100 Stories for Haiti
An anthology
Published by Bridge House at Smashwords
Proceeds from the sale of this book go to helping the victims of the Haiti earthquake.
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100 Stories for Haiti
Copyright 2010 Bridge House
All rights reserved.
No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright owner.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Records of this Publication is available from the British Library
Softcover: ISBN 978-1-907335-03-7
eBook: ISBN 978-1-907335-05-1
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Dedication
I started this book alone. Worried, nervous, and quite frankly, scared out of my wits that the idea would fail. The people listed on the following page pitched in without a thought to themselves. This book is dedicated to them, to the hundreds of writers who sent their stories, and to all those who helped make it happen. And if you’re reading these words, if you bought a copy of this book, it is also dedicated to you.
Greg McQueen, founder, The 100 Stories for Haiti Book Project.
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Editors
Viccy Adams, Elizabeth Cake, Tony Cook, Tammi Dallaston, Nick Daws, Jane Dixon-Smith, Mark Gallacher, Danny Gillan, Elaine Gowran, Dayna Hester, Jayne Howarth, Louise Jordan, Claudine Lazar, Katherine Lubar, Lorraine Mace, Naomi Mackay, Hannah Moss, Anne KG Murphy, David Robinson, James Skinner, Caroline Sutton, Marie Teather, Maureen Vincent-Northam.
Special Thanks
Amy Burns, Mark Coker, Jo Chipchase, Tony Cook, Dorothy Distefano, Nick Harkaway, Sarah Lewis-Hammond, Mai McQueen, and the Bridge House publishing team: Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, Gill James, Martin James, Nicola Rouch, Ollie Wright
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Contents
Introduction
All-Or-Nothing Day
About Time
Amplified Distance
And the First Note Sang
Anna and Nineteen
Apple Pie and Sunshine
The Archaeologist
Attachments
Authority
The Baby
Back to the Land
The Beautiful Game
Betsy Fudge & the Big Silence
Birds of a Feather
Blow by Blow
Call Centre
Channelling Blues
Chatting in the Closet
The Cloud Dragon
Clubs and Societies
Coming, Ready or Not
Contact
Dinner for Two
Dragons
Emergency Response
Emily’s Stone
The Encounter
Enohn Jarrow, a Warning
Escape from Crete
Eve
Fleeting Thoughts
Folding Paper
The Forgetting
The Garden
Going, Going … Still Going
Home
Hope in a Strange Corner
Impact
Indian Dance
An Island’s Story
Jacob’s Ladder
Jeremy’s New Pet
Journey of Hope
Juno Out of Yellow
Justice for Cody
The Kids Are All Right
Larger Than Life
The Last Boy on Earth
The Last Bus to Montreal
One Morning
The Law of Attraction
The Layman’s Solution to the Causal vs. Final Conundrum Or How Two Men Became Insomniac and One Man Slept
A Lesson in Magic
Life Behind a Motorway Billboard Hoarding
Lily’s Room
Lola Loves Loving
Marco’s Ice Cream
Messenger
A Miracle Cure
Mother’s Theorem
Mr Trick Speaks
Mugs
Named After
Naming Finbar
Necklace
The Painting
The Path of the Faerie King
Patio Lights
Père Noël Pops the Question
Potifar Jones’ Experiment with Time and Brains Beer
Real Men
Reshaping the Past
The Ring of Truth
Second Chances
Seedlings
Serenity Rules Okay!
The Show
Sick Joke
Sixty Years Together
Skin Shed like Falling Stars
Snapdragons
Something Different
Sprawl
Stay
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Surf’s Up
This is What You Must Do
Three Drink Minimum
Three Questions
Tom Jones Knew My Mother
Turning Things Around
Updating Dora
Voice in the Night
Waiting for Sarah
The Walk of Life
Walking for Water
The Wonderful Thread
Wrong Direction
Your Voice
Haiti Before the Earthquake
Afterword – The 100 Stories for Haiti Book Project
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Introduction
By Nick Harkaway
If you didn’t actually look at the images, it was because you knew what you’d see: a pall of smoke or dust; hands under bricks; smudged, stunned faces in flapping hospital tents; overloaded doctors from a hundred countries; and wailing, desperate people clawing at the camera lens or running after a truck they hoped might have food on it.
We all knew what the Haiti Earthquake was as soon as we heard it had happened. And we knew, too, that at some point there would be a story about how the money we put into those tins on shop counters wasn’t making it to the front line or wasn’t being spent right, and we gave anyway because you’d have to be an ogre not to hope.
I have friends in Haiti. Every time my email chimed I thought I’d be getting one of those ghastly, toneless letters saying: ‘I have to tell you that so-and-so did not survive.’ By chance, they’re all okay, at least so far. I say ‘so far’ because, although the earth is still again, the crisis continues, as it will for months and – if we stop paying attention – for years.
This, then, is the moment when we demonstrate that we are actually the people we want to be: the lucky, wealthy nations with skills and power and heart. This is when we try to see past the accusations of one doctor that too much time was spent looking for survivors and too little on saving those already found. This is where we acknowledge the relief effort is not perfect but nonetheless we have a job to do.
This is the moment when we keep giving.
Of course, while giving is, according to a recent scientific study, more pleasurable and healthy than receiving, it can become a bit burdensome after a while – especially if you can’t see the real time effects of your gifts. That’s where this book comes in. The writers and publishers will do the actual giving, and you just have to buy some really great stories which you would, of course, have rushed to buy anyway because of the sheer weight of unrefined awesome contained within these covers.
This is an eclectic collection. It’s a bundle of literary odds and ends tied up with string and sent, shoved under the seat of an old four wheel drive truck and squeezed between tins of peaches in syrup and bags of unfashionable clothes, to where it’s needed. As I write this, I have no idea what the stories in it will be, or by whom they will be written. I had a message in my Inbox one morning: Nick, will you do this? Yes. Of course. I’m a writer: I can’t go flying off to Haiti and make a difference. The absolute best I could achieve over there is to get in the way. So how can I help? Like this.
Open the book. Pick a page. There’s nowhere to start and nowhere to finish. 100 stories, in a crate, bound for Port-au-Prince, because we’re writers, and this is all we know how to do. When you’ve finished the book, if you can find one story, one page, one line in it which was worth reading again, join up: get someone else to buy it.
Enjoy the book. And thank you for helping us to do more than just wish there was something we could do.
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All-Or-Nothing Day
By Nick Harkaway
They say that Marlon Agonistes was the greatest gangster the world has ever known. They say he robbed the Special Express and carried off early sketches of the Mona Lisa; that he stole the nails from the cross and the trident from the devil’s paw; that he beat down Iron Roy Branden and made love to Giant Jean. They say that – when he died – every gunhand and soldier, every rickshawman and scurryboy, every footpad, skulldugger, lightfinger, long con and short con, matchfixer and pimp, every dealer, doper, dandy and dastard, every wrecker, smuggler, inside man, shill, car thief, chequebouncer and murderer, every single one, in other words, of the notable and notorious professional crooks in all the five cities, felt a sharp and undeniable pain in his chest, and a sense of overwhelming sorrow.
Marlon Agonistes was a titan. He had flashing eyes and broad shoulders, a generous middle and wide, cruel lips, and he sat behind a table at Robbie Tresko’s café in a fancy suit.
Marlon Agonistes was the keeper of the keys; he solved problems in a town which was just a towering stack – nothing but – and people came to him with everything. My marriage is over; I can’t afford the rent; this guy’s roughing me up; my daughter’s afraid to walk home at night; my manager’s making eyes at me. And all these problems were fixable. Everything could go away. Departing wives at his request would stay another month and try again, and wicked bosses kept their hands to themselves; bullies disappeared for ever. Even solid citizens would come to him, because the borough was so broken an honest joe was as busted as a crook. Marlon Agonistes understood. He inhabited the most fundamental tenet of the gangster’s creed: he lived reciprocity. So when the bulls came down, wild blue lights and howling affront, Marlon Agonistes was invisible. No door was closed to him, no house lacked concealment for Papa Marlon. He was the last priest of the church of us, a one-man revolution.
When he knocked over Lombard & Raye, and the take was twenty million, the gutters of the borough ran with gold. Trust funds appeared for children’s education, lost uncles left fortunes to deserving widows, and debts long written off were paid in full. Businesses foreclosed by banks stuffed full of public money were resurrected, refinanced. This wasn’t just profit, this was restitution; half for Marlon and his boys, and half for the borough. Not forty per cent, the so-high tax legitimate businessmen paid their legitimate accountants to avoid, but the full fifty, every time and without complaint. The numbers appeared on a board at Tresko’s, beside the specials. Pie for a fiver, fish and chips six twenty, library for the Tolpuddle School two hundred and ten thousand, plus ten grand for the Widow Liskard to go to Egypt in fine imperial style.
Marlon Agonistes was our king, keeping peace and doing justice, taxing and disbursing, making war. He was the city, with all its quirky generosity and sudden rage. From his cream and brown brogues to his solid gut and vast belt buckle to his diamond tie pin he was regal, and on his head was a crowning mass of hair.
The hair was where he kept his magic, they said. It was all in the hair. His eyes could transfix you, his hands could bend steel, he could eat and drink like a starved Italian and fight like an Irish rover, but it was that mahogany thatch of fire and shadow on his pate which made all the difference. Marlon Agonistes had the hair of the Medusa. It lay across his face when he was angry, made his wrath more terrible because it was only partly glimpsed. When Marlon was joshing you, his forehead was high and clear and he rocked like Father Christmas in his grotto, but come the moment for serious talk, his hair knew it, tumbled down and over, blocked one eye like a pirate’s patch and cast sharp shadows over his cheeks. Beware, the hair whispered. Beware. There are no second chances in this room. No light forgivenesses.
There was a memorial garden in Latimer, and a park in Trenchard, and people said if you touched the earth in either place, you could feel the exothermic heat of decomposing fools and thugs who’d been slow to show respect. You’d never find mention of anyone done in by Marlon Agonistes. They vanished whole-cloth. People forgot them, pictures faded, registers and records went away. The only trace was those little fingers of warmth on an icy day, reaching up through the soil and preserving the roses, even in winter.
They say he killed a multitude, an actual myriad with his bare hands, but no one can remember who they were.
Marlon Agonistes ruled the borough and the five cities for a decade, and he aged not at all. His hair was mahogany when he arrived, and mahogany it remained until the day it all came to an end.
It came to an end because of evolution.
Marlon Agonistes was an evolutionary force. His peculiar brand of wickedness built civic responsibility, formed good habits. He wouldn’t stand badness; legal or the other kind, he wouldn’t have it. You don’t take that lady’s house, he snarled at Arger Fitz the bailiff. You don’t take it because it’s wrong. He vanished the Cockleshell Men from docklands after Finny Albright was found, and faced down Boss Laughlin in the winter of ‘27. That badness which comes from not paying attention, not caring who your life might touch, that was his special hate. He right about wiped it out all together, and folks got smart, got brave and educated under his law. Out of the smoking ashes of City Hall – it turned out Mayor Klintock was importing slaves from Haiti by way of Tendry Docks, and the face of Marlon Agonistes was entirely covered by his hair that day – grew the New Assembly; from the borough council came a candidate named Bostonia Kite, fresh-faced and new-minted with letters after her name.
‘Seems to me we’re old enough now,’ Bostonia Kite said. ‘Seems to me we’re past the point we need a cold, hard fellow as a monarch in a backstreet bar. Seems to me it’s time we had some law.’
A lot of the professionals in the borough wanted Marlon Agonistes to warn her off, but he wouldn’t hear of it. She won with eighty one percent.
They say Marlon Agonistes died the following morning. They say it, and everyone knows it’s true, because of that great stab of pain they all remember and the soft, lingering sorrow of growing up and being a solid citizen which came upon them, after. Knifemen became barbers and pickpockets became puppeteers. They say that one shared moment of pain and the shadow of extinction was enough for everyone to cross the street to the sunny side, and stay there. So I never tell what I saw at mile marker fifteen, the evening Bostonia Kite won the election.
The marker’s out past Tayton and by the Ledbury farm, and the hills are rich with corn and grapes. The smell of loam rises out of the ground with the mist. I go there when I need to. I’m not city born, and sometimes the purples and the oranges and greys of streetlamp life are more than I can carry, and the circular skyline of house and tower and brick is too tight across my back. I go where the city fades and the world is in a different palette, and I sit. There’s a hedge with a hollow stone on top, and Old Man Ledbury doesn’t mind if I perch on it and eat a beef sandwich and drink beer. Sometimes we talk about things. Most times we don’t.
But this evening, with the sun low and the west all red, and water in the deep breaths, Old Man Ledbury was somewhere else doing Ledbury things, and I sat watching the cows and the mile marker and the cars going by, and I was quiet inside.
So quiet, I was, that the man who came over the hill didn’t see me. He was a big guy, wide in the shoulder and the gut, but he moved with a light step, like a dancer. He carried in one hand a canvas sack, and in the other a spotted handkerchief looped to make a bag. He was so joyful and so careless, I didn’t know him until the light caught his great mahogany mop and for a moment he was still, and then I saw Marlon Agonistes, the greatest gangster of the world, and I saw him smile like a great, shaggy dog lolling its tongue at a plate of steak. He cast around, and found a bit of branch by the hedge, and bent to pick it up.
The sun went down that minute, the way it can outside the city, in a sudden rush. The sky turned gold and green, and it lit him up like a spotlight or the finger of God so I could barely see. But it seemed to me then, and it seems now, that he reached up to his titan’s head, and rolled his shoulders like a man shedding a mighty weight, and took off his hair, and laid it in the sack by the side of the road. It seemed to me that he shrugged out of his gangster’s suit, and put on jeans, and left the whole great terror of himself behind. It seemed that he wandered away with a bundle of life in a chequered handkerchief on a stick, and that, three hundred yards later, a venerable Rolls Royce automobile, its maroon sides scarred by vast and improbable battles, stalled beside him as it slowed to pick him up.
They say that Marlon Agonistes died as he lived, in a great conflagration and convulsion, and that with him died the time of thuggery and sorrow in the five cities. They say no one in the borough missed him and they tell stories of the titan days, the all-or-nothing days he lived through. They say that, bit by bit, the park in Trenchard and the memorial garden in Latimer grew cold, and old sins went back into the Earth.
But this is my truth: that when the car stopped at mile marker fifteen, the big man who had been Marlon Agonistes was embraced by the laughing, regal fellow who was its occupant, and together, with much unnecessary debate and discussion, they restarted the stalled vehicle and went on their way into the coming dusk.
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About Time
By Mo Fanning
Cake. She has to have cake. For an entire week, Anna managed to walk past the window of Truly Scrumptious, averting her eyes.
Last night, she had two bowls of cabbage soup and a bifidus yoghurt. Then later, infused with Zen-like smugness, she ran a hot bath and lit candles. Surrounded by expensive foam, she congratulated herself on a week of self-control.
At 3 am, she woke, went downstairs, and poured a whole bag of oven chips onto a baking tray.
* * *
‘Morning Anna,’ Glenda said, looking up from arranging éclairs on a tray. ‘Haven’t seen you all week. Have you been away? Anywhere nice?’
She shook her head. Words were the least of her concerns. She wanted one of the blueberry muffins piled up behind the glass.
‘We’ve got some lovely carrot cake. Baked it myself.’ Glenda wiped her hands and placed the éclairs on the counter within reach. Anna could smell the bitter dark chocolate topping.
‘I’ll take a plain scone,’ she forced herself to say.
Glenda’s face said it all. ‘Just a scone?’
‘Just a scone.’
‘But you’ll have clotted cream and jam? Strawberry jam.’
‘I’m on a diet,’ Anna said.
Glenda’s face changed. ‘You? On a diet?’ She didn’t add ‘you don’t need to lose weight’. Her face said ‘about time.’
‘I’m trying to slim down for my holiday.’
‘Well, each to their own.’ Glenda put the single miserable-looking scone into a brown-paper bag. ‘As long as you’re doing it for you, not for some bloke.’
‘As if.’
Anna managed a smile.
* * *
Later that morning, Anna sees him across the room. He’s leaning over Lesley Fowler’s desk. Skinny Lesley. She’s doing that giggly thing she does when there’s a good-looking bloke within flirting distance. He looks up, smiles at Anna and does a goofy wave. She does the same back. He mimes drinking. She nods. So they’ve made a date.
Except it isn’t a date. Ben is her best friend.
‘Lunch orders.’
Anna looks up to find Lesley smiling. ‘I’ve got some leftovers,’ she lies.
‘Suit yourself. I’m going to Bert’s.’
Anna pictures apple pie. Oozing pastry, dusted with cinnamon. Bert’s do the best pie in town. Everyone knows it.
‘Get me a salad,’ she says.
‘Just a salad?’
‘Plain green, no dressing.’
‘Are you on a diet?’
‘Sort of. Not really. Well, a bit. Just watching my carb intake.’
There’s that look again. ‘About time.’
* * *
At five, Anna switches off her computer, shrugs on her jacket and goes to find Ben. Together they head for the next door pub. He orders bitter. She has lager. Pints. They find a table in the corner and collapse into soft leather armchairs.
‘I’m thinking of asking Lesley out,’ Ben says.
‘Oh?’
‘Am I batting out of my league?’
Out of his league? Is Ben mad? He’s tall, slim with matinee idol looks.
‘You’re probably too good for her,’ she says, taking a slug of her drink.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Lesley’s a nice person,’ Anna lies, ‘and I really like her.’ She’ll go to hell for adding one untruth to another.
‘But?’
‘But nothing. Ask her out. You two look good together.’
Ben downs what’s left of his drink and goes to the bar. Anna watches him, wondering where it all went wrong. First day in the job, he was appointed her mentor. He showed her round and took her to lunch, insisting she order whatever she wanted, and laughing when she suggested two deserts over a main course. Two weeks later he’d asked her for a drink, then took her to dinner. For a while, it looked like they might become an item. But instead, they drifted into friendship. Meeting up after work to laugh and gossip.
‘I got you some nuts,’ Ben says as he sits down.
‘Oh right. Thanks, but I’m trying to lose weight.’
She studies his face, waiting for the ‘about time’ look.
‘Why?’ he asks.
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you trying to lose weight? Is there a man involved?’
Anna folds her arms. ‘Why can’t I do something for myself? Why does it always have to be for someone else? Why does everyone assume I’m doing it for a man?’
Ben’s face changes. ‘Sorry.’ He looks away and mutters something.
‘What?’
He shakes his head.
‘Go on. Tell me what you just said.’
‘OK.’ Ben takes a deep breath. ‘What I hate about you is that you never tell people the truth. You say what you think they want to hear. You spend half your life tip-toeing around when the worst thing that could ever happen is that someone doesn’t like you.’
‘Wow,’ Anna whistles. ‘Where did this all come from?’
He’s not done. All the time he’s addressing the floor, not looking her in the eyes. ‘And all that would be fine, if just for once, you’d stop thinking about what others want and…’
‘And what?’
‘Do what you want. Put yourself first.’
‘I am doing what I want. I’m losing weight for me.’
‘But I like you as you are.’
‘Bully for you. Shame everyone else sees this big fat lump.’
Ben looks up. ‘Is that what you think?’
Anna nods.
Here it is, she thinks. The ‘about time’ face.
The kiss, when it happens, takes them both by surprise.
* * *
The next morning, their eyes open at almost the same time.
‘Did you mean what you said?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘About time,’ he’d said. ‘About time.’
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Amplified Distance
By Siân Harris
I wish I didn’t think about you when I walk past the war memorial. It feels like tempting fate, and I’m suddenly desperate for there to be a penny on the floor that I can pocket, or for two joyful magpies to fly across the green – just something, anything that might cancel out my gloomy thoughts and keep you lucky. I know you’d laugh at me – Load of superstitious bollocks Jen, since when have you been so daft? – and really, I think that you’re right, but it comforts me to think that I can store up good fortune for you. It comforts me to think that I could keep you safe.
That was always my job, remember? I held your hand across the street, stopped you talking to strangers. You used to have this little yellow duffle coat with a big hood – you thought it made you look like a fireman – and I swear I lost count of the times I had to grab onto that hood and pull you clear of the road, or next door’s pitbull, or the duckpond in the park. I wish it could still be that easy to hold you back.
The thing is, looking back on it all, I could only look after you as long as you let me. I might have been the bossy one, making the most of the eleven minutes I had in the world before you arrived, but you were always stubborn, always so much stronger than me. So either you were humouring me, or – and I think this is more likely, really – you were relying on me. You knew that I’d step in, you knew that I’d never let you get hurt. I’ll not be telling you this theory, I know just what you’d have to say: Oh aye Jen? Been reading psychology books at college again, have we? But it keeps me awake sometimes, thinking about how we used to be, and how far you’ve gone since then.
I saw Katy Dean by here last week – remember her? I worked with her last summer, in the café. Thick as a brick, and that’s being generous. She’s the one who, when I told her I had a twin brother, asked if we were identical. Anyway, she was waiting for her bus, and we chatted for a bit. She asked how you were getting on, and I gave the usual patter about how brave you’re being, how proud we all are. And then, of course, she put on that ‘concerned’ voice they all assume sooner or later, and she asked me if I thought that I would you know, feel something, if anything happened – not that it will – but you two are ever so close, aren’t you…
Thankfully, her bus came then, because I was just about ready to snap. Close? We’re not close. We’re nearly four thousand miles apart. Daft cow. I was still fuming about it by the time I got home, and I had to slip quickly through the kitchen, keeping my head down, so I could get to my bedroom without anyone asking me what was wrong. They’re nice enough, my flatmates, but we don’t have a lot to say to each other, and it’s been a bit tense round there lately. All my fault, of course. I got into a stupid argument with Sophie’s new boyfriend. He’s a politics student, you know the type: roll-up in one hand, Big Book of Anarchism for Beginners in the other. He said his piece and I said mine, and then I played you like a trump card, the ace up my sleeve. It was a cheap move, and I can’t tell you how much I regret it. Not least because I’m going to have to pick at least a fiver in pennies up off the street before I feel like I’ve atoned to Lady Luck.
The strange thing is, for all that I don’t like thinking about you here – with the memorial benches and the battered wreaths, and old St George up there, forever slaying that poor dragon – despite all that, this is still the place I think of you most often. I walk around the square, like we used to do together, back when you were going through your emo phase and nicking all my eyeliner: Don’t be so tight Jen, I’ve only used a little bit. Nobody looking at you in those days would ever believe how things turned out. It can only have been four years or so back. It feels like a lifetime.
Anyway, I walk, and I smoke, and I read the benches, and I think about you and us and I keep my eyes peeled for even the smallest sign that luck is still on your side, that you’re going to be alright. So really, I should have been delighted when I was cutting through the square this morning, hurrying to make it on time for my lecture, and some bastard seagull chose that moment to shit all down the sleeve of my new jacket.
I know what Katy Dean and her kind mean when they ask me if I’ll you know, feel something. They want to know if I’ll feel the repercussions of a bullet to your spine, or if I’ll find myself passing out the very second that your foot plants down in a minefield. I don’t know if I will, and I hope that I never find out. But today, when I was standing there, on the verge of total hysterics, I knew that you’d be laughing. Four thousand miles away or not, I felt that all right. And I don’t know if you felt it back, but eventually, I joined in.
~~~~~~~~
And the First Note Sang
By Catriona Gunn
When Tom – who played the harp – went to get the morning paper, he found a note of music wrapped up inside it. He took the note out carefully and gave it to his sister Lizzie. She put it with the note of music that had been humming by the kettle. Then she gave both the notes to their cat Mouse who took them outside on her whiskers and added them to the note she had found sitting on the doorstep. The three notes were picked up by a bird and added to the note that had been sitting on the end of the branch of a music tree. Da-di-dah-dah. The four notes fell on top of a young man going to the station to catch a train.
‘Well, well,’ he said to himself and began to hum the notes. He added a note that he had been keeping in his pocket. On the train he gave the notes to a pretty girl. She smiled and added a note from her little red bag. Then she gave all the notes to a fat little baby in a pram. He played with them for a little while and then blew them into the air with the note that had been caught under his fat little chin. The notes were caught by a boy in school uniform. He added the note that had fallen off his football boots and gave them to a beautiful woman in a sari. She handed them gently on to the old man sitting next to her. He could just hear the notes dancing across his fingers the way they had when he had once played the violin. He added the note that was still sitting on his right thumb and gave them to a school girl who smoothed them gently and added the note from her pencil case. She gave them to her teacher.
And on and on it went. The note that Tom had found joined the note that Lizzie had found and the note that Mouse had found and the note that the bird had found and the young man and the pretty girl and the fat little baby and the boy and the beautiful woman and the old man and the school and the teacher and on and on and on. They were like a great, untidy necklace of sound.
They went across the ocean and the mountains and the desert and rivers and lakes and a glacier and little mounds and deep gullies. They were caught by people with blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, green eyes, dark eyes and bright eyes. ‘Just a note’ they said to themselves, ‘I’ll add to these other notes and pass it on.’
The notes bounced and jumped and danced and twirled. They ran up and down and curled in and out, over and under. Sometimes they stood on one another, sometimes they would laugh and sometimes they would take a rest.
Eventually they made their way back to Tom who looked at all the notes and said, ‘I think I can sort this out.’
He sat down and tuned the harp and sorted all the notes into the right places and then he started to play. The notes jiggled and jumped, bounced and twirled and danced. Lizzie started to dance and the cat started to dance and the bird started to do a little swooping dance and the man began to give a bouncy little walk onto the station platform where the pretty girl gave a little skip, the baby jiggled in the pram, the boy gave a little jump and the beautiful woman swayed to the tune. The old man smiled and tapped his fingers and the school gave a hop and the teacher clapped her hands and it went on and on and on and on. People began to dance over the ocean, over the mountains and the desert and rivers and lakes and the glacier and the little mounds and the deep gullies.
Tom smiled to himself and the first note sang.
~~~~~~~~
Anna and Nineteen
By Claudia Boers
Nineteen’s heart leapt as Anna passed by the veranda where he sat working.
The tailor kept his head bent. He fed cloth through the machine evenly and pumped the foot pedal rhythmically so she would not notice him watching her slow progress down the street. Her withered leg left a trail of smooth arcs in the red dust behind her. They reminded Nineteen of a sequence of beautiful crescent moons.
She carried a crutch fashioned from the same hardwood that the villagers used to pound cassava roots. Nineteen thought it made her distinctive, but he could tell that the crutch and her bad leg made Anna self-conscious. Ever since she lost the use of her leg she’d seemed sadder than a weeping bird. People told her she was lucky to be alive but this made no difference.
The villagers said the snake bit her because her father, a fisherman, killed one of the giant coconut crabs on Rolas Island. Legend has it that anyone who kills one of these crabs will be haunted by the crab’s spirit. Anna’s snakebite was not the only bad thing that happened to Cheia and his family since he killed the crab. Nineteen hoped his intentions would change the family’s luck and give them reason to celebrate.
He examined the seam he had deftly finished, despite his missing index finger – that was why he was called Nineteen. He understood what it was to want to hide a flaw.
The bright fabric was soft and cool in his hands. The villagers would think the dress’s full length and many layers extravagant. They would say it was impractical but he didn’t care. All that mattered was that when she wore it, Anna would be able to hold her head high and feel like a queen.
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Apple Pie and Sunshine
By Mary Walkden
‘You here, Miss Emma?’
I knew before I pushed the back door open she would be there, she was always there. I rested my hand on the boy’s small shoulder, encouraged him through the door. His eyes were wide with wonder, fright.
She beamed at me from the stove, stirring… always stirring. ‘Sheriff!’ It was always the same, and not just for me. She made you feel like you were the most important person in the world, that you were special. ‘Come on in. Let me get you a coffee.’ She poured, but I could see her eyes peeking over her glasses, taking in my new little partner. ‘I have some wonderful cold fresh milk. Perhaps your new assistant would like some?’ She already had a glass out of the cupboard. I chuckled.
I sat down at her table, not the one the paying guests used, but the one she had for herself and the friends who would drop by. I had spent many an hour in this room, couldn’t get enough of it. It always smelled like apple pie and sunshine.
With a flick of my boot, I pushed out the chair at the end of the table, nodded for the boy to sit. Emma had his drink right there for him, just like my coffee was waiting for me – steaming and sweet; she knew just how I liked it. A plate of fresh cinnamon buns followed. I noticed she set it in the middle of the table, then gently nudged it closer to the boy.
‘Miss Emma, this here is Jimmy Bradley.’
Emma sat down across from Jimmy, poured herself a glass of milk and smiled. ‘I’m pleased to meet you Jimmy. You helping the Sheriff today?’
The boy shook his head slow, exaggerated. ‘No, ma’am. I don’t know nothing about sheriffing.’ Emma took a drink from her milk, smiled her milk-moustache smile at him. Jimmy giggled.
‘Jimmy’s dad sent him up here from the city when Jimmy’s ma took ill. He was staying with his Grandma, Hildy Matthews, but she also took sick. You know Hildy?’
Emma nodded but her attention was on the boy, on his frayed cuffs, his dirty face. He was only about five, had been in the door not even five minutes and he had Emma wrapped round his little finger.
‘Doc put Hildy in the hospital, wasn’t sure what to do about this young pup. I thought maybe he could get a meal and a cleaning here, Emma. I think he’s gone without while his grandma was sick.’
Emma walked her fingers across the table, closer to the boy, a spider stealing a cookie. He laughed. Her finger tips reached his hand, running over each little dimple. ‘Why, I would be delighted to have Jimmy stay here. There’s a bedroom right beside mine that would be perfect for him.’
I knew about the bedroom. It had been used for this sort of thing many times before. The doc would find some kid needing a roof and a meal, he would bring ’em to me, and I would leave ‘em with Emma while I found them a home. Most of ‘em, boys and girls came back again and again to see Emma. None of ‘em ever forgot her.
‘Thank you, Miss Emma.’ Jimmy gave her a shy smile. For her, his words were a whisper from an angel’s lips.
‘I got some of his clothes outside. I’ll bring ‘em in.’
I stood, headed to the door. When I looked back, she was lost in the child’s face, beaming at him, loving him with all her heart already. When I came back in, she was discussing that evening’s menu with the boy, learning what he liked, what he hadn’t ever tried before. He seemed content with the stew she had simmering in a big pot on the stove.
‘Here you go, Boy. Run put this in your room. Do it smart and make sure you keep neat.’
Jimmy took his case. It was almost as big as he was. He started dragging it out of the kitchen.
‘Up the stairs, dear, first door on the left. Do you know your left?’ Emma asked. The boy held up his left hand. ‘I knew you were a smart one, Jimmy. When you get done putting your things away, come back down and help me make some buns, then I will show you around the garden.’
There was a shuffle, a clump, again and again as the boy heaved that trunk up each step. ‘There are some toys up in that room, Sheriff, some little puzzles Fred made.’ I knew that too. The toys up there were legendary, many brought by previous occupants of the room, thankful for what they found and wanting to help make a hard day better for the next child. ‘He’ll be fine here. No worries.’
I knew the boy was in the best of hands. I reached into my pocket, took out my wallet to give her some money for the boy’s keep. She couldn’t be expected to just take them in but I knew what her reaction would be. ‘You put that money away. He’s small. The room was empty and he won’t eat much. He’s just a little boy.’ She winked at me. ‘You’re money isn’t any good around this house.’
I put my cup in the sink, nodded and tipped my hat to the lady. Like all the others before and all who were yet to come here, Jimmy would be just fine. Like all the others before and all who were yet to come here, I was already dreading the day I would come and take him away. For a spell in a young life, though, it was a little piece of heaven, a little sliver of apple pie and sunshine.
~~~~~~~~
The Archaeologist
By Andy Parrott
My grandfather forgot things in the home. He would set the kettle to boil for my grandmother and then return to his study, leaving the water until it was cold again.
‘He’s useless,’ she would say.
This was the man who had held clods of earth in his fists while wearing a white jacket, hat and steel-capped boots. He had separated the features of the earth, as if opening the mouth of a giant, and pulled out treasures. Each object had been heading towards nothingness, sucked down and consumed, fading, then gone. He put them in cabinets.
In company – Grandma’s friends – he smiled and nodded and held his blinks for long enough to suggest that inside his mind something had closed to them, though he didn’t mean it to. Grandma would try to encourage him.
‘Didn’t you know someone who worked for them?’ she’d sometimes ask, or ‘You were saying that just that the other day, weren’t you?’
In response, he would tortoise himself further into his shirt collar with a quiet ‘No’.
Once, though, during a lull in conversation, he brought a bone from his pocket, held it above the centre of the table and said, ‘I think he was a pilgrim.’
Grandma pulled the plate of biscuits away from the foreign object.
‘This was far from his home,’ said Granddad. ‘He must have loved something to travel all this way.’ The bone shook in his hand. He placed it back in his pocket, and looked at Grandma.
When her friends had gone she said, ‘You did well.’ She smiled as she said it and they kissed.
~~~~~~~~
Attachments
By Jack O’Donnell
I always wanted a big plate of mince and tatties to myself. Not a brother or sister grabbing at my ankles, with snotty noses and arses to be wiped. Looking up like baby starlings at dinner time and crying ‘Me, Me’, their little faces, more than their words, saying: give me a bit.
But they’d already been fed. So I just gave them a taste of my favourite dinner. But in no time at all they’d be sitting round me, holding their mouths open, hoping for another spoonful. Even Bryan, who was now a big boy and at school, would sit at my feet with his mouth open, mimicking the wee ones.
Our Stephen. Da’ might have called him feckless. If there was a way of doing something right and a way of doing something wrong, he was sure to confuse one with the other and end up bleating: ‘it wasnae my fault.’ But he wasn’t such a fool. His grey eyes were set like an owl. He crouched over his plate, the food steaming hot, the smell wafting up. There weren’t enough knives or forks, so like me, he used a spoon. There was no real way of telling because it was a blur as it went from the banging on the plate to his hinged mouth which snapped open and shut. His arm was out, curled protectively around his world. He swayed, deaf as the Auchenshuggle bus driver to cries of ‘I’ve missed my stop’, as little hands grabbed at him and fell away.
Then it was time for the wee one’s bed. We had to tuck them into each other, for there wasn’t an ingle-nook of space and only Ma and Da had known a bed to themselves. But a full belly, the heat, and the flickering shadows of the range were enough to bring out many a yawn. The potato peelings had went into the soup, which was always on the go but it was as thin as the hair on Da’s head. The hearth glistened and the big kettle was not far off the boil but we’d used up the last of the tea leaves and would need to use them again. Ma clasped and unclasped her hands for there was nothing to be done and morning would come soon enough, bidden or unbidden.
There was porridge in the morning but the milk had been on the turn the last two days. Da stashed it beside the kitchen window for later. Only he and the flies could stomach it. Ma kept me off from school to watch the wee ones because it was our turn for the washing. I didn’t mind. But Ma said I’d be finished soon enough, so I should enjoy it when I was there. And when she said it, her thin face looked younger, as if she was a schoolgirl herself, and her eyes looked less harried. But then the glint was gone and my old Ma came back and asked, ‘Have you got the washing?’
I’d already bundled everything we had into a big bed sheet. It wasn’t hard. We’d missed the washhouse the week before and we hadn’t added anything, so it was still tied up in the same bundle. It bumped against my one leg and little Lorna’s pressed against the other as we came down the tenement stairs.
Ma was already in the washhouse with the other wee ones. She had the cold-water tap running in the first of the big sinks, ready to sluice away the worst of the dirt. She had the big bar of soap sitting beside the washing-boards. Her hands ran up and down the smooth round buttons of her blouse, down into the pocket of her pinny and back again. They were feverish jerking hands.
‘A cannae find the penny,’ she said. ‘A cannae find the penny’.
Something of her words sank into little Lorna and fanned out so that the wee ones started their caterwauling, one after the other.
‘What about the jug on top of the cupboard?’ I said.
Ma’s placid face looked back at me. The days of having silver stashed away were long gone. ‘Lets get the wee ones back up the stairs,’ she said, ‘and go in and tell Mrs Morrison that she can have a shot of the washroom. There’s no point in wasting it. We can wait another week.’
‘We could use the cold water,’ I said.
‘There’s no drying in cold water,’ said Ma.
‘There must be something we can do,’ I said.
Ma’s look said there was, but she was quiet. It was up to me.
Mrs Blake was the only one in the tenement building that had an iron knocker on her door. It was in the shape of some poor animal with its mouth open which was appropriate for Mrs Blake never let an opportunity pass to tell you what she thought.
Mrs Blake stood careful guard at her door. It was rumoured that she’d lots of knick-knacks that needed constant dusting and a leather armchair in front of her grate that nobody else had ever sat in but her.
Her thin lips told me everything I needed to know. She remembered back to when God had flung the Archangels out of heaven and every brown penny was recast as proof that it was wasted on what? That’s what she wanted to know. She didn’t begrudge it. The greatest kindness she could offer was by not helping and not asking for help.