nor did she seem to apply makeup (perhaps her mask provided all the concealer she needed). She wore her dark hair in two braids that fell over her shoulders. She did have a tattoo that peeked out whenever she rolled up her sleeves, but it was modest enough: a sprig of Qyeen Anne's lace tendriled around her forearm.

The boy, for his part, did not hang his trousers low, advertising his underpants to the world. He was lean, with lively blue eyes. Aside from his Lone Ranger mask and endearing manners, his chief accoutrement was his thickening facial hair. What had started as a roguish Clint Eastwood shadow became a Burt Reynolds mustache, then settled into a fisherman's beard, which--we agreed--was most appropriate given the weather.

The couple wore no jewelry, only matching loops of purple thread on their ring fingers. Recently married--we suspected--saving up for proper rings. Then we laughed, for if anyone could afford genuine wedding bands, it was our Honeymoon Bandits. Yet they kept their word, or at least maintained the appearance of doing so: despite their withdrawals, they wore no glittering rings or fur coats or any such extravagances, a testament to their thrift. We examined how we ourselves might cut back. We urged our husbands to repair broken chairs rather than hauling them to the dump. We asked our wives to rig their sewing machines and mend our torn jackets. We brain stormed new ways to chip away at our credit card payments and took up the old habit of clipping coupons, unable to fathom why we'd ever stopped.

THE HONEYMOON BANDITS, by choosing to operate on the Cape, had gravely limited their options. They were all but surrounded by ocean. Even with our secluded bogs and ponds, our wooded groves and empty summer cabins, they couldn't hide forever. The exact date of their capture became a matter of speculation, leading to the creation of a betting pool. Just as we enjoyed staking a five on the season's first snow, or the precise day the Bass River ice would break, we gambled on when exactly the Honeymoon Bandits' luck would expire.

The only reason they hadn't been caught already was because the federal authorities couldn't cover our entire peninsula alone; the handful of agents assigned to the robberies had to work in tandem with local police. As is often the case, the ranks of our lawmen were comprised mostly of our former troublemakers, those youngsters who--had they not been given a badge and gun--would've joined the military or gone to jail. Their understanding of law enforcement included issuing speeding tickets to out-of-staters, shooting the occasional rabid raccoon, and finding dead-end roads on which to park their cruisers and nap. Whatever edge the federal government brought, our boys effectively dulled. And once our kids started dressing like the Honeymoon Bandits, the authorities didn't stand a chance.

Bandits began popping up in our schools and sub shops, our pizza joints and cinemas. They could be seen purchasing chewing gum at the apothecary, skating on Bass River, waging snowball wars by the park gazebo. Our sons and daughters tore wanted posters from telephone poles and scotch taped them to their bedroom mirrors. None would leave the house without wearing a mask. We didn't complain. By impersonating the Honeymoon Bandits, our children not only shielded their faces from the cold, but also provided a welcome respite to February. We were tired of waking to icy floorboards and shoveling out the car, stepping over petrified mounds of sooty sidewalk snow. Now, we still had slush and gray skies to contend with, but also young Bandits horsing around on the corner, giving one another piggyback rides and dragging sleds behind them. In these moments, the sleety dregs of the low season didn't weigh as heavily.

Bandit fever made for quite a scene at a robbery in Chatham, when the Honeymoon Bandits barged in and found three smaller, fidgety versions of themselves in line, holding hands with their mothers. There was a tick of silence, then someone snickered and we erupted in laughter. The Honeymoon Bandits blushed beyond the edges of their masks. As the boy made his withdrawals, the girl tousled the hair of the nearest little Bandit. She high-fived another, and we noticed for the first time hashes of white scar tissue on her inner wrists. We tried not to stare. She wagged a finger at our children and, smiling, said, "Don't do anything except out of love."

"Absolutely!" we agreed. It might've been something off a refrigerator magnet, but coming from her, it didn't sound so tacky. It sounded like good advice.

Our teenage daughters began dying their hair dark and wearing Pocahontas braids. They stopped caking their faces in quite so much makeup, and, for the most part, ceased starving themselves. They asked permission to get Queen Anne's lace tattooed on their fore arms. When we said absolutely not, some resigned themselves to daily applications of the design in permanent marker, while others came home with arms red and swollen beneath layers of gauze. We were furious but anxious to prevent infection. We reminded them to wash frequently with antibacterial soap, to apply Vaseline and fresh bandages. Our sons could not resort to such extremes. The most they could do was grow their beards with vigor. Razors were left in bathroom vanities to rust.

Then came the rings of purple thread. Exasperated and embarrassed, our adolescent children shoved their hands in their pockets and answered us that no, the threads didn't mean they'd eloped with their boyfriends and girlfriends.

"Then what?"

They shrugged, staring into the reaches of our family dens. "Just means you, like, like each other and care about stuff or whatever."

"Oh!” we said. “You’re going steady!”

"Sure," they said. They bundled up in couples and headed into the snowy woods to "search for the Honeymoon Bandits." We were nervous, but happy. Our children were growing up. They’d gotten off their phones and computers at last; they were experiencing life beyond the screen, making memories. The kind of memories the Honeymoon Bandits had begun awakening in us.

It had to do with the playful glances they flashed each other in our bank lobbies. The way they held hands at every quick escape. Their glow. They reminded us of being young, each new day rolling out with more anticipation than the last--the joy of working together toward something new and exciting. We tingled with that old hunger. Some of us discreetly acquired masks, his and hers. Our husbands and wives were pleasantly surprised; they'd been stirring with memories of similar intensity and breadth.

BANDIT FEVER PEAKED in mid-February when they struck in Hyannis and then three days later in Wellfleet. The Honeymoon Bandits--we realized--were robbing only the branches of the national chains, leaving our community-owned banks and credit unions untouched. We saw the pattern and cheered, for whom among us did not have a cousin who'd lost a home to foreclosure? An elderly neighbor whose meager retirement income had been halved? These gigantic financial institutions had wormed their way into our towns, earned our trust, then pulled out the rug and turned a tidy profit. As we limped through another low season, waiting until the summer tourists needed us to take them fishing, cater their garden parties, serve them lobster rolls, those bankers were in the Caribbean, yachting from St. Something to St. Something Else. Talk about criminal. Why weren't the authorities chasing them? We were not a spiteful people. We wouldn't publicly judge, or jeer, or cast stones. At the same time, if someone else was going to cast the stones, we could find it in us to look the other way.

Some of us felt the itch to do more. Ken Dorsett hung a banner in the apothecary window: 10% off throat lozenges if you "Like" the Honeymoon Bandits. Sully's garage sold bumper stickers: I Brake for Bandits. Mrs. Mamont abruptly retired, ordered a pallet of custom-made T-shirts (I'd Rather be Banking with Bandits) and distributed them freely. Purple ribbons appeared around telephone poles and street signs. We called off the betting pool, donated the money to the local food pantry. We wondered what more we could do to show our appreciation. Some of us offered to bake casseroles. Casseroles or cake.

"Casseroles," the Bandits decided, after consulting briefly in the corner of a bank in Mashpee. "We're not big on sweets."

Of course they weren't. We were on the lobby floor, assuming our usual prone positions.

"But--" The boy glanced at the girl.

"What?" we said. "You'd prefer lasagna? We can do lasagna."

He waved us off." Casserole sounds delicious."

The girl shifted the sack of money from hip to hip. "Baby, tell them," she said.

"Tell us what?"

"It's nothing," he said.

The girl smiled wickedly. "Oh, it's something."

"What?" We were dying to know.

"He's vegan," she said. "He's vegan and he's embarrassed to--"

The boy interrupted. "It's not a judgment on anyone. It's just what I do. I can pick around the dairy."

The girl winked at us and mouthed the words: No he can't.

We went home, searched for recipes online. Seitan? Arrowroot? Nutritional yeast? These vegan casseroles, we realized, were going to be a headache. Then we remembered what must’ve been a bigger headache: running about as fugitives in the brutal winter. Where were the Honeymoon Bandits sleeping? How did they get around, stay fed, keep warm? Nobody knew. But did the Bandits complain? They did not complain, at least not on the job. On the job they acted as though they were enjoying themselves. And if they could do that, we could learn our way around a vegan casserole.

The casseroles emerged from our ovens looking better than expected. Then the obvious problem arose: not only would we have to guess where the Honeymoon Bandits would strike next, we would have to be there with our casseroles, which--ideally--would be warm. It was ludicrous. We set our tables and fed our families. The casseroles were a hit. Our children dug in, served themselves seconds, and elicited promises that we'd soon bake these dishes again.

SENTIMENTS SHIFTED in late February after the first of the "eco-attacks" up north, beginning with a string of SUV dealerships in Vermont. The cable networks broadcasted footage of burning vehicles. No one had claimed responsibility. Pundits spouted theories ranging from disgruntled employees to renegade environmentalists, the most absurd of which involved the Honeymoon Bandits. We scoffed. The Honeymoon Bandits cracked jokes and high-fived our kids. They said "Ma'am," held hands, apologized for every conceivable slight. They bundled up responsibly for the winter and kicked the snow off their boots before entering our banks. They did nothing except out of love; they'd said those very words! Plus, they worked here on Cape Cod. How could they be in two places at once?

Next went an oil pipeline in Maine, a bigger job, requiring know how. Know-how and funding. The pundits wouldn't give up. They suggested the Honeymoon Bandits were financing the attacks. This time we weren't so quick to scoff. The allegation, although still preposterous, did reintroduce an awkward question: what were the Honeymoon Bandits doing with the thousands they’d robbed from our banks? Combating global warming, they claimed, but they'd offered no proof, no details, no receipts.

To be sure, nobody was saying they were involved. At the same time, our car bumpers began sporting gummy patches of adhesive where they'd once expressed an enthusiasm to Brake for Bandits. Purple ribbons weren't replaced quite so quickly when the wind tore them from telephone poles. Forgotten scraps of color fluttered down our streets.

The following week, a dozen hydraulic fracking rigs went down across eastern Pennsylvania. With them went Ken Dorsett's banner from the apothecary window, and--at our insistence--the wanted posters from our children's bedroom mirrors. Mrs. Mamont alone continued wearing her Bandits T-shirt. Our young children no longer played outside in masks. We forbade it. Our adolescent sons and daughters were more difficult. Despite our warnings, they persisted in wandering into the woods with their purple threads and vegan casserole leftovers. They were past the age where we could force them to obey us. When begging failed, we offered our car keys, suggested they go to the movies. They declined.

Some of us attempted to lighten the mood by poking fun at how easily we allowed the media to scare us, the eight million ways we would inevitably find to overreact. After all, not a shred of evidence existed that the Honeymoon Bandits were involved. The problem, of course, was that not a shred of evidence existed that they weren't.

All that connected the Bandits to the eco-attacks were their impassioned pleas regarding the environment, which we'd taken to heart. We hadn't needed convincing; anyone could tell things were changing. We saw it in our dwindling dunes. The nor'easters, worse each year. The Atlantic cod that no longer swelled our nets. Overfishing, they told us, but after decades of regulation had grounded our trawlers, why hadn't our cod returned? Where were the stripers? The littlenecks? Something needed to be done. We did what we could: we recycled; we turned off the lights; we didn't leave our engines idling. The Honeymoon Bandits cared for the environment; so did we. But caring for the environment did not include the violent destruction of property. If there was a chance the Honeymoon Bandits were indeed funding the eco-attacks, we could no longer extend our hands or vegan casseroles in support. Could we?

Our adolescent sons and daughters thought we could, and absolutely should. The eco-attacks weren't harming anyone, they pointed out, only striking back against the machinery devastating the planet--not so different from robbing the banks that had swindled us and ruined the economy.

We shook our heads. "It's different."

"How is it different?"

"It just is. What kind of world would this be if everyone ran around blowing things up? Disagreements must be worked out, discussed--"

Our children cut us off. Tears formed in their eyes. "You don't understand--we're running out of time!"

What we understood was that our sons and daughters had adopted not only the fashions and tastes of the Honeymoon Bandits, but their convictions and anxieties as well.

We tried to remain calm. Over emergency cups of coffee at the Variety Store, frantic fly-by chats in line at the post office, we reminded one another that the Honeymoon Bandits were good mannered, possessing a strong sense of environmental stewardship and civic duty. Weren't any of these characteristics more than we'd come to expect from the athletes and pop stars our children had worshipped in the past? Compared to what our kids used to worry us with--drugs, drunken driving, pregnancy, leaving the house without a jacket--a vibrant concern for the environment was an unquestionable improvement. Empathy and compassion were the utmost signs of emotional maturity. What parent wouldn't encourage such healthy adolescent development?

Growing up, we'd been taught to expect the simple and straight forward: marriage, kids, a decent job, a small boat with a dependable outboard motor. A night game at Fenway each summer. This much we understood and worked for, and it rarely came easily, but it was enough. We wondered about growing up now, witnessing things slipping backward instead of moving forward. Adolescence seemed darker today, the jobs fewer, the stakes higher. How else to explain the devastating ways our children found to abuse themselves--our sons and daughters who'd run away, developed addictions, cut their wrists? Some had scars like the girl. Others had gone deeper, never given themselves the chance to heal. How would we have turned out, without the expectation of a better tomorrow? We loved our children. We wanted them to care, we did. We just didn't want them to care too much.

THEN WENT A COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT in New Hampshire. What the media had been calling "eco-attacks," the government now declared terrorism. Overnight, the handful of federal agents assigned to the bank robberies became a small army. Some believed this proved the Honeymoon Bandits' involvement. Others believed it proved the authorities' desperation. Black SUVs prowled our streets. Helicopters chopped our skies. Beefy men sporting crewcuts and bulletproof vests occupied our diner booths and barstools, our motel rooms and parking spots. If they hadn't tipped so generously, we would've called our town selectmen to complain.

With the authorities came the news crews. They unpacked their cameras and filmed our banks. They filmed the authorities. They filmed the authorities filming our banks. They tried to film us, a privilege usually bestowed only upon visiting summer luminaries. We declined. We weren't people to cavort for cameras. Only Mrs. Mamont agreed to an interview. She appeared on the evening news, wearing her Bandits T-shirt. The correspondent asked if she believed the fugitive couple was involved in eco-terrorism.

"You mean that bit of mischief up north?" Her eyes glittered. "Hard saying, not knowing."

A week passed with no action. The news crews drove north to Provincetown where they could enjoy the restaurants, art galleries, and nightlife while waiting for something to happen. Another slow week passed, then another. A month. The Honeymoon Bandits had either escaped or retired. The tabloids ran the obvious headline: "Is the Honeymoon Over?"

Everything the boy and girl had stirred up began to settle. The authorities geared down, deploying their resources elsewhere. Soon they'd be gone. We hoped our children's global-warming anxieties would disappear with them. Then we could all focus on work and school and church and surviving another winter. We breathed a sigh of relief. But we didn't feel relieved. Some things, once stirred, don't settle. The Honeymoon Bandits lingered. And then they popped up again in Provincetown for their biggest heist yet.

THREE BANKS IN THIRTY MINUTES.

We heard the news and flocked to the nearest television. Nobody imagined they'd be so bold, least of all the authorities. Provincetown, at the tip of the Cape, had been left more or less unguarded. The authorities, recognizing their mistake, immediately closed Route 6, the only way out of P-Town. Police cars, black SUVs, and news vehicles clogged the narrow road, sirens blaring as they raced north.

The cable networks broadcast live from Provincetown. A news caster reported from a helicopter. Cameras captured the Honeymoon Bandits sliding down sidewalks. The sky was snowing heavily. Through the flakes we caught glimpses of their masks, the girl's braids. Plastic bags, ripe with cash, swung from mittened hands. They made tracks in the snow, trails of footprints that pinballed between gray shingled buildings. They paused beneath an awning to change direction, doubling back, trying to shake the helicopter. There was something disturbing in their scrambling, a franticness that seemed unlike them. The Honeymoon Bandits were scared.

Those of us watching from the comfort of our family dens brought our knees to our chests and huddled into the deepest recesses of our sofas. Those of us watching from work chewed nervously on the strings of our aprons and the knuckles of our work gloves. We'd applauded the Bandits, coddled and adored them, and then turned our backs. Perhaps they had funded the eco-attacks. Or perhaps they'd paid off their student loans, or sent money to their families. The only ones who could say what they'd done with their loot were the Honeymoon Bandits themselves, who were now seeking shelter by a shuttered ice cream stand, looking small and alone.

They hid beneath the stand's overhanging roof, momentarily disappearing from view. Then came a new, louder throbbing. The news cameras panned upward. A black helicopter swooped in from the south, rotors thudding through the falling snow.

"Here comes the cavalry!" the newscaster shouted, a little too excited for our liking.

The Honeymoon Bandits poked their heads from beneath the overhang. They caught sight of the chopper and we could practically see them deflate. What they didn't know was that five miles south, on slippery Route 6, a pileup had brought the caravan of law enforcement and news vans to a standstill.

The newsfeed aired shots of crumpled fenders and spinning tires. Sprinkles of tinted windshield glass dotted the snowy pavement. Local police and federal authorities were standing around chewing each other out while waiting for tow trucks. We couldn't help but notice that, of the many injured vehicles blocking the road, those at the head of the accident were all black SUVs with government plates. Out-of-towners always took one good bang-up to understand that winter driving isn't something to be taken lightly, much less learned on the fly.

Coverage flashed back to Provincetown.

"They're making a run for it!" the newscaster yelled. "This is it, folks! Their last stand!"

We'd had enough of his tone. We muted our televisions and watched in silence as the Honeymoon Bandits ran east, then cut south along the beach. Their tracks, straight and purposeful, headed toward the Provincetown pier.

Had this been July instead of February, the pier would've bristled with yachts, speedboats, ferries--plenty of options for escape. The Honeymoon Bandits found only a rusty fishing trawler. The boat listed as they jumped aboard and rummaged about. Whatever they were looking for--keys, a sympathetic fisherman--wasn't there. They climbed out of the boat. The girl took the boy's hand. They glanced at the helicopters, exchanged a few words, and walked to the end of the pier.

The news helicopter maneuvered for a close-up as the boy wrapped his arm around the girl. The force of the rotors churned the water. The fishing trawler pitched against its moorings. The girl brushed the snow from the boy's shoulder and rested her head, and as they gazed out across the harbor, we saw beyond their masks and bags of cash. We saw them not as fugitives, but as a loving couple enjoying a moment of bliss, happily weary at the end of a satisfying day.

The black helicopter veered over the harbor and landed on the beach. A door slid open. Three agents in tactical gear hopped out and ran for the pier. We leapt forward and screamed at our televisions, employing an intensity usually reserved only for when the Sox are down in the ninth and in genuine need of our help. Only, this was no game. We yelled louder, knowing the Honeymoon Bandits couldn't hear us, knowing we were too late.

The boy nudged the girl and pointed to the horizon. The girl blinked through the falling snow. She mouthed the words: Baby, oh my God.

The camera swept around, bringing into focus an advancing flotilla, dozens of dinghies, Boston Whalers, and aluminum-hulled fishing boats. They were our boats. And captaining them were our teenage sons and daughters.

We staggered from our televisions. When had our boats--pulled up for the winter--slid back into the water? We were confused. And angry. We would ground our children, take away their phones, revoke their driving and internet privileges, send them to military academies, Catholic schools. But above all, we were scared. Our children skipped across the cold ocean, and we were helpless to do anything but watch. They stood tall, leaning into the wind and slanting snow. They'd crowded the small boats, riding five or six to each. Our sons had grown their beards. Our daughters had braided their hair. All wore masks. They pulled up to the pier and the Honeymoon Bandits tumbled into their waiting arms. The government agents pivoted and sprinted back for their helicopter. At the same time, reinforcements finally arrived. SUVs and cruisers tore toward the water.

Our children pushed off the pier and raced from the harbor. They zigzagged through the waves, spun their boats in tight donuts, curled around and slapped the wake. The air misted and foamed. The news camera attempted to keep the real Honeymoon Bandits in sight, but it was like trying to following the queen of hearts in a game of three-card monte. We couldn't tell our own sons and daughters apart. We recalled their many trips into the snowy woods. All those portions of leftover vegan casserole. The purple threads. They were all Honeymoon Bandits now.

In the open waters of Cape Cod Bay, the boats clustered together. We worried something was wrong. Someone was hurt. They’d run out of gas. Our outboard motors--while dependable--had been pushed too hard.

The boats bobbed, gently bumping against one another. The falling snow melted into the waves. Our children looked up. Their breath steamed the air. Snowflakes gathered on our sons' bearded faces and clung to the feathered carnival masks of our daughters. Our children waved to the cameras. We waved back. Those were our kids down there, our boys and girls. There would soon be consequences, of course--grave consequences--but for now, as each boat pulled away on a separate bearing, we felt something other than anger or fear. Our children had performed better than we could've hoped or expected. Better than we ever had. Much better. We'd never been so proud.

“Schematic” by Genevieve Plunkett

Found in Willow Springs 77

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THE INSIDE OF TOBY'S HEAD was lined with plaid and could be packed like a suitcase. It reminded Toby of the pattern inside Doug's hunting jacket, which Doug had grown too big for and given to Sammy. That was the second thing Toby put inside his suitcase head--the jacket that had been Doug's. The first thing was this: Before Gram there had been Mom.

"You're the youngest," Gram liked to say. "The last of us to see it."

Sometimes, when he and Gram were alone, she’d ask him to try to remember. "Think, Toby," she'd say, "to back before they put you in your mama's belly."

Toby would search the soft plaid of his mind, pushing past the hunting jacket, past Doug's old truck sprouting weeds in the front yard, past the names of planets and teachers at school. If he did this long enough, he'd see a Christmas tree, covered in silver hair, rising in a dark room. He, or someone like him, would reach out to touch it and a hand would come down hard on his head. The house with the Christmas tree was different than the house where he lived with Gram and his brothers--the color of the wood was different; there was the stuffy feeling of things having been the same forever--so he guessed it must be the place Gram was talking about.

"Was it beautiful?" Gram wanted to know, her eyes shaking with little dots. Toby could see the tree, filling all the space in his vision, nightmarishly tall.

"Yes," he said, and she would breathe out, shuddering. "That's heaven, Toby."

WHEN THE MACHINE SHOWED UP, Gram was already gone. She'd died in the early morning, hours before Sammy got there to help her down the stairs. It was Sammy's job to help her from the chair to her bed at night and from her bed back to her chair in the morning. It was Toby's job to open the door for the church woman, who came on Tuesday afternoons to help Gram in the bath. After Gram fell asleep, back in her chair, the church woman would give Toby a loaf of bread and a jug of milk to take to the kitchen. As she was leaving, she would sometimes look down at Toby and say, "Next time I'll bring you something special." Toby would look at the church woman's bag when she came around again, but it was never more than the loaf of bread and jug of milk. Doug could suck down half a jug like that just walking through the door after work.

It was Doug's job to make sure a flashlight turned on when he touched it to a battery. A long line of flashlights came at him all day on a belt, flashing once then moving on. He said that at night, when he got home, he could still see the lights, turning on and off, which might have been why he couldn't stay away from the machine.

IT WAS A BIG BOAT OF A THING, propped up on four wooden legs, with an upright box at the head, like a tombstone. On its face was an image of a buffalo, running from a slew of arrows, one already pinned to a red blot in its hide. Behind the arrows rode three naked men on horses, with long, flying braids and big white smiles, pitched forward in cartoon ecstasy.

"Where did you come from?" Doug's voice was greasy and older than it had ever been.

Toby had just come down the basement stairs. He'd been about to ask Doug why Sammy wasn't home yet, but got distracted by the smiles on the faces of the naked men shooting arrows. They must have been painted on a pane of glass, because their faces would suddenly light up from behind, making those smiles even brighter.

Doug stood at the end of the machine, fingering a plunger with a metallic ball. He snapped it back and the machine erupted into musical bells and loud pops. Toby watched Doug's long middle finger work a button at the side, holding it down, then tapping it furiously. There was a drop, a repetitive pinging of mechanical spinning numbers, and Doug brought his fist down and ran his pelvis into the end of the machine.

"Go to the hiding place and get me my cigarettes, Toby."

Doug and Sammy kept a store of bottles and magazines in the toolshed, under a bale of hay. Gram would be upset if she knew Doug was smoking in the house, but Toby supposed it must not matter now that she was dead, even if it had only been since that morning. Still, he thought it was important to remember that Gram wouldn't like it, and to feel sorry inside--a thing to keep.

Outside, Toby looked away from the windshield of the crumpled truck, afraid of seeing a reflection, or worse: the empty spots where the glass was cracked. It was dusk and the corn was roaring. Some people might think of corn as quiet, like a vegetable patch or a hay field, but Toby knew that when the stalks were tall, they could crash together, louder than your voice if you ever got lost out there.

Sammy's bike was not propped in its usual spot against the porch railing. He must have been burying Gram, like he'd buried their dog, Little Man, after he died from eating rat poison. Toby didn't consider how Gram would have fit on the bicycle or whether there would be a funeral. That morning, he'd heard Sammy saying she'd been dead most of the night and that Toby couldn't miss any more school. Toby walked to meet the bus, wondering why Gram had spent the night dead rather than asleep, if she was going to spend it in bed anyway. At school, he assumed the teachers knew everything, that every grownup must know, so he hadn't said a word about Gram being gone.

Now, it was almost night. In the toolshed, Toby saw the cat that liked to sit on the hay. He would have liked to make friends with that cat, but Little Man hated cats, which made Toby feel bad about being nice to one. Once, Little Man had jumped out a two-story window to chase a kitten in the corn. Toby liked to tell that story, about his dog flying through the air. When he told it, he saw it from below, looking up at the dog’s spotted belly, even though he'd been the one to open the upstairs window. That was another secret tucked in his head--not the window part, but the part about remembering something from a different pair of eyes.

The toolshed smelled like cat piss and putrid straw. The cat made a harsh, vibrating sound, then disappeared into a black corner. Toby felt around in the space below the hay for the carton of cigarettes. He wanted to hurry back and take a better look at that machine. Its being there hadn't settled with him, how it could just appear like that, with all those parts springing into action without so much as a sputter.

Toby liked when you could see the start of something all the way to the end. Gram had made wreaths to sell at the church fair every year. They weren't the kind you'd get at Christmas; these were made from bits of old clothes and ribbon and sometimes gold wire, or something special, like a charm in the shape of a horse. Toby liked to watch the wreaths grow under her hands, because he knew what to expect from the first knot to the end. Gram's old hands would claw up and down, braiding and pulling, like crows building a nest. Toby would watch her hands so he wouldn't have to see the dark windows of the living room that looked back at him with his own face.

Gram had meant for the wreaths to be sold as decorations for the home-some were pink and green for Easter, or soft and blue for a baby's room--but she found that most people liked to use them for graves, or markers on the side of the road. Toby’s bus passed one every day, right around where Autumn Tracy was dropped off. It was pink and red--the red coming from one of Toby's old shirts--with a big bow that always looked crumpled and wet. A girl who had been in Doug's class died when her truck had hit a tree. Doug said her body flew from the driver's seat twenty feet into the cow pasture and that, by the time the fire department showed up, the cows had licked off all her clothes. Doug was always telling that story, like it meant something important. Toby wondered why the wreath had been nailed to the tree and not put twenty feet into the cow pasture, but no one ever answered that question, so he'd focus on the red shirt. It had been his Christmas shirt, with a snowman on the front.

"There was a cat,” Toby said when he handed the cigarettes to his brother. Doug pulled one with his teeth, grimacing. His face was red and orange in the glow of the machine, which flashed like a fire truck without sirens.

"You know about Gram?" Doug asked with the cigarette still on his bottom lip. Toby nodded, looking at the smiling men with the flashing teeth. He wondered how Doug had gotten something as big and loud as that down into the cellar without anyone noticing. Toby had an uncomfortable feeling, like he was seeing someone's insides, open and aglow and full of strange pumping and flexing.

"Sammy took a job at the Hathaways' for a few days," Doug said. "When he gets back, tell him he'd better strip that bed down."

Sammy was always taking jobs at the Hathaways', or farther down the road--for Mr.Delaney when it was haying season. Mr. and Mrs. Hathaway liked Sammy, liked him so much, he bragged, that when he turned ten, Mr. Hathaway taught him how to drive the tractor, so he wouldn't have to push a wheelbarrow anymore. Some days, when the work was slow, Mrs. Hathaway would even call him in sick for school. Gram would never do a thing like that.

Doug jammed his hip into the machine and the bells started. His fingers twitched over the buttons and smoke came trailing out his nose, like he was connected to a big engine.

Toby found a bag of chips in the kitchen and took them upstairs to his room where there was a TV. He turned it on so he wouldn't have to hear the popping bells and Doug's swearing downstairs. He turned the sound up so he wouldn't have to feel the door to Gram's room, which he hadn't had the courage to close.

IN THE MORNING, the TV was showing a commercial for a breakfast--making machine that could pop out scrambled eggs, or little, perfectly round pancakes. Toby looked at it a long time, wondering how long he'd been awake and why everyone in the commercial was shouting. There was something about their beaming faces that made him uneasy, so he turned the switch and went looking for Sammy, to get ready for school. He remembered the machine halfway down the stairs, the same time as he heard the bells and the ching-chings from below the floorboards.

Doug was always at the factory this time in the morning, unless it was Saturday, which in that case meant no school. If Sammy was at the Hathaways', then Gram would be waiting in bed for her orange juice. Toby went to the fridge and found the bottle. He shook it and poured it into one of Gram's plastic cups with the built-in straw. Even as he was walking back upstairs with the juice in his hand, he knew what he was doing must be wrong. But he decided it was just a game, something to be carried out from beginning to end. He went into Gram's room, stood by the bed, and poured the juice onto the pillow. Back downstairs, Doug was tearing up the kitchen, drawers hanging open, papers and bits of mail scattered everywhere, Doug swinging around like a scarecrow in high winds. He stopped moving when he caught Toby standing in the doorway. He blinked his slow, red eyes.

"What happened to school?" he said. The sun was coming through the window, hard. Toby saw the patterns of dust and fingerprints along the countertops, something that must have always been there, hiding from sight.

"I thought we could make pancakes," Toby said, not knowing why he was saying it. "I thought we could make them really round this time."

Doug's voice was like a drain clogged with hair, getting ready to burble something foul.

"Get your ass to school," he said, and Toby didn't wait another second. He ran past the truck and down the driveway, straight down the road-not so much from Doug, but from the machine. There was no way Doug could build a thing like that, and he'd need a truck to move it to the house. Toby remembered the night Doug rolled home with the truck all smashed up. Gram had been madder than ever.

"I want you to look at my face, Douglas!" she yelled. "I want you to see me when I say I will be dead before this family can afford a new truck."

And now she was and there was no new truck, just that colorful, flashing mess in the basement. It must have been there always, Toby decided, waiting for someone to turn it on.

Toby meant to take the road down to the Hathaways' farm. They had big horses there with feathery legs that turned to icicles in the winter. Sometimes, when school was closed, Sammy would take Toby with him, letting him break the ice on the water troughs with a hammer. But when he came to the fork, Toby found himself walking his bus route instead, unable to deviate from the course he was used to taking day after day.

He made it to the shoulder of the highway before he heard the slow crunch of a car pulling up behind him, then quick footsteps over gravel.

"What on earth brought you out here?" A gloved hand grabbed his shoulder and he was strapped quickly into the front seat of the church woman's station wagon, a photo album wedged under his bottom. The woman got behind the wheel and struggled with a pile of keys in her lap, shaking her head. Her lips peeled back over her teeth in a way that made Toby think she was looking to bite someone. She was muttering.

"No coat," she said to her lap, then turned the key in the ignition. She was wearing a purple windbreaker zipped halfway over a sweater with an embroidered turkey on the front. Toby noticed his fingers were red and stiff. The vents blew lukewarm air at him.

"I'm sorry to hear about your grandma," the church woman said. "But it is always best to go before winter hits, if you can."

The back seat of the station wagon was stacked with paper towels, bags of dog food, plastic grocery bags bulging with scarves and mittens. The woman's hand came down on his knee.

"She’s in heaven now," she said.

Toby pictured the big tree, covered in silver hair, taking up all his vision. The hand coming down from nowhere. He rubbed his forehead as if he'd been struck, and wondered where there was room for Gram in that heaven, if maybe she'd have to find herself another one. As they pulled away from the curb, the woman asked questions about school, about Toby's mother. It had been a long time since Toby had seen his mom. He tried to keep her face packed safely away, but whenever he looked for it, he could only come up with the face of Ms. Stevens, his teacher from last year. He thought about sleeping and dreaming and being dead--how, if you couldn't do all three at once, maybe you could do two. Which two, then? He rearranged the possibilities in his head until everything felt pushed around.

Toby woke in his driveway, the car idling, but the church woman was no longer behind the wheel. The station wagon was parked close to Doug's old truck and Toby could just see the rim of the truck's window. Something solid seemed to roll over inside, and Toby covered his eyes with his hands. The vents blew hot air, rough against his face. When he opened his fingers, the church woman was coming down the porch steps, showing her teeth, like she was going to nip. Doug was in the doorway, smoking and waving angrily. He was holding some sheets of paper in one hand and he stopped waving to look at them as soon as the woman was off his porch.

Toby's door swung open and he slid off the photo album, into the cold. He watched the church woman's station wagon nudge back, then creep forward to turn around before creaking away. Toby felt as though he'd been gone all day. His stomach growled, and something meowed inside the old truck. The screen door of the house bounced and when Toby looked back, Doug was gone.

THAT WAS WHEN the boy showed up on Sammy's bike. Toby thought it was Sammy at first, but Sammy had reddish hair and a white line under his chin from when he cut himself jumping off the statue in front of their school. This boy had brown hair, no scar, and a tooth missing at the bottom, just like Toby. The boy jumped off the bike, letting it drop at the side of the house, then walked up the porch steps and caught the bouncing door in his hand. He was wearing Sammy's hunting jacket--the one that used to be Doug's. Just in case it really was Sammy, Toby started asking him about Gram and what about something to eat. But the boy who looked like Toby didn't say anything. He just went inside.

When Toby got to the cellar, the boy was already there with Doug. They were sitting on an old mattress that had been dragged close to the machine, which was still blinking silently. Doug showed the boy something on the piece of paper, his voice soft, patient, like Toby remembered from a long time ago. He wondered if Doug was sleeping down there now.

"Here's where the trouble is," Doug said, pointing to the paper. "The ball hits the spinner and the wrong lights light up." The Toby on the mattress paid close attention to whatever was on the paper and the Toby standing at the bottom of the stairs was looking at him. He couldn't explain what was happening, only that Gram was gone and if she could just leave like that, then maybe people could also just show up, like the boy in Sammy's coat. That coat was supposed to be his when Sammy grew out of it, but maybe who the coat belonged to was just one of those slight differences, like whether you're asleep and dead, or just asleep.

Doug handed the piece of paper to the boy and went to the machine, pulling back the trigger and ramming his hip into the corner. The machine flashed and popped. It seemed much louder than the night before. Doug's face swam in the orange and red lights.

"See? The wrong fucking lights. On and off. All over the field."

A white smile sprung up under his nose, like the smiling men chasing the buffalo. It reminded Toby of a dog that couldn't properly close its mouth.

Toby went to his room and turned on the TV. He watched it until the room grew dark and the 5:30 news came on. He could never follow the words spoken on the news, the way each sentence rolled into the next, like waves that never broke. Toby had a box of Gram's fruit candies and chewed in a daze, until he heard footsteps in the hall. It was the boy in Sammy's jacket. He came into the room and sat on the floor facing Toby, breathing softly through his mouth.

"It's called a scheme-attic,” he said, sliding over the piece of paper. It looked like a tangle of black lines and circles, with numbers scattered around, like an impossible connect-the-dots puzzle.

The other Toby closed his mouth in a sly grin and said: "I took it from him." He grabbed the paper back and left the room. Toby went to the window, pushing his face to the glass so that his own reflection would not be in the way. He saw the boy cross the front yard to Doug's truck, pull open the driver's door with some difficulty, then climb inside. The truck door closed and Toby had a dark feeling in his chest, like something had crawled in there and turned to stone.

THE CHURCH WOMAN was there the next morning clunking her shoes around downstairs. Toby found her running water over a heap of dirty dishes in the sink. There was a long gurgle that seemed to reach somewhere deep into the house. The woman looked up and wrinkled her nose at Toby, tightening her lips, but then seemed to remember something pleasant and her face changed. She turned off the water and the two of them stood hearing the faint pinging of the machine below.

"Good morning, Toby," the woman finally said, smiling. Her eyes fell onto the boots on his feet, which he'd slept in.

"Why don't you find your coat? I have something special for you in the car."

Toby couldn't think of what to say. Hadn't that boy taken his coat?

Or was the coat still Sammy's?

The woman took his hand and began walking. They made it to the front porch and Toby saw the station wagon parked next to the old truck, just like it had been the day before. Her grip tightened and he was suddenly afraid; what if the boy was still in there? What if he was asleep, or watching from the window? Toby could not decide which would be worse. The other Toby shouldn't be there. Not in Doug's truck. Not with Sammy's jacket. Toby pulled his hand away, scratching his palm on the woman's ring. A wind started to blow and the corn jumped in waves, making a coarse sound. He stepped down from the porch and heard the woman say his name in a low, warning tone, as if she knew what he was thinking. He tried another step forward, almost surprised at the working of his own free will, and he ran.

Toby could feel the other Toby watching, sitting cold behind the wheel of the truck. He could see himself, through the eyes of the other Toby, disappearing into the corn, followed by the church woman who lunged repeatedly at the hood of his sweater, like it was a trailing dog leash. It was easy for him to run through the straight rows of corn, dodging into another row whenever he felt the church woman getting close. But after some time, he slowed and realized that the sound he was running from was not the woman's breath, or the swish of her windbreaker, but the stalks crashing together around him. He stood still for a long time, unable to think of what to do, like an animal lingering in an open trap, suspicious of its freedom.

He'd been lost in the corn before, times when he'd gone in after Sammy, trying not to be seen, but also trying not to lose sight of his brother. One time, Toby followed Sammy and watched him sit on the damp, clay-like dirt. Watched him take from his pocket a book of matches, strike them, one after another, until all the matches were burned. Sammy had left the little black points in the dirt, but put the empty book back in his jacket, the jacket Toby now wondered if he'd ever get.

Two Poems by Brandi Nicole Martin

Found in Willow Springs 78

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FOR THEN THE EYES OF THE BLIND SHALL BE OPENED TO TODD

Todd on the front porch. Todd

in the side yard of ecstasy and earth.

Todd walking our beagle-named Ray.

Todd in new boots, in patches of grass

in a waltz of fog on the same path that tornado

tore beside our one bedroom house, house

of broken blinds, of doors that won't latch,

roof made of tin-tornado from when

Halloween night fell from the sky

in South Mississippi and left us

reeling hymns in the bathtub till morning,

mildew, mattress, iron and rust.

Todd in the long, undefiled light of morning

blue slippers which didn't fit,

which he gifted to me, and our 70 dollar ceramic heater

which was carefully researched for efficiency

to avoid tempting dust motes from the air.

Todd on the couch we bought from Goodwill.

Todd reading Yahoo for football news.

Todd pissed off about a fumble,

chugging 8 Coors the night before

before chucking a half empty can

at a speaker by the big screen.

The elegiac curve of Todd's lips in steam.

Todd singing Elvis in the shower. The kitten licking

Todd's knees, beads of water and soap, knees

which to this day won’t heal right.

Todd's father who used to have a temper,

who lashed out in a game of Monopoly

in a childlike rage in a rickety house in Georgia

where Todd asked if we could live together.

Todd in a horse-drawn carriage, Todd

in a haunted square in Savannah

where Spanish moss won't grow anymore,

where the bodies of infants were burned

and their mothers wept and my own mother

thinks our marriage might never happen.

Todd's shoulders slackening while he reads

Faulkner by the window, surrounded

by his animals, his fingers tapping the sill.

The skill of Todd's hands. What they ask of my body.

Todd waiting while I grind the coffee,

Todd claiming I never do the dishes,

wishing I'd be more social, less negative,

Todd spreading apple butter over

every cracker in my life, coddling me

for each bruise I acquire, lifting my wrists,

and turning them toward the light.

THEY WRITE DIED AT THE SCENE

not charred alive some holiday night,

not stuck in the car while flames reached

the peak of the pine trees. Todd

saw it first, but we might've passed

the fire by. Todd loves his mother,

told her all about my mother,

her turkey and gravy, all things

beautifully dull. Todd didn't want

to be the guy who didn't pull over.

Todd ran through the reeds--

Brandi Nicole, wait far me--to help

other men drag bodies from the pyre,

that mass of melted tire and metal.

I waited years ago-my own body

singed in a ditch, wet grass, smell

of my leg, my contused brain,

collapsing over and over until

the ambulance came, and I still don't know

what I didn't know then-why men run,

how one girl can plunge through glass

while another's left to burn.

In school, we measured our words,

each syllable a chorus of force and lyric.

That single beat, the weight of Todd's name

I stress even now. They never got all three

people out. We later made it home,

and I tell you, there will always be patterns,

rhythm, some strong motion

at the edge of this world. I will always

smell smoke in the air. Todd, forever

sleeping next to me. Thorns from the side

of the highway still caught in our jeans.

“Dear Mistress” by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum

Found in Willow Springs 78

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DEAR MISTRESS,

You are the cancer in my family's gut, our bleeding ulcer, a bile we cannot swallow.

THIS IS THE LETTER I write you about my father's infidelity and my mother's rage.

Dr. R, who last week suggested I try writing myself "letters of positivity," frowns when he sees I've written to you instead. "Your anger is justified, Elisabeth," Dr. R says. "But we cannot let our anger own us. The Buddhist thinker Thich Nhat Hanh says that anger is like a knot. We can't untangle it until we recognize it, smile at it, treat it with tenderness. Can you do that, Elisabeth?" Behind his wide desk, Dr. R folds his hands and fixes his eyes on me. It's some thing he does--a therapist trick for breaking you down, like some sort of superhero death glare. I think it's starting to piss him off that this has no effect on me.

I refuse to blink until he does. "Sure," I say.

He stares. I stare back. The clock on his office wall sounds like tiny knuckles cracking one by one by one.

"Good," he says, shifting in his seat. "Okay then. Why don't you try something else for me this week? A simple spoken affirmation every day to reset your focus?" He stands and raises his hands to the ceiling, closes his eyes. "Today I choose acceptance," he says. He brings his arms down and crosses them over his own chest, a "you-hug," he tells me, and smiles. It's awkward to watch--like seeing my mother try on a bathing suit--and I have to look away.

"I'm not doing that," I say.

"Not now, but try it later." He sighs, my cue that our time is up. At the office door he nods to my parents, who are sitting on opposite sides of the narrow lobby, my mother reading a paperback, my father editing his latest script. At the sight of Dr. R my father curls the script into a tight tube he tucks into the back pocket of his jeans.

"How's she doing?" he asks.

"Remember what we talked about, Elisabeth," Dr. R says. "I'll see you all next week." He disappears behind his office door, and from her corner my mother smirks over the top of her book.

Dr. R meets with the three of us for one hour jointly, followed by a half hour each individually every Friday evening. That's two-and a-half hours a week, for six weeks now, which means we've spent a total of nine hundred minutes in counseling. Nine hundred minutes, Mistress, just to get over my father's love for you, to resuscitate some thing we didn't know we had until you took it from us. Honestly, though, I'm beginning to think we're hoping for the impossible.

"Well, that was bullshit," I say to my parents as we walk out side. It's 5:30 and the light is going that fragile blue you get right before dusk. It's the color I see behind my eyes when I close them at night--a blue that could be violet in another minute, and pitch black the minute after that. It's the color of the dyed tap water my father says is filling the DeDanvilles' luxury indoor swimming pool on his show; and also of an ocean when seen from an airplane window like the one I wish I were looking out of now, far from my fucked-up parents and this fucked-up night and every other night like it until we reach what Dr. R calls "the lasting acceptance."

"Language, Elisabeth," my mother says, but she says it bored.

"She's allowed to express her thoughts just like anyone else." My father's voice is liquid patience. Since you, Mistress, he's been taking this tone with us--my mother and me--as if we are both small children, or maybe mental patients. As if we are his anger and he is treating us with tenderness. He reaches for my hand, but I slip past him and let him walk across the parking lot toward our car, while I lag and scuff the toes of my shoes against the pavement.

"Pick up your feet, honey," my father says, looking back, and when I don't, he turns to my mother. "Can you back me up on this?"

She shrugs. "Why don't you try using a 'feeling statement.' Why don't you try saying, 'Elisabeth, honey, when you drag the toes of those hundred-dollar tennis shoes, I feel you wasting my money."'

My father does the thing where he sighs and closes his eyes.

The only other car in the lot is Dr. R's convertible, a car that has the look of a wet seal--quick and slippery, but too fishy to be truly mammalian. I touch my palm to the window, Mistress, so that my five fingerprints appear in one long smudge on the glass, and my mother raises an eyebrow. "Don't scratch it," she says to me. "We're paying for that thing." When we get across the lot, my father has our car running. She climbs into the passenger seat, settles her bag in her lap. "Get buckled," she tells me over her shoulder. "Your father's buying dinner."

He toggles between radio stations for a moment before settling on NPR and swiveling to look at me. "What do my ladies feel like eating tonight?"

"Whatever,"I say.

“Your heart,” my mother says.

We pull out of the parking lot just as the first yodel of La Traviata trips from the speakers.

DEAR MISTRESS,

Today I am choosing denial.

DURING ONE OF OUR FAMILY COUNSELING SESSIONS my father let slip that what first drew him to you is your devotion to books. She's a bibliophile, my father said, as if that explained it all, never mind that you're twenty-nine and beautiful and an actress. You're a bibliophile. When he said it I thought of a tack, the sound of the word like the knobby head and silver prick of the pushpins my English teacher uses on the corkboard at school. Bibliophile, and I saw the triangle of your face bent close to the thick crease of an opened book, Mistress, your black hair fallen forward over your shoulders. Your pink tongue slipped from between your made-up lips to lick the tip of your finger just before you turn a page.

When he told us about you, I started watching the show. I had watched it now and then in the past when my father wrote a big scene, say, like the one in which Lauraline Estaban fell down the stairs after she told Stefan DeDanville he was the father of her children. They were writing her character off the show, so the fall had to break her neck. Getting a death scene is like getting a promotion for a soap writer, so it was a big deal for my father. He made pop corn and let me stay home from school on a "personal day." We sat on the couch, my feet in his lap and the bowl of popcorn between us, and because we were recording it, after Lauraline fell the first time we switched to the tape and watched her fall again, watched Cassady Walker discover her mother's broken body at the base of the stairs again. And again. My dad mouthed the words he had written as they came out of Cassady's mouth onscreen: Mother! Darling, sweetheart, wait! It was a Flannery O'Connor reference, he said, but probably he and I were the only Valley Heights viewers who would catch that. He winked at me like it--intelligence, I guess--was our secret, and I slapped him a silent air-five with my palm. Until you, Mistress, I'd never seen the show without my father sitting beside me.

Here on the West Coast, the show airs weekdays at 11 a.m., right after The 700 Club and just before the better soaps--the ones my father calls "the legacies"--but it replays on SOAPnet at 11 p.m. every night. I've moved the old TV into my room. I keep it in my closet, the cord stretched beneath the closed door so I can watch you there in my private darkness, knees tucked to my chest and your voice lifting from the mini-speakers to smother itself in the long sleeves of sweaters and the cuffs of my jeans. I've watched so many episodes now that the rooms of the DeDanville family estate are as familiar to me as my own house--that grand entryway with the black-and-white tile floor and the telephone table by the front door; the living room with the overstuffed satin striped couch that Virgintine DeDanville fainted on when Stefan told her he was actually her brother; the mantel where Aubrey DeDanville hung poor baby Ivy's tiny Christmas stocking the week my father told us you weren't just some distraction, but that he was actually in love with you.

After I shut off the TV and climb into bed, I see you walking those rooms behind my closed eyes. You pausing at the foot of the generous staircase, your head cocked like a pet pony's for the sound of Stefan's footsteps on the marble. You with your hand on the front doorknob, your dark eyes narrowed in anticipation of an uninvited guest. You doubled in the guest room mirror, a look of strained remorse on your face just after you've stolen Carmina DeDanville's treasured brooch.

If I could record the shows, I would run you backwards across the room, Mistress, away from the mirror, your remorse returning itself in reverse to whatever came before the theft--selfishness, or jealousy, or loneliness, or despair. I still don't know. Motivation, my father calls it--the push that drives a character toward her choice and the viewer toward revelation. If I could, I would walk you back and forth across the plush carpeting of Carmina DeDanville's en suite all night long just to see the bloom of your remorse wither backwards into what, Mistress? I want to understand.

DEAR MISTRESS,

If I learn to smile at my anger, will my parents learn to treat each other with tenderness again?

WHEN MY FATHER RAISES the issue of the upcoming Valley Heights cast party during our next session, I suggest myself as the solution. This after forty-five minutes of my parents bickering about my father's obligation to be present at said party, and my mother's absolute fucking unwillingness to ever be in the same room as that whore. She says the last word in two syllables, drawing it out like a hair that's coiled itself at the back of her tongue and must be carefully expelled if she's going to keep from gagging on it. Whoo-her. I can't take it anymore.

"I'll go," I say, and all three adults look at me like I've proposed throwing myself into a pit of snakes. Maybe I have, but it's too late to take it back.

"I'd love for you to go," my father says. He puts his arm around my shoulder, smiles at me.

Dr. R makes a throat-clearing sound. "I wonder about that," he says. "What would be the outcome for each of you if you take Elisabeth?" He's doing his best Thich Nhat Hanh now, and he gestures toward me with the pen he keeps tucked between two fingers. Pointing the pen while he reflects on our troubles is one of his things. Like the death glare and the couch--symbols of credibility. When he really gets going he tends to sweep it through the air, wand style. God, my mother said after our first session. It's like being counseled by Harry Potter.

She turns on me now and raises both eyebrows in a question. "Don't you think thirteen is a little young for a cast party?" When I say nothing, she looks at my father. "Are you seriously considering this?"

"She wants to go," he says. "You heard her. She wants to go, don't you, Elisabeth?"

My mother shakes her head. "I can't believe you two." She faces Dr. R. "I'm the bad guy, you see? He lets her protect him."

"That's not it," I say.

"What is it then, Elisabeth?" my mother says. She looks as if she might be sick, as if she might cry. "What is it, then? You tell me."

But what can I tell her, really? That she's right--I do want to protect my father? I want to tell her that I've got this now--I'll protect him and her and all of us from this mess she and my father have made of our family. I want to tell her she can trust me. I'll figure out a way to fix everything. I'll go to the party, and I'll remind my father why he should stay with us, and I'll handle it. I can be trusted. I'm not really a child anymore. I can be adult about this. But what does that even mean anymore--to be adult?

"God,"I say. "Whatever. It was just an offer.”

"And not a bad one," my father says. "I appreciate your compassion, Elisabeth."

"Fine." My mother throws up her hands, dismissing us both. "I hope you two have a great time."

"Why don't we all put a pin in this for a few days and see how it feels," Dr. R says.

"At least I won't have to hire a sitter," my mother adds. The crack I heard in her tone earlier has turned hard and cutting.

"A sitter?" I say.

"For your father, dear."

A look of exasperation crosses Dr. R's face, and I wonder again how different we are from the other families he sees. Are they nicer than us? Easier to cure? Happier, underneath all their anger? I imagine another family, our double in looks but our opposite in manners, standing at the door. Dr. R shakes the father's hand as they leave. The daughter says thank you, and the mother smiles politely as they turn the corner of the lobby. They are not broody or cruel to each other. The father doesn't cry behind his office door in the mornings. The mother doesn't ask the daughter why her husband has stopped loving her. Why she can't seem to stop loving him in return. These doubles are good guests in the doctor's pretend living room for their 150 minutes a week. If half of all families break up, they will be the other half--the half that stays together.

FOUR DAYS LATER the school secretary calls my name over the PA system during fifth period. The rest of the class watches as I stuff my pre-algebra book into my backpack. No one ever gets called out of class for good news.

All the way down the hall I think, This is it: they've come to tell me he's leaving. They've come to tell me she's kicking him out. I picture myself across the kitchen table from my parents, a sleeve of Oreos on a plate between us and a big glass of milk in front of me. It's the setup they arranged when they told me about sex, so it fits that they'd stage a reenactment to tell me about divorce.

But when I get to the office, it's just my mother waiting, her work clothes still on and her staff bag with the public library logo slung over her shoulder. "I'm working on administrative stuff from home for the rest of the day," she says. "But first I thought we'd find you a dress for your father's obligation."

''I'm not sure I want to go anymore," I say.

"Oh, you're going." She signs me out and starts ahead of me through the school's double security doors.

Outside it's bright and springtime warm, though it's only just the end of January. The rest of the world is still iced over with what is probably a respectable winter. A better winter than the sort of cowardly season we get in California, where even the weather is a cheat. I tip my face to the sun. "I won't have a good time," I say, and my mother laughs.

"It's not about having a good time," she says. "No one's having a good time."

"Mom." I stop walking, and she turns to look back at me." I said I don’t want to go."

My mother motions to me and waits while I trudge toward her. "Hey," she says when I reach her. "Hey." She says it softly as I lean into her. She kisses the top of my head, her palm cool on my cheek. "It'll be fine. We'll get you a new dress--an expensive one--and then at least you'll look like you're having fun." She puts her arm around me, and we walk together to the car.

At the food court she lets me get a Mountain Dew and a box of churros. I eat as we walk the length of the mall, licking the sugar crystals from my fingers. My mother pauses at one kiosk and then another. She buys herself a pair of earrings and then a scarf and then a box of six perfect chocolates, which she has gift wrapped, though we unlace the ribbon and dig into the box as soon as we're beyond the clerk's line of sight.

At the bookstore she lets me pick a paperback. While I'm making up my mind, I see her slide a copy of People from the metal magazine rack and my stomach seizes. She's seen you on the glossy cover, I think, your face beneath the words "Daytime's Hottest Stars Confess," and now we'll have to leave, the afternoon interrupted, soiled by your unwanted presence, just like the rest of our lives. But when she slips the magazine back in the rack and turns to me, she's still smiling, and it occurs to me like a slap in the face, like the glorious and unforgiving beam of a stage light: you're not the sort of star who makes the magazines. Not yet. You're just a bit part--a hired girl, a climber--and for a moment I get the total pleasure of shrinking you down to size.

The thing is, Mistress, it's been difficult to maintain perspective. You've become the star of our family. Bigger than life. Truer the more I imagine you. After my father told us about you, it was as if you had moved in with us. You were there in the empty fourth seat at our table. You were the darkness I used to be afraid of behind the basement door. I could hear you moving through our house at night, peering in on us as we slept, a sour but shared dream, a ghost looking for a body to borrow.

Sitting in my closet late at night, I watched the real you--the pretend-real you--living your other life in the DeDanville estate, and I compared myself to you. I am a bibliophile, I thought. I am the sort of person who would take a brooch from a drawer and hold it in my hands just to feel its weight, and then find it a day later, still there in my pocket, accidentally stolen. Or, maybe, on-purpose stolen. Some times it's hard to tell. The lines between fact and fear, between real and dreamed, between you and me are getting harder to see, Mistress, and there have been times when I've thought it was my body you decided to borrow, my story my father has written you into.

But now, in the mall with my mother, I see that it's her you've got--or maybe also her--and that since my father brought you home she's been wearing you like a mask, her forehead always fretted, her mouth so often sewn narrow around a feeling I cannot name. Is it fear, or loneliness, or desperation? I don't know. I look at her as we turn into Nordstrom, as we ride the escalator to the top floor where the really pricey stuff is hung like museum pieces--one dress to a rack. I look at her as she fingers the hot pink tulle on a skirt, the crust of sparkling sequins on a bodice. I look at my mother as she stands next to me in the fitting room mirror, my face and hers side-by-side, so alike. I look at my mother, and I want to undo you, Mistress. I look at my mother. I look at my mother, Mistress, and I want to understand what's gone wrong.

"What do you think?" my mother asks, spinning me around, tugging the zipper on a blue velvet sheath. "You like this one? You think this could be it?" She frowns, and I search her reflection for what it is that's changed in her. "Yes," she says. "We'll get this. You'll feel good in this."

"Okay,” I tell her. “This one’s fine.”

My mother puts the dress on the credit card, squeezes my elbow as the clerk boxes it, the tissue paper crinkling flat like the leaves of an old book going closed as she brings down the cardboard lid.

On the freeway home, I catch her profile in the driver's seat, and a word comes to me, sharp and silver as a hot pin skewering the tip of my tongue. "I feel so disillusioned," I say aloud.

"What?" my mother says. She turns down the radio volume. "Did you say you're disappointed? Why didn't you tell me that before we bought it?"

"No," I say. "The dress is fine."

She shakes her head. “Fuck," she whispers under her breath. "Elisabeth, I'm doing the best I can here, you know? I really am."

"Don't swear at me," I say. "You never used to swear."

For a minute I think she'll cry, but she doesn't, and that's the end of our conversation. She puts in a Heart CD and Ann Wilson's voice rips out of the speakers the rest of the way home.

I look out the window and think about what Dr. R said about lasting acceptance. About anger as a knot, about a knot as just another puzzle to solve, about acceptance as the lasting resolution. That's just more crap. Acceptance isn't resolution. Acceptance is recognizing you can't change anything. Acceptance is being too tired to do anything but give up.

DEAR MISTRESS,

I'm so tired. So tired of us all.

WE SKIP OUR FRIDAY SESSION, and on Saturday my parents tell me they've decided to stop seeing Dr. R.

"It's not working," my mother says.

My father pulls one of his sighs. "I wouldn't say that. It's just--" We're eating a brunch of scrambled eggs and frozen waffles, and he pauses with the syrup bottle still poised above his plate. "We're cycling. Your mother doesn't feel we're moving forward."

"So you're getting divorced," I say.

"Oh, I'm not divorcing him," my mother says. "I’m not letting him off that easy."

"So you're not getting divorced."

My father looks between us, pity on his face. To me, he says, "I know you want a guarantee, but adult life isn't as clear-cut as childhood." He reaches across the table to take my hand--an apology--but I pull away. "We love you," he tells me. "No matter what, we love you." His voice is round and low and lumpy. I know I've hurt him in not saying that I forgive him. I know my silence is killing him.

Darling, I think, and I see Cassady Walker standing over the horrible angles of her mother's body at the foot of the DeDanville staircase. Darling. Sweetheart. No. In my head, the words take the shape of smoke rings, rise, and evaporate. For a second I think I'll throw up. I push my plate away, lean back in my seat. I've brought my new book to the table, and I pull it onto my lap and turn the pages quickly, not really looking at what's printed on them.

"We love you, Elisabeth," my father says again, insistent. He is crying now; I don't have to look up to know it. The sound of his cry is choked, restrained, worse to hear than any good thing he's said about you, Mistress, or any hard thing he's said about my mother. Worse than knowing he isn't happy in his life with us, and that he doesn't know what would make him happy, and that his unhappiness is probably just his puzzle to solve--a puzzle for which he will never have a lasting resolution.

"Here we go," my mother says.

"Stop it," I tell her.

"Don't be rude to your mother."

"Oh, that's rich," my mother says. "You giving her advice on good behavior."

"Beatrice--" my father says, but I interrupt him.

"This is such shit!" I yell. "This is supposed to be brunch!" I close my book and slap it on the table.

"You think I'd have chosen this?" my mother asks. "You think this is the way I thought life would go?"

"You're allowed to be angry," my father says, and I'm not sure if he's talking to her or to me.

"Yes!" my mother shouts. "Let's all be angry!"

I get up.

"Elisabeth," my father says. "Elisabeth, we're still a family."

I hear him, but I am already gone, taking the stairs two at a time.

I watch myself open the door to my closet. I watch myself drag out the dress box. I am out of my body. I am rage.

Under the petals of tissue paper, the dress is folded in a perfect square. I take it in my hands. Its fabric is smooth and soft and fragile. It is the blue of an empty sky. The blue of a glacier. It rips like a dream. I split it at its zipper first, then tear the lining from the bodice, the slip from the skirt. I pop each tiny knot of blue thread, break each precise stitch. Finally, I roll it all into itself again, a tumble of velvet and satin and tissue paper, and I step into the hallway and throw the whole mess down the stairs for my parents to step over whenever they care to get up and find me.

THE NEXT WEEK, during my last private half-hour session, I repeat the fight to Dr. R. I tell him I ruined the dress and it felt good to ruin it. I tell him that neither of my parents has said a word to me about it, though the fabric and the paper and the box all disappeared. I tell him I expected more from them.

"Can I ask what you wanted them to say?" My parents fired him during our family hour, so I know we're both just going through the motions one last time here.

Still, this is the question I've been asking myself, Mistress. I think the answer should be that I want them to say we've all screwed up. We've all made some mistakes and poor choices, but it's okay. It's not too late to rewind. I should want them to say we can still cut you from our lives, edit you out of the story of our family. Wouldn't that be the best answer?

What comes to me instead, though, is the memory of my parents' voices sifting into my bedroom through the air vents early in the morning. I wake and hear them downstairs doing their morning things--making coffee and running through their schedules--their voices recognizable but indistinct. Knots of sound I can't untangle into real words. I've been waking up this way my whole life, Mistress, and it used to be comforting--a reverse lullaby--rocking me gently into the day. But now I don't know. All these years I've imagined them happy downstairs, but how do I know what they were before you, really? How do I know that what I think I saw was real? What if I rewind and replay, and all I get is regret run a new way? At some point doesn't it all converge? Is this making sense, Mistress? Do you understand what I'm trying to say here? Anger isn't a knot. Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh has never been mad enough to know this, but it's the truth. Knots have beginnings and ends. You see what I'm saying, Mistress? Knots can be safely handled. They can be reasoned loose and stripped to single fibers, single seams. Anger is nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. Anger is an electrical fire or a lightning storm. Have you ever seen those pictures of California wildfires, Mistress? That's anger. A whole dry hillside of people's houses--dry for a long time before the spark--lit and blazing like a goddamned bonfire. And, sure, maybe you can put it out, after a while. Maybe. And maybe you can even accept the damage eventually. But accepting the ash doesn't make your house whole again, does it, Mistress?

It doesn't bring back what's already been burned.

"Elisabeth?" Dr. R says after several minutes of silence.

"I want them to be quiet," I tell him. "I just want them to stop fighting and shut up."

THAT NIGHT, once my parents have shut off the lights in their bedroom, I crawl into my closet and turn on the TV. I need to see you, Mistress, and there you are. I've come to appreciate your reliability, if nothing else.

In this episode you're outside--or you're supposed to seem to be outside--on the grounds of the DeDanville estate. For a few minutes I watch on mute, and it isn't until Stefan appears at the garden wall that I realize I've read this episode as a script; my father wrote it months ago, before he fell in love with you, or before he knew he was in love, anyway. At least before he told us. You and Stefan are going to walk to the gazebo, where you will fight, and after he stalks off across the lawn, you're going to have a short gazebo scene all to yourself, like Liesl von Trapp, but since this is a soap opera, you'll talk to the air for a while, and eventually you'll cry. My father debated about the crying. He doesn't like to make anyone cry. On the page it's too hard to pull off--too sentimental to seem genuine. And in real life it's too genuine to be sentimental. But he wrote you this crying scene anyway, maybe because he knew you'd be beautiful there on the artificial lawn, the stage lights set to evening blue.

I watch you cry on mute. You put your face in your hands, and your shoulders tremble. Behind you, at a distance, the DeDanville mansion is large and lit white against the deepening darkness, and though I know it's just an illusion, that you're actually on a set and what I'm looking at is a backdrop, on my TV your world looks impossibly real.

I know your lines well enough to know what's coming next, but when you raise your head and speak, I don't turn up the volume. Instead, I revise my father's dialogue and speak new words for you--the ones I wish you’d say, or--if not you--someone. "I’m sorry,” I say in a whisper. Your mouth moves in only slight misalignment with mine. "I'm sorry," I repeat, louder now. The camera is close enough that I can see the line the makeup artist has drawn just above your actual top lip. "I'm so very sorry, Elisabeth."

I make you say it again, dear Mistress. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry--the words unwinding from my mouth and yours together at once. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I make us say it to each other again and again, even after it's all just indistinguishable sound.

“My Father’s Recitation” by Steve Coughlin

Found in Willow Springs 78

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MY FATHER RAN THROUGH my mother’s heart attack. He ran through the afternoon my sister was hit by a car, through the ice storm that knocked down our backyard fence. During the Blizzard of '78 my father stood on the porch and ran in place for eighty-five minutes. During the Blizzard of '91, instead of leaving work while the roads were passable, my father ran up and down eight flights of stairs. He spent the night at the factory on a concrete floor. The morning my older brother's unconscious body was found, skull bashed in, drug deal gone wrong, my father ran to his beat-up Mercury from his quarter-inch gear machine where he made miniature gears for boat engines. His brain ran so loud he could almost drown out the doctor's voice. "One, two, three," my father kept repeating. His watch counted each second. His note books, his volumes of notebooks, recorded the distance of each run, the weather and location. My mother, her skin a colorless white, knocked on the bedroom wall, kept calling his name, but my father, clinging to his numbers, was running loops around the high school track. He bought a new wristwatch, another pair of sneakers.

He ran with swollen knees, walked like a zombie into the living room unable to bend his legs. He ran through alcohol addiction, through depression so heavy a short run was the only reason to get out of bed. Past Stop signs, past Yield signs, past Do Not Enter signs. Drivers flipped him off after slamming their brakes. "One, two, three," my father explained. Was it the day of an election, the Challenger explosion? The Thursday my brother was expelled from school for lighting a fire behind the gym? My father's notebook observes, "6.9 miles/ Mostly cloudy/ Iced knees thirty minutes." Monday I delivered newspapers. Tuesday I delivered newspapers. I pedaled my bike and tried to join his recitation: "One, two, three." In twelfth grade I averaged seven-minute miles. I kneeled on one leg and vomited onto the sidewalk. I curled into a ball and waited for the shaking to stop. Never a discussion of shallow breathing, my mother's chest tight as a fist. Never a follow-up appointment with the doctor. Just my father running through the cemetery, past the polished granite of his son's stone. His numbers keeping pace with each long stride.

“Vaya con Huevos” by Robert Lopez

Found in Willow Springs 58

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Two despicables in conversation.

Tempers flare.

I'm the one under the oil painting. The oil painting is mounted on a wall too unblemished for its own good. I want to say this wall reminds me of something but it doesn't. I've never seen anything like this wall.

This evening I will endeavor to put my head through it.

We are two in a room with six others. I don't know the six others but the despicable next to me is friendly with one of them, I think. They kissed each other on the cheek earlier. Perhaps she is the despicable's sister. They look like each other in the way women with legs and feet can sometimes look like each other.

The room has walls and windows and paintings and furniture and I'm sweating and mopping my brow with a handkerchief.

There's nothing sexier than a pregnant woman I say to the despicable, which gets us started. She is the one next to me under the oil painting. The woman that looks like her, that might well be her sister, is on the other side of the room looking at another painting. The despicable uses her tongue to clean her teeth and exercises her eyes back and forth in their sockets. This is the kind of woman my mother warned me against. My mother would sit me down and tell me to keep away from the eye rollers and teeth cleaners. This despicable examines each painting like she is an expert but I don't think she is. Most experts tell you they're experts and this despicable hasn't said anything about herself. She puts her face close to the painting and I'm not sure but I think she is trying to smell what the painting smells like. Oil on wood is what we're told but I don't believe a word from their mouths and neither does she.

Neither of us has been in this house before, knows where there's a bathroom or feels comfortable enough to open the refrigerator and take something out of it. I am not even that comfortable in my own house, which is why I'm losing weight probably. I'm down eleven pounds and can fit into pants I should've thrown away years ago. I hide the weight loss well due to the way I carry myself. I don't know how this is exactly but it's the only explanation. The same people see me every day and no one's said anything.

I don't like it, this house, this room, these people, and neither does the despicable next to me. There is a ceiling fan slowly oscillating like it's running out of gas, like it's about to fall down and die in the middle of everything. The blades resemble battle-worn sabers covered with nicks, markings and bloodstains. Like Indian artifacts someone dug up in Illinois under a mound of dirt. Everyone here looks like this ceiling fan. When I say everyone here I include myself, the despicable, and the six people paired off and spread across this big room. I think this house and ceiling fan belong to two of them but I'm not sure which two.

There are abstract paintings hanging on every wall. There is no way to describe the paintings other than to say they belong on these walls and no place else. Everyone is walking around the room to look at them. We know to move to the next painting when our replacements come to look at the painting we've been looking at. This takes two minutes, roughly. I pretend to look at the paintings the same as everyone else. To really sell it I squint my eyes, furrow my brow, and tilt my head. I saw an artist look at paintings once and have never forgotten how to mimic it. I forget where I was when I saw the artist look at paintings. I don't think it was someone's house but I could be wrong about that. I try to keep out of houses that have paintings hanging on the walls.

When the people talk they whisper instead of talk. It makes me think someone is sleeping, a child perhaps. Adults are always motivated to keep a sleeping child asleep. In this way I can be considered an adult. Whenever I am around a child I do my best not to disturb its sleeping. If a child is awake I excuse myself and go straight home. Some people find this odd but to me it makes sense. I have nothing to say to children and find their company tedious. I don't think there are any children in this house. Still I can hear the whisperers. I hear two of them say the house is two hundred years old and something about negative space.

I don't know who painted these paintings. Some painters sign their paintings or initial them but the painter who painted these did no such thing. You can't blame him or her. I wouldn't be surprised if there were numbers underneath the oils.

There is no way to tell if the painter was male or female. Perhaps an expert could tell but I don't see how. I'm assuming the painter was male or female as opposed to is male or female because I assume the painter is dead. If the painter is alive I'm certain he or she would not allow strangers to view these paintings. I don't think one of the other six people or the despicable next to me is responsible for the paintings.

This despicable is not a pregnant woman. She looks like she could be pregnant if she applied herself. She has all the requisite equipment. Perhaps taking long walks, drinking green tea, and changing her name would help. She is taller than me by two or three inches but most of that's hair and shoes. I don't know who she is but she is next to me under this oil painting. She acts like she knows me. She has put her hand on my shoulder twice and left it there for a minute or two each time. She is not sweating so I don't offer her the handkerchief. Every time I use it she thinks there's something wrong with me.

This despicable could be my wife of two years. She resembles my wife in that they are both women of a certain age with eyelashes and painted toenails. There are similarities in complexion, hair color, and deportment. But I think I left my wife home today. I think we argued over how to get here and when I went out the door she stayed in our living room. She wanted to walk and I wanted to drive was the problem.

The two connubial years have included several hangovers and a month of Sundays so I sometimes have trouble recognizing her.

There's nothing sexier than a pregnant woman, she repeats.

I do believe that's true, I say.

You're despicable, she says.

And I say something like it takes one to know one and it takes two to tango but three's a crowd and the more the merrier.

For whatever reason we are whispering this to each other. Something about this room turns you into a librarian.

So the woman next to me whispers You're a despicable except she adds the word fucking as a qualifier.

There is a caged dog in the kitchen of this house no one wants to discuss. This dog looks like a mistake of evolution, like a cross between a fox and a South American rodent. The dog's head is decidedly too small for its body and it has a long and furless tail. The dog hasn't stopped whining but no one pays attention to it. Everyone here is afraid of this dog.

What is with this dog, I say to the despicable. Don't, she says back.

The more I look at and talk to this despicabel the more I think she might be my wife.

This happens to me from time to time. I'll forget the route to my favorite restaurant or lose my place in a book or get lost on the way to the upstairs bathroom at home. The wife I think I left home in the living room thinks there is something wrong with me. She thinks I should see a doctor, have tests done. She thinks they should stick me in a tube and not let me out until I can retain basic information like everyone else.

The despicable next to me hasn't mentioned any tests, which might be a dead giveaway.

There is no accounting for what is wrong with me. I've never suffered an injury or a disease that would've resulted in a compromise of both short and long term memory. As near as I can remember I've always been this way. I wasn't allowed to walk to school because the one time I did I went missing for two days. My mother hung my picture on street signs and light poles and went on television to get me back home.

Right after she says Don't with a familiarity I find disturbing our replacement couple arrives. They look like they just got released from a concentration camp. Their limbs are impossibly thin, so much so that I want to hook them up to an IV and have them lie down. They are wearing sandals and have yellow toenails. Their eyes are similarly jaundiced. I don't think either of these people will live another day.

These are great, the male one says. You can tell he is the male one because the other has two emaciated breasts under her tank top.

Aren't they, though, the despicable next to me replies.

They all turn to me as if it's my turn to speak, my turn to say something nice about the paintings, the house, the dog. Instead I say I'm hungry and I wonder what's for dinner.

The skeletons, after consulting each other first, say--I know: we're both starving.

The despicable looks at me in a way I'm sure means something but I don't know what it is.

A fire truck screams by and for a second I expect firemen to burst through the door, administer CPR to the skeletons and liberate the dog. Everyone turns to the front windows to watch the truck drive by but no one is moved enough to go outside. The sirens are loud and then trail off into people whispering things about paintings and the dog's whining.

I haven't been offered a drink and I wonder why not. I see three others cradling glasses on the other side of the room.

There is no indication food will be served any time soon. I don't smell anything cooking and I'm not sure there will be. No one is running into the kitchen to check on anything. I don't know what made me think there was going to be food involved.

The skeletons move on to the next painting and I follow the despicable to a painting hung in the alcove. I can't tell one painting from the next. They are all the same these paintings and I am finished pretending to look at them.

I listen to the whispering around the room. I hear someone say Define a glass of water and someone else say I like it when someone tells me they're a musician and it turns out they're a drummer. Another says I think the composition here is a little obtuse.

In the alcove the despicable and I stand opposite the pregnant woman. There is also a man standing and whispering with the pregnant woman. One assumes he is the sire. The two of them look like they were hand-picked to breed. Both are tall and stout and have fine skin, hair, and teeth. He probably covered her in a stall under supervision.

This is the kind of woman that should be pregnant 365 days a year.

The day after she gives birth to one she should conceive the next.

The despicable positions herself between the pregnant woman and me.

My wife, the one I left in the living room, enjoys the company of other people and seeks it out whenever she can. This is the kind of affair she will drag me to. I have stood in big rooms under oscillating ceiling fans before but cannot say I am comfortable in such environs. I prefer to be in my upstairs study with the air conditioner on and the curtains drawn. My wife calls it the cave. She has never called me a caveman because of how it might reflect on her.

I don't know where she meets the people we socialize with. I don't think they are colleagues. My wife works alone in our house. I'm almost sure of this. There is a table set up in our dining room and people come in and out of the house at all hours.

Secretly she resents me for not having any friends. She tells me this, as she is not good at keeping secrets. I forget what it is I tell her when she says this to me.

I think I do have a few friends but I forget who they are and how to contact them.

Now the word Literally is being bandied about and this bothers us despicables.

These people should be drawn and quartered, the despicable says. They should be shot and hung from the highest pole, I say.

I thought this would be different, she says. I was under the impression this was going to be something else, she says. Then she says, And it 's hanged from the highest pole. People are hanged, not hung.

I say to her, Is it me or does it seem like everything in here is a photo copy? Even the dog looks like he's been left in the wash too long.

That can't be a real dog, I whisper.

A replication of something half-observed and half-misunderstood, she whispers. Then she leans in and whispers Inadequate means to obsequious ends. She puts her hand on my shoulder again and this time rubs it.

This is something my wife does. She likes to rub my shoulders and back and tell me things I don't quite understand. She is an advocate of alternative medicines and homeopathy. She drives twenty miles to buy organic fruits and vegetables from a farmer's market. There are lifestyle magazines around our house, in the bathrooms, the kitchen, etc. I think she might be a masseuse, my wife. This is probably why people come to the house all hours of the day. We do have a massage table set up in the dining room where a dining room table should go. Around the table are crystals and statues of Indian gods. There is a mobile hanging over the table, too. Paper butterflies dangle from the ceiling and sometimes it looks like they are flying.

My wife has strong capable hands but they don't look strong or capable. Her hands are thin and ladylike. Her hands look like a strong wind could blow them clean off her wrists. My mother told me to marry a woman who had hands like this.

I don't say it out loud but I wonder what kind of a massage the pregnant woman gives. My guess is she can rub your muscles into next week.

These people should be run through and handed their own entrails, I say instead.

Extinguished, cleansed, she says back.

Crucifixion, they should bring back crucifixions, I say.

After I say what I say about crucifixions the despicable and I walk toward the front door. I think she is my wife but even if she isn't I might spend the rest of my life with her. As I think this I hear the dog whining but am glad I can't see it in its cage. The pregnant woman and her sire are looking at us and seem upset when I say Vaya con huevos to them. Their expressions resemble both the unblemished wall and the paintings on the wall. There is probably an Indian or Chinese or Russian word that describes how these things look but I wouldn't know it. The other four people, including the two skeletons, are whispering and pointing in our direction. I can't hear what it is they're whispering but I don't have to. I know because it is on their faces. It is all over everyone's faces.

“Between the Teeth” by David James Poissant

Found in Willow Springs 58

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Jill's had James Dean since college, a gift from her parents before they died--car crash--which makes him extra special to her, a last link to her ancestry or something. For Jill's sake, Dean and I maintain an amicable enough relationship, though there's been tension from the beginning, each of us sure Jill belongs to him.

The courtship was rocky, Jill waiting for Dean to warm to me. Our lovemaking was interrupted more than once by barking and a paw on my pillow. Five years after our wedding, he still jumps in bed between us, growling if I turn in my sleep. More than once, I've had nightmares of waking unmanned.

Tonight, after Dean's been let into the bedroom, he nuzzles Jill's crotch and glares at me in a way that says: I smell where you've been, buddy.

Jill says, "Do you think we're meant to be?"

"What do you mean?" I ask, thinking, Oh, God. Thinking, Here we go again.

"I mean," she says, "what if, in the end, your husband and your soul mate and the person you're supposed to be with--what if they all turn out to be different people?"

"Are you seeing Richard again?" I ask.

"No, honey, I told you. That's over."

''Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure," she says, rolling onto her side. She pulls the chain on her bedside lamp and pretends to fall asleep. I reach out and Dean moves to shield her from my touch. He gives her elbow a lick, then looks me in the eye. He will not sleep until I do.

"Jill," I say. Jill offers only a quiet grunt. Dean moves to cushion the small of her back.

Clearly, she's still seeing Richard.

This morning, I roll over Dean in the driveway. Just crush him. An honest mistake--not cold-blooded murder, just bad driving. Backing up without checking the mirrors, the kind of thing that lands a neighbor's toddler in the ICU and you on the evening news.

A simple case of wrong place, wrong time. That, and we had a deal, and Dean broke the deal.

It's my responsibility to walk Dean in the mornings. My only (Jill's word) responsibility when it comes to her (my word) dog. Dean, an old beagle with a nose like a coke fiend, takes his time making his way around the block, stopping every few feet to sniff another dog's piss, to piss on another dog's piss, or to lick the place on his body where the piss comes out. Not a morning person, I never particularly wanted to get up early to walk Dean. The deal, then, was this: I get up and let Dean out. He has free reign of the neighborhood, leash laws be damned. In return, he comes home before I leave for work.

Both parties have found the arrangement amenable: I get to sleep in. Dean gets to take his time, pissing all over whatever he likes. For years we've operated like this, under the guise of what-Jill-doesn't-know won't-hurt-her.

Usually, Dean scratches at the back door just as I'm buttering a bagel or pouring milk over a bowl of raisin bran. But, this morning, Dean doesn't come back. Not after I've finished breakfast and washed my plate. Not once I've made a second pot of coffee for when Jill wakes up. Not even after I stand at the open door, briefcase in hand, and quietly call for him.

I go to the garage, get in my Jeep. I've never had to look for Dean before. I think of Mr. Lancaster, imagine the man chasing Dean out of his vegetable garden, pitchfork in hand. Or, perhaps Dean's made it under Ms. Mead's fence, at last having his way with the hot little papillon that wags her ass at us whenever we walk by. I even envision Dean dead, the target of some gang initiation whereby one must off a dog in order to get his first bandana and biker jacket.

What I don't picture is Dean hit by a car, not until the moment I feel the thud, hear the crunch, the unmistakable sound of beagle bones snapping under 50,000-mile Michelin tread.

It's my first real experience with death. Even my grandparent are healthy as horses. I had a guinea pig once, in middle school. Something was wrong with him and his ass exploded. Really, he started shitting his intestines. It wasn't a pretty sight. But that was a guinea pig, a rodent.

People don't cry over dead rodents.

This is nothing like that. Dean appears unhurt. Only a thin string of red runs from his open mouth. He pants. I place my hand on his side. He doesn't yelp, just closes his eyes. His ribcage feels like a bag of potato chips.

This dog, I think, will never make it. This is a doomed dog.

At this moment, I can do many things. I can tell Jill, or not. I could say Dean ran away, got out the door while I fiddled with his leash and collar. But, then, what to do with the body? A neighbor's trashcan seems risky. There are woods nearby, but boys play there. I could drive out to the country, dig a little hole.

Except there's more to consider than just disposal. I can't bury

Dean while he's still breathing. I mean, I could, but I can't. I'm not that man.

How long does it take a dog to die?

I consider methods of expediting the process: A plastic Kroger bag from under the kitchen sink, a shoelace to hold it in place. A can of Ajax mashed up in raw hamburger. Shovel to the head.

I do own an acetylene torch.

Scratch that. I can't hide the truth of Dean's death from Jill, but perhaps I can disguise it. Another car, I could say. This car came flying around the corner, ripped the leash right out of my hand. I never caught the license plate, too intent on tending to Dean. Used the fireman's carry to bring the body home and everything.

In the end, Jill makes the decision for me. I look up and she's running down the driveway, her worn, red bathrobe held together by a manicured hand. Even without makeup, with sleep caught under one eye and dried drool flaking from the corner of her mouth, as Jill crouches beside me, takes James Dean's head into her hands, I think: You, my love, are beautiful.

Jill won't talk to me. James Dean lies in her lap, legs at odd angles, head loose, jumping with every bump of the Jeep. At each jostle, Jill shoots a look my way that says, Be careful, and, as I slow down, bats eyes that plead, Hurry up.

It’s no short trip. This is upstate New York, an hour north of Syracuse, a half-hour north of civilization. The nearest animal hospital is twenty miles of old roads away.

I reach for the radio, decide it's inappropriate, then change my mind and turn the dial. A fiery host argues with a listener. I was hoping for music. Before I can change it, Jill stretches over Dean, turns the radio off, and we're back to the hum of the Jeep and Dean's panting, the metronome of his quick, shallow breaths. It's the moment where one of us is meant to speak, and I'm still wondering who goes first when Jill interrupts the silence.

"You didn't have to do it," she says. "I would've stopped seeing Richard."

"But," I say, and my tongue catches on my teeth. So it's true. I knew this, sure, but it's different now, the admission making it more real.

Outside, apples bob in the morning light. We thread the orchard, then up a hill, and suddenly we're facing clear sky. From a field, a man on a stick waves a hand of hay, a crow for a hat, and I remember what it was like to be a boy, before my life turned into all this shit.

Jill is crying. "How could you do this?" she says.

“Jill,” I say, "It was an accident. I would never--"

I look at her. She looks back, searching my face for clues.

"Come on," I say. "Don't you know me at all?"

It's so much to explain, but I tell Jill about the deal and the walks. How, for years, this is how we did it. That I messed up. That I wasn't leaving for work. That I went to find Dean and didn't look both ways before I backed over him.

We continue down the road, the landscape mutating into a town. A drugstore here, post office there, and suddenly we're in Rosemont and the small animal hospital comes into view. It's an old house, green shutters, plank siding and peeling, white paint, that's been converted into a business. Out front, a sign features a caricature of a cat with a thermometer in its mouth. I pull into the parking lot. I'm afraid of what comes next.

"I'm sorry," Jill says.

"I'm sorry, too," I say.

"Do you think..." Jill begins to cry again.

"I don't know," I say. "Let's take him inside and see."

How I caught Jill and Richard last year: I came home from the firm early. Isn't that the way it always happens? I'd had a bad lunch with a client, awful conversation over lukewarm tortellini, and I'd been throwing up about once every hour since. There was no car in the driveway, no trail of clothes down the hall, no noise, even, to give me pause as I pushed against my bedroom door.

What I found was not fucking, just two topless people sitting beside each other, reading from the same book. It was the most intimate moment I'd ever seen Jill in. Nobody knew what to do. Then I threw up all over the floor. How I wish I had opened the door to mindless, unbridled fucking.

The vet's office is beige walls and wax plants, track lighting and tinny music piped through cheap speakers concealed behind flowerpots.

I'm filling out forms when Jill returns from a back room. She sits beside me on the long narrow bench that takes up one wall. She looks terrible, her face puffy and red, her hair like Medusa's.

"How is he?" I ask.

"I don't know," she says. "They won't tell me anything. They're doing X-rays. They asked me to leave."

Jill raises a hand to her face and traces the outline of one eye with a single knuckle. She mumbles something I can't make out.

"What's that?" I ask.

"I think I'm pregnant," she says.

When you hear something shocking, I mean something that just lays you out, you have a choice. You can accept it immediately, react to it, or not. I tend to stall.

"I'm sorry?"

"Pregnant."

"But, when? How long have you known?"

"I don't know. Maybe a month?"

"But we've hardly...... "

"I know."

"Hold on. Do you mean--"

"I don't know," she says. 'I'm just not sure. I'll have to go to the doctor, do the math."

I stand. I sit. I stand, walk once around the room, sit again.

"Honey," she says, and it’s her turn to be the levelheaded one. "Calm down."

"Are you going to leave me?"

"What?"

"If it's Richard's, are you going to leave?"

"Of course not," she says. She takes my hand and squeezes. "I mean it. It's over now."

"So, what would we do with it?"

"Things can be done," she says.

I consider this and a shiver runs down my back. I try to picture it, try not to. What would we call this, in our case? Extermination?

I won't raise another man's child, and yet, I don't think I could kill it either.

"What if I told you it wasn't an accident?" I say. "That I ran over James Dean on purpose?"

"What?"

"If I meant to hit the dog," I say. "Would you still want me around?"

Jill eyes are wide. She lets go of my hand. "Did you?"

"No."

I want a song to soar through the waiting room, suddenly meaningful and ironic. "Your Cheating Heart" or something. Something to make Jill cry. Of course, this doesn't happen. The same soft, classical music comes out of the speakers, some concerto or other. The thing swells, peaks, then falls away in a shimmy of violins.

"You," Jill says, "are an asshole."

The first time I met Dean, I was drunk. Jill's parents had just died. We'd been to the viewing, then gone straight to a bar a few blocks from Jill's place. We were bracing ourselves for the funeral the next afternoon.

We were still in school at Syracuse, had only known each other a few weeks, but standing by the caskets, Jill introduced me to one relative as her boyfriend. Looking back, it is as if there were never a choice in the matter. Neither of us had the chance to turn down the other, as though, in death, something had been decided for us.

Jill and I stumbled into her apartment and groped on the couch. I was supine, Jill on top of me, taking off her shirt.

I looked to my right and there was this animal, brown and white, broad-shouldered and squatty. His tail stood up in the air like a middle finger. He was about six inches from my face.

"Jill," I said. "Jill."

Jill pulled her shirt away from her face and looked down. "Oh," she said, "that's James Dean. Say hi, Dean."

Dean growled. His teeth were white, but his gum line was black.

He didn't bite, but he let me know he'd like to.

"Dean," Jill said, “you be nice." Then, to me: "Don’t worry, he’s really friendly once you get to know him."

We made love like that, Jill on top of me, the beagle beside me.

Dean did not take his eyes off me the whole time.

The veterinarian, tall and thin, forty or fifty, is not a bad man, but he's the bearer of bad news, and I think we both hate him for it. He frowns, but his handlebar mustache curls upward in a smile. He's probably given this speech so many times that it no longer holds meaning for him. They're just words, what he was taught to recite before he got his diploma.

"I'm sorry," he says in conclusion, "but there's nothing else we can do. It would be cruel to draw this out any longer. I think the best thing we can do for"--he pauses, glances at his clipboard, looks back at us and reassumes an expression of sorrow--"Dean, at this point, is to let him go. We can help him do that. It won't hurt. It will be like falling into a peaceful sleep."

I look at Jill for confirmation, but she's gone, beyond words.

"Would you like to say goodbye?" the man says.

I turn to Jill. Nothing. I look back at the man and nod.

The euthanization room is dim, punctured by weird, halogen lights that cast everything in an unsettling yellow-green glow. James Dean is on his side on a steel table. He's been muzzled and an IV tube extends from one paw to a bag hanging from a hook on the wall. The steel table looks cold. I touch it, and it is. There is something alien about the scene, like he's not even our dog. I expect Jill to burst into tears, but she displays no emotion.

"Here," I say. I unclip the muzzle and pull it away from Dean's snout. Suddenly, he looks more like the dog we both know. I pet his head and he sniffs at my hand. He tries to shuffle forward, but his lower half doesn't follow his front legs' lead and his nails scrape futilely against the table.

"Would you like to step outside?" I ask.

"Yes," Jill says. She moves toward the door.

"Wait," I say. "Jill, I'm really, really sorry about this. All of it."

She stands at the door, her hand on the knob.

"Whatever you want to do," I say, "I'm your man. We're in this thing together."

Maybe it's the classical music corning through the thin walls of the next room, or that our dog is dying on top of a table in front of us. Perhaps it's something else entirely. But before Jill walks out the door, she smiles. She gives me a look that says, At least we have each other. That seems to say, We can still make this work. A look that says: Don't worry. Love won't let go.

Now, it's just me and Dean. It's hard to look at him, so I look around the room. It's small, not like the offices where you take your pet for a checkup. No tins of doggy treats or posters of breeds on the walls, no plastic models of organs on the countertop. This room is reserved for death. There are two chairs, a big padded one for the doctor and a white, plastic chair, an old piece of patio furniture. I pick the plastic chair, which seems to open its arms to accept me as I sit, then grips my hips so tightly I wonder if I'll ever escape.

I force myself to look at Dean, and Dean looks back. He's got his head balanced on his front paws. If you took away the IV tube, he'd look like one of those dogs you see on calendars with titles like Beautiful Beagles or Purebred Hounds.

"We had a deal," I say. Dean doesn't say anything, just watches me with his big, sad dog eyes. "We had a deal, you fucker."

Dean winces, and I know that he must be in terrible pain, that it's time to get this over with. As if on cue, the veterinarian walks in. He carries a small tray with a stiff, blue cloth draped over the top, like I won't guess what's underneath.

"If you're finished, Mr. Michaels," he says, ''I'd like to go ahead with the procedure." The procedure. He says it as one might say spatula. There's no inflection, no hint of what is contained in the syringe and what it will do to the dog.

''I'll need you to step out," he says. His face is kind, but his voice is firm.

"No," I say. "I think I'll stay."

"We generally don't recommend that."

"I want to watch you kill my dog," I say.

"Sir," he says, but there is nothing else to say.

"If you want me to sign a waiver or something, I will."

The man frowns. He pulls away the blue doth from the tray, revealing two shots. "I'm afraid I'll need to put the muzzle back on," he says. "He tried to bite one of my technicians."

"Sorry about that," I say.

The vet steps forward with the muzzle. Something churns inside me. It seems undignified, like Dean deserves better. I may not like this dog, but all living things deserve to die decently. I believe that.

I jump up, the chair clinging to me for a second before clattering to the floor. "Wait," I say. "Don't put that on him. I'll take care of it."

The vet looks at me skeptically, then puts the muzzle away. I step up to the table and crouch so that Dean and I are eye and eye.

"Well," I say, "this is it, buddy." I make a fist around his snout and nod at the vet. The first needle goes in and Dean whines, struggles under my grip.

Quickly, the vet retrieves the second syringe. When the needle hits Dean's hide, though, he thrashes, pulls his mouth from my hand and bites down hard on my thumb. The vet injects the last of the toxin, pulls the needle out, and, still, Dean doesn't let go. I try to pry my hand from his jaws, but he holds on tight.

And he dies like that, my bloody thumb caught between his teeth.

For the first time since we met, he looks happy.