I think about Tiffany, and I think about Steve, and I think about how going along with things seems easy on paper, but then there are all these hidden emotional fees, and after a while they really add up and you end up feeling crummier than if you’d just put your foot down and said, “No! I will not feel lost in my own living room!” or “No! I’m not just going to forget about the guy in the chasm!”
At night, when I’m getting tomorrow’s lunch ready, I take out two slices of bread. Then, without giving myself time to think about it, I take out two more.
“I believe you were told not to pack extra food anymore,” says the security guy the next morning. He has in his hands my two foil-wrapped sandwiches.
“Oh, I forgot about that,” I say. The security guy sighs and goes to throw one of the sandwiches away, but I tell him no, that he shouldn’t do that. I should take it and force myself to eat both at lunch so that the uncomfortable fullness that follows will serve as a bitter lesson as to why I need to remember stuff better. The security guy considers this for a moment, then nods. He even pats me on the back and commends my discipline. After that, a guy in a lab coat gives me my eyedrops and I head out onto the factory floor.
All morning, I can barely concentrate. My hand is shaky on the Rod Things. I slip while turning one, and it rubs my palm raw, but I bite my lip and act like nothing happened so that Harris doesn’t get worried.
At our first break, I don’t drink any coffee. I already feel jittery enough without it. Donald notices and asks, “Do you know something about the coffee that I don’t know?”
“No,” I say. Then I add, “Nothing about the coffee.”
Donald starts to ask me what I’m talking about, but Francis comes clacking up, still wearing his cleats like an idiot, so I don’t get a chance to explain. Instead, I tell a joke about Dic’s dick.
“Why was there a picture of Dic’s dick in the math book?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Why?” says Donald.
“Because they saw that it didn’t have an ending and thought it must be pi, the number that goes on forever,” I say.
“Intellectual humor. I like that,” Donald says, without laughing.
“Thanks,” I say. “I thought of it last night while I was making my lunches.”
When noon comes around, I go to the chasm as casually as I can, call down to Steve, and throw him his sandwich. A few people hear me and come over to ask if I missed the part yesterday about the Sandwiches for Steve program ending. I don’t say anything, but there must be something about my blurry outline that implies something is about to happen, because they don’t leave; they just stand there looking down into the dark blur of the chasm like I do, and then even more people start to gather.
I’ll admit that this sudden audience lends the situation even more spontaneity and excitement than I’d planned for, but I can barely feel it because I’m already at my limits in terms of both those categories. Here’s the truth: The sandwich I’ve thrown Steve isn’t a sandwich. It’s a tiny flashlight between two pieces of bread.
“Don’t bite down too hard on that one, Steve,” I call into the chasm.
What I hope will happen next is that Steve will remove the flashlight, turn it on, and see what the half-formed product is. He’ll call it up to us, we’ll all hear, which will probably mean we’ll all be fired, but especially me. The chasm will be filled with Steve in it, or maybe it won’t. Maybe they’ll just leave it there, because with the secret out, the factory might have to shut down and maybe the whole company too. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people could lose their jobs over this, but I don’t care.
I’m just so damn curious.
About the Author
SEAN ADAMS has published work in Hobart, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His story “The Astronaut Who Forgot” was a finalist for the Missouri Review’s 2013 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in Fiction. He is a graduate of Bennington College and currently lives in Seattle.
OUT SOUTH
* * *
NATE MARSHALL
No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
—ROBERT FROST, “OUT, OUT”
In Chicago kids are beaten. They crack
open: they pavement. They don’t fight, they die.
Bodies bruised blue with wood. Cameras catch
us killing, capture danger to broadcast
on Broadways. We Roseland stars, made players
for the press. Apes caged from first grade until.
Shake us. We make terrible tambourines.
Packed into class, kids passed like kidney stones.
Each street day is unanswered prayer for peace,
News gushes from Mom’s mouth like schoolboy blood.
Ragtown crime don’t stop, only waves—hello.
Crime waves break no surface on news—goodbye.
Each kid that’s killed, one less mouth to free lunch,
a fiscal coup. Welcome to where we from.
About the Author
NATE MARSHALL is from the South Side of Chicago. He currently serves as a Zell Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he received his MFA. He is a member of the poetry collective Dark Noise. A Cave Canem Fellow, his work has appeared in Poetry magazine, Indiana Review, the New Republic, [PANK] Online, and in many other publications. He was the star of the award-winning full-length documentary Louder Than A Bomb and has been featured on HBO’s Brave New Voices. He is an assistant poetry editor for Muzzle. Nate is the founder of the Lost Count Scholarship Fund that promotes youth violence prevention in Chicago. Nate won the 2014 Hurston/Wright Amistad Award and the 2013 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award. He is also a rapper.
Maryanna Hoggatt © 2013
Michael Hirshon © 2013
HIGHWAY WITH GREEN APPLES
* * *
BY BAE SUAH
Translated by Sora Kim-Russell
We take a drive one day down a secluded highway through the countryside. As he’s sitting behind the wheel, I ask him, “Did you see a cat pass in front of the car just now?”
“Of course.”
He responds nonchalantly while fumbling with one hand for a cigarette. The late-autumn sky is heavy with clouds and looks as if it has been draped in dark and light curtains. A line of larch trees stretches all the way down to the end of the gray highway. The road ends at a rundown street that leads to a small, unfamiliar town, where women selling green apples will be sitting along the side of the street.
I am one week away from my twenty-fifth birthday. I hate being that age. That age is neither as fresh and full of life as fifteen years nor as jaded as the afternoon of thirty-five years. I never know what the next day will bring, so I am always uneasy.
“They say it’s bad luck when a cat crosses your path,” I tell him.
“Do they?”
“They say something bad will happen. Especially if it’s a black cat, like that one.”
“Black cat?”
He takes his hands off the steering wheel for a moment and considers this. The road is quiet and monotonous. All there is to see on either side are low, unchanging hills and fields planted with corn and pumpkin. With a week left to go before turning twenty-five, I tell myself that there must be a river nearby. Longing for that blue-green water, I lean out the car window into the wind.
“That cat wasn’t black,” he says. “You saw it wrong. It was gray with black spots. I’m sure of it.”
I think, It was black, I know it was. But then I think, Who cares? What difference does it make? And I keep my mouth shut. Outside, where the tall grass lies flat in the wind, there are no people—only road, and more road. I will never forget just how beautiful the late autumn is.
“Want an apple?” he asks.
When I don’t respond, he points to the paper bag of green apples, the ones we have just bought on the side of the road in the small, dust-covered town. Ah, right
, we have apples. Green apples.
The woman who came to the car to sell us the apples was wearing a thickly woven scarf. He had pulled over near the highway and was busy studying the map. He made it sound spontaneous, but he’d had a destination in mind. A fishing village on the west coast—not too small but not so big that you would notice it right away. He tells me it’s a tourist resort during the summer, but by that time of the year, it will practically be in hibernation.
“How do you know about this place?” I ask him. “I’ve never heard of it.”
I had stared at the woman’s chapped, reddened cheeks and wound up buying apples from her. They came in a paper bag that crinkled and gave off an old, musty smell. There must have been an orchard nearby. Her faded, hand-knit scarf covered half of her face. The piano music playing at full volume inside the car echoes far down the deserted road. Was it Rachmaninov? Tchaikovsky? Maybe a Schubert arpeggio? He keeps so many tapes in the car that I never know what we are listening to. The music reaches a shrill, intense part that contrasts with the surreal calm of the street. Then it subsides and turns dark as death, and the pianist lets out a deep breath. The tall larch trees that line the highway stand against the backdrop of the gray evening sky like an old watercolor. Women selling green apples on a dusty road. He had pulled the cash from his wallet without taking his eyes off the map. A dark-blue bus swept past the car with a dull clatter. Nearly invisible dust settled onto the woman’s eyes and dry lips. The buildings are short, and the signs are old and flaking. The inside of one building, where the door stands open, is dark and low-ceilinged. A dry late-autumn breeze carries the scent of boiled beans and dried fish. I want to get out of the car and walk slowly down the street. Yes, it would be nice to live here and sell green apples in paper bags. I see myself from behind, walking back to a home next to a river out past the low hills, dragging my heavy feet as the night grows dark. On that autumn day of my twenty-fifth year, I have a lump in my throat.
“I went there once a long time ago,” he says. “I think one of my high school friends was living there at the time. You can go fishing, and they have summer rentals. I don’t know if he still lives there. But we used to be close.”
I gaze at the side of his face and bite into an apple. I am a twenty-five year-old who goes to bed every night wondering what I will do the next day. By now, all the other women I know who went to the same all-girls high school as me are at their most self-assured, having married or living as career women in the big city, but I am as unsure of myself as I was at fifteen. He starts the car. Fallen leaves swirl up as if in a typhoon. He says, “From here we head straight west,” and adds, “the last stretch is unpaved.” He keeps checking the map. We get lost along the way, so it’s pitch-black by the time we reach our destination. A dog won’t stop barking, and the waves are loud. His high school friend is still living there.
“Long time no see,” the friend tells him. “We don’t get many visitors this time of year. The fishing isn’t that good here. Truth is, I’ve been thinking more and more about leaving this place.”
His friend says he wants to move back to the big city to get a job and enjoy the unsentimental nature of organized society for a change. The three of us walk along the beach in the dark, the sand coarse and the waves high. Beer and Coca-Cola cans and disposable chopsticks lie scattered among the rocks; lights from fishing boats sparkle on the dark sea. We occasionally stop to sit on the rocks, where they smoke cigarettes and talk about the old days. I sit quietly, as I don’t know any of the people they are talking about, including the many women whose names come up. When the waves dampen our shoes, we get up and walk back the way we came. I trail soberly after them, unable to keep up with the conversation. His friend occasionally turns to say, “Watch your step,” as if he has just remembered that I am there. Dawn approaches.
After the trip, I do not see him again for two years. I never learn whether his old high school friend left the village to return to the big city. We arrive in the dead of night and leave at dawn when the fog is thick, so all I remember are sounds—the barking dog, the crashing waves. He sips coffee while driving carefully through the early morning fog. The air is filled with the scent of the invisible sea.
“Feels like we’re floating in a dream,” I say.
I dip my palms into the damp fog. He keeps humming along to the song coming from the tape deck and doesn’t say anything.
You don’t know, do you? How much I love you.
My love for you will never change,
even after an ocean of time has passed.
How long is an ocean of time? Feelings as countless as grains of sand. Distances as far-flung as the sky. How much is that, I wonder. The song keeps playing.
No matter how far you go,
like the wind, I’ll be with you.
I take a bite out of the last of the green apples rolling around in the backseat. The sour, astringent taste fills me like fog. I look over at the side of his face and think, Even if we break up, you won’t be forgotten.
Later, over the phone, he tells me, “I met someone. I think I’m in love. She’s tiny and cute. You would like her. I told her all about you. She’s . . .”
Here, he lights a cigarette. I hear the all-too-familiar sound of his lighter over the phone. The blue-green flame.
“She really puts me at ease. It’s different than when I’m with you. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I had a problem with you. Not at all. It’s just that, with her, I never feel anxious about what I’m supposed to do next. I could never cheat on someone like her.”
He exhales a long puff of smoke. I can picture the blue cloud spreading thinly through a darkened room. I hear the sound of dinner being made downstairs in the house where I am renting a spare room. A cat meows, and the scent of roasting fish is in the air. A week has passed since we ate green apples together in a village on the west coast. It is the evening of my twenty-fifth birthday.
“I wish you were a different type of girl,” he continues. “The type who cries and refuses to let go when a guy breaks up with her. The type who says, ‘How dare you see another woman, I won’t stand for it.’ If you were that type, you would never have gotten this call from me. But, we were good in the beginning! You said so yourself.”
Those words—You said so yourself—sound so oddly like begging that I find myself saying yes despite myself. He forgot it was my birthday. I don’t feel like reminding him, either. And that is how I end up turning twenty-five. During the two years that we dated, he gave me a gift to celebrate every occasion—my birthday, the anniversary of the day he bought a dress shirt from me at the department store where I worked, the anniversary of our first date. If I told him it’s my birthday, he would buy me a gaudy printed scarf or an African-style necklace. That’s the kind of girl he likes.
“Remember our first date?” he asks. “I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep the night before. We saw a movie together. It was a French movie, and I thought about trying to kiss you in the dark.”
It wasn’t a French movie but a 1960s’ Italian film that was playing at a small revival house. And I had left for our date thinking that I wouldn’t mind having sex with him that night. It was late by the time the film ended, and we missed the last subway train while drinking cold beer at a pub afterward. We held hands and walked for hours in the dark past shuttered shops along city streets littered with black plastic garbage bags. Old newspapers fluttered in the wind. What did I wear that night? A blue dress with a white sash. Black high heels to make my legs look longer. Clear polish on my nails. When I let down my hair, which I’d tied into a high ponytail, at a corner of a darkened building, he thought I was trying to seduce him.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say. “I wish you wouldn’t worry about me. I’m not that upset about it.”
I think back to elementary school. My handwriting was always neat and perfect, and during class, I kept my eyes on the swaying hem of my teacher’s dress. She would hand back my pristine ho
mework that never had any eraser marks on it and praise me by patting me on the head with a hand that smelled like soap. “You’re such a good girl,” she would say. “Keep it up.”
“You told me from the start,” he says. “That you were only seeing me because you were depressed. That we would break up eventually. Once I met a girl I really liked.”
“Yes, I did.”
“You said you would turn into a good girl, a virtuous one, and leave me for good.”
“Yeah, so don’t worry about me,” I tell him. “You have nothing to worry about. I’m not going to run off and become a nun or start drinking or anything.”
The house fills with the scent of dwenjang soup, which the landlady always serves at dinnertime. The landlord’s chickens cluck in the back garden, and the rose vines growing on the gray outer wall where the paint is peeling away sway in the November breeze. Salarymen returning home to their families pause to buy cardboard boxes of grapes at the store and to smoke outside the subway station, which is surrounded by buildings that rent out small studio apartments. It’s a typical evening, unchanged and seemingly never to change. When I first found this house, my friend So-yeong said, “I don’t like it. It’s everything I can’t stand.”
“So?” I said. “You’re not the one who’s going to live here. And it’s what I can afford.”
“What I can’t stand is the petit bourgeois air that fills these places. I get this ominous feeling that hiding somewhere in these alleys is a neighborhood bully who never quite grew up. Do you want to live like a character in that TV show, Three Families Under One Roof, crammed into a tiny spare room next to all these poor families?”
Day One, Year One: Best New Stories and Poems, 2014 Page 10