GUD Magazine Issue 3 :: Autumn 2008

by GUD Magazine Authors

  But instead, I turned around and counted backwards from ten. This isn't me. I'm not a bully.

  He'sComingUpBehindYou. Move.

  I jumped to the side. He charged into the broken window and fell against the shards of broken glass. He trembled there, pulling glass out of his neck. Then he slid to the ground.

  I ran outside and found a pay phone. I began to dial 9-1-1, then stopped. I looked over my hands, my coat, my pants, to make sure I was clean.

  I hung up the phone and headed home. I smiled; it felt like 2:45 p.m. on the last day of the school year.

  * * * *

  The police on my trail are as constant as gravity. My wings are my thoughts.

  The urge to save Melanie returns like an alcoholic's craving. I think back to that morning, the football bouncing in my hands as I try to catch it properly. “Think fast!"

  As always, the brown turtle invades and beckons me across that imaginary field, red and white flowers and green grass stained brown. It says, Here lies the road to an unmurdered Melanie. The turtle speaks with my thoughts, the way Hollywood killers clip words out of newspapers to construct their messages. All you have to do, it says, is turn me red.

  But I've always known what will happen if I follow the brown turtle. My penmanship at age six will improve. If I turn the turtle red, there will be no park and no old man with his brown paper bag.

  When the turtle disappears from the path, when the brown stains vanish, when I think of a way to save Melanie without undoing the tapestry, I'll try again. Somewhere, she waits for me as I step off the school bus.

  Patterson No. 2 by Jessica C Hoard

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Measurements by Chad Brian Henry

  Alan takes the tape measure out and Vera lifts her arms as he wraps it around her waist. He writes the number in his notebook and, after a thoughtful pause, measures her height.

  "Okay, good measurements,” he says, not looking up from the paper. “This will work fine."

  He flips back a few pages, erases something, and replaces it with something new. His face is normally wide and oddly flat, but, as he scratches the lead against the paper, the lines in his forehead deepen and his face narrows like a canyon. “This will work fine,” he repeats to himself.

  Vera doesn't think he realizes she's still in the room. He sits down at his desk and sketches a long cylinder from one side of the page to the other. And then two wings. They are jointed like a bird's and tapered at the edges. He gives the parts dimensions, using meters instead of feet.

  "Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asks.

  "I can't spend the rest of my life in the mill. Can you?"

  She gives him the answer he wants because she knows nothing will come of this. She walks into the kitchen and boils water for tea. She makes enough for two, and half of it goes to waste.

  * * * *

  Days pass by and large chunks of scrap metal appear in the back yard. Parts of cars and old aluminum siding. Some is rusted; some is just worn.

  "Are you sure you know what you're doing?” Vera asks as Alan unwraps his newly-purchased blow torch. He grins like she imagines their children would if they were allowed to have any.

  "It's all formulas and equations. I took physics in high school."

  His smile doesn't fade as he walks out of the house and over to the pile. Vera watches him from the kitchen window. It's the middle of summer, so he is soon sweating. He takes his shirt off and his gut rests on his legs as he kneels over the metal. He sorts the parts first, separating the flat pieces from the round ones. He places the nuts and bolts in neat little piles according to size. They look like tiny altars and when he's talking to himself about his plans, it sounds like he's praying.

  * * * *

  The metal takes shape. The cylinder is nearly complete, except for the open ends. Vera is surprised at the quality; Alan has spent hours pounding out the dents and the metal is smooth. When the neighbors ask, he says he's building a shed, but she doesn't think they believe him. But they are good people; they've all lived here for years and she doesn't think they'll tell anyone.

  "Have you gained weight?” Alan asks during one of his short breaks.

  His glasses slide down a little on his nose; he pushes them up with his index finger. There's a bandage at its tip, and a little patch of dried blood.

  Vera looks down at her body. She doesn't see a difference, but her pants feel a little tighter. “I think I'm just bloated."

  "Okay, just checking,” he says, and writes something in his notebook.

  She leans in to see, but he snaps it shut and heads back to his work.

  * * * *

  Alan finishes the cylinder; it's about the size of a canoe. The wings come next, and he sweats more when he's working on them. Sweat pours out like he's in detox. His pants hang loosely around his waist and Vera can see the band of his boxer shorts. He's losing weight, just like he said he would.

  The wings have three joints each and pistons reaching out from the tips that look like they will connect to the cylinder. She walks out in the evening to get a better look as he struggles to line them up.

  "They're not ready to go on yet,” he says as if she's asked, “but I need to make sure they'll fit. Don't want to waste material."

  "I'm having second thoughts,” she says. The sun bounces off the metal like it's supposed to. There's nothing special here, she thinks.

  "It's the only choice we have."

  Is it, she asks herself but doesn't say aloud.

  "I'm doing this for us,” Alan says, like he read her thoughts. She's too ashamed to stay outside, but when she goes back into the house, she wonders why she feels that way.

  I've done nothing wrong, she reminds herself. It's human to have doubt.

  * * * *

  "You know I say this because I care for you. Maybe you should start eating salads too,” Alan says at dinner. It's Sunday, so he's eating with her instead of while he works.

  Vera looks down at the small pouch gathering around her midsection. My breasts look bigger too, she thinks, but he hasn't noticed that.

  "I'm not eating any more than I normally do,” she says and glances at the meatloaf, which suddenly seems so appetizing she can't look away.

  "Maybe you could start exercising. It's important we stay the weight we planned. Otherwise all my calculations will be wrong."

  They remain silent for the rest of the meal, but Vera can see the sad look in his eyes when she starts her second serving. It makes her want to cry, but she can't help but eat. She doesn't even want it, but she can't leave the table until it's done. She chews slowly, and by the time she's finished, Alan is back outside working as the sun sets. The next morning, he gets up a half hour early and goes for a jog. Vera stays in bed and falls back asleep and dreams about a power drill that can only unscrew screws.

  * * * *

  A few weeks later, Vera wakes up in the middle of the night and sees Alan standing over her with the tape measure in his hands. In the moonlight, his face is gaunt and shallow. His cheeks are sunken in like divots. He looks a little like the starving children she used to see in commercials when she was really young, when people were still allowed to learn about the outside world.

  "What are you doing?” she asks, half-asleep, half-surprised.

  "I'm taking your measurements,” he says flatly. “You haven't kept up your end of the deal, and I can only lose so much weight to compensate. I'll need to make adjustments."

  "What deal?” she asks, and at first she thinks she said it in her head, but his eyelids bubble and tears form.

  "We need balance; you need to stop gaining weight,” he says. He leaves before she can respond, and a few minutes later she can hear pounding outside. It's five in the morning and she worries about the neighbors.

  But when the sun comes up a few hours later, Patrol has yet to stop by. Our neighbors really are good people, she thinks.

  She gets out of bed at nine and looks down at he
r stomach. The pouch has spread. She sees girth in her inner legs and a roundness at her sides.

  * * * *

  Alan has lost so much weight that he needs to buy new clothes. Vera tells him this, but he shrugs it off.

  "I'll just tighten my belt. We can buy new clothes when we cross over."

  He has attached both the wings. He keeps what he's not working on covered now that it's starting to take on its final shape.

  When he leans over it, she can see the vertebrae sticking out of his back like faces on a totem pole. They each look like they have their own expression, but they're all just variations of determination and despair.

  * * * *

  The bulk Vera is gathering has spread to her face. Her cheekbones have disappeared and there's a wobble under her chin when she talks.

  She goes to the doctor to see if there's a reason. She tells him nothing has changed and she feels dirty lying to a man with so much education. And then she feels ashamed for thinking he's better than anyone else.

  After blood has been drawn and tests have been completed, he admits he doesn't know why she's gained the weight. She's still in her paper gown and isn't sure why.

  "I don't think you've been completely honest with me,” he says and crosses his arms. His eyes are brown and warm. He reminds her of her father, but not in a physical way. It's the way he carries himself: honest, thoughtful, educated. She doesn't know why she thinks this. She never really knew her father, but that's the way she'd like to think he was.

  And the words come out before she can stop herself. She tells him about Alan and the escape plan and the machine in the backyard.

  He tells her the weight gain is probably stress-related.

  * * * *

  Vera tells Alan why she's gaining weight and his face turns white.

  "Did you tell the doctor why you're stressed?” he asks.

  "He's a doctor. He's not allowed to tell anyone,” she tells him. She doesn't believe it, but it sounds wonderful coming out of her mouth, like it might come true if she says it with enough conviction.

  "We need to leave now,” he says and grabs his notebook. He opens it up. “I haven't had time to make the corrections for your weight."

  "Calm down,” she says. “If he told anyone, they'd already be here."

  "No, they'd gather evidence first. To make it look official. We need to leave now."

  He grabs her hand and pulls her out the back door. It's a little past noon and the sun is directly overhead, bright and hot as usual.

  He yanks the tarp off the machine and Vera almost gasps. “Alan, you made this?” she asks.

  "For us."

  The pistons are connected and there are levers in the front, five of them, the one in the middle the largest. There are two seats built into the cylinder behind it.

  "Come on, get in; it's gassed up and ready to go,” he says.

  She looks down at her seat.

  "What about the weight?” she asks.

  "We'll have to risk it. I'll just have to be careful if it gets windy."

  She feels him tugging on her hand. He helps her step over the side and into the seat. She tries to sit, but something wedges up against her back. She struggles for a moment, and then she sees Alan's face slacken.

  "You don't fit,” he says. His voice is so soft she has to read his lips. Then he shakes his head. “I can fix this. It'll take me a day, but I can do it."

  He pulls her from her half-seated position and grabs his blowtorch.

  "Go without me,” she tells him as she steps out of the machine.

  "What? I can't.” His eyes are so wide she's afraid he might be dying.

  "I don't want to go and now you have to,” she says, and the words come out so naturally she thinks they must be true. She smiles and kisses him. He doesn't kiss her back, but she knows he doesn't mean anything by that.

  Vera doesn't turn back as she walks to the house, but she does listen from the kitchen. He waits an hour before he starts it up. It sounds like rolling thunder at first, and then a steady series of pffts. A few minutes later, the sound fades away and she looks around at the empty kitchen. She decides to make herself some tea. There's only a single teabag left, but she only needs one cup.

  Mustang by Jon Radlett

  * * * *

  * * * *

  American History by Jéanpaul Ferro

  You and I—we were made of glass, the Indian Ocean below us, ghost sky up above, when God went running like light through our veins, in a quiet night in Africa when there was no other war.

  I remember your eyes glowing blue in the dark like a calmness, you looking right through me like there was no other day, our sunburned bodies invisible and quiet on the beach, both of us seeds in the ground, unquenchable like children—that hotness caught in a city on a summer afternoon,

  And some days we could float down Fifth Avenue, a dream where we would sing in between the brick buildings, everyone looking down out of windows (always afraid), waves that came rushing inland, and then rushed out.

  And you make me glad that I'm right here with you now!

  every day like forty steps down to the turquoise ocean, a love in a renaissance in the middle of life, you—a thousand colors that touch me in a night of deep sorrow.

  Forgetting by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  The stunt pilot's last flight is on a late-October afternoon, crisp and windless, and while he skims over the trees above the city through a rising smell of woodsmoke, he glances down toward the parti-colored forest with the fleeting notion that it burns.

  His intentions are simple. Reaching the city, all he has left to do is climb into an empty space of sky and write his message there, then loop back toward the woods and crash in solitude. In his mind, he has a picture of the broken plane embraced by years of moss, his bones knit now by creepers, not flesh.

  His message will be simple too: Forget me. He can only hope she'll see it, and she'll heed. Don't they say that when you forget, you incidentally forgive?

  Reaching that clear space of air, he gives the task his all. Forget he executes magnificently, with flourishes and whirls. But in truth he has never written on the sky before—only passion has driven him to try—and the overwrought script dizzies him. He banks hard back the way he came and spirals out into the hills.

  Soon a wind comes up and bleeds the lettering like paint. For ten minutes it wavers, then it dissolves.

  In the meantime, the word stands in the sky like a decree.

  The high-school field-hockey team sees it from the parking lot after practice, heading home. Bickering a little, they finally decide the word up in the sky is Fortune, so they grab their hockey sticks back up and race to where they guess the word is pointing—an empty lot where the little kids play kickball in the summer—and some take turns digging with the sticks while others are deployed to bring back shovels. When they strike the box and haul it up and smash the rusty lock and peer in to see a glittering, not one of them is surprised.

  The babysitter sees it through the French doors leading onto her neighbor's deck, just as the little girl she's there to watch skips up and asks if they can walk down to the park. Sunlight irritates the babysitter, the autumn depresses her, walking tires her, and she loathes the park. Looking up at the word in the sky, the babysitter is sure it says Forbid. Immediately she bristles. You can't tell me what to do, she thinks, and casts an obscene gesture at the nothingness. Turning to the little girl, she says, Get your coat.

  The muralist sees it from the old redbrick factory building, where he's working on his latest project. The city didn't want to tear the building down, so they hired him to put it to some use. He could scarcely believe his luck, for they didn't care what he painted, so long as it raised the factory somewhere above eyesore status. So now he's painting what he's always dreamed of painting: oppression partially or wholly overcome. In the mural's latest stretch he's painted a maquilladora, rows of women hunched over sewing machines, rows of men hoisting boxes onto a truck. All
backs stooped, all eyes turned down. If there are faces, they cannot be seen at this angle. Off in the corner, a slick-haired foreman dices with an underling. A dare, the muralist assumes. A hazard or amusement at the poorer man's expense—in short, a lesson in world history. A bet: what's in my pockets against your next week's pay. Neither's much, but one is less. Tilting his head up to stretch his back, the muralist catches sight of the word in the sky, which to his mind says Forfeit. Looking back at the mural, he notices that the foreman has rolled. His dice are down; he's lifting up the cup. The muralist gives him snake eyes, for he still can. Tenderly, he smiles at the underling, paints a modest twinkle in his eye.

  The restaurateur sees it from the sidewalk outside the hospital, where he's fled for ten minutes from the white walls and antiseptic smell to smoke a cigarette. Fed up with himself, he marches back up to the room where his wife lies dying, the sickness fastened into her like a wall of thorns. They hadn't spoken for some months before he heard secondhand how she collapsed, just stepping off the subway; heard on the phone last night her mother's voice: She hasn't got much time. Does it matter now, he wonders, whether anything he suspected was true? Better if it doesn't. If he asked now, she couldn't answer anyway. From the window, he watches pigeons wheel toward the word up in the sky, which looks for all the world to be Forgive. He glances sideways at the woman in the bed and sighs. At that moment her eyes come open, and, improbably, she sits up. Staring off into an empty corner of the room, she smiles at nothing he can see. Oh, there you are, she says. Tell me a story. Then she dies.

  The backpacker sees it as the bus pulls to a stop and the doors hiss open. From his seat, the word appears to hang above the skyline, framed by the open door. He wasn't planning to get off just yet, but what the hell, this city's as good a place as any. Stepping down into the clear October afternoon and shouldering his bag, he shakes his head in wonderment at what seems to be the word Forget, scrawled somewhat blurrily across the almost artificial blueness of the sky. He takes the elevator to the top of the tallest building he can find, lets himself out onto the roof, and, with the word in plain sight overhead, he steps straight off the edge, confident that only once he dares look down will he begin to fall.