Throw a Nickel on the Drum

By Bettyann Moore

Audrey yawned and stretched luxuriously under the covers. One of her cats gave a feline grunt and resettled itself on its mistress’s feet. Audrey winced a bit and then smiled, bringing her hand to her right thigh. She pressed her fingers a little harder than necessary into the bruise she knew was there. She smiled again, tracing its curious curved shape with a finger.

I really rocked it,she thought, remembering the night before. Best. Gig. Ever.

Feeling a slight twinge on her left thigh, she slid her left hand along her flank, finding tenderness there as well. She broke into a full-fledged grin.

“Definitely the best,” she said aloud, sighing.

The tell-tale clicking of claws on the worn hardwood floors pulled her out of her reverie.

“Up, Cooper,” she said, and her poodle mix dog leapt into the bed, burying his nose in Audrey’s armpit.

“What a good boy,” she said. “Did my boy have fun last night, too?” The dog wriggled closer, his tail thumping happily against her bruised thigh.

At the end of every gig, Audrey brought Cooper into the bar to meet her fans. Heather, the bar owner, never seemed to mind. Maybe next year she’d ask if he could stay for a set and hear her play. He’d watched her practice before, but had never seen her with the rest of the band.

Dwayne poured himself another cup of coffee and thanked the universe that he’d given up drinking years before. Tina, his wife, was grateful, too, and didn’t mind the little bit of weed he smoked between sets.

I’ll let her sleep a little longer, Dwayne thought. She’s not used to those late nights any more. The band would be on the road for the rest of the Memorial Day weekend and though Tina seldom accompanied him to his gigs any longer – 30 years was long enough, she said – she always went with him to his annual Friday-before-Memorial Day gig at Heather’s Bar. Last night was not much different than the last 15 he’d done there. Cuckoo, the drummer, had played 12 of those 15 and Brian, the bass player, had done ten of those Friday shows. Only Dwayne himself – and Audrey – had done them all.

And while Tina hated to see “Audrey’s annual embarrassment” as she called it, at the end of the night she would hug him tight and whisper in his ear: “You’re a good man, Dwayne Cooper.” They both knew the tips would have been larger if he didn’t let Richard, the horrible sax player, and other wannabes sit in with the blues band’s third and last sets. Dwayne included Audrey and her tambourine in that lot, though he would never classify her as a wannabe. Audrey was a special case.

It was Saturday and wash day for Audrey, despite the holiday weekend. She had nowhere to go and nothing else to do. She sorted the darks from the lights, lovingly adding the black t-shirt with its look-alike Harley logo emblazoned in faded silver across the chest. She only wore it – and her black leggings and knee-length jean skirt – once a year, but she’d been wearing them for 15 years now. They were looking a little worse for the wear. In fact, she’d had to do a little repair work on the neck of the shirt that morning after she’d pulled it over her head and discovered that a thread had been caught on her necklace.

She placed the three items, plus her once-a-year black bra and panties set, in their own washing machine at the LaundroMax and set it to “delicate.”

Dwayne and his band mates seldom drove to a gig together, but since they’d be playing each night of the holiday weekend, they loaded their gear into Cuckoo’s van and headed to their Saturday gig – a new blues bar at a tony resort in northern Wisconsin. Once on the highway, Friday night’s post-mortem began.

“Nice sets last night, boys,” Dwayne said. The “boys,” including Dwayne, were in their early- to mid-60s.

“I came in too early after the guitar solo in ‘She Gets It’,” Brian said.

“That’s cool,” Dwayne replied, turning in his seat to look back at his old friend.

“Hell,” Cuckoo said, rolling his eyes in the rear view mirror, “it’s no wonder with Lady Luck sittin’ in. That woman couldn’t find a beat if her life depended on it. Totally rhythm deaf.”

Dwayne took a long pull from his bottle of Mountain Dew. Here we go again, he thought, the annual harangue.

“No shit,” Brian said, leaning forward between the front seats, “at least the audience was clapping in time. With Sister Mary Sunshine shakin’ her thang right next to me, I had to look out into the bar to get back in the groove.”

Cuckoo guffawed, while Dwayne looked out at the flat expanses of farmland that rolled by. He didn’t want to get into it again.

“Hell, I know we’re white boys playing the blues,” Brian added, “but that chick has zero soul and zip in the looks department. No freakin’ librarian has had enough demons in her life to play the blues.”

Dwayne cut his eyes at the bassist, but said nothing.

“Don’t forget zero titties and bootie,” Cuckoo said, snorting. “It’s a crime against nature and music for a tambourine player not to have a nice bootie – not that she’s actually ‘playing’.”

Dwayne knew they were trying to get a rise out of him. Back in the day, they would have been successful. He went on staring out at the scenery.

After the laundry was dried, folded and put away, Audrey indulged in her Saturday treat: a cup of tea, half a sandwich and a bowl of soup at the neighborhood Internet cafe. She paid an extra dollar for the privilege of using one of the cafe’s outdated, but functional, laptops.

Her hands shook as she logged into the Dwayne Cooper Band’s Facebook fan page. Maybe someone had posted pictures of last night’s gig. Maybe she’d be in some of them.

Ah, she thought, I’m in luck! Someone – Tina Cooper, in fact – had already posted pictures from the show. She’d taken a lot of them. Audrey’s excitement grew as she clicked through the photos, knowing that if she did appear in them, it wouldn’t be until near the end.

She was getting closer. There was that old guy with the saxophone. She’d eased herself up on the bandstand shortly after he sat in for the second song of the third set. And – oh, happy days! – there she was! Part of her left side was cut off, but she had her tambourine in her right hand then anyway. I look a little stiff, she thought, but I was nervous at first.

Audrey clicked to the next photo, then several more before she saw herself again. It was taken during the last set, she knew, because Dwayne was playing that boxy-looking guitar he always brought out then.

“Oh, my word!” she said aloud, causing a few heads in the cafe to turn. A thrill went up her spine. Why, she looked positively disheveled! The black shirt had slid down her left shoulder and the whole world could see the skinny strap of her black bra. There was a wisp of hair over one eye. She was even smiling.

She glanced at the comments section and felt a momentary let-down.

“Whose the stiff bored?” someone named BouncingBetty had written. Audrey slumped a bit in her chair, then brightened.

“It’s ‘who’s’ – not whose – and it’s spelled B-O-A-R-D,” she said quietly, rolling her eyes. A few pictures later, she came to the end without seeing herself again, so she logged off.

It had been an amazing night.

The band slowly unloaded the van in the alley behind the Blues & Brews Club. They were early, but Dwayne liked it that way. In the early days, though, he seldom arrived at a venue in time; quite a few times he never showed up at all.

“I’d like a nickle for every gig we’ve played in a joint called ‘Blues & Brews’,” Brian said as he held the door for the others. There was nothing to carrying his bass and his band mates never let anyone else touch their instruments, Dwayne especially. He treated his various Fenders like bottles of fine wine. Brian had heard rumors that the guitars had been in a pawn shop 20 years ago, but Dwayne never talked about it.

A big guy, Brian also guarded the van while the others were inside, probably unnecessary at a fancy resort in Northern Wisconsin, but you never knew. He flicked a half-smoked cigarette down the alley as Dwayne and Cuckoo came out for the last time; Cuckoo just had to move the van out of the middle of the alley and then it was time to practice the new tune Dwayne had written the week before. Out of the corner of his eye, Brian saw a figure lurch out of the shadows toward the smoldering butt.

“Even here,” Brian muttered, nodding toward the man. Dwayne took in the tattered clothing, the mismatched shoes, the piss-stained pants and the scruffy beard. He shuddered, then looked away.

“Maybe especially here,” he muttered. With morbid curiosity, Cuckoo and Brian watched the man’s drunken progress.

“Jesus, it’s not even three in the afternoon and the old guy can’t see straight,” Cuckoo said none too softly.

The man paid them no attention as he tried to hone in on his prize, stooping down several times, nearly capsizing, then finally snaring the butt. The look of satisfaction on his face was quickly wiped away when he tripped on his own feet and went sprawling onto the gritty alley, where he lay, dazed.

“Gimme the keys,” Dwayne demanded, snatching them from Cuckoo’s hand. “I’ll move the van and you guys work on the new tune.” His voice brooked no argument; the drummer and bassist shuffled back into the bar.

Casting a glance down the alley where the drunk was struggling to come to his feet with little success,
Dwayne stood stock still, raised his eyes to the sky and swore. He unlocked the van, reached in under the driver’s side seat where Brian stashed his smokes and pulled out a nearly-full carton of Marlboros. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills from the previous night’s tip jar and shoved them into the carton. Then he went to help the man to his feet.

Before she went to bed that night, Audrey ironed her uniform as she always did before her Sunday service. She would be working the corner of Prospect and Racine streets, where she’d had some success in the past. Dwayne Cooper could be counted as her greatest success. She took special care with the pleats in her polyester skirt while recalling how she’d found him sprawled in the gutter, lying in his own vomit, a broken bottle of MD 20-20 still clutched in his hand. It was unprofessional of her, but she’d abandoned and completely forgotten about her tambourine and collection kettle as she knelt beside him, doing nothing more than holding his hand until he came to.

After that, it was his work, not hers, that took him figuratively and literally out of that gutter – though Dwayne insisted it was all her doing. The embarrassment of riches he bestowed on her – the new tambourine and her life’s dream realized – humbled her. But she wouldn’t give them up for the world.

Aesop's Fable

By Colleen Sutherland

That first day of first grade, Miss Algard read us an Aesop fable about the grasshopper and the ant. The grasshopper fiddles away the summer while the ant works. At the end of the story, the ant is secure in its home with plenty of food while the grasshopper starves to death. Other versions would have the ant taking the grasshopper in but that was not how Aesop wrote it Miss Algard said She didn't believe in messing with the classics.

After Miss Algard finished the story, she asked the first grade class: “Which would you rather be?” We all dutifully said, “The ant,” which is what she wanted to hear. We promised we would all be good little workers. All but Sallie Mae. “No, the grasshopper. The grasshopper has all the fun.”

“But in the end, he starves,” Miss Algard said.

“Worth it,” insisted Sallie Mae.

Sallie Mae did have fun and got into trouble for it. On nice days she was down by the river splashing around, playing hooky. Once the police picked her up as she was riding her bicycle around and around the park and deposited her at school. She was there ten minutes and was out the door again. “Good days shouldn't be wasted,” she said.

She showed me her report card once. Straight A's in every subject but behavior. She got an F minus there. I got good grades, too, not as good as hers but I got an A+ in deportment and a note to my parents about what a good little helper I was.

She wasn't Sallie Mae for long. At the beginning of the second grade, she announced to her new teacher, “Everyone calls me Sacha.” No one called her Sacha, not her friends, not her relatives, not her parents.

“Isn't Sacha a boy's name?” I asked “Girl's name, too,” Sallie Mae said. “It's short for Alexandra.”

“But your name isn't Alexandra either.”

By the end of that year, her name was Sacha and remained so. She was one of my best friends but I never went on escapades with her. Every time she got into a scrape, I reminded her of the ant and the grasshopper, but she laughed.

“I see a lot of grasshoppers and ants down by the river and none of them are dying,” she said. “Working like an ant is just gross.”

It was that way all the way through grade school and high school. I plodded along, getting good grades, working hard in school, church and the community. I was in Girl Scouts. Sacha tried one meeting and never came back. “Boring,” she said. I sang in the school choir. Sacha played the violin in the school orchestra.

“I intend to fiddle away my life, like the grasshopper,” she said when she first took up the instrument. It was the one thing she worked at. Sometimes our church invited her on Sundays to perform solos and I found out they paid her, too. I knew enough about music to know she wasn't really playing Christian songs, usually something from some pagan opera.

We remained friends for a long time. I tried to get her to behave, she tried to get me into trouble. Finally, it was too much an effort. By our junior year we had drifted apart. She was taking college prep classes, I was in the business courses, taking shorthand, typing and bookkeeping. Rumor said she was dating college guys and everyone said she was loose. I had a nice boy friend my parents introduced me to but I intended to be a virgin on my wedding day.

Sacha's grades got her into an Ivy League school. Though I got the best grades by doing extra credit, the faculty said Sacha would probably be better at giving the graduation speech. I should have been up there at the podium but I don't know what I would have said...maybe something on the grasshopper and the ant and working hard to achieve our dreams. Instead Sacha spoke on the theme, “Time to go out and live!” Everyone laughed throughout and applauded though the faculty frowned. Later the school board had a meeting about that.

Sacha went off to college on scholarships. I had scholarships, too, but I followed my parents' advice and went to the technical college for more business training. A year later, I was in the clerical pool in a big insurance company. Two years later, I was pregnant and married.

Before graduation, I had signed up to be on the reunion committee. Soon we were working on our fifth reunion. It took us a while to locate Sacha. Her parents had moved and so had she. We finally found an ex-boyfriend who knew she hadn't graduated from her big Eastern college. Instead she had moved to California and was living in a hippy commune. She sent word she would be at some West Coast peace rally and couldn't make the reunion.

She did show up at the tenth reunion. Our committee hadn't invited her because we didn't know where she was, but she showed up anyhow, throwing all the number count and seating arrangements for the dinner off because she brought two boyfriends. “Couldn't decide which one,” she said. Instead of a nice dress, she wore jeans, a leather jacket and boots.

By then, I was working again. My husband and I were salting away money on annuities, stocks and savings. We had three children to educate and we were thinking ahead to retirement.

“How are you doing?” I asked Sacha.

“Great. We've started a blue grass band. Gregor on the drums, Eli on the guitar and me on the fiddle.”

“Oh, that must be lucrative.”

“Nah, we've been hitchhiking around the country, but Gregor just bought a van to take us to the next gig.”

Late that evening, we found her with Gregor in the back of his van, smoking pot and half naked. My husband called the police, but by the time they arrived, the van was gone, leaving boyfriend no. 2 behind.

At the 20^th reunion, we found out she was now an artist, showing her wares at farmer's markets and craft shows. She sent us pictures of her daughter wrapped up in a quilt at the edge of her booth and news that she was now a socialist. We left that last bit out out of the memorial album. She didn't show up for the reunion anyhow.

She was in town for the 25^threunion because she was part of an environmental group picketing our biggest business, the chemical factory where I worked as a secretary. I told her to leave them alone because if I stayed with them another fifteen years, I would get a good pension.

“Where's your daughter?” I asked her.

“She lives with her father. I get her over the summers.”

Sacha had no photos of her daughter but did have some slides from her travels and agreed to show them to the class along with a talk about her adventures. I could have shown photos of our trip to the Grand Canyon, but Sacha had been all over the world it seems, fighting pollution. Each slide had a silly story to go with it.

“That must take a lot of money,” I said.

“Nah, I just sign on to work with various environmental groups that give me a place to stay. Then I give talks about it later to pay for the air fare.” That's when I found out she was being paid to attend the reunion. Everyone seemed to get a kick out of her.

“She makes these reunions more fun,” the chairman said. I quit the committee then and there.

I queried her again after the dinner. She had never married, so that daughter was illegitimate.

“What about the future? Don't you want to save money for her college education?”

“Nah, her daddy has all the money for that, plus the connections to get her in. Plus, she's a smart little cookie. She'll probably get scholarships. I take her with me when we go abroad.”

Sacha didn't seem to see the need to save for the future. We, on the other hand, were building up a nice nest egg. We had moved into our second home, a sprawling house with on an acre of land. It needed a lot of upkeep and the lawn had to be mowed every week, but it would be a good investment. It was worth the two mortgages, plus they would be tax write-offs our banker said as he handed us the forms. It meant an hour commute each way for me to work at the chemical plant.

I was now the office supervisor. I didn't like the snippy young girls who worked under me and they didn't like me either, but it was food on the table and health insurance. We needed that now. Bill had developed ulcers and high blood pressure. Diabetes was my problem but as long as I had my job we were OK.

My daughter was in computer classes at the tech but her grades were never that good. One son was in jail but we never talked about that at reunions. The other boy just disappeared one day. The word was that he was in Colorado living with another guy. We wrote him off, too. It didn't look like there would be any grandchildren for us.

By the time the 40^th reunion rolled around, I was a widow. I kept up with the house. It was an investment after all. I managed to renegotiate the mortages, turning them into one. I gave up driving to work and took the bus.

Sacha didn't show up for the reunion but we watched her on PBS news talking about the environment. She had written a book about political activism. A few members of the class had read it.

Our town was one of the first to have to deal with the collapse of the housing market. The chemical plant closed and went into bankruptcy taking the pensions along with my job. Then the recession hit and all my investments were gone. The house followed. I found myself in a one room subsidized apartment. The only traveling I did was to take the bus to Tea Party rallies. I was now working at Walmart, trying to get by on social security and a part time job.

At the 50^th class reunion everyone gathered around Sacha. She was a celebrity now, still working on environmental issues and considering a run for Congress. She brought along photographers and newsmen so our reunion had great coverage. Some of us were interviewed, but I passed on it. Sacha looked great in her designer dress. Mine was the same dress I wore to the 40^th reunion. It didn't fit all that well.

She was huddled in a corner talking to Mr. Pritchard about her career. He must have been eighty years old now. I sidled over to listen. She was giving him credit for starting her environmental career in his advanced biology course.

Sacha owned a townhouse in Georgetown, she told him, paid for with the proceeds from her memoir, which had been a best seller. She felt the house would be necessary while she was in Congress.

“That's our Sasha,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Always confident.”

She finally noticed me.

“How are you doing?” she said. I wasn't sure she even knew who I was. It was the final straw. Damn her!

“Lousy! And it's not fair. All my life I've worked like the ant and you've been the grasshopper. Where's my reward? Where's my cushy home? Where's my money?”

Mr Pritchard asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Aesop, the grasshopper and ant story. I've worked hard all my life and what has it gotten me? I have nothing! I mean, Sacha should be dead by now.”

Mr. Pritchard and Sacha looked at each other and back at me with sorrow written all over their faces.” I hated it that they felt sorry for me.

“Aesop got it all wrong,” Mr Pritchard explained. “Ants live three months. Grasshoppers live up to eleven months.”

Sacha patted my hand. “Kiddo, Aesop was no scientist. It's only a fable. The truth is in the end, we're all dead sooner or later. We have to live it up while we can.”

When she travels through this area, Sacha visits me here at Glen Valley nursing home. She is one of the few visitors I get.

She tells me about her life, about her travels. I pretend to listen but I am thinking of that old bastard Aesop. I hate him almost as much as I hate Sacha.

I won't be going to the 60^threunion.

The Crossing Guard

Author's note: this is the story I promised to write in the my blog post about never running out of ideas.

Image by SchuminWeb via Wikimedia Commons

After all the times that Gunther had been stabbed, shot at, and bombed by IEDs it seemed unfair that he should be killed by a seventeen-year-old girl in his own neighborhood. He supposed he shouldn't complain too much though, at least it was a bright sunny day. Or was that just the light at the end of the tunnel? At least it wasn't raining. 

*

 A Dodge Dart slipped around a stopped school bus with its flashers on, traffic stopped on both sides. Gunther recognized the driver, Faith, as she just cruised past without even tapping the brakes. Somehow the luck of the stupid held, and no children were hurt, but it was only a matter of time. He grabbed his phone to call the police.

"She's doing it again," he said to the dispatcher."Faith Brom, license plate 321 – HTY, just passed a school bus with its flashers on. You need to send someone to write her a ticket. Better yet, throw her in jail."

“I'm sorry Mister Hader,” the man said, “but we can't take it on your just your say-so that this happened."

"All right then, send someone in a squad car down to the bus stop by 7:15 tomorrow morning," Gunther said.

"Sir, I'll bring it up with the Sergeant, but the department is really spread quite thin right now. I'm not certain if we can spare the manpower during morning drive time."

"Will you be able to spare the manpower when there's a dead child in the road?"

"Sir, I appreciate your concern, I really do, but we can only be in so many places at once. Perhaps the bus driver could corroborate your story, that might help raise your concern to higher priority."

“A higher priority?” He let out a bitter laugh. “Right. Bye."

There's never a cop around when you need one. He laughed to himself. Not even when you can deliver a criminal tied with a neat bow. It was getting near the end of the month, surely someone needed to pad their quota. A buddy had told him there were no such things as quotas in the police department and Gunther hadn't believed him at the time. Now he wasn't so sure. Fine, he'd just have to fix this himself.

He called up the bus company, and asked for the name of the driver on his route, describing Faith and her Dart, along with the number of the bus she passed each morning. He was told that as a matter of policy the bus company would not give out the names of drivers, but they would relay the his message to the driver and that they were also very concerned about motorists who disobey the laws. The voice on the phone also assured him that their drivers each had a radio and could report any vehicle that was behaving erratically, which would then be passed on to the local police. The voice assured Gunther that the young woman's behavior had most likely already been properly reported.

"Why haven't the police done anything?" he asked.

The voice of the bus company didn't know, but didn't claim to know the inner workings of the police department either. Gunther hung up the phone and sighed. He would have to take this up with a higher authority.

*

 Gunther's stomach churned as he walked down the sidewalk. It felt like hidden eyes were watching him. There probably were. His Realtor called the neighborhood “close-knit,” which Gunther later learned was code for two-faced gossiping busy-bodies. Funny that the same people who would squawk to the head of the home owner's association if you parked an RV in your driveway overnight hadn't seen fit to nip the bus problem at the source. Gunther didn't like giving orders, but the situation clearly called for it. People would notice, people would talk. He didn't care.

 He squared his shoulders as he saw the house and steeled himself as he walked to the front door. A woman in her 40s with rich curly hair and tired eyes answered.

"Are you Faith's mother?" he asked.

"Yes." The woman just stared at him like a robot.

"Well you should know, and I don't care if you listen to me or not, you should know, that she's passing school buses when they're stopped, lights flashing, kids crossing and everything." He stuck a finger in her face. "And God forbid, if she kills someone, you're the one that'll be held responsible for it."

"Yes?" The woman showed no reaction at all.

"Yes, God dammit yes. Don't you care?"

"Faith hasn't actually hit anyone has she?" the woman said.

Words failed him for a few moments. "But that's not the point. The point is something could happen. Something is going to happen."

"I see. I'll talk to her about it. Thank you." The woman closed the door in his face before he could say another word.

Gunther doubted that anything would be said.

He stewed about it all day long as he sprayed white enamel paint on sheet metal boxes.  Boring work, but a steady paycheck and decent benefits.  During the all-employee meeting on the shop floor, he scribbled little doodles of cars passing buses in the margins of his legal pad as the sales manager was explaining the latest budget numbers. He started sketching his street, adding little boxes with neighbor's names, mailboxes, the bus stops, and the stop sign where everyone turned to get onto the avenue. A thought occurred to him, and he drew a little movie camera, which looked more like a rectangle with mouse ears on it, in front of his house. He added a dashed line right to little rectangle representing the school bus. He drew an even smaller rectangle next to the school bus, and labeled it "caught in the act." He smiled to himself, not really caring that new business was down twenty percent, the company would bounce back

The next morning, he pointed the camera down the street and sat on his porch with a cup of coffee. The sight lines were perfect. At 7:13, the bus rolled past his house and came to a stop half a block down. As if on cue, Faith's Dart turned the corner and roared down the street. Gunther zoomed in on the license plate and back to show the entire car. He had her now. But instead of zipping around the bus as she normally did, Faith sat patiently and waited until the bus lights shut off. She even paused longer than was strictly necessary at the stop sign before she made a picture-perfect left turn. Gunther snorted and tossed the remainder of his coffee into a flower bed.

For the rest of the week, Faith was a model driver. Gunther wondered if she saw him on the porch with his camera, so he took to hiding in the bushes like a duck hunter in a blind. She still obeyed all the traffic laws, though he imagined an engine roaring and tires squealing as soon as she left the neighborhood. Then again, maybe she was cured. Maybe her mother had laid down the law, or perhaps the cops managed to catch her elsewhere. Maybe she had turned over a new leaf.

The next week, Gunther left his camera in the closet. As the bus rolled past and stopped near a group of backpacked children, the Dart rounded the corner and roared down the street, barreling past the stopped bus and blowing through the stop sign as if neither existed. This was no good. Gunther couldn't afford to spend every morning on the front porch making sure that Faith obeyed the law, he was cutting it too fine with punching the time clock before 8:00 already. He was sure she was death-on-wheels and needed to be caught. She needed to be punished.

Gunther bitched  about the girl to anyone who would listen. His do-nothing neighbors nodded their heads and clucked their tongues. He told the stories to the guys in the break room at work often enough that others brought it up on their own.

"Has the girl killed any of the kids yet?" One of them would say.

"No, not yet,” Gunther said, “but it's just a matter of time.”

"I'm surprised no one has run into that girl when she blows through your intersection,” someone said.

"Yeah," Gunther said, pausing, "I'm surprised too."

*

Gunther went around the block one more time in the minivan, one eye on the road and one eye on the stopwatch taped to the dashboard. The timing would be tricky. His knuckles were white on the minivan's steering wheel, his stomach burned with the morning's coffee and bacon sandwich. The timing would have to be perfect. He would teach Faith a lesson, all right. He hated her youthful arrogance, he decided, almost as much as he hated his minivan. With any luck he would kill two birds with one stone. He winced at the thought. He wasn't going to literally kill anyone, just scare them straight. He would save a child's life, teach a teenager a lesson, and get a new car with the insurance money. That's the way life should work, with good deeds rewarded.

At 7:14, he made the turn back into the neighborhood and approached his street's intersection. Ahead, the school bus come to a stop and put on its flashers. He eased his foot from the accelerator. Within moments, the Dodge Dart came barreling down the street, and Gunther floored it. He would hit the Dart in the front quarter panel where the engine would absorb most of the damage, certainly totaling his vehicle in the process. He would feather the throttle to miss the driver side door, and the gas tank behind the rear panel. Today, Faith would get her comeuppance

As he approached, Faith's head turned and looked at him with narrowed eyes. Had she sped up? Was she racing him? Typical teenager, not only believing she was bulletproof, but also faster than some old dude in a van. He had a V-8 in this thing, dammit. He hated the minivan, hated his ex-wife's smile when he got stuck with it, but at least it had balls.

He stomped on the pedal, gauging where he'd hit the Dart, ready to finesse the brakes if it looked like he would hit her in the driver's door. Faith still stared him down, a look of determination on her face. Damn, but she was a stubborn one!

Then he saw the flicker of motion in the corner of his eye: blue, red, white, mop of hair, camouflage backpack. The kid's eyes fixed onto the bus across the road, legs pumping as if his life depended on it. Gunther hit the brakes, but the van lurched forward instead. His foot hadn't moved from the accelerator. He moved over to the brake, already knowing he was too late. He swerved to the left, leaving tires squealing. The kid stopped and looked at Gunther with eyes as big as hubcaps. The dumb little shit, who would have been safe if he had kept moving, was now dead-center in the swerving minivan's path.

Gunther had enough time to feel his heart seize up in anticipation of the impact when he was thrown to the side. His head whipped to the side then down, into a white balloon where the steering wheel used to be. His ears rang, and something smacked him between the eyes. When he looked up, he was stopped, facing the school bus head-on. Outside his window, the kid still stood, rooted. Gunther reached for the door handle.

The good news was that the minivan wasn't going anywhere, wrapped around Faith's Dart as it was. The girl was screaming at him as she wrestled with her door, which seemed jammed. He distinctly heard idiot, dumb fuck, and sociopathic sonofvabitch. He turned and watched as the boy in the crosswalk made his way onto the bus. He rubbed his left arm, which had gone all tingly. The kid kept staring at him as he got on. The bus driver said something to the kid and  he nodded before heading back to take a seat. The driver turned around, and Gunther recognized  Faith's mom. The woman had the same emotionless expression as before.

Faith escaped from her car through the passenger window. She strode up to him brandishing an ice scraper, which was strange, considering it was May. Though it seemed unseasonably hot, come to think of it. He was sweating like it was  the middle of August.

“What the hell do you think you were doing, you dumb son of a bitch?” she called out.

Gunther wanted to speak, but his mouth wasn't working. That was odd. He shook his head.

“Do you know how lucky you are that I was able to stop you before you killed someone?”

Life was not fair. At least he didn't think so, as the ground seemed to lurch  beneath him. He braced for the fall, but his arms wouldn't respond. He didn't remember falling, but he must have hit the pavement hard; his head ached. His breakfast wasn't sitting well either, he had the worst heartburn. What a rotten day. At least it was sunny.

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The Farmhouse - Conclusion

by Colleen Sutherland

He grabbed the seeds and ran out the door. “I ain't a fuckin' farmer,” he screamed at the tractor though the guy couldn't hear him over the engine noise. He threw the packets at the machine but the wind picked them up. They flew back in his face and on into the marsh. Later he realized he didn't even know if the farmer left those seeds but he was the only other human around.

That night it rained as hard a rain as he had ever seen. Lightening shot across the horizon. The lights flickered but stayed on. He decided to take a break from escaping. He roamed around the house. There was an old television but analog TVs no longer worked in a digital age. He tried a radio that dated from a time when FM didn't exist but got only static. Nothing electronic was working except for the lights and the stove. There were books, mostly old classics, and a bunch of Readers' Digests. He wasn't much of a reader anyhow.

He looked through the cupboards. There were cracked dishes and cups and rusted cast iron pots. He took inventory of the food. For some reason most of it was tuna. There was a lot of it for an abandoned farmhouse, but then nothing about this place made any sense. There were a lot of bugs, too. He found an insect guide among the books and amused himself identifying them: box elder bugs, lady bugs and earwigs. As fast as he killed them, even more appeared on the walls. Somewhere inside the walls he could hear rustlings, rats or mice he thought. He hoped not bats. He didn't like bats.

He slept half the day and into the night as the rain clattered on the roof. He woke in the night and wandered around trying to find something to do to pass the time. Perhaps someone left maps behind, that would be useful. The only map he could find was from New Jersey and as far as he could figure out that was five states a way. It was thirty years old anyhow. He settled down to read the jokes in the Reader's Digests.

The sun rose on a cloudless day and the constant sound of the tractor. That farmer never let up.

He drank his coffee while he considered what to do. He would escape tonight but he didn't want to go back into the swamp. He climbed the narrow steps up to the attic and looked out the windows to check out the terrain. He made up his mind. He would leave again but this time he would go through the fields heading toward the country road he could see in the distance. No more getting lost in the forest and marsh. He would take his chances at being seen. He spent the day packing everything he would need in an old canvas rucksack he found in a cubbyhole and attached the ax to a loop in the bag.

He waited until midnight. As he slipped out the door, the night noises assaulted him. Crickets. Whippoorwills. Owls. They gave him the willies but after two nights in a marsh he could live with that. The furrows the farmer plowed up were something else. He kept slipping in and out of them, his boots getting muddier and muddier. He fell four times but pushed on toward the road by the light of a crescent moon.

Then the howling began, canine cries on all sides. That was bad enough but then the howling stopped abruptly. He peered into the near darkness and saw something slinking toward him, its yellow eyes glowing. Then there were more eyes. Wolves? Coyotes? Or feral dogs? It didn't matter. He hated dogs. He reached for the ax but it was gone, lost when he fell. He retreated backwards slowly. The pack moved in closer for a kill. He turned and ran, falling in the mud, screaming, crawling, moving as fast as he could. First one boot, then another fell off but he kept going.

The animals kept coming and coming. He could hear their quiet snuffling behind him. He screamed for help. He cried for his mother, long dead. He got to the edge of the field and ran into the farmyard through the open gate. He looked back. The pack had stopped right there. He could see the eyes glowing but they didn't come any closer. He was safe as long as he was in the farmyard. He was covered in mud, he'd lost the ax, but he was safe for now.

He limped back to the farmhouse, crying. He pulled off his filthy clothes and fell into the bed, sobbing.

In the morning, the boots were at the door, cleaned and dry. The ax, newly sharpened, was on the kitchen table with a note. “Best start on your wood pile. You'll need it this winter.”

Wood? There were trees in the yard, some kind of orchard, but he wouldn't be here this winter. He'd rather die. He couldn't walk out through the marsh or fields, but maybe he could drive out in that old International truck. He went out to the garage and got to work. There was no manual but he should be able to figure it out. At least it was something to do. He began by sorting out the parts laying in the dirt and cleaning them, putting them into boxes he found in the house, remembering what he learned in prison. He found some of the tools he needed in the garage, others in outbuildings. Some had to be adapted. It was a job that stretched into days, then weeks. He began to be fond of the old girl. He even thought about painting her some other color than red but the paint he found had dried up.

The garage had everything he needed for the repairs. There were ramps so he could raise the truck up and work under her. He didn't exactly understand why there was a rope over a beam that stretched down to the International but found it useful in pulling up the engine block when he had to work on it.

He figured it was August though he didn't have a calendar. He was running low on food so he would have to finish and drive the truck out soon. The farmer had long ago finished planting and now was cultivating the crops. If he had planted corn, the prisoner could have walked out of the farm during the day, hiding in the corn rows, but it was only soy beans and they didn't reach any height at all. Night time was the howling and the shape of the beasts prowling around.

He was sick of tuna. He longed for meat. He dreamed of fast food hamburgers. He once found a rabbit nest filled with baby bunnies. He killed one with the ax, but didn't know how to clean it, or for that matter, cook it. He tossed it in the field. The next day all that was left was bones. The dogs cleaned everything including the bunny's ears. He left the rabbits alone after that. He explored the yard looking for something else edible in last year's vegetable garden. He didn't find so much as a bean. No, he had to finish the truck.

Finally, the last bolt was tightened. He made a show of cleaning the old girl up, polishing the fenders and wiping down the cracked upholstery. He was ready. He turned the key. She started right up! He left her there running. He was in the house collecting things to take along, when the International stopped dead. What the hell? He checked her over again, and finally looked at the dials on the dash. There was no gas. The old gas that had been in her tank was now in a puddle on the dirt floor. There was no gas anywhere on the farm. Nothing. And he was out of food.

All those days. All that time working All that time living in a house crawling with bugs. He didn't even have any more tuna. He couldn't leave. He could see the dogs or whatever they were at the edge of the yard. He could see the farmer going back and forth, back and forth. The nights were colder and he had cut no wood. He had planted no vegetable garden and even if he had he would have been no better at canning a harvest than the last person was.

He walked to the orchard to see if anything grew there that he could eat. He found wormy plums and apples that were as bad. There were some green pears, they might do. He stumbled on something and looked down. It was a stone marker of some kind, nesting in weeds. There were a few markers, in a row at the back of the orchard. He leaned down to examine one. It had numbers on it. He went up and down the row. They all had numbers. Familiar numbers.

He rushed back to the garage for a shovel. He frantically dug into the space in front of the marker closest to the farmhouse. Nearly six feet into the hole he hit the wooden coffin.

He threw the garage doors wide open. He understood now why the rope was hung over the beam. It was the only escape from the farm. The sun shone into the garage, illuminating him as he knotted the rope. He knew how to do that, he learned that in prison, too. As the setting sun glowed on him, he climbed onto the roof of the International and said good-bye to the farmhouse.

*****

Out in the field, the farmer brought his tractor to a stop and turned off the engine. He pulled his cell phone out of his overalls, and dialed a number.

“Yeah? How's it going Tim?”

“Ready for a new prisoner,” he told the warden.