Plovers
by Steven Allaback

"You," I heard her say. "It's you." She moved from the living room into a corner of the kitchen out of my hearing. It was dawn on Christmas morning. As always on weekends and holidays we had awakened early to walk or run along the beach. After she hung up the phone - "An old friend," she said - we had our usual breakfast of coffee, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and then we drove to the beach. "Merry Christmas," I said. She took a moment to reply. "Yes. Merry Christmas."

Ours was a late in life romance. Together for two years, we never inquired about the secrets in each other's pasts. We walked on the sand from the East Beach parking lot toward the pier, a mile away. Several weeks before, a fire on the pier had destroyed Moby Dick Cafe and a fish market, leaving a gap. On the seaward side of the gap, the pier was now an island of fire-blackened planks and pilings. A tall Christmas tree stood atop the debris.

During our walk we found three shark-egg pouches in a tangle of kelp that had washed ashore. Later, we hung the black pouches on our small tree at home. Only a few other people had braved the chilly breeze, but the beach was alive, as usual. Near the Garden Street storm-drain outfall, a flock of Black Skimmers stood within a ring of gulls - Westerns, Californias, Mews. We saw three other flocks that day, upward of four hundred skimmers with their striking black-and-red bills. We saw nine Snowy Plovers, two fewer than the day before, crouched in indentations in the dry sand far above the surf line. Compact, self-assured little birds, afraid of nothing. We had kept a count of them for months. She said nothing more about her early morning telephone call.

The next day, the day after Christmas, we returned to the beach. I needed to be at work the following morning but she had the rest of the week off. This time I jogged barefoot in the dry sand while she ran on the grass in Palm Park. I knew she wanted time to herself. "You. It's you," she had said.

Mindful of my steps, I could not keep track of our birds. I slogged my way under the pier to the far end of West Beach next to the yacht harbor where I stopped for a moment to stretch. The harbor dredge was not operating today. I started back the way I had come and once again ran beneath the pier - Stearns Wharf - where, when I was with her, we always paused to kiss, and where, sometimes, we exchanged a phrase, "Don't go under the pier," a warning of her mother's from thirty-five years before. She grew up on Santa Monica Beach. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, but I had known about under-the-pier girls. All my life I liked under-the-pier girls best, and she, or so she said, liked boys who took girls there. That night she asked about our plovers.

"I saw some, but I didn't get a firm count."

"How many, do you think?"

"Three, four."

"Where? Tell me exactly."

She wrote down what I said. She kept a detailed journal of all we did, a thick map of our brief time together. Most of our allotted years had passed, but we had vowed to pretend that history began with us. She nodded as she wrote.

"So what's on tap for you tomorrow?" I asked. The next few days would be bright, clear, and windy.

"A long beach walk and a very careful plover check," she said, looking up from her notebook and smiling. "Among other things." I caught her eyes, dark and glinting like the wings of a turnstone. "Reading. Shopping. Who knows? She said. "It's the plovering I anticipate most."

I imagined my love strolling along the dry sand, wandering among the bulldozer tracks where the plovers often hunkered down. The dredging company used the bulldozer to manipulate the twenty-four inch steel pipes that carried sand from the yacht harbor down coast to East Beach.

We often sat on them to watch birds or gaze at the ocean or just to talk. I pictured her tomorrow, alone, next to those long, rusty pipes. The dredge would be operating by then: she would hear the rocks and sand clicking and swirling within the echoing steel. I pictured her there.

Mateo
by Daniel A. Olivas

"What's your name?"

Mateo looked up at Cinderella. Her blond hair glistened. She was perfect, thought the boy.

Cinderella bent down, put her white-gloved hands on Mateo's shoulders and announced in a somber voice: "You're a very handsome boy, do you know that?"

Mateo shuddered. How could anyone so beautiful notice him? She was an angel.

"My name is Mateo."

"Maw-teh-oh?" she said. "What kind of name is that?"

Mateo looked into Cinderella's blue eyes. Her blue, satin dress was more brilliant than the afternoon sky. Boys and girls walked past them toward the balloon man. A long line of tired adults and excited children waited nearby to get on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Three little birds took excited turns pecking at the top half of an abandoned hamburger bun. Mateo knew that he loved Cinderella with all of his heart and that they would be married someday.

"Did you hear me?" said Cinderella.

Mateo blinked and nodded.

"Well, what kind of name is it then?" she said punctuating her query with a little squeeze of the boy's shoulders. "I really want to know." Then she added: "Cinderella really wants to know."

"Mexican," Mateo finally answered. "I'm named after my uncle who lives in Mexico City."

Cinderella lifted her hands off of the boy's shoulders so fast that Mateo thought she might have received a shock from him. But he didn't feel anything, and he hadn't been rubbing his feet on any carpet. Cinderella narrowed her eyes, looked left and then right to see if she and the boy were more or less alone. She leaned close to Mateo's ear.

"Mexicans are dirty people," she whispered with a smile.

Mateo held his breath.

"I'm right, aren't I, Maw-the-oh?" she said, nodding.

The boy returned the nod. Now he and Cinderella were nodding together. How could he not? Cinderella wouldn't lie. And besides, Mateo's mother always complained about how dirty he got when he played outside. Sometimes she called him Pig-Pen, just like Charlie Brown's grubby friend. For a moment, he and Cinderella stared at each other in silence. And then, the connection was snapped when Mateo's mother called: "Mateo!" And Julieta trotted toward them, pulling Rolando and two Mickey Mouse balloons behind her.

"Go to your mommy and brother, you little beaner," whispered Cinderella.

Mateo let his eyes wash over this beauty one more time before turning and running to his mother.

"Don't ever wander!" said Julieta, hugging her son. "Don't you ever do that again! You scared me half to death."

"I'm sorry."

"Why couldn't you wait until we got the balloons?"

"I wanted to talk to Cinderella," said Mateo. "I love her."

Julieta glanced up at Cinderella who strolled several yards away from them, waving at children, smiling a broad smile. Several brown strands slipped out at the nape of her otherwise perfect blond wig.

"She is beautiful," said Julieta.

Mateo nodded. "Yes," he said. "Very beautiful."

Passed On
by J. Lynn Laughlin

Smitty was driving his wife to her gravesite.

"How does the rearview mirror stay up there?" she asked.

"With glue," he said.

"What kind of glue?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Like Super Glue?"

"Something like that, like glass glue." He pulled the car into the left-turn lane and waited for the light to turn green. A wrought iron sign arched over the entrance to "The Grassy Hills Cemetery," and a long wall of hedges stretched east to west.

"Let's stop at Lowes on the way home," she said.

"You decided on a color?"

"Band-Aid brown is the new mauve; I heard that on the morning show. And it will match our rug."

"The rug is Band-Aid brown?"

"It's navy blue and tan."

The light turned green and Smitty drove through the intersection, through the entrance, and followed a cobblestone drive until they reached the parking lot. Rebecca brought paperwork to prove that she owned plot #1193, but when she tried to show the papers to the front-desk attendant, he didn't want to see them and handed her a map of Grassy Hills. After studying the map, they decided to walk to the section of the graveyard where her plot could be found, a place called "Orchard Mound." It was mid-morning, and sunlight broke through the leafy canopy creating a wave of emerald swatches.

Rebecca stopped and admired a carved gravestone with twin granite urns holding crimson roses. She read the epitaph: "Dana Wilcox, a loving mother and wife."

"1921-1950," he read.

"She was only twenty-nine."

"I think we need to go this way," he said, pointing across the field of stone to the hill. "

Do dogs have bellybuttons?" she asked as she followed him.

"I guess they would."

"But have you ever seen a doggie bellybutton?"

"Why are you asking strange questions?"

"They're not that strange."

"This morning you asked me how many inches of rain Seattle gets in a year."

"I guess the grave reminds me of the things I don't know."

The hill was a newer section but already with many occupants. Rebecca was disappointed when she saw the flat plaque-like headstones, which made landscaping easier and left the hill a smooth carpet of grass where planted every few yards were saplings supported with stakes and string ties. Smitty and Rebecca stood side by side, looking at plot #1193, not speaking until Smitty said, "It's like a park."

"But it's not a park."

"It looks like you'll have a nice apple tree."

She looked away. "Why did Beth get the china, Robert the Ford, and I got a grave?"

"Because your aunt died in Florida, with them, and you still live here."

"I hate apples."

"We could sell it."

"You could use it," she said.

They watched the struggling saplings for a while, the blue sheet of sky, then went back to their car.* He said, "So, Band-Aid brown is the same thing as tan?" "No. Band-Aid brown is the new mauve."

Monarch Migration
by Christy Shick

I live across the street from a eucalyptus grove where every January thousands of Monarch butterflies gather to mate. They are lumpy on the trees like a quilt and in between the branches like a storm of orange petals. One has to search for spots of sky.

I am sitting, watching a few orange escapees flit around my lawn, watching the cars pull up in slow motion down the long straight street, and there are some boys coming up the sidewalk fast on roller blades. My porch is ten feet from the sidewalk. I sit with my toes spread out on the warm cement and watch the hypnotic stride of the first boy's blades coming toward me.

He is effortless. Shiny blond hair and new brand-name clothes with surfer logos from head to toe, as perfect as a movie. His face is like a fighter pilot's, I think as he flies by, far ahead of the others. He doesn't look at me. He eyes the end of the street where he is headed - not a through street, but there's a path to the beach there. He's acutely aware of being the fastest, thebest: it's important to him, I'm sure by his unsmiling face that does not even seem to enjoy the ease and grace with which it speeds on those thin wheels.

I sip my Nescafe, and the younger brother charges up - identical blond hair and clothes, everything new, a foot shorter. He pumps his arms and grimaces, focused on his older brother way ahead of him; he's dying to catch up. He tosses me a defiant side-glance: I'm cool. I'm as cool as he is, it says. I can see the sweat on his brow, his fear of being left behind, his fear of not being fast enough, not good enough in his state of the art roller blades and fifty-dollar T-shirt. The brothers together wear more than a month's rent, I think, about ten and eight years old.

Their friend, a skinny black kid in cut-off jean shorts and a purple T-shirt that is too big for him is last and comes sailing up out of control in his unlaced, steel-wheeled roller skates that look handed down from an older sister who bought them at Kmart in the '70s. His feet kick wildly out in front of him, arms flailing in the air, wheels rolling like coins. Whoaa! He can't control his speed. He catches my eye. Don't fall! His only thought is not falling, and it feels like he goes by faster than those blonde kids, but that's impossible because he's last. It just feels faster.

I want to tell him, You're having the most fun! Because he doesn't know he's like a dance after those aimless blond bullets. Dancing down the sidewalk with one bright stray Monarch chasing, weaving and ducking around his unsure head.

Pavel's Grey Painting
by Vanessa Gebbie

Pavel's uncle has left him a painting in his will. Pavel is delighted; his uncle was a connoisseur. Pavel waits to see which one has been picked for him.

It is wrapped in plain brown paper. The courier makes Pavel sign, "Signature, please," before handing it over. There is layer upon layer of brown paper. Pavel has already taken down his framed accountancy qualification certificates to make space for his new acquisition.

Voila. But oh, what a choice. His uncle had paintings of magnificent tigers and elephants, castles and mountains - and here is a pale portrait in several shades of grey. An emaciated Jew (Pavel can tell this much) lying on a pile of corpses, eating a shoe.

"Oh, Uncle, what a disappointment."

Pavel replaces his certificates on the wall. What is entertaining about this painting? What is there in it to uplift Pavel at the end of a day at the Town Council offices where he is Assistant Deputy Chief Financial Controller?

Rewrapping the painting, Pavel sees a small label on the back. "The artist. Of course. And his address. It is a good canvas. He can repaint it."

The artist receives Pavel on a Saturday, Shabat, making allowances for Pavel's position. He is a small, fine-featured man, and were Pavel a writer he might say the artist has the skeleton of a bird. As it is, he thinks the man is small and dark, living in a series of small dark rooms.

Pavel unwraps the painting. The artist takes it, holds it to what light there is. "This," he says. "Selling this was like selling my own liver."

"Good heavens," says Pavel. "Your liver? That would mean death, surely?"

"Yes," says the artist, who cries openly. "This was the first painting I sold. I used to destroy everything, sold nothing. But this?"

"Why did you not destroy this one?" says Pavel.

"This one?" says the artist, making a small movement with his hand as though to stroke the work, but pulling back. "This is my father."

"Good heavens," says Pavel. He checks his watch. It is 11:58AM and the supermarket shuts at 13.00 hours. If he is to go to the supermarket, do a whole weeks shop before it shuts, he needs to get a move on. "I would like you to paint over it."

The artist does not speak. He holds the canvas as though it were a child.

"I will replace it with another canvas" he says.

But that is not convenient for Pavel. He wishes to keep the canvas bequeathed to him by his uncle, and says so. "Can you do this in, say, a week? I rather thought I would like an elephant."

There is a pause. "An elephant?" says the artist. "You would have me overpaint my father so?"

"Indeed," says Pavel. "Or if not you, perhaps you can suggest some other painter who is able to paint elephants?"

There is another pause. "If anyone is to do this," says the artist. "It must be me."

Pavel leaves, having made an appointment to collect his new painting on the following Saturday.

For three days and three nights, the artist lives once more with his father. Then he sets the work on an easel and mixes, very carefully, oil paints in several shades of grey, the same shades, in fact, that he used once before.

An Episode (Montreal in January)
by Tyson Ward

Nothing is saved from the snowdrift. Boots skid from curbs into filthy meringues of ice. Singly or in single pairs the hooded figures slush along the usual troughs, passing the yellow sign of St. Hubert's Grill. A giant butler-cock invites me to cheese fries doused in broth, but I'm pushing on, thanks. Headlights swing shadows over the tracked snow. On a last-light hill the streetlamps petrify trees in rings of amber and ash-blue, their branches shocked like veins in marble. The frost-capped dome of St. Joseph's Oratory - patina-green belly injected by a cross - blimps over Citizens Bank. Twilight crumbles the clouds like chalk. I think of Salinger's De Daumier-Smith and the "cold, white summits of his profession," and also of Christ, whose glorious death makes all us victims jealous. For every master a coterie of burnouts, for every risen messiah a million peasant carpenters wrapped in canvas, dumped together in limy holes. A man stares me down as the ribbons of our breath twist and expire. A Mercedes trundles past on a flat tire, not stopping, and suddenly some lady gongs a trashcan with her cane. My fingers flexing in my pocket find a shopping list.

The Tenth Hour
by Richard Waldinger

Mme. Zsuzsanna's second client that night was a young man, dark, brooding, obviously lonely, named Edmund. She gave him tea from the samovar; Mme. Zsuzsanna was not Russian, but she didn't mind people's thinking she was. She sat the man down at her heavy wooden table with an embroidered coaster under his tea, bending over to reveal her still enticing cleavage, then she sat and laid out her cards, which were of obscure Albanian origin. All the characters were a bit deformed: the wizard had seven fingers on one hand; the young virgin had a third, smaller, breast. Mme Zsuzsanna's face darkened.

"This is very strange and urgent," she said. "You are going to be attacked. You must be prepared to defend yourself. On the tenth hour of the thirteenth day."

"Of this month?" asked Edmund.

"Very possibly. I can't be sure."

"How can you be sure about the hour?"

She pointed to a card: the ten of Suns. "The hours are suns," she explained. "Do you own a weapon?"

"Only an old pistol that my father left me."

"Be sure it is ready."

Mme. Zsuzsanna was particularly disturbed because her first client of the night, a dark, brooding, intense young woman named Alicia, had received precisely the same cards; Alicia owned a knife, which Mme. Zsuzsanna had urged her to carry. And Mme. Zsuzsanna had shuffled her deck most thoroughly afterward. But the same cards twice in one night? This had never happened before. Was something horrible going to happen--a mass murderer about to strike? She knew better than to alert the police. The cynics would laugh her out of the station, and then forget about her when the prophecy came true, as always. She poured herself some tea, dosed with cognac.

On the night of the thirteenth, Edmund was home alone. He had locked all the doors and windows, but as the tenth hour approached, he became apprehensive. What if the attacker was concealed somewhere in his house? He decided to head for the town square. The strawberry harvest festival was under way. Although Edmund had no interest in the loud drinking, dancing, and carousing, he would feel safer in a public place. Who would attack him in front of a crowd of witnesses? But he took the pistol anyway, and made sure it was loaded.

As the tenth hour approached, he was walking though the square, and when the church bell started to strike the hour, he saw a dark beautiful woman approaching him. He looked at her, and she looked back. He had not imagined his attacker would be a woman, but as they approached each other he saw her hand reach inside her handbag. Could it be a knife? He felt for his pistol, concealed in the pocket of his overcoat. The woman drew her weapon out from her handbag; it was a knife. He pulled out his pistol, and as she sprung at him and buried the knife in his chest, he fired. They both fell to the square, their blood mixing in a dark puddle on the bricks.

The townspeople drew around them. A doctor broke through the circle; his fee had been paid earlier by Mme. Zsuzsanna. "Why did you attack me?" asked Edmund, still conscious.

"It was you who attacked me!" said Alicia.

And that was the first of my grandparents' many mortal battles.

Locomotive
by John Kofron

Tom pulled the chain and the whistle chased the folks off the tracks. Jim let out the brakes, and we rolled toward Barstow. I filled the firebox, checked the boiler water, and sat down to roll a cig. It was cold outside and huge flakes beat the trees beside the track as we chugged out of town. Another easy run to the coast.

Tom didn't like it when I smoked in the locomotive.

"I don't like it when you smoke in here," he said, so I swung out on the board to light up. The pistons beat up and down, and the black trail chuffed out the smoke stack, and stretched behind the train. As I spit off the side, I saw something move across the cars behind the tender. The smoke was too thick to get a good look, so I tossed the rest of my cig into the trees, and went in.

I said what I'd seen to Tom, but he guessed it was a lump of snow, fallen off a tree. "Just snow Skip, musta fell off a tree."

Jim didn't have an opinion; he was asleep on his seat, head slumped over his stomach. I opened the firebox and piled in some wood. The trees raced by. The pistons beat up and down, up and down.

Tom pulled the whistle as we hit a turn, and the side door shot open, and this ragged hobo hopped in. He was black with soot, and had sticks and leaves in his beard and hair.

"I'm takin' over this train," he said.

Tom jumped for his Colt pocket six, but the hobo was faster, and cracked Tom's head with a little pipe he was carrying. Tom fell, and the hobo grabbed the gun and cracked my jaw with it, which wasn't fair because I didn't do anything. The struggle woke Jim, and he jumped at the hobo, but the hobo was faster, and Jim got shot through the shoulder. He staggered a bit, like we were running over some bad rail, and the hobo shoved him backward out the door into the trees. Then he tied Tom and me to the seat. My chin throbbed. The pistons beat up and down, up and down.

The hobo chucked the gun out the door and sprung the firebox. We were moving pretty fast, but no one was driving, or working the boiler, so it couldn't last long. I told the hobo, but he told me to shut up.

"Shut up," he said. He was warming his hands on the fire, and mumbling to himself like the real crazy ones do. "I did it. I did it!" and stuff like that, but real quiet and slurred, so it was hard to tell what he said.

He took off his hat and greasy hair spilled out. He was missing some teeth and stank so bad I wished he'd knocked me out, too. I tried to bury my nose in my coverall bib, but I couldn't reach with my hands tied behind me. That, and my chin was throbbing, the pistons beating up and down, up and down.

The hobo closed the box and moved to the throttle. I thought I heard him say "Florida", but like I say, he was a mumbler. He was touching buttons and getting everything dirty. Then, real sudden he yelled, "This train is going to Florida!" I told him trains only go one way, but he hit my head with the gun again.

We were in the desert when I woke up. The pistons were silent and the train was stopped. I guess the hobo didn't know much about trains. The furnace was out and he was pushing buttons and turning knobs, but the train wasn't moving without wood in the firebox and water in the boiler. I tried to tell him, but he just yelled something about Florida.

"Florida!" he said.

It wasn't long before the posse rode up. I guess we plowed through Kingman without stopping and they guessed something was wrong. They rescued Tom and me and took the hobo away. When they led him off the train, I told him again that it makes no sense to hijack a train to Florida.

He grinned. "You're crazy!" He said. "Where do you think I took us?"

I guess California must look something like Florida. I don't know, my train doesn't go there.

Pickle
by Liesl Jobson

There are things she doesn't want her children to know, the mother who insists on table manners when they come alternate weekends, bringing out the knives and forks, the good nutrition: salads and whole grain bread, organic chicken and preservative-free juices. She allows them to serve themselves, to choose their own portions. She wants to teach them good things: responsibility, to listen to their bodies, not to waste.

When they're with their father she eats alone, whole cartons of ice cream, gobbled in private, straight from the tub, picking the crunchy bits out with her fingers, licking the lid. The beans and tomatoes and potatoes left in the crisper go uncooked, mouldy and tired. Sometimes she can redeem some of the veggies, cutting off the rot to hide them in a stew, but when the beans are finally drowning in tears of brown pickle juice she throws them away, glad the children cannot see her wastefulness.

When they're with her she makes them brush their teeth, she gives them vitamins, she tells them to take a shower, but when she's alone, she does not always brush her own teeth, she neglects to wash, she forgets her meds. She tells herself she is lazy. She makes excuses, saying she is too sad.

When they are with her, she doesn't drink.

She is trying to get it all right. She really is, but it's a big job looking after her children, even though it's only alternate weekends. There's a lot of catching up to do for the other 12 days, the lost time. That's the hard part.

She sends them text messages on their father's phone: Hey sunny boy, I love you a bucket. She doesn't know whether he shows the children her messages or deletes them, saying, Mom says Hi. Still, she tries to make them laugh. Hi pretty girl, your birdie ate a pawpaw bigger than herself today.

Maybe she should be kinder to herself, kinder to the mother, because mostly, she's kind to the kids. Mostly, but not always, and that's the thing that stays under her skin. She wishes it didn't, but it does. When she lies awake at night, she remembers the bad things: the fighting and screaming, the red welts on a surprised cheek left by her fingers, the tears and slammed doors.

The mother is tired, permanently blah. She hasn't slept in weeks, maybe years. When she left the children, she couldn't sleep for the unnatural quiet in the house. It was like her biorhythm had broke, expecting to wake up for one of their nightmares, snakes under the bed, wind blowing off the roof, or endless requests for glasses of water. Now, she can't sleep. She wakes to the silence, no breathing in the next room.

Once properly awake, she remembers the children aren't there. Then she can't get back to sleep for thinking of the freezer, the ice cream with the crunchy bits. She licks her fingers, knowing she should have taken the children with her, wishing she'd had more gumption and stood up to their father, the engineer.

She doesn't sleep because she is fat. Her boyfriend pats her cheek or jiggles her shoulder to wake her, telling her she's doing that funny snoring thing. He whispers that she's stopped breathing altogether; she stops again and again.

She heard about a pump you can get, with a headgear you wear to sleep. She heard on the radio that if you have sleep apnoea, you wake a hundred times a night, a hundred times an hour even. You never rest, your brain always jerking awake to bring in the oxygen, your adrenaline charging relentlessly, wears your metabolism out.

Her great belly pushes into the mattress and can't push itself back up.

Alcohol, says the radio lady, is a contributing factor.

She knows she should get more exercise, but walking hurts her feet, her hip, and she's too tired to drive to the pool and swim laps after work. At work, she telephones engineers on the mines, at Kriel and Arnot and Twistdraai, telling them about training courses: diesel pump maintenance, conveyors, chute and feeder designs. She tells them about emergency power supplies conferences. But she can't concentrate, forgetting the paperwork, staying in during lunch, trying to catch up, resenting the pressure, slippery brained.

The radio lady says it can be cured. You have an assessment at the sleep clinic. They hook you up to wires, monitoring your brainwaves; they hook you up to the pump, the latest in biomedical engineering, which gives you positive pressure all night long. It can turn your life around. You focus, work sharp, have more energy. You'll want to exercise, and without trying, you'll lose weight. It sounds like a miracle. It sounds so easy. Too easy.

She's glad the garbage collection is on Friday. By the time the children come, the evidence is gone.

Most of all she doesn't want her children to know that when she spends all that money on the assessment, the pump and headgear, when she stops snoring and starts sleeping, she will still let the ice cream melt enough to pick the crunchy bits out with her fingers. She will dig deep to the bottom of the tub, probing through the chocolate, smoothing it over again with her spoon, so that it doesn't look robbed.