slice: issue 9

a room full of voices

into the wild

us $8.00

fall ’11/winter ’12 Issue 9

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Slice, Issue 9

Copyright © 2011, Slice Literary, Inc.

Slice magazine is published by Slice Literary, Inc.,

a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization.

Slice is published semiannually.

Please visit us online at www.slicemagazine.

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Donations and gifts to Slice Literary, Inc. are

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Slice is printed in the United States by United

Graphics.

ISSN 1938-6923

Cover and interior design by Amy Sly

Cover illustration by Jing Wei

Illustration on previous page by Daniel Zender

Photos at right by Amy Sly

PUBLISHERSMaria GaGliano

Celia Blue Johnson

ART DIRECTOR/DESIGNERaMy sly

MANAGING EDITORaMelia KreMinsKi

FICTION EDITORSsarah Bowlin

TriCia Callahan

POETRY EDITORToM haushalTer

ASSOCIATE EDITORian ruder

ART/DESIGN ASSISTANTSTess evans

saMuel ferri

BLOG EDITORS

saBa afshar

C.a.B. frederiCKs

READERS saBa afshar, MaGGie

Beauvais, sarah Bowlin,

aManda BulloCK, lissa

edMond, sean Gordon,

luKe hoorelBeKe,

MerediTh Kaffel,

ian f. KinG, aMelia

KreMinsKi, Karen Maine,

liz MaThews, JaCKie

reiTzes, ian ruder, iris

roBerTs, Paul TaunTon

COPY EDITORS/PROOFREADERS JosePh BeninCase,

elizaBeTh BlaChMan,

aManda BulloCK,

TriCia Callahan, ToM

hardeJ, anGie huGhes,

Karen Maine

LITERARY EVENTS EDITORian f. KinG

ASSISTANT LITERARY EVENTS EDITORMaGGie Beauvais

BOARD OF DIRECTORSMaTThew lansBurGh

david liaTTi

susan riChMan

KiMBerly ThoMPson

shane welCh

adrian zaCKheiM

Very special thanks to the following supporters of Slice:

Lori Bongiorno

Walter & Kathy Callahan

Antonio DiCaro

Carmine & Rosalia Gagliano

Joe & Katherine Gagliano

Grand Central Publishing

Sal Gagliano & Linda Lagos

Scott LeBouef

Carl & Patricia Johnson

Christian Johnson

CJ Johnson

Colin Johnson

Heidi Lange

Charlotte Sheedy

Mark & Laura Feld

lifeTiMe suBsCriBers

slice

deAr ReadeR:it’s rare that anyone drifts into the wild. Most people hurtle toward the

mysterious territories that lie beyond the borders of their respective norms.

some are driven by curiosity and a sense of adventure, while others are dragged

kicking and screaming into the overgrowth. They set out to embrace the

unknown or are held captive by it. and that dynamic, between us and the wild,

whatever the wild might be, fits the art of writing perfectly.

issue 9 of Slice celebrates writers who have ventured into the wild—some

literally and literarily. each writer in this issue, the bright new stars and the

established greats, took a chance, ventured into uncharted spaces (fictive or

real), and recorded their journeys on the page.

The result is a collection of interviews, poetry, and prose that will rustle even

the most stoic imagination. you’ll meet the original “wild things” that inspired

Maurice sendak’s beloved children’s book (hint: they’re from Brooklyn),

discover breakout novelist Karen russell’s alligator-wrestling family, and peek

into the world of post-apocalyptic vampires created by bestselling author

Justin Cronin. you’ll experience a glimpse of the wild life as told by middle

school students in the Bronx, visit a house overrun by bats, and encounter some

more unexpected elements of life outside our comfort zones.

whether these writers dove into the unknown uninhibited or tiptoed in with

caution and curiosity, these pages reveal what happens when we break away

from everyday life and begin to explore.

enjoy!

Celia Blue Johnson & Maria Gagliano

Co-publishers

Slice magazine

celia

maria

spotlighther own sPeCial TouCh 135Jackie Shannon Hollis

fictionnoBody’s MaKinG you sTay 10Jackie Thomas Kennedy

CondolenCes 25Kathryn Ma

lord of The flies 39John F. Kersey

CounTry Miles 56Colin Fleming

on BeinG lonely 83 and oTher TheoriesCarla Panciera

liKe The lizard 103Maya J. Gammon

in this issue interViews

with

maurice sendak

justin cronin david

grann

karen russell

TourisT season 108Courtney Maum

honey 114 Rachelle Bergstein

savaGe 125Maggie Murray

winTer harBor 130Elizabeth Bevilacqua

interViewsJusTin Cronin 16Paul Taunton

david Grann 48Tom Hardej

Karen russell 68Maria Gagliano & Celia Blue Johnson

MauriCe sendaK 94Celia Blue Johnson & Maria Gagliano

nonfictionThe Buddha Bird 22Swaha Devi

The Journey hoMe: 34 a Brief faMily hisTorySaba Afshar

iT’s a JunGle ouT There 54Aaron Bir & Andrew Goletz

MounTed MeMories: Can 92 TaxiderMy BrinG us Closer To naTure? Liz Wyckoff

Born of The wild 112Tim Mucci

poetryhouse arresT 15Sara Afshar

hiTChinG 33Josiah Bancroft

a Garden in olneyville 47Andrew Sage

sleePers 66inTroduCTions To BoTany 67Gina Keicher

PaGe of waTer 100sTarwheel 101Rae Gouirand

BildunGsroMan 110lasT resorT 111Annie Binder

TreMor Cordis 122The whiTe doG 123Matthew Daddona

rising VoicesThe wild 74Khady Gueye

inTo The wild 78Lesley Ramos

The wild ThinGs 80Jaslynn Salado

inTo The wild 81Fabiola Cruz

16

An IntervIew wIth

paul taunton

Justin Cronin was best known as the author of literary works like Mary

& O’Neil and The Summer Guest when he made a surprising mid-career

leap to an epic speculative trilogy beginning with The Passage. now, he’s

gone from writing about the human condition to writing a story in which

human survival is . . . conditional. But his creative shift didn’t merely come

from an author’s decision to play with fantastic elements—it came from the

kind of imaginative vision that has given us The Stand and other classics

to which The Passage has been compared. What followed were frenzied

publishing auctions around the world, a major film deal, and an extensive

publicity tour that included a stop at the twenty-first century entertainment

mecca of Comic-Con. Slice caught up with Justin to find out what has

changed along with his new narrative territory, and discovered that the

seeds for The Passage and its upcoming sequel, The Twelve, had been

planted long before.

Justin cronin

17

To many the acts of writing and publicizing a book

are diametrically opposed. were you prepared for the

extent of publicity you’ve done for The Passage?

It’s true that writing and publicizing are

fundamentally unlike each other. Writing is

very contemplative: I rarely leave my house. I don’t have

to talk to people—I don’t get to talk to people. I work

alone for long stretches of time, and time moves in a

different manner when you live like that, actually. Then

for publicity, you go out into the world, and it’s airports

and hotels and talking to people. I was actually pre-

pared for it in some ways by having a day job that

required me to be a performer. I’ve been a teacher of

one kind or another for twenty-five years, and a lot of

teaching is showmanship. You have to know what you’re

doing, but you have to make people pay attention, too.

Speaking in public, going on radio, doing television,

doing interviews—I was pretty well-prepared for it by

my other career. And it’s a nice break in some ways.

phoTogrAph © gASper TrIngAle

end of weB exCerPT The full interview appears in the print edition of Slice. http://slicemagazine.org/subscribe.html

3434

this is a piece of my family history. one day it

will be lore among many other colorful stories that dot

the Afshar family history—a grandfather’s tale about his

great-grandfather. But today it is my tale, about my par-

ents, and it is as factual as their memory and my retelling

allow.

It’s 1983 and an airplane lands in hamburg, West

germany. A young family deplanes. The father, from Iran

and just under thirty, presses on through the terminal.

he moves with purpose, following german signage he

doesn’t understand, masking any jet lag, confusion, and

fear that should be overwhelming. his eyes do wince

in pain occasionally as he does his best to hold his left

wrist steady while he gently guides his rambunctious

two-year-old son with his curled fingers. he can feel

the shrapnel press against nerve endings in his wrist

and hand, curling his fingers tighter. A suitcase is in his

useful hand. he looks back. his wife, from India and not

quite twenty-three, is two steps behind, carrying not

only a suitcase but their six-month-old son, whose skin

looks even paler in the lighting of the airport than it did

on the plane, only a faint smear of blood on his lips as he

quietly sleeps, as if he weren’t throwing up blood just an

hour ago. The mother’s eyes are fixated on the two-year-

old, watching him walk with all the energy one would

expect from a toddler, despite the fact that he clearly

favors his right side. She begins to guide him with her

voice, protecting him from more danger in yet another

foreign land. protecting her husband from having to suf-

fer through any more pain.

There is no real plan once the Afshar family has

landed in hamburg. They only knew that they had to

get there. It was their only salvation. They immediately

go downtown; from there they will have options, they

think. From there they will be able to find a hospital, a

room, someone who could at least speak a common

language—english, Farsi, Urdu; it doesn’t matter at this

point. like the moth to the flame, they are drawn to the

hamburg hauptbahnhof, one of the busiest transporta-

tion hubs in europe. They pause on the curb outside

the station. hunger pangs. hooshmand, the father, sets

in alone to better navigate the crowds in the search for

food. The mother, Zarrin, is left alone with the luggage

and kids. She doesn’t give fear and anxiety a chance to

wrap their heavy fingers around her mind, for the sake

of her children. She keeps those thoughts at bay even

while they wait and wait and wait for hooshi to return.

« . »

return. two months earlier, that was all Zarrin could think about in that walk home after it all happened

in nigeria. I want my baby to return. I want my baby in

my arms.

The Afshars had just come off a different plane, this

time in the northern nigerian city of Kano. They arrived

in the hot, dusty, old city that had been their home for

the past year. For hooshmand this was a long time com-

ing. Zarrin had been with the toddler, Suraj, back in her

homeland of Kashmir, India, to give birth to their second

son, Saba. She had needed to be somewhere comfort-

able, somewhere where she was not lonely. Understand-

ably, the twenty-two-year-old woman wanted to be

with her mother. hooshmand had remained in Kano as

the engineer overseeing the completion of a bridge. he

missed the first three months of his son’s life. The bridge

complete, he finally was able to go to India, meet his

second child, and bring his family back with him.

the Journey homeA Brief fAmily History

Saba afShar

35

the journey home saba afshar

They landed in the middle of the night and took a

taxi home. no one noticed a beat-up car carrying two

desperate, reckless men, but the two men noticed this

foreign family and the large amount of luggage they had

loaded into the cab.

As is the nature of so many violent crimes, the car-

jacking came out of nowhere. This began with a bullet,

shot toward the cabdriver to get his attention. The cab-

bie left the keys and fled. hooshi, who had his toddler

son sleeping in his arms, was simultaneously removed

from the backseat by a second carjacker. Zarrin was

then pulled out of the car as she was reaching for her

baby son, only months old. In the pitch dark, the thugs

assumed it was a valuable she was protecting (not an

invaluable child!). hooshmand then made the bold but

rash move to rescue his youngest in the face of drawn

guns. This was more than the instinct of a father protect-

ing his family. This was a result of training while serving

in the Iranian military under the Shah. This was strength

gained from a life of poverty, from leaving his homeland

and never returning. This was the action of a man whose

faith in god superseded all else.

his lunge toward the backseat of the car was cur-

tailed by a volley of lead. If there was good fortune to

be had during the events in Kano, the first of two such

fortuitous incidents occurred here. The ammunition used

was not bullet rounds. Instead, the gunman who opened

fire on hooshi and the sleeping Suraj was carrying

birdshot. The spray of lead balls ripped through hooshi’s

arms, with a heavy concentration on his left wrist and

hand. he was brought to his knees. As he bled, feeling

his son still breathing in his arms even though Suraj had

not made a sound—had not risen from sleep—the same

gunman emptied hooshi’s pockets, taking his wallet,

keys.

Zarrin watched in abject terror as one of the carjack-

ers sped away in the taxi with her baby. hooshmand,

with a child held even tighter in his arms, chased after

the car. Zarrin, begging her husband to stop, ran after

him. She was scared of further damage. She was scared

of being raped. Foreign women were targeted in the

violent nation. In the increasingly oppressive dark, even

as she watched the second thug run off in the dilapidat-

ed car that crashed the Afshars’ homecoming, she felt

danger around her. She saw more strange men carrying

weapons. She saw them in the dark, on the back of her

eyelids, lurking in windows. She saw them everywhere

until she left nigeria.

When the short, futile chase for their baby ended,

when the dust and noise settled back into a quiet mid-

night, the couple with a still-sleeping child found that

they stood only five blocks away from their home. They

jogged home quietly in silence. Shock clears your mind.

hooshmand and Zarrin only focused on the task at hand,

not allowing grief or panic to waste any crucial time. As

they approached their home, a floodlight switched on.

Zarrin’s eyes went to her child in her husband’s arms.

There was blood everywhere. For a moment she thought

the blood was all coming from hooshi’s lacerated arms.

She stepped in closer to them. Suraj’s shirt was shredded,

and what remained of it was soaked in blood; seeping out

of little holes that lined the side of the toddler’s torso and

left arm. She fell to her knees and shrieked, grabbed the

collar of her white blouse and tore her shirt in half.

This is how they arrived at the city hospital: a young,

short woman half-naked, with the remains of her blouse

dangling from her shoulders and no expression in her

eyes; a man carrying a breathing but motionless child,

desperate to hold him despite the pain registering on

the father’s face. There was blood caking both father

and son. A nurse rushed in and covered Zarrin, surpris-

ing the couple. They had forgotten about her exposed

chest, or the social importance of covering it up.

For the first time since getting out of the cab, Suraj was

removed from his father’s grasp as they were led to sepa-

rate rooms. Zarrin followed her son. The room was dirty;

the nurses and doctors were hesitant to act. A Swedish

friend, Mr. Widegren, arrived, a fellow Baha’i they had met

in the religion’s local community. he found Zarrin and Suraj

in the hospital room. no word on Saba yet. Zarrin left the

room to check on her husband. his room was just as dingy

as Suraj’s. The doctors told them that they didn’t have the

facilities, technology, or ability to perform the fine surgery

necessary for his arms, to give hooshi the use of his left

wrist and hand back, to alleviate any of the pain. Zarrin left

as they began to dress his wounds.

When she returned to Suraj’s room there was com-

motion: Mr. Widegren was assisting a nurse washing out


Country Miles

ColIn flEMInG

PAINTING By RyAN MCLeNNAN

58

slice issue 9

i think that out of all the ways of saving someone, pushing them out of the way of something is prob-

ably the best way to go. It’s the easiest, I reckon, and

you get the same amount of credit for it.

It’s probably even better if there’s snow on the

ground, which isn’t very realistic where we live. What

worries me is how a girl might take it, if things ever got

to the point where you had to prevent her from getting

run down. A guy would probably understand and thank

you and you’d hang out a lot after you had saved him.

he’d probably say that he would have done the same for

you. I guess he’d have to. But you might be stuck with a

friend you don’t really like, depending on what he’s into

and if his parents have a furnished basement or not with

a high-def TV and an Xbox.

My parents would probably try to get us to enact

plays. My mother teaches drama classes to rich kids.

We are not rich, but I think she likes to pretend we are

when she makes me and a couple other kids—the kids

who have nowhere else to be—hop around with wooden

sticks between our legs while my dad works at his video

business in the back of the house.

The teacher of this class where I am currently being

held hostage is from england. Maybe that’s why she

gives us ten minutes of work to do and then we just sit

here until the bell rings. Are they lazy over there? My

dad said they’re a bunch of hooligans, but it “ain’t never

no mind” because the poles (that’s a funny name for a

polish person) there are some of his best customers.

“The sick fucks.” Quite a thing to say when you’re having

meat loaf and Tater Tots at supper. “Your daddy has his

pressures,” as my mother puts it, and then he sort of

waves at me and everyone goes back to their meat loaf

or reaches for more Fanta.

Anyway, if I was going to save someone, the person

I’d like to save most is Summer. She sits in front of me

in a bunch of classes because we practically have the

same last name and it goes alphabetical. hers is hutch-

ens and mine is hutches. It’s kind of my first name too

since everyone calls me hutch. Summer gets called

Summer, as you’d expect. She comes over to the house

after school three days a week, which is embarrassing.

And not just because of how dirty everything is and how

small our house is. The kids call it the Cracker house,

and that got me pretty upset, but I took out a book

from the library on architecture and, sure as shit, it’s a

Cracker house, technically. When my mother’s students

come over there’s hardly anywhere for me to be except

in the kitchen where the class can look in and see me,

or with my dad in my room. he works in there with all of

his video machines that get kept under my bed. So that

doesn’t really leave anywhere for me to be.

My dad’s a film editor for the local TV station. “The

only one who gets to work from home,” as he’ll tell you.

I’m not allowed in my parents’ room—my older brother

Billy went in there once before he left home with his

girlfriend. They snuck in when our parents were out and

when I asked him what all the big deal was, he told me

to mind my business, and he left not long after that. ever

since they’ve had it locked, which my mother explains

by saying I’m at that age where I start trying to extend

my boundaries. She is always saying things like that that

ought to embarrass me, but no kid would understand

her anyway, so you learn not to draw any attention to

her remarks.

Summer pushes her feet back under her desk a lot,

but not today. She has her bag stuffed under her desk

instead of on the side. We touch shoes sometimes. Soon

she won’t be wearing shoes because all the girls wear

sandals when it’s hot. She takes her feet all the way out

then. I’ve touched her that way too.

We’ve never really talked much to each other,

though. Just some little stuff. It’s never my intention just

to talk about little stuff, but when I do, I end up feeling

better that I didn’t try and say more. I don’t really know

any of her friends, and that’s what girls like to talk about.

They all sit at the same table at lunch, and it reminds

me of the times I’ve seen C-SpAn when we had cable,

and I remember watching all of these important-looking

people being so serious at their tables together. There’s

a few guys there too. I’m sort of friends with some of

them from little league, but maybe “former teammate”

would be a better way of putting it.

The ones that are in this class are drawing things

now. Mostly sports stuff—the majority of the kids root

for Duke so they draw the little blue devil guy with his

pitchfork and some of the more famous players like

grant hill and Christian laettner and Bobby hurley. The

59

more old players you know the cooler you are, but there

are some Tar heels fans too because one kid’s older

brother walked on there, wasn’t even recruited, and

he made the team. That’s usually how the teams break

down on the basketball court after school too, pretend

Dukies versus pretend heels.

I’m not good at drawing so I don’t bother. The one

time I tried I was stupid enough to use the back of a

quiz. Mrs. gallagher had everyone send them down the

row facedown so no one could see the answers, and this

kid that everyone calls Souza—his real name is Arthur

peetes, so don’t ask me where Souza comes from—said,

“Did Cauley the retard draw that?” Cauley is regularly

considered to be the retard in our class. he’s not really

retarded but he is kind of like an animal. My dad had a

retarded brother, but I never met him. he climbed out

on the roof of their house when my dad was a kid and

fell off and broke his neck. That was hard on my grand-

mother, but to hear my dad tell it, it was even harder

on him, because she gave him hell about everything he

did after that, even when he got good marks in school.

When she died a while back—after giving my dad five

or six stepfathers and me a bunch of different people to

call grandpa for a spell—I heard him tell my mom that

it was good and that the old slag deserved it. That kind

of sounds like a word Mrs. gallagher would use, but you

could tell from the way my mom reacted that I probably

shouldn’t ask Mrs. g. what it means.

My dad slapped my mom’s ass and came out into the

hall and saw me standing there after I’d retreated a little

bit and asked me if I was in the mood for ice cream. We

normally don’t go out together to get ice cream, but

that day we went all the way to raleigh where there’s

the state’s biggest Dairy Queen. I asked my dad why we

went so far just so I could get ice cream and he could

get some beer, but he just said that he had something

to think on, now that grandma was dead, and now

that she didn’t have anything to leave us, after all. My

mother would call this way of talking my father’s “mode

of expression,” but I just found it confusing. I guess he

thought we had something coming that we didn’t.

“That’s not your concern anyway, little man,” he said

to me as we pulled up into our driveway, and he looked

in the backseat to see if there were any beers left. “A

man’s gotta kill his own snakes.” now, I know he wasn’t

talking about something like that copperhead nest I

found last summer, or the black racer that bit our dog

Kylie. But I’ll be damned if I knew what he was on about,

to put it like Mrs. g. would. I wonder if she’s partial to the

Blue Devils or the Tar heels.

« . »

My dad is the biggest Atlanta Braves fan you can

find. or he was, before their announcer Skip Caray died.

It’s like he didn’t care after that, which I didn’t under-

stand at all. They were about as good a team as usual,

fighting it out for the wild card or the division. one night

after Summer and the rest of my mom’s class of as-

sorted wankers—another Mrs. g. word—left, my dad was

slouched down in the la-Z-Boy really tucking into some

wings and washing them down with his beer. he’d been

off with Summer for a couple hours, doing whatever it

is they did. “Special lessons, pistil,” as my mom puts it,

never mind that I would prefer to be called Ass Master,

Blow King, or lord Stool before being called pistil, which

is the thin part of a flower that comes out of the top. I’m

thin. I’m her flower. get it? Bitch be killing me. So that’s

why I listen to rap—the ’rents can’t stand it. Anyway,

Summer had been off with my father and now she was

gone and he was right knackered in g-speak—that’s how

a bunch of us describe how Mrs. gallagher talks—but

I thought, okay, we can bond a bit and maybe he can

give me the d-low on Summer and I can make my play.

like, maybe she’s a massive Blue Devils fan, and my dad

would know because he’s with her so much and I can use

that to my advantage. Dads dig this kind of bonding shit.

But I barely got to open my mouth before he started

ranting. You would have thought he was comatose

slouched there, but when the Mets hit into a double play

and the Braves announcer got all excited my dad went

nuts, raving with a lot of thong words, which I looked

up later. “You’re blurring your diphthongs! Stop running

those syllables together! Skip Caray never would have

talked this way. Blue-blooded murder of the english

language! oh good. At least you got that monophthong

right, you lazy-ass motherfucking joke of an announcer.

how the hell is the youth of today supposed to learn

country miles colin fleming


94

An IntervIew wIth

Many of us remember crawling into bed, blankets tucked in firmly, and

looking up as someone’s hand slowly turned the pages of a picture book. in

that magical moment our bedroom would transform, the images on those

pages eclipsing the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Maurice sendak captured

the power of a child’s imagination, to transport them into the wild recesses

of dreams, in his most famous book, Where the Wild Things Are. And so he

was a natural fit for this issue of Slice. We had the opportunity to chat on the

phone with Maurice, who lives in Connecticut, a week before his eighty-

third birthday. he took us back to the wildest place he ever went to, the place

that inspired the adventures of his mischievous character named Max. it

was his childhood home, located in Brooklyn, the same borough as Slice ’s

headquarters. so it turns out that the wild can take root in your backyard,

or if you don’t have one—as is the case for many city kids—in the nooks and

crannies of your apartment.

CElIa bluE johnSon & MarIa GaGlIano

MAurice sendAk

95

This is the Brooklyn magazine, right?

yes. This is Celia Johnson and Maria Gagliano, from

Slice.

good, okay.

Maria is actually from Bensonhurst.

oh my god. Well, she lived through it.

our first question is actually about Brooklyn. you were

born in Brooklyn, which is where we are based, and we

were wondering what some of your favorite childhood

memories are.

let’s see if I have any. I guess there were my

friends, the kids I knew. It was a good time

for me. The trees were healthy and shady. I guess I say

that because there was an article in the paper today

about how all the trees in this poor little town, all the

trees were blown away. It made me think of Brooklyn

where all the trees were wonderful, so thick, heavy. I

know there are trees elsewhere than Brooklyn, but I only

knew the Brooklyn trees. And the stoop where every-

body sat and chatted and talked and hollered, yelled

and threatened. Skating with my brother.

These are ordinary childhood memories, nothing

special. There were mysteries that we hid from our

parents, but that’s what all children do. We only told

them a little bit about life. We didn’t want them to get

nervous. So we kept things from them. But that’s not

Brooklyn, that’s just childhood. All I can really tell you

is, I had a good time.

PHoToGRAPH ©JoHN DUGDALe


130130

Winter hArBor

ElIzabEth bEvIlaCqua

Pop gives me a salute and puts a cigar in his mouth before closing the kitchen door. he’s headed to

Jack’s for shotgun shells. pop’s teaching me to shoot. got

me an air rifle. Don’t matter that I’m a girl, he says. Says

I got a better shot than him when he was twelve. I watch

him from the sink window as he gets in the Jeep. We’ve

got time on our hands since it’s summer for me and pop

says it’s perpetual Saturday for him since the fire.

Soon enough, ginger comes in and she’s on the hunt

for pop. I don’t know why she’s friends with pop now,

except maybe that she feels bad because it was her ex-

husband that laid the finish that set our house afire. A

whole house, just like that. And Mum and the boys, too.

Bad product. Wasn’t the first time, either. That’s how we

got the lawyer from portland. Should have been discon-

tinued years ago, he said.

Mum and pop had a new kitchen put on our old

house. It was just about done—walls up, windows in,

floor down—and ginger’s ex-husband laid this high-

gloss sealant to protect the hardwood. he was the

contractor. At the end of the day, he threw the rags in

the trash under the sink and overnight they sparked. It

might have been an electrical spark or just the pressure

and heat built up under the sink, but the rags and the

barrel went up and the whole place caught fast. It was

an old wood house and all that new sealant on the floors

made the smoke bad.

I give ginger the eye and shake my head to let her

know pop’s not here and never will be for her, but she

hollers his name a couple times up the staircase. She is

dressed like a truck driver except that under her open

flannel she’s got on a tank with a deep vee charging

down her bread dough boobs. looks like someone

cut her dough chest in half with a butter knife and

the crooked line jiggles side to side when she clomps

around calling for pop.

I’ve known ginger my whole life. She runs the gener-

al Store in town. It’s penny candy and milk and eggs and

soda and beer and there’s some crap for tourists, too.

lobster-shaped maple candy and buckwheat pancake

mix with a moose on the package. Me and reedy and

Todd would ride our bikes down and get Slush puppies

and salt-and-vinegar chips.

reedy and Todd were two years younger than me—

twins. I was eight when the fire happened. It was the

smoke that got them. Mum, too. Funny how the body

is. You breathe too much smoke, you die. You lose too

much blood, you die. Your heart doesn’t thump enough,

you die. Simple as that. Could happen anytime.

ginger looks at me again.

“not here, ginger,” I say. “he went out.”

“You tell him I came by,” she says.

I don’t want to tell her I won’t, but I won’t. And I don’t

want to say I will because I have a thing now about not


ILLUSTRATIoN By JULIe MoRSTAD

135135

All the towns we lived in were small ones but the

one we moved to when I was nine was smaller than any

of them. papa was sticking with small towns because

they were the best place to raise a son, even if people

tended to snoop into each other’s business. he was sure

Springs would have some boys my age to play with even

if it was small.

The yard around our new house was just a patchy

square of grass. It was springtime and there had been

rain, but most of the grass was brown. There were

no flowers or shrubs or much of anything in our yard,

except for a bendy low-to-the-ground tree in the front

corner.

A few weeks after we moved in, Mama and I were

on the porch. We were taking some sun after the rain.

The people at little’s grocery said the rain was good for

farmers. papa said the wheat farmers were the heart of

this town. Still, it was good to have some sun, even if the

farmers would have problems.

The street was quiet because all the kids were in

school. I didn’t know any of the kids yet because papa

decided I could wait until next year to start school. “It’s

almost summer,” he said. “Anyway, you’ve got enough

smart in you for the year.” he cupped his big hand over

the stubble on my head. “It’ll be good for your Mama to

have you with her for now.” I made a sour face and papa

made a frown.

papa was at work at the highway the day Mama and

I were in the yard. he’d worked all over oregon for the

highway. It was a good place to work, because it was

easy to get transfers and they had a pension. I hoped we

wouldn’t get a transfer from Springs because I’d seen

some boys at the park when he took us on a car tour of

the town. Those boys looked like they were my age.

her oWn speCiAl touCh

jaCkIE Shannon hollIS

PHoToGRAPH By eRIN HANSoN

138

slice issue 9

I got up off the porch and walked over to the little

red tree. I tipped my cowboy hat back off my head and

squinted at Mama. “It looks awful scrawny,” I said. The

leaves were soft. I rolled one between my thumb and

fingers.

Mama came over and bent down to the hunched tree.

“That’s a maple tree, little Cowboy.” There was a sigh in

her voice. Mama wore herself out in Milton and papa told

her she needed a good long rest and should take her

time to get to know people in this new town. She was

doing that, getting a good long rest in our new yard.

The red leaf between my fingers turned into red dots

and goo. I wiped it off on my jeans and tugged the string

catch that kept my hat tight on my head. I made a line of

heel marks with my cowboy boots, in the dirt. The dirt

was damp from the rain and my boot marks looked like

some kind of hoof animal had been there.

Mama made a sigh again and straightened back up.

She looked around the rest of the bare yard. “This yard

is one big patch of nothing.” She put her hands on her

hips so her arms made triangles.

I heeled my way over to the cement porch and sat

on the second step. Mama turned away from the yard,

toward the street. her shoulders and elbows were sharp

points and she was still. When Mama was like that,

still and pointy, it got inside me and made me still and

pointy too.

« . »

the day we took that car tour of springs, the day

I saw those boys who might be my age climbing on the

monkey bars at the park, I’d counted that there were

eight blocks on either side of Main Street and twelve

blocks going out either way. I’m pretty sure that was the

least blocks of any town we’d been in.

Mama was quiet that day. She was in the front seat

but she was clear over by her door, not next to papa like

she sometimes was.

papa said, “This town is a good one for a boy to grow

up in, Mary Anna.” That was when we drove by the blue

house that was four blocks down from us. “We don’t

need to worry about what other people in this town

have,” he said.

Mama’s face was turned away from him. She was

looking at the blue house.

papa said, “We have enough on our own.” he looked

back at me and winked. But there was a wrinkle between

his eyes and it made the wink look sad.

The blue house had a big tree and lots of pink and

purple flowers. Mama turned her whole body to keep

looking at that house. The side of her face went soft and

the little lines she called crow feet almost disappeared.

“oh,” she said, “that’s a pretty garden.” She ran her fin-

ger on the window and it left a smear. She perked up in

her seat. “Well, sure.” She wrapped her arms like a hug

for herself. “This will be a fine town for a boy to grow up

in.” her voice had a singing sound in it.

papa had both hands on the steering wheel, tight,

like he was wringing a washrag.

« . »

right before we left Milton, our last town, Papa

got mad at Mama. I was supposed to be sleeping but

they were making noise. “This has got to stop, Mary

Anna.” he was trying to whisper and yell at the same

time. “This thing, it just takes you over. You disappear.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that. I never saw her

disappear.

« . »

in the yard, when Mama was still and pointy, she

didn’t see the yellow-stripe cat peeing in the opposite

corner. he scratched dirt back with his front paws and

looked over his shoulder at Mama. I pulled my pistols

from my holsters and pointed them at the cat. “Bang,

bang.” If I’d had a real gun he would’ve dropped dead

sideways. That cat scratched one last time over the wet

he’d left in our yard. he went on across the driveway

into the neighbor’s yard where there was a good long

stretch of green grass.

« . »

the next day, i was in the front room playing G.i. Joe when Mama came out of her bedroom. She had


slice: issue 9

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