Saints & Sinners 2010
New Fiction From the Festival
edited by
Amie M. Evans
& Paul J. Willis
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
QueerMojo an imprint of Rebel Satori Press on Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by Saints & Sinners Literary Festival
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Contents
The End of Jesus, Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Latins on the Loose, James Nolan
Finders Keepers, Aaron Hamburger
Jesus Is My BFF, James Driggers
Saint Daniel and His Demons, Rob Byrnes
Dancing Pink Roses, Danny Bracco
Storyville 1910, Jewelle Gomez
The Last Excursion, Jess Wells
Part of the Saints & Sinners Literary Festival’s mission is to bring GLBT writers at all stages of their careers together with each other, editors and publishers as well as readers to learn from each other, network, foster a sense of community and recharge their creative spirits while supporting the New Orleans AIDS Taskforce. We are proud to say this anthology is a direct product of that mission. It brings together the work of writers at all stages of their careers and a portion of the proceeds from this project will be donated to NO/AIDS.
The First Annual Short Fiction Contest and this anthology couldn’t have happened without the generous support of a number of people. Sven Davisson of QueerMoJo, A Rebel Satori Imprint, who volunteered to publish this book; Mike Kooiman who designed the fabulous cover; and the judges who donated their time to read and reread the entries. We would like to thank them as well as everyone who submitted their work to the contest.
Saints and Sinners 2010: New Fiction from the Festival contains a mixture of short fiction representing many genres and styles as well as a diverse number of themes and experiences. It was truly a difficult task for the judges to select a winner and two runner-ups from over a 100 entries. The completely-blind, three-tier judging process that was used yield what we think is a wonderful set of stories. The finalists for our first annual short fiction contest were Danny Bracco, Nathan Burgoine, Emily M. Danforth, James Driggers, Jack Fritscher, Wayne Lee Gay, William Holden, James Nolan, Steve Scott and Shawn Syms.
There are five stories from the contest included in this volume along with works by established authors. The winning story, “Ondine” by Wayne Lee Gay (Denton, TX), is a musical tale of both longing and awakening. The two runners-ups are as different from each other as, well, as Saints & Sinners. “Dancing Pink Roses” by Danny Bracco (San Francisco, CA) is a sensual story of personal discovery—both enlightening and painful. “Jesus is My BFF” by James Driggers (Asheville, NC) weaves a complex story of intolerance, self-destruction and affirmation in an unexpected way. The two remaining finalist included are “Latins on the Loose” by James Nolan (New Orleans, LA), a witty story about the hazards of ‘shopping locally’, and “The Kid” by Steve Scott (Rancho Mirage, CA), a dark tale of a not-so-right young man.
In addition to the finalists from the First Annual Short Fiction Contest, we are honored to include stories from “Festival Favorites”—some of the best GLBT authors. We have wonderful new works from Lambda Literary Award winners Rob Byrnes, Greg Herren, and Jeff Mann. The collection also includes original fiction from award-winning authors Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Peter Dube, Aaron Hamburger, and Jess Wells. We are extremely excited to include Jewelle Gomez’s “Storyville 1910” which provides readers with a new adventure of the main character from her cult-classic 1991 Gilda Story—winner of two Lambda Literary Awards.
John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, will be the final selection judge for the 2011 contest. We want to encourage each of you to enter the Second Annual Short Fiction Contest and to come to New Orleans for Saints & Sinners.
We cannot think of a more fitting way to end this introduction then with this quote from Michael Thomas Ford, 2009 Saints and Sinners Hall of Fame inductee, who sums up exactly how we hope every person who attends the Festival feels:
No other city is like New Orleans, and no other writers conference is like Saints & Sinners. Where else can you bring beignets and chicory coffee from Cafe Du Monde to your morning panel on creating realistic murder scenes? Where else are you going to have crawfish ètouffee while exchanging ideas with half a dozen other writers from all around the country over lunch between sessions? Where else can you take a vampire tour after the day’s events are over? The magic of New Orleans enlivens everything about the conference, resulting in an atmosphere that recharges the creative batteries and reminds us why we love to write. I’ve been going to conferences for more than 20 years, and never have I enjoyed them as much as I do when I’m at Saints & Sinners. The conversations with other writers outside of the sessions are just as informative and inspiring as the panel discussions and workshops, and the opportunity to spend time with writers from so many different genres makes this a completely unique experience you won’t get from any other conference. When I come home from Saints and Sinners I’m always more excited about my work—and about the work of my fellow writers—than when I left, and I immediately start counting down the days to next year’s conference.
We hope you enjoy this collection and thank you for supporting Saints & Sinners.
Amie & Paul
Lucy Jane Bledsoe
Mac was dead. She’d been dead for over 30 years. So when I found her little book in Powell’s my knees literally buckled. I sat down, collapsed would be a more accurate word, right there onto the bookstore’s wooden plank floor. A late afternoon August light came in a window across the room, washing me with its dusty warmth. In my trembling hands I held the book that had failed to save Mac’s life. Though it had saved mine.
I’d come back to Oregon for my mother’s memorial service, which would be taking place in under an hour, and I’d walked to the bookstore in a kind of trance that was a combination of grief and dread. The city of books was a comfort, all those words, all that knowledge, the vast diversity of human experience. I strolled through the store’s many rooms as an antidote to the service I was about to attend, where everyone would believe in one, and only one, truth. I was considering staying in the bookstore, skipping my mother’s memorial service. That blasphemous thought made me touch the books for grounding, for random guidance, and I dragged my hand along a row of bumpy spines.
And there it was. I would have known it anywhere. The unassuming slim girth. The short red spine with the white lettering. Mac’s book.
It wasn’t just the same title, it was the very book, her copy. I knew this because when I opened it up and flipped through, I found, in the back, a section of blank pages. On the first of these pages was the printed word “Notes.” Here the book owner was supposed to write down her own observations, and Mac had, with brief discretion. She’d written:
June 10: Sylvia.
June 14: Sylvia. Sylvia.
June 30: Sylvia. Sylvia. Sylvia.
August 9: Robin’s rocks.
August 18: Hell.
September 2: How to survive talk.
September 21: The end of Jesus.
The August 9 entry? That’s me, Robin. I experienced a strange gratification in seeing that I was one of three people she named in that summer’s significant events: Sylvia, me, Jesus. I’d lived under an entire rock pile of guilt all these years, but apparently it hadn’t been misplaced. I had been a major player in Mac’s demise.
I bought the book—so far as I knew, all that remained of Mac and that summer—and took it back to my hotel, where I packed and checked out. Yes, my mother had died. And yes, I felt an enormous and tangled sadness. But that didn’t mean I had to subject myself to her most recent pastor and congregation who, I’d been informed many times, prayed for me regularly.
Instead, I drove to the scene of my 30-year-old crime, three hours from Portland. Armpit, Oregon, 97603. I wish I could say all those years provided me with a kind of armor, but they didn’t. As I drove into town through the Douglas firs that line the highway, I once again became that tender 12-year-old who didn’t know Paris, France, from A-Hole, Oregon. Who knew how to read but hadn’t ventured beyond the Bible. Who believed Jesus was everyone’s savior. And why not? His picture alone looked like a way out. The thin, defenseless chest and skinny arms. Scraggly but clean, even pretty, hair. Sorrowful eyes. He didn’t look like most men. He looked almost like a girl. He didn’t hunt or belch as a joke. He shared his food and washed bad women’s feet. At the time it seemed hopeful, optimistic, that he was our model for love.
I drove directly to the church and parked in the big lot that spanned the space between the buildings and the woods. The church itself was nothing more than two big prefab structures attached like an L. The smaller building was the sanctuary, and the larger one was a combination of community hall, classrooms, and offices. A light early autumn drizzle made the whole place look even more dreary than I remembered it, but I got out of my truck to brave the dampness. The confusing thing about returning to a place that has a hold on your psyche is that you simultaneously can’t believe you’ve let it have so much power over you even as it exerts its full force all over again.
New Day Church of Jesus Christ had youth events on most weekend evenings, which were pretty much mandatory. Movies, karaoke, even some early version of Christian speed-dating for the older kids. The community room is huge and the little kids were kept on one side, usually drawing pictures or listening to stories. I was always more interested in what the big kids were doing, but I wouldn’t graduate to that side of the room until the following year.
One exceptionally warm July evening, I noticed Mac leaving the community room, and not by the door that led to the bathrooms. It was pizza night, and the big boys were being obnoxious, shouting insults and throwing wadded up napkins and spilling sodas. Pastor Evan wasn’t there most Saturday nights, but he had two assistant ministers, Alan who was just out of high school and Carly who was actually an ordained preacher, but young, too. Alan was usually assigned to us, but you could tell he’d rather be working with the older kids. He was just waiting for his promotion. That night, as the boys started getting rougher, he left our side of the community room and rushed across the big hall to help calm the situation. Trevor, who already shaved a dark beard daily, had decked a skinny boy and was “wrestling” him, pretending it was all in fun, but the other kid didn’t look like he was having fun. As the mayhem escalated, I saw Mac leave. I stepped out right behind her.
Mac walked across the church parking lot and straight into the woods. I hesitated because there wasn’t any path, just trees and dirt and who-knew-what animals. But it was still bright out, and Mac didn’t seem afraid, and so I followed, moving as quietly as I could so she wouldn’t hear me.
Mac was 15 years old and unlike all the other teen girls at New Day. Lanky and awkward, she wore boyish clothes and her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I coveted her high-top sneakers. I thought she got away with dressing like that because she was so smart. Mac knew the Bible inside and out. She could quote verses by heart. And yet she refused to flaunt it. I think this frustrated Pastor Evan, how if he called out the chapter and verse, she’d deliver the words, but if he asked her to supply a passage that illustrated some point he was making, she’d shake her head. She wasn’t willing to twist the meanings of Bible stories to flesh out anyone’s agenda. It’s like she only wanted to set the words, verbatim, alongside life, and then watch what happened. I thought that was why she always carried a small Bible right in her back pocket. The word against the body.
I think Mac tried hard to not be noticed. Pastor Evan liked working with the kids who were pushing the envelope: girls who showed too much skin or boys who smoked pot. He enjoyed wrestling with people’s souls. Mac was boring with her no-nonsense dress and straightforward intelligence. Back then, in the early summer, no one much noticed or cared about Mac. Or so I thought.
On that warm evening I followed her, she moved through the woods with the ease of an elk. As she ducked under a downed tree, the mossy log leaning against the upright trunk of another, she ran her hand along the cushion of green as if it were something lovely. Soon she emerged from the woods and onto the cut-off road that led to the dump, and she walked along this slowly, picking up stones and tossing them at trees. Sometimes she stopped and looked up at the sky, and I’d look too, expecting to see a plane or a bird, but there was only the blue. She climbed the small hill overlooking the dump, and then turned and said, “Why are you following me?”
I shrugged.
She looked at me for a long time and I looked right back. I’d been watching her all year, but I guess, along with everyone else, I hadn’t really seen her. The jeans, bright white boy’s tee, and blue and green flannel plaid shirt looked good. I noticed that then. How comfortable she seemed. It made me wish I had jeans and a flannel shirt, too, instead of the scratchy girl clothes.
“Why did you leave the church?” I asked.
She sat down on the hill’s small summit, and I climbed up to sit next to her, regretting the stupid question. The dump had baked in the sun all day, and the stench was ripe, a cross between burnt rubber and rotted banana peels.
She said, “I have things I want to think about.”
“Yeah, me too.”
She looked at me again, and I felt exposed, like in those dreams where you realize you accidentally went to school naked. And yet, it felt strangely good, like deep honesty. Even the stench felt necessary right then. She asked, “You ever been out here?”
“Once to drop off our old refrigerator.”
“Watch,” she said, and nodded toward the pile of car parts and cut grass and carpet scraps and the hulls of televisions. There were three or four crows, their wings shiny black, flapping around the trash, picking at anything edible.
“The crows?”
“Them. For starters.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes and watched the crows. They had their own personalities. Some were funny. Some, mean. One kept trying to chase the others away, like it deserved an advantage.
The sun had set and I began to worry about walking back in the dark. But something kept me seated next to Mac, and I was sure glad I stayed, because at deep dusk, a black bear came out of the woods and climbed up on the garbage. The crows screamed and leapt into the air, circled over the bear, as if they could drive it away, and then alighted on a different part of the garbage heap. The bear snoofed around until it found a relatively fresh dump of potatoes and cabbage and orange rinds. It scarfed all that down.
After the bear finished eating, it lifted its head and looked right at us. I grabbed Mac’s arm.
“Won’t hurt ya,” she said. “He only wants to eat.”
There was a deep calm about Mac. Like she was happy. Like she knew a really good secret. I thought about all the other kids back in the church, chugging soda and burping pepperoni breath, and how extraordinary it was that I got to be here with the crows, bear, and Mac. I swear, I felt as if something lifted me right off the ground and floated me. I thought—I did, I’ll admit it—that I’d been somehow chosen, maybe because I was so good, to be here. Deep down in my gut I felt a glow, and it spread, all around us. I whispered, “Thank you, Jesus,” and Mac smiled at me. She got it.
Mac let me walk back to the church with her and we went right through the dark woods. It was as if she had cat eyes, could see in the dark. I held onto the tail of her flannel shirt. The floating and glowing stayed with me the whole time I was with her.
That week I walked out to the dump every chance I got, hoping to find her. Finally, late Thursday afternoon, I saw her sitting on top of the hill. I was afraid she wouldn’t be so happy to see me, so I hid in the woods and watched. After about five minutes, she shouted, “I see you.” At first, I wanted to run in shame. But as I stepped into the sunshine, the shame was replaced by some other feeling that moved my feet forward. I thought it was the Jesus feeling again. Levitating me to Mac. She got up and shook out each leg, and met me halfway. “I’m walking back now,” she said and let me fall in step beside her.
This time, instead of going directly through the woods to the church parking lot, she headed off toward the creek. When we got near, she crouched down and said, “You know this plant?”
I shook my head.
“Nettles. They’ll sting you. But you can also eat them.” She reached into her back pocket and pulled out what I had always thought was a Bible. She flipped through the pages until she found the one she wanted, and then read, “The whole plant is edible but it tastes best when it’s young.” She looked up at me. “If you cook it, the stingers mush out. You can also put the whole plant in a blender. It’s good for joint and muscle pain.” She handed me the little red book so I could read for myself, like maybe I wouldn’t believe her. I looked at the cover: How to Survive in the Wilderness.
“Watch,” she said. Still crouching, Mac scraped away a layer of forest floor. She pinched some of the black soil between two fingers, placed it on her tongue and swallowed. I kept my eyes on her face, awed.
“The difference between dirt and soil,” she said. “It’s very important. Dirt is just dirt. Stuff you don’t want to touch. But soil is completely clean. It’s old trees and plants all broken down. It’s perfectly fine to eat.”
“Like the bear eating at the dump?”
“No, not like that at all. That bear shouldn’t be eating at the dump. He does it because it’s easy. He should be finding his own roots, berries, and gophers.”
I still had How to Survive in the Wilderness in my hands and I wanted it so badly I just slipped it into my own back pocket.
She held out a hand and said, “Give it.”
So of course I did.
The next Saturday night she once again walked right out of church. I watched her go. She had the little square book in her back pocket again, its shape discernable under the flannel shirt. I watched it move against her butt as she walked. I knew what I’d seen: How to Survive in the Wilderness. Yet somehow my mind did a trick and pretended it was the Bible, after all. When she’d been gone a few minutes, I pictured her ducking under the mossy log.
I would have followed her again if I could have. No one had missed her the previous week, but I was only 12 years old. Carly and Alan had conniptions when I turned up missing. I lied and said I’d left the community room to take a nap in the lounge. Now they watched me like a hawk. There was no way I was going to be able to sneak out again during church events.
But I continued my weekday pilgrimages to the dump, sometimes checking once in the morning and again in the afternoon. I liked thinking of myself as the only person on earth who knew the real Mac, probably her only true friend. I imagined her to be lonely, lonely enough to not mind the companionship of a little kid.
On Wednesday of the following week, I was stunned to find Mac sitting on the hill above the dump—with someone else. I stayed in the woods where I could watch, and this time she was too busy with that other person to notice me.
This would be August 9. Mac described that day’s events with two words: Robin’s rocks. Let me fill in a few more details.
Mac’s companion was a pretty girl with brown skin and wavy black hair. She wore a close-fitting cool lime tank top that showed a lot of her breasts, and tight jeans with a big brown leather belt. Her feet were bare and her toenails were painted blue. The two girls laughed and pulled at tufts of grass. Mac laid her arms across her drawn up knees and hid her face in them. Then she peeked at the girl out the side of her self-made mask. She was smiling. Finally, the girl pulled one of Mac’s hands away from her face and held it in her own lap. She tickled Mac’s palm with her fingers, as if she were writing words there. Mac’s expression got very serious. Then the girl turned her head so that her face was just about two inches from Mac’s. She waited there, as if something was going to happen.
Then something did happen. Mac kissed her. Right on the mouth.
I was still okay then. Sort of. Jesus is love, right? This looked like love, too. Love equals love.
But the kiss didn’t end. It just kept going. They looked like they were mashing each other’s faces. The girl leaned back and pulled Mac down with her. They scooched their entire bodies against each other.
That white light I had felt with Mac? The glow I thought was Jesus? It popped and hissed like firecrackers now. It burnt and scorched, turned almost instantly to hot, dry coals.
I bent down and searched the ground until I found a rock. It was the size of a golf ball, with sharp edges. I fired it at the two girls. It was a good shot and landed near their feet, but they didn’t even notice. I felt both anger and helplessness. I thought I could smell smoke. It pushed at my chest, suffocating me. I didn’t think I could breathe. I picked up a bigger rock and fired it, too. This one landed a few feet away from their heads, and now they noticed. They sat up, startled, looking around. I began pelting them with stones, throwing as hard and fast as I could. Mac leapt to her feet and picked up a rock herself. She threw it back at me and shouted, “Get out of here!”
That’s when I saw the bear. It had come lumbering to the dump, but stopped when it saw the human crossfire. They were up on the hill, but I was in the woods, in its territory, and this only increased my fear. I meant to shout the words, but they came out in a hoarse whisper. “I’m telling,” I said. “I’m going to tell.”
I ran all the way back to the church, tripping on the sticks in my path, once falling so hard I scraped both forearms. I got right up, though, and ran so fiercely that by the time I got to the church parking lot I was wet with tears and sweat. Pastor Evan always said that he was there for us, that we could come and talk any time, and now I went directly to his office.
On this day, though, his door was locked. A dry mark board was attached to the door and a marker dangled from a string. Across the top of the board were the words: I want to see you! Leave a note. I took the marker and wrote, “Robin was here.”
After that, I saw the other girl everywhere. At the grocery. Waiting at the bus stop. Sitting in a parked car in front of the library. She always wore gigantic gold hoop earrings that tangled and glinted in her dark hair and the tight jeans. She was really pretty, even though her face was badly broken out with acne. I liked her mouth. It was asymmetrical and her smile was like cocking a gun, quick and then released. I learned that she worked in the Arco convenience store, and so I asked Gregory, who pumped gas, her name.
“You mean Sylvia?” he said. “That Indian chick?”
I shrugged and walked away, as if he’d misunderstood me.
I never told.
I never told.
I never told.
But everything changed anyway. I saw it happen with my own eyes, Mac’s transformation. All because she thought I’d told. She didn’t sneak out of church events anymore, and her more obvious presence caused Pastor Evan to start taking an interest. I saw him talking to her after the Sunday service, his hand resting on her shoulder, a restraining chumminess. Carly, too, started asking her to participate. Small things at first, like, “Mackenzie, would you mind handing out the cupcakes?” And, “Mackenzie, you have a lovely voice, will you say the prayer tonight?” Mac used to object when people used her full name, but now she let it go.
I suffered terribly that August. I was only 12 years old. I experienced life deeply, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. What happens to you at that age is like a dream, the way it penetrates your entire psyche, floods you with feelings as specific and bright as colors, as wet as water, as blunt as a rock. You can’t lift an arm without lifting the weight of that dream, too. But you don’t really know what happened to you. You only can tell the story, the events.
It became my mission to correct Mac’s belief that I had told. Every Sunday I waited after the service for a chance to talk to her, and if I saw her alone, I shot over. But she would walk away before I got close, joining a group of people so I couldn’t have a private word with her. Or she would look right through me, as if I were completely invisible. Once I slid into a pew behind her in the chapel and, talking in a hot whisper, said something to the effect of, “I didn’t tell, Mac! I swear it.” But she was gone before the first word left my mouth.
I still went out to the dump a lot and sat alone on top of the hill. Always the crows were there. Sometimes the bear showed up. Mac never came, but I liked to pretend she was sitting next to me. That way I could see the crows and bear and sky and woods through her eyes. Shimmering with light. That secret her whole body had seemed to hold. Of course I thought nonstop about the kiss between Mac and Sylvia. As well as my shameful behavior. It had been plain ugly jealousy. I knew that. I had wanted Mac all to myself. Each time I left the dump, I stopped in the woods near the creek, scratched away a layer of the forest floor, and ate a taste of soil.
Mac’s condition worsened every week. She lost weight. She also lost her purposeful gait. Her gaze, rather than searching out worthy subjects, seemed to just land anywhere. Then, near the end of August, Pastor Evan attended a Saturday night youth event, and right in front of everyone, he asked Mac to give a talk on wilderness survival! He must have discovered her book. He smiled hard as he made the request, as if it would be an honor for her. Mac said she didn’t know anything about wilderness survival, but he insisted, saying that she was never without her book. It sounded like a reprimand, like she was never without the wrong book. The little kids, including me, were corralled to the big kids’ side of the community room, and she was made to stand in front of the entire group. The older boys slid low in their chairs, smirks on their faces, exchanging looks.
Mac said the stuff about nettles and also talked about some roots you could dig up and eat. Pastor Evan wouldn’t let her sit down yet, though, and so she talked about building a shelter against rain and wind. She said that a hat was the best protection against hypothermia because you lose 90% of your body heat from your head. She didn’t tell them anything about crows, bear, or soil.
Pastor Evan said how interesting her remarks had been. He said he liked it when pretty girls like Mackenzie took an interest in the works of God. Some of the boys cracked up and elbowed each other. Later that evening, I saw Pastor Evan take these boys aside, one by one, and give them a talking to.
The next Saturday night the teens had a dance. I’m confused about the timing here. Mac’s notes in the back of How to Survive in the Wilderness list her talk as having taken place the week after the “Hell” entry. I would have reversed those two. Surely “Hell” refers to the events I’m about to relate. In any case, I saw everything. The little kids got to sit against the far wall and spectate the dance. Mac was being watched too closely now to slip out. Several of the boys asked her to dance, and it was obvious even to me that the staff had made them. Seeing that big strong girl, who knew how to survive in the wilderness, and more, the difference between soil and dirt, in the arms of a pallid, skinny boy made me want to throw up.
But here’s what broke my heart: I remembered what she had said about the bear, how it should be hunting its own good food, not eating garbage when it didn’t have to. It ate the garbage anyway, voluntarily. So did Mac. I could see it: she was trying. She wore black slacks rather than her jeans. She had on a yellow blouse rather than her tee-shirt and flannel. She waited between dances, staring straight ahead, some false pride propping her up.
The lights were out. Alan and Carly milled among the dancing couples to make sure they weren’t touching too much. Most of the little kids were falling asleep, sinking into sugar comas after all the cookies and juice. I stayed alert, felt as if I had to, not unlike the circulating ministry.
Then I saw her slip out, after all! I felt like cheering. It was like seeing a fox break free from a trap. But then I saw Trevor step out right behind her. No one stopped either of them. I followed, sliding along the shadows of the community room and out the door. Mac and Trevor walked together now, crossing the parking lot, heading for the woods. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The woods belonged to Mac. The soft green mosses and joint-healing nettles. Why would she show them to him?
A hand clamped around my upper arm and a rough female voice said, “Get back inside.” It was Carly, who was in charge of the big kids, not the little kids.
“But Mac and—”
“Mind your business.”
So this was a sanctioned excursion to the woods. Where some kids needed to be restrained, others apparently needed encouragement.
I should have persisted. Someone would have had to listen to me. But how could I have explained about the truth in Mac’s high-top sneakers, her grace in the forest, her book on survival? The lies flapped around my head liked open-mouthed, winged bats, obstructing my clear view with fear. I went limp as Carly dragged me back inside the church, and I imagined Mac going limp at the same moment, back there in the woods with Trevor.
School started that week, and I had a hard teacher, lots of homework. It got dark earlier and earlier in the afternoons, and I never walked to the dump again.
But sometimes, if I had some money, I stopped in at the Arco convenience store on my way home from school. I spent as long as I dared browsing the chips and candy before making a selection, Sylvia a hot presence at my back. Then I’d carry the chosen snack to the counter and set it down with my dollar. I was afraid of her. Her face was aflame with acne. Her gaze scraped across me. Her tight clothes and big hoop earrings said fuck you. Still, I kept coming.
On about my tenth visit, she said, “You’re the girl who threw rocks.”
I shook so hard I had to hold onto the edge of the counter. That day she wore a yellow sweater and skinny jeans tucked into high boots, the big belt.
“Little tattler,” she said. “Rat.”
“I didn’t tell,” I whispered.
“Right.” She crossed her arms and her breasts squooshed up. “Get lost.”
A guy plunked a six-pack down on the counter and she waved me aside and took his money. I stood around outside the Arco station the rest of the afternoon, until the end of her shift, and when she came out, I said, speaking loudly and clearly this time, “I didn’t tell.”
“Go home,” she said. “And never come back.”
The way I felt about Sylvia wasn’t the Jesus feeling. There was no glow, no levitation. Maybe it’s perverse to feel what I felt in the face of someone’s anger, but as she shooed me away from the Arco station, I believe I had my first experience of patent lust. I admired Mac. I wanted to be her. But Sylvia was gorgeous. I wanted to touch her.
Two days later, in the middle of math, my teacher got a call from the school office. I heard her say, “I didn’t know Robin had a sister. Really? Oh, well. Okay.” She hung up the phone and said, “Your sister Sylvia is here for you, Robin. You have a dental appointment in 15 minutes.”
An icy fear blatted in my stomach. She had come to beat me up. Then maybe drag my unconscious body out to the dump. Of course I didn’t have to go. I could have told my teacher that I didn’t have a sister, nor a dental appointment. But I packed up my books, all of them, and my notebooks as well, as if I were leaving school for good, and then got my jacket out of the closet. I put it on and zipped it up. I said, “Bye,” to the whole class, like a total dork, but I sensed that when I stepped out of the classroom door, it would be the end of life as I knew it. And I was right.
I walked down the hall and entered the school office. An older girl I’d never seen before stood up from the row of visitor chairs and scolded, “So you, like, forgot, Robin? Mom’s really mad. Hurry up. Let’s go.”
I followed her out the door and into the cold, rainy day. She didn’t say another word and neither did I, though I snuck glances at her. She was tall and athletic, wore her dark blond hair short, and popped her knuckles continuously, like she was nervous. We walked to the end of the block, and then around the corner, where the real Sylvia was waiting.
“Ha! It worked!” Sylvia said. To me she explained, “With the color of my skin, they weren’t going to buy my saying I was your sister.”
I waited silently to find out what was going to happen. Sylvia put a hand on my shoulder and nodded at the gold Mustang parked at the curb. “Come on. Lynne has a car. Get in.”
Sylvia opened the back door for me, Lynne got behind the wheel, and Sylvia climbed in the front passenger seat and then cranked around to face me. She looked cold, wearing just a sweater, and she crossed her arms, squooshing her breasts again. Lynne looked straight ahead.
“Mac’s in trouble,” Sylvia said. “She tried to kill herself. She’s in the hospital.”
I was 12 years old. How can I express how this news hit me? Mac thought I’d told. I’d watched her shame spill across her life, soaking everything, drowning her happy secret. It was my fault.
“Lynne is going to take us to the hospital,” Sylvia said, and right on cue, Lynne turned the key in the ignition, pulled the Mustang away from the curb. “I already tried to see her but that pervert of a pastor of yours is in the room with her, won’t let me in. You’re in their church. He’ll let you in.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I croaked.
“Get her out of there.”
Of course Sylvia and Lynne, at ages 15 and 16, were children, too. They hadn’t thought anything through. They didn’t have a plan. They felt as desperate as I did. But I didn’t know any of this at the time. So far as I was concerned, they were more savvy than true adults. They handed me the job of getting Mac out of the hospital, and I strained under the weight of that grave responsibility. Not only had I caused Mac’s fall, her chances for life were now in my hands.
To this day, I remember nothing of the drive to the hospital, nor do I remember getting out of the car and walking into the building. I only remember standing in the doorway to her room. I feel like I’ve been standing in that doorway ever since.
Nothing says despair better than a hospital room. The white. The tubes and instruments. The drips and astringent smells. The flickering of hope, like a flashing taunt. Maybe it’ll be okay, but probably not.
Mac was on her back, the bed propping her up. Her eyes were open and she stared at the wall below the mounted television. She looked so lost.
“Mac!” I cried and started into the room, but Pastor Evan stood abruptly and blocked my entrance.
“Please,” I told him as he pushed me into the corridor and shut the door behind us. “I need to see her.”
“Not now, Robin. She’s in critical condition. She needs your prayers. And you can do that at home.”
“I need to see her,” I wailed and tried to step around him.
“I know your heart is heavy, Robin,” he said. “Shall we pray together?”
The words of his prayer wrapped around me like a rope, binding my arms, hands, legs, and feet. The wail continued inside me but his “Amen” was like a gag. After praying, he gave me a little shove down the corridor, and I went, walking like a zombie back toward the exit and the Mustang in the parking lot. I got in the backseat and Lynne started the engine. They didn’t ask for an explanation and I didn’t have one to give. We were all frozen in our grief.
The next day I skipped school and walked the three miles out to the hospital. I arrived a little after 10:00, and Pastor Evan was just coming out the front door of the main entrance. He took hold of my arm, gripping it in the same way Carly had outside the dance that night, and looked closely at my face, as if he were detecting the same disease in me that had been discovered in Mac. “What are you doing out here, Robin? How did you find out about Mac, anyway?”
I tried to shake him off, but he held on tight.
“Let go,” I said.
“I’ll drive you back to school.”
“Let go,” I said again, fiercely this time, and kicked him in the shin.
“She’s gone,” Pastor Evan said angrily. “Mackenzie is gone.”
More than thirty years have passed since that day. Pastor Evan might be 60. He might be sitting in the office a few yards away, writing this Sunday’s sermon. I decided I didn’t need to find out. I didn’t trust myself to behave honorably, not with my mother’s death fresh in my heart, opening up all the other complicated wounds, too. Instead I drove to town and parked in front of the Arco station. Of course Sylvia wouldn’t still be working there, but I went inside anyway. I recognized the man behind the counter. It was Gregory, the boy-now-man who used to pump gas. His father had managed the station then, and maybe the son did now. This would be the second time I asked him about Sylvia.
“Sure, I remember her. She’s in Portland now. Runs a shelter for runaway kids. She comes back all the time to see her folks. They still live out on Walker Road.”
I drove all the way back to Portland that same day and checked back into the same hotel. My mother’s service would have been over by then, and no doubt the mourners had clucked about my absence. Well, I gave them something to be sanctimonious about. My gift to my mother’s congregation.
In the morning, I found the shelter for runaway kids and, moments later, found Sylvia herself. I like to think I’m handsome enough. My short brown hair is lightened by gray, and my face is lined and brightened by a life in the outdoors. I try to hold inside me that glow I first discovered with Mac, a love of the bear and crows and forest. Though I’ve been haunted by my part in Mac’s death, I’ve also survived because of what she showed me. I don’t know what Sylvia saw when I stepped into her office.
She said, “Can I help you?”
Her smile was still quick and asymmetrical. She crossed her arms, that same gesture all these years later, and yes, it still squooshed her breasts together. She’d plumped up quite a bit, and her acne had cleared, leaving scars. Her hair was still black and glossy as crow feathers, and she wore it shoulder-length. She was still gorgeous.
“I’m Robin,” I said. “The girl who threw rocks.”
I watched her face as the memory came into focus. Then, slowly, “Oh, my god.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Wow.” I started talking fast, wanting to establish some kind of connection, and so I told her about my work with girls and young women, how I took them on wilderness adventures to learn self-esteem and build confidence, how maybe our programs could partner. Then I blushed.
But she was nodding, saying, “Awesome. Yeah, we should talk.” She looked down, crossed and uncrossed her arms, squooshed and unsquooshed her breasts, and said, “It’s because of Mac, isn’t it? That you do this work?”
“Absolutely,” I said, grateful that she had spoken her name.
The quick, asymmetrical smile, and then, “Me, too. Let’s have dinner tonight. Are you free?”
“Very.”
She laughed at that, and I realized that she was no longer the older girl. I wasn’t 12 to her 15 anymore, I was 45 to her 48. There’s a big difference.
“Okay, look,” she said and glanced at her watch as if it were almost dinnertime rather than midmorning. “I have two crises today. So far. But I should be able to get out of here by 8:00. Is that too late?”
“That’s fine.”
“Good. I have an idea. Meet me here, okay?”
At 8:00 sharp, I parked on the street, a block away from the shelter, and walked down to get Sylvia. She locked her office, a fat ring of keys jangling in her hands, and waved goodbye to the kids and attending adults remaining for the night.
“It’s raining,” I said as she headed outside without a coat.
She shrugged. “I’m lucky to get out of the house with underwear on, let alone outerwear.”
There was a lovely recklessness about Sylvia. Drops of rain caught in her hair as we walked the few blocks down Burnside. She stopped at the door of a bar and pulled it open. I felt a little disappointed. I’d been thinking of something a bit more upscale, maybe some roasted halibut and field greens, a crème brulee for dessert. Not a bar burger with rancid fries. We stepped into the dark interior and climbed a set of stairs. At the top, she turned and smiled hugely at me.
It was a lesbian bar—I mean, big deal, right?—but maybe she wanted to confirm that she was in fact queer. I supposed that was a good sign, but still, this wasn’t the atmosphere I wanted for getting to know her. She sashayed right up to the bar, threw her arm over the shoulder of a woman sitting there, and kissed her cheek. Then she turned and grinned at me again.
The kissed woman turned as well.
She shouted, “Fucking A! It’s the kid. Sylvia! It’s the kid, isn’t it?” She jumped off the barstool and grabbed me in a headlock, mussed my hair with her knuckles, as if I were still 12 years old. “How the hell are you?” she asked, releasing me.
Speechless.
“I wanted to surprise you,” Sylvia said.
Thunderstruck.
“Can I get you a beer?” the other woman asked. “Scotch? Whadda ya want? It’s on me.”
This was a dream. It had to be. So I treated it like one. What else could I do? I jumped right to the heart of the matter, before I woke up and lost my opportunity, saying, “Mac, I never told.”
She frowned, smiled, frowned. She looked at Sylvia, and then back at me. “Say what?”
“That day at the dump. When I threw rocks at you and Sylvia. I never told anyone.” I couldn’t believe I was talking to a dead person. This had to be some surreal manifestation of angst about my mother’s death.
Mac slammed a palm down on the bar top and shouted, “Ha! I remember that! That was fucking hilarious!” She looked at Sylvia again and then bent over laughing. It sounded a little forced. Or maybe just a little drunken. “God, that was funny,” she said, straightening. “That was so funny.”
Funny?
“I thought you thought I told the pastor.”
“You tell? That would have been rich. Baby butch that you were? You would have only implicated yourself.” She punched my arm.
“That’s not why I didn’t tell,” I said.
But she’d turned to order another beer from the bartender and drank half of it before looking at me again. This wasn’t a dream. Mac was alive. Had been, all these years. She looked exactly the same, thin and angular, though now her hair was short and her forearms were covered with tattoos.
“We’re going to get a bite,” Sylvia said. “Come with us.”
“Game’s on,” Mac said, nodding toward the mounted television. It reminded me of the one in her hospital room. “But it’s great to see you. And you,” she said to me, and for a moment her eyes softened, lingered, so that I could hope those couple of times sitting on the hill above the dump, walking through the woods, had meant something to her, too.
Sylvia and I did go somewhere upscale for dinner, and I even ordered halibut. When our glasses of wine arrived, she said, “You look really shook up, Robin. I’m sorry I sprung Mac as a surprise. I shouldn’t have done that. I guess I’ve had time to assimilate everything and didn’t think how it’d be for you.” She pushed her wild hair off her face, sipped her wine, pressed her lips together. “Actually, I should apologize for back then, as well. You were even younger than we were, just a little girl. I’m sorry we involved you in our drama.”
“Your drama?”
“It took me years to understand that it wasn’t me who caused Mac’s suicide attempt.”
“You?”
“Yeah.” She was wistful now, twisting a strand of hair in her fingers. Half a lifetime of emotion skidded across her face.
I shook my head, signaling my incomprehension.
“Me and Lynne. That big tall basketball chick.” She laughed. “We were just kids. We didn’t know our mouths from our feet. Seriously. But the thing is, I really did love Mac. We were each other’s first, and it was so intense. But that sick church you all were in. Shit. It wreaked havoc with Mac’s sweet soul. Know what I mean?”
Oh yeah.
“She couldn’t handle it. What was happening between me and her, and how that played with her Jesus thing. And I couldn’t handle the conflict tearing her up. I was only 15! I wanted to have fun. So I did. With Lynne. Mac found out and went apeshit.”
So that must have been “August 18: Hell.” The dance and Trevor and all the rest of Mac’s trying came after. And all these years I had thought her dissolution had been my fault.
“But it wasn’t my fault,” Sylvia said, her thoughts paralleling mine. “It was that sick church. It’d been years in the making, her inability to reconcile who she thought she was supposed to be with who she really was. Our falling in love—” She paused and laughed. “Even if only for two months at age 15. That was just the crisis that tipped the whole cart.”
Pastor Evan’s words had been thrumming in my ears all evening. She’s gone. Mackenzie is gone.
“I thought she died.”
“Died? You mean….”
“Yes. All these years I thought Mac was dead. Until I saw her in the bar an hour ago.”
“Oh, Robin.” Sylvia reached across the table for my hand. “God. I’m so, so sorry. I never would have…. Why would you have thought…?”
I held her hand tight, 12 years old, after all.
She started nodding. “I guess it makes sense. You weren’t at high school with us. You wouldn’t have heard. No one tells kids anything. She ran away. She left from the hospital that night.”
I had been sobbing into my pillow as Mac ran through the darkness, her stomach pumped, her lungs and legs no doubt aching. Mac survived.
“What was the date?” I asked hoarsely.
Sylvia shook her head. “I don’t know. Late September.”
I knew. “September 21: The end of Jesus.” The same day I kicked Pastor Evan in the shin. Mac and I lost our faith on the exact same day. That was enormously comforting to me.
“Where’d she go?” I asked.
“All over. She tells wild stories from those years. Eventually she ended up here in Portland. She got a good job doing park maintenance for the City, until she hurt her back. Now she’s on disability.” Sylvia began twisting her hair again. “She’s okay. Nice little house in northeast. Three dogs. Two cats.” She shrugged. “She drinks too much.” Then she laughed. “Mac dead? You couldn’t kill her with a lead pipe.”
It felt good to laugh, and afterward we met eyes across the table, held each other that way. That felt good, too. Reckless good.
When we said goodbye, we exchanged contact information and reconfirmed our intentions to get our programs together. I asked her for Mac’s address, too. After I wrote down the street and number, Sylvia leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth. Then she shrugged, as if she’d surprised herself, and walked away.
In the morning I drove over to Mac’s house and parked in front. It was the sweetest place, the front yard a tangle of squashes, lettuces, purple lobelia, and orange nasturtium, all flourishing. Three bird houses, homemade from the looks of them, hung from different low branches of a huge willow. The house was small and badly needed paint. A stone path led to the front door.
How ludicrous we are at 12 years old, living our dreamlike lives, iconic moments looming. I never questioned why there hadn’t been a service for Mac, nor why no one spoke of her death. It made perfect sense to me that she had been swept under the rug. She was gone, in Pastor Evan’s words. A few months after that, my family had moved to another small town in Oregon, and then again the following year, until eventually we landed in Portland, where my mother just died.
I needed to go clean out her apartment.
But first I would return Mac’s book. I opened it up and reread her notes, beginning with Sylvia and ending with Jesus. I found a pen and wrote, at the bottom of the list, today’s date, followed by a colon. Then, “Mac. Mac. Mac.”
I put the book in my back pocket, wondering if I would really relinquish it, and walked up the path to knock on her door.
Jeff Mann
“Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips
And all is dross that is not Helena.”
—Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
He’s dressing just down the aisle. For months I’ve been wanting to see him stripped down, but by the time I’ve fumbled my own locker open and start taking in the sweet sight of him out of the corner of my eye, that stellar nakedness is diminishing fast. Slow down, I think, as he tugs on his briefs, and his furry butt slips out of sight. I try to veil my hunger, but it’s hard for the celibate not to stare. I soak up the details, trying to collect mental souvenirs, images I’ll stroke tonight in bed alone.
He’s in his mid-twenties, I’d guess, about five years younger than me. He’s about 5 foot 8, a good 6 inches shorter than me: just the size I like to top. You can tell he’s been coming to this campus gym faithfully for a long time, because his body is beautiful. Big arms, big chest, fine thighs. Just a little bit of belly, the kind that leads me to believe he’s not a weight-lifting obsessive or diet fanatic, but a regular guy who appreciates the good things in life like beer and the occasional doughnut. Broad shoulders tapering down to narrow hips and ass. His ass is, actually, about the prettiest I’ve ever seen—perfect curves, and covered with dark hair. In fact, everything about him except his forehead is hairy. Before I started teaching English, I used to be in forestry, so the metaphors that come to mind are always botanical: chest hair like moss, belly hair like larch needles, forearm hair like the soft fascicles of white pine, fine hair coating his back like water weeds I saw once waving gently in the current of a peat-stained river pouring into Sligo Bay.
His face? Short, thick hair, just the tiniest bit of silver at the temples. Sloping nose, high forehead, full cheeks dark with late-afternoon beard shadow. And a bushy moustache, the kind I like to chew on, once I’ve got a man helpless.
Still shirtless, he’s pulling on jeans over his white jockey shorts. When he’s tugged them up as far as his cock-bulge, he gives a little dip/forward thrust to tuck the bulge in and pull the jeans on up to his waist. Something about that movement is so fucking endearing I want to laugh out loud. I want to marry the guy.
Too soon, he’s got a T-shirt on over his wonderful chest. The sleeves are loose, hanging to his elbows, hiding the thickness of his arms. He’s not one of those vain assholes who wear tight clothes to show off their attributes. Good sign. The guy might even have an inner life, a brain.
He laces up his hiking boots, stuffs his gym clothes into his bag, slams the locker door, and turns toward me. He catches me staring. Instead of dropping his eyes, he smiles. Unusual here in Blacksburg, a small college town in southwest Virginia, where gay men are few and far between.
I’m very shy around men this hot, so I’m about to return that smile as best I can in this state of sudden nervousness, then turn away and pull off my boots, when I see a pendant glinting between the barely discernible curves of those great pecs. It’s a silver pentagram. I can’t believe it.
“Nice necklace, “I stammer,” though you might want to hide it under your T-shirt. This is the Bible Belt, y’know.”
His smile broadens. Full lips, and what my grandmother would call butter teeth. White, prominent, but handsome. The better to eat me with, I think.
“You know what it is?” he says, following my advice and slipping the pendant under his shirt. He sounds surprised that I recognize the symbol, and with good reason. There aren’t a lot of folks around here who would know what a pentagram really means. Dumb fundamentalists would assume it meant Satan.
“Yeah, I know. B-been into the occult since I was a kid.” Might as well be honest and see where it leads. If not for this lucky coincidence, I never would have figured out how to talk to him. With men whose chests are that big and that hairy, I’m always a pathetic stutterer.
His eyes widen. Hazel—combo of green and brown. Same colors as mine.
He extends his hand. I extend mine. It begins here, the story of Jeff and Thomas.
* * *