Welcome to our inaugural issue.

We hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as we did.

His door was different. The rest of the doors in our modest home were hollow white composite, but my father’s door was deeply stained solid knotty pine. I spent a good amount of my early childhood on the floor outside that door, wondering when he was ever going to let me in.

It wasn’t my father’s bedroom door; he and my mother shared a bedroom upstairs. This was his study. That intriguing title (What was he studying?), the anomalous door, the strange staircase within, the amount of time he spent alone in there working on his book— it all helped to mystify that room for me as a young girl.

Some days I’d sit outside the door and play with Dad’s old matchbox cars on the hardwood floor. Other times I’d look through my picture books. Quite often, I’d just plant myself, Indian-style, with my back against the adjacent wall, staring at the closed door, finding figures in the patterns and shapes of the wood grain. Some faces I’d create in my mind were welcoming and others unnerving, much like the man who toiled inside.

In reality, my father’s study was not much more than a repurposed hallway.  When the house was originally built, this passage brought you to a staircase, which led to the second floor. The owners before us decided to instead build stairs at the front of the house. They boarded up the ceiling between the two floors in the back hallway, but for some reason left the old staircase. What most people would consider a peculiar eyesore, Dad saw as an opportunity. He walled in the hallway to nowhere and put up a door, thus creating his study. The stairs themselves became a sort of built-in bookcase for his many volumes.

So many books.

My father was a high school English teacher during the school year and a frustrated writer in the summer. Those hot months of my sixth year, flipping through my many stories of Christopher Robin and Pooh, provide my first solid memories.

Occasionally, I would knock and ask if I could come in.

“But Anne,” he would say, “I’m writing; you know that. Besides, there’s no room for you to sit.”

“I’ll be quiet. Daddy, I promise. I’ll just read,” I’d assure him. “And I can sit on the red chair.”

He’d open the door wide enough for me to see that the leather high-back chair was already occupied by a few stacks of books. I’d look back at him as if to say, You could move the books, couldn’t you?  Aren’t I more important? He never had to answer because I never actually asked.

I had my own little library as well. The books came mostly from my father, of course. For each noteworthy event, such as birthdays and holidays, there would be a book. My mother would buy me a separate gift, either a toy or some clothes, but with Dad it was always a book, and I did not mind in the least. And these books were never merely random selections or current popular titles. He would find the perfectly matched book for every occasion. So for my first dance recital I would get Angelina Ballerina; for my pre-K graduation it was Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

But my favorite part about each gift was not the book itself. What meant the most to me were the inscriptions. Rather than spending money on a separate card that would just get lost or discarded, my father would elucidate on the inside cover of each book, instead. For instance, for my birthday that fifth year, Dad gave me A Light in the Attic. On the inside cover he wrote: “My Dearest Anne, may this book shed light in the attic of your mind, where words and stories always shine as bright as your smile. Love, Daddy.” These notes were the only evidence of my father revealing anything resembling a sentimental emotion. I think that’s what made me want to please him more.

While Mom wasn’t home much because of her night shift at the county hospital, the time she did spend with us was always brimming with bubbly love.  Hugs, baked treats, and words of encouragement were just normal parts of her routine. Perhaps it was her natural warm Columbian culture, or maybe she was just making up for missed time. Either way, her love for me was never in question, and therefore easy to take for granted. Those inscriptions from my father, on the other hand, I so cherished because they were scarce intimations from a closed off man.

It’s not to say Dad was completely absent. He did his duties after school as the lone present parent. Dinners were prepared (I remember lots of stews and other pressure-cooked concoctions), baths were drawn (no bubbles in fear of urinary tract infections), one cookie with milk for desert, and then there was bedtime.

He would actually sit next to me in my bed to read me my nightly story. I could always smell the Palmolive on his hands from doing the dishes. I would graze my cheek against his as I settled myself into the pillows, just so I could feel the tiny stubbles that had poked through since his morning shave.

As he read, my father would slightly alter his intonations to adjust for the changing characters. Nothing overly theatrical, but compared to his normal steady temperament, it was a riot for me to hear. I never laughed or let on how amusing I found his voices, in fear that he might get embarrassed and stop. And when reading, Dad would always follow along with his pointer-finger, not because he needed help keeping place, rather he was hoping that it would help me make out the words.

By the time I was five-and-a-half, I could tell my father what was going to happen before he read it aloud. Assuming that I just had remembered the story from the last time we’d read it, he would test me with a new book. Dad would start the sentence and I’d finish, getting a few words wrong but understanding the gist of the story.  His little girl was learning to read and he was pleased as punch—one of his favorite expressions. Once I witnessed his pride in my achievement, it became my only goal to inspire it further. So for Christmas that year, I went for the zenith.

There had been this boxed set of leather-bound literary classics for young people at our local bookstore.  Simplified editions of Black Beauty, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the like. For years, each time we perused the shop, Daddy would saunter past that box, running his thumb along the edge like most fathers would a Corvette, and he’d say, “One day, Anne, one day this will be yours.” So in my letter to Santa, I wrote one lone item. My mom protested, explaining to me that I needed include more ideas, that maybe Santa’s elves couldn’t make all those books in time. Daddy just folded up the New York Times and sipped his tea with a grin. I was asking for real books. Not picture books, but time-honored masterpieces, even if they were watered down for kids.

Sure enough the set of books awaited me under the tree, wrapped in rigid brown paper and adorned with a red velvet bow. There were twelve hardcover books in all. The first one I dove into was Anne of Green Gables, because of the protagonist’s name, of course. That night my feet barely hit the steps on my way up for my bedtime story with Daddy.

It did not go as expected.

I probably didn’t realize it all that night, but it slowly became evident to me that it wasn’t my reading that had improved; it was my analysis of the pictures.  Apparently I had become so proficient at deciphering the illustrator’s interpretations, coupled with a growing identification of the recycled plot points of children’s book, that I could pretty much guess what was going to happen next in the story with relative accuracy.

Those nights with my father and Anne were torturous. Without the pictures, not only was I unable to read as well as I had done previously, but I was just not enamored with the process of reading in general. This confused my father and it frightened me. How could I tell him, this lover of literature, that it wasn’t the words I craved but actually the pictures? It was our only time together, and if we lost that special nighttime ritual, I was convinced I’d be cast aside like toy car with a missing wheel.

I started to make excuses at night. I was tired. My belly was hurting.  My eyes were hurting. Anne and her eleven bound friends lay unopened. I finally spilled the beans when Dad set up an appointment with the optometrist.

“I like pictures!” I yelled on the way home from church one Sunday. This is something I could never have done without Mom present for protection. “Those books have no pictures.”

“But that was the point, Anne,” he said, bewildered, looking back at me in the rearview mirror. “That’s why you asked for those books in the first place.”

“I don’t like it,” I said, looking out the window at the people spilling out of the bakery, wishing I were online for a cookie instead of in that car.

“You don’t like what?”

“Reading!” I said after swallowing hard. “It’s boring.”  By the time I finally lifted my gaze from the window, my father’s eyes were directed forward on the road.  That was the end of the conversation and he never looked back again. He never saw the tiny rivulets streaming down my face.

Dad still tucked me in at night, but there where no more stories. The boxed set of children’s classics was gone. Occasionally he would offer to read some of my old picture books, but I was too ashamed and certain he was only half-heartedly going through the motions. He’d reach over so quickly to turn off the lamp on my bedside table, that I’d hardly get a chance to catch a whiff of the dish soap. I certainly never got to bristle his stubble.

I was lost. Some days I was despondent and then others I’d be defiant.

One day I started to make a ruckus outside my father’s door while he was writing. I smashed the die-cast metal cars together, enacting a grand pile-up of catastrophic proportions. He came out from his hallowed chamber, yelling, “Those are my childhood possessions! Have some respect for other people’s property.”

“You gave them to me!” I quipped back, even without Mommy around for back up. “Doesn’t that make them my property?” Dad just puffed and slammed his door on me. I knew he wasn’t upset about the cars.  I had distracted him from his precious book, and I’m not sure I didn’t mean to.

Then came my sixth birthday. The occasion brought a little joy back into the house, but that evening after cake came a small Band-Aid in the healing of wounds. Mommy had given me this beautiful grey and black plaid dress, along with a doll clothed in the exact same outfit. She knew someone from the hospital who was also a seamstress on the side, and Mommy had always wanted a doll with coordinating ensembles when she was little.

I had seen Dad’s card taped to a present, but I put it off out of fear, I guess.  This would be the first gift since my whole reading meltdown and for once, I wasn’t sure what to expect. After opening the presents from my extended family, his was the only one remaining. It was a heavy, huge book entitled: A Big Book for Little Eyes: Children’s Illustrations. There were 240 pages of classic and noteworthy illustrations from children’s books around the world. I flipped through the pages. The book hardly contained any words.

I turned back to the inside cover for Daddy’s inscription.  It read “Happy Birthday.  Love, Daddy.” Not much, but I looked at it as a start. At least it still said “Love.”

My fits outside his door ceased. I began copying illustrations from my book onto some manila construction paper I’d smuggled home from school. I started out with crayons but they were too cumbersome and indiscriminate, so I moved onto markers and then finally pencils.

“Did you trace that?” my father asked me one day when he emerged from his study for a snack.

“Nope,” I said, holding the book up to him for comparison.

Dad smiled. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Really?” My face almost couldn’t fit my smile.

Days passed and my drawing continued to evolve. My nighttime ritual with Daddy began to include a lot more scrubbing at the sink, in an effort to rid my hands of the black ink stains from my pens.

Before I knew it, it was Christmastime again. One Sunday afternoon Mom and I were in the kitchen dropping red and green sprinkles on our sugar cookies. She was begging me to write my letter to Santa, but my heart just wasn’t in it, after the fiasco from last year. “What six-year-old says, Fiasco?’” my mother said, shaking her head. She stuck her finger in the white icing and smudged some on my nose.  I scooped up some cookie dough and chased her around the table. The kitchen was quickly filled with laughter.

A series of crashes came from the study. I held my breath as my father flung his door open and burst through the kitchen, a stack of white paper in his hand. “I give up!” Dad screamed as stormed into the living room and kicked over the metal screen in front of the fireplace. Before I knew it, his papers fed the hungry flames and he was through the front door and out into the snowy night. My mother wiped the icing from my nose as the Partridge family sang, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” on the stereo.

After dinner that night, my father’s door was still open, and when I peeked inside, I saw all the books that belonged on the staircase/bookshelf scattered about the floor. Without the company of the books, it truly looked disconcerting, this stairway to nowhere.

My mother was busy with the dishes, so I picked up the paper and pens off my normal spot on the floor and brought them into the study. I started to draw a picture of the family decorating the Christmas tree; Mom was putting on the tinsel while I sat nestled on Dad’s shoulders, trying to place the star. I must have fallen asleep at his desk before I finished, because I woke up slightly when he finally came home and carried me up to my room. As he tucked me into bed that night, instead of Palmolive, I remember another strong odor coming from his breath. Something sweet and pungent.

I whispered to him with closed eyes, “I’m sorry if I ruined your book, the way I’m always distracting you all the time.”

“No, Anne, no,” he whispered back, kissing me on the forehead.  His collar smelled of smoke.

On Christmas morning, there were no books waiting for me under the tree.  Not a single book. Most kids across America were scouting out toys, dolls, and games to tear into, but I was eager to find a book, hoping that my connection with my father was still intact, even if just hanging by a thread. It was the end of an era.

But it was also the start of a new one.

That was the year Dad gave me my first art set. Sketch pads. Pastels.  Watercolors. Charcoal pencils.

“Santa told me you’ve been bad this year,” he said that morning through a smile. “Said I should give you coal for Christmas.  Well, I figured those pencils might count.”

I hugged him so hard that my mother was afraid I might break him. In my stocking was a strange black and white photograph of what looked like a fish in a bowl. Mom told me it was a picture of my baby sister in her belly. It was the best Christmas ever.

But the real gift came a few days later while Dad and I were still home on vacation. I was on the floor, trying to figure out how to draw eyeballs that didn’t look all creepy or cartoonish, when I heard my father’s door open.

“You busy?” he asked, standing in the doorway.

I held up my sketchpad for inspection.

“Alice,” he tried, “from Wonderland?”

“Anne,” I responded, “from Green Gables.” I dropped my pad. “I’m not busy.  Why?”

“You think you could help me out with something?” he asked, and stepped to the side of his door.

“Me? In there?”

He nodded and went back inside the study. “You might want to bring that pad with you.”

I crawled up onto Dad’s lap as he was sharpening some pencils at his grand desk. He opened up a marble notebook, which revealed his handwriting. “You see, I finally figured out why I was having so much trouble with my book,” he said to me.

“Mm.  Because Mommy and me were always making noise outside?” I surmised.

“No,” he said gently, opening my sketchpad to a fresh page.

I was confused. “Then what was it?”

“My story,” he said, “it was missing pictures.”

My father ruffled my hair with his big hand and handed me a pencil.

Adam Bjelland, is an English teacher from Long Island. His work has recently been published in Junto Magazine, The Offbeat, Microtext Anthology 3 by Medusa’s Laugh Press, and The Esthetic Apostle. He has also been featured online at Word Riot and The Other Stories. 

Traffic

How many new cousins have you got?
Four. Three with scars and sallow eyes.

How many new sisters today?
Dad’s brought six. Four speak French and bruise real easy.

How many new aunts at yours this week?
Just the two. One still thinks she’ll see her family.

How many in-laws at the weekend?
Seven. Two trained as doctors, five can’t read.

How are your sisters getting on?
Quite well. Six became friends but have hollow eyes.

How many new cousins have you got?
None this week. But dad says I’m going to be an uncle.

Surasawa Pond

By Surasawa pond
on a billboard
a holy man paints a lie:
‘On the third day
of the third month
the dragon of this pond
will ascend to heaven.’
Two men scoff
a child dreams of black dragons
a holy man
explodes with laughter
The lie grows a tail
and fins

An Aunt
from Sakurai
brimful with determined faith
pins her prayers on lasting
to see the ascent
Thus, the ripple of the lie
that on the third day
of the third month
the dragon of this pond
will ascend to heaven
From Yamato
to Izumi
as far as Harima and Tamba
the murmur, the arc
the shimmer, the flowering
lotus of the lie
that on the third day
of the third month
the dragon of this pond
will ascend to heaven

So
on the promised day
of the sacred month
with words that slip their leash
the holy man proclaims
he feels the wait as keenly
as the throng of black caps
gathered to witness
the dragon of this pond
ascend to heaven
And on the third day
of the third month
a storm breaks
The crowd
unconscious of the passing hours
see cherry blossoms
a flash of gold
a hundred feet of vision
an Aunt breathing
‘It must have been’

On the fourth day
of the third month
some believe the truths
of holy men;
some of Aunts.
I, your humble narrator,
have not seen the water, but hear
Surasawa pond
reflects the sunlight
without a ripple.

(Taken from Dragon: The Old Potter’s Tale by Ryunosuke Akutagawa)

With a foot firmly on each side of the Irish Sea, Alex Smith was raised in troubled Northern Ireland during the Eighties before moving to the slightly less troubled south coast and later the midlands of England for the Noughties. Educated in all things English and Spanish at the Queen’s University of Belfast and in all things educational at the University of Chichester, Smith comes from that stable of pared-down, plain-speaking poets such as Muldoon and Armitage. His work has taken him to some of the most socially deprived schools in England. His poetry has been published in ‘Twyckenham Notes’, ‘Tammy’, online at ‘Clear Water Poetry’, ‘ABCTales’ (where he also edits) and in ‘The UK Poetry Library’ and has a collection entitled ‘Home’ coming soon through Cerasus Poetry.

The Headache

A miniature roofer climbed
to the side of my head.
Ladder against skin,
and poised with hammer,
so uncool, so unbeautiful,
that his work is like a drumbeat
that it could unhinge a painting.

The steady chant is like music,
and I am good practice for his art,
and my eyes are crossed,
for there is no morphine.
When I drop a glass,
it is like a window shattering,
and it’s double the explosion.

Hologram

Two points of view:
A garden and a holocaust.

There’s the dead-end cul-de-sacs
that rhyme with a maze of Crop Circles,
and the ills of ringworm to wash it down.
The hoes of the farmers are melting,
and the tractors are being driven backward.
We throw phantom ears of corn into our baskets.

A woman is painting a landscape:
Juices of apple trees, ripe,
and ladies passing with dangling earrings.
Love is free, without price or barter,
and Christmases are plentiful with kindling,
and families latch on like a circle.

Two points of view:
A royal flush and a metal-wreck.

Amanda Tumminaro lives in the U.S. She is a poet and short story writer and her work has been featured in Thrice Fiction, The Radvocate and Stickman Review, among others. Her first poetry chapbook, “The Flying Onion,” will be released through The Paragon Journal in the spring of 2018. 

On the East side of Atlanta, in the town of Stone Mountain, Georgia is a park featuring a monolithic piece of quartz monzonite (close to granite) ascending 786 feet above ground and nearly 9 miles below ground.  Officially known as Stone Mountain, it is one of the largest monadnocks (single exposed stone) on Earth.

It is here I decided to tempt fate and climb it.

For the record, I am a 53 year old math and science teacher with a large brood of summer school students and a planned field trip to meet the mountain.  Not one to shirk a challenge, I agreed to go with all 28 of my healthy, fit, 13 year old students.

I made the climb.

I was sweaty, out of breath, in desperate need of multiple rests, and suffering from what I will describe when I get older as “a heart attack with each step”.

But, I made the climb.

My students finished in 20 minutes.  I clocked in at 45 minutes.  I wasn’t the last up the mountain, but I looked like a disaster during the entire climb.

On both the ascent and the descent, I passed a number of individuals, each with their own reason for being on the mountain that day.  Some where there for fitness, some for adventure, and some for fun.

One was there for another reason.

I have no idea what his name was, so I will moniker him as Bob.

Bob climbed and talked (out loud) to himself.  He spoke of times of his life running the entire spectrum of pleasantness to sheer horror.  He must have lived each episode and been affected accordingly.  His pace matched my pace.  His words resonated with me.  He married young and she died young.  His single child ran away from home and never returned.  His army days scarred him of actions too heinous to repeat.

Bob broadcast his struggles with drugs and alcoholism, his repeated attempts at recover, and his time spent behind bars.

Bob detailed the life of his last best friend, his dog.  While never stating his name, Bob rejoiced in the few years they had together.  He stopped the tale mid-sentence, both to catch his breath and to wipe away a tear on his face.  I took that time to mirror his pace and actions.  Sweat and pain followed me upward.  History and therapy pushed Bob.

At the first rest station, Bob found a respite on a water smoothed rock perfectly accessible for a single person requiring such a place to rest.  I lurked nearby, unable to hear Bob’s constant banter, but wishing I could.  I am not a professional who might have helped Bob so I should have continued independent of him, but I found myself drawn to his solo conversation.

I became an uninvited spy in the life of another.

Bob moved on and so did I.

The vertical steps between rocks became smaller, but my lack of energy made even this part of the ascent difficult.  I am out of shape from the days of my youth and felt every painful leg lift to continue propelling myself forward.  If Bob (who looked a decade older than me) had the same problems, he didn’t show it.  Mimicking a metronome, he proceeded at the same pace he began.

In for a penny, in for a pound; I had to keep up.

I heard Bob speak of his faith in God and the times he lost his faith.

I heard Bob curse someone named Melissa while never breaking stride.

Bob reached an adjacent gravel road and decided to travel its constant slope for the next quarter mile.  So did others.  So did I.

Bob became silent during this portion and rededicated himself to a successful conclusion.  I kept pace for I could see the top.  I would collapse there (as would others).

The rest of the climb became uneventful for the two of us.  I heard Bob breathing as hard as I was and walking as slow as I would, if I set the pace.

Upon reaching the summit, I did require a rest, but only one in close proximity to Bob.  I have no right to make this decision and no right to eavesdrop for as long as I have, but I had no other choice but to finish what we (Bob and I) started.

Ironically, this was the first time today I used the pronoun “we”.

Once on top, Bob walked to the edge of Stone Mountain and gazed upon the wonder of what Nature bestowed upon man and what man found the courage to preserve for posterity.  He took his time, looked about, and began a long guttural scream a long time coming.  It was as painful to watch as it was to perform.  My ears hurt.  My heart ached for Bob.  This had to have been his metamorphosis or cathartic release or some other reason justifying what he did and where he did it.  Perhaps this one spot atop the mountain had a powerful meaning only he and his ghosts could fathom.  Perhaps he had survivor’s guilt from being the last of his kind and the journey was one last goodbye, screamed to the winds.  Whatever was Bob’s purpose, whatever pushed him upward, or pulled him through, I believe he became a better man for playing the role he was cast to play.

After catching his breath and exercising his demons, Bob gave thanks toward the sky and began the slow and careful walk back down to his life in Georgia.

I chose not to follow him.  I had my own purpose for being on the mountain.

My students greeted me from the snack shack atop Stone Mountain and laughed at my sweaty appearance.  I did look disheveled and far from the norm of teaching excellence I wished to always convey to them.  My heart was still racing, my pulse was too high, and my face looked flushed.

But I made it when none of my students believed I could do so.

In honor of this small achievement, I walked to the edge of Stone Mountain, gazed about, and proceeded to yell at the top of my lungs to the wind.

My students rarely understand the subtlety of what I say or do.

If Bob had heard me, he would have.

Of that, I am sure.

With degrees in Physics and Chemistry, Andy Betz has tutored and taught in excess of 30 years. His novel, short stories, and poems are works still defining his style. He lives in 1974, has been married for 26 years, and collects occupations (the current tally is 95).

“Sorry,” she replied, shaking her head, “But I don’t know who Picasso is.”

“O-K… Well…”

Franck beckoned to Borana – the mama-san – and pointed at their empty glasses.

“One more for the lady,” he said, “And another double vodka and soda.”

“Are you sure?” asked Borana.

“Yes…”

Franck knew what Borana meant, but he didn’t care. The last time he’d been there, he’d only pushed that old prick over. Nothing else. Yes, he had been drunk, but that old pervert had been asking for it. He had nothing to say sorry for.

“Well,” Borana shrugged, “If you’re sure, and you’ve got the money to pay for it, then I guess that makes it alright then, doesn’t it?”

It did.

After a heavy session at Dodger’s, the pool hall, Franck didn’t need to drink any more. But what else was there to do in Phnom Penh? Go to the genocide museum? Go to the old torture chambers? Go to the mass graves? Go and fire a frigging rocket-launcher?

Franck shook his head and took a ten out of his wallet.

No. Drinking was the only thing that this city was good for. And after all it had put him through, it was the only thing that was keeping him sane.

Taking his money, Borana turned to fetch Franck his order, muttering something about ‘crazy drunk foreigner’ under her breath. A throwaway comment, but one that Franck caught, and would have hurled straight back at the sour-faced old cow, if it hadn’t have been for Shreyline placing her hand on his.

“Thank you,” she smiled, kissing him on the cheek, “Love you baby.”

“Yes…”

Franck knew it was an act, but he wasn’t going to say anything. Shreyline may not have been the most intelligent woman he’d ever met, or the best conversation either, but she had a good heart. So, for tonight, at least, he would perform his part in the way that she expected him to. Telling Shreyline how he really felt would only cause a scene. And after the one in the pool hall earlier, Franck was in no mood for another. Leaning towards her, he kissed Shreyline and smiled.

“Love you too baby.”

He’d been sleeping with Shreyline for just over two months now. And, at best, Franck gave their ‘relationship’ two more months again. It wasn’t that Franck didn’t like her. He did. It was just that he didn’t like her that much. And with with him heading back to France in less than three months time, when his contract there had finished, Franck saw no future in it anyway. Especially as Shreyline’s five year contract didn’t belong to her but to the owner of Papayas.

Franck may have been leaving but Shreyline wasn’t going anywhere.

“…But it’s not that much baby, really, it’s not …”

He didn’t care how much it was, or how heavy and constant her hints had been. He wasn’t going to do it. He wasn’t going to buy Shreyline out of her contract with the bar.

Buying her drinks? Sure, that was fine. That was her job – to sit with the customers and charm them into buying her expensive ‘girlie drinks’, from which she earned a very small commission. But paying for her to be with him? No chance. Shreyline slept with him, and only him, because she wanted to. Money had nothing to do with it. Franck had never paid Shreyline so much as a riel, and he wasn’t about to start.

Picking up his vodka, Franck looked around the bar.

Small and dirty, its red faux-leather booths and its aluminium tables were filled and surrounded, as they always were, with the other girls who worked there full-time, and a dozen or so freelancers, who came and went as they pleased.

Franck had no problem with them. None at all. It was the men they were drinking with, who he couldn’t stand. Much older men. Men who were in Papayas, night after night. Men who came to get the girls drunk. Men who came there to pay them for something that, in all his forty-two years, he had never once had to, or had even once considered.

“Fucking sex-pats,” growled Franck, taking a long hit from his glass.

If it hadn’t have been for Jacques; the only true friend he had there, Franck would never have gone to the bar in the first place.

“…Yes, I know you don’t like girlie bars, but I have to go to Papayas, I don’t have any choice Franck. And, no, before you ask, I am not going to tell you why. Let’s just say that I’ve been paid to find somebody, alright?”

It was. And knowing what his friend Jacques did for a living, Franck hadn’t asked him any questions. He’d just sat down on a stool to the left of the bar and ordered a vodka. But when it arrived and he’d turned to his right, instead of his friend Jacques sitting there, he’d found Shreyline sitting there instead.

Perhaps, it was her pretty face. Maybe, it was her curves. Perhaps, it was her simple country manner. Or, maybe it was the way that she’d always listened to his complaints about the city and its dangers without judging him.

He wasn’t sure.

Exhaling slowly to calm himself back down, Franck felt his mind shrug at its own hazy question.

It didn’t matter now, did it? Whatever it was about Shreyline that had made him stay that night, or any of the nights which had then followed, Franck did know, that if it hadn’t have been for her, then there was no way that he would have been sitting there, surrounded by all of those slobbering old pricks, with their groping hands and their ‘fucking’, ‘pussy’, ‘ass’ banter.

“You OK baby?” asked Shreyline.

“Yes,” Franck hissed through his clenched teeth, as his hand gripped the glass tighter and his forehead furrowed.

He just wanted to glass the fucking cunts.

“You sure baby?”

“Jesus,” Franck snapped, “What is it with everyone tonight? Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be ‘OK’?”

“Sorry baby, it’s just…”

Shaking her head, Shreyline left it there. From the look on Franck’s face, she knew better than to push him. His friend Jacques had told her that, not long after they had first met.

“Shreyline, listen, don’t hassle Franck, OK? Just try and keep things nice and relaxed. And, please, Shreyline, if you really do want any kind of future with him, then, remember, whatever you do, don’t start phoning him, and texting him all the time. Franck hates that. I mean, he really hates that…”

Looking down at her smart-phone, Shreyline bit her lower lip.

Yes, she knew that as well.

Only that afternoon, Franck had completely lost it with her, when, having received no replies to her texts, she had phoned him up, just to see how he was. She hadn’t known that he was in a meeting. And, as she’d tried her best to explain, she hadn’t meant anything by it. And despite what Franck had said, she hadn’t been acting like a child. She’d just wanted him to know that she was thinking of him and that she cared. That wasn’t a lie, was it?

No, it wasn’t. Since she’d left the garment factory; not far from her village, and had come to the city to work for the owner, Franck was the only man that Shreyline had slept with for free, and the first man she had felt anything like this for.

“Another double vodka and soda…”

Looking up, Shreyline smiled at Franck, as he pushed his empty glass towards Borana.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.

“Nothing, I…”

Shaking her head, Shreyline stopped again and looked down at her phone.

She hated it when Franck drank like this. It changed him from the person that she could still see on her touch screen. Photos and messages which reminded Shreyline of how well Franck used to treat her. That the way he’d been lately was not who he really was. That all the bad things that had happened to him would soon fade from his mind, and that things between them would go back to the way that they had been. A memory that not only lightened her mood, but also reassured Shreyline that they still had a future together. A future into which she’d already invested two months of her time.

Yes, Shreyline nodded to herself, a future that she had a real chance of building with Franck. She didn’t care what the other girls said about him and his drinking. She wasn’t going to end up like Borana behind the bar. No, there was no way that was going to happen. Franck would come good. Shreyline knew he would.

Blushing, Shreyline couldn’t stop herself from laughing at that, as she browsed through the photos and the videos, which they’d both sent to one another, the nights they’d spent apart.

Yes, she had always made sure of that, hadn’t she?

“Another double vodka and soda.”

Handing Borana the money, Franck shook his head.

He had no idea what Shreyline found so funny. All day she’d hassled him about coming to the bar. And now that he had, she was just sitting there, like some dumb little teenager, staring at her phone and ignoring him, just as she’d ignored everything he’d said that afternoon.

Still, Franck wasn’t surprised.

You only had to look around the bar to see what passed for manners in Phnom Penh. The old man; sat by the right hand wall, who was groping a young girl’s breasts and backside. The older girl; seated behind them, who was pouring herself a glass full of vodka, while the buyer of the bottle was in the toilets with a different girl. And the tattooed man; sat on his own in a booth near the door, who was laughing and then arguing with the pipe that he had been smoking meth through.

“Yes,” Franck growled.

That was the culture there. That was how Phnom Penh had taught them all to behave.

“You fucking scum…”

Taking a piece of toilet paper from the plastic box in front of him, Franck wiped the sweat from his burning forehead.

“You OK baby?” asked Shreyline again.

“For fuck’s sake…”

Screwing up the black stained piece of toilet paper, Franck hurled it at the floor and turned to face Shreyline.

“Please, will you stop asking me that?”

“But-”

“But nothing,” he said, “I told you this afternoon Shreyline. You don’t need to keep on checking up on me, OK? Not only is it annoying Shreyline, it’s also fucking boring. Jesus, haven’t you got anything interesting to say? Or, would you prefer to just sit there staring at your stupid phone all night?”

Her face flushing red, Shreyline slammed her hand down on the counter.

“Don’t talk to me like that!” she shouted, over the music in the bar, “So what if I don’t know anything about all these painters and writers that you love to go on and on about? I’m still a human being, aren’t I? Yes, Franck, I am. So start treating me like one, and stop fucking bullying me…”

Glancing at the other girls, who were all watching them, Shreyline lowered her voice before she then went on.

“Besides,” she shrugged, trying her best to look calm in front of the other girls, “I’ve already said sorry for disturbing you, haven’t I? What else do you want me to do Franck? I mean, how was I to know that you were in a meeting? And if it was, sooo important, then why didn’t you tell me that when we got up this morning?”

Laughing, Franck shook his head at her.

“Because it’s none of your business, is it?”

Folding her arms, Shreyline fixed her brown eyes on Franck’s.

“Right, it’s like that then is it…”

Yes, Franck was drunk, but that was no excuse. Not any more. Not with all the other girls watching her and laughing at her. Not after all she had given Franck for free.

“So, go on then,” she demanded, “You tell me, what is my business then?”

Shaking his head, Franck looked down at his half-empty glass.

“Sorry Shreyline, I… I haven’t got a clue what you’re going on about.”

“Yes, you do Franck,” she insisted, “Yes, you bloody do. That’s why you won’t look at me. That’s why whenever I try and ask you about it, you always change the subject. Or say that you’re busy. Or you head for a bar. Or to that bloody pool hall! I’m sick of it, Franck, sick of it, you hear me?”

He could and Franck nodded.

Shreyline was less than a foot away from him. But he knew that was still fifteen hours on a plane from where she really wanted to be.

“It’s been two months now,” Shreyline went on, “Two months. And I’m sick of waiting for you to do something, anything, that shows me, that proves to me, that you really do love me, and it’s not just pretty words. You know I can’t give any more to this relationship, than I already have, Franck. But you? – What have you given me, Fracnkc? Well? Well?”

Turning to face her, Franck shook his head at her.

“No, Shreyline…”

She didn’t deserve an answer to that.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shreyline demanded.

Shaking his head again, Franck’s thin lips creased into a smile.

She really was stupid, wasn’t she?

“Listen Shreyline, if I have to explain, then you really don’t understand, do you?”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head, “No Franck, I don’t.”

Shrugging, he beckoned Borana over.

“Well, that’s not my problem then, is it?”

“Franck, please…”

Pushing her hand away, he drained his glass and gave it back to Borana.

“Another double vodka and soda…”

He knew Shreyline wasn’t talking about any kind of emotional commitment. She was talking about money. Money to buy her out of her contract. Money to give to her parents. Money she knew she’d never asked him for. Money she knew he would never give her. But money she now claimed that he was trying to cheat her out of.

“Franck,” she pleaded, “Talk to me…”

Franck shook his head and raised his glass to his lips.

Why the hell should he? Asking him for money, made Shreyline no better than any of the other girls who worked there. And made him, in her eyes, no different from any of the other men who were always with them.

“Please…”

No, he wasn’t having that…

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

Not from this knock-off princess, with her fake pearls, polyester dress and plastic high heels…

“Franck?”

He slammed his glass back down.

“Because you’re full of fucking shite,” he snapped, “That’s why, Shreyline.”

“W-why… Y-you… You can’t-”

“Fuck off Shreyline, I’ll say whatever the hell I fucking well like.”

Franck saw her hand coming but he didn’t move.

“You bastard!” Shreyline screamed, slapping him hard around the face.

Nodding, Franck rubbed his sallow cheek.

Yes, if slapping him made Shreyline feel any better about her life, then he was more than happy for her. He was just glad that it was all over and done with, and he wouldn’t have to spend any more time sharing the same diseased air as all these fucking sex-pats.

Taking out a twenty, he got up off his stool, slapped it down in front of Shreyline and turned to leave when she pulled him back.

“Franck, wait!”

Shreyline wanted to explain, to apologise, to ask him to stay, but, in her heart, she knew she couldn’t and she didn’t even attempt to try. She had already made herself look a big enough fool in front of Borana and all of the other girls who worked there. Even if she didn’t want to admit it, Shreyline understood that they had been right all along, and that she had been nothing but young, stupid and very, very wrong. Letting go of his arm, Shreyline wiped her eyes and looked back up at him.

“Franck…”

But he wasn’t looking at Shreyline.

No, Franck was looking at the bald-headed man, who was walking through the bar towards them. In his sixties and dressed in a pair of red shorts and a green Hawaiian shirt, Franck had seen him there countless times before.

But that wasn’t what bothered Franck, was it?

No, it was because Franck was sure that he’d seen him somewhere else.

“Are you OK?” the old man asked Shrelyine, glancing at Franck before placing his hand on her shoulder, “Because if there’s a problem baby-”

“Yes,” Franck nodded, his eyes widening, as he remembered where he’d seen the man before, “We do have a fucking problem, old man…”

Molopo’s – that’s where Franck had seen him. It was on the way to Papayas from the pool hall. Franck had seen him sitting outside, drinking with two of the girls who worked there. Girls who, like all the other girls who ‘worked’ in Molopo’s, were no more than fourteen years old.

“You fucking nonce…”

Grabbing the man around the throat, Franck pushed him to the floor.

“Franck! No!!”

But it was too late for Shreyline to say or do anything. Franck was already on top of the man and had both his arms and legs pinned down.

“You… Fucking… Paedo… Piece of… Mother… Fucking… Shit…”

Fired on by the vodka, Franck didn’t stop until his fists, knees and his elbows had pounded the old man’s face into a shapeless bloody pulp.

“You. Fucking. Cunt…”

Spitting into the huge tear on the old man’s upper lip, Franck got back up to his feet. The girls and the other customers giving him a wide berth, as he swayed towards the toilets at the far end of the bar. His face, hands and his clothes, all covered in the old man’s blood.

“Franck!” Shreyline shouted after him, before Borana stepped in.

“No,” she snapped, grabbing Shreyline by the arm, “You’re not going after him. Not this time. You hear me?”

“Yes, but I-”

“But nothing.”

Borana pressed a finger against Shreyline’s lips.

“Yes,” Borana said, “You ‘love’ him, Shreyline. I know that. We all know that. You’ve told us all a million times how ‘in love’ you are. But right now Shreyline, you are not going to say, or tell me anything. You hear me? Not a single fucking word.”

Shaking her head, Borana scrolled down to the number on her phone and then put in the call.

Yes, they were coming…

Franck could feel it.

The adrenaline had worn off, and now he couldn’t stop himself from shaking.

Franck knew damned well that you couldn’t do something like that in a bar like Papayas and expect to get away with it. Especially to one of its best customers.

No, and even if he had run, or even if he tried to make a run for it now, it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. No, they would still found him through roughing up Shreyline, or through the city’s tuk-tuk Mafia. The question wasn’t, ‘when’ they were coming, the question was, ‘how many’.

Turning off the tap, he leaned against the sink and waited for his heart to slow.

“For fuck’s sake Franck, why the fuck did you do that? Why didn’t you just leave?”

Looking up, he shook his head.

Franck had no answers for the reflection staring back at him from the toilet mirror. Yes, his short blonde hair may have still been parted to the right, but that’s all he recognised. That thin and bloodstained figure staring back at him may as well have belonged to a stranger.

BANG – BANG – BANG – BANG – BANG

Turning, Frank heard a foreign voice coming through the bolted toilet door.

“Come on pal. Out you come now. Time’s up. Don’t make us break the door down and drag your sorry ass out of there. That would not be cool, you get me?”

Franck did but had no answer for the man outside.

“Hey! Don’t blank me you prick, I said, “you get me?””

“Yes…”

He’d got Phnom Penh, the first time he’d been robbed at knife point. The first time he’d been beaten senseless. And the first time he’d felt a gun barrel pressed against his head. Again and again, that ‘city of four faces’ had schooled Franck in what was waiting for him beyond that bolted toilet door.

He could hear it in the angry shouts outside. He could see it staring back at him from the bloodstained sink. And he could feel it in his heartbeat, as Franck placed his hand upon the handle of the door. Franck knew that there was no escaping the city and he didn’t even try. Sliding back the bolt, Franck pushed open the toilet door and the owner’s men then rushed inside.

Stood by the bar, Borana shook her head and lit a cigarette, even though she wasn’t at all surprised.

That was the fifth fight in a week and the twelfth in the last month. Of course, Borana had seen far, far worse incidents than that. She had been working in the bars in Phnom Penh for over forty years. No, the reason Borana was shaking her head was because it was low-season. And with customers being thin on the ground, Borana knew that her boss really wasn’t going to appreciate another disruption like this, and she was going to get it in the neck again.

“OK,” nodded the short and bearded foreign man; in charge of the owner’s men, as the men passed her at the bar, “We’re all done here now, Borana, you can get them back to it now, OK?”

Nodding back at him, Borana watched, as the owner’s men dragged the two men’s unconscious bodies out of the bar, before turning her attention back to the girls.

“OK,” Borana snapped, clapping her hands loudly, as soon as the door to the bar had closed behind the men, “That’s enough of the tears and the chat then girls.”

“Come on!” Borana shouted at them, slamming her fist down on the counter, “You heard me ladies! Let’s get back to bloody work!”

J H Martin is from London, England but has no fixed abode. His writing has appeared in a number of places in Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Website: acoatforamonkey.wordpress.com
Instagram: @acoatforamonkey

When the phone rang and I learned I’d been called on to interview Charles Dickens, the first noise in my mind was the callow exclamation I imagine would have passed through anyone’s mind: But I didn’t know he was still alive! Was this unreasonable? Dickens had always evoked, for me, a world that seemed thoroughly severed from my own, and yet I could think of other cases where people who’d inhabited similarly removed worlds–Paul McCartney, say, or Mikhail Gorbachev–had appeared on TV, in my own time, and I’d not felt nonplussed at all. Finally, I deadened my doubts by thinking of Chuck Berry, a figure whose world had seemed perfectly sealed off from mine, while still, with little difficulty, I could conceive of him as a man who’d been extant in the twenty first century.

As a rule, imagination, when faced with any temporal concept, makes do with spatial symbols, so, considering my place relative to Dickens on a measure as abstract as “human history,” my internal screen mustered a simple line graph (as did yours… no?) which, sometimes, segued into a road (ditto?), the start of which stretched behind me then blurred into a conveniently painted “heat-haze”. Which isn’t to say my “road” was a failure–upon it I could see Dickens crammed up against Berry, then both of them pushed against the backs of my feet in this, possibly brief, technological, industrial epoch, which is really only the most recent outlier of history: the white rim of the toenail from which the giant’s leg and long body stretches backwards over hundreds of clouded millennia while, here, among the beast’s toes, Dickens, my near coeval, avails himself of railways and sewage systems; men no longer wear powdered wigs; nobody is publicly hung, drawn and quartered; and slavery has been abolished, more or less.

I came to accept, then, that I had no reason to be put out if the phone rang in the small hours and an old man’s rasp demanded I visit Dickens, or (this I thought as I crawled in search of a violet, diamond patterned shirt) seeing Dickens interviewed on Youtube, or Dickens as a talking head on TV, answering softball questions about himself.

I worried that, being so long out of public life, and not having published anything for so long, he must have become a gloomy, misanthropic old patriarch. Journalistically, a tough assignment. As with many figures who’d only been at the periphery of my interests, I was surprised by how much I didn’t know: that he’d founded and patronized an institution for “fallen” women; that for more than half a century he’d lived in a suburb of New York… I was surprised to learn he’d chosen NY because, to my knowledge, he’d always been ambivalent about America. That’s the impression I got from what I knew of American Notes. He’d originally emigrated, predictably I guess, to evade the Nazis and, not having been interested enough in his reputation by that time to have published anything in more than a half century, he probably didn’t care if people back home threw the “T” or “C” words at him. To be honest, I think the Nazis might have been gentle with Dickens: he did create, in Fagin, the world’s second-best-loved anti-Semitic archetype after Shylock (although a later trawl through Wikipedia revealed he’d tried to make amends for it towards the end of his published career, writing some honorable Jews into Our Mutual Friend–perhaps they got to him?).

I hadn’t actually read Our Mutual Friend before my abrupt call-up (which ended several months of neglect and inadmissible suffering) and that was another cause for anxiety: I wasn’t exactly the most boned-up interviewer ever regarding the Dickens oeuvre. I’d read Oliver Twist (which, actually, I didn’t like), Great Expectations (better), about a fifth of David Copperfield and, of course, I was familiar with A Christmas Carol (which I mainly hated). Otherwise I’d let Dickens sermonize, or satirize, or simper, or whatever he did, somewhere out of my ken until now, un-forewarned, I was called on to do this interview, I needed a comprehensive and conversational knowledge of the works, and lacked the time to imbibe. I’d been granted a miserly one day before my flight, most of which I spent looking for corners in my flat to conceal contraband… Praises to Wikipedia for its comprehensive overview of characters and plotlines, all of which I printed out and stapled into four portly wads with the intention of studying and memorizing on the plane.

Pausing from these notes, on the train to Heathrow, I tried to picture Dickens as he’d look now: an extremely old man, perhaps bed-ridden and speechless, not having conversed with anyone throughout such a long solitude. I worried that he might just lie there, or stare at the ceiling, which would kill dead all my journalistic aspirations. I jotted potential questions:

• Who, in literature or film, do you regard as your successor?
• Did you see, Oliver!? Reactions?
• Have you read Orwell’s or Chesterton’s essays on you?

…it had also occurred to me that Dickens would view allowing me into his home as an extreme concession to outside pressures and therefore I should cover my imposture, and my ignorance, with a goodwill gift. I figured it would be a nice gesture if I gave him a contemporary book that could act as an emissary to him from my own time and so, after dismissing a mental shelf of more recent titles, I settled on Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon… OK, it’s maybe forty years old, but I think it still somehow captures the tint and timbre of our world, as I see it, and those who built upon its vision later were never really able to throw their borders wide enough to get outside the borders laid down in that book, back then, in the 1970’s. To be honest, I found it hard-going, but I assumed Dickens was a man of superlative intellectual gifts and would have far less trouble than I had getting the juice out of it.

I’d arrived early in London and detoured into the center. There are plenty of bookshops in central London, all of which would have offered what I wanted, but I chose to hit the Waterstones near Piccadilly Circus, not wanting to trample on the livelihoods of independent booksellers. Upstairs I found Pynchon’s little section easily. The Vintage version of Gravity’s Rainbow had the most attractive cover, I thought, consisting of small, intricate cartoons, like a kind of sinister and philosophically literate Where’s Wally? and I could pretty much see, at this point, the author himself, standing close behind, just out of my peripheral vision; not really seeing, just kind of knowing he was there, nodding in an avuncular way, twirling his Dali moustache, saying something like: “Go for it, my boy!”

How couldn’t I?

I didn’t want to risk hidden cameras catching me as I deposited the item into my backpack and so–as you would have done–I opted to behave in a confident, bland-seeming way and just walk out of the shop, object in hand, and because the book was not for my own pleasure, because, ultimately, it wasn’t even a book I liked, I didn’t have to go through the self-questioning and doubt of common filching and this would make me appear strikingly, almost obnoxiously, innocent. You see: I was lacking funds and wasn’t to be paid until after the interview (the American magazine that commissioned the piece had arranged my flight but that was where it ended)… and this may strike you as a pointlessly reckless way to proceed considering all I had at stake (my happiness, my health, I could go on) but I could no longer imagine this interview taking place without this offering, and I could vividly picture myself standing on an old, cold road pleading with an adamantine gate.

All the way down the stairs, past the checkout, my method panned out pretty well–the checkout was manned by a woman with dyed black hair, but it–the method–failed me, and just on the cusp of the sliding door; then a “Hey!” and a palm clamped on my book-wielding shoulder. Out from my shoulder there’d developed a tall security guard–one of the tallest men I’ve ever seen! He wore a bored expression and said in a monotone, slightly Second Language voice, “Please come with me, sir.”

At the back of the shop, a short, fattish, red-faced man was called. Unlike the security guard, he seemed genuinely angry: “OK, scumbag. Let’s see what you got.” He took a swivel chair on the other side of a table that hemmed me against a wall. I showed him the book. He looked down at it then up at me.

“This is a big, difficult book. Can you actually read this?”

He opened to about a third of the way.

“OK [finger sliding down page] Culverts. Do you know what culvertsmeans?”

“No.”

“I bet.”

I wanted to say, “It’s not for me. It’s for Charles Dickens,” but I had a picture in my mind of the ridicule and cruelty that would follow, so I kept my peace. After a few seconds, he moved his lips, as if he were going ask another question, but instead he swiveled towards the security guard, muttered, “Sod this,” and, after opining some derogatory things about me, waddled out of the room to phone the police. The security guard looked down at me and smiled the most subtly polyhedral smile possible.

My arresting officers, one tall with a carbuncle on his glabella, and one stocky, escorted me into the police station. My notes were typed; my property confiscated. They asked if I wanted to make a call but I couldn’t name anyone to receive it. They took my photograph and fingerprints. Then I was questioned by a mustachioed officer whose smile just told me that he was into things like fisting and eating shit and stuff he was when off-duty.

The cell wasn’t too bad in itself, but its blandness was upset, painfully, by the thought of my receding interview, that my flight to New York (and, with it, in fact, my last chance of satisfaction in life) would leave in under three hours. I tried to remember the names and personalities of Dickens’s characters from my notes, which novel each featured in, what happened in those novels, but the books turned out not to be water-tight and I found that, all the time I’d been in London, the characters and events had been sloshing freely from one book to another:  Mr Sleary is taking Tiny Tim out to pick pockets. Who’s this old man? Tough luck–today’s quarry has been Grandfather Smallweed and he’s seen you hobbling away, Tim. “Oh, you’ll regret this!”–he shakes a bird-like fist at you. Now both the wallet and Mr Sleary are nowhere to be seen. Poor Tim diminishes into a dismal dream, but–Beware!–old Smallweed has pulled back a crimson curtain and clinked open a cage door and Mr. Magwitch emerges into the light. He’s walking on all fours with his nose to the road. He’s inspecting every door with burning, azure, mindless eyes. His canines are longer than your tibias, Tim–Oh! You’ll be sorry…

A half hour later, maybe, the door opened and an officer entered. He was a bald man who didn’t blink and the corners of his mouth seemed stretched, too far, into an immobile mask of euphoria. Otherwise, his shape and hairlessness made him resemble a huge baby. He sat opposite me and directed a trembling right hand toward his jacket’s inside pocket. Locating something in there, he said, “hur-hur,” then bore from his pocket a–no… yes–a sausage of about twenty centimeters; cold, unwrapped, and richly dappled with pocket lint. His eyes were orbicular and webbed with red veins. “Mind if I…[gesture]?”–and with impressive zest he put the top end of the victual in his mouth. From where I sat I could see a big ball of fuzz, about the size of a macadamia nut, suckling the viand’s lower end. He did his best to take his time, making noises between chomps like, “mmmm… mmmm,” hosannas to gustatory joy, while I sat rigid. I heard footfalls quicken in the corridor then disappear. When the whole of the sausage had been consumed the officer leaned back, unblinking, and said in a slightly too loud voice: “Mmm, fucking marvelous!… Why are you here?”

He leaned forward: “…………………………..?”

He cleared his throat: “Why are you here, young man?”

“I shoplifted a book to give to Charles Dickens.”

“Hmm…” The officer made a face my father had often made, one that corresponded well with the statement, “I have just bought a vacuum cleaner and found that there are no instructions in the box.” He blinked and seemed to forget me, falling back into an awake doze, mumbling things like, “mmm-mmm. Fucking delectable, indeed” and other such botched genteelisms that I started to wonder what kind of life he’d had.

He resumed talking, maybe to himself, and grew animated again. He spoke with increasing speed, sometimes laughed, and when he laughed, and threw up his hands, his pupils bobbed to the back of his head like a pair of compasses–

“So,  normally a normal criminal isn’t about to just grab some bag off a chair, grab some shopping bag in public because it could be a, anything–a hairdryer or– one of the Greeks said something about it, look it up–but now he’s fucking, so messed up that– you know it’s like a fucking, it’s like it’s a challenge, so he–he purloins this bag and tears onto the street and these three guys following him, and he gets into this alley and there’s this huge, fucking, huge bodybuilder walking this–this little toy poodle on this–it’s like a ribbon–it’s not a dog, it’s a weasel inbred with a fucking sheep, so he’s swerving this way and this little weasel is swerving–like this–and they go BHWOOOGH–and the bag goes spinning–spinning fucking through the air, into the fucking bodybuilder’s fucking–his phallus–and would you like to guess what’s in the bag? A fucking bag of buttons and a kid’s toy frog!…”

And he laughed, reliving the moment’s absurdity. And we both fell quiet.

His eyes had turned watery and pink like the glistening ends of a pair of frankfurters–an unhappy role-reversal there. I looked at the clock and saw I had less than half an hour before my flight. I groaned and told the officer that, while I was sitting in this cell with him I wasn’t doing nothing: I was actually missing a flight to New York, and with that flight, I was missing the name-making opportunity to be the first person to interview Charles Dickens this century.

“How the fuck does one get to do that?”

I told him I was trying to make my name as a writer. I’d published a few of my pieces on the internet. That’s probably where they’d found me out and decided I’d be the guy for the job. The officer told me he was also a writer, in his own fashion: He’d written a long manifesto about culture, history, and politics and sent it out to various newspapers and magazines. It turned out, though, that the whole of the mainstream media had pretty much closed ranks against him so, finally, he’d published his piece on a blog called The Unforgiveable Truth and he recommended I check it out once I got the fuck out of this shithole.

Then he told me about the things he’d discovered and uncovered while he was researching for his manifesto: that the outcomes of the first and second world wars could be found all mapped out and possibly even planned in a book written way back in the eighteen hundreds; that the Third Reich, despite all its outward projections, was actually a Zionist regime; that there was a five mile train filled with these fucking shackles and chains and whips and yokes that would one day be used to transport the entire population of London, and surrounding areas, down into a vast underground synagogue. Right now he was only a PCSO (Police Community Skilled Officer) but he predicted soon he’d be a full constable, and later a sergeant, and then he’d be even deeper in the bowels of this terrifying machine. It was while he was telling me about this blinking, purple light he saw from time to time, usually assuming a diamond shape, that I began to feel my mind overtaken by the following revelation: that while I’d, by now, almost certainly lost Mr. Dickens (whom, an hour past, I’d thought of as my last and only lifeline), I’d nevertheless found myself in the orbit of an important sage…

Now I listened, fidgeting, trying not to let my foot stamp excitedly as the worldly revelations issued forth, filling the space of the cell, guided on by those unblinking sausage-y eyeballs. The man was like a tumbler filled with knowledge and all you had to do was tilt him this way or that and dazzling perceptions and explanations would flow forth. Just occasionally I needed to prod him awake with questions when his flow became muddied with sleep and his round face began to nod forward. (Here’s another thing: both of us suffered from an identical dread that, if we failed to play our cards right, we’d slide onto another plane of reality and never be able to crawl back again.)

As so often happens, Bad Luck (my co-pilot) intervened after what seemed like only a half hour delivering to my door the same stocky officer who’d escorted me into the station. Now to tell me to get lost. When he saw the PCSO in the cell his back straightened as if an electrical current had been switched on:

“What the shit are you doing here?”

The officer who’d eaten the sausage raised his hands as if fearing a slap. Then he stood up, back bent into a kind of bow and shuffled past the officer and out of the cell. The other officer followed him to the end of the corridor with his eyeball until the footfalls became inaudible. Just as you would have done, I pleaded to be allowed to stay in the cell and to let the PCSO stay in with me, but that, said the officer, was absolutely out of the question, as well being a singularly weird thing to request… to begin with… dickwad.

Outside, in London’s stale grey light I realized I hadn’t asked the PCSO’s email or phone number (how adroitly I defeat myself!). Yet, with his words gripped tight in my memory, like a ribbon around my finger, or leprechaun in my hand, I was optimistic; perhaps more optimistic than I’d ever been about anything before in my life. And can anyone really ask for more than that? From life. You see, a second thought, like a suddenly released scent, had become manifest in my mind while I’d been in the cell: I could record the sage’s insights and discoveries, memorize and annotate them, then present them to my American editors, and ultimately the whole reading world, and beyond, as the reflections and revelations of the elderly Charles Dickens, no?

Let’s skip to the following day: back in my home city and with a court appearance set for about a month hence. That morning I’d gone to a bookstore and swiped two Dickens novels so that I could get a more solid sense of the writer’s style and thereby raise the overall authenticity effect in my interview write-up. At random I picked Bleak House and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The latter is the famously unfinished “last” novel and, as I thumbed it for the first time, it became clear just why Dickens had been unable to reach a conclusion… but here I must digress:

There’s a theory sometimes palpated around the edges of academia that great writers create holistic visual pictures in their works which go way beyond the physical text of the book, and that sometimes a really skilled, really artistic reader can experience these visions in toto. I think this is what Roberto Bolaño was getting at when he proposed a remake of (the film I’ll call) Mesozoic Safari (for purely pedantic accuracy reasons) wherein no dinosaurs appear. Living dinosaurs are not even alluded to. All the viewer will see is Dr. Grant waking up, somewhere in Utah, brewing coffee then bringing the pot to where fellow paleontologist Dr. Sattler is sitting, who’s fretting about a nice boy in their area who’s been spotted hanging out with a rich old drug addict she thinks will be a bad influence on him. Dr. Grant shrugs away her misgivings, saying something like, “He’s not a kid anymore,” and Sattler sighs into her coffee and says something like, “I know. Life’s what you make of it.” The film continues like this for three or four hours, then the credits roll, and yet, in the midst of it all, the audience is made to become anxiously aware, without knowing how or why, that there are rapacious dinosaurs somewhere, perhaps not in Dr. Grant’s vicinity, perhaps not even within a two hundred mile radius of Dr. Grant (who is, meanwhile, filmed doing things like negotiating with his university about funding for an excavation project on the border between Garfield and Wayne counties) but the dinosaurs are somehow still crushingly there, inexplicably, and causing terror and death already in some undisclosed cinematic hinterland.

This is the only way I can think of to explain exactly how I was able to understand why Dickens had been unable to finish Edwin Drood. The first pages were straightforward enough: squalid, sad London; John Jasper leaving an opium den. A little further along, however, I noticed that Dickens, in amongst these surface evocations, was leaving these sorts of cracks and fissures in the paragraphs which expanded as I read on, wide enough to let the teeth and fingers of unvoiced meanings slide up into my own air. Early on, I noticed Dickens offering tacit support for Virginia Woolf. Surprisingly, I also detected an approving nod for Albert Camus. In the next chapter I made out a ditch full of men, some living, some dead, the living and dead intermingling, the living struggling outward through the sea of dying. A few pages later I saw enormous posters along miles of walls showing a mustachioed man in uniform licking his lips, his fingers clenched into a fist. As I skimmed past the book’s half-way point I picked up hints of conniptions in Africa (The Congo? Rwanda perhaps?), the invention of the World Wide Web (with the usual anxieties concerning its effect on human brains), then I reached a very nineteenth-century, very orientalist, kind of panorama showing a group of Arabs, some of whom held severed heads by the hair and were swinging them around like students with lunchboxes (a reference to Islamic jihad, one would have to assume). After that, things became abstract and incomprehensible for me. Thin lines ran parallel for meters or miles (“lanes of light,” Dickens says) all positioned in some, no doubt, meaningful pattern, but not one I could decode–although I picked up on a few split-second intimations: strange methods of violence, crimson water flowing through under-road pipes, people who didn’t look like people, then the book’s abrupt, horrified, cessation.

I ignored the grumbling hunger in my intestines and moved to Bleak House. (I couldn’t recall the last time I’d eaten; certainly not since my meeting with the sage. A month earlier I’d been so skeletal people would turn to each other as they walked past me, and whisper, or they’d look away as if my existence embarrassed them; I reminded them that suffering is as imminent, always, as nakedness.)

This book was a quieter work: The descriptions of smoggy London streets seemed familiarly, one could say predictably, “Dickensian.” I read through about thirty pages and began to wonder if, perhaps, this one would disclose no particular message for me. Yet, on the edge of putting the book aside, I became sensible of a deceptively subtle incongruity I’d been too impatient to process until the first few chapters had shifted from my right hand to my left. London’s streets appeared, in Bleak House, to be falsely straight and uniform, in some places fully giving way to a grid system. This, then, was the grand entrance: London, in Dickens’s vision, had been subtly supplanted by New York, my New York, and having noticed this, the streets filled with cars and yellow taxis and a plane flew overhead. With this it also occurred to me that, all through the book so far–like a child’s hidden word-search solution that suddenly breaks the surface, like (for I lack time to un-mix metaphors), like a whale–I’d been encountering, in every scene, almost every page, the exact same old man. I knew he couldn’t have been manifest in the book’s physical sentences because he wore a polo shirt and a blue tracksuit. He never spoke. He lay on a big, almost luxurious bed… One doesn’t have to be a genius to see that this was the writer’s “cameo,” even though the iconic beard was gone (he was now completely hairless). He lay, tiny and skeletal, inside a white room, the whiteness of the walls interrupted by a few paintings, mostly landscapes, no portraits, and behind him to the right, a grandfather clock with no hands and its face in the form of an eye.

Occasionally his nurses, Persephone Rosehip (who often speaks of her hallucinations) and Cinnamon Fang (whose knitted frog stares from her bag with sad, glazed, button eyes), enter his room to help him with exercises or to administer his medicines. That Dickens should have ended up in America now made perfect sense: If the world’s imperial and economic fountainhead had been set in London in the nineteenth century it had long since been transplanted to New York, where it remains, and Dickens had simply followed it there. Perhaps he felt spiritually depleted except when close to the power source, or perhaps the power source had wanted to keep Dickens close to itself.

It seemed he’d brought together a small team of almost excessively dedicated helpers (henchmen, disciples) who helped maintain his rich seclusion in the US. Dickens loathes and is sickened by any kind of loud noise and so, when he requires something, he turns a handle by his bed and a diamond-shaped light pulsates in the relevant team member’s cabin. This may seem an ineffectual way of calling for attention–if the team member should be asleep, for example–but, apparently, everyone has trained him or herself to jump up, wide-eyed, whenever a purple diamond appears, blinking in his or her dreams. Sometimes he rants and raves. The nurses say he has disturbed fantasies. Sometimes he resembles, for them, nothing more than a shrieking skull…

I was sitting in bed, gazing into a grey-shadowed fold in my sheet and, as I became self-conscious, this vision I’ve tried to describe drained of all clarity. Something had clicked off in the universe and my room had turned languid and dull. I reflected that Dickens would have been waiting for me, anticipating me, and this thought pinched unpleasantly: the first throb of regret since I took on this project. Dickens had made that effort for me (no matter how accurately or inaccurately I’d envisioned his appearance and circumstances). He’d hobbled from his bed to greet me, then he would have realized I was not coming, that I, not he, was the one who’d reneged, and probably he’d been glad to have been spared this intrusion into his solitude and had chortled or cackled to himself, confirmed in his view of human venality, as he turned from his doorway and staggered, slowly, slowly, back to his silent, capacious room. When the door shut behind him all the colors seeped into one and dissolved in front of my eyes and I nodded towards a frustrated sleep.

Into this void came another disruption: an incessant, arrhythmic thumping on my door. I listened in a daze for a few moments, believing that if I could find a pattern I would become lucid. Why does he hit so hard? Howloudhowloudhowloud. Then I felt cheerful: this meant he’d come for me. Perhaps he’d forgiven me! I was fully dressed, and so I had no reason to keep the man waiting–out of my way, door!–and I greeted the gentleman who stood there.

As I’ve said, in my vision the bearded man of the iconic nineteenth-century photographs had been succeeded by the hairless, skeletal wraith I’d come to think of as “Dickens.” Now, as in a fright, that ghost had packed up and hurried off to make room for a new, brawnier figure. A shadow from the hall initially divided his face into two discrete segments and, as he came forward, the receding shade presented two pale eyes, like blue cataracts, that implied no thoughts. He had a missing pinkie-finger and a third blue eye, identical in size and color, was vividly tattooed on his hairless left wrist. His expression was almost an idiot’s but, at the same time, avid and, even, predatory.

“Come in, Mr. Dickens! Can I get you a drink? What do you think?… make yourself at home. You phoned? Take a look at anything you like around here. The toilet is on the right, over there. Here’s a chair. Are you hungry? I’m afraid there’s almost nothing in the cupboards…

Come in!”

Richard grew up in England, studied philosophy at the University of East Anglia then moved to Japan. From Japan he was awarded an MA in Literature (distinction) for a thesis on literary depictions of boredom. He is a member of the Vladimir Nabokov Society of Japan.

All of the welders at Witherton Shipyard were a little crazy.  It seemed to be part of their job description.  Their faces were dirty, and the skin on their forearms was marked up with the tiny burns that came from fusing molten metal together.  When the shipyard won a new contract to repair a cargo ship (or perhaps a tanker), all of the welders went to work, clambering into every corner of the boat while dodging gigantic cranes lifting several tons of steel at a time.  From as far away as 51st street you could see them all working away on board some enormous vessel in the dry dock.  They looked as busy as a bunch of ants feasting on some leftovers at a picnic, climbing up and down tree-house type ladders into random cubby holes with dense packs weighing up to fifty pounds.  As if that wasn’t enough, they pulled heavy electrical cables for the welding equipment that weighed even more than the packs did.  Only someone out of their mind would sign up for something like that.

The welders worked the hardest jobs.  No other trade on the waterfront was forced to squeeze into as many tight places as they were, always being crammed into some of the most obscure areas on the boat.  If any other tradesman in the shipyard was having a hard day he would just watch the welders for a few minutes and then say to himself, “Well, at least I’m not a welder.”

Mr. Tisdom, the welding instructor, said that welding was a calling.  On the first day of training, he gave an inspiring speech worthy of Denzel Washington.  “I didn’t choose welding as a profession,” he said, “It chose me.”

Jasmine Jacob wondered what he meant by that.  She had gotten hired one month ago at Witherton after she completed the welding program at Fairfield Community College.

She put on her backpack of tools and climbed down a ladder to get to her job site.  Her dark, brown eyes carefully watched each step as she descended into the inner hull of the ship.

Unlike most people, Jasmine had to take two trips to the job site in order to carry all of her tools because she was so small and petite.

But she was the perfect size for a welder.  Being so tiny, she could get into the places that most other welders couldn’t.

She paused for a moment and tucked her braids under her still-shiny hardhat.  At Witherton, a shiny hardhat meant that you were a rookie, and subject to rib-jabbing from the veterans.  Some of the new hires even went so far as to purposely scrape the tops of theirs so they wouldn’t be made fun of by the old timers.

Jasmine thought that was silly.  She knew that respect had to be earned, and she was willing to work for it.

When she climbed down to the bottom of the ladder she was confronted by a large, burly pipefitter.  He took a big wad of mint flavored chewing tobacco and stuffed it into the corner of his mouth.  Grinning from ear to ear, he spat with terrific force into a plastic coke bottle he was carrying.  “Don’t that beat all,” he said, “I thought I’d never live to see the day the shipyard sent a girl to the waterfront.”

Jasmine rolled her eyes and shrugged off the comment, knowing that her sex had a long history in the welding business.  But the pipefitter looked familiar to her.  She saw the name “Little John” inscribed on his hard hat.

“Don’t mind Little John,” said an old, bearded electrician.  He peeped out from behind a scaffold like a shy little gnome from the woods.  “He’s just ignorant.”

“I know,” replied Jasmine, recalling that she and Little John had been at Fairfield together.  “He’s probably still mad about getting washed out of welding school.”

The electrician snickered.  “What?”  He said with a toothless smile.  The old man’s whole body shook as he laughed.  He wiped the sweat off of his forehead and removed his hard hat.  There were so many scratches on his that they all congealed into one mass at the top.  He was a lifer.

“I didn’t wash out of welding school,” Little John said, “Besides, welding is a brainless trade anyways.”

“Brainless,” said the electrician.  “Everything you do is brainless.You ain’t no fitter.  You a fitter’s helper.  Your boss reads the blueprint and you the one who holds it.”

Little John put his hands on his hips.  “Well at least I don’t sleep on the job,” he said.  A tiny vein began to stick out on the top of his forehead.  He paused to spit in his bottle.  Thick, brown liquid dribbled over his bottom lip.  “I’m not gonna name any names,” he said, “But I know a certain someone who likes to take a little nap after lunch.”

Within a few seconds, the pipefitter and electrician were at each others’ throats, name-calling, yelling and pointing.  The whole thing looked like a scene from The Three Stooges.

Jasmine shook her head and laughed.  “I just hope they don’t start arguing about football,” she said.

Arguing about football was forbidden at Witherton.  Of course, this rule had a history.  Five years ago a foreman had written up a machinist for taunting a rigger about his weekend loss.  The machinist retaliated against the foreman by filing a grievance to the Union.  This started a chain reaction and scores of craftsmen swamped the Union with grievances about the company.  A civil war erupted, and the salaried foremen pitted themselves against the hourly craftsmen.  The higher ups flew in specialized HR personnel and spent thousands of dollars to avoid a strike.  When the smoke settled, the rule was made: no arguing, in fact, no talking about football.  The other subjects you couldn’t talk about were politics, pay raises and religion.   But this rule only applied when workers were on the clock.  As soon as the whistle blew for lunch, these topics were all people ever discussed.

Jasmine continued her journey to the job site and began setting up her tools.  Within a half hour she was busy working with her welding shield down.  She gazed through the dark lens, seeing nothing but the end of her torch manipulating the white hot molten metal wherever her hands desired.  She was welding a piece of steel to the ceiling and dodged hot sparks coming down from overhead.

Jasmine became interested in welding when she learned that Witherton was hiring entry-level positions.  She had attended a job fair and found out that as long as you had a clean record you could enter a two month long program through Fairfield’s welding school for free.  After you were able to pass some basic tests, the shipyard let you in.

Mr. Tisdom, the welding instructor, said that Jasmine was a natural.  She had good hand-eye coordination, and advanced past her classmates.

By now she was welding in every position imaginable and had started to master overhead welding.  It took a lot of endurance to hold the torch in the same position for long periods of time, but Jasmine did daily workouts to build up her stamina.    

After a few hours, the morning passed and Jasmine finished welding the overhead angle iron on her job.  She was ready to move on to the next.  Glancing at her phone, she saw it was 1130.  There was enough time for her to get set up on a new job site before lunch.  She called her foreman.

The raspy voice of a chain smoker answered on the other line.  “Yeah?”  He said.

“Hello, Malcom?”  Jasmine asked, “I finished the overhead fillet on third deck.  Where do you want me now?”

There was a brief pause as Malcolm rifled through some blueprints.  “Ok,” he said, “I need you to go down into the inner bottom of the ship.  Do you remember where you were at yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Go to the same spot.  Someone on second shift was supposed to finish that job up, but it never got done.”

“Ok,” replied Jasmine, “Bye.”

Malcolm hung up without any reply.

The inner bottom of the ship was the lowest part of the vessel, full of holes any regular sized person couldn’t fit into.  But Jasmine could slide in and through them with relative ease.  Though she had been on the job for only a month, she had already been in the inner bottom five times.  Her small size was a valuable asset to the company.

She made her way down the flights of stairs as low as she could possibly go.  When she came to the final set of stairs, she saw that the machinists had sealed off the main entry hatch.  Their impact wrenches were lying on the deck where they had bolted the hatch down.

I’m going to have to find a different way down to the job.  Jasmine thought.  She looked around and found a tiny hole with a ladder.

Sliding in, she got on her hands and knees, inching her way through hole after hole.  It reminded her of her old elementary school’s pet hamster squeezing into the mazes of plastic tunnels the kids had set up.  Jasmine wasn’t claustrophobic, and that was a good thing.  This was one of the questions the doctors had asked her when she took the physical examination for entrance into the company.

“Fear of heights?”

“No.”

“Claustrophobic?”

“No.”

“Any difficulty stooping, bending or crawling?”

“No.”

The shipyard was a young person’s game.

Jasmine entered into a dark, cramped compartment and turned on her flashlight.  I’m guessing that my job is on the other side of this bulkhead.  She said to herself.

As she continued to crawl, she thought she heard something.  It sounded like an engine running.

That’s strange.  She peeked her head through the next porthole into a new compartment.  This was the area that her job was supposed to be in.  It opened up into a more spacious room.

Before her was the gigantic shaft that turned the ship’s propeller and moved the whole boat through the water when it was underway.

Jasmine gazed at the magnificent piece of machinery.  What’s that smell?  She wondered.

Exhaust.  Looking further in, she saw that the entire room was filled with it, and the sound of the engine was growing louder.

Jasmine fanned her face and coughed.  What in the world is going on down here?

The compartment floor was covered with at least six inches of water.  Leftover rain had come down and trapped itself in the bottom.

“Is anyone there?”  Jasmine yelled.  “Who left this engine running?  They’ve sealed the entry hatch and there’s no ventilation.”  She coughed some more and slid down into the compartment.  Her feet became soaked as she splashed down into the freezing cold water.  Jasmine hung her backpack on a piece of pipe and slogged over to the running engine.  It was powering a pump that was shooting the rainwater out of a long black hose.

“Idiots,” Jasmine said.  She looked all over for the kill switch on the engine.  In a few seconds she found it and turned it off.  “Don’t you people know anything about carbon monoxide?”  She shook her head and coughed some more.  “This is really dangerou . . .”

Jasmine stopped dead in her tracks and covered her mouth.  A body was lying in the water.  She scrambled over to get a glance at the face.

“Little John!”  Jasmine screamed.  She grabbed him by the shoulder.

He was out cold.

“Somebody help!”  She called.

But there was no answer.

Jasmine checked the time.  It was twelve o’clock and everyone was going to lunch.  She ran over and checked John’s pulse.  It was strong.

Good.  Jasmine thought.  She put her hand a few inches away from his mouth.  He’s barely breathing.  I don’t have much time.  She tripped over a pipe and landed in the water.  Her head felt dizzy.  I’ve got to get out of here.  She scrambled back up the wall to the porthole she had just entered through.  Jasmine moved as fast as her tiny body would allow, slipping into one hole after the next until she was on the open deck directly overtop the compartment that Little John was in.

It was no use trying to open the main hatch.  It was bolted down in twelve places.  Jasmine paused for a moment to catch her breath and try to figure out what to do.

I should call Malcolm.  She said to herself.

But she had no cell phone service down there.

I can’t just leave John down there.  She thought.  I don’t think there’s enough time.  I’ve got to come up with something fast.

Jasmine’s eye caught a glimpse of a cutting torch located in the corner.  She rushed over, turned on the gas and fired up the torch.

Putting on her welding shield, she adjusted the torch flame until its shape was sharp and blue.  Pressing the torch trigger, she could hear the blast of pure oxygen coming through the nozzle.

She rushed over to the sealed hatch with torch in hand and started burning a hole through the thick steel–a hole big enough for Little John to fit through.

She was just starting to wonder how in the world she was going to drag Little John’s big body out from below when Malcolm showed up.

“What are you doing?”  He hollered, “Everybody’s at lunch.”

“There’s a man down there!”  Jasmine screamed.  “He’s out cold and we have to get him topside—quick.”

Malcolm’s jaw dropped.  He looked at the big hole Jasmine was burning into the deck, and then looked back at Jasmine.  “Ok,” he said, “I got you.”

As Jasmine finished her cut, Malcolm grabbed a nearby hammer and knocked the remaining scrap metal away.  From below came a big cloud of exhaust smoke which Malcolm fanned away.

Inside the hole Jasmine had just made was another set of stairs.  Malcolm wasted no time in climbing down.  “Call 911,” he ordered.

Jasmine punched the numbers into her phone, but the call wouldn’t go through.  “Auuuggghhhhh!”  She yelled in frustration.  She could hear Malcolm dragging Little John’s body through the rain water down below.

She jumped down to help him.  They both pushed and pulled Little John’s body up the stairs.  Jasmine tried her phone one more time.  She heard the phone start to dial and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the dispatcher say “911, what’s your emergency?”

After explaining the situation to the dispatcher, an ambulance full of paramedics rushed to Witherton.  The EMTs had a good relationship with the shipyard and were trained in assisting for emergencies related to the industry.  Hooking up an oxygen mask to Little John’s face, they carried him out on a stretcher.

“It sure was lucky you happened to be where you were.”  Malcolm said to Jasmine, “Any longer and we might have been reading Little John’s obituary.”

“What was he doing down there?”  Jasmine asked.

“Little John was sent down there to operate the pump to get rid of the rainwater,” Malcolm said, “He fell asleep on the job and the machinists accidentally sealed off the main hatch to the compartment he was in.”

“He slept through all that?”  Asked Jasmine.

“You’d be surprised.  With no ventilation down there, L.J. became a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Will he be alright?”

“Yes, thanks to you.  That was a very brave thing you did today.”

Jasmine shrugged her shoulders.  She was ready to go home.

When the work day ended, all of the shipyard workers made their way out and into the parking lot.  They looked like a herd of cattle being prodded through the turn stiles, one cow at a time.  An ambulance flashed its red lights in the parking lot.

Parked nearby the ambulance, Jasmine saw a blue van with big yellow letters on the side.  News Channel Six it said.  As she made her way to her car, a slick looking man with a microphone approached her.  He was followed by a TV camera.  They had been chasing the ambulance in hopes of a story.

“Wow.  You guys don’t miss a beat, do you?”  Jasmine said.

“We’re always on the lookout for a good story,” the reporter replied.  He extended his hand.  “Dean Harvey,” he said, “News Channel Six.  Could you spare a few minutes for an interview?”

Jasmine shook the reporter’s hand and gave a nervous laugh.

Mr. Harvey smiled, hoping to bolster what he thought was Jasmine’s lack of confidence.  “Is anything the matter?”  He asked.

“Well,” Jasmine said, “It’s just that I remember you from before.  You’ve already interviewed me once.”

“What?  Are you sure?”  Mr. Harvey looked confused.

“Yes, Mr. Harvey.  You have,” Jasmine replied.

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”  Mr. Harvey studied Jasmine’s face for a brief second.

“I applied for a job at Channel Six four months ago,” Jasmine said.  “You told me that you needed someone with a Master’s Degree.  I’m still paying off student loans from my Bachelor’s.”

Mr. Harvey stepped back.  “Oh, uh, sorry,” he said.  He paused for a moment, made a quick signal to the cameraman to start rolling, and then shoved the microphone into Jasmine’s face.  “What happened here today?”  He asked.

Jasmine recounted the story for the evening news.  Her composure while on camera was quite impressive for being so unprepared.  She was a natural.

When they were all done, the cameraman packed up his equipment and headed back to the van.

But Mr. Harvey lingered a little and started to smile at Jasmine.  “Hey,” he said, “You know, maybe we were a little too hasty before with our decision in that job interview.  You seem like a sharp girl.  I could put a good word in for you.  Would you be interested in coming back?”

Jasmine hesitated.  She had gotten a four-year degree in journalism with hopes of becoming a reporter one day, but in her mind she traveled back to the first day of welding school.  She had never held a welding torch before, but Mr. Tisdom put his hands over hers and guided her every move until she could get the feel of it.  “You’re going too fast,” Mr. Tisdom had said, “You need to slow down and get into a rhythm.  Remember, welding is an art.”  She recalled passing her first weld test in the flat position, and then working really hard to pass the vertical welding test.  When she finally passed the hardest test of all, the overhead, Mr. Tisdom celebrated by buying pizza for the entire class.  He was always inspiring his students to do better, and he never stopped giving them helpful tips.  “Make sure your heat is set right on the welding machine,” he said, “That way you’ll get the perfect-looking weld bead.”  Jasmine could see her instructor’s face the moment he told her that welding was a calling.

She now felt like she understood what he meant.  It was something she couldn’t put it into words.  Something only learned by experience.

The reporter stood there, waiting.

“I appreciate the offer,” Jasmine said, “But I’m going to pass.”

Mr. Harvey shook his head and looked at Jasmine’s dirty coveralls.  “You’re crazy,” he said.

“I know,” Jasmine replied, “It comes with the job description.”  She walked over to her Toyota Camry, turned the key into the ignition and drove home.

Phillip Hall loves telling stories.  Last year he won 2nd place for creative nonfiction at Thomas Nelson Community College.  He has published two stories called “Flirting with Reality” in Open Journal of Arts and Letters and “Special Delivery” in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.  He is currently working on publishing his first sci-fi/fantasy novel, The Four Pendants.

In the summer of 1978, Frank J. Cole was working as a security guard at the Ramada Inn in Gatlinburg, a tourist town at the main entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. I was a desk clerk and general gopher for the same establishment. Frank was in his mid-fifties, but in appearance he could have passed for being a much older man. I was eighteen and had recently moved from Nashville to Gatlinburg with my parents. In the fall I would begin classes 40 miles away at Maryville College, but first would come my introduction to deep mountain culture, which was a considerable change from my city-bred upbringing. I was an outsider to the mountain folk and therefore not easily accepted as a “local” — an important distinction in any tourist town, but even more profound in the historically isolated world of Appalachia. Even so, Frank and I quickly became friends despite the cultural barriers. He was as pure a “mountain” man as one was likely to find in 1978; he was also an individualist with a certain detachment from his native surroundings, a detachment that made him accessible to someone like me.

At the Ramada, Frank was charged mostly with keeping the parking lot free of vagrant tourists and outlaw parkers. Although he was working as a private security guard and did not serve the county in an official capacity beyond the hotel, he wore the full uniform and badge of a deputy sheriff, an appearance greatly enhanced by the oversized revolver that hung from his gun belt. He looked the part of a lawman even as he carried himself more like a 19^th century gunslinger — a distinction that has always been a bit blurred in Americana.

One of my first memories of Frank is of him proudly showing a photo of himself posing with some rather beautiful models. The photo had been taken a few months earlier, he said, at a reunion for the 101^st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, a unit with which he had served during World War II. The ladies were all dressed alike and were in front of prop scenery. Most likely each attendee of the reunion had the chance to participate in a similarly staged photo-op. Frank made the most of the opportunity, his arms wrapped around two while the third was leaning against his chest with a “naughty” expression accentuated by pouty lips. The carnival-style theatrics aside, there was nothing staged about the big smile on Frank’s face.

Frank didn’t often leave the confines of his native Smokies, but a chance to be with his buddies from the 101^st Airborne was something he couldn’t pass up. After all, back in 1943 the U.S. Army took him away from the mountains for the first time. A natural and gifted storyteller, Frank often spoke proudly of his years spent as a paratrooper with the 101^st, but he rarely spoke of the actual war. In general his stories were more likely to be about one of two subjects: women or growing up in the mountains. I loved to listen to his yarns, even when I knew he was often embellishing for my benefit (carefully-crafted embellishment being a mark of a good storyteller.)

A favorite story took place in the Sugarlands, the little mountain community where he was born and where his family owned a small plot of land until the federal government made that slice of mountain paradise a part of the newly established national park in 1934. After the forced sale of their property, some residents were allowed to continue living in their homes for a specified period of time — but with new rules. Hunting and fishing were now strictly regulated by the federal government. Mountaineers such as Frank and his family depended heavily on the local game, both for food and sport, and they didn’t easily adhere to the imposition of laws forbidding them to behave in the only manner they understood. The result was that Frank and his younger brother Allen — inseparable companions — quickly became known targets for the federal agents now charged with keeping an eye on the new park land.

Their father, Allen Walter Cole, was told that any infractions, in addition to hefty fines, could lead to his family being forced off the land sooner than the contractually designated time. Known locally as an honest man of great integrity, Walt Cole was a compassionate but stern father whose motto was “I only swing my axe once.” The boys may have made great sport out of eluding the feds, but they knew better than to test their dad.

One afternoon Frank was alone at the family cabin in the Sugarlands with his youngest brother Sherril. Frank was about sixteen, Sherril about eight. Sherril came into the house shouting excitedly, “Frank, there’s a bear eating Dad’s honey.” Frank rushed outdoors to see a big black bear sitting on his haunches, honey dripping down his face and bees flying all around (At this point in the story, Frank, with great effect, would mimic the bear’s face and its paws swatting at the bees). He had already destroyed a couple of hives and was making short work of another one. Honey being a major source of income for the Coles, Frank knew he had to stop the bear, but he also knew it was big trouble to kill a bear on the newly-designated federal property. Pondering the dilemma as he watched the bear dig out more honey, Frank made a decision: “Sherril, go get me Dad’s rifle.”

Carefully preparing the single shot breech-loading rifle, Frank positioned himself behind a small tree, resting the long barrel of the weapon in the “v” between the trunk and a branch. He took careful aim, and when the bear turned its head, squeezed the trigger. The bullet passed through the bear’s head at the temple, exactly where Frank had aimed. The great animal let out a brief roar and then fell over backwards, still covered in bees and honey. Frank quickly reloaded the rifle, saying, “Sherril, take a stick and go poke that bear. If he moves I’ll shoot him again.” Being the youngest brother could be hazardous in the mountains. Sherril did as he was told, but a second shot was unnecessary. Now the worrying began. Had any federal agents heard the shot? And, more importantly, what would Dad say?

Just as the sun was setting, Mr. and Mrs. Cole, middle brother Allen, and daughter Hazel returned from their trip to town. Frank, knowing the bear carcass would be impossible to hide, swallowed hard and forced himself to tell his dad the story. Mr. Cole, a quiet and calm man by nature, didn’t visibly react to the news. He just stared at Frank for what seemed to the youngster to be an eternity, and then said, “Go up to the Carr’s place and tell Jim to bring his knife.” There was no more discussion. The neighbor came down and the two men spent the night skinning the bear and dividing up the meat in an impromptu covert operation that would — if undiscovered by feds — help feed their families through the coming winter.

Years later Frank’s son Gary would recall that his grandfather’s only response to the re-telling of the classic tale was to say, “Frank could’ve chased that bear away. He wanted to shoot it.” But as far as I can remember, Frank never mentioned the possibility of chasing the bear away. No reason to taint a good story.

During the first summer of our friendship, Frank was a self-professed “dry” alcoholic; he did not use the term “recovering.” This would be my first, but far from my last, honest face-to-face look at alcoholism. I was an everyday beer drinker well before my eighteenth birthday and my dad was less than a decade away from dying of bourbon-flavored cirrhosis, but neither of us had yet admitted any definite problem with the stuff (other than difficulties with the strict liquor laws then in effect for most of East Tennessee, which sometimes made it inconvenient to stay well-stocked.) Frank did not shy away from stating his relationship with alcohol. For him, as he often said, “one drink is too many and a hundred ain’t enough.” Sometimes he said a thousand. And he was quick to forewarn me to stay away if I ever saw him on the hooch.

He remained sober that first summer, but the next summer I saw the other side. I was walking down a back street when I found Frank sitting on the curb. His hair was all mussed up, he had cuts and scratches all over his face, and his glasses were nowhere to be seen. “I got drunk and got in a fight,” he sheepishly slurred through a bloody, toothless grin. I helped him up and took him to his parents’ house, which fortunately was just a block away. On the way I naively started lecturing him on how he had told me himself that he couldn’t drink, but he quickly and accurately informed me that there wasn’t anything new I could tell him on the subject. He also asked me if I would be willing to drive him to the Veterans Administration hospital in Johnson City to dry out — when he was ready. I said I would, and then I took his earlier advice and stayed clear of him for a few weeks.

The call for the VA trip came one evening, and the next morning I got behind the wheel of his elderly mother’s car (his father had died the previous winter). Mrs. Cole got in the passenger seat and Frank sat in the back. The trip to the VA involved the sort of shenanigans to be expected when carting around a drunk, but nothing gravely memorable. I did stop along the way to get him something to drink, already intellectually familiar with alcoholism enough to be wary of DTs showing up before we arrived at our destination. Beer, which wasn’t Frank’s idea of booze, was the only available legal option, and I wasn’t about to seek out a bootlegger under the circumstances. In order to get the necessary alcohol content, he chugged each 16-ounce can in succession, draining the six-pack in about fifteen minutes.

We arrived at the VA and, after an entertaining hour or so in the waiting room, managed to get Frank admitted. I then made the two-hour return trip in the company of his mother. She was an impressively silent woman with a slight but very sincere smile and deep, knowing eyes. I was intimidated but not uncomfortable in her presence. Even if I knew very little about her life, I knew she was someone special. I felt it. Years later I would learn more of her story, but on this day we were both focused on the immediate situation.

The up-until-then quiet Mrs. Cole began to speak as we pulled onto the ramp of Interstate 81. “He’s never been the same since he came back from that war.” She said this matter-of-factly, with neither bitterness nor remorse. Then she added, “Just like his daddy after the Great War,” using the original term for World War I. “They don’t sleep right …” As her words trailed off, she turned toward the countryside rolling by outside the car window, her thoughts compressing decades of memories. After a quarter-of-a-mile or so she faced forward and continued. “Every night Frank will go to sleep in his bed, and every night I come in and cover him with a quilt. He’ll be a laying curled up on the floor. Sometimes he looks like he’s a trying to crawl up under the bed, but he don’t fit. He just never has been able to sleep normal-like since he come home.”

Frank had been married and divorced a few times, and in between marriages he always moved back into his parents’ home in Gatlinburg. But I knew she meant when he returned home in 1945. During the silence that followed I thought about the tremendous suffering this woman must have endured through wars and their never-ending aftermath. And then I remembered Allen, the son who didn’t come back from war. Although I would later research Allen’s story, at the time I did not know the details, just that he had been killed by the Japanese. That was all Frank had told me. Mrs. Cole never mentioned Allen in my presence. As an older man I might have ventured a question, asked about her thoughts on her husband and then her sons going to war, but at the time I couldn’t begin to grasp the measure of that sacrifice. In my later years I would realize that such things are only measured by the inexperienced.

Frank Cole certainly was neither aware of nor concerned with the political shape of the world in 1941. While possessing a sharp intuition and quick wit, he was, like many of his fellow Southern highlanders of the era, semi-literate at best, so he had little need for newspapers beyond using them as insulation for the walls of his family’s log home. Radios were a source of outside information, but most mountain families couldn’t afford a radio and, even if they could, only folks who lived in town had access to electricity. But major news did eventually reach them, and as Frank phrased it, “We heard there was some shootin’ goin’ on,” so he enlisted in the U.S. Army without questioning or being overly concerned with the details of the conflict. Just as his father had done some 25 years before, Frank “answered the call.”

During basic training he found the shooting range to be laughable. How could you not hit a target that was straight in front of you, motionless, with absolutely nothing between you and it to hinder the shot? He easily plugged the bull’s-eye with his first couple of efforts and waited for the congratulations. The sergeant overseeing the exercise calmly told him, “Good shooting hillbilly. You keep it up and they’ll stick you in a tree somewhere and leave you there until the Germans shoot you down.” Frank got the message and started veering his shots off slightly to the left or right of the center, thus earning the marksmanship ribbon without being upgraded to sniper status.

He volunteered for the 101^st Airborne because it paid more money, and money was something his family needed and he enjoyed. There were plenty of stories about his days in the 101^st Airborne. The English scenes prior to D-Day, the jump into Normandy on June 6, the battles in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany — Frank could certainly recite the itinerary like a man who had been there, and he usually made it sound almost fun. But sometimes that veneer cracked a little. For instance, Frank didn’t just refer to himself as a veteran of the 101^st; he delighted in calling himself one of “the Battling Bastards of Bastogne.” That phrase was among the rare moments when he hinted at the reality he had faced in 1944.

One winter day I found Frank drinking coffee in a little bar situated on the rooftop of the Ramada. The bar had picture windows facing every direction and the view was magnificent. There was a heavy snow falling, and the white mountain vista was breathtaking. I took a gulp of beer and made a comment about the extraordinary beauty. Frank only grumbled in response. I was somewhat taken aback as I had expected a true mountain man — and Frank was most certainly a child of the mountains — to revel in the natural beauty of the moment. When I remarked as such, he growled, “Phil, I’ve got no use for snow and never have since Bastogne.”

The siege of the Belgian town of Bastogne was a pivotal event in the Battle of the Bulge, a surprise German counteroffensive that began on December 16, 1945. Thinly spread out within the densely wooded forest that encircled the vital crossroads town, the 101^st Airborne was surrounded by a German army of superior numbers and weaponry. To compound the situation, the battle took place in the midst of one of the coldest and harshest winters in the known history of the region — and, because of the urgency with which they were rushed to the front, the paratroopers were not equipped with winter clothing. Frank mentioned the weather, but what he didn’t mention were the days spent holding the line in a pine forest, a line that was perfectly sighted by the German artillery. The artillery barrages would not only obliterate soldiers caught out in the open or sheltering in their foxholes, many of the bombs were designed to explode at treetop level, thus turning the beautiful pine trees into horrendous sources of shrapnel. Such experiences defy description.

The defenders of Bastogne repeatedly saw their friends and comrades torn to shreds and decimated during intermittent artillery barrages day and night from December 20 through the 27th. During these moments all they could do was hunker down and wait to see if they would still be in one piece when the shelling finally stopped. When it did stop, they would venture out long enough to help the wounded and, if feasible, identify the dead. In between shelling they stayed as alert as possible in their frozen foxholes, ever ready to repel the inevitable infantry attacks. Despite being desperately low on ammunition, food, and medical supplies, the 101^st held the perimeter until the siege was finally broken by the lead elements of General George Patton’s Third Army on the 26th. The main battle itself would continue for another 30 days. The U.S. Army would suffer approximately 100,000 causalities during the engagement, a number that does not include the trauma embedded in those who escaped physical harm.

The above synopsis is a meager sampling of the memories that winter and snow brought to life in the mind of Frank Cole and his fellow survivors of the Battle of the Bulge. I never told Frank what his mother had shared with me about his nightmares, and I never heard Frank blame any of his problems in life on the war. In fact, whenever he mentioned his time in the 101^st, it was obvious that the experience was the defining moment of his life and would have remained so no matter what had transpired in the decades he lived after the war’s end. Frank seemed to know — although he never stated it as such — that he had been used up by the war, but he clearly accepted it as an honor, never something to grumble or complain about.

At the beginning of our friendship, I did not spend too much time reflecting on what men such as Frank had gone through. I was a young man with young man concerns in front of me, and I had trouble seeing beyond those concerns. But early on I sensed that there was something special about this grizzled mountaineer, this proud Battling Bastard of Bastogne — drunk or sober.

On my last summer as a college student I saw Frank sitting alone on the rooftop patio of the Ramada late one night. The bar was closed but I had a key and permission from the bartender to help myself. I filled a mug with beer from the tap and strolled out to where Frank was sitting. He slowly turned his head in my direction and said what he always said when he saw me. “Hello friend.” I sat down. On this night something was troubling my buddy. I casually and cautiously asked if he wanted to share what was on his mind. He said no, and then he began telling me anyway.

Near the end of the war he was leading a patrol that surprised and captured a group of German soldiers. Frank was a sergeant and there were no commissioned U.S. officers present, so he was in charge. Using the few German phrases he had been ordered to memorize for such moments, he told the enemy soldiers to drop their weapons. At this point in the war only the most fanatical Nazis were willing to die for the Führer. All of the soldiers complied — except for their commanding officer. He held his luger and spoke in harsh tones in response to Frank’s demands. But the officer only spoke German. Tensions mounted, and, Frank said, “I shot him in the head Phil.” As he told me he kept his face turned toward the darkness in front of us, the same darkness that hid his mountains from our view. “Somebody told me later that the Geneva Convention said that officers didn’t have to surrender their sidearm. That’s probably what he was trying to tell me. I don’t know. I’ll never know.”

After a short silence I suggested he talk to someone, maybe a preacher (there were zero professional “counseling” options locally in those days). He quickly reminded me that he was labelled as a drunk by the church. There were several denominations sprinkled around Gatlinburg and the surrounding area, but for the indigenous townsfolk, “church” meant the Gatlinburg Baptist Church. Then I reminded him that my dad was a preacher (an Episcopal priest, but to non-Episcopalians in the mountains — which meant pretty much all natives — he was a simply called a “preacher.”) Frank knew Dad and liked him. He thought about it.
The next morning there was a knock on the door of the church rectory where my family lived. It was Frank. My dad happened to be home, and they went into the living room and closed the door. About two hours later they came out. Frank never mentioned the talk to me except to say it was the first time since the war he had ever been able to fully speak of the things he had seen and done as a soldier. Dad, of course, never mentioned it to me at all. There was healing in that moment, I’m certain.

During the last years of his life Frank would go on fewer drunken sprees. I moved away from the mountains in 1983, but on my occasional visits I always looked for Frank. When I found out he had died in 1998, I tracked down his family and was told that his last years were spent peacefully sober and that he had been an active (and welcome) member of the church. He had died stretched out in an easy chair, found by a “lady-friend who had come callin’,” as his daughter-in-law explained it. I thanked her, told her how much I loved Frank, and said goodbye. Then I wept.

To most of the locals, Frank was, at best, simply a drunk. That was his identity. To a few of us, he was a good man trying to outdistance the demons he brought home with him in 1945. And, whether sober or drunk, he was my friend. Always.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Frank was — and still is — one of my most profound teachers. At the end of every summer I always made sure to say goodbye to him before returning to college. Every year he’d say the same thing as I was walking away: “Don’t let all those books get in the way of your education.” It was good advice. I’ve yet to read a book that taught me more about life than I learned from my friendship with Frank J. Cole, the Battling Bastard of Bastogne.

Phil Rice is a native Tennessean currently living in Woodstock, Illinois. His writing has appeared most recently in PBS’s Next Avenue, Ginosko Literary Journal, and The Connotation Press. He is the author of Winter Sun: A Memoir of Love and Hospice.