Promotional Material

Promotional Material

       By Leigh Douglas Starbucks

              canals are funny things
                  the way locals are proud of them

                  and show them off

                  to visitors     as if they would unhide the fox

                  and rig elections if the cause were

                  stark enough and clear

                  not like the water that flows through both

                  water for brains    water for woman   water for

                  tracks of ditch big with
                  passing ships carrying maybe even

                  someone with child

                  or someone returned
                  from a fine

                  a private place

                  and tickling feathers

Weland Spread could have told you the time of day to the minute when his boss knocked at his cubicle and asked to speak to him about his retirement. The thought had never seriously crossed his mind that his age might suggest to anyone the possibility that he move over for someone else.

       “Might I give you my answer next week?” was all he could think to say. Barry Barnacle looked at Weland as if he had not heard correctly. After a pause and some indications of false indifference he spoke again.

       “I do not require an answer,” he started. “Though I speak to you in these friendly terms, I intend for you to act rather than respond with thoughts.” He peered around the small office and took in, as if for the first time, the clutter there. The books on the shelves lay at odd angles to one another. A half-dozen cardboard boxes did for filing cabinets. These stood where they had stood for years balanced on narrow shelves. A pair of worn sneakers and another of vinyl loafers lay visible under the old desk. The janitor had merely swept around them for some time. A coat hanger on the floor near the hat stand, bits of paper on the tiled floor, and other debris, stood out to both men as they pondered.

       “Naomi Swiner who replaces you next week will not require this space,” Barnacle said. “She will operate out of the office next to mine. That gives you a week to remove your belongings while she establishes hers.” Weland could not think well. All these years he had hoped for a promotion to an office with a window. The row of offices with windows were meant for senior employees. He felt disinclined to leave this new information from Barnacle unaddressed.

       “But, I always wanted that office,” he said. He waited, thinking of the promotion he would never get now. His tie bothered him and he adjusted it. He tightened it till his neck bulged over his collar. He pulled up his trousers so that his bare legs, hairless and white, showed above his socks. Barnacle looked at him in disbelief.

       “You always wanted that office?” he said. “You were waiting to be allowed to move up to that office?” He stood to go. He wore cologne. There was no smell of sweat about him. His dark suit, neat and pressed, his crisp shirt and tie, his very bearing, spoke of authority. Before he could open the door, however, Weland spoke again.

       “I always wanted that office myself,” he said, glancing about him. He did not rise from his chair. “Why?” He waited for his boss to speak. “Why do you do this to me?” He began to get to his feet and then did so. He approached Barnacle and stopped close to him.

       “Would you like a drink?” he said, reaching into the desk drawer. The door began to open but Weland put a hand on it and closed it. Barnacle tried to force it open but could not make it move. Weland had a strong arm.

       “You will need more than a fine suit to beat me at the opening of doors,” Weland said, smiling. “Here, have a drink. It’s pretty good whiskey. I often have a drink here when things get boring. Go ahead, have one now, too.” He handed the bottle toward his boss who drew back from it. Weland put his left arm around Barnacle’s shoulders.

       “Good man,” he said. “There, there, now,” he added. Drink. Here, share.” Weland raised his arm to his boss’s neck and squeezed him so his head jerked up. His color began to change. Weland pushed the neck of the whiskey bottle towards his mouth which clamped shut in response. Not for long. The bottle jabbed between his lips with so much force that two teeth chipped. A piece of enamel stuck to his lip. His mouth opened in surprise. The bottle got inside and Weland lifted it and the whiskey poured in. Barnacle choked and coughed. The bottle kept pouring. Barnacle swallowed finally and then kept swallowing until he had consumed a great deal.

       “Now, isn’t that better,” Weland said, sitting the boss down in chair he had vacated. The boss began to rise but Weland reached the bottle toward him. Barnacle shook his head but when Weland made as if to take him by the neck once more he nodded. He drank a little sip. Weland shook his head.

“Take a good one,” Weland said. “Make it worth your while.” The boss took a little more. When Weland smacked him on top of his head he drank a large amount. Soon, Weland did not have to suggest that he drink. Barnacle sat there with the bottle in his hands and took sips now and then.

“Help me put these books in boxes,” Weland said.  Barnacle did not understand at first. When Weland lifted him bodily out of his chair and faced him toward the books and pointed at an empty cardboard box, he began to stack books into it. “Move them into the office next to yours,” Weland said. The boss began to lift the box but its weight prevented him. Weland picked it up with ease and placed it in Barnacle’s arms. Barnacle wheeled out of the door with Weland following. Barnacle made as if to set the box on the floor of the new office but Weland pointed to the shelves and Barnacle began to put the books onto them.

“You can have another drink each time you finish moving a box in here,” Weland said. He stayed on Barnacle’s heels. Barnacle thought that if his secretary had not booked off he could have shouted and have her call the police. But no one seemed to be around and Barnacle kept moving boxes until all the books lay, in some disorder, on the shelves. By this time Weland had encouraged him to drink all of the whiskey and Barnacle felt faint and exceedingly dizzy.

“I’ll be back next week to start my new promotion,” Weland said and left the building. He did not appear on Monday, nor Tuesday, nor Wednesday. On Thursday he stood suddenly at Barnacle’s open door and smiled at him.

       “Goodbye,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming.” He left and never returned.    

No Purchase of Wine

No Purchase of Wine

        By Douglas Guzzletop (alias, Dougy One Time)

              klipsch

Snyder went to the counter with his bottle of red wine and paid for it. He walked through the mall and as he did so he unscrewed the top. Behind a big tree under a skylight he took a drink. He tried to hide the tilting bottle in a corner the elevator made but he thought a gentleman in a trench coat on a bench nearby had noticed him. He took one more good pull at the bottle and put it in it paper bag and into his pocket. Christmas carols played on the intercom. Along the ceiling curtains of white blinking lights shone. Rudolph stood at the head of a line of miniature reindeer. Santa nodded mechanically in a store window and sat holding children who waited in a short line-up across the corridor in front of the Safeway grocery. Salvation Army matrons stood near the store door and it was better to have some change handy to put in the plastic globe than to have to apologize to them as you tried to pass by.

       Rhonda came out of nowhere. She did not see him. He saw her walk up to the same tree that he had hidden behind and take a paper bag out of her purse. Checking around her, she tilted it back and took a swig. She noticed the gentleman on the bench watching and took another quick, big drink before placing the bottle back in her bag. She came out from behind the tree and walked into The Bay. Snyder followed her to see what she was up to. She went from one department to another looking at things, purchasing now and again an item. At Men’s Fashionable Clothing she bought a fedora Snyder’s size. At Burma’s Charm she bought a small kit of perfume and eyeliner (likely for Charnese, Snyder thought). At Handy Home Repairs she eventually purchased a brand name cordless drill and a rooter for, Snyder surmised, Snyder himself and his workshop.

       She ended up at Lingerie and Fancy Things. She was in a booth trying on some items that he saw her pick up. It was a curtained booth. He could see her legs underneath. He watched her dress come off around her ankles and a pair of underpants reached down for to be taken over a foot before he opened the curtain and looked in. Rhonda shrieked. A male attendant came running up. The attendant and Snyder both gazed into the change room where Rhonda stood naked.

       “It’s okay,” Snyder said to the young man beside him, who looked as if he should try to help or comfort her. “It’s just my wife.” The attendant asked Rhonda if that was true. She fumbled with her dress, trying to put it on without raising her arms. The neck of her bottle showed from her purse on the floor at her feet. She nodded, got the dress on and flounced out of The Bay.       

Just Jeans and Shirts

 Just Jeans and Shirts

       By Danny Rogers (the chickener)

Herman ran till his breathing evened out and his general agitation subsided. Peggy had dumped him. God! And after all these weeks! And why? Who the hell knew. Oh well, he thought, I’ll find another woman. There are more fish in the sea. Maybe another man. “Shut up,” he said out loud. “Don’t go there.” From the path he picked up a stone that looked vaguely like a daisy flower and threw it into the forest on his left. On his left was forest, on his right, field. A stream trickled in the distance, he could hear. A frog indicated by its owling a swamp nearby. And on the branch above his head lay a cloud that resembled a tawny catamount. Wicked, he thought. Just wicked. What a wretched, wild and wonderfully wicked morning.

       Susanola had dumped him before Peggy, and Rachella before Susanola, Whisper before that, and earlier, Duchess. And a bit further back a series of dumpings had left him almost breathless with their swiftness of succession.  Dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump, dump. Susanola was an interesting case. She lived in a walk-down on Wellington close to the Hava Java shop on the street that ran behind the Winnipeg Concert Hall. She made her living selling lamps and shades that she constructed from assorted things she found in dumpsters. She ate food that he had never heard of before, dishes that she concocted from whatever she found in the grocery isles that caught her attention. She would walk by bacon and farmer sausage and fall on pickled hog’s feet and candied ham ends. She would reject buns and kringles and cheer over five pounds of croutons in a plastic bag. At the counter she would pay for these, plus asparagus, hot mustard sardines, eggplant in oil and water, wisteria nubs (whatever the hell they were), celery salt, a bag of grapefruit and a variety of bulk candies. These would together make up her meals for the next week till she ran out of ingredients. She liked to tongue his ears till they hurt in hopes of bringing him to climax.

       Rachella simplified her dressing to the point of interest for Herman. She got up mornings and draped on a commodious towel still damp from last evening’s shower. Niftily tucked and angled it made her seem unearthly slim, her ankles flickering underneath as she moved about the apartment. Her shower cap went on before she got under the spray. Green with some designs on it, but large, covering her ears and most of her neck. Then, out of the shower, dried and damp, jeans of a dark blue usually came on next, without underpants. Then a shirt buttoned up to the neck, long-sleeved, often with a bold, flowery pattern on a white background. No bra. A bracelet followed and that was it. She wore two or three things and shoes reluctantly if she had to leave for somewhere. Her clothing drawers were empty except for a stack of jeans and shirts neatly folded. No sock drawer, no underwear drawer. No drawer with odds and ends of ornaments or hair ties or caps or hats. Nothing except jeans and shirts. She loved to rub her fingers over her own breasts while he watched, her eyes almost closed as if she were fully self-involved, and then suddenly turn over and get on top of him, hurrying into a series of amazing contractions that would leave him fighting for air, so surprising and precipitous they came.

       Her boss told him about Whisper’s tendencies. That was how he found out, and when he did she left him fairly quickly after that. She worked in a shoe store on Williams in the heart of Ukrainian Winnipeg, one specializing in shoes for big men. Rubber boots, work boots, hiking boots, that sort of thing. Her job was essentially to check the figures of the five clerks working there and determine if any of them were cheating. She had found a few of these and they were let go immediately. Feeling sorry for them, she always hugged them and kissed them on their last day at the store and worked them around to the storage room where no one went from one day to the next and made love to them there as a sort of farewell. A don’t-take-it-too-hard gesture.

       She was born and raised in Boston and her favorite singers were Ryan’s Fancy, Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers, and various other maritime folk singers. She flew to Florida once a year for holidays and sun and did not know the amount of money in her bank account at the end of the month. She just hoped there would be enough. Her bum in his face left him feeling oddly happy at the end of each session of loving. Usually morning before work and evening right after work. She did not make love to him on those days when anyone was fired from the business.

       Dutchess loved him well in every way. She was perfect. Her Madonna figure satisfied his sense of aesthetic balance. Her two preterdaemian feet slanting neither right nor left when she walked or ran, shod or barefoot, pleased him but also convinced his careful eye, trained in deviations, of their absolute alignment. When she disrobed, which was not often, he signed the logbook without question. Her topsail and spinnakers caught all the breeze and hurried her ship along. She made quick way over the briny sea, docking now in Tahiti, now in Caramazoo, with never a fear for her safety or demise, travelling so expertly over her own waters. Her breasts were two bunches of fruit hanging on a laden tree above him on an island shore. She was in every way his superior. He did not care to discuss her with anyone or even let himself think about her. He never looked at her directly. She was his greatest personal achievement and he would from now on look to men he had told himself when she left. Her habit at night was to crawl under the covers when he slept and to suck on him till he woke, and then when he was finished to hold his head on her bosom, rocking him as if he was a little boy, a small Don Juan, and croon him to sleep. He ran very fast and hard just now remembering. Oooo, a stone’s throw from another lover now, he knew.               

,       

Hired Hands

Hired Hands

       By Placard Plett-Reimer

Chisholm putzed. He had nothing better to do. First he tinkered with the Chevy half-ton. Then he drifted around back to the hog trough and fiddled with that. Eventually, he worked his way around to Sarajeva’s bedroom window that needed replacing or repair, whichever came first. He picked at the dried putty and figured out where the new putty would have to go. Reverend Joshua Freebee watched Chisholm’s every move. He observed him and wrote down what he saw. Each detail of his movement, and even the Rev’s ideas about Chis’s inner state as he made these movements made their way into the narrative he was constructing around the hired hand’s routines.

       Niggard, he thought to himself. Niggard. A bad good word. Sniffing. I’ll use that. Sniffing niggard. Niggardly sniffing. Oops, there he goes toward the barn. I wonder what he’s up to now? I’ll follow him via the chicken coop and look into the milk room from the window at the back. A shit! Shit everywhere! These damn chickens! If it wasn’t for chicken soup I wish they’d all be dead. Daaeijem. Okay, there he goes. Into the big door. Down the main runway. Stops to check out Polly. Gives her something. Lifts her tail. Why’s he doing that? Jeez! I hope not. Na. Okay, whew! Continuing down the bovine runway. All the way to Checkers’ stall. She’s got farrows. Nine. Kay, he pats her, lifts her tail. Looks. Jeez! I wish he’d stop doing that! What’s the matter with him, for Pete’s sake! Right. Oops. Hide. Here he comes. He turned around. I better duck behind the tank. Shhhh. He’s coming in here. Now he’s pissing. I can hear him outside. Psssshhhhh. Is that how to write it? He’s coming in here, I think. I thought so. I can’t move till I know. Or hear him somewhere else. What’s he doing!? Why’s he taking so long? Oh, for Pete’s sake. Oh, Jeez! I hope not!

       Sniggle. Snubble. Snuckers. Shorts. Swindle. Swanglebutt. Big Butt Swangle Butt. Niggard. Na, did that. Okay. Way stations. Weigh station. Whey station. Pretty good, eh? Willy wanged his wanger and winged off into welkin space. Oh, for just one time. Jeez. Ooooohhhh. There he is. Coming now, I think. I can hear his boots. One step. Another. Waits. Why the hell is he waiting all the time. Doesn’t he have things to do? Oh, for fuck’s sakes! Jeeeez, already! I hope not!

       “Yeah, hi.”

       “What I’m doing here?”

       “Well, nothing. I just got in here behind the tank and tried to find the thing I dropped in here last week and so once I was in here I couldn‘t get out easy and so I just decided to wait around till someone came to give me their hand and pull me out. Come on! Pull me up, already. Good. Yeah. That’s better. Well, so long. See you.”

       Jeez, that was close. How come he saw me right away? Oh, for Pete’s sake. Okay, I’ll duck down behind the granary once I know he can’t see me, and he’ll think I’ve gone to the house. Then I can watch him from the end there if he all of a sudden goes toward the pond. But why would he? Oh, okay, I got him. He’s heading for the colored gas tank, I think. He’s climbing up it. Probably thinking about God right now. He’s lifting the nozzle and sniffing into the tank to see if it’s varnish yet, I bet. He’s staying up there quite long. Sniffing. Sniffing some more. Oh, for Pete’s sake. Don’t tell me. Oh, oh, for crying out loud. I hope not. Oh, Jeez! Now he’s fallen down.

“Hey, Chis, you alright?” Oh, Jeez! He’s not responding! “Chis. Chisholm! You okay? You alright? Hey, Wanda! Where are you? You in the kitchen? You out back here? Wanda! Wanda! You around here . . . ?  Oh, Wanda, come quick. Chis is out of it. He fell off the gas tank!”

       I guess that is enough for one day. I’ll get back to this tomorrow. I got to stay away from that milk room. No place to get out if he comes. If he comes to!

           

Gutsy Women in Besieged Fortresses

Gutsy Women in Besieged Fortresses

       By Besieg Reimer

In the Maccabees, the story is told of a powerful queen who intervened on behalf of the frightened Israeli army and slew the enemy king whose victory over the weakening city seemed inevitable. How she did it has been the subject of a great deal of interest among marginal readers of the Bible and less so among the steadfast and devout. The Israelites quaked before the huge army sprawled around the fortress walls. There were so many enemy tents that none could see the farthest reaches of this field of canvas. The Israeli women wailed and the children whined as only kids can at the doorstep of their deaths. A cat, for instance, hates going and knows it will go before it goes, even more certainly than its human counterpart does, since it has this sixth and even seventh sense. So, if you ever intend to dispose of a family pet pussy, you will find that it complains something fierce. Yet, not as irritably as a human child whose nasal screeches when peeved are enough to drive one to murder, almost. That is why W. C. Fields hated kids, not cats.

       To make a long story short, this queenly woman finally had enough of the puling and snivelling of her guard and soldiery and set out one morning to solve the matter on her own. She took with her a basket of fine foodstuffs and the best wine the Israeli nation produced. Not much of it was left in their larders, though, but she managed to find a few bottles. She dressed in her most beautiful skirts, highlighting both her youthful beauty and her modesty, she had the gatekeeper let her out of the gate at an early hour, and straightway made for the enemy camp. From the enemy sentinel she learned which was the General’s tent. When the General’s guard had made sure that she was not carrying weapons, they, with smirks, knowing what would become of her, let her in to please their bored captain. Six weeks of lying about doing nothing (even for a leader) is a long time, we all know that. Now, she set out to do her violence as well as to protect her sanctity.

       “First,” she said to her host, “before we proceed with what we both want, let us drink some wine.” She tasted first and, he, then, assured, tasted next. He loved the proffered vintage--and vintage in general. She practiced the art of seduction then that the drowsy light of wine reliably makes more inviting still, and before long he was drunk and all over her. Despite her promise to herself, she did enjoy his advances to a small degree as he undressed her, admired and tasted her breasts, and found with some clumsiness her female body’s entrance with fingers and hands. She resisted at this point, but he refused any more wine until she would let him divine her. This refusal of drink made it possible for her, without self-blame, to encourage resistingly him to proceed with the embracings. She permitted the General, with gentle coyness of remonstrance, to explore to his heart’s content, taking long and long to discover where to place his fork and find water. After much mumbling and uncertainty of location, he finally discovered the aquifer and did not hesitate to both dip in precipitate and proclaim again and again, over the sounds of the splendid callings and entreaties of his skirted partner, his convictions about the purity, fineness, softness, newness, tightness, smallness, energetic pulsation, slightness, wetness, smoothness, clarity, sweetness of taste, general loveliness, exquisite luck, wicked possibilities, and perfumance of the well and water amid its surrounding hills.   

       She stayed in the tent, with him intermittently snoring, until it was nearly morning.  Guards came in once or twice, only to find master and mistress well and game. At the right time she took the general’s sword, cut off his head, placed it in her basket. Meekly, followed by her maid—every modest woman had to be accompanied by a maid—and, with an air of blushing modesty, she walked past the guards who smiled and smirked, imagining what pleasure General had just taken, weighing their chances if they should now take some of it for themselves.

       When she returned unmolested to the her fortress gate, her officers received her with amazement, praising God and singing psalms. With trumpetry and other fanfare they showed the severed head from the walls and the luckless enemy, immediately in disarray and terror, fled, the Israelies pursuing and slaughtering till no soldier or retainer remained. A woman, a rich, gentle, spirited woman had shown the cowardly heroes what to do. Agamemnon’s wife was a woman to be dealt with, too, as was Odysseus’s. Let me briefly recount the stories. One loved her husband; the other hated hers.    

     

Skruggs

Skruggs

       By Dougy Hightops

Skruggs, though, sang with a voice beside which the sound of the dulcimer seemed humdrum. Melodious or not, when Skruggs’ wife had been gone only a year he sued my daddy for my hand. The conclusion of the matter was not a foregone one. He visited many times in between gigs in Techumsey, Valentine, Oklahoma City, Laramee, and even one in Mexico across the river from Reo Matte. He brought Jim Beam whiskey usually, if it was a Saturday night, and the two talked about the Andy Warhol paintings my father had inherited from his father, and some of which he himself had collected. When two or three paintings with impressive credentials had been proffered by my suitor and received, and a few dozen bottles of good whiskey drunk, supplied always by Skruggs, my father relented and I joined my husband in his home in Hollywood.

       Home? Mansion, more like. The place had a hundred rooms, it seemed to me. And, a walled garden into which I was not allowed to see, much less venture. Skruggs travelled endlessly and I saw little of him. He had given me a key on our wedding night (with a slyness about the mouth that made me wince). It unlocked a little garden door, the only one that served the garden, an entrance covered in vines and hidden from view. I am a humble woman for the most part. That is what I have been told and what I, too, know of myself if I am any judge of womankind. In this case, however, my patience with another’s requirements ran out.

       Each time Skruggs returned from one of his engagements he embraced me and looked, I noticed, to see if the key still hung about my neck. To find, if it were possible, some evidence that it had been used. Perhaps a scratch on its perfect surface, one designed to easily patina. Never. I did not wish for a long time—for my first ten years—to see the place. Whatever for would I want access to a garden long dead and where, for all I knew, butchered cats and dogs, if not wives, lay buried beyond the watch of neighbors or the arm of the law. My indifference changed the day I heard the melodic notes of a dulcimer from some hidden corner of the Skruggs mansion. I had never explored its length or width and so, in search of this eeriness that began more often to haunt my sleep, I set out on a cold, still night with torch for light to find their source. I had not long to search. None of the rooms housed the sound. The garden, it came to me then! Instantly I felt a surge of childhood curiosity and found myself at the very door I had vowed never to open. In walked I. And, there saw the most astonishing thing.

       In the cradle of a cherry tree, with blossoms about him, sat a young boy dressed in all the colors of the rainbow holding what looked from this distance to be a stringed instrument. The sadness of the music made me expect sadness in his face. When I approached him—cautiously, I must say, for all his smallness of size—I saw at once a remarkable glow about his face, and a beatific peace that dispelled my apprehensions. He laughed when he reached his hand toward me and as I took it in mine. I noticed his fingers flit over its surface. He was stone blind! Such joy in such a void! It goes without saying that I felt the presence of some greater power then, which I had, by accident as it were, discovered. I knew immediately and from that moment for the rest of my days that this hour had been saved for me for this precise time in my life. Never again, in all the sixty-three years that I lived in that house, with Skruggs first gone so much and then finally dead, did I feel that humble loneliness that in my youth I had carried west with me from out of the hills of home.    

Cabbage Under Her Arm

Cabbage Under Her Arm

       By Twelve Years in Postsecondary School

              Strike while the iron is hot.

“In lieu of money, I will give you . . . ” Lionel said, and could not think of anything he could hand over to Haman. Haman lived with Corona Belle Davis whose apartment had finally come available when the landlord had declared that he had had enough of her extemporary renovations. Lionel was down on his luck. All that his father had given him he had squandered at billiards in North Kildonan, gambling at the Regency Casino, fancy dinners for groups of friends in eateries such as Café del Sol on south Osborne, and more recently with the purchase of the motor launch tied on the Forks’ slips under bank orders not to even start the engines.

       Corona Belle Davis had been employed as a heavy machine mechanic till a year ago when her pregnancy brought her the care of two girls, one of whom died after two weeks. She’d stopped going to work, though the garage called every morning till they’d had enough, too. She’d spent her savings and then received welfare, but she lived in a space that the agency declared too expensive. Now, for these two reasons, she would be moving into a one bedroom apartment on Westminster near the Balmoral school for girls. As Lionel and Haman spoke, Corona could be seen on the front porch nursing Wendy Lou. She sat there in the shade many hours a day, calling out now and then to a passerby that this or that had happened to the little girl that day. She kept no pets, dogs and cats proliferating in the neighborhood as they did, and that, at least, had postponed the day of her having to give up her suite.

       Haman had met Corona in Montreal where she’d gone on three months vacation three years ago. He had decided to move in with her in Winnipeg since he had used up all his friendships out east. Unemployed, he spent much of his time indoors reading the papers or outdoors engaging with whoever walked by. He could always be found somewhere near Corona, though they seldom spoke to each other. He was not interested in returning to Iran, he had told her, but she guessed that one day she would have to go there to find her daughter. In Montreal he had tried to strangle another Iranian over an argument concerning his manhood. In prison for a year, he had immediately, on his release, left that city for life with the woman who had borne his child. His wife he left out east with their two school-aged children, telling Corona that under no circumstances would he ever have anything to do with that woman again.

       “You do own a car,” Haman said and looked toward the old Toyota that Lionel had parked a block away. Lionel kept his mother at his house and they made do with the strangeness of the need for her to be helped at every step of the way. He bathed her, and toileted her, even. Not pleasant, he said to people, but just one of those unexpected you get used to. His mother had been a marksman and won prizes and trophies. These hung on the walls of her room and filled the bookshelves in the house. Thieves had recently broken in and taken most of her firearms. She would soon die, Lionel thought, out of grief for the loss. Her housecoat hung open at odd times and she did not think to close it. Her teeth stayed in the glass in the bathroom all day sometimes, for she ate little now and really did not need them. At night, about once a week, he would find her wandering around inside, and even outside now and then. Winter would not be kind to her. Lionel had bought her a Winchester 30-30 and put it in a prominent place above a trophy shelf, but she only sighed.  He resigned himself to her leaving him.

       Corona walked toward them and took the baby from her breast. She said to Haman that he might go to the corner grocery and pick up some vegetables for curry. Haman pointed to Lionel’s ring. It was a diamond he had received from his Uncle Conivington when he turned twelve. His uncle was dead now, but when he lived he thought highly of his third nephew and spent lavishly on him. Lionel said that he would come back tomorrow and see what he had that he could part with. He wanted the apartment very badly indeed and thought that he might have to decide between car and ring, but could of course not in an instant make up his mind. Corona walked to the grocery on the corner herself, carrying Wendy Lou in one arm. She came back almost immediately with a cabbage tucked under her free arm. She passed them both without acknowledgement. Haman pointed to Lionel’s wallet and asked how much he had in it. Lionel said he had nothing in it but some change.

       “Let’s go for a beer,” Lionel said. They left the Sherbrooke an hour later and Lionel said he would be back next morning at ten. When he got there, Haman, Corona and Wendy Lou had gone and a moving truck stood in front of the apartment. Furniture was already being dollied in by the Two Small Men With Big Hearts.