The Journey Prize Stories 23

by Alexander Macleod; Alison Pick; Sarah Selecky

  “That’s beautiful, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter who you are. The sultan of Brunei gets the same moon as everybody else.”

  She was smiling when I said that. The vacancy of her face dissolved and her lips came to a point and opened when she smiled – the darkness of that mouth, her ruined teeth.

  “Doesn’t it feel like we’re on the verge of huge change? Everything is mixing together. And it’s all happening and it’s all too late.”

  She nodded and I kissed her, felt the inside of her mouth and the sharp points of a scar where her tongue had been. I didn’t open my eyes. I felt lightning tremble in my core. I kept jabbing at her ruin, compelled and titillated. How full she must have been. And with what purpose? I held her close and wouldn’t let her go. I was stuck. She made a quick move ment and then there was a noise so wild I thought for a moment some thing had attacked the dog – a panicked and feral sound of scary urgency and a twist and I was on my back behind the tire. Ajla ran through the field towards the house. Sam barked after her, then turned, confused.

  “I made a mistake!” I yelled. “Please, I made a mistake!”

  A distant tapping announced her rush up the front stairs and inside. One hundred metres from where I sat the windows of the house glowed tiny and yellow, like a match taking refuge under a tin thimble, or like a pizza joint at four in the morning. I felt the way a shooting star might feel when it finally sees where it’s going to land. It was too late to change my mind. At the time it wasn’t what I wanted. The blast was over and I couldn’t see anything waiting for me but one long dying note. I wasn’t ready to come in from outside, but there was nowhere else to go.

  FRAN KIMMEL

  LAUNDRY DAY

  When Harvey walked out last summer he said he was never coming back. Now he says he’ll be home tomorrow so we can be together for Jesus’s birthday. Harvey drives the long haul trucks. I’m supposed to put on my red dress and we’re gonna go dancing. He’ll be some pissed if he wakes up to a pile of dog hair on his pillow on Christmas morning, which is the big reason I’m at the Soap ’n Suds on the coldest day of the year, running everything I own through the heavy-duty cycle.

  Molly says I can’t take care of a cabbage, and I should thank the gods he’s changed his mind. But when Harvey disappeared, I got nails that grew shiny white at the tips and didn’t splinter to bits at the first sign of trouble. And I got a dog. During those first long nights, I curled around his tiny body in the dark. When his little chest thumped and quivered, I held him close to my heart and could feel his hot breath on my palm. I didn’t think once about rolling over and crushing him to death – what used to scare me into sitting straight up whenever I dreamed of babies of my own.

  When Molly met Max the first time she said, Gracie, you must be dumber than a bag of rocks. She said Maxine was a girl’s name, and I had no business getting a dog when I couldn’t tell he was a boy and couldn’t pay the bills. And just look at his paws, she yelled as she waltzed out my door. He’ll be big as an elephant.

  I asked Joe in produce if I should change Maxine’s name. Joe’s real smart and votes in all the elections. He rattled off a dozen famous Maxes – kings and warriors and artists and such – so now whenever my sister comes around, I hide all the pricey toys and say, Good dog, Max, when he drops my shoe or stops chewing on the TV cord.

  I got three washers going in a row. Seems I’m the only one with dirty laundry in this town, except now there’s a young girl who’s pulled up in front of the window and is wrenching her boy from the back seat and dragging her green garbage bag along the crusty snow, and now the boy’s inside and mom’s yanking his arms out of his coat. She looks like she’s mad. He’s got a cough that doesn’t sound too good, but I think at least she didn’t leave him in the car.

  Oprah showed about a lady who said she was the most hated woman in America ’cause she forgot about her baby girl in the back seat all day and that poor baby fried to death. That lady was real smart, too. A principal. The lady’s husband usually did the drop-off but he was getting his tooth yanked. So she bought doughnuts for the teachers and jumped out of the car all excited and didn’t look back and just sailed around greeting everyone and asking about their summer ’cause it was the first day of school. Harvey says I’m too stupid to have kids and raise ’em right. I don’t hate that poor lady no matter if the whole world turns its back on her. But I do know something. If I ever was a momma, I’d sure as eggs never forget it.

  When Harvey called on Halloween night from somewhere between Seattle and Spokane, his voice sounded soft and low and not at all like I remembered. He said he was alone in his truck, but I thought I heard her breathy sleep in the background. He’d been praying over me a lot, he said. Reading his Bible about how woman was created out of Adam in order to be his helper, and when women rebel against their God-assigned role, they sin. He said if I could try a little harder he would let bygones be bygones, and I was lucky he never pressed charges, and he was thinking of taking me back. He said other stuff I didn’t hear so good cause there were pirates and tooth fairies yelling for candy at my door and holding out plastic pumpkins. Max was scared to death of the commotion, so I put him in my bed room with his teddy and a rawhide. I think Harvey mighta said he missed my tuna casserole.

  I didn’t tell Harvey that I hadn’t prayed once since he left or about how I got a job at Bing’s Grocery. And I sure didn’t tell him about Max. Every time I put on the ugly brown shirt and orange tie and Be Patient – Trainee button, a combo what took four hours bagging groceries to pay off, Max’s ears go down and his eyes look watery. Joe says split shifts were invented to keep the money-grubbing capitalists from paying for breaks, but I say thank heavens for capitalists then. Max can’t hold it past four hours. During our first weeks together, Max spent his alone time digging a football-sized crater through the drywall by the back door. He musta thought that kitchen wall was all that stood between us. He didn’t care if he broke every nail just to find me again. I’d run all the way home on my breaks and snap on Max’s leash, and he’d drag me around the thistle field until I thought my arm might break, which wouldn’t be the first time.

  That girl has crammed everything into one load and she’s put her coughing boy on a blanket on the sorting table. He just lays there, feebly grabbing at sunbeams with his stubby fingers. I’m sitting right in front of her on my plastic chair, but she won’t look at me, and neither does the boy, and I don’t want to stare, but she has the prettiest nails I’ve ever seen, flowers painted on her thumbs with a blue sapphire on the petal.

  Now that I got nails of my own, I pay more attention to everybody else’s. You need a special contraption for clipping dog’s nails that looks like an eyelash curler. Max hates getting his nails done, but if he gives in to his fears he could be tearing through the field one day and a nail might rip at the root, which is exactly how those torturers in cement rooms get their torturees to confess to crimes they didn’t even know how to imagine.

  I’m still trying to get the hang of the Shimmering French Manicure. I can’t get the white half moons to look the same on each finger. The kit comes with tiny curved strips for guides, but they don’t stick straight, and fall off at all the wrong times, like when you’re sweeping the polish in a single even stroke. Max makes a huge scene when it’s his turn, squirming and moaning, but when we’re finished he forgets he was scared and sits like an angel and slobbers on the linoleum while I fish out his Milk-Bone from the jar.

  Dogs grow new coats when it’s winter, which leaves their old coats in your cereal bowl and your underwear drawer. Harvey called on Remembrance Day night when I was sweeping up dog hair by the bag load. I remember ’cause that same morning Bing went over the loudspeaker to announce a moment of silence for the fallen soldiers. Nobody knew whether to stand at attention behind their carts or keep pushing down the aisle with their heads bowed. Harvey said he was hauling steel to New Orleans, a godless cesspool in his opinion, a place where police fired seven hundred rounds
into the air – kaboom, kaboom – just to see who’d call in, and nobody did. I’m not surprised. Deafness comes with an on-off switch, otherwise we’d go crazy listening to what we’re not meant to hear – all that thudding and cracking and pleading. Harvey asked if I’d given any thought to our last conversation. I shrugged, rubbing the fuzzy red poppy in my pocket, which of course he couldn’t see. If his question was something he thought to test me with, he couldn’t wait for my answer. He said he’d done a lot more praying on the road and that God kept steering him towards forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? My flinging a mayonnaise jar at his head? Though, I did crack him pretty good and he probably shoulda got stitches, his turn for once. He said he’d been picturing goin’ dancing with me in my red dress. I closed my eyes and thought about swaying against him with the lights down low and his hands on my breasts, digging into them with his fingertips. How he would moan and tell me how fine I was.

  It’s blue cold outside. The girl must have chose regular instead of heavy duty, cause our wash cycles finish at exactly the same time. Her boy is asleep on the sorting table, lips bubbling, legs and arms spread like a biology frog. We carry our loads to our dryers, wet sleeves and legs dangling. Once the tumbling starts, the window gets steamy enough to write our names. The radio guy says to expect cold and more cold, snow and more snow. I’ll be out there soon enough, hunkered down low like Santa Claus, sack strapped to my sleigh, waving my mittens like windshield wipers so I can see what’s ahead and don’t fall sideways and get swallowed by a drift. I got to work a second shift tonight. Though I imagine in this storm the store will be empty as a ghost town. Bing says people need bread even when the sky is falling, and it’s the grocers that shine a beacon of light. Joe says we should get danger pay if we gotta be shining our beacons in a minus-forty degrees windchill.

  Molly says when Harvey gets home he’ll tie Max out back where he belongs. I think about Max all alone shivering in the wind, like the big yellow dog that lives down the alley. That dog paces back and forth in his empty cage, nothing but a frozen water dish for company. When I trudge past him on my way to work he throws his great paws up on the fence and whimpers the same trembling note over and over, and I fish out a treat from my pocket, and he wolfs it down in one gulp and licks my fingers like an apology. Then I tell him I have to go. I try to pat his great head through the cold steel. He stays at that fence and stares after me, and no matter how many times I turn back, he’s still staring. I know he’s a dog and it’s not the same as forgetting your baby in the back seat, but it’s not that different either. When I try telling Molly that, she says I fell off the beer truck. Harvey hates dogs. Harvey’s allergic. For once in your life, get your head on straight and do the right thing, Gracie. She reminds me that Harvey likes dancing. What more do you want, she asks.

  I don’t know. More.

  I used to watch Fear Factor before Max came along. I liked to pretend it was me on the edge looking down. Me slithering through the black tunnel on my stomach, or laying on a bed of snakes, or letting the spiders crawl down my shirt. But I’ve been thinking more and more lately, what’s the point of being brave if it lacks practicality? When I said this to Joe in the lunchroom, he stared at me so hard I felt my underarms get wet. Then he finally said, “It’s not spiders and snakes make you brave, Gracie. It’s this!” He flung his arm in the air. “Bagging groceries all day in that sappy uniform, getting shin splints from standing so long, coming home half froze but heading right back out because your dog’s been waiting.” I don’t know how Joe knows what he knows, but I felt like he’d crawled up inside me and grabbed hold of my heart.

  Harvey says I can expect him tomorrow, and he’ll take care of business. I hate that red dress. My boobs won’t stay put. I feel like a slut who’s trying too hard.

  My panties and leggings go round and round. I stare so long at the jumbled, tumbling mess of black and blue that I think it’s my eyes staring back at me. I think I can see the reflection of the girl with the beautiful nails lean over and touch her sleeping boy’s cheek with her sapphire thumb. I see Max, his tail thwack, thwack, thwacking as I walk through the door. He’s only a dog, but he finds God in me, his love so pure and simple I want to fall to my knees.

  For once in your life, do the right thing, Gracie.

  How do you? That’s what I want to know. Maybe you’re supposed to drown out the noise in your head and listen to your heart banging inside its bra cup. Maybe that’s all you got worth listening to.

  It takes me three tries before I can push away from my plastic chair. I stand over the girl and pretend I don’t feel my knees tremble. “Take my stuff,” I tell her. “Take it all.” I drop the empty sack that held my life at her feet.

  Her eyes narrow, she’s afraid now too, her mouth a weary O. What for? What you want?

  I have no right words so I turn away and button my coat and cover my mouth with my scarf. I leave my stuff in the Soap ’n Suds with that girl and her boy, cough-burping in his sleep.

  Outside, the bite is a shock, even now, even after weeks of sliding down the throat of winter. I trudge towards home, picturing Max, picturing what the audience would see if we were on TV. Not Fear Factor. Something more classy.

  First, the path into the woods where the town drops off. A girl and her dog, picking their way blind through the dips and valleys of the frozen deer trails. They struggle to the edge of the clearing, climb out from beneath branches hanging heavy like abandoned white sheets after laundry day.

  The rippling silver field stretches to forever in the night. The dog breaks through the drifts, and his strong, young legs run and run and run, and he can’t feel the cold, and the girl tries to keep up and not look back, and the pair gets smaller and smaller and smaller until they’re nothing but perfect, soundless flecks under the falling sky.

  SEYWARD GOODHAND

  THE FUR TRADER’S DAUGHTER

  For many years we lived on a lake in the woods. The sun rising and falling over a ridge of cedar on the edge of our clearing and a pock et watch my father kept on the mantle were all we knew of time. Once a month we journeyed into town for provisions. The town was an old woman with a thousand eyes. When we walked through her grey, cobbled streets dragging suitcases glutted on pelts and the stiff heads of beasts, she drew her lids shut. I could deduce glowing mirages of interior light through curtained windows, but never the whole, comprehensible outline of a flame or bulb.

  The market was always open when we came. My father was a trapper and a taxidermist. It wasn’t only savage icons the people craved, wild boar tusk and polar grizzle; they wanted softer fare as well, items imparting luck or wisdom, like rabbit’s feet or whole wood owl. They liked to pretend they came from another time and place, so they bought martin tail and ermine snout. Women said they would pluck their brows fine and buy red lipstick to go with their new muff. We sold enough to get by.

  I watched the traders in the market and they watched me. Most of them were townspeople and therefore different from my father and I, who had travelled from across a wide space. They hawked striped nylon socks, underwear that said “You’ll Love Me for Lunch,” and bowls of individually wrapped candy. There was a man who sold cheese and a family that traded in zucchinis no matter what season. Sometimes my father struck up a few cordial words with the butcher. The shoppers interested me most. They formed chaotic clusters around things they wanted, held hands, brushed shoulders, and laughed at jokes their friends made. None of them came too near where I stood because they were afraid of the bees that hovered around gaps in my cloak. Still, I could hear what they thought in grooved echoes we weren’t supposed to notice.

  “She doesn’t look real.”

  “Too pale, her skin.”

  “It’s like she’s his slave. Does he lock her up? Did he burn her?”

  “Hey, you,” my father turned and spoke if he also heard them. “Keep your chin down and don’t look at anyone. Don’t give them a reason to look at you.”

  Speaking was verb
oten. My father bartered with potential clients and I counted out their change, bagged their boar, antler, or bear claw, and kept my eyes on their pockets.

  During one December’s journey into town, my father got the flu. By the time we’d set up our stall, hissing fluid steamed from the bottom of his trousers, and he’d wrapped himself in some now unsellable lynx pelts. I watched his mess melting the snow but didn’t know whether I found it repulsive or not. He shivered on a stool and looked at me as though I were a fawn who refused to come to the dead mother he’d used to bait a trap. “You’re so implacable,” he seethed. “You don’t care. When I made you I should have used more of my own soul.” Finally, he grabbed my arm, even though it cost him all his effort. “Get me some medicine. Don’t stray.”

  Down one of the more frequented back streets, the apothecary’s kneeled snug in between a patisserie and a shop where tourists could buy imitation medieval swords. I went there while he watched me, my face passing over windowpanes that revealed nothing. Two dazed and starving drones clung to the back of my hood. It’s possible that I lived in all those ancient houses, a vengeful emanation sucking air from between the cracks of broken things. Across the street, a boy wearing a plastic Ro man helmet pulled on his mother’s hand, pointed in my direction, and waved a pamphlet that advertised nightly ghost tours.

  Little bells jangled over the apothecary’s door. I braced myself for a surge of warmth, but instead the room was cool and dim as a library of lost scrolls. Air seeped through cracks in the floor, which made it seem as if the whole shop was elevated on stilts as high as the sky. The only other patron was an old woman who wandered across the front counter examining liniment cream. She found the blood pressure monitor and tested herself again and again.