Tag: short story

Threes

Threes ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

It was late fall, getting close to Thanksgiving. I was eleven and in the sixth grade. I came down with a terrible cold that settled in my chest. I had a rattling cough and a fever. My chest hurt and my swallowing mechanism wasn’t right. My mother had taken a sliding fall on the street and was in the hospital with a brain concussion. She was out of commission until further notice. Daddy, who ordinarily didn’t like being bothered with kid problems, was in charge in my mother’s absence. He never understood me, even at the best of times. He thought I was faking it even when I wasn’t. I was too young to stay at home by myself all day long, the thinking went, so my cold was ignored (by him, anyway) and I was sent packing off to school.

Miss Smalls noticed right away there was something wrong with me. I couldn’t stop coughing. I could hardly hold my head up. She held her hand to my forehead and then walked me up to the nurse’s office.

Miss Millie Deal, the school nurse, looked in my eyes and ears and down my throat. She put a thermometer under my tongue and then unbuttoned my shirt and listened to my heart. “You’ve got a lot of congestion in the lungs,” she said. (No fooling.) “You should have stayed at home today and rested.”

“There’s nobody there,” I said around the little glass tube in my mouth.

“Are you afraid to stay by yourself?”

“No. It wasn’t my idea.”

She took the thermometer out of my mouth and turned toward the window to get a better look. “A hundred and two,” she said. “If left untreated, your condition could be dangerous.”

“What?”

“I think you might have the start of pneumonia. You feel rotten, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Any vomiting or cramps?”

“No.”

“You’re not coughing up blood, are you?”

“No,” I said anxiously. “Will I?”

There was a small, metal hospital bed—more like a cot, really—against the wall. It looked like it might have been used in World War I or before. She pulled down the covers and told me to take off my shoes and get into the bed. After I had done so, she took my glasses from me and covered me up.

“Just stay there,” she said, “until I tell you to get up.”

The sheets smelled liked peppermint. The pillow was soft and fit my head perfectly. I turned my face to the wall and covered up my head. By the time Miss Deal came back from telling Miss Smalls she was keeping me in her office “for observation,” I was sound asleep.

I slept all morning and through lunch. When the lunch-is-over bell rang, I woke up briefly and then went back to sleep. When school was over for the day, Miss Deal woke me up and told me it was time to go home. Before I left she handed me a note she had written for me to give to daddy: Your son needs to see a doctor before he returns to school.

Daddy wasn’t happy about the note, but he didn’t do more than the usual amount of crabbing. After a dinner (that I didn’t want) of fish sticks and macaroni and cheese, he made me go straight to bed without any TV. A little shit as sick as I was, he said, needed to be in bed.

In the morning he took me to Dr. Vermilion’s office on his way to work. He sat there beside me silently, looking at a magazine, while I waited my turn to see the doctor. When my name was called, he didn’t go in with me, as my mother would have.

I had been going to Dr. Vermilion all my life and I wasn’t too scared of him. He was old but he knew how to laugh and joke around. The thing I hated most about going to the doctor was having to take off my clothes. This time he let me keep on my undershirt and my pants while he examined me, so already I felt better.

He used a tongue depressor to look as far down my throat as he could; listened to me front and back with the stethoscope. My temperature was still about a hundred and two.

“What girls have you been kissing?” he asked.

“None!” I said emphatically.

“I think you’ve picked up a germ somewhere.”

“It wasn’t from any girl.”

“How do you know that?”

I was trying to think of an answer but he laughed then, so I knew he was just playing with me.

He gave me a shot, a bottle of pills, and cherry cough syrup. He said I was to stay home from school for the rest of the week and stay in bed as much of the time as I could. Drink plenty of fluids, stay warm and dry, avoid chills. If I wasn’t better in four or five days, he would do an x-ray of my lungs. The part I liked best was staying home from school.

When I told daddy what the doctor had said, he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me out to the car before I had a chance to put on my coat. I had already screwed up his entire morning, he said, but, by god, he had no intention of letting the entire day go to waste.

He drove me to grandma’s house and dropped me off and sped away in the car. I wasn’t sure if grandma was even at home, but when I rang the bell she opened the door with a smile. I told her what had happened, that I had been to see the doctor, but she already knew somehow.

She put me to bed in her big front bedroom that was only used for overnight company. She put her portable TV at the foot of the bed and turned it on for me. Then she went into another part of the house and told me to just give her a holler if I needed anything.

I wasn’t used to being able to watch anything I wanted on TV with no grownups around, especially during the day. I watched cartoons, game shows, and a soap opera that I thought was stupid. Then it was time for lunch. Grandma fixed me a hamburger and I went into the kitchen and sat at the table and ate it. After lunch I went back to bed and took a two-hour nap and then I watched TV some more. The life of the invalid suited me fine.

When it was just starting to get dark outside, grandma came into the bedroom and woke me up. I started to get up, figuring daddy had come to pick me up to take me home, but she told me to stay put. She would call me when it was time for dinner.

I learned later that daddy had had an accident at work. He was hurrying to get something done and fell off a ladder and broke his leg in two places. They had operated on him and were going to keep him in the hospital for a few days. I would be staying at grandma’s for the time being. I told her I was old enough to stay by myself, but she swatted me playfully with the newspaper and told me not to even think such a thing. If anything happened to me in that house alone, she would never be able to forgive herself.

Bad luck always comes in threes, she said. She had seen it happen too many times. After my mother’s brain concussion, daddy’s broken leg was bad luck number two. Number three was just waiting to happen and when it happened it would be sure to happen to me.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

At the River

At the River ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in The Sim Review.)

All day long he had nothing to do. His legs didn’t work so well anymore; neither did his eyes or his ears. He slept at night and got up in the morning and there was somebody always there, sometimes a stranger he had never seen before, to help him get himself into the bathroom and dressed and downstairs to breakfast, where he sat with thirty or forty others just like him, making a mess of his oatmeal and eggs and not saying anything. After breakfast somebody always sat him down in a comfortable spot in the solarium or the TV room and he just sat there, usually all day, until they came and got him for the next meal. After that it was time to get into bed and sleep again and wake up again and get dressed and go down for breakfast and do the same thing all over again; again and again as if that was what he was put on the earth for: a lot of nothing that seemed to have no end. Whoever said life was short?

He wondered what happened to the people he used to know. Didn’t he have a wife and a couple of children? Didn’t he have at one time some grandparents, uncles and aunts, a mother and father, a sister and a couple of brothers? What happened to all of them? Did he just dream them up? Oh, yes, that’s right: one after the other they all died. He came to see life as a kind of lottery: the winners went on ahead and the losers had no other choice but to stay behind. In the end there would be one loser left, and he was it. When they were children and they played tag or kick-the-can or hide-and-seek, somebody always had to be “it.” He didn’t like being “it” then, and he didn’t like it now.

Since he had no current life to speak of, he dwelt mostly in the past. Once, when he was eight years old, he and his whole family—including grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins—went on a camping trip to a river. The men went fishing while the women went in swimming. He had never fished and wasn’t interested in learning, so he stayed with the women. His mother told him he didn’t need to be embarrassed about staying with the women, but somebody always teased him about it and it hurt him enough that he thought he should probably learn to fish so it wouldn’t happen again. His mother took his swimming trunks out of her suitcase and gave them to him and told him to go into the tent and take everything off and put on the trunks and come back out as soon as he could because they were all waiting to go in swimming.

After he put on the trunks, he was ashamed of the way he looked. His arms and legs were a pale yellow color and as thin as sticks. His chest was ugly and not at all manly. His stomach stuck out farther than he would have liked. He imagined that he looked like a monkey without any hair, a shaved monkey. He couldn’t let anybody see him almost naked with just a strip of red cloth around his middle. He stayed in the tent until his mother came and pulled him out, looking plenty silly herself in her green swimsuit and matching bathing cap that wrinkled the skin on her forehead. When he insisted that he had to stay in the tent because he felt sick, she slapped at him and told him she was in no mood for any of his nonsense. He slapped her back on the arm, which later he regretted. He could tell that she wasn’t quite herself; her tongue seemed thick in her mouth and her movements were jerky; she had been drinking. She dragged him out into the sunlight and held him to her hip as if she thought he might get away if she let him go.

Nobody looked at him in his silly red swimming trunks so he started to relax. He went into the water up to his elbows and then got back out and sat on a towel in the shade on the bank. The women were splashing around in the middle of the river, talking and laughing. The older kids were playing in a spot farther off, screaming and trying to hold each other under. He wanted no part of any of them.

He realized after a while that he couldn’t just sit there all day while everybody else was having fun, so he went back to the water. He waded in slowly until he was up to his chest and then, taking a quick look over his shoulder, began walking downriver. He walked until he was out of sight and hearing of the others.

He went farther and farther, staying in the middle of the river. The farther he went the deeper the water became. It was up to his breastbone and then past his shoulders to his neck. When he looked down all he saw was green-black murkiness; he could no longer see his feet, but still he kept going.

Every couple of feet he advanced, the water came closer to swallowing him up. It was up to his chin and then to just beneath his mouth. If he stepped off a drop-off that he couldn’t see, he would go under. He knew the drop-off was there, up ahead, waiting for him; he could see it without seeing it. All he had to do was keep going and he would find it. He would drown because he had never learned to swim. And even if he had had a chance to yell before he drowned, nobody would hear him because they were all too far away. He knew, even at his young age, that he was flirting with death.

As he stood in the water up to his mouth—unable to swim if he should go under—he looked over at the river bank; at the sky and the wild foliage that began on the other side of the trees. He was watching some birds doing acrobatic loops in the air when he noticed a smell in the air, a smell that he realized had been hanging over him all day. It seemed to him to be the smell of death. He thought for a moment that it was his own death he had been smelling, but as he turned around and began walking back upriver he knew it was somebody else’s.

When he got back to camp, everybody who had been in the water earlier was now out. His mother, as he was soon to find out, had had an argument with her younger sister and swam off by herself to another part of the river. Everybody expected her to come back in a few minutes, after she cooled off, but more than an hour had gone by and nobody had seen her. They were starting to get a little worried.

After another hour or two, they were certain something bad had happened, or she would have come back on her own. Somebody drove to the nearest phone and called for help. The police came in due time and, after they had asked their myriads of questions, conducted a search of the river. They found her body near some bluffs where it had been swept by the current and become lodged against some rocks. The green bathing cap was what they saw that led them to her.

His mother’s drowning was the terrible event of his life, the one event by which all other events were measured; the event that changed everything. It was his primer in death—the death that prepared him for all the others, including his own.

Not a day—and barely a waking hour—had gone by in his life that he didn’t think of her. She was and always would be the unknowable thirty-three-year-old wife and mother of four and he, the frightened eight-year-old boy clinging to her memory. He had—and always would have—unanswered questions that only she could answer.

After dinner he had a sinking spell; he blacked out on the way to his room and fell in the hallway. The nurses got him to his room and into bed and called his doctor.

He had been dozing in the darkened room when he opened his eyes and saw a nurse he had never seen before standing beside his bed. He smiled at her and she smiled back.

“I knew you would come,” he said.

“Of course I came.”

“Where’s the green bathing cap?”

“This is my day not to wear it.”

“You don’t look a day older.”

“That’s the way it is. You look much older.”

“Isn’t it awful?”

“Don’t talk now. The doctor is on his way.”

She straightened the blanket around his shoulders and went to the window and pulled back the curtain and looked out. “It’s starting to rain,” she said.

“You won’t leave again?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ll be right here.”

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Phiz

 Phiz ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

(Published in Bewildering Stories.)

I’m not allowed any visitors. I said my goodbyes to my parents a week ago on my eighteenth birthday. My mother cried and my father was without emotion. They were told I was to be made one with the essence of the Nonpareil, which means I’ll be gassed and my body placed in a thick block of cement that will be used in one of the public works projects. Maybe someday the cement containing my body will crumble and my bones or whatever is left of me will again be exposed to the light of day.

I’m in a little room somewhere but I’m not sure where I am. I have nothing to do but wait for the end. A utility robot brings me food three times a day but I don’t eat much. Since I have no future, I try not to think about anything and try not to feel anything. I have a little window up high and I spend most of the daylight hours looking at the blue sky, at the tops of the trees off in the distance and at the birds flying from tree to tree. Occasionally I see an airship moving ponderously across the sky and wish I was on it. At night I love looking at the stars and sometimes I catch a glimpse of the moon.

How I came to be here is a long story. I was the only child of my parents and a disappointment to them. From the very first, I did not take well to the teachings of the Nonpareil. I was rebellious and moody and I refused to march in lock-step with other children my age. I was in constant trouble at school until my father was told to make some other arrangement for my education. I was placed in another school and then a succession of schools after that.

My parents were determined to find out what was wrong with me. They took me to a series of doctors who subjected me to every physical and psychological test known to man. After a period of time, the doctors found that I had no mental or physical impairments that would keep me from conforming the way I was supposed to conform. I was a healthy boy and there was no reason I couldn’t be like the other boys my age: a wholesome example of obedience and loyalty to the Nonpareil and all he espoused. There was no reason I wouldn’t live to pass on my seed of obedience to the next generation. The doctors advised more rigorous mind control and an aggressive drug regimen to be administered by the state.

My father knew that, in spite of everything that could be done to change me, I would never be what he wanted me to be. When I was ten years old, I overheard a conversation he had with my mother late at night in which he stated that he had given up on me and was ready to see me made one with the essence of the Nonpareil before I caused him further trouble and heartache. My mother pleaded with him and begged him to give me another chance. It was only after she threatened to leave him, disgracing him, that he agreed.

It was when I was fifteen years old that my rebellion took shape and developed a purpose. I was introduced at that time to one of the underground “secret societies” that detested mind control and conformity and advocated the overthrow of the Nonpareil and a return to a free and democratic society and form of government. The secret society was a place of free thought and free speech where the forbidden ways of the Old Time were revered. I knew finally what it was I had always longed for.

I discovered a whole new world in the secret society. I was made to feel welcome, for the first time in my life, with a group of people who thought as I thought. I was surprised at the many people of all ages and backgrounds who belonged. We studied the ways of the Old Time and longed for the day when we would be free. Many of us believed the overthrow of the Nonpareil was only an airy dream that would never happen, while others were sure the day of deliverance was close at hand.

Membership in the secret society was, of course, a serious offense to the Nonpareil and was strictly prohibited. Cells of secret societies were constantly being flushed out (many times from the tips of anonymous paid spies) and members gassed (or, made one with the essence of the Nonpareil). These events were always highly publicized to make examples of the members and to discourage other miscreants from wanting to join.

Over the years I had accumulated some books and texts on the ways of the Old Time. I had traded them with other members of the secret society and had in some cases bought them on the black market that operated on the fringes of the law. I kept them locked in a foot locker under my bed. When I was alone in my room at night, I would take them out and read them and study the pictures and dream about what life in the Old Time was like—and what life might someday be like again. My mother discovered these books—not by accident but by prying open the foot locker with a crowbar—and that’s when things went really bad for me. She informed my father that I was in possession of forbidden materials; he called the police and I was arrested that night. I was incarcerated in a correctional facility where I was forced to submit to electroshock therapy that was supposed to “reorder” my thinking.

I was kept locked in a tiny white cell (white was thought to be purifying and cleansing) for over a year. During that time, I saw only utility robots and had no contact with anyone. My mother was allowed to speak to me on the picture phone for a few minutes once a month, during which time she cried and attempted to get me to reform, to confess to all my wrongdoings and apologize for all the trouble I had caused. My father refused to expend further effort on my behalf.

During all this time, of course, no one had been able to “break me.” I remained true to what I had always been and that was the only thing I had. No matter what they did to me or in what way they threatened me, I was not going to change and become the boy they wanted me to be. Not now. Not ever.

After I still showed no signs of “improvement,” my father requested (he had the legal right to do so) that I be made one with the essence of the Nonpareil, and the court, after reviewing my case, complied with his request. So, I was brought here to wait for the end of my life. My parents were told I would be here for three or four days—a week at the most—but that I would be treated well and fed regularly (like an animal locked in a cage), no matter how long it took.

I’ve been here now for a week and two days. I have no calendar and no clock, but I’m still able to keep track of how many days have gone by. Not that it matters much. Every day I think will be my last. Every time I hear the door being opened, I think it will be them coming to get me. I’ve been told it will be easier for me if I don’t resist. When the time comes, I’m going to be cool and calm; I’m going to show them I don’t feel anything at all. They can kill me but they can’t hurt me. I’ve rehearsed it in my mind a thousand times.

On my ninth night in the little room—it must have been two in the morning—I woke up to the moonlight streaming through the window. I was surprised at how bright the moonlight was but I thought no more about it and turned over to go back to sleep. That’s when I realized it was not the moonlight that woke me up—but a sound—and someone was coming quietly into the room.

I propped myself on my elbows in the bed, thinking my time had come. I saw a dark figure coming toward me and when I started to get out of the bed he held up his hand.

“Don’t make a sound,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked sleepily. “Who are you?”

“Get out of the bed and put these on,” he said, handing me a small bundle of clothing.

I did as I was told and discovered that what he handed me was a black tunic, a pair of soft black trousers and a pair of black leather boots.

“What is this about?” I asked.

“Don’t ask questions,” he said. “Just do as I tell you if you want to live past tonight.”

After I was dressed, I could see his face better in the dim light. I had never seen him before.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

“It’s better if you don’t know who I am,” he said. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m an interested party who knows what is about to happen to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tonight is your last night. They would have come for you in about an hour or so. I’m offering you a chance to escape if you just take it.”

“Why would you want me to escape? Who are you?”

“Be quiet and just listen to what I’m going to say.”

I sat down on the bed and laced the boots while he continued to stand.

“I’ve sent the two guards on a small errand that will take them five minutes or less,” he said. “That’s all the time you have to escape.”

“You’re letting me escape?” I asked.

“I’m going to walk away from this room without re-locking the door. One minute after I’ve left, you may go out the door and to your left down the hallway to a flight of stairs. Go down the stairs and at the bottom of the stairs go to your right down the long hallway. At the end of the hallway is a door. You may leave by that door.”

“What then?”

“Walk away from the building for about a quarter of a mile until you come to a gravel road. Turn left on that road and stay on it until you come to a paved road called the Hyphen Road. Start walking on it toward the east.”

“How do I know this is not a trick?”

“You don’t, but it’s your only chance. Stay on the Hyphen Road east for five miles, at which time you will see an airship docked at a small airfield. The airship will leave exactly at dawn and it won’t wait for you if you’re not there.”

“Why would anybody take me on board? An escaped miscreant?”

“Tell them your name is Lloyd David and that Mr. Thackeray sent you. Can you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“Can you walk five miles without stopping?”

“I haven’t ever tried.”

He gave me an identification tag to show in case I was stopped along the way, and then, without speaking another word, he was gone.

I waited for what seemed a minute and then I went out the door and down the hallway to the left as he had said. I walked calmly—not fast and not slow—as if I belonged there. I went down the stairs and down the long hallway to the door at the end. In less than a minute I was outside the building, breathing in the night air.

I crouched down in the shadow of the building for a minute or two to make sure there was nobody around who might spot me, and then I began walking away from the building. I found the gravel road and stayed on it until I came to the paved road, the Hyphen Road, and began walking on it toward the east. I knew that five miles was a long way to walk without stopping, but I was moving forward almost without effort. My legs seemed almost to be working independently of my body.

I had to admit that it felt good to be someplace other than locked in a small room. The night, with its smells and sounds, was delightful. Only once did I encounter other people: I saw two men walking toward me—they apparently didn’t see me—and crouched down in the tall grass beside the road until they had passed.

I first saw the docked airship from about a half-mile away. It seemed enormous, like a huge sleeping animal. I felt my heart beat faster as I came closer to the airship. I was happy that the thing hadn’t left without me but also apprehensive with the feeling that anything might happen. I still believed my “escape” might be something other than what it appeared to be.

I was surprised to see no one around the airship, no workmen or crew preparing for flight. One lone man was standing at the bottom of the steps that went up into the airship. As I approached, I could see that he was a strikingly handsome boy a year or two older than me with pale skin and tousled brown hair. When he looked at me and smiled, I saw from his slightly luminous eyes that he was a robot. For a moment I couldn’t believe what I was seeing because he was by far the most lifelike robot I had ever seen, a welcome change from the utility ‘bots I had become accustomed to for the last couple of years.

“I’m Lloyd David,” I said. “Mr. Thackeray sent me.” My own voice sounded to me like somebody else’s voice.

He gave me a salute and stood aside and gestured for me to board the airship. I went up the ladder on shaky legs, with him right behind me, and when we were both inside he gestured for me to follow him. He took me down a small flight of stairs through a passageway and down a corridor to a door. He opened the door and stepped aside for me to enter and when I had gone inside he closed the door again and was gone.

I found myself in a small but comfortable cabin. There was a cot, a small table and two chairs and not much else. I could see through the one porthole in the cabin that it was starting to get light outside. I sat down and was taking off my boots when the robot opened the door again and came back into the room.

“We’ll be taking off in a few minutes,” he said.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My name is Phiz,” he said.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s going to be a long flight, so just make yourself comfortable.” He closed the partition over the porthole, blocking out the light, and then he was gone again.

I lay down on the cot and fell into a deep sleep, during which I dreamt of the room I slept in at home when I was a child; the room was high up in the house where we lived and I used to pretend it was a cabin on an airship bound for exotic ports.

I don’t know how long I had been asleep when I awoke with a start. Phiz, the robot, was standing at the foot of the cot looking at me. He had a strange way of seeming to come alive when I looked at him; he was at other times, I suppose, in a dormant state to conserve his energy supply.

“Where are we?” I asked. “Have we landed?”

“Still airborne,” he said, raising the partition over the porthole.

“When will we land?”

“Not for a long time yet. Would you like some food?”

“Yes, and something to drink.”

He was gone no longer than five minutes and when he came back he was carrying a tray with a covered plate on it. When he put the tray on the table and removed the cover, I could see the plate held some kind of roasted fowl surrounded by vegetables. I sat down at the table and began eating. He left again and in a moment came back carrying a bottle of wine and a glass. He opened the bottle and poured the glass full and handed it to me. The wine was light and delicious, unlike any I had ever tasted before.

He sat down across from me at the little table. “Would you like me to sing to you while you eat?” he asked.

“I’d rather talk,” I said.

“Of course. What would you like to talk about?”

“Why haven’t I seen any other people on this airship since I came aboard?”

“You and I are the only ones here,” he said.

“Somebody has to be steering,” I said. “Somebody has to be navigating. The thing just doesn’t fly itself.”

“If you must know, I’m steering and I’m navigating.”

“Oh, I see. And who cooked this food?”

“I did.”

“You do everything?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see the captain,” I said. “I want to know where we’re going.”

He looked at me as I stood up from the table and went out the door of the cabin. I had been in airships before and I knew where the control room was. I ran to the front of the airship and up a stairway to where I believed the captain and navigator
would be. I opened a hatch and stepped into a large empty space. There were no steering device, no navigating instruments, and no crew.

I ran back to my cabin and looked out the porthole. I hoped to see a mountain, river, or city—some feature that might tell me where we were. Clouds were all I saw; we were in a thick cloudbank.

“I know all about you,” Phiz said, “from the day you were born.”

I turned and looked at him. “Who are you?” I asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“No.”

“I’m the Nonpareil.”

I let out a little snort of laughter. “The Nonpareil is a robot named Phiz?” I asked.

“The Nonpareil is different things to different people.”

“I want you to turn this ship around and take me back to where we were.”

“That isn’t possible. We’ve passed through the portal. There’s no going back.”

“What portal?”

“The portal from one plane of existence to another.”

I sat down heavily on the bed. “So this is what it’s like to be dead,” I said.

“Do you feel any less alive than you did?”

“I want to go back.”

“I just told you. You can’t go back. And, believe me, where you are now is better than where you were.”

“I’ll figure out how this thing operates and turn it around.”

“You would be wasting your time to even try.”

“I’ll open the door and jump out.”

“You would drift forever in purgatory. It’s a horrible existence.”

He sat down beside me on the bed. I could hear the slight whir coming from inside his chest, the robot equivalent of a heartbeat.

“I don’t want to be here,” I said, “with a robot. I’ll figure out a way to bring this thing down, even if it kills both of us.”

He smiled sympathetically. “You’re not making sense,” he said.

“Where are we going and when will we land?” I asked. “I want to know!”

He gripped the back of my neck gently in his hand and, in spite of myself, I leaned into him and put my head on his shoulder. If I had had a knife, I would have ripped his beautiful face apart and done him some real damage.

“This is what you always dreamed about, isn’t it?” he asked. “Just drifting among the clouds, without a care in the world?” He began making little cooing noises, which I found strange in a robot, and pretty soon I began feeling drowsy. The next time I woke up it was dark but I could see his luminous eyes looking right at me. 

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

A Good Clown is Worth Repeating

A Good Clown is Worth Repeating ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in Short Story America.)

Polly Wollydoodle sat at her dressing table on an early summer evening, getting herself ready for a night on the town. After covering her face with white powder, she drew her lips on in a wide arc and applied glittery blue eye shadow halfway up her forehead to her eyebrows. Then she opened her box of noses and selected a glittery red one appropriate for evening wear.

The dress she had chosen had large blue polka dots on a white background. After she had stepped into the dress and did it up, the puffy collar covered her neck and made it almost appear as if she had no neck at all. The cuffs on the ends of the sleeves were also puffy, nearly hiding her hands but affording her the use of them nonetheless. The voluminous padding built into the dress made falling down and sitting on hard surfaces much more comfortable than otherwise.

When she finished dressing, she saw from the chicken clock on the wall that it was nearly seven o’clock and her heart began beating faster and her throat constricted with dryness. She said a little prayer to the patron saint of clowns as she stepped into her size thirty-eight clown pumps. She hoped her nerve wasn’t going to fail her.

She was going out on a date with no one less than Mr. Noah Zark. He was only the most eligible clown bachelor in Clown Town—the handsome, dashing, ambitious, accomplished, much-desired and much sought-after clown-about-town. When he called her on the hamburger telephone and asked her to go out with him, she believed at first that her brother Jocko Wollydoodle (kidder that he was) was playing a trick on her but, after speaking to him for a couple of minutes, she knew it was the real Noah Zark and he was asking her to go out with him. She could hardly believe her good fortune.

She checked her reticule and made sure she had all the items essential for a date: the squirt bottle filled with seltzer, the rubber chicken, the feather-duster floral bouquet, six multi-colored balls for juggling, the horn with the squeeze bulb and, most importantly, the custard pie. If the date went well, she would hit Noah Zark in the face with the custard pie when he took her home at the conclusion of the date. She felt weak in the knees at the thought of it.

When Polly went downstairs, Clemmie Dibble Wollydoodle, her poppa, and Boombah Wollydoodle, her brother, were sitting in front of the TV watching Calling All Clowns and didn’t pay any attention to her when she came into the room. Eata Banana Wollydoodle, her plain older sister, was sitting in a chair to the side of the sofa. She wasn’t looking at the TV but was looking instead at a spot on the wall with her hand covering her mouth. She had been crying and, instead of being happy for Polly that she was going out with Noah Zark, she was angry and jealous. She refused to look at Polly or compliment her on her appearance.

Wishing to be seen, Polly went and stood in front of the TV and did a little pirouette, followed by a curtsey with her forefinger under her chin.

“Hey!” Boombah said. “Get out of the way! I can’t see the TV.”

“How do I look?” she asked coquettishly, holding still as though posing for a picture.

“Now, just what do you think you’re doing?” Clemmie Dibble asked, irritated at having his favorite TV show interrupted.

“Oh, don’t you remember, dearest, our little girl clown is stepping out tonight?” Clarabelle Wollydoodle, Polly’s mother, said from the doorway to the kitchen. She had a rubber chicken draped over each shoulder and a piglet in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. She was happy and excited that her Polly had been invited to step out with Noah Zark. It might be the beginning of big things for her.

“No, she’s not,” Clemmie Dibble said. “Not tonight.” He had a way of laying down the law.

“What?” Polly asked, panic-stricken.

Eata Banana looked up with interest, a little smile forming on her lips.

“I said you’re not going out tonight,” Clemmie Dibble said, “and that’s final.”

“Oh, dearest,” Clarabelle said. “Don’t be an old silly. It’s too late to cancel now. A young clown is coming to pick her up.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Clemmie Dibble asked. “Is a clown poppa to know nothing about his clown children?”

“I told you, dearest,” Clarabelle said. “You must not have been listening.” She turned and went back into the kitchen, trying to calm the piglet down.

“He’s late,” Eata Banana said gleefully. “I don’t think he’s coming.”

“He’s probably just tied up in rush-hour traffic,” Polly said. “I’ll just sit down and wait.” She settled her padded rump in the middle of the sofa between Clemmie Dibble and Boombah and put her arm around Boombah.

“Gee, you look pretty,” Boombah said. He reached up and touched the end of her glittery red nose with the tip of his finger.

“Aren’t you sweet!” Polly said. “I’m glad somebody in this family has something approving to say.” She kissed Boombah on his white cheek, leaving the imprint of her lips.

She wanted to appear cool and collected, but she was terrified that Eata Banana was right and Noah Zark wasn’t coming after all. Her heart was beating way too fast and she was having a little trouble breathing. She looked at the TV, not really seeing it, and time dragged on. Finally, at half-past seven, when she had begun to abandon all hope, the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Boombah said. He bounded off the sofa with accustomed exuberance and went to the door and flung it open.

All of them, Eata Banana included, turned and looked at Noah Zark standing in the doorway. He held his hat in his hand against his chest. He looked so handsome standing there, dressed in the latest clown fashion. He smiled shyly and said to Boombah, “Is this the Wollydoodle residence?”

“Come in,” Boombah said, looking Noah Zark up and down.

Polly stood up and gave Noah Zark a nervous little smile and curtseyed, her forefinger under her chin.

“Good evening, Miss Polly,” Noah Zark said in his resonant voice.

“Who do we have here?” Clemmie Dibble asked, a note of jeering skepticism in his voice.

“Poppa, I’d like for you to meet Noah Zark,” Polly said. “I’m stepping out with him this evening.”

Clemmie Dibble gave Noah Zark an appraising look and held out his hand. Noah Zark shook it forcefully and, instead of letting go of Clemmie Dibble’s hand at the end of the handshake, he held onto it and pulled him to his feet. Before Clemmie Dibble knew what was happening, he and Noah Zark were standing nose to nose.

“Just what do you think you’re doing there?” Clemmie Dibble asked gruffly. “I’m not a yo-yo!”

“It’s a very great honor to meet you, sir,” Noah Zark said. “I have heard so much about the great Clemmie Dibble Wollydoodle.”

“You have?” Clemmie Dibble asked, instantly charmed.

“Your reputation as the greatest of clowns precedes you, sir.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“This is my little brother, Boombah Wollydoodle,” Polly said.

“How do you do?” Noah Zark said, shaking Boombah’s hand.

“Hello,” Boombah said.

“And this is my older sister, Eata Banana Wollydoodle,” Polly said.

Eata Banana stood up and sniffled and offered Noah Zark a pitiful smile. He took her hand and bent over it and kissed it.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Eata Banana,” Noah Zark said.

“Hello,” Eata Banana said in her pained voice.

Clarabelle, having put the piglet back into his little cage, came in from the kitchen.

“Oh, and this is my mother,” Polly said.

“Well, well, well,” Noah Zark said. “I would have said she was your sister. How do you do, madam?”

“Very well, thank you, Noah Zark,” Clarabelle said. She blushed as Noah Zark took her hand and kissed it.

“Well, we’d better be off,” Noah Zark said, turning to Polly and rubbing his hands together. “We have a reservation for eight o’clock at Clown Rendezvous. That’s all the way over in Crazy Town.”

“Can I come along?” Boombah asked.

“You’d better take a wrap, dear,” Clarabelle said.

“Oh, mother, I’ll be fine,” Polly said.

“Be good to our little clown,” Clarabelle said to Noah Zark.

“Mother, please!” Polly said.

“And be home at a respectable hour!” Clemmie Dibble said with a laugh, as though he didn’t mean it at all.

“Good evening to you all,” Noah Zark said. “It was such a very great pleasure to meet all of you.”

After they left, Clemmie Dibble turned to Clarabelle and said, “That young clown seems like a very sensible and decent chap. I think I like him.”

“And he’s so handsome,” Clarabelle said, “in his junk-yard tuxedo with the enormous baggy pants with the suspenders and his smashed top-hat and his wide red tie.”

Eata Banana began bawling uncontrollably. Clemmie Dibble and Clarabelle and Boombah turned and looked at her in surprise. When she realized everyone was looking at her, she ran upstairs to her boudoir and slammed the door.

“Now, what do you suppose is the matter with her?” Clemmie Dibble asked, sitting down again.

“I think I know,” Clarabelle said, “but I don’t think you would understand.”

“I know what’s the matter with her,” Boombah said. “She’s a girl!”

In Noah Zark’s clown car, Polly sat as close to him as she could get. She was sitting so close, in fact, that he could hardly move his arms to steer. When he turned his eyes away from the road and looked at her, she gave him a simpering smile and her eyes were moist. He could smell her perfume, which was something called Clown Parisienne and was very expensive.

“I hope you’re hungry, Miss Polly,” Noah Zark said, not being able for the moment to think of anything else to say.

“Oh, I could eat an elephant.” In truth, she had been too nervous to eat all day and now had a raging appetite.

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Noah Zark said and laughed. Polly didn’t understand what he meant, but she laughed appreciatively anyway to show that her wit was as sharp as his.

She watched the unreeling scenery for a couple of minutes and then she turned to Noah Zark and said, “Gee, it must be wonderful to have your own clown car and be able to drive all over Clown Town, or beyond, whenever you feel like it.”

“It’ll do for now, I suppose,” Noah Zark said dispiritedly. “I’d rather go around in a chauffeur-driven limousine like your poppa, though.”

Polly felt oddly flattered that Noah Zark recognized her poppa’s significance in the scheme of things. “Maybe some day you will,” she said.

“Oh, yes, Clemmie Dibble Wollydoodle is a very important clown. Every clown in Clown Town knows that.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Polly said, wishing to change the subject. She had been with Noah Zark for ten minutes and he hadn’t said a thing about how pretty she looked.

“Why, he practically runs the Jerkus Circus. He can make or break a clown. One favorable word from him and a young clown’s career is made.”

“Uh-huh,” Polly said.

“As a rodeo clown,” Noah Zark said, “I’m on the road most of the year and I don’t even have a home I can call my own. I want to settle down. My goal is to get a berth with an established concern like the Jerkus Circus and move up through the clown ranks.”

At the words “settle down,” Polly believed that Noah Zark had marriage in mind and was laying the groundwork to propose to her. She couldn’t expect him to propose on their first date together—that would be rushing things too much—but maybe by their second or third date.

“Everybody looks up to rodeo clowns,” she said. “You are the hero of many.”

“That may be true,” Noah Zark said, “but there’s more to life than the admiration of one’s fellow clowns.”

“My brother Jocko wants to be a rodeo clown,” she said, feeling a little thrill as her leg brushed against Noah Zark’s leg.

“Why does he not follow in your poppa’s footsteps?”

“Jocko and poppa never got along,” Polly said. “Jocko is very head-strong. He doesn’t like to be ordered about, and poppa can be a bit overbearing at times.”

“Well, I hope Jocko knows the life of a rodeo clown is a lonely life. I hope he knows what he’s getting himself into.”

“I’m sure it has its rewards,” Polly said. “It must be exciting to travel and be in a different town every night. I’ve never even spent a single night away from home.”

“Believe me, after a while all towns look alike, and you wish desperately to be back in Clown Town where you feel you belong. The romance of the road is vastly overstated.”

“Well, the Jerkus Circus moves around a lot, too,” she said.

“That’s true,” Noah Zark said, “but they stay in one place a lot longer than the rodeo does.”

Soon they were in Crazy Town and Noah Zark turned off the road onto the parking lot at Clown Rendezvous and a uniformed clown valet appeared to park the car. After the valet had driven off, Polly took Noah Zark’s arm and they went inside.

She was impressed that the maitre‘d recognized Noah Zark as soon as he saw him. He made a checkmark next to Noah Zark’s name in his big book and then, bowing and scraping, he personally escorted Noah Zark and Polly to their table. As they walked through the crowded nightclub, Polly  felt clowns looking at the two of them—at Noah Zark because of who he was and at her because she was with Noah Zark.

When they were seated at their table, Noah Zark ordered a bottle of champagne and before it came he took Polly by the hand and pulled her out onto the dance floor. She wasn’t accustomed to dancing, but she soon saw that Noah Zark’s skill and polish made up for her not knowing what she was doing. He held her close in a slow number and then twirled her around the dance floor when the orchestra played The New Tiger Rag, a very fast number. He literally tossed her away and then pulled her back, bent her over backwards until the top of her head touched the floor, lifted her up into the air and slid her along the floor between his legs, spun her left and spun her right until she was dizzy and believed she might be sick. When the number ended, they went back to their table amid a smattering of applause.

“My, you’re such a good dancer!” Polly said with a laugh. She felt as if she had just been inside a cocktail shaker, but she also felt happy and, well, important. She was sweating and panting a little, but she noticed that Noah Zark was perfectly composed.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Noah Zark said. “A clown in my position has to learn many things.”

He poured her a glass of champagne and handed it to her and then poured one for himself and drank it down and poured another. She took a tiny sip of the champagne and smacked her lips.

“You like?” Noah Zark asked.

“I like,” she said.

She drank down her champagne the way Noah Zark had done and he poured her another glassful. After the waiter came and took their order for dinner, Polly excused herself and stood up and made her way on wobbly legs to the powder room.

Inside the powder room, she sat down in front of one of the big mirrors encircled with light bulbs and opened her reticule and took out her comb and fixed her hair that had become disarranged during her wild dance with Noah Zark. Then as she was touching up her makeup, two more clowns came into the powder room. They made their way to the other end of the row of mirrors. One of them sat down in front of the mirror and the other stood behind her, looking at her face in the mirror. They were engrossed in conversation and didn’t seem to notice Polly sitting there.

“And did you notice that dress?” the sitting clown asked. Her name was Arma Geddon. She was short and fat and had flaming-orange hair. Her lips were painted on in a cupid’s bow and her eyebrows inverted V’s.

“How could I miss it?” the other clown said. “She looks like she raided her grandmother’s closet!” This clown’s name was Bozinda. She was tall and skinny; she wore a skirt that was slit up the side and ended in the middle of her calf, showing horizontally striped stockings.

“And that nose!” Arma Geddon exclaimed. “Nobody wears those glittery things anymore. They went out with the horse and buggy.”

Polly had her hand to her nose when the remark about glittery noses registered in her brain. She pulled her hand away as though she had touched a hot stove. She realized the two clowns were talking about her. She stood up and was making her way for the door as unobtrusively as she could when the two clowns noticed her and stopped talking.

“Oh, miss!” Bozinda said, just as Polly had her hand on the door to push it open.

Polly turned toward Bozinda and gave her an innocent look. “Me?” she asked, touching her breastbone.

“Yes, you, dearie! Might we have a word with you?”

“I suppose so,” Polly said.

“We saw you dancing with Noah Zark,” Bozinda said.

“Yes?”

“How much do you know about him, dear?”

“I know he’s a very fine, accomplished gentleman,”

“Hah!” Arma Geddon exclaimed. “You are a sweet innocent!”

“You’re probably thinking right now that he’s the man of your dreams,” Bozinda said, laughing up her sleeve. “Most of the girl clowns in Clown Town and Crazy Town and the surrounding environs have thought the same thing at one time or another.”

“You need to be made aware of what a scamp he is,” Arma Geddon said, pulling at her false eyelash.

“Let’s face it, darling,” Bozinda said. “You just aren’t his type at all, but you probably can’t see that because you don’t know what type is his type the way we do.”

“Just what is it you’re trying to tell me?” Polly asked, beginning to understand all too clearly.

“Well, since you aren’t his type,” Bozinda said, “I’d say he wants something you have that he doesn’t have. He wants you to do something for him that would further his career.”

“He has a way of always getting what he wants from girl clowns,” Arma Geddon said in her know-it-all way.

“Yes, and after he gets what he wants from you,” Bozinda said, “he’ll cast you aside like a pair of old boots.” With that, she looked down at her own army-issue boots and shook her foot as though trying to dispel a cramp.

“Take a piece of friendly advice,” Arma Geddon said, batting her eyelashes and turning away from the mirror and facing Polly. “Get what you can out of him—a night on the town, a few drinks, a good time, a few laughs. But when it comes right down to it, my dear, don’t fall for his suavity and his line of smooth talk. If you do, you’ll end up wishing you hadn’t.”

“I’m sure I do not know to what you are referring,” Polly said quietly. Believing the conversation had come to an end, she gave Bozinda and Arma Geddon a little curtsey and then left the powder room.

When she got back to her table, Noah Zark pulled the chair out for her. She sat down without looking at him and picked up her glass of champagne and drank it down and reached over for the bottle and poured herself another glass.

“Are you quite all right, Miss Polly?” Noah Zark asked. “You look a little peaked.”

“I was feeling a little sick,” Polly said, “but now I’m all right.”

“I so want to get to know you better,” Noah Zark said. He reached across the table for Polly’s hand but she pulled it away quickly before he could touch it.

The waiter brought their food and they began eating. Before they were finished with the soup course, the floor show began. First there was a girl clown singer who stood in front of the orchestra and belted out a couple of clown ballads and then there was a troupe of midget tumblers. They leapt and bounced and buffeted about the stage as if the laws of gravity didn’t apply to them. When the tumblers left the stage to enthusiastic applause, a couple of identical twin clowns came on who juggled bottles of milk; first one juggled the bottles and then the other, and then they juggled the bottles back and forth between them so fast they could hardly be seen. The audience gasped with delight and appreciation.

As soon as the floor show was over, Noah Zark asked Polly if she was finished eating and if she would care to dance again.

“Yes and no,” Polly said. “Yes, I’m finished eating and, no, I wouldn’t care to dance again.”

“Why, what’s the matter, Miss Polly?” Noah Zark asked. “You seem so different. Are you not feeling well?”

“I just think it’s time for all good girl clowns to be at home,” she said. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him that all the glamour and excitement had gone out of the evening for her.

“Do you mean you want to leave already?”

“Well, we’ve had dinner and we’ve seen the floor show. What else is there?”

“Are you not enjoying my company?”

“I would just like to leave, Noah Zark, if you don’t mind.”

Noah Zark called for the check in his customary showy manner. He threw a handful of clown money down on the table and then he helped Polly out of her chair.

When they were once again in Noah Zark’s clown car, he looked over at Polly, now sitting as far from him as the car seat would allow, and said, “Would you like to go someplace for a nightcap?”

“That means more liquor, doesn’t it?” Polly asked. “I think I’ve had enough champagne. If I drink any more than I’ve already had, I think I may be quite ill in the morning.”

“Maybe a drive in the country, then?” Noah Zark asked. “It’s a beautiful evening and still early.”

“Oh, all right,” Polly said, “as long as you don’t go too far out of Clown Town.”

“I know just the place,” he said.

He steered the clown car in the direction of the Mountain Road between Crazy Town and Clown Town. He knew of a secluded spot to stop and park that looked out over the city. He hoped to get Polly to thaw out because he had a favor he wanted to ask of her. He had never yet known a female clown that wouldn’t melt into his arms when he turned on the charm.

For her part, Polly opened her reticule and slipped her hand inside and felt around until she found the socket wrench that she carried with her at all times. She closed her hand around it, ready to pull it out. She would clonk Noah Zark on the head if she had to.

Noah Zark pulled the car off the Mountain Road at Lookout Point. Polly was relieved to see there were already several other clown cars with clown couples in them parked there. If Noah Zark tried to get too fresh, she could scream for help and someone would hear her. Maybe she wouldn’t even need to clonk him on the head.

Noah Zark parked the clown car and turned off the engine and put his arm up over the back of the seat. Polly shrank from his arm as if it was a rattlesnake.

“It’s a lovely evening,” Noah Zark said. “The moon and the stars and the city spread out before you in a lovely panorama of glittering lights.”

“How poetic!” Polly said, altogether unimpressed.

“I trust you’ve had a pleasant evening,” Noah Zark said. “I hope that stepping out with me this evening has been a worthwhile experience for you.”

“Well, I always wanted to go to Clown Rendezvous.”

“Miss Polly, I must confess I have a little favor to ask of you.”

“Just a little one?” she asked.

“Miss Polly, have you ever heard the expression, ‘It’s not what you know—it’s who you know’?”

“No, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that expression.”

“I’ve called your poppa on the telephone several times and I’ve written him a couple of letters.”

“Whatever for?”

“He won’t return my calls and doesn’t respond to my letters.”

“Oh, “Polly said, “I think I’m beginning to understand.”

“I was wondering if you might arrange it so that I might be placed in the way of your poppa in a situation where he wouldn’t be distracted by other matters.”

“You want his help in getting a berth with the Jerkus Circus?”

“One word from him is all it would take.”

“You want me to invite you to dinner at my house, where the talk would inevitably turn toward your career and what a great benefit your talents would be to the Jerkus Circus?”

“That would be splendid!”

“Well, I…”

“You don’t have to give me an answer now. Just think about what I’m saying and let me know if what I’m asking is going to be possible.” He reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a card and handed it to her. “Here’s my agent’s business card. He’ll know how to get in touch with me. And please remember, this is urgent. The sooner you are able to arrange it, the better.”

She took the card and looked at it and slipped it inside her glove. “I think I’d like to go home now, Noah Zark, if you please,” she said.

When he pulled up in front of the house where she lived, he turned off the engine and put his arm up over the back of the seat the way he had done at Lookout Point. He thought again that she would melt into his arms and, if she did so, he would reward her with a big sloppy clown kiss, but again she failed to do as expected.

“Well, good night,” she said, putting her hand on the door handle. “Thank you for a very lovely evening. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

“Wait just a second,” he said. “I’ll walk with you up to your front door.”

“That’s not necessary. I’m a grown clown. I can find my way to my front door in the dark. I’ve done it many times before. I’m not as helpless as everybody seems to think me.”

“You’ll call my business agent, then?” he asked. “You won’t forget?”

“I don’t think I will be seeing you again,” Polly said.

“Why ever not?”

“Noah Zark,” she said, “have you ever heard the expression, ‘There’s none so blind as those who will not see’?”

“I don’t think I ever heard that expression. What does it mean?”

She got out of the clown car and stood beside it, but before she closed the door she pulled the business card he had given her out of her glove and tore it into tiny pieces and flicked the pieces at him across the front seat.

Two days later in the middle of the afternoon Polly was sitting at the table in the kitchen polishing the silver and listening to music on the radio, her mind pleasantly devoid of thought. Clarabelle was standing at the counter putting frosting on a cake. Clemmie Dibble was upstairs taking a clown nap, Boombah was at a Clown Scouts meeting, and Jocko was in the back yard practicing his juggling routine. Suddenly Eata Banana, who had been moping around the house all week, burst into the room. She was uncharacteristically happy and excited.

“Guess who just called me?” she said, hardly able to keep from jumping up and down.

“Who did?” Clarabelle asked, turning from her cake, her frosting-laden knife in the air.

“Noah Zark!” Eata Banana said. “Noah Zark called me on the telephone just now!” She was trembling and her eyes shone with excitement.

“What did he want?” Clarabelle asked.

“He asked me to go to a clown ball with him at the Clown Country Club on Saturday night!”

“Are you going?”

“Am I going? Well, of course, I’m going!” Eata Banana said. “I’d be crazy not to go! He’s a rodeo clown! He’s just the most exciting clown bachelor in all of Clown Town.”

“What are you going to wear?” Clarabelle asked.

“I don’t know,” Eata Banana said. “I think now that things are finally happening for me I’m going to need to buy a whole new wardrobe. Maybe he’ll ask me to marry him!”

Polly smiled and dabbed her rag into the silver polish and rubbed it on the silver serving tray that had belonged to her Grandmother Lulu. She realized that Clarabelle and Eata Banana were both looking at her, expecting her to say something. She said nothing, though, only singing along with Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries, which was just then playing on the radio. She knew very well that Eata Banana wasn’t Noah Zark’s type, either, but she said nothing to that effect. Eata Banana would just have to find out on her own, in her own way and in her own time.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Send Me a Postcard

Send Me a Postcard ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

(Published in The Fringe Magazine, April 2011.)

Since Paul’s mother lost her job at the hospital, she’s not the same anymore.  She stays in bed a lot of the time during the daylight hours, something she never did before. If she’s not in bed, she’s sitting in front of the TV in her bathrobe smoking cigarettes and watching soap operas and game shows with the sound turned all the way down. He stands in the doorway looking at her and she doesn’t seem to know he’s there until she sees his shadow on the wall.

“What are you doing?” she asks, craning her neck around to look at him. “You creep around the house like a thief.”

“I’m just looking at you,” he says. “What’s for dinner?”

“Oh, is it time for dinner?” she asks, looking at the clock. “I didn’t think it was that late.”

He goes into the kitchen and fixes himself a peanut butter sandwich. He is glad to see she has been to the store and bought some fresh bread while he was at school. He puts the sandwich on a plate and goes back into the living room where she is.

“Just help yourself to whatever you can find in the kitchen,” she says. “I don’t feel like cooking dinner.”

“Did you eat anything?” he asks.

“I don’t have any appetite,” she says. “I’ll have something later.” She reaches for her pack of Lucky Strikes and takes one out and lights it and inhales deeply.

He looks at her skeptically but she doesn’t know it. “Smoking is bad for you,” he says.

“So I’ve heard.”

“I’m not ever going to smoke.”

“Bully for you.”

“How about if we go to a movie tonight? There’s a western at the Criterion and a comedy at the Gem.”

“How about if we stay at home and watch TV? There’s a western on one channel and a comedy on another one, and you don’t have to pay to see them. I’m not made out of money, you know.”

He marvels at how mothers always say they’re not made out of money, but he says nothing because he doesn’t want to argue. He would someday like to see a mother made out of money, though. That must be a sight worth seeing.

“I have to write a book report,” he says.

“How lovely for you.”

“Do you want to help me?”

“What’s the book?”

“A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.”

“Isn’t that kind of a grown-up book for eighth grade?”

“I read grown-up books all the time.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. You’re already quite the little man, aren’t you?”

“I chose that book to read from the list. I’m the only person in the class who read it.”

“Isn’t that about the French Revolution or something?”

“Yes, they’re killing all the aristocrats. They’re mad at them because the king and his wife are rich and they don’t care that the peasants are starving, so the peasants want to kill all the aristocrats, whether they’ve done anything wrong or not. Do you know how they kill them?”

“Let me guess,” she says. “They cut off their heads with a thing with a big blade that drops down.”

“It’s called a guillotine. It was invented by a Dr. Guillotine. He was a Frenchman. They make them stick their heads through a hole and tie their hands behind their backs and then they let the blade drop down and wham! it slices off their heads.”

“Sounds divine,” she says. “I’ll be sure and add that book to my reading list.”

“They say it doesn’t hurt, but I don’t know how having your head cut off could not hurt.”

“Why don’t you try it some time and let me know?”

“I saw Daddy when I was walking to school today.”

“Where?”

“He drove past in a black car.”

“It must have been somebody else. His car is blue. Was it a new car?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can tell a new car from an old one, can’t you?”

“I think it was a new car.”

“Well, the next time you see him tell him to throw some of that money our way that he’s spending on a new car.”

“I wouldn’t ask him for money.”

“Why not? He’s your father, isn’t he? You wouldn’t be on this earth if it wasn’t for him, so he’s supposed to pay your way. That’s the way it works.”

He notices how many of his conversations with his mother always come around to the subject of money. He tries to steer her in another direction.

“Are you still looking for a job?” he asks.

“Off and on,” she says. “If it’s any of your business.”

“Do you want me to read the want ads to you? I’ll bet there are some good jobs in there.”

“If I wanted to read the want ads, don’t you think I could read them myself? You’re just a two-bit punk and you don’t know anything.”

“’You’re just a two-bit punk and you don’t know anything,’” he says, in exact imitation of her voice.

“You’re getting just a little too big for your britches!”

“’You’re getting just a little too big for your britches.’”

“Stop it!” she says.

“’Stop it!’”

“Don’t you know you’re driving me crazy?”

“’Don’t you know you’re driving me crazy?’”

“Do you want me to get up from here and come over there and slap you silly?”

“No, I don’t,” he says solemnly, using his own voice again.

“You remind me more of your father every day.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Run away from home and join the circus. You could be one of their freaks.”

He knows she’s only teasing him, but remarks like that hurt him a little, he has to admit. It’s as if she doesn’t want him around her anymore.

“When I’m old enough, I’m going to join the navy.”

“Good for you,” she says. “Serve your country. See the world. Send me a postcard.”

A man and woman are kissing on the TV. Their noses are pressed together.

“Can we change channels?” he asks.

“No!” she says. “I’m watching this!”

He goes into the kitchen and gets an apple and goes out the back door with it and around the house and sits on the front steps, between the bushes that grow on both sides. He throws the apple up in the air a couple of times and catches it and then takes a bite out of it. The juice is running down his chin when he sees a black car pull up to the curb in front of the house, the same black car he saw that morning.

Somebody in the car motions to him. Fascinated, he stands up, throws down the apple, and crosses the lawn toward the car.

“Hello, son!” his father says brightly, rolling down the window.

“Did you get a new car?” he asks. He can’t think of anything else at the moment to say.

“No, it’s a friend’s car. I’m just borrowing it. How are you?”

“I’m all right. When are you coming home?”

His father turns off the engine and puts both hands on the steering wheel. “I’m not,” he says. “How’s your mother?”

“She’s fine.”

“Don’t tell her I was here.”

“All she has to do is look out the window and she’ll know you’re here.”

“Well, this is just between you and me.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out some money and hands his son a twenty-dollar bill. “Get yourself something good to eat,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“Well, I just wanted to see you for a minute and see how you are. I’ve got to be going.” He reaches to start the engine again.

“Daddy, can I come and live with you?”

“No, I’m afraid that’s out the question right now. I’m staying with friends. We’ll talk about that later when I’m more settled.”

“Mother hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She loves you very much.”

“She’s crazy. She’s going to smoke herself to death and she doesn’t eat any food.”

“Well, she’s just going through a rough patch right now. You’ll understand when you’re older and not hold it against her.”

“I’m going to run away from home.”

“No, you’re not. You just stay put for now. We’ll talk more about a different kind of arrangement later, after things have settled down.”

He starts the engine and looks over his shoulder to see if any cars are coming. He makes a u-turn in the middle of the street and speeds off in the opposite direction from which he came with a little squeal of tires.

When Paul goes back into the house, his mother is waiting for him at the door.

“Who was that you were talking to?” she asks.

“Nobody. A man looking for the hospital.”

“That was a black car, wasn’t it?”

“I think it was.”

“Did he try to get you to get into the car with him?”

“Of course not.”

“Did you tell him how to get to the hospital?”

“I tried to.”

At ten o’clock that night his mother is still in front of the TV, but now she’s asleep with a bottle of gin on the table beside her. On the TV is a skinny old man in a tuxedo doing a tap dance in front of a wall of mirrors that reflect the people watching him.

He goes into his room and shuts the door, moving the bureau in front of the door so nobody can come in. He starts to work on his book report; writing it should be easy because he’s already read the book, but he can’t seem to concentrate. Luckily it’s not due for a few days.

He turns off the light, finding the dark comforting; it makes him feel safe. Far off in the distance he hears a siren. The wind is blowing against the house as if to blow up a rainstorm. He settles under the covers and sighs. The last thought he has before going to sleep is about the guillotine. He wonders if it really hurts or if it’s just like a whisper on the back of the neck. Of one thing, though, he is certain: He will never know for sure.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Pass Without Paying

Pass Without Paying ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Lester Fane had been to the store to buy a couple of items that his mother simply couldn’t do without. He was on his way back home, worrying about what other jobs she might decide to make him do, when he spotted Jingo Lanky and his homely sister, Lynette, standing on the street corner up ahead. He was going to turn around and walk home a different way, but he knew that Jingo and Lynette had spotted him so he kept on going.

Jingo Lanky was only a couple of years older than Lester, but he seemed much older. He was as tall as a grown man and he had whiskers and bulging biceps. He smoked cigarettes that he rolled himself; he was said to drink beer and even whiskey and do other adult things that Jingo had only a vague knowledge of. He lived in a falling-down house on the edge of town with his hag of a mother and his eight miserable brothers and sisters. He had been expelled from school and had been in jail more than once for drunken and disorderly conduct and for shoplifting candy and cigarettes and other small items that he attempted, not always successfully, to conceal in his clothing. Everybody who knew him believed he was on his way to living a useless and crime-ridden life and would one day end up in the state penitentiary.

Lynette was about twenty and had been in girls’ reformatory. She had pale, pockmarked skin and orange hair that could only come from a bottle. She wore falsies because her breasts had never developed the way they were supposed to and tight denim skirts that showed the contours of her buttocks.

Lester put his head down and walked faster, believing he could get past Jingo and Lynette without having to speak to them or even look at them. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice him.

“Well, well, well,” Jingo said, grabbing Lester by the upper arm and stopping him. Where in the hell do you think you’re going, you little punk?”

“Let me go!” Lester said.

“I asked where you’re going, you little turd.”

“I’m going home. My mother is waiting for me. She’s sick and I’ve got to take her some medicine.”

“She’s probably been sick ever since she gave birth to a little freak like you.”

“I’m not a freak!”

“What have you got there?” He pointed to the paper bag Lester was carrying. “You got anything to eat in there?” He grabbed the bag and unfolded the top and looked inside.

“Give me that!” Lester said. “It’s none of your business!”

“What is it?” Lynette asked, trying to see inside the bag.

“Looks like…toothpaste and some kind of pills,” Jingo said.

“It’s roach paste and suppositories for hemorrhoids, if you must know,” Lester said.

“What the hell?” Lynette said. “That’s some weird shit!”

“Hey, man, that’s disgusting!” Jingo said. “Who goes to the store and buys stuff like that?” He threw the bag back and Lester caught it.

“Ask him what his mother uses the roach paste for,” Lynette said. “Does she use in cooking when she wants to poison somebody?”

Lester started to run but Jingo grabbed him by the shoulder and held him. “You can’t go until you give me a dollar.” He squeezed Lester’s upper arm painfully.

“You’re hurting me!” Lester yelped. “I don’t have a dollar!”

“You don’t pass until you give me some money.”

“You don’t own the street!” Lester said. “I can pass without paying if I want to.”

“Leave him alone,” Lynette said. You’re going to make the poor little thing cry.”

“Hah-hah-hah!” Jingo laughed, shaking Lester by the shoulders. I wouldn’t want to make the little girl baby cry. You aren’t going to cry now, are you, sweetie pie?”

“You’re a dirty pig!” Lester said.

“Hey, man, you hurt my feelings. Why do you want to go and do that?”

“You’re hurting me!” Lester said. He squirmed to get loose, but Jingo held him immobile.

“Hey, man, do you want to have sex with my sister?

“Oh, come on, now,” Lynette said. “Don’t you think he’s a little young?”

“She’ll have sex with you if you pay her.”

Lynette laughed. “He wouldn’t have enough money to make me want to have sex with him,” she said.

“Let me go!” Lester said.

He saw an old man open his front door, look out, and close the door quickly.

“I’ll bet you’ve got some money,” Jingo said. “Don’t be stingy with an old pal.” He wrapped his arms around Lester and slipped his hands into his pockets. When he saw that his pockets were empty, he let him go. “Hey, you really don’t have any money, do you?” he said.

Lester tried to kick Jingo in the leg but missed. Jingo laughed and held up his hands in surrender.

“Come back in about ten years,” Lynette said haughtily.

“And next time you’d better have some money,” Jingo said, “or you don’t get past. Remember that.”

“Go to hell!” Lester said.

“Is that the best you can do, tough boy?” Jingo said.

“You’re a shit-faced hog and I hope you go to the electric chair!”

“Hah-hah-hah!”

“That’s pretty cruel,” Lynette said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself for speaking to people that way.”

Lester was trying to think of other names he might call Jingo, when a white car came around the corner very fast and pulled up at the curb. Lester saw right away that it was Harry Harris, the town sheriff, driving the unmarked patrol car. When Harry Harris jumped out of the car without turning off the engine, Jingo Lanky started running.

“Hey, you!” Harry Harris yelled. “Come back here! I want to talk to you!”

Moving with surprising agility for a man of his years, Harry Harris began running after Jingo. In the middle of the next block, just as Jingo was about to cut across somebody’s lawn, Harry Harris overtook him and tackled him, knocking him face down on the ground.

Lester and Lynette watched as Harry Harris cuffed Jingo’s hands behind his back, jerked him to a standing position and brought him back to the patrol car. Lester thought he would enjoy seeing Jingo handcuffed and in the custody of the law, but he didn’t. Jingo was out of breath and his face had suddenly gone white. His nose was bleeding and starting to swell. He had the look of a trapped, injured animal.

When Harry Harris opened the rear door of the unmarked patrol car and began to push Jingo into the back seat, Jingo twisted around toward Lynette.

“Tell mother what happened,” he said, blood pouring from his nose into his mouth. “And tell her I don’t know when I’ll be home again.”

Lester suddenly felt sorry for Jingo and was sorry for what he had said about the electric chair. Maybe he really would go to the electric chair now.

“What did he do?” Lester asked Lynette as they watched the unmarked patrol car speed away.

“What didn’t he do?” she said, shrugging.

“I wonder what they’ll do to him,” Lester said, believing for the first time that maybe Jingo wasn’t so bad after all.

“I’m sorry for what I said about your mother poisoning people,” Lynette said. “I didn’t mean it. I was only making a joke.”

“That’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it. I’m sorry I called your brother a dirty pig.”

“It’s not the first time he’s been called that. Do you want a cigarette?”

“No, I’ve got to be getting home.”

“Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

“Yeah,” Lester said. “Maybe so.” When he turned to look at her he saw she was crying real tears. “Can you make it home all right?” he asked.

“What other choice do I have?” she said, cupping her hands around a match to light a cigarette.

Copyright © 2011 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Schooled in Depravity

Schooled in Depravity ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

John the Baptist was brought before King Herod Antipas and his wife, Herodias. He was disheveled from the rough treatment he had received at the hands of his captors, but he maintained his dignity and his composure. If he was afraid of what King Herod was going to do to him, he didn’t show it.

King Herod looked John up and down, a sneer on his lips. “Are you the Messiah everybody keeps talking about?” he asked.

“No, I’m not him,” John said. “He’s coming, though.”

“How do you know this?”

“How do I know the sun is shining? I know because it is.”

“The man is impertinent,” Herodias said.

“I hear you are a troublemaker,” King Herod said. “You preach sedition wherever you go.”

“Only peace,” John said.

“I hear you are dangerous.”

“I am but a voice crying in the wilderness.”

“You are a reckless cur!” Herodias spat out. “You should bow down before your master. You should kiss the hem of his garment and beg his forgiveness!”

“I have but one master,” John said quietly.

“What are we going to do with him?” King Herod said to himself, but out loud so everybody could hear him.

“Let’s burn him over a slow fire and hear him beg for mercy,” Herodias said.

“Is not your cup of abomination already full enough, woman?” John said.

“Are you going to let him speak to me that way?” Herodias screeched at her husband.

Salome, step-daughter of King Herod, heard the commotion and knew something interesting was going on. She entered the room and stood beside her mother, Herodias.

“I heard you just insult my mother, the queen,” Salome said to John, a cruel smile on her lips.

“I just spoke what is the truth,” John said. “It’s time somebody did.”

“Don’t you know it’s dangerous to insult the queen, the wife of Herod Antipas?”

“When I look at you, child,” John said to Salome, “I see someone who is not yet entirely rotted through with the corruption that permeates this place and these people.”

“What kind of talk is this?” Salome said with a laugh. “It sounds as if you’re giving me some kind of a warning.”

“I am giving you a warning, child, for your own sake. Leave this wicked place tonight while there’s still a chance for you. Leave and never look back. I see when I look at you that you haven’t yet crossed the threshold that these others have crossed. They are beyond redemption, while for you there is still some hope because you are so young.”

“And if I left my home and my mother, just where would I go?” Salome asked.

“The Lord will guide you in your path if you let Him.”

“I have never heard such crazy talk in all my life!” Herodias said. “I say we kill him before he lives one more day. I say we have him tortured and listen to his bones crack!”

“No,” King Herod said quietly.

“What? Do you mean you’re going to let him live?”

“I mean I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do with him. I want to keep him alive for now until we see how this thing with the Messiah plays out.”

“You coward!” Herodias shrieked. “You’re afraid of him! You’re afraid that the stories you’ve heard of him might be true. You believe he wields some kind of mysterious power that he might use against you.”

“Hold your tongue, woman,” King Herod said, “or I will make you wish you were never born.”

As the guards led John away to the dungeon, Salome watched him go. “I don’t like him,” she said. “He makes my blood turn to ice water.”

That night, when Salome was alone in her bedchamber, she couldn’t stop thinking about John. She imagined him beside her in her bed, his huge hands running over her body, his lips on hers. The thing about John, she realized, was that he moved her in some mysterious way that she didn’t understand. She hated the power he seemed to have over her but also in a way found it thrilling.

The next day was King Herod’s birthday. A huge feast was held in the palace with dozens of honored guests. The food was rich and abundant and the wine flowed freely. There were musicians, dancing girls, acrobats, even a trained bear. King Herod knew how to throw a memorable party.

All during the festivities, King Herod kept his back to Herodias and pointedly ignored her. He was disappointed in her as a wife. She was far too outspoken for her own good or for his; he cringed at the sound of her voice. She was becoming more and more like a thorn in his side that he couldn’t remove.

Salome, on the other hand, was becoming lovelier every day. She had left girlhood behind and was now a woman with a mind and a will of her own. For beauty and cunning, she could match any woman twice her age.

King Herod kept drinking more and more wine. The drunker he became, the more he abandoned caution. “Why don’t you dance for us, Salome,” he said, unable to take his eyes from her. “For me?”

Herodias bristled at these words, but Herod didn’t notice.

“I don’t feel like dancing,” Salome said petulantly.

“There is nothing I would like better at this moment than to see you dance,” King Herod said.

“Why should I?”

“Because your king requests it and today is the anniversary of your king’s birth. Won’t you grant your king a birthday wish?”

“What will you give me?”

“I’ll give you my entire kingdom.”

“And what would I do with it?”

“I have riches that your mother doesn’t even know about, jewels as big as a goose’s egg. They are yours if you will but dance for me.”

“Ho-hum,” Salome said comically, drawing a laugh from those who heard her.

“Anything I have, anything I can get, is yours.”

“You will give me anything?”

“You can name your price.”

Everybody knew that King Herod was being foolish but they watched in silent fascination to see what was going to happen. How far would he go to get Salome to dance?

She stood up and assumed a dance posture, her face covered by a veil. As if it had all been rehearsed, the musicians began playing a dance tune.

Salome danced seductively for the assembled guests but especially for King Herod. She swiveled her hips, put her arms in the air, moved her head from side to side. She used her veils to great effect to show off her face and her body. She bent forward and balanced herself on her hands; backward and joined her head with the floor as if she had no bones in her body. She shimmied and she shook. She moved all about the room so as to be seen by everybody; there was no eye that wasn’t upon her. She demonstrated a skill and dexterity that nobody believed her capable of.

When she came to the end of her dance, everyone was silent with awe. King Herod stood up and held out his arms to her and she ran into them.

“That was heavenly!” he said. “It was divine! I’ve never seen anything lovelier. You may name your price, my child, and, no matter what it is, it will not be too great!”

“I’ll tell you what I want,” she said, speaking out so everybody could hear her.

“Yes, what is it, my child?”

“I want the head of John the Baptist on a plate!”

King Herod was surprised at her request. He thought at first she was making a joke. He had offered her untold riches. Why would she want a trophy as grisly as a severed head?

“I don’t think I heard you correctly, my dear. What was that you said you wanted?”

“You heard what I said and so did everybody else.”

“This is the thing you want above all others?”

“I said so, didn’t I?”

“And what will you do with the head of John the Baptist when it is presented to you?”

“I want to look at it.”

“Are you prepared to deal with the consequences, no matter what they are?”

“Yes, yes,” she said with an impatient gesture.

King Herod clapped his hands to summon the guard. He instructed two of his most loyal and obedient men to go below with a large sword and forthwith bring forward the head of John the Baptist on a plate to present to his step-daughter, Salome.

Within minutes, two men came into the banquet hall bearing a tray between them. On the tray was the severed head of John the Baptist. King Herod motioned for them to set the tray on the table on which he and the others had earlier been eating.

Salome approached the head slowly, her eyes glittering with bloodlust. She had never been happier in her life than she was at that moment. She picked up the head by its hair in both hands, the neck dripping warm blood. She looked into the half-closed eyes and kissed the dead lips passionately. The assembled guests, schooled in depravity as they were, were utterly enchanted. It was the best birthday party they had ever seen.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

What the Young Matron is Wearing


What the Young Matron is Wearing ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in The Legendary.)

In preparation for company coming for dinner, Peachy Keen was in her boudoir putting the finishing touches to her toilette. She slipped her best blue dress on over her head and smoothed it over her broad hips and fastened it up the back and spritzed herself all over with eau de cologne. She stood before the mirror and touched the comb to the wreath of curls on her head, even though it was already perfect to her way of thinking, and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Hetta was working over the tray of hors d’oeuvres. She had given herself a failed home permanent and her hair hung in limp cascades around her face like seared sheep’s wool. She spread cream cheese on little round crackers and put a half-moon of olive on top of each one and licked her fingers. Seeing that everything was proceeding as planned in the kitchen, Peachy went into the dining room.

Jewell was just setting the table. The spoons were cloudy, so she was blowing her breath on each one and wiping it with the tail end of her bathrobe. Her hair was up in curlers, as it had been since the night before. When she realized Peachy was standing beside the table looking at her, she jumped back and dropped a spoon as though a loud noise had startled her, even though Peachy had not made a sound.

“When you’re finished with your work,” Peachy said in the no-nonsense way she had of speaking to Jewell, “I want you to go upstairs and get yourself fixed up. Wash your face and comb your hair and put on some lipstick and some face powder. And put on something nice. You don’t have to go around looking slovenly all the time. I want you go make a good impression on Mr. Dilly and his son.”

Jewell said nothing but only looked down at a blister on her finger and nodded her head slightly and went back to her work.

Peachy put on her little hostess apron and busied herself with straightening up in the living room. She adjusted the sofa cushions for at least the fifth time that day and straightened the picture over the divan and emptied an ashtray where Hetta had deposited the stump of a cigarette and turned again toward the mirror and tugged at a little strand of hair over her right ear that wasn’t cooperating. She was thinking about taking the scissors and cutting it off when the doorbell rang. Her heart gave a little leap and she swept across the room in her grandest manner and opened the door.

When she saw Mr. Dilly she smiled and showed all her teeth, but when she focused her attention on Chick, Mr. Dilly’s son, her smile faded. She stepped aside and motioned for them to come inside. By the time she closed the door she had regained her smile, which she shone on them like a beacon.

“So,” she said, taking the little bouquet of flowers that Mr. Dilly handed to her, “this is the son I’ve heard so much about.”

“Yes,” Mr. Dilly said, “This is my boy Chick.”

She stepped forward bravely and took Chick by the hand. “I’m so happy to make your acquaintance, Chick,” she said. “Welcome to my home.”

Chick looked at her and tilted his huge shaggy head back and rolled his watery blue eyes at her in greeting. She had a fleeting mental image of a St. Bernard.

“This is the fine lady I told you about that Daddy is going to marry,” Mr. Dilly said in a loud voice to Chick. “She’s to be your new mama.”

“Yaw-yaw-yaw,” said Chick.

While Mr. Dilly was a small man, with the bodily proportions of an ant, Chick was thickset through the shoulders and hips and a head taller than his father. They looked nothing alike.

“Won’t you sit down?” Peachy said, gesturing toward the divan in her best hostessy manner. “I’ll tell Hetta you’re here.”

When she went into the kitchen, Hetta was sitting at the table reading a movie magazine. “What’s the matter with you?” Hetta asked. “You look funny. Are you going to be sick?”

“They’re here,” Peachy said, “and it’s worse than I thought. Much worse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come and meet them.”

Peachy took Hetta by the arm and led her back into the living room, as if she might escape if she let go of her, and introduced her to Mr. Dilly first and then to Chick.

“Enchanted,” Hetta said to Mr. Dilly, giving a little curtsey. “Enchanted,” she said again to Chick.

“Gaw-gaw-gram!” Chick said.

“Yes, that’s grandma,” Mr. Dilly said.

“Do you need to go to the toilet?” Hetta asked.

“Why, no,” Mr. Dilly said with a strained smile.

“Would you care for a beer?”

“No, no.”

“Well, let’s all sit down, then” Peachy said. “Jewell will be right down. She went upstairs to change.”

“What will she be when she comes down?” Mr. Dilly asked, tugging at the legs of his trousers.

“What?”

“You said she went upstairs to change. I asked what she’d be when she came down. I was making a little joke.”

“Oh. Ha-ha! Don’t you have the driest wit ever?”

“Oh, yeah,” Hetta said, lighting a cigarette.

Smiling brightly, Peachy went to the bottom of the steps and called up them. “Jewell, dear, we have guests and they’re waiting to meet you! Please come down right this minute!”

When Jewell came down, she was wearing silk Chinese lounging pajamas, and all eyes were upon her. She had removed the curlers, and her hair stood out all over her head as if electrified. Peachy introduced Mr. Dilly to her as her soon-to-be stepfather and Chick her soon-to-be stepbrother. Jewell looked at them solemnly and put her palms together in front of her and bowed from the waist without saying anything. Mr. Dilly looked strangely at her, while Chick lolled his head and clamped his eyes on the dragon on her chest.

“Serve the hors d’oeuvres, now,” Peachy said, forgetting, for the moment, to smile.

Jewell passed around the tray, and when she came to Chick and held it in front of his face, he took two of the hors d’oeuvres, one in each hand. He looked at them and started to put them over his eyes, but Mr. Dilly saw what he was doing and took hold of his wrists and made him drop them back onto the tray.

“Sometimes he doesn’t know what to do with things,” Mr. Dilly said apologetically.

“Glaw-tib-faw-faw!” Chick said.

“If it’s some kind of food he doesn’t recognize, he thinks he’s supposed to attach it to his face somehow.”

“Oh, dear!” Peachy said. “Should we get him something else?”

“Oh, no, we’re fine,” Mr. Dilly said. He made Chick put his hands in his lap as he fed one of the hors d’oeuvres into his mouth.

“Nyum-nyum-nyum,” Chick said as he chewed.

Jewell set the tray of hors d’oeuvres down and sat in the chair opposite the couch. She crossed her legs and rested her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand.

“So,” Mr. Dilly said, “I hear you’re a good little worker.”

“What’s that?” Jewell asked. It was the first words she had spoken to him.

“I hear you take care of things while mummy’s working.”

“What things?”

“I hear you clean the house and wash the clothes and help out sometimes in the kitchen.”

“I like to make tuna fish sandwiches, but they don’t like it when I make too much noise. I like it at night when everybody is gone and I’m here by myself. I can hear the wind in the trees and if it’s raining I can hear the rain hitting the windows. The best time is when there’s a thunderstorm and the lightning hits really close to the house and it makes you scream. You might think I would be afraid of that, but I’m not. Not one bit. If it ever strikes me and kills me, I think it would be a glorious way to die, don’t you? I could ride right up to heaven on the old bolt of lightning! One night a man came and knocked on the door. He was a big man, too. I went to the door and told him nobody was at home and I couldn’t let him come inside.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Dilly asked.

“I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I had let him come in, though. I wonder what we might have talked about. Maybe he was a talent scout from Hollywood and he was looking for a girl just like me to be in the movies. I might have missed out on a wonderful opportunity by not letting him in. I do so wish I had let him come in. My life might be all different now.”

“Chick boy likes the movies, too,” Mr. Dilly said. “He likes any kind of picture with animals in it, especially westerns with lots of horses.”

“I like love stories where there’s lots of singing,” Jewell said. “And circus pictures and prison pictures.”

“I think you and Chick boy will find you have a lot in common. The two of you are very much alike.”

“Me and him?” Jewell asked, pointing at Chick. “I don’t know how you figure that.”

“Dinner’s ready,” Hetta said, as if she had received a telepathic communication from the kitchen.

When they were all seated at the table, Mr. Dilly set about filling Chick’s plate first. He took a little bit of everything and heaped it right in the middle of the plate and took a big spoon and mixed it all up together into a brown-and-gray mash. Then he took a napkin and tied it bib-like around Chick’s neck and set the plate in front of him and took hold of his right hand and closed his fingers around the spoon and pushed his arm forward to get as much food onto the spoon as he could and then into his mouth.

“He can feed himself,” Mr. Dilly said. “You just have to help him get started.”

“Nyum-nyum-nyum,” Chick said.

As the meal progressed, Mr. Dilly and Peachy spoke of their wedding plans. Since it was to be the fifth marriage for Mr. Dilly and the third for Peachy, they would have a simple civil ceremony at the courthouse. Afterwards, there was to be a five-day honeymoon trip to an undisclosed location that only Mr. Dilly knew about.

“That will be the perfect time for you and the Chick boy to get to know each other,” Mr. Dilly said to Jewell. “I’ll drop him off here with his grip and the two of you can have a fine time together.”

“Wait a minute,” Jewell said. “You’re going to go off for five days and leave me alone with him?”

“Hetta will be here to help out,” Peachy said cheerily.

“When I’m not tending bar,” Hetta said.

“Now, don’t worry about a thing,” Mr. Dilly said. “I’ll write out everything you need to know. Then after your mother and I get back, we’ll all be living together in the same house.”

“I just know we’re going to be so happy!” Peachy said, her eyes glistening. “Just as happy as we deserve to be!”

After dinner, Mr. Dilly had to help Chick go to the toilet, which took such a long time that Peachy thought about going to the door and knocking to make sure the two of them were all right, but finally they came out and Mr. Dilly installed himself on one end of the divan where he had been sitting before dinner and Chick on the other end. Mr. Dilly launched into a long and graphic account of a recent abdominal operation he had suffered through, while Chick roved his eyes around the walls and the ceiling, breathing audibly.

“I tell you, the gas pains were something fierce,” Mr. Dilly said in his droning voice. “I needed to have a bowel movement so bad and it just was not going to happen! They were giving me laxative after laxative and I was getting no satisfaction at all. I thought it was going to take at least a ton of dynamite to get some movement down there again…”

Peachy gave a little yelp of laughter and rocked in her chair, while Hetta yawned behind her hand.

Jewell listened for a while to what Mr. Dilly was saying and then, since nobody was paying any attention to her anyway, she blanked him out the best she could and leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She went to sleep for just a minute or two and then she awoke with a little start, wondering how she could have gone to sleep so easily.

She realized in the moment of waking that Chick had been looking at her, as if studying her. When he saw that he had her attention and hers alone, he placed both hands on his crotch and rubbed up and down suggestively. He smiled then, and in his eyes was an intimation of cognizance that had been absent before.

A little while later, when Hetta opened a bottle of cut-rate champagne to toast the happy couple and their upcoming union, Mr. Dilly asked if Chick boy, since he wasn’t allowed champagne, might have a glass of milk in a champagne glass so he wouldn’t feel left out. Jewell was sent to the kitchen to get the milk.

She poured the milk into the champagne glass and stood there for a moment at the counter looking at it. She could still hear Mr. Dilly talking in the living room and Peachy’s high-pitched laughter. Quickly, before someone came in, she opened the cabinet door under the sink and picked up the small, faded box of rat pellets that had been there for as long as she could remember.

She tilted the box of pellets and allowed two of them to come out of the box and rest on the palm of her hand. They were little brown nuggets the size of pencil erasers that rats were deceived into believing was something good to eat but that would kill them. She squeezed them between her fingers and put them to her nose, but they had no smell. She wondered if they had somehow lost their strength and their ability to poison. She dumped them from her hand into the champagne glass full of milk and took a spoon and made sure they dissolved.

When she took the milk back into the living room, Chick took it from her and drank it greedily in one long drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jewell stood back and watched to see if he was going to die right away. If he didn’t, she would have to think about using more of the pellets the next time.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Rain Continuing Tonight and Tomorrow

Rain Continuing Tonight and Tomorrow ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(Published in Writers’ Stories Magazine.)

Louise Eldritch didn’t have an umbrella. By the time she walked the six blocks from the bus station to the hotel, she was soaked through to the skin. She stood there, shivering a little and dripping water on the floor, while she signed her name to the register, a false name that came to her in the moment before she wrote it down. The night desk clerk smiled at her familiarly, as though he knew her. He had the same smile for everybody, no matter who they were.

“I have a nice room for you on the eighth floor, Miss Whitehead,” he said, reading the name off the register.

“It’s Mrs. Whitehead. Don’t you have anything on a lower floor?”

“Not cleaned and made up. With all this rain, you see, we’re short-staffed.”

“I guess the eighth floor will have to do, then.”

“It’s nice and quiet up there and you’ll have a fine view. The elevator is in working order, so you won’t have to walk up the stairs.” He handed her the key.

She took the creaking elevator up to the eighth floor. The door opened on a long carpeted hallway, silent and deserted. On the way to her room, she heard voices coming from behind the door to one of the rooms. She paused for a moment because something about the voices seemed oddly familiar; first a woman’s voice, pleading and crying, and then an angry man’s voice. There was the sound of breaking glass and the woman screamed. A different male voice, higher-pitched than the first one, yelled as if he was calling a dog and then the other two voices were stilled. She wondered if maybe someone was in trouble and needed help, but she had problems of her own and didn’t want to become involved in anybody else’s. She walked on to the end of the hallway.

Her room was as dreary as she expected. The walls were covered with faded green-and-brown wallpaper and the ceiling spotted with water stains. She turned on the lights and stepped out of her wet shoes and draped her jacket over the back of the desk chair. She took a towel from the bathroom and dried herself off the best she could. She longed to get into a tubful of hot water to try to soak the aches out of her body but she was just too tired. The day and a half spent travelling on the bus had taken its toll. She wanted only to sleep.

There was one window in the room and beside it a small door that opened onto a tiny fire escape landing. The window and door were both covered with a heavy green curtain, the kind that completely shut out the light. She pulled back the curtain and looked out at the rain, which hadn’t diminished and was, if anything, coming down heavier than before. She looked down the eighty feet or so to the street but couldn’t see much of anything, other than a streetlamp at the next corner and the lights of an all-night drugstore in the next block.

It could be any one of a thousand different towns in America. In the two days she had been traveling, she crossed several states lines and had lost track of where she was. If she had known the name of the town when she arrived there, she had forgotten it, but she derived a sort of perverse pleasure in not knowing where she was. If she didn’t know where she was, didn’t it follow that nobody else would know?

The room, for all its shortcomings, was warm and dry, and for that she was thankful. After she smoked a cigarette, she took off her clothes and got into the too-soft bed underneath the pile of peculiar-smelling covers and switched off the light. She could still hear the voices coming from down the hallway but underneath the soothing sound of the rain they seemed detached and far away.

She lay on her back in the dark for perhaps half an hour, smoking one cigarette after the other. As tired as her body was and as much as she needed to sleep, she knew she wasn’t going to go to sleep without a struggle. She had the sensation of still being in motion; her head reeled and she had a knot in her stomach. She got out of the bed and switched on the light and opened her suitcase and took out some pills, one to calm her down and another to make her sleep. She washed both pills down with a swallow from a bottle of Kentucky bourbon that she had bundled among her clothes to protect it from breakage.

While she had the suitcase opened, she took the diary out of a zippered compartment and opened it and sat down on the bed and held it open on her lap. The diary was for her more than just a book; it represented the end of her old life and the beginning of a new life, the kind of life she had always wanted.

In the diary, in Byron’s own handwriting, was his own confession. She didn’t know why he would confess in writing to having two business associates killed in five years, but that was just his way. He was thumbing his nose at the world. He believed he could get away with anything and outsmart anybody; he believed he was infallible. He kept the diary locked in a safe to which only he had access and he believed nobody would ever even know of its existence.

He slipped up, though, and she found the diary and read it, as wives sometimes will. She recognized it at once as a gold mine. Byron would pay a lot to get it back. She had wanted to get out of the marriage for years and now here was her chance, as if dropped into her lap from heaven.

When she got a safe distance away—and she didn’t know yet exactly where she was going—she would contact Byron and make him an offer. She would start at five-hundred thousand; she didn’t want to be overly greedy. That amount would be enough to keep her comfortably well-off for the rest of her life. She could travel and keep a nice apartment and have friends and give parties and never have to worry about anything; live the kind of independent life she had always wanted.

Byron would kill her too, though, of that she was certain. He would use any means at his disposal to get the diary back. She wasn’t certain that he hadn’t been following her or having someone else follow her—a hired killer, perhaps. For that reason she had taken a meandering course across four states, had changed buses five times, and had stopped at a dreary old hotel on the edge of nowhere—a place that wasn’t even on the map. She didn’t think she was being followed, but still one could never be certain of anything, especially when dealing with a man like Byron Eldritch.

Almost immediately the pills began to take effect and her eyelids began to feel heavy. She put the diary away carefully for safekeeping and got back into bed again. Soon she was asleep.

She dreamed she was walking along a flat country road. She didn’t know where the road was but it seemed somehow familiar, as if she remembered it from her far distant past. Looking down at her legs and feet, she saw they were covered with the dirt of the road.

As she walked along this road to an unknown or uncertain destination, she heard a car coming up behind her. She stopped walking and turned around and faced the car. She was interested in knowing who was driving, but apparently no one was, or, if there was a driver, he was invisible. An invisible driver didn’t make any sense, so it was easier to believe the car was moving on its own.

The car was bearing down on her and she had the sudden sickening realization that it meant to run her down in the road and kill her. When it was no more than thirty or forty feet away, coming toward her very fast, she jumped out of the way just in time and it went on past her in a cloud of dust.

She was awakened from the dream at that moment by a crash down the hallway, as of something being thrown against the wall, and then a scream. After that she could hear the voices, louder than before, as though the argument was still going on and had intensified. She tried covering up her head with a pillow but it was no use; she could still hear it. She got out of bed and turned on the light and picked up the receiver.

“Night clerk,” the voice said.

“There’s an argument going on down the hall from my room, loud voices and shouting, and it’s keeping me awake.”

“What room are you in?”

“846.”

“Oh, yes. The eighth floor. I believe they’ve been celebrating. I’ll call them and tell them to keep it quiet.”

She heard the phone ringing faintly down the hall and the murmur of voices, followed by laughter and the slamming of a door, and then stillness. Whoever they were, they seemed to have finally stopped the arguing and settled down for the night. She switched off the light and covered up her head and went to sleep again.

It might have been ten minutes or an hour or two hours before a knocking on the door jerked her violently awake. She sat up in the bed, her heart pounding, uncertain for the moment where she was. When the knocking came again, she got out of bed and went to the door.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“Mr. Mendel calling for Mr. Sloan,” a raspy voice said.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Mr. Mendel calling for Mr. Sloan’.”

“I don’t know who you are,” she said. “You’ve got the wrong room.”

“I need to see Mr. Sloan right away.”

“There’s nobody here by that name.”

“He said room 846.”

“You’ve got the wrong room.”

“There came one day a lovely box of flowers.”

“What?”

“Will you let me in?”

“You’ve got the wrong room.”

“So you say, but can you give me a good reason why I ought to believe you?”

She heard a huff of breath and faint footsteps as the man turned from the door and walked away. A few seconds later she heard the elevator door open and close and then the faraway creaking as the elevator descended.

The next time she awoke she could still hear the rain, but underneath that was some other sound. She pushed back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed and stared into the darkness. It took a few seconds before she was awake enough to know that she had been hearing someone calling her name outside the door to her room, softly yet insistently. She went to the door and put her ear against it.

“Who’s there?” she asked softly. “Is anyone there?”

There was no reply but the unmistakable sound of someone breathing in air and letting it out again.

“Who is it?” she asked, louder this time. “What do you want?”

There was a long pause, after which a man’s voice said, “Aren’t you going to tell me I’ve got the wrong room?”

“Who is it?” she asked.

“What’s the point of asking such obvious questions?”

“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”

The man laughed. “All right, all right,” he said. “No reason to get excited. So I’ve got the wrong room. No need to shoot me!”

She heard him walking away, followed by silence. She longed to open the door and look down the hall toward the elevator, but she was afraid he was playing a trick on her and when she opened the door he would force his way in.

She went to her suitcase and took from underneath the jumbled clothing the little .22 caliber handgun that Byron had given her in happier days when he traveled a lot and she was left at home to fend for herself. Having a gun nearby had always made her feel safer, even though she had never had any reason to fire it.

Clutching the gun to her breast, she got back into bed and sat against the headboard and pulled the covers up and stared into the darkness. The rain blew in gusts against the window. She went to sleep again.

She awoke to the phone ringing. She dropped the gun to the floor, forgetting she was holding it, and grabbed the receiver to silence the ringing.

“Yes?” she said, her voice breathless.

“This is the night desk clerk.”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to ask you if you’ve been bothered any more by the guests on your floor. We always follow up on these things.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s exactly one-forty-seven, Central Standard Time.”

“There was a man knocking on the door a while ago. He was looking for somebody he thought was in this room.”

“Did you open the door?”

“No.”

“If he comes back, don’t open the door. You never know who might be lurking about. We try to keep people out late at night who aren’t actually paying guests of the hotel, but sometimes they come in unnoticed for one reason or another.”

“Do you have the number of the local police force?” she asked.

“The police? What do you need to call the police for?”

“Well, I can’t say for sure. I have an uneasy feeling.”

“You don’t need to be calling the police, ma’am. I’ll be here all night, until seven or so, and if you’re bothered again pick up the phone and call me. Just don’t call the police.”

“I’m going to leave this place. I don’t feel safe here.”

“Where would you go in the middle of the night in the pouring rain? The dam might be breached and if it is this whole area could be under water. You wouldn’t even get a cab.”

“I’ll sit in the lobby or I’ll go to the all-night drugstore down the street and wait there until morning.”

“No need to do that, ma’am. Just go back to sleep. Everything will be all right.”

When she hung up the phone, her hands were shaking and she felt dizzy and short of breath. She took two more pills and drank the rest of the bourbon in the bottle.

Suddenly a pounding at the door brought her to her feet. She stared at the door in the darkness, as if expecting to see through it to the other side.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

This time a different male voice (with a hint of a foreign accent) said, “Open the door and stop fooling around!”

“I said ‘who’s there’?”

“If you don’t open this door, you’ll have to answer for it later.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s the middle of the night. I’m trying to sleep!”

“Do you know how silly that sounds?”

“You’ve got the wrong room.”

“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll open the door.”

“Go away!”

For good measure, he pounded on the door again and kicked it with both feet.

She returned to the bed and pulled the covers up over her head, hoping to shut out any further disturbances. She longed to be at home where everything was certain and where nobody would dare bother her in the middle of the night. She was thinking about getting out of bed again and checking to make sure the door was double-locked, when the phone rang again. Unlike before, she let it ring ten or twelve rings before she picked it up.

“Yes,” she said groggily into the receiver, holding it several inches from her ear.

“You’re not fooling anybody,” a voice said quietly, followed by a click and the dial tone.

“Who is this?” she said, even though she knew no one was there. “Why are you doing this to me? What is it you want?”

When she hung up the phone, she felt ill and took two more pills to calm herself down. Unable to remember how many pills she had taken, she took two more. She then pulled all the covers off the bed and piled them on the floor and lay down on them and tried to cover herself up. She would make herself small on the floor underneath the bedclothes and no one would even know she was there. She would roll herself up in the corner and make herself invisible if that’s what she needed to do. She was more resourceful than people were willing to give her credit for.

There came then a rhythmic pounding on the ceiling and then on the wall behind the bed and then on the opposite wall. It was coming from every place at once and no place at all. She let out a scream and wrapped herself in the blankets on the floor like in a cocoon and covered her ears with her hands but she could still hear the pounding, loud and then soft like tapping and then stopping altogether and starting up again in a different place. When she could stand the pounding no longer, she stood up and made her way to the phone and picked up the receiver.

“Night clerk,” the voice said.

“What is that terrible noise?” she asked.

“This is the lady on the eighth floor, isn’t it?”

“Someone is bothering me, harassing me!”

“How so, ma’am?”

“It sounds as if someone is hitting on the walls and the ceiling with a lead pipe.”

“That’s just the plumbing, ma’am. Air gets trapped in the pipes. This is an old building. You hear all kinds of strange noises.

“It has to be something more than that.”

“Just try to ignore the sound and get some sleep, ma’am. Nobody is deliberately trying to bother you.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Good night, ma’am.”

The pounding continued for some time, growing louder and fainter and then stopping altogether. When all was quiet again, she went to the door and put her ear against it. She imagined she could hear blood coursing through the veins of whoever was standing there, just on the other side of the door. She wanted to call out to the person and ask who they were and what they wanted with her, but her own heart was pounding in her chest as if to strangle her and she seemed to lack the breath to get the words out. She backed slowly away from the door and, as she did so, the doorknob turned quietly one way and then the other. Someone was trying to come into the room.

She picked up her gun and, holding it in both hands, lay down again on the blankets on the floor and covered up, leaving only her eyes exposed.

From her vantage point on the floor she could see the crack underneath the door that admitted a sliver of light from the hallway; in that sliver she could see shadows as people moved silently back and forth, in and out. She had stopped trying to figure out who they were and what they were doing. She trained her gun on the door, holding it in both hands, ready to fire when needed.

She focused all her attention on the door for the remainder of the night, determined to stay awake to protect herself. She lay on the floor in the dark, listening to the rain, waiting for the next thing that was going to happen.

The pounding on the wall had stopped. People were no longer moving about in front of the door. There were no more phone calls, no more voices. She began to feel toward morning that everything was going to be all right. The awful night was almost over. She could get up in a while and get dressed and order some breakfast and catch the next bus out of town. With these thoughts in her head—and in this more relaxed state of mind—she fell into an exhausted sleep.

She had been asleep for only a few minutes when the door to the room opened slowly, without making a sound. A small sound—a footstep or a sigh or the clearing of a throat—woke her up. When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t terribly surprised to see two men in the room with her. They were wearing dark clothes and had no faces; they were only outlines in the dark. She reached for the gun but was unable to find it. She stood up and made her way around the bed to the far side of the room.

Standing in front of the door to the fire escape, she turned and looked at the men. They seemed for the moment to not know she was there. They weren’t looking at her but were instead intent on rifling through the clothes in her suitcase. She believed that when they turned their attention on her they would kill her, so she must somehow get out of the room. Since they were blocking the way between her and door, there was only one way out.

She opened the door and stepped out onto the tiny rain-slicked fire escape landing. She felt the cold sting of the rain on her face as she gripped the railing and looked down into the darkness for the steps that would lead her down to the ground and to safety. Hanging onto the railing with both hands she eased one foot down on the top step and then the other foot. When she stepped down to the next step, she misjudged the distance and her feet slipped out from under her. Try as she might, she wasn’t able to regain her footing. She held on for as long as she could but it was no use. The railing slipped from her hands and she was gone.

The awning over to the entrance to the hotel broke her fall. She was only knocked unconscious and would have survived if she had not fallen face-down into the water that had accumulated in the awning and drowned. Her body was discovered in the daylight and retrieved by firemen with hooks.

When interviewed by the police, the night desk clerk was voluble. Enjoying the unaccustomed attention, he disclosed everything he noticed about the woman. Something about her seemed terribly amiss. She seemed unusually nervous and appeared to have been drinking. He spoke to her several times in the night and she seemed distraught; believed somebody was bothering her for no reason. She complained about noise that only she seemed to hear.

After completing their investigation and establishing the identity of the woman, the police ruled her death a suicide with no indication of foul play. Since she had left no suicide note, maybe she hadn’t intended to commit suicide, but if that was the case what was she doing out on the fire escape before dawn in the rain? It was just one of those silly things that people do for which there is no logical explanation.

Copyright © 2011 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

“Snow Flakes” by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Snow Flakes ~ A Classic American Short Story by Nathaniel Hawthorne 

There is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the morning, and, through the partially frosted window-panes, I love to watch the gradual beginning of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere. These are not the big flakes, heavy with moisture, which melt as they touch the ground, and are portentous of a soaking rain. It is to be, in good earnest, a wintry storm. The two or three people, visible on the side-walks, have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall, or at least before the sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us, the street and our little garden will be heaped with mountain snow- drifts. The soil, already frozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid upon it; and, to a northern eye, the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own, when Mother Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her winter’s wear. The cloud-spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoarfrost over the brown surface of the street; the withered green of the grass-plat is still discernible; and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look gray, instead of black. All the snow that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually, by silent and stealthy influences, are great changes wrought. These little snow-particles, which the storm-spirit flings by handfuls through the air, will bury the great earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for dreary months. We, likewise, shall lose sight of our mother’s familiar visage, and must content ourselves with looking heavenward the oftener.Now, leaving the storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down, pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an influence productive of cheerfulness, and favorable to imaginative thought, in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a southern clime may woo the muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage, reclining on banks of turf, while the, sound of singing birds and warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our brief summer, I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a dream. My hour of inspiration–if that hour ever comes–is when the green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in the gust, and the snow-flakes or the sleety raindrops pelt hard against the window-panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper, with the certainty that thoughts and fancies will gleam forth upon it, like stars at twilight, or like violets in May,– perhaps to fade as soon. However transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky fling through the room. Blessed, therefore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-born son, be New England’s winter, which makes us, one and all, the nurslings of the storm, and sings a familiar lullaby even in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth again, and see how much of his task the storm-spirit has done.

Slow and sure! He has the day, perchance the week, before him, and may take his own time to accomplish Nature’s burial in snow. A smooth mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand shivering in a shallow snow-drift, looking, poor things! as disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the summer; they neither live nor die; what they retain of life seems but the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower shrubs in midwinter! The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object,–as yonder spire,-and observe how the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct, but transient glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant’s ghost; and now the dense wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snowdrifts at each other, in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have seen an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper regions. It is a snow-battle of school-boys. What a pretty satire on war and military glory might be written, in the form of a child’s story, by describing the snowball-fights of two rival schools, the alternate defeats and victories of each, and the final triumph of one party, or perhaps of neither! What pitched battles, worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses, built all of massive snowblocks! What feats of individual prowess, and embodied onsets of martial enthusiasm! And when some well-contested and decisive victory had put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a lofty monument of snow upon the battle-field, and crown it with the victor’s statue, hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter, the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon the level common; and, unmindful of the famous victory, would ask, “How came it there? Who reared it? And what means it?” The shattered pedestal of many a battle monument has provoked these questions, when none could answer.

Turn we again to the fireside, and sit musing there, lending our ears to the wind, till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice, and dictate wild and airy matter for the pen. Would it might inspire me to sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea, if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit before my fancy, shall be the theme of the next page.

How does Winter herald his approach? By the shrieking blast of latter autumn, which is Nature’s cry of lamentation, as the destroyer rushes among the shivering groves where she has lingered, and scatters the sear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap themselves in cloaks, and shake their heads disconsolately, saying, “Winter is at hand!” Then the axe of the woodcutter echoes sharp and diligently in the forest; then the coal-merchants rejoice, because each shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the atmosphere. A few days more; and at eventide, the children look out of the window, and dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the air. It is stern Winter’s vesture. They crowd around the hearth, and cling to their mother’s gown, or press between their father’s knees, affrighted by the hollow roaring voice, that bellows a-down the wide flue of the chimney. It is the voice of Winter; and when parents and children bear it, they shudder and exclaim, “Winter is come! Cold Winter has begun his reign already!” Now, throughout New England, each hearth becomes an altar, sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deity who tyrannizes over forest, country side, and town. Wrapped in his white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed snow-drift, he travels over the land, in the midst of the northern blast; and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary empire is established; all around stretches the desolation of the Pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England children—for Winter is our sire, though a stern and rough one—not ungrateful even for the severities, which have nourished our unyielding strength of character. And let us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides, cheered by the music of merry bells; for the crackling and rustling hearth, when the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy Manhood and the blooming cheek of Woman; for all the home enjoyments, and the kindred virtues, which flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve, when, after some seven months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful, and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often, ere he will give up his empire, old Winter rushes fiercely back, and hurls a snow-drift at the shrinking form of Spring; yet, step by step, he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends the summer months within the Arctic circle.

Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the winter’s day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill, there is a layer of snow, reaching half-way up the lowest pane of glass. The garden is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of uncovered earth, where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it elsewhere to the fence-tops, or piling huge banks against the doors of houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen with the wind. And now the jingling of bells, a sluggish sound, responsive to the horse’s toilsome progress through the unbroken drifts, announces the passage of a sleigh, with a boy clinging behind, and ducking his head to escape detection by the driver. Next comes a sledge, laden with wood for some unthrifty housekeeper, whom winter has surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles along the uneven street? A sable hearse, bestrewn with snow, is bearing a dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. O, how dreary is a burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor child!

Evening–the early eve of December–begins to spread its deepening veil over the comfortless scene; the firelight gradually brightens, and throws my flickering shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber; but still the storm rages and rattles, against the windows. Alas! I shiver, and think it time to be disconsolate. But, taking a farewell glance at dead Nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snow-birds, skimming lightsomely through the tempest, and flitting from drift to drift, as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer. Whence come they? Where do they build their nests, and seek their food? Why, having airy wings, do they not follow summer around the earth, instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm, and fluttering on the dreary verge of the winter’s eve? I know not whence they come, nor why; yet my spirit has been cheered by that wandering flock of snow-birds.
by allen0997