Soul's Road: A Fiction Collection

by Cody Luff

  The footfalls crossed the floorboards of the cabin, steady as the second hand on a watch. When they hushed, he threw back the quilt and swung his feet onto the floor where he noticed his shoes had been placed carefully side to side, toe outward. Before mustering the strength to make for his coat, the door edged open and he lurched forward in a lunge from the bed to the chair, collapsing to the floor. Objects receded momentarily from his vision, and he recoiled into blank nausea. He came to with his host standing over, holding in both hands a slab of wood. The fugitive put his palms on the seat of the chair and rose to it, groaning.

  He sat in the straight-backed chair with arms hanging limp as the board was set at his feet. Upon the flat of the plank was a row of items carefully positioned to span the distance end to end: a tin bowl of gray porridge, three crab apples, and a crazed mug of tarrish coffee. Beside the cup lay a book of matches and two cigarettes, one of which had rolled off the end of the board. He looked up at the man’s face grateful, uneasy. The breakfast was presented with a ceremony that made him unsure of how to proceed. It occurred to the fugitive that perhaps the man feared him, having heard the recent news, and was trying to pacify him. To be calmed was not his wish. He wanted oblivion.

  The fugitive regarded the porridge for a beat longer and overcome, collapsed to the floor again, this time to crawl around to the bowl, which he grabbed and raised to his mouth in a panic of hunger. After coaxing with his fingers a couple of mouthfuls of the thick fibrous stuff, he saw that the man was holding a large spoon out to him. The fugitive grabbed it and set to finishing the contents of the bowl. He’d been kneeling as he ate, and when the porridge was consumed, he took one of the apples and fell to his side. He laid the side of his head on the floor and watched the hermit, who had retreated to stand in the corner, shadowed by the open door.

  He chomped half the apple away and swallowed before his tongue retracted at its bitterness. “How did you find me?”

  The face peered from the corner. Years in growth, the beard veiled any signal of speech. The hermit regarded the scrap on the wall again which the fugitive could see now was an old black-and-white photo. His host was conversing, in his wordless manner, with a figure in the photo, consulting a third person in the room. When he raised himself to look at it, the man took a step back and gestured with an arm sweeping outward, indicating a place beyond the walls, somewhere in the forest below the cabin. He pointed at the fugitive and mimed a sleeper.

  “Yesterday?”

  The hermit held up two fingers. His eyes glistened.

  “Two days?”

  The hermit stared at the fugitive.

  “Two days.”

  The fugitive reached for the mug and by its chipped handle raised it to his lips and gulped a liquid the taste of burnt leather. It leaked from the cracked corners of his mouth. He slid over to the bedframe and slumped against it. “You know who I am, then.”

  The hermit stared at him.

  ***

  When the old man left the room, the fugitive lit one of the cigarettes and came to a hesitant stand. He walked to the fading photo on the wall: boy in a tire swing laughing, barefoot toes rising to the camera; older boy behind him grinning in the instant of his playful shove. The fugitive stepped back and put a hand on the wall, leaning in to squint at the scene. The photo was blemished, badly creased from handling; but the composure of the older boy’s face clearly betrayed the much older version of the hermit’s. The swinging boy was caught in flight, and the fugitive stared a long time at him.

  ***

  He crossed the room to the window, pausing at the chair to slip a hand into the pocket where the .45 was cool metal waiting. The window glass was long missing and daylight shown in dimly through gray plastic sheeting. He put his shoulder to the swollen frame. It budged open, shuddering on its hinges. When he blew out a stream of smoke, he found he was looking at columns of massive trees populating a steep slope.

  He turned to reach for the coat, clear out, keep moving. But his host had re-entered the room silently and was now standing beside the chair, holding the gun out to him by the barrel. The fugitive stood without motion, cigarette smoldering in his fingers. He looked into the man’s rheumy eyes intent upon his own and unsmiling. The hermit nodded at the fugitive an acknowledgement.

  They peered at each other like facing mirrors before the older reached out with his free hand and placed into the palm of the younger the pistol stock. Then, from the baggy folds of his coveralls, he produced a piece of curved iron, nicked and dark with wear. The bar had been flattened at one end, and the hermit stooped, applied it to a nail-head in a floorboard at his feet. He labored over the next minute with great energy and made small grunting noises as he worked. When the board creaked and popped off the joist, he straightened and faced his guest. The visible flesh at his forehead was creased and reddened from exertion, and the fugitive saw in him a new semblance, a picture of himself through a filter like distance or time. The hermit gestured at the long gap in the floor; the fugitive without consideration threw the pistol into it and stepped back. The older man quickly replaced the plank and pounded the nails back down using the handle-end of the iron. When he was finished, he stood and regarded the photo on the wall for an instant, before shambling out of the room.

  After an hour the fugitive was ready. The hermit held open the door, lifted to the fugitive a pint bottle of murky water and a ragged shirt knotted to contain a load of crab apples.

  When, after rising some minutes into the big forest above the dwelling, he stopped to look behind him, he saw that practically nothing of the hermitage was distinct from the undergrowth. All was knit gently into the garment of wilderness. Only a square of gray plastic lay nestled within, camp trash drifted in by the wind, beside it a narrow wedge of shadow.

  By afternoon he’d not yet made the ridge, but he pushed on. He flew up the scree of a rockslide, up the root-tangled face of a cliff, the muscle of his heart a hammer in his chest.

  PAULA ALTSCHULER

  And You're Okay With That?

  (an excerpt from a fictionalized memoir)

  IN THE VICTORIAN HOUSE on Officer's Row, the breeze rising off the Puget Sound rocks the weathered windows. It's creepy. You’d almost expect to see cobwebs festooning the double-door archways. The brick duplex on the end of the Row is supposedly haunted, but I wouldn’t know; I won’t go inside and I don’t even believe in ghosts. Fort Worden, which was once an Army fort and then a juvenile detention facility, is a rather choice location for creative writers.

  “Our school is a graduate program for people with special needs,” says Jump, resembling an androgynous leprechaun in brown polyester pants and a red bandana. Jump leans back on the couch across from me, laughing, popping mini-Reese’s peanut butter cups into their mouth like potato chips. Jump legally changed (their) name for gender neutrality. They—I’ve learned this week at school—is an acceptable pronoun for Trans-boys or T-taking girls or phe’s. As a former college cheerleader, I think Jump is a pretty rad name, regardless.

  Jump and I are two peculiar peas in a pod. Our friendship sketched entirely in words—long-distance phone calls and emails over the last six months, coincidentally the hardest six months of my life—that we now draw on to rehash this past semester.

  “But I’ve had it pretty good. Led a fairly normal life,” I say, wishing the fireplace was burning to add to the room’s charm. “Nothing that bad has happened to me.”

  “That’s why your mother died!” Jump’s voice rises.

  “You’re right. Now I’m wounded too. I finally fit in!” I say.

  Later when I repeat this story to my therapist, she’s nonplussed. “And that was okay with you?” she asked.

  “Of course, I thought it was hysterical,” I said.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  Six months ago, I began my MFA in creative writing and a manuscript about an outrageous character based on my mom. Yes, yes, everyone's mom is wacky, but trust me, not like this. I have
yet to meet a parent that rivals her "outgoing" personality with such sagacious advice as in middle school when Ma told me conditioner would soften my pubic hair. This character-slash-book idea was a long time coming, born into scribbled notes on yellow scraps of paper and a Wonder Woman notebook years ago. I yearned to write this book like dreaming of visiting a far off land, but only seeing it on a map. Back then, the closest I scored to creative writing was drafting press releases and web copy. It took longer than I hoped, but finally, I was going for it. The first of my family in graduate school, leaping into the overpopulated artistic cesspool, our realized dream coming true: mine to write this book and Ma's to star in it.

  But then Ma died. Suddenly.

  A month later, I was non-celebrating my second wedding anniversary to my husband, still in my pajamas at four in the afternoon trying to shape fits of despair into meaningful narration. The fictional story of Ma’s wild life so quickly turned into a memoir of circumstance about my sadness and my longing. Maybe I should have taken the semester off, but it felt disingenuous to my Ra-Ra Attitude. Then, in the midst of my anguish, something magical happened. Creative inspiration whined in my subconscious ear: "What about my book?" When a Funny Person Dies, They Don’t Stop Being Funny. That's it! Ma must interrupt my sorrowful word vomit. I didn't have to be a downer. I wasn't a woe-is-me type, so why was my writing portraying me as one. I could jump-kick grief where the metaphorical sun don't shine. I could sever sadness with a sarcastic sword (albeit, while gravely overusing alliteration in a sentence). I could write whatever-the-fuck I wanted! Fuck, I could even write—fuck. Well, maybe fuck was too much. It is. Isn't it?) 92

  ______________________

  92Of course it's not too much. You got my chutzpah, kid. Now use it! She was always so worried. "Ma, are you sure?" "What do you think of this outfit, Ma? Is it too revealing?" "Honey," I would say, "if you got the body, go for it." Drove me crazy. Always so nervous about what people would think. About everything she did or said. "Who cares?" I would tell her. "I don't. If someone doesn't like me, it's their loss. I have one life and I'm gonna have some fun with it."

  "Ma, you're embarrassing me." Everything I did was embarrassing.

  This one time I went to visit Pauler in Utah and she took me to a concert. Finally! I always begged for her to take me to watch live music, but she didn't want to show up with an old lady. I looked good; what was her problem? We went with a few of her friends, lovely people. Anyway, the concert was in a small bar, very dark, packed to capacity. People crowding the main dance floor and lining three-deep on the mezzanine above us. Once the music got going, I wanted to smoke a little pot. Everybody else was. "No, Ma," my daughter said. "People will see you. Don't embarrass me." Who cared? I was a sixty-five year-old grandma of eight. What would happen? They probably wouldn't arrest me. Maybe we'd get kicked out, but what a story we'd have to tell. And I did look good that night. A young guy started dancing behind me. You know, putting his hands on my hips and standing real close. I turned around at some point to reveal who he was dancing with, but it didn't seem to bother him. You see, and my daughter was worried I wouldn't fit in.

  Jump and I are at Fort Worden for the residency portion of our MFA—like a week of adult summer camp for creative eccentrics—jam-packed with writing workshops and advisor meetings. Late nights we drink beer and play ping pong, debate the future of literature and speak way too enthusiastically about the inventive use of footnotes in our writing. We are wounded warriors and now I've earned my badge, too. We are the hopped-up, geeked-out retro queer. We are the stylie-crooked, the soft-spoken esoteric tree huggers, the mild alternatives (that’s me!) and the one and only black man on campus who refers to himself as the Black Jedi. We are twenty-five and fifty-five years old and everything in between; we are drinkers and AA-goers, we are monogamous and polyamorous, and most importantly, we are writers sharing the common love of mashed up words on a page. For the rest of the four-month semester, we read and write at home, alone in artistic insanity, mimicking the real life of a writer.

  The next night, in a Victorian house two doors down on Officer’s Row, the seniors (if we had such titles) host a salon where we listen to compositions read aloud from our MFA brigade. Before grad school, I'd never heard of salons, which began in France as a means for intellectuals to disseminate ideas and social strategies. Before grad school, I enjoyed "beach reads." Tonight, we have a happy hour spread. Tortilla chips and store brand salsa, boxes of wine and local-brewed bottled beer set up in the dining room. I'm pouring a glass of red wine and Carrie is standing next to me. I haven't spoken to her before, only smiled in passing, but now we feel like kindred souls. You see, Carrie's dad died the day before last semester's residency. In addition to our losses, Dana went to visit her mom, who lived in the same town as residency, and found her dead. We got sucker-punched in the face last residency. "I'm really sorry about your dad," I say to Carrie, which I've been meaning to tell her all week, but took me until now to garner the courage to give my condolences. "My mom died two weeks before last residency," I add.

  "Oh," Carrie says, "you're the one who didn't tell anyone."

  Is that what they think of me: I'm the reticent high-kicker refusing to surrender my smile?

  I find a spot on the gray rung carpet in front of my buddy, Nathan. He'll let me lean against his shins for back support; we're going to be here awhile. The rest of the forty or so other students gather around in the way kindergartners do when the teacher reads Dr. Seuss. Our first story-teller perches in front of the fireplace in the octagonal living room with its white walls and mismatched flannel couches. Two sconces, so outdated they're almost back in style, flank the fireplace where a picture of the Fort, when it was actually a fort, sits atop the mantle. We begin. The readings by several students proceed for the next hour. I love these people, but I'm super uncomfortable. My face clenches involuntarily like I have to fart. It's not gas. I'm being blown back in waves of “The rape…” “The rape…” “The rape…,” which seems to be the oratory theme of the night. I thought the readings would be funny (or at least arousing) because tonight’s salon topic is Sex and the Semicolon. But this. What is this? Too many horrifying stories in a row and most of them probably true. Memoirs, I’m sure. Intermission couldn't come soon enough.

  In the kitchen, I escape the assault lingering in the living room. Jump walks in the back door. "Hi Jump. You missed a whole lot of stories about sexual abuse," I say. "I might be the only person who hasn’t been raped." (Oh no! I’m making obnoxious comments like my mom. This has been happening lately. Ever since she died, I can't keep a muzzle on it. My mouth spews faster than my brain has time to filter. Jeez Paula, way to be sympathetic. Now that sounds more like me.) 93

  ______________________

  93Pauler wasn’t raped cause I taught her right: poke him in the eyes and knee him in the balls. My Pauler’s not insensitive, she just hasn’t personally encountered anything like this. Sometimes, you need to share it to know it happened, so you can move on. That way it becomes a story outside of your memories. I know, I know. This goes against everything I said I would do. I’m supposed to be telling you funny stories like when Pauler was away at summer camp and we didn't want to tell her that her beloved pet bird Peachy died, so we propped it up in the cage and took pictures. And then mailed the photos to her. Or about the time I gave Pauler a jewelry box filled with chopped liver for Chanukah. What? There was a necklace underneath. It was in good fun. I told you she was too serious.

  But I can’t tell you those stories right now. I need to tell you something that gives you perspective into my “character.” My daughter thinks it demonstrates why I was always making light of everything.

  I was coming home from the Queens Oldsmobile car lot where I sold used hunks of junk. It was late and Mr. Jensen told me to lock up after my paperwork was finished. I hated that building, stark and square, two big for the metal desks that littered the perimeter of the room. In the middle of the showroom one shiny
new car that wasn’t even for sale. On the walls, Mr. Jensen hung framed posters that said Dedication and Commitment and Responsibility with scenic backgrounds. Like that was gonna make us work harder. It was a dead-end job with dead-end employees. And the dealership always smelled like lox, eggs and onions. Mr. Jensen told me he gave me the job because women can sell cars. People trust women, he said in his patronizing voice, and he’d wet his stubby fingertips with that fat pink tongue of his and smooth his mustache. He was a crotchety man with thick wandering hands and if you couldn’t tell, I hated him too. He’d act surprised like he didn’t mean for his arm to graze my breast. Oh, sorry 'bout that, he said, which was obviously not the same as giving me a pat on the shoulder.

  Mr. Jensen loved to make a fat joke. I’d hear him in the back office with the door closed telling his male employees that fat girls were easy because we only wanted someone to love us. I’d pretend to be on the phone when he’d walk onto the showroom floor so he wouldn’t know I could hear him. He’d give my cheek a quick pinch and wink at me as he waddled towards the front desk to remind me of his goodwill. Mr. Jensen knew my father back when Harry was still around. Now that I was almost nineteen, and Harry was long gone, I guess he was doin’ me a favor by giving me the job. I mostly hung in the back garage with the Puerto Ricans who were tinkering under the hoods of our no good cars. They loved big women and showered me with compliments like I was their second comin’ of Madonna. Rico and Jose, they were good guys, but Mr. Jensen called them Lazy Mexicans—to their faces—not realizing there was a difference between PRs and Mexicans. At least Mr. Jensen never called me a fat ass to my face. Jose called me asmigas, I’m probably not pronouncing that right, but he’d say it affectionately like we were real friends making a difference to change the world—one Boricua-Jewish friendship at a time.