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In This World

Posted on May 20, 2013 by allen0997

In This World ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

The girl came down the mountain in a rainstorm, about to deliver herself of a child. When the people who found her asked her where she came from and where her husband was, she just wailed and pointed back up the mountain. Mrs. Laughlin was running a boardinghouse then. She said she’d take the girl in. She could use her as a sort of chambermaid after the baby was born and, if the baby was healthy, it would come in handy, too. Mrs. Laughlin’s son took a liking to the girl and said he would marry her if she didn’t die in childbirth. He also said he would make a fine papa for the baby, whether it turned out to be a boy or a girl, or whatever it turned out to be. His name was Burl Laughlin. He had always been a solitary man. Most people thought he wasn’t right in the head.

When she was able to speak, the girl said her name was Freda, but she couldn’t remember a last name. She shrugged her shoulders when asked who her people were. The only doctor in town said she seemed to be suffering from some kind of amnesia, no doubt brought on by a traumatic event, such as seeing someone she loved murdered. It had to have been something so horrible, the doc said, that her mind just blocked it out. Maybe someday she would be able to recall, but it was probably best if she didn’t.

On the night the baby was born, Mrs. Laughlin called in Mrs. Altenburg from the church to assist. Freda screamed for several hours but the baby was born easily enough. It was a girl. When Mrs. Laughlin and Mrs. Altenburg looked at it, they knew it wasn’t right. It didn’t weigh more than three pounds and had a drawn look to it, as if, being only a few minutes old, it was already sick. It hardly moved at all and gave a weak whimper when smacked on the bottom.

“Poor little thing,” Mrs. Altenburg said. “I expect it ain’t long for this world.”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Laughlin said. “They can fool you sometimes.”

“I don’t know about you,” Mrs. Altenburg said, “but I think we would be doing the poor little thing a blessed turn if we was to end its suffering right now.” She eyed the basin of dirty water beside the bed. It would be so easy to hold the baby under the water until it rested in the arms of Jesus.

“No, no!” Mrs. Laughlin said. “Don’t do it!”

“Why not?”

“Because He’s watching us.” She pointed to a picture on the wall of Him in His Crown of Thorns, and He really did seem to be looking down at them.

“Far be it from me,” Mrs. Altenburg huffed.

They gave the baby to Freda and she somehow knew what do with it. She said she wanted to name it Beatrice. The name didn’t have any significance other than it was a name she had always liked. Two weeks later she married Burl Laughlin in the front parlor of his mother’s house with all the boarders looking on. If it turned out that Freda had a husband after all, it wasn’t her fault if she couldn’t remember, and nobody would hold it against her. They would just have to sort it all out later, if it turned out she was married to two men at the same time.

From the first, the marriage between Burl and Freda was a marriage in name only. Mrs. Laughlin fixed up a nice room for them with a large bed and plenty of space for Beatrice, but Burl refused to give up his snug little room in the attic. He knew nothing about women. Whenever he went near Freda or, heaven forbid, tried to touch her, she screamed and drew away and that frightened him. After several days of this treatment, he lost interest in her; he began to ignore her and to go out of the room whenever she entered. He seemed to forget he was married to her.

Freda didn’t care how distant Burl was. She was half afraid of him, it’s true, but all her time and energy were taken up with her housework and with taking care of Beatrice. She didn’t want the baby out of her sight and didn’t trust Mrs. Laughlin or anybody else to take care of her. Whether she was cleaning the rooms, washing clothes or preparing meals, she kept the baby in a basket close by. When dinner was finished in the evenings and the work done for the day, she retired to her room with the baby and nobody saw either of them again until the next morning.

For the first three years of her life, Beatrice was expected to die. She had none of the round rosiness that other babies had. Her skin was cool to the touch and her limbs spindly and lifeless. She ate hardly anything at all. She lay for hours in her basket, not making a sound, staring out at the world with disinterested eyes. It was as if she had already taken up residence in that other world.

When Beatrice was four years old, she spoke her first words and began walking on her own. She remained tiny, not weighing more than a bag of seed, but she seemed to draw her strength from something outside herself. Freda attributed her new vitality to the lemons she had given her to suck on since she was born, which, the doctor conceded, couldn’t hurt but probably didn’t help much, either.

Freda began making all of Beatrice’s clothes, rather than buying them ready-made. Whenever she came across a piece of cast-off material, she squirreled it away in the trunk in her room until she had time to sit down and cut out the pieces and sew them together. She took Beatrice’s measurements and just made the dresses up as she went along. What she had in her mind was a miniature version of a grown-up woman’s dress, so, after she had refined her sewing technique, she had Beatrice looking like a little dressed-up doll. She made little hats to go with the dresses and adorned them with fake flowers or whatever else she had on hand. When she started curling Beatrice’s hair and putting a dab of rouge on each of her alabaster cheeks, the doll illusion was complete.

Beatrice taught herself to read when she was five years old. Burl would take her on his lap in the evenings after dinner and read to her from the newspaper, the Bible, or whatever written material was available. Beatrice would look at each word as he read them out loud and soon she was reading the words on her own. She might not have known the meanings of all the words, but she knew how to pronounce them from the way they were spelled. Soon she was a better reader than he was. Mrs. Laughlin gave her some books that a boarder had left behind, a couple volumes of poetry and some English novels, and she began reading them, slowly at first and then with ease.

She began to be curious about what was outside the walls of Mrs. Laughlin’s boarding house. She had only ever glimpsed a horse or a dog out the window and she was curious about them and about flowers and other things that grew. She wanted to be up close to them and to touch them and see what made them what they were.

One day in spring Burl decided to take her for a buggy ride in the country. She loved seeing the cows grazing on the hillside. When he stopped at a little bridge over a stream, she was amazed that she could see fish swimming far below her in the water. She had only ever seen fish in books before. On the way back home, since the ride had gone so well, he decided to take her by the general store and buy her a candy cane.

The people in the store crowded around her with smiles. This was the first time that Burl realized how unique she was. He had been with her every day since she was born and he didn’t see her the way other people did. Here was this tiny child, like a beautiful living doll, half the size of other children her age but with the proportions and manner of a grown woman.

“What a sweet little darling!” a large woman with two loutish-looking boys said.

“Haven’t you ever seen a girl before?” Beatrice said as the two boys gaped at her.

“Well, not one like you, dearie,” the woman said.

Burl let her pick out some candy and when he went to pay for it, the store clerk said, “Is she some kind of a midget or something?”

“No,” Burl said. “She’s six years old and small for her age.”

“Well, you ought to sell her to the circus,” the man said. “People would pay money to see her. You’d make a fortune.”

“Do you have children?” Burl asked.

“Got seven,” the man said.

“Why don’t you sell yours to the circus and don’t be giving advice to them that haven’t asked for it.”

When Freda and Mrs. Laughlin took Beatrice to church with them, people crowded around to get a glimpse of her. Some even wanted to touch her, believing it would bring them luck. They asked her such questions as if she had ever been married or if she had ever seen a ghost. She smiled politely and sought her mother’s hand to guide her away from them.

She sat through the long, dry sermon without moving and when it was over and time to go home, the minister made a special point of speaking to her personally.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” he said, bending over and taking her hand in his. “You’re already quite a well-known personage in these parts.”

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities,” she said. “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

The minister looked amazed, as if a dog had spoken to him. “Well, my goodness!” he said. “She certainly knows her scripture, doesn’t she? I wonder if she has any notion of what she’s saying!”

“Well, of course she does!” Freda said. “She’s not a talking parrot!”

When they got home, Beatrice said, “I don’t want to go to church anymore. The whole places reeks of vanity and hypocrisy. I can find out what I need to know from reading the Bible.”

Not long after, Burl received a surprising letter from the State Board of Education. Every child in the state, the letter read, was required by law to attend school, public or otherwise. Since he had a daughter, or ward, at the age of six years, by the name of Beatrice Laughlin, he was forthwith required to see that she was enrolled in a certified institution of learning. If the aforementioned Beatrice Laughlin, age six, was not forthwith enrolled in a certified institution of learning, appropriate measures would be taken that might include removal of the child from her home and placement in a state-run institution.

“They can’t do this, can they?” he said weakly as he handed the letter to Freda.

“She can’t go to school,” Freda wailed as she read the letter. “She’s too tiny and frail. The other kids would grind her under their heels.”

“She’s not going if we say she’s not going,” Mrs. Laughlin said. “She can learn everything she needs to know right here. If she needs a special kind of arithmetic book or something, we’ll get it for her.”

“Yes, we can teach her everything,” Freda said, sniffling.

The next day Burl took Beatrice to see the schoolhouse. He told her about the letter he received that said she had to go to school with other children her age.

“Wouldn’t you like to go to school?” he asked.

“I’m not going,” she said, “and there’s an end to it. I’ll bet I can already read and write better than anybody there, including the teachers.”

“That may be true,” he said, “but it’s always best to be humble in all things.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she said.

Two days later there was a terrific thunderstorm in the night. Lightning struck the schoolhouse, setting it ablaze. All was lost. School was suspended until such time as a suitable alternative place of learning could be found. No other property besides the school was damaged or destroyed.

A couple weeks after the schoolhouse fire, one of the boarders, a man named Helmut Bloodsaw, was trying to run away without paying his back rent. He had stolen some food from the kitchen, along with twelve dollars in cash, and was leaving by the back door at one o’clock in the morning. Beatrice had the feeling that something was wrong in the house and got out of bed. She saw the man from the window of her upstairs room and shot him in the leg as he crossed the back yard. He wasn’t able to go any farther. He lay there and screamed, rousing the neighbors and causing the dogs to bark.

“How did you, a child, happen to have a gun?” the sheriff asked Beatrice when he came to investigate the incident.

“It was my papa’s gun,” she said.

“I didn’t know she knew I had it,” Burl said.

“How did you know your papa had a gun and how did you know where to find it?” the sheriff asked.

“I don’t remember how I knew,” Beatrice said.

“You shot him in the leg. You didn’t kill him but you stopped him dead in his tracks. Where did you learn to shoot like that?”

“I saw him by the light of the moon.”

“I didn’t ask that,” the sheriff said. “I asked where you learned to shoot.”

“I don’t know. It just came to me, I guess. I never fired a gun before.”

The next day a piece appeared in the newspaper about how Beatrice Laughlin, the little doll woman, protected her family from a thief who was absconding with the family’s food and money. In the absence of a photograph, the paper ran an “artist’s rendering” of the girl, showing her size in proportion to that of a fully grown adult, a dog, and a cat. Underneath that piece was another piece written by a supposed “expert” on the subject of “proportional dwarfism.” The opinion was put forth that Beatrice Laughlin wasn’t a child at all but a woman of about thirty-five years who had attained notoriety some years earlier as an expert marksman in a Wild West show. She had killed somebody in the pursuit of her profession, probably accidentally, and was hiding out in a small town, pretending to be a child. Many people who had seen her up close and had spoken to her were of the opinion that she was too smart, too wise, too intelligent, and knew too many things, to be a child of six or seven years.

Overnight Beatrice was famous, when being famous was the one thing in the world she didn’t want. People were dropping by the boardinghouse day and night, sometimes whole bunches of them at a time, to see and to speak to the little doll woman who was not like anybody else on earth and was a heroine in the bargain. She received hundreds of letters from people wanting a lock of her hair or a signed photograph. She received proposals of marriage, one from a convicted murderer and one from a former priest. Three men from a newspaper in the city, one of them a photographer, came to the front door as if it was their right, wanting to write her story for their paper. Mrs. Laughlin went after them with an axe without hearing how much money they were willing to pay.

“Don’t worry,” Burl said. “Something else will come along and attract their attention and they’ll forget all about Beatrice before too long.”

But they didn’t forget. The fame and adoration continued through the summer months. Burl and Freda began to fear for Beatrice’s safety and for their own safety and for everything they held dear.

One morning when Burl got out of bed and went downstairs, Freda and Beatrice were gone. Freda had left a note for him on the dining room table. He went into the kitchen and sat down at the table and handed the note to his mother.

“You’d better read it,” he said. “I think I already know what it says.”

I know that something terrible is going to happen if we stay here, Freda wrote, so I’m taking Beatrice back to the place where I came from so I can keep her safe. Don’t try to find us because if you do the whole thing will start again.

“Where is the place that she came from?” Burl asked, staring out the window.

“That’s something nobody knows,” his mother said. “Maybe it’s another world or another dimension.”

But Burl didn’t believe in other worlds or other dimensions. He believed that if he tried hard enough he would find Freda and Beatrice in this world. If he wasn’t able to return them to their rightful place at his mother’s boardinghouse, the three of them would live together some other place.

A few days later he was gone without a word. His mother knew without being told. She comforted herself with the thought that she would see all of them again in this world and, if not, she would more than likely see them in the next.

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State Line

Posted on May 14, 2013 by allen0997

State Line ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Evan awoke to the smell of cooking food. When he got out of bed and went into the kitchen, mother turned from the stove and smiled at him. She was wearing her red silk dress with the white buttons instead of the usual old chenille bathrobe.

“Sit down and have some bacon and eggs,” she said cheerily.

“Why are you so dressed up?” he asked.

“We’ll talk about that later.”

While he ate, she sat across from him and drank coffee and smoked.

“Now that summer vacation is finally here,” she said, “what are you going to do today?”

He could tell she didn’t really care; she was only trying to make conversation.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Read my book and watch TV, I guess.”

“Don’t you think it’d be a good idea to get out and get some exercise and some fresh air?”

“I might ride my bike to the park.”

“Don’t you have some friends?” she asked. “It’s more fun with friends.”

“Sure. Is anything wrong? You’re acting funny.”

“I need to have a little talk with you.”

“What about?”

“Do you remember my friend Tony? You met him once when we were having lunch downtown.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

She clasped her hands together and looked down at them. “Well, he and I are going away together this morning. He’s coming by to pick me up.”

“Where to? Does daddy know?”

“I wrote daddy a letter that he’ll read when he gets home from work.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet. We talked about going all the way to the West Coast. The important thing is for me to be someplace other than here.”

“But why Tony?”

“I’m in love with him. Right now he’s got a wife and I’ve got a husband, but I hope to marry him someday. I know it’s hard for you to understand right now.”

“Is it something I did?”

“Of course not! I don’t want you to ever think that.”

“Is it something daddy did?”

“No, daddy didn’t do anything, either. I can’t go into it now. I’ll try to explain another time. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I was waiting until you were out of school for summer vacation so you would have the summer to get used to my not being here.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go. When will I see you again?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll call you just as soon as I get to where I’m going.”

In a little while there was a honk out front. She went into the bedroom and when she came out she was carrying her suitcase and had a white sweater thrown over her shoulders.

“I want you to come out on the porch and see me off,” she said, taking him by the hand.

Tony had parked his shiny blue car at the curb. When he saw mother and Evan come out of the house, he smiled and waved. Then he stood beside the car waiting for mother with his hand resting on the fender as if he was posing for a car ad.

Mother let go of Evan’s hand on the porch and bent over to him so that her face was close to his. She didn’t have to bend very far because he was almost as tall as she was.

“I want you to know that my leaving has nothing to do with you,” she said softly. “Wherever I am, you will always be my son and I’ll always be your mother.” She took ten dollars out of her purse and put it in the pocket of his pajamas. “Here’s a little mad money,” she said. “A little money never hurt anything.” She laughed and kissed him on the cheek and gave him a little squeeze. She let go of him then and, without looking back, crossed the lawn and got into the car with Tony.

He watched Tony’s car until it was out of sight and then he went back into the house and got dressed. He was used to staying by himself during the daytime, but the house seemed awfully lonely and quiet with mother gone. He turned on the TV but, not being used to watching during the daytime, wasn’t able to get interested in anything that was on.

Mother was right, he thought. He did need to get out of the house for a while. He took his book and went to the garage and got out his bicycle and headed for the park.

There were some kids in the park that he knew but he ignored them, hoping they didn’t see him. He didn’t feel like being with anybody. He rode back and forth around the perimeter of the park until he got tired and then he found a shady, secluded spot under a tree and sat down. He opened his book, holding it in his lap, but didn’t look at it.

He thought about mother in the car with Tony, the wind blowing her hair. He could see her laughing and smoking cigarettes and pointing to an old barn or a windmill or something that she wanted him to see. After that, everything was just a blur. He couldn’t see her sleeping in the same bed with Tony, fixing his breakfast, or even sitting across from him at a booth in a restaurant. When he thought of Tony, he saw daddy’s face and how it would change when he read the letter that mother left him beside the toaster.

He sat under the tree for a long time until some girls settled themselves too close to him; he could hear them chattering and laughing and he felt insulted in some way that they pretended he wasn’t there and didn’t matter. He left his spot under the tree and, realizing he was hungry, bought a hot dog and a Coke from the vendor at the pavilion with the money mother gave him.

When he got back home he put his bike away in the garage and waited outside until daddy came home from work. When daddy’s car finally pulled into the driveway, he felt relieved somehow, as if the hours of waiting were at an end. He didn’t have to deal with mother’s leaving on his own anymore; here was someone else to try to figure it out.

“Where’s your mother?” daddy said when he got out of the car and saw Evan sitting on the back steps. It was almost as if he already knew she was gone.

“She’s gone,” Even said. “There’s a letter for you from her in the kitchen.”

He waited a few minutes, giving daddy time to read the letter, and then he went inside. Daddy was standing at the sink drinking a glass of water. The opened letter was on the table.

“I think I know where she is,” daddy said. “I’m going to go get her and bring her home.”

“I want to come, too,” Evan said.

“No,” daddy said, “you stay here and take care of things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

And, with those words, echoing the words mother had spoken earlier in the day, he was gone.

Evan felt better than he had felt all day, ever since mother told him she was leaving. Daddy would straighten things out. He would bring her back and get her to see reason. He always said that women were illogical and could change at a moment’s notice. Evan was witnessing that first hand.

He ate some leftover fried chicken and potato salad from the refrigerator, and when he was finished he went into the living room and turned on the TV and laid down on the couch. He watched one program after another until the news came on and then he got up and switched off the TV. He made sure the doors were locked and, leaving the porch lights on and also lights in the kitchen and living room, he went into his room and changed into his pajamas and got into bed. He was tired from all that had happened and soon he went to sleep.

He had been deeply asleep for an hour, or maybe two, when something woke him up. The floor had creaked or a door closed—someone was in the house with him. He was going to get up and see if daddy had come back, or if it was mother, when he realized somebody was standing in the doorway to his room looking at him. He sat up in bed and tried to get his eyes to see in the dark who it was.

“Mother?” he said.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You came back!” he said.

She came slowly into the room and sat on the edge of his bed. “Yes, I’m back,” she said.

“Daddy went to find you.”

“We got all the way to the state line and I made Tony turn around and bring me back. I know he thinks I’m crazy but I don’t care. I thought I could go off and leave you but I wasn’t able to do it. It seems I’m a better mother than I thought.”

“You’re not going to leave again?”

“We’ll talk in the morning. I’m so tired now I’m dead on my feet.”

“You’ll be here when I get up in the morning?”

“Of course I will.”

He rolled over and went back to sleep, and a little while later when he woke up again he wasn’t sure if he had dreamed that mother had come back or if it really happened.

In the morning when he got out of bed she was sitting at the kitchen table with her hair pinned up, dabbing polish on her nails. She looked up and smiled at him when he came into the room.

“You’re really here!” he said.

Over the next few days mother’s dark mood seemed to lift. She changed the color of her hair and started taking pains again with her appearance. She bought some new clothes and made her face up in the mirror everyday, whether she was going anyplace of not. She cleaned the whole house and cooked lavish meals and didn’t seem to mind.

Evan hesitated to say anything that would darken her mood again, but he wondered where daddy was. On the third day of daddy’s being gone, he decided to broach the subject.

“When is daddy coming home?” he asked.

“I’m afraid you’d have to ask him that,” she said, lining the forks up in the drawer, just so.

“You don’t know where he is?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Don’t you think you should call the police and have them look for him? Something bad might have happened to him.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” she said. “I’m not calling the police or anybody else.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t need any men in our lives,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed how happy we’ve been without them?”

He started to speak again but movement out the window caught his attention. He stopped what he was doing and went to the window to get a better look. Tony’s car was parked in front of the house and Tony himself was coming up the walk, carrying a large suitcase in one hand and a birdcage in the other with a fluttering yellow bird inside. It appeared Tony and the bird were planning on staying for a while.

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The Beauty Box

Posted on May 5, 2013 by allen0997

The Beauty Box ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

When Noreen set the plate of salmon croquettes and macaroni and cheese in front of Odell, he gave her a significant look but didn’t say anything. He was hoping for chicken or beef stew, at least. He didn’t like salmon croquettes; they had little soft fish bones in them that he tried not to think of as bones as he chewed them.

“Do you notice anything different about me?” Noreen asked as they began eating.

“You’re wearing a different shade of lipstick,” Odell said, barely looking at her.

“I’m not wearing any lipstick,” she said. “Guess again.”

“You got a new pair of pedal pushers.”

“No!”

She turned around so he could see the back of her head. “I’m wearing what they call a ‘fall,’” she said. “It’s an addition that blends in with the rest of my hair so you can’t tell the fake hair from the real hair.”

“Do you mean you’re wearing a hairpiece?”

“Well, if you want to call it that.”

“Why don’t they call it a hairpiece, then?”

“Because ‘fall’ sounds better.”

“The more important question, I suppose, is why do you need a hairpiece?”

“Well, I don’t really need it, but it makes my hair look better, don’t you think? Thicker and fuller? It somehow makes me look younger?”

“If you say so.”

“I went to the Beauty Box today. They have this wonderful new hairdresser named Enzo. He took one look at me and said, ‘A fall would do wonders for your hair!’.”

“Enzo is a man?”

“Yes.”

“Why is it that hairdressers are all men now? Hairdressers used to be women. Now they’re men. Men with foreign-sounding names.”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you conduct a survey?”

“Is Enzo a homosexual?”

“I didn’t think to ask.”

“Well, it seems you would want to know the sexual preferences of a person fixing your hair.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What country is he from? Is ‘Enzo’ an Italian name?”

“If I had to guess, I’d guess he’s an American.”

“Does he speak with an accent?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to go punch him in the face for you?”

“What for?”

“For raising so many questions for which there are no answers.”

“But don’t you think my hair looks cute?”

“It looks flat in the back and pushed up on top,” he said. “The way it looks when you get up in the morning.”

“Enzo said I have lovely hair.”

“Isn’t he paid to say that?”

“He looked at my face with a magnifying glass and he said I have beautiful skin. He said a lot of women have weather-beaten skin, but he could tell that I take care of mine. He said you can tell a lot about a person’s general health just by looking at the skin on their face.”

“And if Enzo said it, you believe it.”

“It’s his business to know about those things.”

“If he told you to make yourself up to look like a frog, would you do it?”

“Of course I would!”

“Are you in love with Enzo?”

She laughed. “Hardly.”

“Why don’t you divorce me and marry Enzo?”

“That’s too much trouble.”

“If you heard Enzo talking to other women, I’ll bet you’d hear him say the exact same things to them, no matter how old and ugly they are.”

“Are you saying I’m old and ugly?”

“No, I’m just saying I’m wondering what Enzo’s game is.”

“I don’t think he has one. He’s just a very nice man.”

“He made you feel important.”

“Well, yes, I guess so.”

“He made you feel special.”

“When you put it that way, I guess he did.”

“And you gave him a great big tip.”

“I always tip my hairdresser.”

“What else?”

“What do you mean?”

“What else did you feel compelled to do for him because he’s such a nice man?”

“I bought some beauty products from him.”

“How much?”

“A hundred and eighty-seven dollars.”

“And that on top fixing your hair and selling you the fall?”

“Well, yes.”

“How much did you spend today at the Beauty Box?”

“Everything is always about money with you, isn’t it?”

“How much?”

“Three hundred and thirty dollars.”

“So there you have Enzo’s game.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He’s a crap artist! He flatters you and makes you feel special and gets you to liking him. Then he just happens to mention these beauty products he’s selling. By that point you have no sales resistance. You wouldn’t be able to turn him down if he was selling real estate on the moon.”

“Now you’re just being silly.”

“I didn’t get fleeced out of three hundred and thirty dollars today.”

They were silent for the rest of the meal until Noreen was serving the dessert. “There’s a Doris Day movie on tonight,” she said. “It’s one we haven’t seen before. Do you want to watch it with me?”

“I told Willard I’d stop by and see him this evening,” he said tersely.

After he was gone she stacked the dishes in the sink and went to the phone and called the Beauty Box and asked to speak to Enzo. She had to wait what seemed a long time but finally he came on the line.

“Enzo?” she said. “This is Noreen Baggett. I was in the shop today.”

“Yes, darling,” he said. “I was just about to leave for the day. What can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to make sure you have me down for the seventeenth at ten o’clock.”

“Just a minute, dear. I’ll check the book.”

He laid down the phone and when he came back he said, “Yes, dear, we’re all set for the seventeenth.”

“I’m so looking forward to it!” she said.

“Well, so am I, dearest!”

After she hung up the phone, she turned on the TV and sat down in the recliner and made herself comfortable. The Doris Day movie was just beginning.

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Cat Scratch Fever

Posted on April 29, 2013 by allen0997

Cat Scratch Fever ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Miss Pick looked out at the sea of innocent young faces staring at her. Even though she knew all their names and knew who was there and who was not, she still thought it a good idea to call role every morning so they would get used to listening for their names and responding accordingly. It forced them to be attentive. All part of growing up.

“Phillip Abbot,” she said, loud and clear.

“Here,” Phillip said.

“Junie Adler.”

“Present, teacher.”

“Eli Babb.”

“Wah-wah-wah! Here, teacher!”

Everybody laughed.

“Very funny,” Miss Pick said. “Anything for a laugh. Who are you supposed to be today?”

Eli was slightly embarrassed, as she hoped he would be. “Nobody, teacher,” he said. “I was pretending to play the trombone.”

“Well, the classroom is no place for the trombone, real or imaginary.”

“Yes, teacher.”

“Wanda Baggett.”

“Here.”

“Clarabelle Beers.”

Silence.

“Clarabelle Beers!”

She looked up from her book, back about midway in the room and saw Clarabelle Beers in her usual seat with her head down and her face hovering over her desk. “Clarabelle, why don’t you answer me?” she said. “Can you not hear me?”

Veronica Stompers, who sat to Clarabelle’s right, raised her hand timidly.

“Yes, Veronica, what is it?” Miss Pick said.

“She wet her pants,” Veronica said. “There’s pee all over the floor.”

At this the class laughed uproariously. Everybody jumped out of their seats to see. There was nothing like somebody wetting their pants in class to spice up a dull winter morning.

“Sit down!” she bellowed. “What is this? You know not to get out of your seats without permission! We’re not a bunch of animals!”

She stood up and walked back to where Clarabelle was sitting and bent over her. “Clarabelle,” she said softly. “Did you have a little accident?”

Clarabelle looked miserably into her eyes and nodded her head.

“Come with me and we’ll get you fixed up, then” she said.

She took Clarabelle to the nurse’s office down the hall, where she knew there was an abundance of paper towels.

The school nurse, Maxine Phegley, who was not really a bonafide nurse but a sort of medical assistant, was sitting at her desk reading a magazine. When she looked up and saw Miss Pick open the door and come into the room with Clarabelle, she quickly stowed the magazine out of sight.

“What’s this?” she asked, standing up.

“We had a little accident,” Miss Pick said.

While Miss Phegley went to get paper towels to help Clarabelle get herself dried off, Miss Pick went to summon the janitor to come with his mop to clean the mess up off the floor in the classroom. When she returned to the nurse’s office, Clarabelle was snuffling into a paper towel held to her face.

“I’m cold,” Clarabelle said.

“I’m afraid her clothes are soaked through,” Miss Phegley said. “I think you should send her home.”

“I can’t send her outside in wet clothes,” Miss Pick said. “She’ll freeze to death.”

“Well, call her mother, then.”

“You wait here, dear,” she said to Clarabelle, “and I’ll go downstairs to the principal’s office and get your mother on the phone.”

She asked the secretary to get the phone number for the Beers family. When she called the number and got the busy signal, she waited two minutes and tried again. Still the busy signal.

She went back upstairs and informed Miss Phegley that she would drive Clarabelle home herself, in her own car, to get into some dry clothes. They would be back as soon as they could.

“Would you mind,” she asked Miss Phegley, “to sit in on my class and make sure everybody behaves until I get back? Tell them to read in their social studies book the chapter on Peru. Take down the names of anybody who thinks of it as a play period and doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do.”

“Just as you say,” Miss Phegley said.

Miss Pick helped Clarabelle into her coat and led her outside the building onto the parking lot. She opened the door of the car for Clarabelle and then got in herself and started the engine.

“Where do you live, Clarabelle?” she asked.

“We live out in Scraptown,” Clarabelle said. She had brightened considerably outside of school.

Miss Pick sighed but didn’t say anything. How could she not have known that Clarabelle lived in Scraptown? If she had ever given it a thought, she would have known.

Scraptown was on the southern edge of town, across the railroad tracks near the sewage processing plant. It was where the poorest people lived, the ignorant and hopeless of the world. The one thing the people in Scraptown could do properly, Miss Pick thought as she jolted her car over the ruts in the road, was have lots of children—children they were in no manner prepared to take care of.

The Beers home was the last dwelling in Scraptown, a miserable little gray square of a house set on a hill, surrounded by winter scrub and an assortment of car and major-appliance parts.

“You can pull in there, by the fence,” Clarabelle said.

It hardly seemed like a driveway, but Miss Pick turned off into a little scooped-out space that had been washed away by the rain just big enough for a car.

Clarabelle ran on up to the house with Miss Pick behind her. When Clarabelle came to the front door, she stood aside and waited. Miss Pick knocked, expecting a slatternly, fag-smoking mother to answer the door, but instead it was answered by a girl in her early teens.

“Who are you?” the girl said.

“I’m Miss Pick, Clarabelle’s third-grade teacher.”

“Did something happen to Clarabelle?”

“Here I am!” Clarabelle said, coming around behind Miss Pick.

“Clarabelle had an accident at school and she needs a clean change of clothes,” Miss Pick said. “I’m going to wait for her and then take her back.”

The girl seemed hardly to care, but she stood aside for Miss Pick to enter.

“Are you Clarabelle’s sister?” Miss Pick asked.

“I’m Rosalie,” the girl said.

“Is it all right if I sit down?”

“Sure.”

She sat down on a dilapidated sofa the color of mold.

“What kind of accident did Clarabelle have?” Rosalie asked.

“I went my pants!” Clarabelle said proudly.

“Oh, brother!” Rosalie said. “Anything for attention.”

Clarabelle disappeared into the back part of the house.

“She needs a bath, too,” Miss Pick offered.

“Take a bath, CB!” Rosalie yelled.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Miss Pick asked, smiling to soften the question.

“Well, ordinarily I would be,” Rosalie said, “but my mother is in the hospital with cat scratch fever, and while she’s away I have to stay home and take care of Winchell.”

“Who’s Winchell?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Too young to go to school?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Well, why…”

“He’s retarded and doesn’t go to school. He used to go to retarded school but he flunked out.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in his room. I gave him a pill to quiet him down.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like a beer?”

“No, I…”

“My mother says I should always offer visitors a beer.”

“We have to be getting back to school as soon as Clarabelle finishes dressing.”

“Before you came,” Rosalie said, “I was sitting here by myself wondering and wondering. Do you think I ought to get married?”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“I think you should finish school before you think about marriage,” Miss Pick said.

“That’s what everybody says, but I don’t think I’ll wait that long. My boyfriend wants me to marry him and he’s not going to wait years for me. He’ll find him another girl if I make him wait that long.”

“Is he a classmate of yours at school?”

Rosalie laughed. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t go to school. He’s twenty-one. His name is Ricky. Don’t you think that’s a cute name for a boy?”

“Does your mother know about him?”

Rosalie doubled over with laughter, slapping her knee. “She’d steal him away from me if she thought she could!”

Finally Clarabelle came out of the back room, wearing a stiff corduroy dress three or four sizes too big for her and a knit cap with all her lank blond hair tucked inside. “I got dry,” she said, “and I took a bath, too!”

“That’s the first one in about a month,” Rosalie said.

As Miss Pick and Clarabelle were going out the door to go back to school, Miss Pick said to Rosalie, “It was nice talking to you.”

“Yeah,” Rosalie said. “You too. I’ll invite you to my wedding. Haw-haw!”

When they were on the highway headed back to town, Miss Pick looked away from the road to Clarabelle and said, “Somebody needs to speak to you and I suppose it might as well be me since your mother is, um, in the hospital.”

Clarabelle looked solemnly at her, believing she was about to be scolded.

“I won’t be able to do this again,” Miss Pick said. “Bring you home to change your clothes, I mean. This has disrupted everybody’s morning, including Miss Phegley’s. You’re supposed to go to the bathroom before school starts in the morning or during recess. If for some reason you don’t go during recess and you have to go when you’re in class, come and tell me and I’ll let you go. Please don’t sit there in class and let it build up until you can’t hold it in any longer and it comes out on its own!”

“Are you mad at me?” Clarabelle asked.

“Of course not.”

“Could we stop someplace and get a hamburger?”

“I’m afraid not. They’re waiting for us back at school. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

Miss Pick looked at her watch. “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “You have your lunch money, don’t you?”

“No.”

“When the lunch bell rings, go down to the lunchroom and get yourself a good lunch. Some roast beef and mashed potatoes. Cooked carrots. Tell the head hairnet to put it on Miss Pick’s tab. Can you remember that?”

“The head hairnet.”

“That’s right.”

“I like you, Miss Pick,” Clarabelle said.

“Well, I like you, too, dear!” Miss Pick said, looking over at Clarabelle and smiling. That’s when she came to an icy patch on the road that she hadn’t noticed before and the car went spinning out of control.

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Charmaine Chatsworth, Society Girl

Posted on April 23, 2013 by allen0997

Charmaine Chatsworth, Society Girl ~ A short story by Allen Kopp

Fifi opened the curtains, letting the sun in. Charmaine was instantly awake. She groaned and sat up in bed as if reveille had been sounded.

“You said you wanted to be up by seven, miss,” Fifi said.

She wanted to pick something up and throw it at Fifi for interrupting such a lovely sleep but, after all, she was only doing her job.

“Where are mummy and daddy?” she asked.

“Breakfast is being served on the terrace, miss.”

She got slowly out of bed and went into the bathroom. After brushing her teeth and dabbing at her face with a washcloth, she ran a brush over her hair, put on a dressing gown and went down to the terrace.

“Good morning, dear!” mummy said cheerily. “I hope you slept well.”

“I always sleep like a dog,” Charmaine said.

“I think that’s ‘sleep like a log’,” daddy said, not bothering to look up from the paper he was reading.

“Well, that’s a cliché,” mummy said. “We try to avoid clichés in our speech.”

The maid came with coffee for Charmaine.

“None of that,” Charmaine said. “I’ll just have some grapefruit juice and toast.”

“I’m afraid you’re not eating enough,” mummy said. “You’re as thin as a nail.”

“I think you mean ‘thin as a rail’,” daddy said.

“Isn’t that what all women strive for?” Charmaine said.

Daddy put the paper down and looked at Charmaine’s dressing gown. “Are we not even bothering to get dressed anymore?” he asked.

“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m not getting dressed until there’s a good enough reason.”

“Why don’t we all just sit around in our drawers, then?” he said.

Chester came out onto the terrace, kissed mummy on the cheek and sat down at the fourth side of the table.

“Morning all,” he said.

“Yes, isn’t it?” Charmaine said.

Chester was two years younger than Charmaine and already quite a man. He was six feet, two inches tall, had blue eyes and a dimple in his chin. He looked nothing like either mummy or daddy. Nobody was more entranced by his handsomeness than he was himself.

“How’s my favorite son this morning?” mummy asked, reaching over and patting him on the hand.

“I’m your only son, mummy,” he said.

“Unless, of course, you count Rexford, my dog,” she said. “He’s like a son, really, when you think about it, except that I didn’t give birth to him.”

“Why are you all dressed up so early in the day?” daddy asked, pointing at Chester’s tie and jacket. “You’re not by any chance planning on doing any work today, are you?”

“Heaven forbid!” Chester said. “I stand to inherit a very large fortune. Why would I work for it when I don’t have to?”

“There’s a little thing called ambition,” daddy said.

“Of which I have none. No, I just have a little business in town, that’s all.”

“What kind of business?” mummy asked.

“I think it comes under the heading of private business.”

“You’ve just been told to mind your own beeswax, mummy.” Charmaine said.

“It’s not some intrigue with some woman, I hope.” daddy said.

“Nothing as tawdry as that,” Chester said. “I’m going to the travel bureau and then I’m having lunch at the Seafarers’ Club with Dexter and Louie.”

“Louie’s that musician fellow, isn’t he?” mummy asked.

“That’s the one.”

“I’m afraid he isn’t a very savory companion for you.”

Chester laughed. “I believe I can choose my own friends, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Well, I just want you to be careful with that sort.”

“I hear he smokes reefers,” Charmaine said to tease Chester. “And that’s just for starters.”

“Oh, he does not!” Chester said. “You stay out of it!”

“How about you, daddy?” Charmaine asked. “Aren’t you going in to the office today?”

“Not today,” daddy said. “I’m taking a few days at home.”

“It wouldn’t matter if he never went to that horrible old office again,” mummy said. “He’s already got a hundred and seventy-five million dollars. Let those other people scramble and claw at each other to make money. Daddy doesn’t have to do that anymore.”

“Three years ago, in 1929, I had two hundred million,” he said.

“This awful Depression,” mummy said. “I don’t know what people are supposed to do.”

“Yes,” Charmaine said. “Isn’t it awful to have to squeak by on a hundred and seventy-five million?”

“The way you females spend money,” daddy said, “I’m wondering how long it’ll take you to run through the hundred and seventy-five million.”

“Oh, you exaggerate so!” mummy said.

“You ever notice how much of the conversation in this family centers around money?” Chester said.

“Well, since you’re not using Liggett this morning,” Charmaine said, “I thought I could get him to drive me in to town.”

“Oh, not you, too!” mummy said. “Why do both of my children have to go to town today when it’s a perfectly lovely spring day and we have this charming old thirty-five room house to knock around in?”

“I’m sure Rexford won’t want to go,” Chester said.

“Well, it’s like this,” Charmaine said. “I haven’t seen my friend Claudia Millet for ages. I told her I’d spend the day with her today and I might even stay the night if she invites me. We’ll probably see a show or something.”

“Well, if you think you should,” mummy said. “I have to keep reminding myself that you’re a grown-up person now.”

“I was going to take a cab to town,” Chester said, “but since Liggett is going to drive you, Cha-Cha, I’ll just tag along. He can drop me off at the travel bureau. I can walk to the Seafarers’ Club from there and I’ll take a cab home.”

“Oh, why must you use that horrible nickname?” mummy asked. “I cringe every time I hear it.”

“What’s wrong with Cha-Cha? It’s a perfectly logical diminutive of Charmaine.”

“It sounds like a floozy or a harlot or something.”

“Well, isn’t that what she is?”

“Watch who you’re calling names, buster!” Charmaine said. “Two can play at that game. I might think of some names to call you that you wouldn’t especially like.”

Charmaine ordered the car for nine o’clock. Liggett was waiting for them at the front door. All the way into town, she and Chester spoke little. Chester closed his eyes and appeared to be dozing, while she looked out the window at the trees, which were just beginning to come into full leaf.

Liggett dropped Chester off first and then turned around in the front seat and asked Charmaine where she wanted to go.

“Just let me out at the library,” she said, “and I’ll walk from there.”

As she was getting out of the car, she dismissed Liggett for the day. She was spending the night in town, she said, and wouldn’t need him. He looked pleased that he wasn’t going to have to wait for her and could go back home and do as he pleased until he was needed again. He touched the brim of his hat in a kind of salute and drove away.

From the library, she walked six blocks to a different part of the city. She turned at a corner as if she knew where she was going and walked two blocks down until she came to an old hotel on a corner opposite an empty warehouse. She went inside and engaged a room for the night. The desk clerk told her she could have the room only if she paid for it in advance.

Alone in the room with the door securely locked, she put her little suitcase on the bed and opened it. She took off her expensive-looking dress and changed into an ugly gray one like a female prisoner would wear. She changed her stylish shoes for a pair of scuffed oxfords and then put her dress, shoes and leather handbag into the suitcase and put the suitcase under the bed. She wiped the lipstick and makeup off her face and put on a brown felt hat that completely covered her hair. Checking herself over in the mirror, front and back, she then went back down the dark, foul-smelling stairs to the street.

From the hotel, she walked five blocks and turned and began walking toward the river. She could smell the river and feel it in her mouth from a long way off. Finally when she came to a charity soup kitchen in a building whose windows had been covered with newspaper, she paused for a moment and then went inside. She found the man who ran the soup kitchen, a Reverend Peebles, and told him she was there to help. He gave her an apron and put her behind the counter.

She ladled soup into bowls until the pot was empty and somebody from the kitchen came and replaced the empty pot with a full one. She was sweating and her feet ached. Still the indigents came, an endless flow of them. The bowl of soup and slice of bread was all the food most of them would have all day.

After a couple of hours she spotted him far back in the line. His turn came, finally, and she filled his bowl. She smiled at him and he smiled back. When she saw him take a seat at the back of the room and begin eating, she gave her ladle to the girl standing closest to her and said she needed to take a little break. She took off the apron and went to where he was sitting and sat down across from him.

“Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you’d be here today.”

“Well, here I am,” he said.

“Are you feeling better than the last time?”

“No. I think I’m dying.”

“You should see the doctor at the free clinic.”

“What if I told you I don’t care that I’m dying?”

“Everybody wants to live,” she said.

“Do they?”

“Let’s not quarrel.”

“Who’s quarreling?”

“I read the first six chapters of your book.”

“Are you going to tell me I’m a lousy writer?”

“On the contrary. I’ve never read anything like it. You have a very interesting and unusual way of expressing yourself. I can’t wait to read the rest of the book.”

“There’s not going to be anymore,” he said. “I’ve given up writing. It’s a luxury I can no longer afford.”

“What about the six chapters?”

“Burn them. Use them for wrapping fish. I don’t care.”

“You can’t give up now.”

“Can’t I?”

“I got us a room,” she said, hoping to change the subject.

“Does this room have a bathtub?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He flashed one of his rare smiles at her and finished his soup.

When they were walking back to the hotel, she stopped at a little market and bought a loaf of bread, some cheese, a couple tins of sardines, a package of cigarettes, two apples and some oranges.

“First a room and now food,” he said. “Where is the money coming from?”

“I had a little saved,” she said.

“You’re not a prostitute, are you?”

She laughed. “I’ll try not to be too insulted by that,” she said.

At the hotel, she had to help him up the stairs to the room because he was so weak. She opened the door and when he saw the bed he went to it and lay down heavily on his back, gasping for air.

“When are you going to see a doctor?” she asked.

“Probably not until they’re doing the autopsy.”

“Ha-ha. What a wit.”

While he was taking a bath, she washed his underwear and socks the best she could in the sink and hung them up to dry. When he came out of the bathroom he got into bed and covered up because he had nothing to put on.

“You’re feeling much better now, aren’t you?” she said.

She lay down on the bed beside him, on top of the covers. She kissed him lightly on the lips and then lit a cigarette for him.

“I really don’t know what I see in you,” she said.

“Don’t you think I’m handsome?”

“Not especially.”

“What is it then?”

“I don’t know. It was something I felt the first time I saw you last fall. Something that can’t be explained in words. Some kind of mysterious connection.”

“I don’t believe in that kind of bull,” he said.

“What do you believe in?”

“Nothing.”

He took her hand and put it to his lips. “You look and smell so clean,” he said. “Not like the rest of us.”

“I had a bath before I walked over to the soup kitchen.”

“I know nothing about you,” he said. “Are you some kind of an angel or something?”

“Hardly.”

“Do you have family? A family of angels?”

She laughed. “I have a mother, father and brother, but I don’t think anybody would ever think of them as angels.”

“Where do they live?”

“Not far from here.”

“When do I get to meet them?”

“Soon.”

“You know, don’t you, that you’re wasting your time with me?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’m no good. When I was growing up, my old man was always telling me I was worthless and I see now that he was so right.”

“Everybody has worth,” she said.

“I want you to just forget about me.”

“I could help you if you’d let me.”

“How do you mean?”

“I could give you money while you finish your book.”

“I’d rather die than take money from you.”

“You could think of it as a loan and pay me back when the book is published.”

“The book won’t ever be published. I told you. I’m washed up as a writer. I won’t ever write another word.”

They talked through much of the night and slept intermittently. He wanted to know about her upbringing. She told him as much as she could without actually lying, omitting, of course, certain details such as the family yacht and vacations in the South of France. They ate the food she bought, talked some more and slept some more.

When a police siren woke her up before dawn, he was gone. She waited for the sun to come up and then changed her clothes and left the hotel and found a cab to take her home.

At mid-morning when she was dozing on the terrace in the sun, mummy came out of the house and sat down close to her. When she realized mummy was looking at her with more than the usual scrutiny, she opened her eyes all the way and sat up.

“Are you going to the dance tonight at the country club?” mummy asked.

“I suppose so.”

“What dress are you going to wear?”

“The peach, I guess.”

“Who are you going with?”

“Talbot Lakey.”

“He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t like him very much, do you?”

“Not very much.”

“He’s an accomplished polo player and already owns his own yacht.”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s time for you to start thinking about finding a suitable husband.”

“Maybe you can find one for me and save me the bother.”

“Did you and Claudia Millet have a good time?”

“Yes.”

“What show did you see?”

“Oh, we decided not to go to a show after all. We had lots of talk to catch up on.”

“Why don’t you tell me where you really were?” mummy said.

“I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to tell you it’s none of your business, would it?”

“No,” mummy said. “Not this time. I think you should see a doctor and have a thorough physical exam.”

“All right, mummy,” she said. “Anything you say.”

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Posted in Uncategorized and tagged Allen Kopp, Charmaine Chatsworth Society Girl, fiction, short story. Bookmark the permalink.

You Came Back to Me

Posted on April 16, 2013 by allen0997

You Came Back to Me ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Snap Crosswhite sat in his bathrobe at the kitchen table and ate his substantial breakfast without saying a word. When he was finished he went back upstairs to his room and locked himself in without so much as looking at his mother or acknowledging the food she had cooked for him. She knew she wouldn’t see him again until lunchtime and maybe not even then. Sometimes he didn’t come down all day until evening when dinner was on the table.

She was in the kitchen washing the dishes when she heard someone knocking on the door. When she went to answer it, she saw two youngish men in suits and dark glasses looking in at her. They were officially grim as if they were acting in a television drama. Standing behind them were four uniformed police officers and, behind them, two police cars gleaming in the sun at the curb.

“Yes?” she said, squinting in the bright light.

“Is this the home of Mr. Stanislaus Crosswhite?” the taller of the two men in suits asked her, the one with sandy-colored hair. She didn’t fail to notice that he was quite good-looking as he flashed a badge at her to let her know who she was dealing with.

“We always called him Snap,” she said.

“Is he here?”

“Yes.”

“We’d like to speak to him, please.”

“What is this about? I’m his mother.”

“We’re not at liberty to discuss it with you, ma’am.”

“All right. I’ll go and get him.”

She went upstairs and leaned her ear against the door of Snap’s room and tapped lightly. “Snap, dear,” she said, softly, so as not to alarm him. “There’s someone here to see you.”

“Um. Who is it?” he called.

“I don’t know, dear. Just some men. They say they need to see you.”

“What about?”

“I don’t know, dear.”

“Um. Just write down their number and tell them I’ll call them back.”

“They’re not on the telephone, dear. They’re at the front door and they say they want to see you.”

“Oh, all right.”

She heard him walking toward the door and undoing the lock. When he opened the door, he was pulling his bathrobe around his front and tying it. She thought she should probably warn him about the men at the door, but he brushed past her without giving her a chance to speak.

He went down the steps in his indolent fashion, but, as soon as he took one look at the men, he turned around and ran back up as if they were firing bullets at him. He nearly tripped and fell over his own feet. Seeing that he was trying to get away, they burst into the house uninvited and ran up the stairs after him like a stampede.

He ran back into his room and slammed the door and locked it, but the men were right behind him. The uniformed men reached the door first but stood aside for the two men in suits.

“Please open the door, Mr. Crosswhite,” the other of the two men in suits said (shorter than the first one, with black hair and sad eyes). “It’s the police.”

He waited a few ticks of the clock and, when the door apparently wasn’t going to be opened, he gestured to the uniformed man standing closest to him, who threw his shoulder into the door with a loud crash and a splintering of wood.

When they ran into the room, Snap was trying to hide himself in the closet. He whimpered when he saw them coming toward him and attempted to conceal himself behind some hanging clothes. Two of the uniformed men seized him by the arms and began trying to extricate him.

“No, no, no!” he screamed. “Leave me alone! I haven’t done anything! Just ask my mother!”

“For heaven’s sake, what do you think he did?” she said from the doorway, but her voice was drowned out in the commotion.

They pulled him out of the closet and when they let go of him he threw himself on the bed, bellowing like a bull.

“Make it easy on yourself, son,” the second man in the suit said. “You can go willingly or we can have an ugly scene and upset your mother. It’s your choice.”

“Don’t let them do this to me, mother!” he screamed.

When they tried to pull him up from the bed, the sheets came off in his fists and then he wrapped his arms around the edge of the mattress like a drowning man holding onto a log. In the scuffling that ensued, his clothing became terribly disarranged. His bathrobe rode up onto his shoulders. His underpants were pulled down, exposing his enormous white buttocks.

The sandy-haired man turned to Snap’s mother and said, “I think you should wait downstairs, ma’am. We’ll stay with him and get some clothes on him.”

“Well, all right,” she said meekly. “If you think that’s best.”

A little while later when they all came down the stairs, the two men in suits were flanking Snap, holding onto his arms above the elbows to steady him. He was subdued now, although sniffling and looking very pale and unhappy. His hands were cuffed in front of him. They had dressed him in jeans, sweatshirt and sneakers. With head bent, he didn’t look at his mother as he was taken out of the house.

“Where are you taking my son?” she asked the sandy-haired man, as he seemed to be the leader. “When will I see my son again?”

“Now, now,” he said, as if trying to soothe an anxious dog, “it won’t do for you to worry.” He touched her lightly on the arm, no doubt meant to be reassuring. “After he has been processed, we’ll be getting in touch with you to apprise you of the details of his case. In the meantime, I suggest you try to maintain a positive attitude and don’t speak to any reporters.”

“What? Why would I do that?”

“You have a really fine day, now,” he said, and then he was gone.

She waited anxiously by the phone for the rest of the day but it never rang. That night her sleep was tormented by disturbing dreams in which Snap as a child was calling to her to help him. “Help me, mother!” he screamed. “I’m here! Can’t you see me?” But, the harder she tried to see him the more blurry he became, until finally he faded into the air like a wisp of smoke and in his place was the jack-in-the-box toy that used to make him cry when he was three years old.

The next day she spent most of the day lying on the couch in reach of the phone, but still it was silent—not even any wrong numbers or sales calls. She had the TV on for company but she wasn’t paying any attention to its silly game shows, commercials and soap operas. When it came time to eat, she went into the kitchen and prepared food for which she had no appetite.

On the second day after Snap had been taken away (still no word from or about him), she decided she needed to do something to occupy her mind and keep her from worrying so much, and she knew just the thing. She could clean Snap’s room from top to bottom, something she hadn’t been able to do for eight years or more. He would be so surprised when he came home and found his room cleaner than it had been in a long time.

First she opened the windows to let out the stale air and the fresh air in. Then she cleared out all the trash and debris: old newspapers and magazines, food cartons, candy wrappers, soda and beer bottles, dirty clothes, socks and underwear. She loaded everything into trash cans, including the clothes, and put the cans in the alley to be emptied on trash day.

With the room free of clutter, she began cleaning. She cleaned the walls and floors, clearing away the cobwebs that had accumulated close to the ceiling; pulled the furniture away from the walls and sucked up all the dust mice into the vacuum cleaner; scrubbed the mysterious stains out of the rug that had formed over the years; cleaned and polished the bedstead, dresser and chest of drawers; emptied all the drawers into trash bags; replaced the old pillows and sheets on the bed with new ones that had never been used before; scoured and disinfected the bathroom, cleaning all the mirrors and polishing the chrome fixtures. From the closet she took all of Snap’s old clothes and threw them away. The two of them would go shopping together and buy all new things when he came home, as if they were wiping the slate clean and beginning again.

When she was finished, she was very tired but happy with what she had done. The room looked like an altogether different room. She was sure that when Snap saw it he would take more pride and develop more responsible habits. There was no reason anymore for slovenliness.

A week after Snap had been taken away, she still hadn’t heard a word from the police. No matter how much she wanted the phone to ring and willed it to ring, it was still silent. She wished she had someone to share in her concern, but there was no one. She had never felt more alone and helpless in her life. At other times, she believed that not hearing was a good thing; it meant that everything was well and that Snap would be coming home with his problems, whatever they were, all cleared up. It was all just a mistake and everything would once again be as it was before.

She took to napping on the couch during the afternoons, not wanting to get too far from the phone. It was during one of these afternoon naps that someone knocked on the door and woke her up. Her heart leapt because she was sure it was either Snap or someone delivering good news about him.

When she opened the door, a young man was standing there smiling at her. He was immaculately dressed and groomed. His hair shone in the light and his teeth were the most perfect teeth that God ever made. He wore a tasteful tan suit with a white shirt and a red tie.

“Who are you?” she said. She didn’t care if she sounded rude.

“Aren’t you going to let me in?” he said.

Without waiting for an answer, he picked up the suitcase at his feet and came through the door. It was as he was crossing the threshold that she realized how much like Snap he was, except that he couldn’t be Snap. He was thinner, better-looking, better dressed, more courteous and much cleaner. How could he be that much like Snap while being so much different?

“Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?” she said, making a little joke.

“What?” he said with a little laugh. “Are you saying you don’t know me?”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I was sleeping and I guess I’m a little confused in my mind.”

How have you been?” he asked. He surprised her by putting his arms around her and kissing her on the cheek.

“All right,” she said. “ A little worried, though.”

“Well, I was worried, too. About you.”

“Where have you been?”

“We don’t have to talk about that now,” he said. “We’ll talk about it another time.”

“You must be hungry.”

“Yes, I am.”

“It’ll take me about an hour to prepare dinner.”

“Good. In the meantime I need to rest. I think I’ll just go upstairs now.”

“Of course.”

When he came down from upstairs and took his place at the table, he was wearing a yellow plaid sport shirt tucked into a pair of trim black pants. She wanted to tell him how good he looked, how unusual, but she was afraid it would come out sounding like a criticism of the old Snap.

“Did you notice anything different upstairs?” she asked.

“Why, yes,” he said. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble. Everything looks wonderful.”

That proves it, she thought. If he wasn’t Snap, how could he know what the room looked like before? On the other hand, Snap never had a good word to say about anything, so he probably wasn’t Snap. Nothing was settled in her mind.

“I threw out a lot of the old things,” she said. “I thought we’d go downtown and buy you some new clothes. I know men don’t like to go shopping, but I won’t know what to get unless you go with me.”

“I don’t mind,” he said. “I could use some new things. Out with the old. In with the new.”

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” she said. “I want to go to church. Would you care to go with me?”

“Of course I’ll go,” he said. “If you want me to.”

The old Snap would have scoffed at the idea and would have made fun of her for asking him.

“After church I thought we’d go for a little drive and have lunch at that little place outside of town that has such good barbecue. And then after that go visit my sister and her husband.”

“All right.”

“I’m afraid they’re awfully dull. My sister’s husband is a retired meat inspector. He has very strong political views.”

“I don’t mind.”

When they were finished eating, she stood up and started clearing away the dishes.

“You stay right where you are,” he said. “I’ll wash up. You just rest.”

She looked at him with genuine amazement. The old Snap would never have offered to help after a meal.

“From now on I want to make things easier for you,” he said. “I’ll help with the housework and cooking. I’ll bet you didn’t know I could cook, did you?”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Now you go and rest. If you need anything, I’ll be in the kitchen.”

She had a dozen questions to ask, such as how and when he had learned to cook, but she was afraid to ask him, afraid to break the spell, if that’s what it was. The old Snap would be back and she didn’t think she could bear it.

She stood up and went outside, down the front steps to the sidewalk, and began walking down the street, past the houses that were so familiar to her. When she had walked half a block, she forgot where she was going or why, but suddenly it seemed very important to her that she tell someone: her son had come back and he was the kind of son she always wanted.

After she had walked many blocks and no longer knew where she was, a strange older man wearing a hat and dark glasses approached her. She strained to see his face but wasn’t able to make it out. When he took her by the elbow, she found his touch comforting somehow.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re lost, aren’t you?”

“My son,” she said. “My son.”

“What about your son?”

“They’ve done something with him. He’s the same but not the same. He never liked to take a bath but this one is very clean. I can’t explain it.”

“Do you want me to call him for you?”

“I don’t think it would do any good.”

“My car is parked right down the street,” he said. “ I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Just name it.”

“I’m not sure if I should or not.”

“Come on. It’ll be fine.”

He took her by the arm to his car parked in the next block. It was an old car and big, the color of rust. He opened the back door for her and she got in. Then he got behind the wheel and started the engine.

He looked at her in the rearview mirror and smiled, showing brown teeth. “You’re a good-looking dame,” he said. “But I bet you already know that.” He laughed and put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb into the ceaseless flow of traffic.

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A Conversation Between Two Mothers

Posted on April 13, 2013 by allen0997

A Conversation Between Two Mothers ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

It was Lorna’s turn to host the card party and she still had much to do. She had just put her hair up in curlers and was tying a scarf around her head to make herself presentable to go to the store to buy some last-minute items when there was sharp knock on the back door. She snuffed her cigarette out in the garbage pail and went to the door and opened it. A very short woman with disheveled reddish hair was standing on the bottom step looking up at her.

“Mrs. Simple?” the woman said.

“It’s Semple,” Lorna said. She tried to smile but couldn’t because she found the woman repellent in some way.

“Well, Simple or Semple or whatever it is, I need to have a word with you.”

She could see the woman was agitated about something. “Would you like to come in?”

“No, thank you!”

“What is this about?”

“You have a son named Dwayne?”

“Yes.”

“He’s been picking on my Curtis.”

“Picking on your what?”

“On my son Curtis, dodo bird!”

“And just who are you?”

“My name, if it should happen to be of any interest to you, is Mrs. White. My son is Curtis White.”

Lorna sighed and stepped out the back door onto the little porch. “Maybe you’d just better tell me what happened,” she said.

“Curtis was riding his bicycle on the sidewalk, minding his own business. Dwayne jumped out from behind a tree and yelled and scared Curtis and caused him to turn over on his bike. He skinned his leg really bad.”

“What am I supposed to do about it, burst into tears?”

“Then, when Curtis was lying on the ground in pain, Dwayne took his bicycle.”

“Oh, he’s just playing. That’s what boys do.”

“Oh, is that so? Well, I think Dwayne is a psychopath!”

“Now, wait a minute!” Lorna said. She was starting to come unraveled. How dare this woman come and bother her with some trivial child’s matter when she had so much to do?

“Then when Curtis finally got his bike back, it had some scratches on it that weren’t there before. He is so proud of that bike. It nearly broke his heart!”

“Wait a minute!” Lorna said. “Did you see Dwayne do any of this?”

“He did it all right!”

“Did you yourself see him do it?”

“Well, no, I was in the house at the time, tending to my little girl. She’s had pneumonia and has been awful sick. The doc says her tonsils have to come out if she’s ever going to get any better.”

“If you didn’t see Dwayne do it, how do you know he did?”

“Because Curtis said so. If you could have seen how upset he was, it would have broken your heart; that is, if you have a heart.”

“But how do you know Dwayne did it? There are lots of other boys in the neighborhood.”

“I just told you, dumbbell! Curtis said so! He came into the house crying with the blood dripping down his leg. He was so upset he couldn’t speak for a matter of minutes. Then when I held him on my lap and got him calmed down a little bit he told me what happened.”

“So, you’re taking Curtis’s word that Dwayne did it?”

“Hell, yes! Are you saying my boy is a liar?”

“I’m saying that you can’t always go on what kids say. Sometimes you have to find out what happened on your own.”

“So you’re saying my boy is a liar.”

“I don’t have time for this right now! When Dwayne comes home, I’ll speak to him about it and I’ll find out the truth. If he did what you say he did, he will be made to apologize.”

“And that’s all?”

“What do you want, a written confession in blood?”

“I have a good mind to call the police.”

“You do what you think you must.”

“You tell that little ham-handed troglodyte of yours to stay away from Curtis and Curtis’s bike and anything that belongs to Curtis.”

“You’d better watch who you’re calling names! You’ve got a lot of nerve coming to my door and raising such a fuss over nothing on a day when I have so much to do!”

“So now you’re saying it’s nothing? First Curtis is a liar and now it’s nothing!”

“If you don’t get off my property, and I mean right now, I’m going to throw something at you!”

“Why don’t you come down off that porch, you crazy bitch, and I’ll just beat the shit out of you right here?”

Lorna ran back into the kitchen to find something to throw. The first thing she picked up was the dishtowel but that was no good. She opened the refrigerator door and, without thinking, grabbed the pitcher of tomato juice that she was chilling to use for cocktails. She picked it up, sloshing a little on her front, and ran to the back door. Mrs. White was still standing there on the bottom step, hands on hips. She started to speak again but Lorna emptied the tomato juice on her head, about three-quarters of a gallon.

“Oh, my god!” Mrs. White said, stepping back and wiping the tomato juice from her eyes. “You really are insane!”

“Have I made my point?” Lorna said.

“That burns my eyes! I’m going to sue you for assault!”

“All the time remembering, of course, that you started it and you came on my property to start it!”

“People like you and that crazy kid of yours should be locked up!”

“I’ll give you about five seconds to get off my property and, if you don’t, I have to tell you my husband keeps a loaded gun in the closet. I don’t mind shooting your ass off. There’s not a court in the land that would convict me!”

“Oh, my,” Mrs. White said, prancing around in a circle with the tomato juice dripping off her. “But aren’t we hoity-toity, though?”

“You have fifteen seconds to leave. That’s how long it’ll take me to get the gun.”

“Make me!”

She ran through the house to the bedroom. The gun was on the top shelf in the closet, where her husband insisted that it be kept, loaded and ready to fire. She grabbed it the same way she had grabbed the tomato juice.

When she went to the back door with the gun, Mrs. White was standing there, hands on hips, acting very strangely. Her tongue was sticking out and her eyes rolled up into her head as though she was possessed of a demon. When Lorna leveled the gun at her, she did a little jig of defiance, her broad rear end shaking.

“You are the most repulsive woman I ever saw!” Lorna said.

She shot Mrs. White in the breastbone. She fell backwards and, as she was struggling to stand up again, Lorna shot her two more times, once in the head and once in the abdomen, until she was dead.

Lorna went back into the house and put the gun back where it belonged in the closet. Then she got her purse and keys and went back out, locking the door. She dragged Mrs. White by the ankles into the bushes, where she was, for the most part, concealed from view. Then she wiped off her hands and got into the car in the driveway and started it. She had to get to the store before they were out of the best cuts of meat.

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Mink Stole

Posted on April 9, 2013 by allen0997

Mink Stole ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

When Vicki-Vicki was fourteen, she shaved off her eyebrows. They were growing too much, almost meeting in the middle, and she hated the tedious and painful process of pulling them out one by one with the tweezers. She believed that by shaving them off completely they would grow back in a week or so, beautifully shaped and highly glamorous like those of a movie star. She discovered, however, that, once they were shaved all the way off, they didn’t grow back at all. She was forced to resort to stealing an eyebrow pencil from the cosmetics department in the drugstore and drawing them on herself. She was the only girl in eighth grade to have drawn-on eyebrows.

Not that drawing on your own eyebrows is a bad thing. It allowed her to experiment with different shapes and thicknesses. Some days she felt like just a thin line, high up on her forehead (think of Marlene Dietrich), while other days she drew them on low and thick as though she were scowling (Irene Dunne in the early 1930s). And, of course, there was always the Joan Crawford look (high, thick and dark). She learned to express her many moods through her eyebrows.

Another thing that made her different was that she wore a French beret (a gift from her crazy grandmother) with all her hair tucked inside. She liked to keep the beret on all the time because she had unruly hair, but sometimes one teacher or another at school would make her take it off in class. She didn’t know why a beret bothered them so much—maybe they just hated the French and didn’t want to be reminded. Anyway, she had to remove it when told or risk being in the kind of trouble that she was in no manner prepared to deal with.

A housebreaker of her acquaintance in Scraptown, one Nesbitt Fingers, gave her an old mink stole that he had no use for. If she didn’t want it, he said, he was going to throw it away. She accepted it eagerly. She loved its furry softness, its slightly musky smell, and began wearing it every day, wherever she went. She was the only girl in the entire school to own a real mink stole. She believed it must be valuable and, if she ever needed money desperately, she could sell it. Until that day, though, she had no intention of parting with it. She believed it would bring her good luck.

The history teacher, Miss Skells, was out for an operation and a sleepy-eyed substitute in his late thirties named Wilfred Durston came in to fill in for her. He was quiet, wore a moustache and drove a small black car. Nobody spoke of him or knew anything about him. He seemed to arouse no interest in even the gossipiest person in the school. He just was until Miss Skells came back, like a piece of cardboard that stands in for a pane of glass until the pane can replaced with the real thing.

After Mr. Durston had been at the school a few days, Vicki-Vicki noticed him watching her. When she looked at him, he looked away quickly; then when he thought she was thinking about something else he began watching her again. She knew of no reason that he would be interested in her unless he recognized the mink stole, knew who it belonged to and, thinking she had stolen it, planned to call the police on her. The thought scared her.

In a couple of weeks Miss Skells came back and Mr. Durston was gone. Vicki-Vicki put him out of her mind until one day when she was walking home from school and saw him standing on the street corner up ahead. She was going to just smile politely and say hello to him if she had to and then walk on past, but she realized as she came nearer that he had been waiting for her and hadn’t just happened upon her by accident.

“Vicki-Vicki,” he said, smiling.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you know who I am?”

“Substitute teacher.”

“You remember me?”

“Of course.”

“How have you been?”

“All right,” she said. “If you’re selling magazine subscriptions, I don’t have any money.”

“I’m not,” he said.

“If it’s about the mink stole, somebody gave it to me. I don’t know where he got it.”

“No, it’s not that, either.”

She took off the beret and shook out her brown-blond hair. Her eyebrows were two perfect arcs on her forehead. With the mink stole around her shoulders and the afternoon sunlight on her face, she looked much older than her fourteen years.

“Well, it was lovely seeing you again,” she said with a touch of irony, starting to move past him.

“Wait!” he said. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Not here. I wonder if we might go someplace and have a drink. A Coke. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I have to go home now.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday. Will you meet me then?”

“Well, I suppose I can if it’s that important.”

“Meet me at the big tree by the basketball court at the southeast corner of the school.”

“What time?”

“Five o’clock.”

“If I’m not there by five-thirty you’ll know I couldn’t make it.”

“And, if it’s all the same to you,” he said, “nobody needs to know about this.”

On days she didn’t have to go to school, she liked to “dress up,” meaning she wore clothes she would never have been allowed to wear to school. For her meeting with Mr. Durston, she wore men’s pleated flannel pants, a vintage gaucho shirt and saddle oxfords. She was going to wear the mink stole but decided at the last minute to wear a loose-fitting black coat that went all the way to her ankles and a “widow’s” hat with a black veil that covered her face. The last thing she did before she left was to carefully draw on her eyebrows, this time in a straight line that curved downward slightly at the ends.

She arrived at the big tree at the southeast corner of the school a little early. Mr. Durston was waiting for her there, standing beside his car. He wasn’t sure at first if it was her because of the veil.

“Vicki-Vicki?” he said.

She raised the veil so he could see her face.

“Get in,” he said, opening the passenger-side door.

She hesitated. “I don’t know if I should or not. How do I know you’re not a murderer?”

“You don’t,” he said. “You’ll just have to trust me.”

“I can scream really loud.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I wrote your name on a piece of paper and left it on my dresser. If I’m murdered, they’ll know who did it.”

“That was very clever of you but not necessary.”

They both got in and he started the car.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

He drove over into the next town where they would be less likely to be seen by people who knew them and stopped at a roadside diner.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked.

“I guess so,” she said.

When they were seated at a booth, she said, “You wanted to talk to me, so talk.”

“You’re not like other girls your age, are you?” he said.

“No, and why should I be? I come from a crazy family. It’s only natural that I should be crazy too. We live in Scraptown. My mother changes boyfriends as often as she changes underwear. She drinks, smokes and shoplifts, among other things. She beats me up when she thinks she has a good enough reason. One time when she was drunk she held me down and shaved my head. When she was sober again, she didn’t remember doing it. I don’t even know who my father is. My grandmother talks to dead people and makes clothes for her cats. Veradean and Baby Eddie, my brother and sister, are growing up even crazier than I did. They’re the only reason I don’t run away.”

“Would you like to run away?”

“Sometimes, but it just isn’t practical until I’m at least sixteen. You didn’t bring me all the way over here to listen to me talk about my family, did you?”

“No.”

“Do you ask all your eighth-grade students out on dates?”

“This isn’t a date and, no, you’re the first.”

“What about you? Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your wife like?”

“Older than me.”

“Do you have kids?”

“No.”

“How long have you been a substitute teacher?”

“Long enough.”

“Do you like teaching?”

“Not especially, but it gave me a chance to meet you.”

She looked at him over her hamburger. “What makes me so special?”

“Have you ever seen the sun set over Sapphire Lake?” he asked.

“I can’t say I have.”

“Well, let’s go then.”

He drove along the river road around the mountain to Lookout Point. He stopped the car and they both got out.

“I like to come here to think,” he said, leaning against the front of the car.

The lake was like a mirror reflecting the evening sky. The sun, coloring the clouds a glorious pink color, seemed to sink into the mountain.

“It’s getting chilly,” she said. She leaned against him and put her head on his shoulder. “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me?” she asked. “Not even just a little bit?”

“I can’t have thoughts like that about you, Vicki-Vicki,” he said.

“Is it the age difference?”

“It has nothing to do with age.”

“I’ll bet I’m not as naïve as you think I am.”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “Did your mother ever tell you anything about your father?”

“No. I figured she didn’t know who it was. She’s such a tramp.”

“I knew your mother a long time ago,” he said. “We went out together for one whole summer.”

“What? How could you stand her?”

“She was different then. A few months after we broke it off she wrote me a letter. I still have it at home in my desk drawer. In the letter she said she had given birth to a baby. She didn’t want anything from me but she wanted me to be aware of the baby, because, if anything happened to her, she said, she didn’t want the welfare people taking it.”

“Oh,” Vicki-Vicki said. “I was the baby, wasn’t I?”

“When I saw you at school, I knew right away who you were, even though I hadn’t seen you since you were five years old.”

“I just made a pass at my own father,” she said. “I feel so silly I could die.”

She let down the veil on her hat and got back into the car. On the way back to town, she looked silently out the window.

When they were parting, he wrote his phone number on a piece of paper but she wouldn’t take it.

“Why did you tell me?” she asked.

“Doesn’t everybody want to know who their father is?”

“I’ve gone this long without knowing. It doesn’t make much difference now, one way or the other. Veradean and Baby Eddie don’t know who their fathers are. For their sake, I would rather not have known.”

“If I can ever do anything for you…”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I think it’s probably best if you don’t tell your mother about this.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t cause you any trouble.”

“I’d like for us to get to know each other.”

“I don’t think so. What’s the point? What’s the point of anything?”

When she got home, Veradean and Baby Eddie were alone, asleep in their beds. She knew that people weren’t supposed to go off and leave little children at home by themselves at night, but how do you explain the behavior of somebody like her mother? If there was a fire or something, they would surely be able to get themselves out of it on their own. They had been doing it all their lives and were learning fast.

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Feathers or Fruit

Posted on April 3, 2013 by allen0997

Feathers or Fruit ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

As mother was backing out of the driveway, father ran out of the house and motioned for her to stop. He was always thinking of things almost before it was too late.

“Bring me a Sunday paper and some cigarettes,” he said. “And then come straight home.”

“Why doesn’t he go to church?” Lathan asked, when they were underway again. He was dressed in his new suit, sitting beside mother on the front seat.

“He’s tired,” she said, “and he doesn’t like church people.”

“I hope he doesn’t eat all the best Easter candy while I’m gone.”

“If he eats it all, I think he might be sick for the rest of the day,” she said with a little laugh. “I think that would be kind of funny, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Lathan said, “but then there wouldn’t be any candy left.”

The Easter Bunny had been very generous this year, with three cellophane-encased baskets and another basket of two-dozen dyed eggs, which had to go right into the refrigerator. At age eight, Lathan knew there was really no such thing as the Easter Bunny, but he would keep up the pretense as long as he had to, or until mother acknowledged the truth.

The parking lot was already full, so mother had to park on the street half a block from the church. She and Lathan just barely made it inside and found a seat in the back as the service was beginning. Lathan sat on the end with his shoulder pressed into the wood of the pew, glad that mother was between him and the person on the other side of her, a fat woman reeking of dime-store perfume.

Even the occasional churchgoer managed to attend on Easter Sunday, so the church was full to overflowing. They sat packed in, shoulder to shoulder, the men in their dark suits and their slicked-down hair, the women in their whites or bright spring colors. Some of the women wore funny hats with feathers or fruit, but most of them were bareheaded with hairdos fresh from the beauty parlor. Little children sat next to their mothers or grandmothers, trying hard to be good and knowing they would get swatted on the leg if they weren’t. As babies fussed and whimpered, a valiant effort was made to keep them quiet.

A man (not the minister) stood up and said a prayer, after which he read some announcements about upcoming church activities. The choir sang, without much enthusiasm, a couple of songs suitable to the occasion while the organist, a somnambulant grandmother with orange hair and a hanging mole on her upper lip, provided spotty accompaniment. The somber-looking deacons passed among the congregation with their felt-lined wooden money plates. People deposited coins, bills or little white envelopes into the plates, either with a smile or a scowl. After this “offertory” was finished, it was time for the Easter sermon, which, if it was a good one, would be remembered for a long time and might still be talked about next Easter.

The minister stood on a raised platform higher than anybody else, higher than the choir behind him, with baskets of lilies on both sides. He gripped the pulpit with both hands as if trying to hold himself upright. “Dear friends,” he said in his high, reedy voice (surprising for a man of three hundred pounds), “I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to me to see so many of you here on this glorious Easter Sunday. Our message today is ‘come one, come all’. The more people we can get into our humble little church on this, the holiest day of our holy year, to hear our message of peace and love, the more it gladdens my heart and the heart of the One who watches over us all and knows us, each and every one, better than we know ourselves. From the moment that Adam and Eve disappointed God in the Garden of Eden by doing the one thing He asked them not to do…”

About fifteen minutes into the sermon, a pigeon flew in at the window and, after flapping its wings around the ceiling for a couple of minutes, perched on a crossbeam twenty feet above the minister’s head and did what appeared to be a little dance of its own, facing front and back and then sideways, as if wanting to give everybody a chance to see it. Children tittered and pointed. About half the people in the church watched the pigeon to see what it was going to do next and had stopped listening to the sermon. The minister didn’t see it or else chose to ignore it.

Listening to the minister drone on, Lathan thought, was worse than sitting through his most boring subject in school, but finally it was over and time to go home. Everybody stood up at once, glad to be able to move again and to shout if need be. The minister appeared at the front door as if by magic and proceeded to shake everybody’s hand as they left and to receive the compliments that were due him on what he considered a very fine sermon.

When mother stood up from the pew and then Lathan beside her, a smiling man approached her and extended his hand. He wore glasses and had black hair; he was wearing a light-gray suit with a red tie and a red carnation in his buttonhole.

“So nice to see you today, Sylvia,” he said. “I saw you as soon as you came in but I knew you didn’t see me.”

“Hello, Cedric,” mother said, taking his hand in her own.

“I missed you at Sunday school,” he said.

“I was lucky to make it for church,” she said with a laugh.

“I’m with my mother but she’s over there talking to somebody, so I have to wait until she’s finished.”

“Have you met my son, Lathan?” mother asked.

“Yes, I believe I’ve seen the little fellow once or twice,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m all right,” Lathan said.

“Well, I won’t keep you any longer,” he said, “but I hope to see you again soon. We’re bound to run into each other again.”

“All right, Cedric,” mother said. “Tell your mother hello for me.”

“I will.”

When they were walking to the car, Lathan said, “Who was that man?”

“His name is Cedric Coolidge. He’s just somebody I’ve known since high school. I used to go out with him some.”

“Do you mean on dates?”

“Yes, it was before I was married.”

“Is he married?”

“No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Do you like him?”

“Well, yes. He’s an old friend. He’s very smart and an excellent piano player.”

When they were almost home, mother said to Lathan, “I’d rather you didn’t mention to your father that we spoke to Cedric at church today.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, no reason, I guess. I think it’s just better if we don’t bring it up.”

“All right,” Lathan said, “If you say so.”

“I know you’re good at keeping your word,” she said. “I know you don’t understand yet, but that’s what it means to have integrity.”

“Integrity,” Lathan said. “I don’t know what it means.”

When they were having dinner, they were all silent until mother said, “A bird flew inside today during church service. I wonder what it means.”

“It means somebody’s going to die,” father said.

“No,” mother said, “I think in this case it means something else.”

“Well, whatever it means,” he said, “it shouldn’t matter to you. Pass me the potatoes.”

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Curtain of Night

Posted on March 29, 2013 by allen0997

Curtain of Night ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

She didn’t know how far she had walked, but it seemed more than a mile but not quite two. Finally when she came to an old house at the end of a dirt road with a split tree she knew she had come to the right place. She walked up rickety wooden steps to the front door and knocked timidly. In a moment an old woman came and peered out at her through the screen.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Wakes?” the girl asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ve walked all the way from town to see you.”

“Do you have any chocolate on you?”

“Why, no.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well, come on in, then. And make sure you don’t have no mud on your shoes.”

Stepping in out of the bright sunlight, she could barely see. It was the darkest house she ever saw. The windows were covered up on the inside.

“Come on back to the kitchen,” Mrs. Wakes said.

She pulled a chair out from a table and gestured for the girl to sit. She took a glass and filled it with ice-cold water and put it on the table in front of her. “Better tell me who you are,” she said. “I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

“My name is Ernestine Bird. I live in town with my papa and my mama and my younger brother Gaither. My papa owns the feed and grain store. I go to church every Sunday.”

“What can I do for you, Ernestine Bird?”

“People say you’re a witch.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you a witch?”

“Do I look like one?”

“I’ve never seen a witch so I couldn’t say.”

“Some call it one thing. Others call it something else. If you feel good calling me a witch, then go ahead and do it.”

“You sell potions and things.”

“I don’t call them potions. They’re medicines, restoratives, mixtures, compounds and what-not. Whether or not they work is very often in the mind of the person using them.”

“Do you have something that could cause a person to die mysteriously, but really fast and without any pain or choking or fits or anything?”

“There is something called ‘Curtain of Night’ that brings instantaneous death to those that take it. I don’t give it to just anybody, though.”

“That’s the thing I want.”

“Just who is it you want to die?”

“It’s for me.”

Mrs. Wakes looked directly at her face as if studying her. “I don’t usually give it to people who want to use it on themselves,” she said. “It’s mostly always used for a sick family member who can’t get well or for revenge against an enemy.”

“I promise you nobody will ever know where I got it.”

She sat down at the little table and took Ernestine’s right hand in her own and turned it palm up.

“Are you going to read my fortune?” Ernestine asked.

“Nothing as silly as all that,” she said. She rubbed her palm against Ernestine’s palm. “Your hand is all sweaty.”

“I walked a long way.”

“Drink the water.” She pushed the glass toward Ernestine and watched as she drank.

“Now,” she said when the glass was empty, “tell me your foolishness, whatever it is. I’ve heard it all in my day.”

“There’s this boy I want to marry.”

“Oh, so it’s about love, then. Why am I not surprised?”

His name is Phillip Andrew Clague. He’s older than me. I’ve been out on dates with him exactly three times. He has a Ford that we ride in with the top down. One time we went to the picture show and the other two times for a drive in the country.”

“And he took advantage of you when you were least able to resist and now you’re in trouble, is that it?”

“Oh, no, that’s just the thing. He keeps his distance. He acts like I’ve got the plague or something.”

“So, he doesn’t like you very much, or not enough to suit you? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you want to die because of it.”

“Recently he’s started stepping out with a girl named Hester Risley. She’s a whore but he doesn’t know it yet. I’ve heard from somebody who knows Hester that she’s got it into her head that she’s going to marry him. I can’t let that happen.”

“Is it worth dying over?”

“If I can’t have him I don’t want to go on living.”

Mrs. Wakes sighed. “Oh, foolishness, thy name is woman!” she said. “Take the word of an old harridan four times older than you. You don’t want to die over the first boy that bats his eyelashes at you. He’ll move out of your life and then somebody else will move in and, before you know it, you won’t even remember the name of the one you were willing to die for. It’s the way of young people. Go on home now and forget you were ever here.”

“I’ll pay you all I have. Twenty dollars.”

She leaned over and spit into a lard bucket on the floor against the wall. “Has it occurred to you,” she said, “that there might be some other way besides doing away with yourself?”

“I have the feeling you’re laughing at me.”

“I can give you a love elixir that will make any boy fall in love with you. Even one who thinks he doesn’t like you at all.”

“Is that possible?”

“It happens all the time. If you’re able to give him the elixir and take some yourself at the same time, he will love you throughout all eternity. Your spirit will be locked together with his as though you are one, forever and ever.”

“I’d like some of that, please.”

“Not so fast. You have to ask yourself if you really love him that much. You have to be sure because there’s no way to undo it.”

“The answer is yes.”

“How much do you know about him?”

“I know enough.”

“Do you know what his personal habits are like? Does he keep his word? Is he kind to animals? Is he kind to his mother? Do you know his opinions on the important subjects of the day? Is there anything going on in that head of his behind his pretty face?”

“I know enough, I tell you.”

“I want you to think about these things. Go away and come back in one week. After a week’s reflection, you might change your mind.”

“I don’t have one week and I won’t change my mind! If he decides he’s going to marry Hester Risley, it’ll be too late.”

“It’s your funeral. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“So you’ll let me have it, then?”

“I don’t know yet. Only on the condition that you’ll think about it for a while before acting.”

“I will.”

“And, also, you’ve got to understand there are no guarantees.”

“Are you saying it might not work?”

“It’s not a hundred percent foolproof. Most of the time it works but not always.”

“If it doesn’t work, will you give me back my money?”

“After you leave here, you assume full responsibility for what happens or doesn’t happen. By the time you get back to town, you’ll forget that I exist or that you were ever here. You’ll have the love elixir but you won’t know where you got it.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s something I do to you. In fact, I’ve already done it and you didn’t even know it.”

“You cast a spell on me?”

“Call it whatever you like.”

“Since the love elixir might not work, I want the Curtain of Night, too. Just in case.”

“I want you to make sure you understand the seriousness of the step you are about to take. You’re not playing a child’s game.”

“I know that.”

“Very well. Go into the next room and lie on your back on the bed. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

The room off the kitchen was just as dark as the rest of the house, but a small chink of light, enough to see by, came through at the top of a window. Against the far wall was a small bed with one pillow and a coverlet. She lay on the bed as Mrs. Wakes had instructed her to do and folded her hands over her abdomen. She breathed out and breathed in. Soon she was asleep.

When she came awake, she was on the road back to town with the odd sensation of not being able to remember how she got there, as if she had woken up while in the act of walking.

“She really is a witch,” she said to herself.

By the time she got back to town, though, she couldn’t remember Mrs. Wakes at all. When she got home and found the two tiny bottles in her pocket, one marked Love and the other Death, she couldn’t remember where they came from but she knew what they were for and how she was going to use them when the time came.

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Literary Fictions

Tag Archives: short story

In This World

State Line

The Beauty Box

Cat Scratch Fever

Charmaine Chatsworth, Society Girl

You Came Back to Me

A Conversation Between Two Mothers

Mink Stole

Feathers or Fruit

Curtain of Night

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