< Back to Breakthroughs Issue How to Make a Basket Jan Mordenski for Henry Taylor Take a walk down Canal St. Buy one of those crispy horn-shaped buns from the lady at the corner bakery. Eat it as you watch the two boys dangling their lines off Salmon Weir Bridge. Sit inside St. Benedict’s. Watch the sputtering rows of vigil lights, the way the wax bends the air as it evaporates. Take delight in tangled things: your daughter’s coppery hair, the fading lines of your fingertips, the trail a swallowtail makes as she tastes the asters in the garden. You need not concentrate on strictly rural images. Park across from the power plant; follow the grimy path of one fat black pipe. Keep your eye on the red Trans Am as it volleys down Telegraph Rd. This is easy. Move on, now, to the more difficult preparations. Study openings, memorize the patterns of house windows, the shifting lulls in your conversations. Dwell on one vast vacant area: your own loss of hearing, your inability to understand, the memory of the palms of your mother’s hands. Then go into the field. Find something that grows, something long and aspiring that points to the sky, tries, in fact, to be part of it. Explain to it how it will be better this way. Take it in your hands, not reverently exactly, but with respect. And keep it wet. Remember that little thrush you saw this morning at the edge of the canal? Try to see her now: a disoriented worm in her beak, her claws, two tiny scythes, gripping the gentle mess of twigs and feathers and string into which she put her children. Hold all this as you begin the chosen pattern. "How to Make a Basket" was first published in BLACK RIVER REVIEW . At my father's suggestion, I had enrolled in a few classes in basket-making and that (like many crafts) provided time for reflection - on my homelife, teaching, writing. I came to realize how many separate aspects of life are actually interwoven . This poem celebrates that breakthrough, and one of my poet-mentors, the great Henry Taylor. Previous JAN MORDENSKI was born in Detroit, Michigan. She is the author of the chapbook The Chosen Pattern (Quadra-Project, 1988). Her poem "Crochet" was published in Plainsong and in Ted Kooser's series, “American Life in Poetry.” Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Mama's Hands Willy Palomo scrub toilets until you can see your face as you piss, until her hugs smell only of rubber & bleach. Her knuckles are rougher than my father’s, tougher than anything behind a dumpster with Timberlands and a metal bat. At nine years old, the sound of her car leaving the garage would wake me up in the morning. Her shift ended at midnight, so at bedtime, I would take out all my toys and wait for her and play with dinosaurs on the couch. But the morning would come with the crank of her engine, again. I’m sorry, Mama , I’d blink, knotting myself deeper into my sheets, but I couldn’t breathe & keep my eyes open at the same time. I’m sorry , I’d stomp, crushing snails after school, I didn’t love you enough to stay awake . When night came again, I’d yawn, pull out my triceratops, and vow to see her before bed. I thought I would never make it. Then one night, the door broke open like a promise, the light behind her head darkening her face as she lifted me numb from the sofa. I twitched, maybe managed a smile, as her hand stroked the left side of my face—rough. Published in Crab Orchard Review , Vol. 23, No. 3. The literal breakthrough in the poem is a door opening and a pouring forth of light, one that also creates a chiaroscuro "darkening her face" in the frame of a promise broken open. Previous WILLY PALOMO (he/they/she) is the author of Mercury in Reggaetón , winner of the Light Scatter Prize, and Wake the Others (Editorial Kalina/Glass Spider Publishing, 2023), a winner of a Foreword Prize in Poetry and an International Latino Book Award honorable mention in Bilingual Poetry. A veteran of the Salt Lake City poetry slam scene, his fiction, essays, poetry, translations, and songs can be found across print and web pages, including the Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and more. He has taught classes on literature, rap, and creative writing in universities, juvenile detention centers, high schools, and community centers. He is the son of two refugees from El Salvador. www.palomopoemas.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Rude Weather Cynthia Hardy 1. The weather changes and changes again— just when our skin has opened its pores to heat & tanned from wildfire smoke-- rain 2. Rain softens the profile of mountains, blurs the day so that everything’s as in a dream— birds flit through the overhang of eaves—delphiniums droop—the greenhouse drowses 3. In a drowse, I hear the news—some tragedy in a place where the air overheats and neighbors pass with rude stares. I nestle the cat. I do not call my neighbor to ask how her tomatoes grow 4. Tomatoes form a wall of green at the back of the greenhouse— the dark and jagged leaves hiding yellow blossoms, thumb- sized fruits. A dragon- fly beats against the translucent roof 5. A dragonfly lands on my knuckle—a skeleton of black chiton—wings iridescent paddles, mandibles moving, slowly chewing a yellow striped sweat bee 6. The bees are silent. The neighbor’s hive has swarmed—the gray sky and rain damps down their buzziness. I long for a finger full of fireweed honey—so light and clear and nectar-sweet. This poem was written as a response to a challenge I gave my poetry students: moving from one image to another, letting the poem drift. It was a poem I could have just tossed away, but didn’t. Perhaps that’s the breakthrough—or that, in its own loose way, this poem represents an attempt to add order to my usual unstructured process. Previous CINDY HARDY writes from Chena Ridge, Fairbanks, Alaska. She has published poetry and fiction, teaches occasionally, rides horses, and gardens all summer. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Bird News Cynthia Hardy A thump against the cabin wall. I find the body, palm-sized, warm yet, on the porch. One eye glistens, the beak open. Someone says, "If a bird flies in your window he's come to tell good news." But, if the bird dies, and the news is never spoken? Or spoken late, words of comfort flung against a window they can’t pass through? I see your mouth move, like bird wings: the news shatters as it flies. As children we filed into halls nestled among coats and boots, our heads between our knees cradled by our arms. We recited the bad news silently. The skies shone clear and empty. The worst threat-- one not seen--comes in joyous blue. All we love can vanish, empty as the sky. I lay the bird on a clump of moss. Next time, I say, there will be no window glass. Next time the bird flies in free and clear, singing. This poem was written in response to the statement quoted in the poem. I was surprised at where the poem turned, and then, that the poem was published in the Heartland section of the Fairbanks Daily News Miner in 1986 (when they regularly published poetry). This poem was also published in my collection Beneath a Portrait of a Horse (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2010). Previous CINDY HARDY writes from Chena Ridge, Fairbanks, Alaska. She has published poetry and fiction, teaches occasionally, rides horses, and gardens all summer. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Review of El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez Willy Palomo El Rey of Gold Teeth by Reyes Ramirez is a striking contribution to the poetry of the Central American diaspora. Ramirez writes in a form-forward style with a microscopic attention to language. His pen treks across an ambitious range of topics, including toxic masculinity, the climate crisis, as well as colonization and its hangovers. There is hardly a poem in this collection that doesn’t fit into his tightly woven thematic tapestry and the following four series: the “hijo please series,” where his mother provides him with sometimes toxic but always loving advice and admonitions; the “A Lesson …” series, where Ramirez unpacks the weight of colonization, migration, and (dis)possession, especially in gendered terms; “The Fabulous Wondrous Outfits of the Fabulous Wonder Twins” series, where Ramirez takes images of twinning from 80s and 90s music videos and spins them out to comment on the bifurcation of identity so frequently discussed by diasporic authors; and finally the “… is My America” series, where Ramirez takes moments of both joy and disaster to paint us the cultural landscape of his personal America. Such a tight grip on his pen gave me little space to doubt Ramirez’ intention, sequencing, or mastery of form, even when I may have wrestled against them. Take, for example, Ramirez’ use of codeswitching. The poet intentionally codeswitches in a staggering manner that pushes against the fluency of typical bilingualism. This excerpt from “A Broken red-eared Slider’s Shell” is case in point: house de flesh y hueso glides about un azure womb skyed con marbled membrane struck numb por prisms que shatter y skitter. The average bilingual reader will recognize that this is not how we generally codeswitch and likely will have difficulty saying this sentence aloud. For some, that will be a turn-off and valid criticism. It’s obvious to me at least that this move is intentional. The clash of languages in between articles and prepositions forces me to slow down to pronounce the language Ramirez conjures, which is beautiful even if I experience some pain in the difficulty of speaking it. Rather than flip the page in frustration, I marvel: what a clever way to corner his readers and force them to slow down and experience the violence of language. The trip of the tongue is a trip I experienced many times in my lifetime of losing and acquiring my Spanish. El Rey of Gold Teeth will routinely dazzle you with flashes of perfectly sketched moments and images Ramirez uses to transport people directly into his neighborhoods. In “La Pulga,” you will rummage through “a series of shirts,” where “Tweety is Chicana / Bart Simpson is Domincan” and “Vegeta is Salvadoreño now.” In “Finding Kittens After a Tropical Storm is My America,” Ramirez surveys his devastated city in an effortless contrapuntal, showing the reader “edgeless mouths struggling to speak” and how “raw pink paws thrash again / for nipples on rusted air conditioner.” In “A 4th Grade Dance Party in a Cafeteria at 1 P.M. is My America,” Ramirez shares the magic of watching children spontaneously dance “the milly rock, / the juju, running man. even ones before / their birth like the macarena, wobble, cha cha slide.” Ramirez displays such charm and mastery time and time again in poems about pupusas, pozole, Selena, and more. Ramirez writes from Houston, Texas, a city bursting at the seams with powerful Black and Latinx voices in a state that has banned more books than any other state as of 2023 and where diversity, equity, and inclusion has been outlawed in higher education. In El Rey of Gold Teeth, Ramirez follows the thread that stitches his Latinx communities, their significant leaders, their pop stars, and even their children, indelibly into the American empire. Their presence is frequently in resistance to colonization, surely. Other times, such as the poems “El Salvadoreño-Americano as Decolonizer, 1929-1936” and “The First Mexican American Astronaut Was Once,” I read Ramirez as a colonized intellectual a la Fanon, wrestling to provide meditative, compassionate portrayals that champion significant Latinx leaders whose jobs were ultimately intimately tied to American imperialism and settler colonization. I lay exhausted with my back to the mat in this wrestle with Ramirez, as we struggle to recuperate a history banned once again and attempt to forge a future where our people may still be nourished by their roots. The coming fascists will be willing to do more than ban us to stop us. It is our duty to survive. It is our duty to keep writing down our truths. Ramirez says of El Rey of Gold Teeth (Hub City Press, 2023): "Colonizing languages and subverting forms, rerouting histories, and finding the mundane made extraordinary, El Rey of Gold Teeth breaks open notions of destiny, in humorous and devastating ways, to reimagine the past and present a new future where lack transforms to abundance, where there will be many answers to every question." Previous WILLY PALOMO (he/they/she) is the author of Mercury in Reggaetón, winner of the Light Scatter Prize, and Wake the Others (Editorial Kalina/Glass Spider Publishing, 2023), a winner of a Foreword Prize in Poetry and an International Latino Book Award honorable mention in Bilingual Poetry. A veteran of the Salt Lake City poetry slam scene, his fiction, essays, poetry, translations, and songs can be found across print and web pages, including the Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and more. He has taught classes on literature, rap, and creative writing in universities, juvenile detention centers, high schools, and community centers. He is the son of two refugees from El Salvador. www.palomopoemas.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue The Long Haul Shanan Ballam The black ribbon of highway unfurls before us. It is well past midnight. The stroke and I are driving a semi on a three-year road trip. We are exhausted, sticky, smelly and stiff from the long, stale ride. We haven’t been out of the truck for hours and hours. We haven’t had a chance to stretch our legs. We are both wearing black plastic AFO’s that makes our right legs numb. Our bladders ache. We have no idea if or how it ends. We don’t know where we’re going. We just know we must drive. Because that’s all we know how to do. We must keep moving. But we don’t know why. The situation is so confusing. Every time I turn my head when I think I see the answer it dissipates like smoke. The stroke is driving. Bleary-eyed the stroke turns the wheel over to me. The seat is warm where the stroke sat. I take the sweaty wheel in my grip. We’re hauling precious cargo, dragging its heavy load behind us like a tail. In the trailer we carry all our grief. We can’t afford to lose this load. I drive carefully through the night. The stroke sleeps in the passenger seat. I drive until the white morning sun seeps through the cab windows. I glance at the stroke. She has brown hair and is wearing my red shirt. When she lifts her sleepy head I see she has my brown eyes— my nose and my mouth— she even has my four moles high up on her cheek, that look like the basin of the big dipper. She is me me me. She has been me all along. We know what we have to do: together we unhitch the heavy trailer of our grief. We leave it at a grimy truck stop in the middle of nowhere. The stroke says I’ll drive— but the words come from my mouth. I have written several poems about my stroke, comparing it to a horse that falls on my chest, a rat, my abusive stepfather, my drunk brother-in-law who molested me. The stroke is always an enemy. This poem was the first time I saw that the stroke was actually me—had always been me. This idea was a breakthrough, to see the stroke not as an adversary, but as myself. Previous SHANAN BALLAM is the author of the poetry manuscripts The Red Riding Hood Papers (Finishing Line Press, 2010), Pretty Marrow (Negative Capability, 2013), Inside the Animal (Main Street Rag, 2019), and the chapbook first poems after the stroke (Finishing Line Press, 2024). shananballam.org Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Bluebird Abecedarian Pamela Uschuk for Laura-Gray Street Aegean blue etches frost air a deeper indigo than river-scrubbed lapis or blue hair dye or cadmium fresh from the tube onto canvas’s deep glacial lake. Blue catches me wandering dawn song ether, where no bombs blow off freezing feathers from wings, where no random gunshots thwack red birds with the snap of their terrible teeth. Hobbling, mothers drag kids through Gaza, from unsafe to unsafe in genocide’s firestorms of missile revenge. Just when I think this Virginia sky has birthed a kite of quietude with its upswung limbs of live oak, redbud, elm and maple’s sugar hope news intrudes its list of atrocities opening old wounds that never get a chance to heal. Peace? Ceasefire? These ancient questions are tacked to my sleeve like small roses of blood leaking from a child’s forehead pixilated on screen, laptop or smart TV in your own living room where you used to lounge with your lover or your cat, both valentines of hope, that elusive word again like a ghost whale or x-ray of a leg bone shattered by a grenade or an explosion of yellow feathers. Ground Zero is war’s footprint, unseen by bluebirds the size of a human heart. I wrote this Abecedarian as a model poem for an advanced undergraduate poetry class when I was the Pearl S. Buck Visiting Writer at Randolf College in Virginia. Besides Natalie Diaz’s wonderful “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation,” I couldn’t find an example that was quite right for this class. This poem tries to hold all the grief and outrage I feel by the ongoing assault on Gaza, a country that is has been almost bombed out of existence by Israel whose firepower is overwhelming. I incorporated a lot of bird imagery because birding is one of my greatest joys. I dedicated the poem to Laura-Gray Street who brought me to Randolf and who I had the great privilege of going birding with. The poem turned out to be an anti-war poem. The last line was one of those gifts that come out of the blue, a lucky line. This is another breakthrough poem for me. Previous PAMELA USCHUK is the author of eight books of poems and has received many awards including the American Book Award. She is a senior fellow and board member of Black Earth Institute, as well as Editor in Chief of Cutthroat , a Journal of the Arts. www.pamelauschuk.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Gamble Patrilineage Robbie Gamble B eginning with James, of Scotch-Irish stock, shipped out to America from Enniskillen at sixteen, following the magnetic call of Manifest Destiny, pulling up on the stockyard banks of Cincinnati. There he learned the soapmaking trade, and soon fell in with William Procter, candlemaker. They pooled funds, and in 1837 co-founded the Procter & Gamble company. Energetic, shrewd stockpilers of materials, they grew the business well, filled coffers in Civil War contracts on the Union side, shipping bar soap and candles downstream into the maw of the conflict. And when the armies stumbled home they expanded as the nation, reconstructing, flexed its wealth westward. D avid, son of James, born into wealth amidst the bright industrial flush of household goods, cradled high on the bow of flagship Ivory Soap, while America scoured itself clean, striving toward a fresh end to the century. David served P&G as company Secretary, retiring in 1893 to sail the world with sons, overseeing Presbyterian missions charged with Oriental evangelization. Disembarking, he shuttled between showcase mansions in Cincinnati and Pasadena, the latter now a national landmark, the Gamble House. C larence, son of David, unexpected youngest of three. Prodigal, self-possessed, he posted first in his class at Princeton, 1914, then second through Harvard Medical School. His generation unburdened by the reins of soap production, instead he got a trust fund, his first million at twenty-one. Clarence caught the bug of Eugenics, pseudo-science of race and class superiority, dreaded humanity being dragged down by bad genes. He never built a medical practice, instead became a population-manipulator of one, urging for more babies amongst the educated, testing new contraceptives for the poor, funding rogue clinical trials, advocating sterilization of the feeble-minded in the rural South, always striving to constrain human sprawl in worrisome backward societies around the globe. W alter, son of Clarence, third of five redheaded siblings, the quiet, studious one. He lived for scientific questing; like his father he studied medicine, and unlike him he kept at it, specializing in pediatric cardiology, designing new pacemaking devices in the 1960s to impose strict rhythms on sick kids’ faltering hearts. He kept a hand in the family’s Great Cause of world population control, sitting on their foundation board, rattled about in his research lab with a menagerie of subject rats and cows, rounded on patients, and biked in to work in all kinds of weather, for over thirty years. R obbie, son of Walter, first of three boys, came into unexpected millions at eighteen. He grew deep discomfort for his wealth, shifted from Harvard to the Bowery in 1982, to work among homeless folks, and with his first wife Martha gifted away a fortune. He became a nurse practitioner to better care for people scraping at the margins, raised three kids, lost a marriage and a brother, discovered Anna, an orchard, a shining reverence for words. If there’s a breakthrough in the unpublished poem “Gamble Patrilineage,” it’s in the influence of my first wife, Martha, who helped me to see through the constraints of the patriarchy and the trappings of wealth, and turn away from family convention to become a more authentic agent for change in the world. My family has an almost biblical sense of self-importance, and I find it useful to coopt that narrative with an over-the-top generational structure that shows the undue focus given to the men on the family tree. Previous ROBBIE GAMBLE is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). He is poetry editor at Solstice Literary Magazine . robbiegamble.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Angel's Diner Stephen Wunderli It is the hitching season, or so the old timers used to call it. A time to hitch up all dogged-out farm equipment in the fields and drag it into the barn for repairs. Snow will fall and moving anything abused through the summer into the barn where it can be repaired is essential. Field work slows. Coffee flows. God waits somewhere above the names carved in stone over the mine entrance to comfort the sons of Greeks who died in the great tunnel collapse. They will return. SAM Sam called Darius and told him to be at Angel’s Diner a few minutes early. He had a favor to procure, and he didn’t want the rest of the boys to hear it. He pulled up under a rust-colored sky, shuffled through the slush, and slid into a booth with orange vinyl stretched painfully over benches. Darius was already there. It was six in the morning at a truck stop between two towns that serve petroleum trucks, umbilical gas lines pumping diesel into their bellies and entertaining locals with near disasters as the land whales shudder southbound tourists onto the shoulder of the highway when they pass. “Nicky is dying,” Sam told Darius, his winter-swollen hands folded in supplication around his coffee cup. “The doctors said some kind of cancer they have never seen around here.” “I’m sorry,” Darius said. “Can we pray?” Sam leaned his meaty face into Darius. “No need yet. Now about this favor. It’s complicated. can’t have Kelli hearing of it, not with the restraining order. She isn’t to come near either of us. If she gets wind, she could throw the gears off Nicky’s last days.” Darius sat back. His rounded shoulders, big as a steer, leaned forward, his black head mounted securely in the middle. “The kid is only nine years old. What does Kelli think?” “I don’t know,” Sam said with the kind of deep-seated contempt that puts up fences between neighbors. “She hasn’t been around since she had a go with you.” Sam paused and let his emotions die down, looking out at the diesel exhaust hanging in the air. He smelled of it. He always smelled of it. The three layers of flannel went the winter without a wash, the belly pulling his shoulders forward. “You know nothing happened,” Darius said, squinting into the hurt Sam was feeling. “It’s quite a thing to watch a life get away from you, isn’t it?” Sam asked. DARIUS An apparition was steaming on the window where Darius rested his forearm. His broad, black face flowed in folds down his neck, hiding the sinews that tightened when he talked, drawing his jaw back slightly into a nonthreatening position. He was a strong, good-looking man of good proportion except for the few extra pounds he carried about the middle. Trucks exiting the freeway threw waves of slush as they carved their way to the stop, miles of gray wash behind them and gray frags burrowed into fresh snow as if after an explosion. The dawn seemed stalled against the roiled fog; brackish and heavy, shouldering against the sun. Darius was rarely up for one of Sam’s favors. It seemed he was always the first to be asked and the last to get thanked. He pushed his hands out on the table in front of him in supplication. “You know that, right? That nothing happened between me and Kelli?” Sam looked away from Darius to watch Angel tabbing receipts, balancing plates of eggs and holstering the coffeepot in her apron tie. “Don’t matter one way or the other. I don’t want Kelli gobbing up the boy’s life now.” “She is the mother,” Darius said. “Don’t pick sides, big man. You know the woman can’t hold herself up, let alone steady the boy. What’s done is done, and what’s right is right.” Darius sat back, his big body taking up most of the bench built for men a hundred years ago who worked all day in the mines on a cup of coffee. He knew Sam was shaping the story about Kelli to his advantage, the way he always did. Pushing the truth of things. The bit of truth in a lie is what mattered to Sam. Darius had seen it before and he knew challenging Sam would only earn a smug “that’s your way of looking at it.” Silence. “Should I tell his baseball team,” Darius went on. “Do something special, make one of those blankets everybody can sign?” “No. He wants to see Bigfoot,” Sam said. “Judas, Bigfoot? That’s the boy’s dying wish?” “Let’s get to my favor before the other boys show up.” Darius leaned forward with the girth of his chest rested on the booth table. “Let’s have it then.” “Kelli can’t know about it,” Sam said, leaning over his coffee. “She’ll be digging at you looking for answers. Don’t pick up the phone.” Darius nodded. Kelli’s number had been scratched from his phone months earlier. They had been talking, way back when the war between Sam and Kelli began, with Darius as peacekeeper so Sam could stay on the road. It was a year after Nicky was born when Kelli unleashed her insides. Darius had witnessed the scrapes on Sam’s face the width of fingernails and the bashed-out headlights on his truck. More than once, he found Sam asleep in the café in the early morning. Kelli called Darius late at night with her long, breathless complaints when Sam tired of yelling into the torrents of Kelli’s accusations, but he never went over to comfort her in person, no matter how many dishes she broke on the floor for him to hear. SAM “It come on him in the hospital,” Sam started, his face sagging under the weight of the topic. His stubble was coarse enough to fray his flannel shirt. “He shows up for chemo once a week and has nothing to do but sit there and be quiet. So, he picked up a magazine that’s been in the waiting room for ten years and reads about some Bigfoot sighting. It was like a drug. It just got hold of him. It’s something you know a bit about, how you can’t control the next thing you’re gonna say or do.” Darius looked at Sam, his eyes tired, weakened by the weight of denial. He breathed out long. “And there’s a favor in this story?” “I’m coming to that. It takes some time. That’s why I asked you to come early.” Darius used his thick hand to prop up his face and give his neck a rest. Drops of moisture from snowflakes colliding with the big windowpane were spotting the outside gray and breaking up the fluorescent lights. “He spent a month in the library. He’s got newspapers laid out like treasure maps in his room,” Sam said, spreading his arms out wide like he was measuring a fish. “Course you can’t say nothing to a boy in that state, so I’m letting him piece it all out in his head.” “Sounds serious.” “Oh, it is.” Sam sat back and sucked in air like he was storing it for later. “It is.” The weight of losing his boy was suffocating him. It drained all reason and logic, pushing him into abstract unknowns he could not plumb or measure. A tanker pulled up to the side of the café, splattered with brown highway slush and wobbling to a stop. “There’s Jim,” Darius said. “Better get it out before he walks in here.” “Alright. So here it is. I need you to be Bigfoot.” Darius put his hands on the table like he was showing he had nothing to hide. “Me? Why not Jim?” Sam leaned forward. “Because you are a big Black man, and you owe me one.” “Judas, Sam.” “It’s the kid’s dying wish, Dee. God honest truth.” “You want me to be Bigfoot?” “You’re the best I got. Jim would blow the whole thing up, dance like a rodeo clown, or worse, holler something out in his real voice and my boy would be pulverized. Nicky is whip smart. He reads.” Jim eased in beside Darius and patted the middle of the table. Angel set a coffee cup down and filled it. “What’s got you fellas quiet this morning? School bus broke down again?” “No, not that,” Sam said. “Just a day like any other.” “Sam says I’m a big Black man,” Darius blurted out. Jim leaned back and eyed Darius. “Well, you don’t say. I never noticed until now. Damned if he ain’t right.” Darius chuckled and let the steam from the fresh coffee rise to his face. Sam tightened his lips until the wings of his mustache readied for takeoff. “He just wants a favor for his boy, that’s all,” Darius said. “How is Nicky?” Jim asked. “I know he’s sick.” “He’s dying,” said Sam. “But he still has some strength.” “Damn. I’m sorry about that. He up for a ride in the tanker? I could take him on a route?” “No,” Sam said. “He wants to see Bigfoot,” said Darius. “It’s his dying wish,” Sam added. “Don’t ask me why. I’m not good at this at all.” Jim looked at Darius, stared for a moment at the thick beard, the broad, dark face. “You know there’s no such thing as Bigfoot.” “There is now,” Darius offered resolutely. “There is now.” “You want to let the other boys in on it?” Jim asked. “No,” Sam answered. “A conspiracy ain’t a conspiracy if the whole town knows about it.” “Okay, let’s go then,” Jim said, standing up. “We can talk about it at the truck bay. I’ve got to wash the whale.” Darius raised his hands like he was calming a horse. “Nobody’s said yes to anything yet.” JIM Compressors sputtered on and off and mist hung in the air. The spray gun dripped. The sky was a cement gray. The boys leaned against the side of the sweating tanker, freshly sprayed down. Jim’s beard drained droplets onto the front of his T-shirt, into a void the flannel could not cross. “You’re right about the boy dying with a smile on his face. That would be my wish.” “Not here to talk about the dying part,” Sam said. He had not let himself go to that place where his boy lay in coffin sucking the life out of the world. Jim held up his hand to overrule the conversation. “Just saying that it’s hard to get a corpse to smile. Ask Winifred. She embalmed a hundred people in her life, and she’ll tell you it’s better if they come in with a natural smile.” “It’s why we’re here,” Sam said, not knowing where to put his hands. They were roughhewn and worn and he was trying to stow them somewhere without success. “The boy deserves the best sendoff I can give him. Something that keeps him smiling all the way to Heaven.” “You’d think seeing God would be enough,” Jim said. “No one asked you,” Sam snapped back. “The boy’s not even old enough to drink coffee but he’s old enough to know that Heaven is waiting for him.” “If I had a boy, I’d want to make sure he died happy and not be all tangled up in stuff that doesn’t matter.” “Like how?” Sam demanded. Jim stepped back from the tanker. Darius calmed the tension by offering to help. “Where do I fit in?” Sam tugged at his trucker jacket and drew a magazine page out of his pocket. He pressed it against the side of the tanker. “I stole this from his stash. This is what Bigfoot looks like.” Jim fished in his shirt pocket for his readers. The boys stared at the photo. “Where do we get the costume?” Jim asked. “No costume. It has to look real,” Sam insisted. “Nicky’s got a sharp eye. An ape suit won’t do it.” “You’re talking a Hollywood makeup job there,” Jim said. “The best this town has ever seen.” “The boy is worth it,” Darius said. “Damn cancer. We could get Debra over at the Kut and Kurl.” In the photo Bigfoot’s arms hung long, the hands flapping like a kid wearing his dad’s mittens. The head coned comically upward, and hair grew unnaturally over the kneecaps, something that would not happen in the wild to an animal who spent any time rooting around for grubs. “My hell, Sam. He’s way too clean. We can do better than this,” said Jim. “A beast in the wild would have briars and tagalongs on its fur.” “We have to make the best Bigfoot people have ever seen,” Sam said. “We can do the trick with horsehair from the groomer and some glue. We’ll send Darius out early to pick up a few thorns and thatch to look authentic.” “Hold on,” said Darius. “You got to give me a say in all this.” The three men stood at the edge of the concrete. Cheatgrass pocked the snowy field behind them, rising toward the foothills they could not see but knew were there. A scramble of sage and scuttled boulders were cloaked in the skirt of fog, buried under a blanket of snow draped on the mountains. A series of storms was moving in from the west where they would be pinched off by cold dropping down from the north. Spring was struggling to arrive on the earth tilting slowly toward the sun, changing temperature and time. The days would be getting longer. The milky tears of sleet ached to be spring rain. Beyond the fog was a place Bigfoot could live in the mountains; a place where a boy could find him. “We’ll do it,” Jim said. “Me and Sam will set it up so it’s believable. You’ll see.” NICKY The night light in Nicky’s room seemed to float the boy in the air in front of the window where he stood with head dark against the glass. “Can’t sleep?” He heard someone ask. When he turned around, he saw his father sitting in a chair in the hallway. “Can’t you?” The boy asked. He was thin, sixty-three pounds, and the knots of his knees stood out unnaturally because he was just beginning to grow when the cancer overran his immune system. “No,” Sam said. “If you can’t sleep, neither can I.” “I had that dream again,” Nicky said, walking to stand in front of his father, the man he had watched grab a mangy mare by the neck and wrench it to the ground so the vet could draw her foal out with a cable and jack. He climbed onto his father’s knees and let his pale legs dangle like that foal’s, his mop of blonde hair falling against the father’s barrel chest. “It seems like I can’t wake up when I’m having it, but then I open my eyes.” “Tell me about it again.” “There’s this boy in a cage and there’s all these other cages but they are empty. It’s like somebody forgot to let him out, the only one. That’s it. And I’m just watching him, and nothing happens. He doesn’t even ask me to let him out. He just stares at me, and I stare at him.” “Why does it scare you?” “I don’t know. It just does.” “I’ll leave the door open. You are not in a cage.” The boy stared at his father for a long time. His eyes purple underneath where they should have been sunburned from days in the fields chasing crows with a lasso like the other boys, trying to catch something they never would. His skin bleached rather than browned by the outdoors. “Will mom come back when I’m gone?” “Get back in bed, Sam said. “It’s not your fault she left.” SAM On Saturday, Jim rocked his fix-it van to a stop at the Kut and Kurl. He carried a bag of horsehair trimmings and wore his new Justins because his wife had come home with a new pair of pocket-stitched jeans and he was due. Sam and Darius had arrived in Sam’s truck and waited so the three of them could walk in together. Nicky was at the hospital and the doctors said he couldn’t leave until tomorrow. Sam had dropped him off before picking up Darius. The radio was still tuned to the gospel channel and a drawl voice commanded listeners to doubt not and thrust their hands inside of Jesus. Sam cut the engine. Snow was falling out of the air, thick as down when Sam cleaned geese and the wind kicked up. It made him think of the elements of nature, how two things can look the same but be so different. “I brought wader socks,” Darius said. “I put ball bearings up into the toes to make my footprints look less human.” Sam nodded. He was twisting the grip on his steering wheel like he was trying to change the shape of it before he levered the handle and shouldered the truck door open. Jim hauled the load of horsehair like a bird bag full of dead pheasants. He was proud of the bounty of mane he had secured from the vet. DEBRA Debra stood at the screen door. “Of course I will,” she said. “I love that boy.” “Everybody does,” Sam said as the boys walked in, somber and resolute. “But God loves him more and wants him back.” Debra trembled, holding back emotions was not easy for her and caused her insides to shudder. She spun the chair around and motioned for Darius to sit down. “Take everything off,” she said like a nurse. “Lock the door,” Darius said, tossing his flannel jacket onto a folding chair. He pulled off his boots and struggled to roll his socks off while standing. The Henley shirt came off next, wrestled over his head releasing his round, brown belly. He dropped his Carhart pants on the floor and Jim picked them up. “Judas,” Darius said. “Everything?” Debra nodded. “I don’t believe Bigfoot wears BVDs.” Darius dropped his underwear and tossed them onto the chair with the pile of his clothes that smelled like creosote. He stood there naked, dark skin pocked on his shoulders, and creased with stretchmarks just above the hips. Debra looked at him, sizing him up. Darius sat down on the chair, the vinyl squeaking beneath his bare skin. He took a deep breath. Sam dumped the horsehair out on a table and started sorting through it. Debra cut the tip off the craft glue bottle. Sam taped the magazine picture on the mirror next to a photo of a woman with short bangs and a long mullet in the back. Debra stared at Bigfoot for a moment. Then she sucked air through her teeth and studied the mound of brown human in front of her, the belly like a mare’s, the pebbles of black hair on the chest. She shuffled back and forth on swollen ankles, eyeing the blank canvas and seeing where the natural worn spots would be if he were Bigfoot, the valleys filled with thick hair, the creases where ticks could burrow. “It’s somethin’ seeing it from hoof to hide,” Debra said. Darius took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Just do your worst.” Jim and Sam drizzled craft glue in uneven streams across Darius’ chest. Debra worked carefully on his whole body, putting hair everywhere. She was careful about covering up the private area. When they were done with the front, Sam helped Darius pull on the wader socks with three ball bearings each and they covered those too. Then Darius got out of the chair and settled his elbows on the armrest while they put hair on his back and rump. Nobody talked. It felt as sacred as washing a corpse. “I’ll go get Nicky,” Sam said. “See you at Pearson’s Perch.” Darius nodded. “I’ll be there.” SAM Sam arrived at the hospital and slid a laundry basket out of his pickup truck. It was half-full of towels. He walked in through the back door and took the stairs up to the third floor, breathing heavy when he reached the top, his mind envisioning every step of his escape as he passed the children’s paintings of winged angels hung in the stairwell. He held the basket low as he passed the nurse’s desk and slid the glass door back and stood over Nicky. “There’s been a sighting,” Sam said. “A what?” Nicky sat up weakly, surprised but glad to see his dad. “Shhhhh,” Sam whispered. “There’s been a sighting out to Pearson’s Perch.” “But…” “Do you want to go?” Nicky was pale, his lips gray. “Bigfoot?” “Yes. We’ll only be gone an hour.” Sam tossed the towels onto the bed and set the basket on the floor. Nicky slid down and curled up in it, his eyes unnaturally wide. He folded himself like a baby bird in an egg. Sam covered his son with towels and unplugged the monitor from the wall. A faint beeping noise sounded. He hoisted the laundry basket onto his hip and ducked into the hallway while the attending nurse looked over her shoulder but continued her conversation with the other nurses. Sam lumbered down the stairs, wobbling with the boy in front of him. He shouldered Nicky at the bottom, hurried out the door and set his frail son on the front seat of his truck. “Stay down,” he said. Nicky giggled. It was the first happy sound he’d made in two months. They moved slowly out of the parking lot and Nicky poked his head up, perched in the basket and looking out the window at the snowflakes turning to water when they hit the glass. The cold made his face grayer than in the hospital. He shivered. Sam turned up the heat. They made new tracks in the snow on the highway. “I brought you some boots and coveralls.” Nicky rolled out of the basket and started getting dressed. “She,” Nicky said. “Bigfoot is a she . Everybody thinks otherwise, but it’s a mother. That’s why it’s so hard to get a look at her, mothers got a way of being invisible.” Even though Nicky was excited to reveal this bit of information, Sam began to weep. He didn’t want to hear about mothers and all their willful love. It reminded him of Kelli. He steered with one hand and pawed the moisture away. “Makes sense,” he said. They motored slowly off the highway and up a sheep road to a gravel turn-around, the snow falling in lager flakes, some the size of aspen leaves in the high altitude. “Down this slope in Negro Bill’s Canyon where they saw him last,” Sam said, when they were climbing out of the truck. “They don’t call it that anymore,” Nicky said. “I saw it on the news. Now they call it Shadow Canyon since it is so narrow and the sun only gets there part of the day.” “Old habits. Old ways,” Sam answered. “I don’t think Darius liked the old name.” Nicky said. “He might prefer Bill’s real name, William Grandstaff.” “You read too much. I don’t think he minds one way or the other.” Snow was falling on the trail and Sam inhaled snowflakes when he breathed in. The large flakes held their shape in the thin air, compressing under their feet, wafting before them as they hiked. Nicki walked forward awkwardly, bundled in the insulated coveralls, and work gloves. A towel around his neck for a scarf and oversized work boots. He looked into the cloud of snow. “Let me lead,” Sam said. The two worked their way down the rocky path that overlooked the choked canyon. The ground was slippery, and the dried Juniper branches damp and brittle, buried like steel game traps. They moved carefully, the father testing every step and the son placing his feet in his father’s footprints. Sam reached for a juniper branch to steady himself, but it gave way. His feet slid; his weight teetered. He put an arm out to break his fall, but the cross hatch of branches gave way, and he went down hard on his hip and a bank of snow followed him over the edge. Nicky could hear his father thrashing through the brush and scraping on the shale while a rivulet of high mountain detritus flowed down the furrow Sam left plowed. “Dad!” There was a long, dead silence. “I’m OK, Nicky,” Sam’s voice floated up from the bottom of the narrow ravine. “I’ve jacked up my ankle, son. Stay there. Stay right there!” “I can get help,” Nicky called out. “Stay there,” his father called back. “I’ll get up to you. Just give me a minute.” NICKY Nicky fanned the deepening snow around him and stomped a waiting place. All things in the cold were shrouded. He listened to his father grunting and turning and kicking loose rubble. He could hear the labored breaths, the air sucking through his father’s mouth into his lungs, the coughing. Nicky cocked his head and listened to a new sound, the shuffling of feet not far from him, a strange and soft sound. His boyhood years in the brush had taught him to see with sounds, gauging size and distance. He turned his head to the sound as it moved along the bottom, around a stand of oak brush until it was below the rise of the trail that dipped steeply. Through the veil of snow, he could see his father’s form on the shoulders of some beast he could not make out. A dark head appeared, covered in hair. A broad chest, bare in the snow, head facing down, a barrel body covered in hair tangled with briars, snow knots and mud. The beast moved awkwardly, the snow churning in a wake behind him. The beast did not look up. Nicki could not see its eyes. It opened the truck door and dropped his dad inside. Sam was passed out from the pain. His foot bent at a right angle at the shin bone. Nicky stood facing the beast. “Will he live?” “Yes,” said the beast, letting its eyes be seen. “You’re Bigfoot?” “Maybe.” “You could be Negro Bill.” “He died a long time ago,” Bigfoot said. “Maybe he didn’t die,” Nicky said. “Could be. I have heard of such things.” “His mother then,” Nicky said. “Mothers live forever.” “Yes. And they always come back.” “For sure?” Nicky asked. Bigfoot nodded. “Will you live forever?” Bigfoot looked out toward wilderness he could not see. The veil of snow hung thick in front of him. “I guess that depends on who you ask. Sometimes I’d like to die.” “Well, I am dying,” Nicky said. “And I’m afraid.” “There’s worse things.” “What’s worse?” Nicky asked, now waist deep in snow. The beast crouched on its haunches and tried to look out at the canyon, lonely and eternal. Thick hands of snow fell, pressing downward while small gaps of gray light drifted upward. “We should be going,” Bigfoot said. He collected the boy in his arms and set him in the laundry basket on the hood of the truck. Sam woke and moaned in pain, his lower leg now swelling. “I lost the key when I fell.” “I’ll go get help,” said Bigfoot. He hoisted the basket packed tight with boy and white towels onto his shoulder. With his free hand, he brushed the snow in front of him, clearing a trail in the waist-high drifts, the whiteness floating up and falling at the same time. ANGEL “I seen the creature come in off the foothills through the snow. It was white as steamed milk, couldn’t even see the mountains. He appeared, trudging like the creature he was, and it was clear that my place was his destination. “His head was down and his fur like a bison’s was covered in snow knots. On his shoulder was Nicky, wrapped up like the Christ child in a laundry basket. He opened the door and the glass fogged. He set the boy down like a doorstop where the warm air could rush over him and walked back on the same line he came in on, like he had some inner compass directing him back through the snow. I dropped the coffee right there; you can still see the stain of it on the floor. I slid the boy in, and he told me the whole story. God’s angels aren’t what you seen in Sunday school, feathered wings and white and floating. Some, I guess, are brown and hairy and strong enough to trudge eight miles through the snow to save a boy. Those such things happen here.” I write to discover those things that change us, the little breakthroughs that give birth to redemption at best, and a new way of seeing things at the least. The epiphany comes in the action of writing, muddling through sentences to try and discover an out to a dilemma. Previous STEPHEN WUNDERLI is a freelance writer for The Foundation for a Better Life. He is the recipient of the United Nations Time for Peace Award, the Bridport Prize in Literature and an EMMY. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue The Birdwatcher Stephen Wunderli Lydia turned her head to the window. The sky was pallid. The fire, only a few miles away, had moved on. Angry ember streams pulsing on the face of the Laramie mountains had subsided into slow exhales of gray smoke that shrouded the valley. The wind had roiled across the basin, laying smoke on the town of Casper, an unwelcome night that wouldn’t leave. “It’s the last thing you should do.” “Just to see what’s there if anything. I can’t sit anymore,” Ted said to his wife. “You mean with me.” “Don’t wait up.” The dark skin of Lydia’s Arapahoe body had been sponged quickly for ash and dabbed with iodine across blistered cheeks, the warpaint of the hospital. An oxygen tube fastened beneath her nostrils. She unlaced the leather tie of her ponytail with one hand and hummed hoarsely to herself; dragging her fingers through black hair too stiff for her young age. Out of the other forearm, bandaged tight like a horse’s shinbone, emerged the IV tube – saline for hydration and antibiotics against infection. This was the longest she had stayed in bed since they moved from town to the woods. Ten years of dawn to dusk chores. It’s the last thing you should do . The first words she had spoken since she came out of the burn unit and was propped up in the hospital bed in the hallway because the rooms were for deeper wounds, the kind that left scars like flagellated skin. Her lungs were branded. Her left hand was bandaged from punching through the flaming wall of the woodshed where the dog had somehow got when it ran off in a panic. “It’s my fault,” she had said, coughing, her hand blistered. “The dog wasn’t worth it,” he said back. It had not been a dramatic escape from the inferno a few days earlier. He had chopped a fire line around the house and thrown earth against the timber foundation until it raked down from the slats. But it wasn’t enough. The fire didn’t crawl along the ground, it dropped from the sky, from the deadfall that became airborne with the heat, coals raining down on shake shingles and bare porches. He beat at the flames with wool blankets, shoveled more dirt, but it wasn’t enough. He was the last one to climb in the truck, to cough through the smoke, the engine sputtering for clean air, the old Ford pushing into a traffic jam on the highway where a few firetrucks sprayed down the cars for embers and a water truck wet the shoulder while homes slowly collapsed in flames behind them. “What about James?” “I’ll take him with me. He should see.” “He shouldn’t go with you.” “I’m his father.” Lydia tried to call out to him when he turned, but Ted had already grabbed James by the arm and the two bumped their way through the train of beds parked in the hallway and the press of family beside them and the nurses in blue moving like ticket-takers between stops. “Your mother wants me to see if there is anything left,” he told the boy. James was nine-years old and had just learned to identify quail tracks by their faint scratches in the soft loam and the bowls they dug with their shuddering bodies hoping to draw out bugs. The week before he had crept carefully through the underbrush, uncovering a nest stacked with small eggs under the watch of the mother nearby. “Do you think the quail have got away?” “No. Nothing gets away.” Ted was accustomed to walking uneven ground. Striding across the parking lot made him uneasy, the flatness of it made him mistrust his own footsteps. He guided James to the truck with his thick hand pressing against the back of the boy’s thin shoulder blades. Ted had become more at ease with an axe handle in his hands than the tender arm of a young boy, more at home in the delicate sounds of the woods than the manufactured noises of the Barstow filling station where he grew up, surrounded by asphalt and combustion, the thud of a wrench against his back from his enraged father. Ted could not live with people he mistrusted, and that was most. “The boy doesn’t need fractures to learn lessons,” he told Lydia. “He needs the scuffs of living, not the punishment of some unknown sin.” James looked up at his father but didn’t ask questions. His father was taut as fence wire, his eyes clenched from ten years staring into the wind. “I would never hurt you,” he said to his boy. The boy nodded. The fires had come. It was their season, he expected that much, but the flames had blown past their usual boundaries and come upon the small town like Grendel in the night, torching this home and not that one, this barn but not that shed. Everyone refused to leave. It was home, if it was going to burn, they wanted to stay and fight, do what they could. It was no use; the flames drove them out anyway and clogged the highway with a wave of surrender. Ted had built the home himself, hoisting the beams alone, with a rig of pulleys and hemp rope. He set every post, painted every piece of siding. He would see it catch fire for himself before he finally gave up. Lydia threatened to leave before the fires. “You can have the house,” she’d said. She threw her bag of clothes onto the porch, scattering the quail that had ventured onto the boards where she had spilled cornmeal in her anger. “A boy needs school to learn things. He needs more than scat and velvet antlers to teach him. He needs a few books, Judas Ted! He could use more than your lectures on seed and whorling disease and alkaline soil, and God help us if he finds friends his own age!” The boy was watching the landscape as they moved away from the hospital. “The fire isn’t coming this way. It’s moved on.” “Why did it come after us?” “It’s just how fires are. Unpredictable.” They rolled out of town, crossed the North Platte River and followed a fire road toward the settlement that had become their home away from the sprinkler-piped developments with their food franchises and synthetic stucco. The settlement was a place people could live in solitude with no need for window shades because the space between neighbors was too great to see. And nobody cared about your business unless they had news about a mountain lion or the coming increase in the price of propane. Father and son idled past onlookers in yards set up in lawn chairs like they did on the fourth of July. Damned if anyone of them had ever swung a pick or dug their own well. Ted hated them for being the offspring of ease. He drove defiantly toward the veil of smoke hanging on the settlement. He was stopped on the highway by the fire crew from the next county over. “You can’t go this way.” “Here to run the water truck,” Ted lied, unfolding his volunteer Search and Rescue ID. The man in the clean uniform looked at them both. “Hell of a fire. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.” “I’ve seen worse.” “Not today you won’t. We got a missing smokejumper up there. Wouldn’t be good for the boy if you know what I mean.” “The boy is fine.” “Go back,” the man said. “Wait for the all clear . That’s not an ask, it’s an order.” Ted looked hard at the man. “Well. It’s not you that’s lost everything.” The rear wheels engaged and spun on the shoulder. The nose of the truck dipped down into the ditch, submerged behind a police cruiser and breached the haze beyond and skidded onto the road. “It’s home,” Ted said to James. “Nobody gonna take that away from us. Understand?” James nodded in the passenger seat while he watched the man in the clean uniform fan the dust from his eyes and talk on his radio. They reached the stone bridge that crossed a dry arroyo marking the beginning of the settlement. Everything was charred and still smoldering. This is as far as Lydia had gotten on her first run at leaving. She told him he was stubborn. He told her what’s right is right and everything else is weakness. She wept and stood there alone, eventually walking the gravel road back to the house. “I have nowhere to go,” she told her son. “I need you to love me. I never had a mother to love me. Can you do that for me?” James stared into her eyes. “Are we going?” “I don’t know for sure. I don’t know anything for sure anymore.” James held his mother’s arm and felt the pulse of her body as it held back the currents that wanted to break forth. “I only seen a few boys grow up like this, without schools, in the woods. It didn’t work out for them.” The two sat in the small room with hand stitched quilts draped across the bed posts saying nothing else until Ted stomped up the front porch stairs, kicked the bag she packed across the boards and banged open the front door. He’d been checking coyote traps, something that always satisfied him. “They just feed off the work of others,” he taught his son. “They need to be killed.” He dropped a bent trap on the floor and the chain jangled like shackles. He walked into the small bedroom and stared at the two. “My son needed me,” Lydia said. “He should have come with me to see why the traps were empty.” “The two of us should have left.” Ted took the boy by the arm and told him to go find the dog that had gone off again, rooting in the undergrowth for rodent carcasses. “It’s a waste of time, all these fights,” Ted said. “Up here is harsh enough,” Lydia said. “You don’t have to be harsh with me. I just see his education different than you.” “What else should the boy learn?” “He could learn to talk to other kids his age. It would do him good.” Ted walked out of the room and picked up the trap and made his way to the workshop. The air burned at Ted’s eyes. Only the foundation of the first house remained, blackened bricks and chimney that had fallen over and lay like a shipwreck in the living room. He idled the truck forward across the baked road. James was pale and wide-eyed and moved his head slowly, fixing on porches he used to cross on his honey route that were collapsed and yawing. “A hell of a fire,” the father said. The boy could say nothing. Ashes were making their way into the cab of the truck and swirling like gnats. He fanned them away from his face. Ted wiped the condensation off the inside of the windshield so he could see more clearly. “Love is the only thing that matters,” she had said to her son. “But it works both ways or it doesn’t work at all, so you have to keep looking.” Ted overheard this in the early night while she was sitting on the edge of the boy’s bed, the edge of leaving. He spent the night on the porch with his head on the bag, forming sentences that would bring it all back, like circling around the trap line and ending up home again. The fires were a safe distance then. He could start again. He could say things his own father had never said. But the winds changed and tore at his face. The red lights arrived soon after and the man in the uniform asked him if the bag was the only thing he was taking and if there was anyone else in the house. “I’m not leaving,” he’d said back, not mentioning that the bag was Lydia’s, not his. “It’s the smoke that will kill you,” the man said. “No one is leaving!” Ted yelled at the man. The brakes complained to a stop in front of their house. The timber frame had held, but nothing else. Walls and roof were gone. The sofa skeleton was all that remained inside. Everything else was a pile of smoldering firewood. “Let’s have a look,” he said to the boy, but James was slow to exit. He tested the ground with his boots as if they would explode into flames. The stone steps were still standing. The two kicked up ashen dust as they walked but dared not enter. James edged carefully along the side of the house where the quail had once made their run. Ted squatted on his haunches and surveyed the remains, trying to read the entrails of a sacrificed animal for some kind of sign, an omen that would guide the next thing he should do. “Everything panics in a fire,” Ted taught his son. “Run straight into the flames.” “Look,” the boy said. “Someone is there.” He was pointing to a hundred-foot lodge pole pine undressed by the fire and soot black. It was out seventy yards or so. Up high there was a body knocking against the trunk, stiff and lifeless, unveiled by the parting of smoke. A black shroud flapped behind it. The figure was also blackened and a tangle of rope around the neck and right arm strung around a branch above caused the head to cock to the right. The legs hung freely, swaying like a wind chime. “Who is it?” The boy asked. The father stood and looked. “A birdwatcher,” he answered. “Just a birdwatcher.” “Will he come down?” “Maybe. It’s been a hell of a fire.” “And he just watches?” “It’s all he can do. Watch. And wait for the birds to return.” "The Birdwatcher" was originally published in miracle monocle . Often it is the simple lives that have the most meaning, providing fertile ground for raw feelings to run their course. And alas, breakthroughs sometimes come too late. Previous STEPHEN WUNDERLI is a freelance writer for The Foundation for a Better Life. He is the recipient of the United Nations Time for Peace Award, the Bridport Prize in Literature and an EMMY. Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Imagined Scenes Mary Behan Ever since she read about it, riding the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok had been on Jennifer Fowler’s bucket list. She was fascinated by train travel, and no other rail journey promised such a bigger-than-life experience, chugging across that vast expanse of Asia, where a single color dominated the world map. She imagined a few days in Moscow to buy necessities for the ten-day trip, a final check of her paperwork, and then that electric moment as the train moved slowly out of the station, gaining speed through endless grey suburbs, and finally bursting free into a landscape that stretched for thousands of miles to the Sea of Japan. In her mind’s eye each scene along the way had its own vivid color, smell, and sound. Endless forests and snow-covered steppes punctuated by remote train stations; the curious faces of Russian farmers pausing to stare at the speeding behemoth; the lurching carriage with a samovar steaming quietly in the corner; the smell of sweat and damp wool and urine and garlicky sausages. Excuses came and went. At first it was money—never enough—but as her career progressed, time became the limiting resource. Her Chicago law office was small, and if she took more than two weeks of vacation, someone else would have to attend to her clients. Colleagues were always willing to pick up the slack for a wedding or an illness, but for anything else, they tended to be less generous. And so the Great Railway Bazaar scenes faded gradually as the years went by. This had been a particularly challenging winter for Jennifer. One of the attorneys in her office had slipped on the icy sidewalk early in December and broken both wrists, leaving her unable to work. Much of her caseload had fallen to Jennifer, who had little choice but to work fourteen-hour days, dragging herself home each evening through the grinding cold of a Chicago winter. By the time her colleague returned to the office in mid-February, Jennifer longed for a break from the relentless routine. That afternoon, as her client’s voice continued to drone on in the telephone receiver, she allowed her mind to drift. This was the third phone call with this man in as many days. He was a needy man, she thought; someone who liked the sound of his own voice and didn’t seem to care that every minute of her time came with a price. Absentmindedly, she scrolled through her e-mails. Pausing as one caught her eye, she double-clicked on the link that opened to a brochure for a conference in New Orleans the following month. The topic was only tangentially related to her area of expertise, but it piqued her interest. Her gaze drifted towards the window again. Yesterday’s snow was already melting, merging with the gray of the sidewalks. In the distance the L-train wound its way between buildings, looking for all the world like a model railroad. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of those two images in her brain, but by the end of the phone call she had made a decision. She would go to the conference in New Orleans—by train. * * * The tiny sleeper compartment would have been cramped with two people, but as she was travelling alone, it felt spacious. Two comfortable seats faced each other in front of a large picture window, beneath which hung a folding table. The porter who showed her to her roomette had stowed her suitcase deftly in a corner of the compartment, assuring her that he would take it out later when he prepared the cabin for the night. “My name is Joseph, Ma’am. If there’s anything you need, just let me know. You can press that buzzer or just walk towards the back of the train. You’ll find me for sure.” His broad, toothy smile left her feeling safe. Remembering those erstwhile Trans-Siberian dreams, she had brought a bottle of wine, and as soon as Joseph closed the compartment door, she opened it and poured herself a generous glass. The train lurched briefly, prompting her to grab both glass and bottle, but then it relapsed into a steady movement as it trundled out of Union Station into the Chicago suburbs. A tiny spark of excitement rippled through her. Her desk was clear for the next few days and nobody expected to hear from her. She was free. It was the absence of movement that woke her in the middle of the night. Drawing aside the curtain, harsh lights illuminated a railway yard, and for a moment she wondered whether something had happened. A derailment on the tracks ahead perhaps, or something more ominous? The app on her smartphone showed the train in Memphis, Tennessee, close to the Mississippi River. She listened for any sounds of alarm but the corridor was silent, so she went back to sleep, sliding down between crisp, white sheets and pulling the woolen blanket up to her chin. The next time she woke it was daylight and the view outside had changed dramatically. This was the hidden America—hamlets where trains no longer stopped, settlements that shouted poverty and abandonment. The train moved slowly through this blighted landscape, allowing her to imagine how her life might have been had she grown up here. A dilapidated shack, its wide porch cluttered with sagging chairs, a washing machine, and a stack of empty beer crates was a chastening reminder that not everyone had a chance to live the American Dream. Joseph helped her with her suitcase as she alighted from the train at the Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans. She thanked him sincerely, feeling a momentary pang of apprehension at the prospect of leaving his care. She reminded herself that she wasn’t stepping off into a remote Russian city but, rather, a familiar American one. She was a successful lawyer in her mid-thirties, about to attend a conference where she would be respected, if not admired. She straightened her shoulders and walked out of the station into the mid-afternoon sunshine. The unaccustomed feeling of warm air on her skin made her smile. She decided to walk the eight blocks to the boutique hotel in the Warehouse District where she had made a reservation. Signs of post-Katrina recovery were everywhere, although little seemed to have been achieved in the three years since the hurricane. By comparison with Chicago the city felt hostile, and she walked briskly, her roller bag rattling on the uneven pavement. That evening she had an early meal at one of the more exclusive restaurants in the city. It was the sort of place that normally required a reservation, but by going early she hoped they would seat her. She dressed carefully for the occasion, and as she expected, the maître d’hôtel scrutinized her before seating her in a quiet corner of his dining room. Leaving a little over an hour later, she paused at a street corner to watch a scene playing out that could easily have been in a Hollywood movie. Two police cruisers had pulled up behind a battered-looking sedan, their lights flashing. The occupants of the car—two young black men—got out slowly and stood beside their car, waiting. Four white police officers emerged from the cruisers, their bulky gear making the process slow and awkward. One of them approached the two men; the other three stood slightly at a distance, their hands on their guns. The tension was palpable. Jennifer watched in fascination, waiting for someone to make a move—a wrong move. She didn’t notice the woman behind her and was startled when a voice spoke quietly. “Perhaps we should watch from a little farther away. It might be safer. I think we’re in the line of fire here.” Jennifer turned to see a tall, elegantly-dressed woman around her own age with vivid blue eyes and short blond hair parted to the side and slicked down, giving her a vaguely masculine appearance. She was very beautiful. “Maybe you’re right,” Jennifer responded, giving the woman a warm smile. It was true. A stray bullet could easily hit either of them or any of the bystanders who had also stopped. The woman touched her arm gently and led her across the street to a safer vantage point. For the next fifteen minutes they watched the scene play out, exchanging comments as to what might be going on and speculating as to how it might resolve. Suddenly, as if on cue, all six men got into their cars and drove away, the cruisers turning left and the sedan continuing on straight past the two women. The crowd of onlookers began to disperse, but the two women lingered and continued their conversation, which by now had progressed to the rehabilitation efforts that were being undertaken in the Warehouse District. Jennifer was about to say goodbye when the woman said, “I have an apartment just around the corner. Would you like to come up for a glass of wine? We have a lovely rooftop garden; you can see the boats on the river.” She tilted her head to one side and looked inquiringly at Jennifer, the side of her mouth turning up slightly with the hint of a smile. There was an awkward pause. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself earlier. Veva Kiuru.” She extended her hand and Jennifer shook it, offering her own name in exchange. The name sounds vaguely Polish, Jennifer thought, yet this woman didn’t remind her of any of the Poles she knew in Chicago. Normally she would have refused an invitation like this, claiming an early morning meeting or some such excuse. But to her surprise, she found herself agreeing. Something about Veva intrigued her, and the prospect of doing something totally out of character was exciting. Besides, she reasoned, it was still relatively early in the evening and while her hotel room was charming, it offered little besides a large TV. Five minutes later they arrived at a four-story red brick building that, from its outward appearance, had once been a warehouse. “My husband bought the apartment soon after Katrina,” Veva said as she punched in a code on the panel beside a pair of heavy, wooden doors. “Nobody wanted to come downtown in those days, so it was a bargain. We live across the lake—Lake Pontchartrain—but this place is convenient when we go to concerts.” Any sense that the building had once been a factory disappeared as the doors swung open and automatically closed behind them. After the busy street noise, the silence was striking. A faint perfume of some sweet-smelling flower, the name of which escaped Jennifer, hung in the air. The spacious, dimly-lit foyer ended at a marble staircase that angled upwards into shadow. “You don’t mind if we take the stairs, do you?” Veva asked. “There’s an elevator but I prefer the exercise.” The apartment was on the top floor of the building and consisted of a spacious, high-ceilinged loft with a row of tall windows that spanned the whole length of one wall. Facing the windows was a galley kitchen, separated from the room by an island at which stood two high stools. A hallway led off the room, presumably to the bedroom and bathroom, Jennifer thought. Decorated in a minimalist style, the floors were of recycled lumber sanded to reveal the dark wood grain. An L-shaped sofa dominated the center of the room, strewn with cushions in muted colors. In the angle of the sofa stood a large glass coffee table, empty except for a pair of silver and bronze stirrups with an intricate Arabic design carved into their sides. Beside them lay a shield and sword, both equally stunning. An image of Genghis Khan flashed into Jennifer’s mind, seated astride his horse and looking fierce and magnificent. As she followed Veva towards the kitchen, she ran her fingers delicately over a slab of cream-colored wood supported by a complex arrangement of stainless-steel cables and posts that looked to be a writing desk of sorts. It felt like silk, the surface hardly registering on her fingertips. Pausing, she stared at the object on the desk, which she recognized as a Japanese suzuri, the ink stone nestled into an intricately carved dragon whose eyes were fixed upon a golden egg. Beside the suzuri lay a calligraphy brush. She looked over at Veva, who was watching her. “It’s very beautiful,” Jennifer said, gesturing towards the room. “I like beautiful things,” came the response. Jennifer watched as Veva reached upward to slide two wine glasses from the rack hanging above the island. The movement was fluid and practiced and despite her own petite frame, she felt awkward by comparison. “Your name is very unusual. Is it Polish?” Jennifer asked. “Finnish.” “What do you do…for work I mean?” “I work for the government,” came the reply, but something in Veva’s tone seemed to discourage further inquiry. “And you?” “I’m a lawyer. We do mostly health care stuff…representing hospitals and clinics. The laws around health care are changing all the time.” Veva nodded. “You drink white?” she asked, opening the refrigerator. “I have red if you prefer.” “White would be lovely.” She took out a bottle of wine, glanced at it, and uncorked it with practiced efficiency. “It’s a New Zealand wine and a good one. I promise.” Her blue eyes lingered on Jennifer for an extra few seconds. Then, with glasses and bottle in hand, she walked towards the hall. “Follow me,” she said without looking back and disappeared into a small passageway from which a spiral staircase led upward. The rooftop garden was a surprise. Each of the apartments in the building had its own private space, separated from neighbors by tall, wicker partitions. On opposite sides of Veva’s garden, a steel and glass wall allowed for an uninterrupted view of the New Orleans skyline. A trellis festooned with lush greenery covered much of the tiny space, shading a table and two chairs. Veva poured a generous measure into the glasses and offered one to Jennifer. She raised her own glass. “To safety,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up slightly. For the next two hours they talked. Veva was a good listener, prompting the conversation with thoughtful questions, but offering little information about herself. Something about the rooftop—a sense of removal from the world—allowed Jennifer to open up in ways she never had before. Neither confessional nor therapy session, it felt more like a conversation with her inner self. She could hear the disappointment in her own voice as she talked about her divorce seven years earlier and the few men she had dated since. All the while Veva’s intense blue eyes held her attention, and for some reason she couldn’t explain, she found herself yearning to elicit that unique smile. The temperature had dropped slightly and the wine bottle was empty. Veva stood up, stretched her arms above her head, and arched her back. She walked to the rail and looked towards the river. Silhouetted against the darkening skyline, Jennifer thought she looked magnificent, like a character out of an Avengers movie—feline, predatory, powerful. “Come join me,” Veva said, turning around to look at Jennifer. Although it was said softly, it was a command not a request. Standing side by side at the railing they stared into the distance, neither speaking. Then Veva turned towards her and gently stroked her face. The caress carried a question and at the same time an expectation. Jennifer held her breath, not certain whether she wanted the scene to progress. But her body had already decided. A warm ache made its way through her, bringing a flush to her face. Then Veva kissed her. Her tongue explored Jennifer’s mouth, withdrawing to linger over her lips, then plunging greedily again and again. Jennifer could taste the wine on Veva’s breath. She closed her eyes, and in her mind saw the scene unfolding in slow motion, like a drop of water creating gently expanding waves. She gasped as every cell in her body ached for this sublime feeling to go on forever. Veva’s mouth was still on hers, her arm around her neck, holding her in a tight embrace. Then she pulled away, took Jennifer’s hand in hers, and led her towards the stairs. At the bottom of the spiral staircase, Veva turned to her. She was smiling. “Let me blindfold you.” Her eyes were bright, her mouth slightly open as if expecting Jennifer to refuse. But there was no protest. She slid the silk scarf from around her neck and held it out in her two hands, like an offering. Jennifer took a deep breath and accepted, raising the scarf towards her face. Veva helped her tie the knot and whispered in her ear, “Trust me.” Jennifer could feel the warm breath followed by the tip of a tongue deftly probing her ear. A thrill of pleasure erupted in her core. There was a gentle pressure on her back pushing her forward, and instinctively she held her hands out in front of her. A finger caressed her outstretched palm, threading its way to her wrist and closing around it like a manacle. She felt a slight pull and allowed herself to be drawn into the bedroom. Like Alice falling down a rabbit hole she had no sense of what might happen next, but she was willing to give herself up entirely to whatever might unfold. * * * She knew Veva was gone as soon as she woke the following morning. It wasn’t just the absence of sound; it was as if someone had sucked all the life out of the apartment. For a few minutes Jennifer lay there thinking about the previous evening. Her hand moved toward her center, which was still wet and slightly bruised. She rolled over on her belly, inhaling Veva’s scent from the smooth sheet. Every fiber of her body craved the exquisite pleasure she had experienced. This is what jonesing for drugs must be like, she thought—a gnawing pain that begged to be satisfied. But there would be no antidote to ease her back into her previous life. She pushed the thought aside and got out of bed. In the living room, propped up against a tall glass of water, was a card-sized piece of cream-colored paper. The letter ‘V’ had been inscribed on it with a perfect brush stroke of black ink. She turned the card over but it was blank. Jennifer made a final tour of the apartment, trying to sear every detail of the space into her mind. She reached out to touch the suzuri, tracing the dragon from tail to head, her fingers lingering on the golden egg. The calligraphy brush lay beside it, still slightly damp. She took the card and slid it carefully into her purse. Then, with a feeling of immense loss, she left, closing the door decisively behind her. The next day was filled with people and presentations, welcome distractions that served to keep a maelstrom of conflicting thoughts at bay. Up to now, all of her sexual encounters had been heterosexual, and as Jennifer searched through scenes from her past, nowhere had she ever felt attracted to a woman. The evening with Veva had been more pleasurable than anything she had ever experienced. Although sex with her husband was satisfying, it had been unimaginative. None of the men she had slept with since her divorce had made her feel the way she had with Veva, and she wondered if it would change her life in any way. But this was something she didn’t want to dwell on, at least not yet. On the second evening of the conference, Jennifer arranged to have dinner with a friend from her law school days who was also attending the meeting. They hadn’t seen each other since before her divorce and spent an enjoyable couple of hours catching up. After dinner, he offered to walk her back to her hotel and she agreed, steering him on a circuitous route through the Warehouse District with the excuse of showing him the architecture. As they walked past Veva’s apartment building, Jennifer stole a glance upward, but the windows were unlit. On the final evening there was a cocktail party for the two hundred attendees in the ballroom of the conference hotel. Waiters carrying trays of canapés and glasses of wine wove their way expertly among the crowd. Jennifer stood at a tall bar table with a group of colleagues, not quite engaged with their conversation. Looking around the room at some of the now-familiar faces, her heart missed a beat. Staring at her from across the ballroom was Veva, a tiny smile lurking in the corner of her mouth. Their eyes locked for several seconds until the crowd closed in and Jennifer lost sight of her. She abruptly excused herself and rushed to the spot where she had last seen Veva, but she had disappeared. The following morning Jennifer took an early flight back to Chicago and by mid-afternoon was seated at her desk. Looking out her office window later that afternoon as the light was beginning to fade, she watched as the L-train threaded its way through the commercial buildings. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to remember, and as the scenes unfurled like flowers, a world of possibilities began to emerge. "Imagined Scenes" was previously published as "Scenes in a Movie" in my collection of short stories, Kernels . In this story, the breakthrough is an awakening as a young lawyer from Chicago has her first non-binary sexual experience with a woman she meets in New Orleans. Previous MARY BEHAN was formerly a professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now writes fiction, memoir, and short stories. Her books, published by Laurence Gate Press, include Abbey Girls , a memoir she wrote with her sister, Valerie Behan, about their childhood in Ireland; A Measured Thread set in Wisconsin and Ireland, which was named a Top 100 Indie Book, a finalist in the Page Turner Awards, and an eLit medal winner; Kernels , a collection of short stories; and Finding Isobel , a companion to her first novel, was published in 2024 and awarded a gold medal for best adult fiction e-book by the Independent Publishers (IPPI), a silver medal in women’s fiction from Readers Favorite, and Outstanding Literary Fiction Winner in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. mvbehan.com Next

< Back to Breakthroughs Issue Stargazing Mary Behan “I’m going outside to look at the stars. Do you want to come? It’s a perfect night for it; it’s still warm and there’s no moon.” Marilyn tried to inject as much enthusiasm into her request as possible, knowing that the invitation to her husband to walk uphill to the meadow behind their house was probably not going to be accepted. Each evening after dinner when he had cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, Kenny settled into his upholstered recliner with a sigh of pleasure and switched on the television. Within a few minutes, the authoritative voice of a male presenter describing a car restoration project would drift into her “lair,” as she liked to call her sewing room. Years earlier when she had been bitten by the quilting bug, Kenny had added a room to their bungalow. It was a bright, sunny space from which she could just see the hilltop meadow, the colors of which, as they changed with the season, gave inspiration to her quilting designs. This room was where she spent most of her evenings, and much of her days since retiring from her job at the local bank. “I’ll pass this time, if you don’t mind,” Kenny said. “There’s a program I’d like to finish watching. Remember, I told you about my ’64 Corvette? The one this guy is working on looks exactly like mine. Same color too.” His audible sigh was followed by, “Boy, I should never have sold it.” Passing through the living room, Marilyn gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek before pulling on a fleece jacket and going outside. Theirs was a happy marriage of nearly forty years. Each of them had been married previously, but as neither had brought children to their union, their love was focused on each other. Kenny gave her hand a gentle squeeze, his fingers lingering for a moment before releasing her. “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” she said, but doubted her comment was heard over the sound of the television. Outside, the air had a moist, nutty smell – a harbinger of the approaching Winter. The silhouette of a massive maple tree guided her towards the path. Passing by, she noted that the leaves were devoid of color whereas earlier in the day she had been stunned by their range of hues, from pale yellow to vibrant red. That morning she had watched, enthralled, as dozens of leaves detached themselves in a spontaneous gesture of exhaustion, and drifted to the ground in a blur of color. All through the day she had mused over how she might translate this visual miracle onto a canvas of cloth. The quilt would feature a pile of colorful newly fallen leaves, together with the figure of a child, their arms outstretched in a moment of joyful abandonment. It was an easy climb to the meadow. Cresting the hill, she went a little farther so as to block out any stray light from the house. Here there was a natural dip, deep enough to be sheltered from any breeze, yet shallow enough to see the full panorama of sky. She lay down on the cool ground and deliberately closed her eyes. From previous experience, she knew this would hasten her dark adaptation, and maximize the experience when she opened her eyes and looked up into the sky. It was easy to keep count of the seconds and minutes. For some unexplained reason she was able to hear her heartbeat in her right ear — a steady sixty-four beats per minute. The tinnitus had developed after a routine ear cleaning, but her doctor reassured her it was nothing to worry about and that it would likely go away. But it hadn’t gone away. During the day she could ignore it for the most part, and at night had taken to sleeping on her right side to muffle the sound. Now as she listened, the steady pulsatile thrum dominated the night sounds — the hoot of an owl, a coyote’s howl, some small creature rustling in the grass, the plaintive wail of a train. One hundred beats later, she opened her eyes to view her personal planetarium. A tiny gasp escaped her as she tried to absorb the immensity of the sky. Her eyes first sought out familiar constellations, starting with the Big Dipper and from there following a line to the North Star. Orion with its distinctive belt was just beginning to appear over the edge of her horizon. She recognized Cygnus to the east, a grouping that often eluded her, but this evening did indeed look like a swan. High above, the irregular “W” shape of Cassiopeia came into focus. But it was the Milky Way that held her gaze, sweeping across the arc of the night sky from north to south. It was easy to understand why Native Americans from Chile to Alaska had thought of the Milky Way as a pathway for departed spirits, connecting the earth with the otherworld. Staring at it now, it seemed to engulf her, sucking her into its swirling interior. In the stillness, she listened but could no longer hear the beating of her heart. * * * It takes some time to get used to being dead. For a start, the whole idea of time is different. It’s not linear like in life, but seems to be interrupted, as if you were reading a book and skipped a chapter or two, leaving you struggling to reconnect with the story. The past is irregular too, like watching tiny snippets of black and white movies punctuated by blank sections. There’s no future, or at least I don’t recognize it. Sometimes I feel as if I have been dropped magically into an ongoing stage play, where none of the actors notice my presence. They just continue with their lines, moving through me without missing a beat, and yet I am there on stage with them. I can remember that final evening on top of the hill behind our house, lying on the ground looking up at the Milky Way. I came back to the house and went into the kitchen where a light was still on; the rest of the house was in darkness. Things seemed a little out of place. A book I had left on the counter, planning to return it to the library the following morning was gone, but I guessed Kenny had put it in the car so I wouldn’t forget it. A couple of other things had been moved. But the biggest change was that he had replaced the toaster on the countertop by the sink with a brand-new air-fryer oven. He had talked about getting one for me at Christmas, so this was a lovely early present. In our bedroom I could make out his bulky form under the comforter, but resisted the urge to wake him and tell him how pleased I was. Instead, I lay down on the sofa. I became aware of two voices coming from the direction of the kitchen, neither of which I recognized. When I looked, a young couple was sitting at the table, the remains of a meal around them. He was tall and dark-skinned, and had a pronounced Indian accent. She was short and pretty, her voice carrying the rounded consonants and dragged-out vowels of the Midwest. “Who are you?”, I asked, “and where’s Kenny?” I was irritated by their intrusion and annoyed with Kenny for not letting me know we were going to have guests. They ignored me and continued talking. I walked to the table and stood awkwardly between them, looking from one to the other. Again I asked the question, this time more forcefully. Still they didn’t make any effort to respond, so I grabbed the man’s arm and shook it. “Look here. I’m talking to you. How dare you…” It was then I realized that I couldn’t feel his arm, that my hand made no impression on the sleeve of his shirt. I reached out with my other hand, this time tentatively, and tried to pick up the knife that lay beside his plate. Nothing. I returned to the living room and looked around more carefully. For a moment I thought I had developed cataracts. The room had a washed-out appearance, like you might see in an old photograph — not quite black and white, but what little color there once was had faded. The furniture had been rearranged to face a huge flat screen TV, something Kenny and I had sworn we would never buy. I continued down the corridor to my sewing room. On the large work table where my sewing machine sat, all traces of quilt-making were gone, replaced by a laptop computer and neat stacks of papers and journals. I could still hear their voices in the kitchen as I went through every room in our house, searching for signs of Kenny or me. There were some — pieces of furniture mostly — but any sense that we had lived in this house for almost forty years together was gone. I know it sounds ridiculous, but when I couldn’t find our electric toothbrushes in the bathroom, I glanced in the mirror. It was only then I finally understood: I had died that night under the stars. But why had I come back to my house as a ghost? I asked that question again and again over the next several months. Even though time had little meaning, I knew that months were passing because I could see Mary Anne’s belly getting bigger. The couple now living in our house were Mary Anne and Arjun and she was pregnant with their first child. From conversations I overheard, I gathered they had met while they were at university. Now they were working at two different Biotech companies in the nearby city. It wasn’t as if I deliberately eavesdropped. It was just that when they were in the house, I was aware of them and heard everything they said. It struck me as odd that I could both hear and see, yet I had no ability to feel anything or move an object. Smell and taste were also absent. In life that would have been a hardship, but now I hardly noticed. It was the absence of touch that affected me the most. Time and time again I would reach out to stroke a piece of fabric or put my hand over the stovetop and try to capture its heat . The absence of any sensation was a cruel reminder of my new state . I could still watch clouds drifting across the sky, see pine branches trembling in the wind, or look at birds alighting on the feeder — all things I used to enjoy when I was alive but now gave me little pleasure. What did give me pleasure was hearing Kenny’s name or mine. Little by little I pieced together what happened to me that night. I had a cerebral aneurism that burst, ending my life instantaneously. Even if Kenny had found me, it wouldn’t have made any difference. As it was, he slept soundly through the night, only realizing that I wasn’t beside him in bed when he woke the following morning. He blamed himself for not going with me, choosing instead to watch that television program. But the aneurism could just as easily have burst when I was with him, perhaps when I was driving which would have ended both our lives. I think he might have preferred that outcome, for, according to Mary Anne and Arjun, he was depressed and had lost all interest in life. I might not have been able to feel, in the sense of feeling an object, but even as a ghost I could still feel . Just as with the faded images and scenes, my emotions were also diminished; but they were still there. I still felt love for Kenny, and I missed him deeply — the pleasurable anticipation of seeing him when I walked into the room, a smile lighting up his face when he saw me. I missed basking in his loving gaze, touching his hand, kissing his cheek, being hugged by him. * * * Mary Anne looked up from her computer and stared out the window of her home office. The maple tree that dominated their backyard was at the peak of its Fall colors, she guessed, noticing a few leaves drifting gently to the ground. She decided she would ask Arjun to hang a swing from one of its thick lower branches next year; that is, if they were still living here. For several weeks now, they had been negotiating with Kenny to buy the property. Meanwhile, his nephew had advised him against a direct sale, pointing out that he could get far more money if he listed the house with a realtor. As renters, they would have to leave once a sale was finalized. In her mind’s eye, Mary Anne could see herself swinging back and forth lazily, surrounded by color, while her son played in the circle of leaves beneath the tree. Lost in this vision, she didn’t hear the car on the driveway and was startled when Arjun burst into the room. “He’s going to sell the place to us!” Arjun said, stooping to wrap his arms around his wife. “We don’t have to move.” The relief in his voice was palpable. She looked up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “At the price we offered?” “Yeah.” Arjun nodded vigorously. “After all, it’s not as if we’re asking him to fix any of the things the building inspector came up with. Still, I was afraid he might change his mind at the last minute. His nephew has been talking to him again.” “It’s a fair price, and I think he likes the idea of us living here, especially with the baby coming.” Mary Anne moved Arjun’s hand to her belly. “Can you feel him kicking?” Arjun kissed his wife on the lips. “I am the luckiest man alive.” “You are indeed,” she replied, with a laugh. “Actually, we both are. And we’ll never be able to thank your parents enough. I know they have lots of money, but still…” Arjun kissed her again. “They love you, and now that they’re going to have a grandson, they love you even more. Besides, it’s now that we need their money, not in fifty years’ time.” Groaning slightly, Mary Anne got up from the chair. “Tell me about the visit with Kenny. I feel badly not going with you, but the place depresses me. I’m certain the baby feels it too.” She stroked her belly protectively. “It’s alright. I don’t mind going there. I know in the beginning I had an ulterior motive, but over the past few months I’ve come to enjoy our chats. Kenny is an interesting old guy with lots of great stories. Today when I got there, everybody was in the day room, so I asked if I could take him to the conservatory — that glassed-in area off the dining room. It was a little chilly, but at least we had some privacy. We had a good conversation and in the end we shook hands on the deal. He’ll call his lawyer tomorrow and get things rolling. He asked how you were, by the way. I think he likes the idea of a new baby in the house. He and Marilyn never had children; I think his nephew is the only relative he has.” “Did you tell him he can come and visit any time he wants.” “I did of course. But to be honest, he’s so weak, I doubt if he’ll be around much longer. All he talks about now is that he’ll be with Marilyn soon.” “That’s so sad.” Mary Anne made a wry face. Arjun shrugged. “He believes it. I suppose that’s all that really matters.” * * * The thought of my husband spending his final months in a nursing home surrounded by strangers made me sad. I wondered what would happen to him when he died. How would he find me? Up to now I had never encountered another spirit, neither in the house nor in the surrounding farmlands. There was nothing more to learn indoors, so I began to roam the woods and fields around the house, often at night when the absence of light made little difference to my wandering. One night I made my way to the hilltop pasture and the spot where I had died. I lay down in the grass and looked up into the vastness of the universe. The Milky Way was shimmering above me, and as I stared at it, the banner of stars seemed to descend. I raised my hand with fingers outstretched as if to touch one end of this band of light. For a moment I wasn’t sure, but then I felt something. I felt something. Fingers brushed against my hand, then entwined themselves in mine. I brought Kenny’s hand to my lips and kissed it. In this story, the breakthrough is from life to death. An elderly woman dies, and returns to her home as a ghost. She searches for her husband, but new owners have moved in. Her search is eventually rewarded, and the couple is reunited. Previous MARY BEHAN was formerly a professor of neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now writes fiction, memoir, and short stories. Her books, published by Laurence Gate Press, include Abbey Girls , a memoir she wrote with her sister, Valerie Behan, about their childhood in Ireland; A Measured Thread set in Wisconsin and Ireland, which was named a Top 100 Indie Book, a finalist in the Page Turner Awards, and an eLit medal winner; Kernels , a collection of short stories; and Finding Isobel , a companion to her first novel, was published in 2024 and awarded a gold medal for best adult fiction e-book by the Independent Publishers (IPPI), a silver medal in women’s fiction from Readers Favorite, and Outstanding Literary Fiction Winner in the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Awards. mvbehan.com Next