A Moment in the Light – Victor Cline

By The Editors | May 6, 2019

Victor’s storytelling can speak for itself (and then some).

This has become one of our favorites.

Enjoy:

~~~

“Baby I was born this way”. Blasting Lady Gaga in the car on the way to the venue is an almost ceremonial affair. The lyrics speak of being born who you are: trans, gay, fat, thin, black, blue, green, bruised. Songs are a good first step in shaking off the anxiety that comes along with getting into a character and costume, only to attempt peeling articles of clothing off in a way that will seduce with deliberation and intent. My stage name is Cinderfella, a play on words denoting an alternate universe where the humble blond princess is a male burlesque performer. I’m doing 65 in a 50 to get to the Lodge on time, but this part of route 40 is quiet and rarely sees police. An inconspicuous and almost creepy venue from the outside, the Lodge is a small cabin with a big parking lot that sits atop a mountain. The only gay bar for half a state’s distance, it’s a cherished location and a stronghold for the last bit of queer performance art in our region. I park my car and make my way to the door, striving not to stumble on any of the props I’m lugging along the way. Before grabbing the knob it’s time for a deep breath. Here we go…

Like a moth to the flame I somehow always seem to find myself in a line of work that includes stress in the job description. By night an illusionist of the art of tease, by day an ER registration clerk. I’ve worked in the medical field for 6 years now. I always think I’ve seen it all, but each day brings a new set of drama and emotional turmoil for the family and patients surrounding me. I take a deep breath before grabbing this door handle as well, then I make my way to my work area. It isn’t the sites that shake you. Many an outsider would imagine blood and gore, and surely every once in the while we have our fair share, but if you close your eyes and listen, it’s the vibrations of the airwaves that will come for you here. Two screaming babies, it’s the smallest people that we try to protect the most. A man’s voice cursing at a nurse wondering when their child will be seen, “What do you mean there are 10 people ahead of us?! This is a baby! My baby!” translate: “We are the only patients here! I’m blind to other people’s problems! I’m not in the cognitive state to realize this wait is a result of a broken medical system and isn’t in any way of direct fault to you, the triage nurse that just checked all of my baby’s vital signs and found that it’s probably just an ear infection!” The whispers of “I’ll die out here before a doctor sees me.” The primal screeching and wailing of a teen girl who has just tragically and unexpectedly lost her guardian to the hood of a vehicle. “I CAN’T DO THIS WITHOUT HER!” Cynicism from police and EMS as they bring in a drug overdose. “Maybe he should have taken a little more, haha. Am I right guys? We don’t need people like this.” My boss. Ohhhh my boss. A thick Caribbean accent with an attitude problem that only gets sweeter with the knowledge that you’ve collected copays. “Victuh! What do you mean you aren’t available! I need you to work on the third of September!” Except she pronounced “third” as “turd”, a tiny sliver of immature humor that I tuck away in my pocket for rainy days. A voice overhead requests my presence at trauma room one, so I can check a new ambulance into the computer system. I haven’t lost my mind though, it’s just an intercom broadcasted from the ceiling. Nonetheless I look to the ceiling and reply “God…. God is that you? It’s me, your favorite stripper.” I tuck that one in the other pocket.

I open the door to the Lodge and quickly make my way to my work station to begin my makeup. This act calls for something abstract and ethereal. I’m going for a nearly monochromatic alien-type vibe and decide to use varying hues of pink as my eyeshadow and contour shades. My costume for the night is everything opalescent: a series of reflective straps sewed into the shape of a body harness that shifts between pinks and blues and silver depending on the angle of light, a baby pink sequin loin cloth to cover the no-no spots, tear drop shaped pasties strung together by a chain of pearls, a medical mask from the ER that I’ve decked out with white and pink lace, pearls, white flowers, and butterflies. Lastly is a large, white, cape-like covering cut into a revealing robe shape with a slit down the side. Think interplanetary extra-terrestrial temple slut that is slave to a powerful alien drug lord that she sits to the right of and fans all day long while he’s on his throne. All she really wants is to strangle him and go free to return back to her galaxy of origin. But the fans are more than just part of the concept or imagination, I HAVE them! My white ostrich feather fans are precious to me and will assist me in my motions tonight by granting me control over what and when I reveal portions of by body. They cover me and hide me from the crowd until I’m ready. My performance calls for revealing this body, but my instincts tell me to stay behind the fans all night.

Similar to the shrouded comfort of my feather fans, this tiny office in the ER permits me a moment of escape from the scene outside. The resource nurse just paged us reminding us that a trauma patient is 10 minutes out. An older man has fallen down his basement steps and isn’t doing so well. “Deep breaths”, I remind myself. I make my way over to the trauma room bay and wait for the EMT’s to arrive. We know from the paramedic consult over the radio system that his health is quickly declining. The man-made impact with his head at some point it would seem, an event that could make for anything from trivial concussion to an all-out brain bleed. When the ambulance left the scene, the man was still responsive. That’s the last thing his family saw. The family will likely still be expecting his condition to be somewhere around the same as before, but it won’t be. The worst reactions are always like this. If the patient was already in such a decline at the scene, the family would know what to expect. It’s events in which the doctor is like “Surprise! He’s dying!” that yield the most gut-wrenching reactions from the family. I’m thinking about it way too much, and now my gut is beginning to tighten a bit too.

I wouldn’t call these “butterflies”. Butterflies float on air, softly beating their wings and delicately landing on surfaces. Butterflies are not what you feel in your tum-tum before you’re about to take your clothes off in front of a crowd of 200 people. Many of the onlookers will be other gay men; men with “better” bodies than me, men without beer bellies or chub rub discoloration as a result of my thick thighs chaffing in the hot summer sun. Some of them will judge me, but if just one of them looks at my pasty white curves the way I look at cheesecake, I’ll be pleased. Our troupe displays a smorgasbord of body types. Most of our performers are biological females ranging from lean to big. The neo-burlesque community has grown to be very body-positive, and with that comes a sense of confidence for me. It isn’t my body type that makes me feel anxiety before a show, it’s my level of performance. I want to be in control of the stage, not let the lights and sounds control me. None-the less, doors are open, and patrons are flooding in. Its 2155 and at 2200 MC Commodore Bailey will announce the start of the show.

The familiar sound of a large vehicle backing up, “beep-beep-beep,” alerts us to the fact that the ambulance has arrived with our new patient. The stretcher turns the corner revealing a piece of machinery that is never a pleasant site to see. The LUCAS chest compression system is essentially a large arch with an automatic compression piece that is placed over a patient’s chest to alleviate the crew of having to perform manual CPR. The machine punches down into the patient often breaking ribs and sternum to effectively reach the heart. I’ve been in this situation many times, but something about this moment made me look away as the stretcher pulls into the room. Deep breaths.

Deep breaths. I’m up next. The performer currently on stage before me is none other than Bearcat Betty, the sideshow spectacular. She’s doing her classic sword ladder act tonight. With each barefoot step up her incline of machetes, my gut wrenches a little more… bats. There are bats in my stomach. Bats carrying bats. Fast, hard, recklessly beating rats with wings wielding Louisville sluggers. I’m concerned about Bearcats safety, but with each step I come closer to going on stage. Her act ends, and Commodore Bailey begins my intro. Something something “If I had a taste for boys, this one would certainly be it!” something something “All the way from back stage and with booty to boot, its Cinderfella!”. My humid palms grasp the curtain in a death grip as I pull it aside and make my way on stage.

I grab the curtain to the room and swing it aside. I have to get this man into the computer system right away, so doctors and nurses can begin ordering medicine. The LUCAS has been pulled off the man and manual CPR has begun. Orders are being shouted, staff are moving quickly but deliberately to complete life-saving tasks, and I’m grabbing an EMT holding a clipboard in hopes of identifying our new patient. His name and birthdate are revealed to me and I get him into our computer system.

Lady Gaga’s “Speechless” begins, a fitting song for the illusionist special effects makeup of a stitched mouth that waits under my mask for reveal time. My back is turned to the crowd and I begin spinning in place. My movements start out smooth as the song progresses, my feather fans covering my face in preparation for the first reveal of my mask and makeup. On the “James Dean glossy eyes” lyric my eyes peer over the border of my feathers to meet the crowds. It’s so bright. The spot light obscures most of the faces. If I weren’t so instinctual, I could use this comfort to my advantage; I can’t see them. They aren’t there. I’m sweating bullets. Epinephrine and norepinephrine are the kidney’s automatic hormonal response to fight or flight, but the body doesn’t know there is no real threat, it just perceives what my animal brain is going through as one.

“Another shot of epi!” the doctor cries out. Epinephrine is used to jumpstart the body. It is like a dose of life, a spark from a flint stone to kick the heart into gear. After several rounds, there is still no response from the patient.

The song kicks up! My fans pull away from my face and slide down my body. I feel the fibers of each feather on my skin, and I want my audience to imagine the feeling too. I want to share in it.

The family comes in and are taken to a conference room. The doctor has called it. Time of death. The family is worried but remember, he was talking when the paramedic left. Soon the news will be given to them. I don’t want to know that feeling. I don’t want them to share that with me. We hear the wails no matter what though. Our office is just down the hall from the conference room and you can’t help but hear the wails. A light has gone off for them. A flame in their family has been blown out.

The spot light goes out. A black out moment for a buildup for the finale. I take off my mask and the light comes back on. I reveal a mouth stitched shut, powdered with shades of greens and blues and brown makeup to portray infection. Thus far my look has been angelic. White feather wings, shimmering shades of pearl. This is why I’m speechless. I’m speechless in this environment. My stitched mouth portrays my anxiety towards sex. I want them to see me as a sensual symbol. Feel my fans. Ponder on the texture of the skin of my exposed hips and ass, but now I want them to know that beyond the sights and sounds of sensuality, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of sex. Monsters of my past have taken the right to one of the simplest pleasures of life from me. I land on my knees. At this point I’m wearing nothing but thin opal straps and my small sequin loin cloth. “Some men may follow me, but you choose ‘death and company’. Why you so speechless, oooh ohhh”. My back faces the crowd at this moment. My hips are thrusting the air as if I’m riding a bull. My fans fly open as I throw my arms in the air and bend over backwards to finish out the song.

The son’s arms fly open to quickly grasp his mother before she falls to the ground. I’ve never lost anyone I truly care about. Not yet.

I’m sweating hard, but not diaphoretic. My heart rate is elevated, but it isn’t medical tachycardia. I’m alive. I’ve never felt more alive. From my place laying on the floor with my fans over my face in my finishing pose, I hear shouting. I can’t make out any words, but I know its applause. When coming down from a moment like this, applause sounds like static television snow. I’m still here. I did this. It is my moments in the ER that remind me to pursue this fantasy over and over again until I master it. Someone else’s light is going out. I can’t take these moments for granted. I can’t let fear stop me, not with the knowledge of much harder things to come. Relish this moment in the sun, this moment in the spot light.

~~~

About Victor: Victor enjoys long walks on the beach. His favorite food is fish tacos. Capricorn. Please swipe right or you’ll hurt his feelings. Victor Cline is one of those people who quickly burns through his interests, diving into the subject as deeply as possible and then just as quickly coming back up for air. Significantly knowledgeable but practically useless and a Hagerstown native, he legitimately grew up surrounded by fancy breeds of show pigeons that his dad accumulated countless trophies for in national title shows. Think AKC Eukanuba dog championships, but sky rats. Google if you don’t believe it. Victor works in the ER and is attending HCC’s RAD Program, but his true passion lies in herpetology. Biweekly, Victor volunteers at the National Aquarium Baltimore taking care of the poison dart frog population of the Amazon Rainforest Exhibit. By day an orchid hoarding, frog keeping, patient caring guy, but by night a burlesque tease by the name of Cinderfella.

Too many pies and not enough fingers. Somebody help this man!

June 26, 2015 – Andrea Gregory

By The Editors | May 5, 2019

Wooden beams lock me in

Old wonder long faded

Is God not love?

The words of hate reverberate

I can no longer belong

A thing like marriage isn’t meant for hate

This is a mold I cannot fit,

But one I cannot break.

~~~

Andrea Gregory is a Hagerstown Community College student. She likes hiking and spending her weekends surrounded by friends.

Eon of Suns – Colleen Brohawn

By The Editors | May 4, 2019

Eons of Suns

All the scores of youthful lusts divide

Within the decadence of brilliant days.

I am rendered speechless, in the desperation the age brings forth;

Could it have been you who brought me here to waste along the wind?

Could it have been a garden night that so enraged me,

To take you, at once, my silent, loving bride?

To sever centuries is to deny the light of truths and fables.

What an unjust age can bring to an eon of suns,

Prejudices and mockeries that once sizzled and burned but never broke,

Now rise in the collective mind and thoughtless haze.

Beats that can’t understand the defiance of rhythm

Betray the eternal symphony: the sacred life and casts of memories, wounds unhealed.

~~~

Colleen lives in Hagerstown, Maryland and is a student at Hagerstown Community college, majoring in general studies. When she transfers, she will be majoring in journalism.

Cedars-Sinai, Harpist – James Croal Jackson

By The Editors | May 2, 2019

Here’s two more from James:

___

Cedars-Sinai

Vital signs at zero, a squiggly line gone infinity–

guess what I’ve prepared for. An eternity of this

nothingness. I tossed the phone like a grappling

hook at your distance and it caught. You left it

hanging on the bricks, though, and moved to

California, where I used to sleep the streets in

my Ford Fiesta, the same car we drove to Melt:

a time bomb heart attack. How close we were

back then, each deep-fried grilled cheese bite

hushed the thrumming. Fingers greasy– wiped

on napkins, wiped and wiped and wiped.

Harpist

Every suburb needs a callous-

fingered harpist to bleed heaven

from her hands from her driveway,

to raindrop angels into puddles

after storms of indifference.

Imagine: lawns grow in

the pizzicato of days first plucked,

then plodding. Homes, once full

of promise, rot– bricks erode

to the sharp of strings

slowly falling from the sky.

Boneless Wings, Cigs – James Croal Jackson

By The Editors | May 1, 2019

Welcome to May, everyone!

Though you are reading this from us, the Spring ’19 editors, you are reading it in absentia. Our time, though wonderful, is up in the Hedge Apple chair. As it says in the post pinned to the top of the site, we are closed for submissions until the next editors start their own journey.

Just because the Hedge Apple is, for now, untended doesn’t mean, however, we can’t bring you as many wonderful submissions as possible.

Here are a couple of poems from James Croal Jackson–the first is perhaps fitting for the wistfulness we feel over our, for the moment, empty chairs.

These also deserve, as any poem does, in every way to stand in their own light–to share their unique colors with the world.

Enjoy:

___

Boneless Wings

Following a trip to Vegas

in August heat, my skin itched

for good. I ended us.

No, you said. We were a done deal.

You would not leave my apartment.

We drank juice and vodka

to forget we had ever

talked about forever.

We rode a Lyft to BW3

at 2 P.M. on a Thursday

because a cheap happy hour

is a kind of grim reminder.

We ordered boneless wings at the bar.

The bartender told us ignition is cheap.

Beer stripped us to tender meat

and there was no more steam.

Your skirt mushroomed in the breeze

when you stepped outside to smoke.

We had locked ourselves out when

the clouds produced rain, not keys.

Cigs

we smoke

our paper

lungs

in the storm

then run

from your mom

to seek

an awning

to shield

the holes

in our chests

flames

tempered

by rain

clouds

scream

from our mouths

billowed gray

how it floats

above like

to warn us

forests need not

consume flame

___

James Croal Jackson swore he’d never work in film again after leaving L.A. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Columbia Journal, Rattle, and Hobart. He edits The Mantle. Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. jimjakk.com

POND Acrostics – John L. Stanizzi

By The Editors | April 30, 2019

Hey, all,

Here’s a beautiful set of short acrostics which Jon graciously provided to us from the experiences of his project.

We’ll let him explain:

“These are poems from a project called POND. Every day, for one year, I will walk to our pond, jot a few notes, and take a photo or two. Then I’ll write a 4-line acrostic using P, O, N, D as my first letters, with the extra caveat of never using the same first-word twice. I began the book on November 9, 2018 – will finish November 9, 2019.
Grazie.

-John “

Thank you again, John.

Enjoy, everyone:

___

11.10.2018

10.06 a.m.

34 degrees

Pitchy dark where winter has just this moment arrived

out of the north hills; it crawls up under my shirt,

naturally and unfazed, as if it were trying to warm itself —

daguerrean-downstream rush of the brook gossips with its cold voice.

11.11.2018

3.11 p.m.

39 degrees

Ponds’ conflux – run-off from Fowler’s pond

overflows the small stone wall along with street run-off;

nozzling, they warble a crystal duet in the bird-less

dusk beginning to bear down on the half-buried bullheads sleeping.

11.13.2018

2.46 p.m.

39 degrees

Piety arrives with a female evening grosbeak.

Offed by chill wind, the leaves cover the wet forest ground.

Nearby, the look of running water

dazzles like a miniature Topajos, miniature Amazon.

11.24.18

8.33 a.m.

24 degrees

Peabody, Peabody, Peabody, Old Sam Peabody!

Oblique geometry here, mirror-smooth there, thick battered hem, gray

nuances of ice seal it all – those on the bottom – those in the bottom.

Determined white-throated sparrow searching for Sam, though I’m the only one here.

12.2.18

12.30 p.m.

45 degrees

Peaceful rain, steady all night, leaves the ground soppy

overshowered and spongy, and the confluence of springs

necks torrential, as the rain soaks the air,

dampening everything but falling so lightly that the pond is silent.

12.5.18

2.39 p.m.

35 degrees

…and your tears on the wings of the plane

where once again I cannot

reach to stop them

and they fall away behind

going with me

-W.S. Merwin

– …from Plane (The Carrier of Ladders)

Plane. One of my very favorite poems

of W.S. Merwin’s. He is our beloved

nobleman of the rees, with me

daily, a knot of sparrows tied to the cedar.

___

John L. Stanizzi is author of Ecstasy Among Ghosts, Sleepwalking, Dance Against the Wall, After the Bell, Hallelujah Time!, High Tide – Ebb Tide, Four Bits – Fifty 50-Word Pieces, and Chants. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, American Life in Poetry, The New York Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Connecticut River Review, and many others. Stanizzi has been translated into Italian and his poems have appeared in many journals in Italy. His translator is Angela D’Ambra. Stanizzi teaches literature at Manchester Community College in Manchester, Connecticut, and lives with his wife, Carol, in Coventry.

Spring ’19 Submission Window Closing

By The Editors | April 19, 2019

Hi, all!

This is just a quick but important announcement.

Though we do love reading each and every submission we receive, our tenure as Spring editors is nearly up. Our focus has shifted to presenting, here on our website, all the great work we’ve received since the beginning of the year as well as producing the Spring 2019 print edition of Hedge Apple.

Starting after 12:00PM EDT tomorrow, Saturday April 20, 2019, we will no longer accept or consider any additional submissions for the Spring issue of the Hedge Apple.

The Hedge Apple will remain closed until a new host of student-editors take residence in, by the very latest, Spring of 2020.

Thank you all for reading, considering, and submitting. On behalf of the Hedge Apple we wish you luck in your future creative endeavors and hope that you all enjoy the summer.

Also, keep tabs on our website! We’ll continue publishing on (or near) the daily for as long as our supply of stories, poems, and other fabulous creative works lasts.

Thanks again for a great Spring.

Best Wishes,

The Editors

Revival – Mark Houston McLain

By The Editors | April 15, 2019

Mark’s writing for Revival is captivating. It tugs at you as much as it does envelop. The world he paints, along with its characters, is at once verdant and tragic. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Reader discretion is advised for physical and emotional violence.

___

REVIVAL

Ruth

When I was a girl, my Momma and me would sing together. She would be working her hands on that washboard and look over at me and smile, singin’ that song as happy as she could while not knowing she was working herself to an early grave. The winter after Daddy left, she got sick and died and left me all alone. I was sixteen and that’s when Irwin asked me to marry him. I guess he felt sorry for me because I had only met him a couple of times and had given him no reason to like me. His family had a large farm and they said we could live there. Where else could I go? So, I said I would marry him, and we decided we could have a wedding at the end of summer and live with his Momma and Daddy until we could build our own house.

I went to church some, but Irwin and his folks were a Bible bunch and I reckon they thought since I was going to be part of the family, they had better start workin’ on me. A couple of weeks after we told everyone we were going to get married, the whole family packed up in the truck and we drove down the highway about an hour to a hay field in the valley of a large farm. We unloaded the truck and pitched a canvas tent next to a group of other families. In the middle of the tents was a haulin’ trailer with a big shiny microphone roosted on a metal stand. Hangin’ behind it was a white sheet with big red letters

HAVE YOU BEEN WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB?

That first afternoon we laid out blankets on the hay field in front of the trailer, and we were right in the front, as close as we could get. In the evening, two women got up and stood on both sides of that microphone and began to sing and everybody that knew that song joined in. They sang two more songs and then left the stage. Someone turned on a string of lights that hung right over the trailer, and a lanky man ran up the wooden stairs two at a time and onto that stage and grabbed that shiny microphone and yelled into it and said Hallelujah! Have you been saved? as he held up his hands high in the air. He was young, and I don’t know if he had even shaved yet, but he was wearing a black suit and a white cotton shirt and that is the first time I ever saw anybody in a suit. He had a head full of red wavy hair and it was all combed over and was the prettiest hair I had ever seen. It shined like a new penny when he walked under that string of lights.

He began preachin’ and walking himself back and forth across that stage. Every once in a while he’d stop and look me in the eyes, and I figured it was the Lord talkin’ right at me. After he finished, the two women got up and sang again, then the lights went off and we went back to the tent for the night. Only I couldn’t sleep in that old hot canvas tent with all them family in there. Whenever somebody moved it woke me up all over again. I told Irwin I was gonna sleep outside, and I don’t know if he even heard me. I took my pillow and went and put it down on that stage and slept like a baby under the stars.

The next day we all walked down to the river and Irwin’s Momma had packed some cornbread and greens, so we all ate and put our feet in the water. That evening as the crickets started to chime, we went back to the trailer and the same two women came out to sing and I waited on the red headed preacher to come on the stage, but it wasn’t him but a big man in blue pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled way up. He did some preachin’. He’d stop ever so often and say Amen and take his hanky and wipe all the sweat off his face. I didn’t hear much of what he said, I was wonderin’ what had happened to that other preacher.

That night, when the family was all getting settled in the tent, I told Irwin I was gonna sleep outside again. He said I was sure to get eat up by skeeters and rolled over. So, I went back out across the field to the trailer and throwed my blanket down under that big sky and the preacher with the red hair comes walkin’ up. He don’t have his suit on and he sure looks different. He asks me what I’m doing out here. He takes his smoke and crushes it out on the metal edge of the trailer and asks me if I have ever been baptized. I shook my head no and he says we should go down to the river.

We walked down the steep bank to the river and sat on some big rocks along the side. He kept talkin’ about cars and shotguns and whiskey, but he didn’t say nothing more about baptizing. The moon was big that night and I figured I might as well sit and talk with him cause the sky was so bright, I wasn’t gonna see any stars anyway. That red hair almost glowed in the night and I kept looking at his eyes when he talked and didn’t even realize that he had put his hand on my leg and slid it up under my dress some. He went to whisper in my ear and I thought it was gonna be something about baptizing but instead he just kinda rubbed my neck with his mouth. It happened fast after that. I was lookin’ up at that big moon and pretty quick-like he stopped moving on me and just lay there and I figure that’s when he filled me with his spirit.

******

Irwin

I used to tell myself he don’t mean no harm. But I’m an old man and now I know that sometimes you can see a thing for what it really is. I come to realize that sometimes there is evil in the world and that’s all you can say. That boy come into this life screamin’ and I reckon he won’t quit ‘til they lay him in the ground. He don’t look like none of my folk but I raised him just the same. I knew it as soon as I seen the little bastard. Damn boy come out with that red hair, how the hell was I supposed to think he were mine? Raised him though, and claimed him for my own when I knowed he wasn’t. She let me name him and I give him my uncle’s name and I shore wish I hadn’t.

When that boy was just a little feller he was pure evil, I mean weren’t a decent bone in him. Killin’ stuff around here just for the fun of it. Ants and spiders when he was knee high. Coons and possums later. Once he killed him a huntin’ dog. A damn huntin’ dog. Had a collar on it and everything. I told him it were a redbone and some hunter would sure be lookin’ for him. He didn’t care. He just kilt it to watch it bleed out. I told him it sure was a sin if I ever heard one to kill a man’s huntin’ dog. He just stood there and looked at me with that red hair stickin’ up. I give up on the boy right then and there. Roof. Heat. Food. That’s all that youngin is going to get from me. I said to myself thank God he ain’t from me, I ain’t got that evil blood runnin’ through me.

Ruthie and me don’t talk about him no more. She never let me lay into him, whip him a few times. It’s because she knows he ain’t mine. We he was about twelve or so, he got into trouble, something to do with cornering a girl after school and holding her down. School principal showed up at the house and said Don’t send Parnell back down here, we don’t want him. That boy gonna have to get his learnin’ somewheres else. Ruthie told ‘em they was all damn liars but deep down she knew it was true. Only time I ever heard her swear in her whole life. She tried all the time to get him some salvation, but he never seen the need for it. Sometimes at night she’d read to him from the Bible and he’d sit there staring into the fire, listening to her reading all the thous and shalls, his cold eyes all fixed and he’d just have this little smirk in the corner of his mouth and sometimes right in the middle of a readin’ he’d bust out and laugh and she’d stop readin and look at him. I mean right at him. I could see she was madder’n hell, but I knew she’d be right there on her knees that night prayin’ against all that evil in him. One night she just slammed her Bible shut and went to bed and cried all night and I figured that’s when she gave up on him too.

******

Parnell

I had a girlfriend once. I was about sixteen. Pretty girl. Her neck and face as smooth and white as sweet milk. I met her down at the river. It was summertime and hot as dammit. One day Momma said she wanted me to see a preacher man. I asked her why and she stayed quiet for a real long time and I thought, well fine then don’t say nothin’, I don’t care. Then she said she wanted to get me right with the Lord and I thought well hell, why not. Damn old truck bout didn’t make it over the mountain. We drove for a good long while before we pulled up in the dirt parking lot of this church. I couldn’t read the sign, but I saw it had a steeple so I knowed it was a church. Made out of cinder blocks with white paint peeling and hangin’ off and that steeple on it were way too small looking and I thought this don’t look like no place to get any religion. Momma said to stay in the truck and so I sat there while she went inside. After a while she came back out with this big bald-headed feller and they stood there in front of the door with Momma talking at him and him standing there with his arms crossed just lookin’ at me and noddin’ and I thought this don’t look good. Momma waved me on and I walked up to them and ole baldy put his arm around me and kinda pulled me along into the church. We walked right up to the front, where all the preachin’ is done and he said I was a sinner and that I gotta get down on my knees, and so I figured we come all this way I might as well do what the man said so I kneeled on down and then he smacked my head real hard like and started screamin’ and then Momma started screamin’ and all the while I was the one bein’ smacked and I was the only one weren’t hollerin’. After he popped me a couple more times and yelled some more, he laid his hand on my head and I didn’t pay no attention to what he said but he had my head under that big hand of his and it was a shakin’ like he was trying to send something down into me. He let it go all of the sudden and told me Get Up! and I did, and I could see Momma standing there with her hands all up in the air shoutin’ and the tears a washin’ down her face. She durn near shook the hand off that old preacher and then handed him two dollar bills. On the way home, we stopped at a blue hole down by the river to eat our sandwiches and I saw her. She was swimmin’ and she knew everybody was watching her, but she didn’t care. I sat right there and watched her swim. Her hair was all slicked back on her head. When she got out of the water and on the bank, I could see her pretty bottom in that swimmin’ suit and she knew I was lookin’. She stood up and pulled at her top and bottom to make sure that nothing ain’t fell out when she got out on that rock, standing there in the sun. About that time, she bent over, and I said GODDAMN! and Momma commenced to start bawlin’ and said she reckoned the devil ain’t been out of me and that preacher must not be no good, and I started laughin’ cause I guess that’s the funniest thing I ever heard.

******

The social worker stood on the stoop of the tattered shack, tears flowing down her cheeks as her trembling fingers flicked at her cigarette. The sheriff should be here soon, she thought. On the rotten porch steps, she could see Parnell’s bloody boot prints heading in the direction of the heavily wooded creek area. In the open front doorway lay Irwin, his eyes open and fixed in the furrowed skin of his cold, white face. Only the handle of a large hunting knife could be seen, as the whole of the blade was entombed in the side of his chest. In the shack, some cinders remained smoldering from a neglected fire and a heavy ash lay over the stone hearth. The room showed the leftovers of a violent struggle. In the rocker next to the hearth sat Ruth. She rocked in silence save for the runners of the chair creaking with each pass on the floor. Her old hazy lensed glasses sat perched on her nose as she read from a well-worn Bible that lay open across her lap. Her craggy face showed no signs of distress or horror, but of serene peace and calmness. Along the worn floor, the blood that had drained from the wound in Irwin’s side wasn’t the bright red of a fresh cut, but a crimson as deep as the reddest of wines. The blood had rivered along the knotted pine floor to pond at the low area beneath Ruth’s rocker where some of it had soaked up into the thick wool socks she was wearing.

___

Mark McLain loves to write short stories about the South. A seventh-generation Tennessean, he is a graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and enjoys spending time with his family floating the Hiwassee River and hiking in the Appalachians. His work has appeared in Gravel and Mulberrry Fork Review.

Prediction, Faculty Drub – Phil Huffy

By The Editors | April 14, 2019

This is Phil’s second publication with Hedge Apple. His first, last semester, is also on our website.

Prediction is an honestly-described tale of recollection. Faculty Drub is a limerick–Phil’s seeming signature with us.

(It seems both we and our immediate predecessors appreciate limericks.)

Enjoy:

___

Prediction

He looked into the future

at the Corinth County Fair.

The cost of this? Two dollars,

promptly paid.

It seemed uniquely quiet

in the fortune teller’s lair.

The hoopla right outside went

unrelayed.

She took his hand quite firmly

and remarked about his palm

that a pleasing indication

was displayed

and told him there was something

from his past he’d soon enjoy,

to reassert a memory

long mislaid.

He headed for the midway

and the babble re-emerged

as he stepped into the sunlight

from the shade

and thought that he’d be foolish

to believe in such a tale,

yet felt the urge

to buy a lemonade.

~~~

Faculty Drub

A professor of eminent station

had been grading an English translation.

Although expertly made

it received a downgrade

for a comma outside a quotation.

___

Phil Huffy writes early and often at his kitchen table in upstate New York. He has been published frequently, with nearly 100 pieces finding homes in the last twelve months.

Photo in a Box – Eric Schwartz

By The Editors | April 13, 2019

This submission from Prof. Schwartz really tugs at the drawstrings of life. Everyone’s experience is colored by sights, sounds, and sensations that remind them of where they’ve been. Sometimes the smallest things can bring conscious and subliminal self-definitions flooding back. That’s the magic of the mind.

Enjoy:

___

Photo in a Box

Somewhere in a notebook, under many other notebooks, in a box surrounded by many other boxes, upstairs in the attic is a photo of a window open to a late spring day and an old black t-shirt washed by hand that hangs on a wire clothes hanger and flaps in the breeze. No one is in the photo, but a moment of my youth is captured there, a moment not long after I sold the car that I had driven to nation’s capital, the car into which I had packed all my personal belongings, the car that broke down in the middle lane of the Beltway during the morning rush hour after a marathon drive from the Midwest. Yes, I sold that car. Broke up with my girlfriend in DC. Gave up on the job I was sure to find in that city and headed up the East Coast with my belongings now fitting in a large blue backpack that was fraying on the edges.

The backpack is not in the photograph.

I think now of that moment when my life seemed suspended, flapping like that damp t-shirt in the breeze. I had no job prospects. No concrete sense of what awaited me in the days, weeks, or months ahead. No girlfriend. No belongings except what fit in my backpack. That wide-open sense of the unknown yawned before me, an open road, a blank calendar, a life ahead with everything uncertain.

That moment seems now so far away. When I think of it, it’s not that I want to reclaim or certainly not to relive those days. But I also recognize the strange charm of that time, that power of the looming unknown, the undefined potential of youth. I know this was my story, but I also know it is not mine alone. We don’t all have that moment, but many of us do, a moment when the supporting fabric of our life is cut away, and in what is left we clearly feel the infinite variations suddenly possible in the life that stretches ahead, variations in that life that are spun by the choices we make and will make moment after moment after moment.

A couple of days after taking that photo, I caught a Greyhound bus, making a couple of stops before landing at my brother’s place in Boston. My brother offered me a place to stay. I stayed. I lived out of that backpack for another year. I probably wore that t-shirt for another year after that. I lived. I made choices that led to more choices, more life. Eventually, I got rid of the backpack. I needed more and more boxes to hold more of my life. And now that photo is still somewhere up there in the attic, in one of those boxes.

___

Eric has been teaching political science and history at Hagerstown Community College since the autumn of 2012. Prior to college teaching, he worked as a journalist and journalism trainer in the United States and the former Soviet Union.