Into the Woods

Issue 76, Spring 2024 (Featured story)

[Note that’s displayed near the journal at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle]:

These pages were recovered in Lilliwaup, Washington, in 1934. According to Thomas Bowman, a local man who witnessed the event, the bundle of papers was dropped by a raven in flight. Bowman kept the pages in his possession until his death in 1999. Piecing together the time line, museum staff has determined that the account, attributed to hallucinations brought on by severe dehydration, was written by Sheldon Murphy, a self-proclaimed wanderer of the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s. His body was never found.

June 2

I have yet to enter the Forbidden Wood, choosing instead to interview local residents about the expanse before I set foot there. That seemed prudent because of the research I’d done before arriving on the Olympic Peninsula. From the people I’ve talked to over the last several days, my mission seems somewhat risky, if only that no one knows exactly what I face when I tread the mossy floor of that forest. They are only adamant that I will not return. I am impressed with this land—magnificent and lush—but I do feel it harbors a watchful spirit, perhaps malign. Tu-o-kiimag, in the Skokomish tongue.

Photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

Zachary Trant, from Wilmott, only a mile from the woods, talked at length about his grandparents who, he said, trapped and hunted the area but never ventured past the woods’ boundary, even when game was hard to come by. When I pressed him about their belief in the dangers, he simply said, “The forest swallows.” When I asked him if he’d ever set foot in the forest, he looked at me as though I’d asked him if he ate children.

June 14

It’s now been two weeks since I came to this place. Tomorrow I’ll make my first attempt at walking the mysterious tract. Marian Hemley gave me an amulet to wear. She lives on the property that lies next to Zachary’s and tried to dissuade me from exploring the Forbidden Wood. When she realized I would go there regardless of how many cautionary tales I heard—in fact, I’ll say the tales have only made me more eager to traipse through the land—she assembled this protective piece to hang around my neck. It appears made of feathers, tiny shards of glass, and a ribbon inscribed with symbols foreign to me. She said an odd thing: “Walk always; to halt is death.” She would not elaborate. “I’ve said too much already,” was her reply.

June 15 - morning

I’m going in today. Looking over the topographical map the U.S. Geological Survey gave me in Seattle, I’ve decided to make my first pass from the section of the woods that runs alongside Entrapment Road. If I should need to make a hasty exit, the road will be my landmark. If I am badly injured and can drag myself out, a passing cart driver can give me transportation to Doctor Peterson, over in Lilliwaup. I have already spoken with him about my plans, and he has provided a small bag of medicinal herbs and salves should I need them on my hike. Part of me feels reluctant to go forward with the endeavor, but that I am sure is due to the dozens of stories I’ve heard about the forest. Fear can eat at you, if you’re not careful, immobilizing you. I have faced down bears and mountain lions as I have explored this upper Northwest, and survived. I can do the same now.

June 15 – midafternoon

The sun has crossed its midpoint in the sky, as summer is only a week away. I have stopped to eat a snack of pemmican and take my bearings. I sit on a fallen log dotted with moss greener than I’ve seen anywhere else. It is the Olympic moisture that provides the nourishment for these flora, I’m sure. Other than that, the place is still. Odd that I hear no birdsong, no insect hum, despite the time of year. Only the whisper of a breeze singing through the needles of the fir trees that surround me. I plan to pitch my tent before the sun sets, but that still gives me several more hours of hiking. The compass that Zachary lent me seems to be broken, spinning in circles instead of settling on a true north. I must use the sun as my guidepost; it is an old friend that has led me out of mazes before. The small pieces of glass on my amulet catch the sun’s rays and cast flickers on the leaves above me.

June 25 – evening

I can only guess at the time since I wear no timepiece, but the sun has set. Clouds have rolled in, darkening my surroundings and I write this by lamplight. What an adventure today, and it is only the first of many, I am sure! No more than an hour after I made my last journal entry, I heard a raven’s croak above me. It was the first sign of animal life in these peculiar woods. The bird perched on a branch that might have been twenty feet overhead and looked down at me with such intelligent eyes. I stopped and set down my pack to better observe the bird. It dropped lower in the tree branches until it was quite close, perhaps only five or six feet away. I wondered at its intent and tried whistling to it. The bird shook its feathers and cawed again. I have heard many a raven on my travels but this was the first whose sounds resembled human speech. The croaks sounded like “walk, walk, walk.” I can only assume I was becoming befuddled after my many hours of hiking. It then flew to a tree deeper in the woods and croaked again, as if commanding me to follow.

And I did. It led me farther and farther into the forest, where the trees grow impossibly close and soar majestically to heights of two hundred feet or more. Such vibrancy of life! I can almost feel the tree sap running as the blood runs in my veins. I crossed two streams, the splashing water refreshing both for my throat and my face. And still the bird drew me on with its calls, always just ahead. When we reached this small clearing, I had to stop. I knew the day was ending and I would need to make camp to await tomorrow. The raven seemed to sense my decision and vanished into the dense canopy above me.

I have eaten more of the pemmican and some dried fruit. With no game to be seen, I hope my food will hold out until I am done here. Tomorrow I will use the sun to guide me farther northward. By the map I consulted before I left, I have maybe another two days’ trek ahead of me until I emerge on the other end of this woods.

June 27

I must get this down on paper for those who find me. My hands shake so badly that I find it difficult to hold the pen, but it must be done. Others must be warned. The forest is indeed alive and does not want me here. Was it only two days ago that I was joyously hiking through these woods, oblivious to its dangers? I look at the date I last wrote and cannot believe it is true. Surely I have been here a month—the time stretches somehow . . . [this last word is scrawled]

Let me begin again while I still have my strength or, more important, my sanity. The raven had led me to the clearing, and I planned to bed down there for the night. Hours later but still pitch dark beneath the fir trees, I was awakened by a sound. It was a moaning cry, full of anguish, maybe pain. Fully alert, I lit my lantern and crept from my bedroll. The clearing held no creature, so I ventured beyond, into the trees in the direction of the cry. I searched as best I could. I had left my crossbow with my pack. If I were attacked, all would be lost.

At last, after what seemed like hours, I found the source of the cry. God help me, it was a face—a kind of face, at least. Enmeshed in fir needles and cones, the thing contorted its mouth and howled at me. I stepped back in fright, so awful was its expression. When I turned to flee back to my makeshift camp, fir boughs blocked my path. Again and again I attempted to push through them, but they would not allow me passage. Exhausted, I remember collapsing to the ground, where I must have  fallen  asleep . . . [the last few words are scrawled]

Later

[This final handwritten entry is very difficult to decipher. We have printed it here to make it easier to read.]

Don’t know when this is.

Am I still alive? Or is this hell?

The trees.

Want to escape.

Have tried.

They won’t let me. Never.

No food.

No water.

Bird.

Black bird. On the ground beside me.

Eyes. It sees me.

Stays away from my grasp.

I will roll up my journal.

Message. Important.

It pecks at my amulet.

I push the trinket toward it.

Maybe the bird knows . . .

Top 10 factoids about trees

These are in no particular order or significance. With spring underway in this area, the trees are beginning to leaf out, bringing a welcome green to the landscape. Here are 10 interesting facts about trees.

1. Although you might think that the tree trunk you’re leaning against is packed full of water and nutrients flowing up and down, most of the trunk is dead tissue. Only the outside layers of a trunk are alive.

2. A tree’s age is written in its growth rings. Each year, a tree in a temperate climate forest adds two rings: one in the spring and one in the summer. The spring ring is usually wider than the summer ring.

3. The glorious leaf colors that tinge the autumn landscape are a part of the leaf throughout the spring and summer, but during the growing season, chlorophyl production is high. The green of the chlorophyl is reflected, and we see that color as the dominant one. In the fall, chlorophyl production plummets, and the oranges, reds and yellows step into the sunlight.

4. The ironwood tree is also called the American hophornbeam or the Eastern hophornbeam. It is one of the hardest of the hardwoods, and in the past was used to make tool handles.

5. The ash tree, now decimated in many parts of the U.S. because of the emerald ash borer, has a long history. In Norse mythology, the ash tree Yggdrasil was known as the “world tree” because of its importance to their way of life. In terms of utility, ash wood is flexible, allowing it to be fashioned into items such as walking sticks, bentwood chairs, and wagon wheels. The wood was also used in baseball bats.

6. The bark of some trees contains chemical properties with medicinal uses. Examples include the bark from cinchona (quinine to treat malaria), oak (an antiseptic), and willow (pain relief and anti-inflammatory qualities).

7. The world’s largest tree is the giant sequoia or redwood. Although these trees (some as tall as 325 feet, or 30 stories high) once grew throughout the U.S. and other parts of North America, they now are found only in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

8. The apple tree holds a place in scientific history. Isaac Newton developed the theory of gravitation (in the 17th century) after supposedly seeing an apple fall from a tree and wondering why the fruit fell straight down instead of sideways. Gravitational force is what makes the apple fall downward, the same force that keeps your feet on the ground—and the Earth in orbit around the Sun.

9. The pawpaw tree produces the largest native edible fruit in North America. The pawpaw fruit is similar in taste to the banana, but looks like a small green potato.

10. Trees can communicate with one another, via an underground network of roots and fungi. Their communal, interdependent existence is similar to an insect colony.

Gloria

Part of "A Fish Out of Water" (Fall 2023)

The ocean opened up a whole new world to me. What had I known about the Atlantic before the day I walked into it with Hudson? As a landlubber, the sea was blue or gray, depending on the weather; it was fun to spend time lying next to, and it was so big, it stretched to the horizon.

But deep beneath the surface, it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. The endless patterns of sunlight filtered through the water. Darting schools of mackerel. Lumbering leatherbacks. Outposts of oysters.  And I never had to surface for a gulp of air.  My lovely tail fin moved me through the water so easily I almost forgot how my legs once worked.

It was a dream come true—until I realized that Hudson was interested in more than just showing me around his kingdom.

“Marina, this is Gloria, my mate,” Hudson said to a small, lumpy merperson. We hovered in the water—I guess that’s the best way to describe it—near a cavity on the rocky bottom, in what Hudson said was his colony. “And,” he added, with a glance at me, “Gloria, this is Marina. She oversees the colony.”

Mate? This was only our first date and already he was claiming me? How medieval was that?

“Hudson?” I tried to say, “we need to talk,” but although I could breathe just fine, my voice was altered. Instead of words, my voice produced musical tones.

Marina gave me a sharp look, her eyes drilling into me, then she turned back to Hudson.

“What have you done?” She swam closer to me and grabbed an arm, turning me toward him. “You’ve brought a human into our realm and transformed her.”

I tried to pull away from her grasp, but Hudson gently stopped me and smiled. “Yes, I have.” He touched my chin with his fingertips. “It was necessary. Without a mate, I would not be able to help grow the colony, and you forbade me from moving onto the land permanently.”

Now I had become not only his mate but also the bearer of his children. I shook my head. “We’re moving too fast,” I said, but once again, my words were of song.

Blowing out a stream of bubbles, Marina frowned. “Can you not feel the change? The shifting shadows, the shock that echoed across the plateau? Can you not hear it in the music that she speaks? You’ve threatened our hard-won peace with your foolishness.”

Hudson moved away from Marina with a small flip of his tail. “I feel nothing. You’re old, Marina. Caught in a net of the old ways.”

“I tell you, you’ve brought trouble, Hudson. Look at this.” She gestured toward me. “The wing nubs have already sprouted. She will soon complete her metamorphosis. And when that happens, the hunter fins will exact their toll.”

I finally pulled away from her. “Leave me alone,” I said, but my words did not emerge, only more tones. It was a language I didn’t know or understand, yet I was speaking it.

Frightened now, I flipped my own tail and surged away from the colony’s outpost. My rush through the water outstripped any speed I’d mustered on land. I should have been exhilarated, but I couldn’t put aside my inability to speak. Something was happening to me that I couldn’t stop.

Unless . . .

Pointing my head toward the surface, I sped upward. When I broke free of the water, I gasped. With relief, I breathed the salt air. That much was still the same.

The necklace Hudson had placed so tenderly around my neck: If I removed it, I could revert back to my old self—the person with two legs and two feet I’d started out the day as.  Or so I hoped.

Using my tail fin to keep me at the surface, I worked the necklace over my head and flung the shelled strand away from me. The strand floated. Almost immediately, it was as though my head was in a plastic bag—I sucked in the air and got no relief.

Ever more panicked, I waited in vain for the transformation, understanding that I would suffocate if too much time elapsed. The necklace stayed near, bobbing in mockery of my plight.

A head emerged to my left. Hudson grabbed the necklace and placed it back around my neck. He pulled me under the water and led me farther out from the shore.

He held my arms so that I would look at him.

“Gloria, you must wear the necklace in order to breathe.”

I shut my eyes and felt the tears—could I cry underwater?  “You lied to me,” I tried to say. “I don’t know what you are, but this is not what I want.” Mom, Dad, Ben—even Trevor. The Crab Shack. My life on land. All incredibly appealing now that I was … a fish. But I couldn’t get the words out.

Thrashing my tail, I swam down to the sea bottom and then cruised among the debris of sunken boats and jetsam cast off by fishing vessels over the years. I needed to get away to think.

If I could turn into a mermaid, logic held that it was a two-way street: I should be able to turn back. Ripping off the necklace almost killed me. There had to be another way. A memory jolted me: Hudson walking into the Crab Shack. Hudson breathing air and strolling on the beach on two legs. He held the proof that it was possible to morph from one species to another—and back.

As the minutes slipped by, I gradually became aware of the shadows that passed above me. One, two, three at least, circling in a lazy pattern, drawing near.

Sharks. Hunter fins, Marina had called them.

“I mean you no harm,” I called to the gray beasts. My tones seemed to agitate them, and they circled faster and lower, just above my head.

“Tritoness,” they said, and somehow I absorbed their speech. “You bring war upon our kind.”

I held still, almost motionless, except for the cycling of my gills. Did sharks eat merpeople? I scanned the seabed without moving my head, searching for a weapon to ward off the attack if it came. Armed with a rock the size of my fist, I spoke, the fear I felt causing my tones to warble. “I’ve done nothing to you. Let me be.”

The largest of the three beasts passed within a few feet of me. Its gray flank flipped ninety degrees to expose its mouth, arrayed with rows of teeth.

“Your wings give you away, Tritoness.”

Wings? Only then I realized that the “wing buds” Marina had referenced were now  appendages that swirled from my back like wings. What was I?

Lazily, the shark approached me again. “We will allow you passage—to return to the colony. Tell them we will give them one sun cycle. Those who have not departed by then will be slain . . . and eaten.”

 Reluctantly, I returned to the colony, but I had nowhere else to go. This was all Hudson’s fault. He had led me into the water, given me the necklace that I now depended on to survive.

I’d barely crossed the colony’s threshold when someone shouted, “There she is.”

A group of merfolk gathered around me, much as the sharks had done, but this time I was trapped. Where was Hudson?

“You’ve felt the sea change.” Marina hovered beyond and slightly above the encircling merfolk. “You’ve seen the shadows of the hunter fins,” she said. “This tritoness is the cause of that. Her merwings are now full grown. Hudson has brought a siren into our midst.”

 The merfolk murmured, their faces flickering with fear.

“It’s only a matter of time before the hunter fins swoop down and destroy us,” Marina continued.

I’m not a siren, I wanted to say. I’m a woman, a land woman. But that would only make things worse. Besides, I needed to warn them, to pass along the shark’s threat. How could I possibly make myself understood?

More merfolk joined the knot around me, one of them Hudson. He pushed himself through the crowd and joined me at the center.

“You’re wrong, Marina,” Hudson said. “This change was inevitable. The center cannot hold.”

“I’ll not be the one that wakes the slumbering beast,” she said. “You … you and your human”—this she said with a down-turned mouth—“are banished from this colony. You cannot return, under penalty of death.”

“No,” I said. I shook my head and tried to pantomime the sharks’ attacking. “Listen to me.”

Hudson swept me away with him. “We can’t fight this, Gloria.”

*

We swam farther out to sea, where the bottom drops off into the land of the whales and porpoises. A small smack of jellyfish floated near us when we stopped. Hudson looked stunned. I felt only anger—topped with fear. Anger at Hudson for luring me into the water for his own purposes. Terror at being trapped in a world where I didn’t belong. I knew I was going to die.

“Where will we go? The colony is all I’ve ever known.” Hudson moved his tail fin slowly to keep himself in place. A jellyfish drifted between us, its orange bell glimmering.

“That’s no haven either,” I said. “The sharks—” I stopped. My words still came out as tones, but the jellyfish lit up in pulses that matched my speech.

“The hunter fins?” he said.

He’d finally heard my words!

I hurried to add, “They’re going to slaughter the colony if everyone doesn’t leave within twenty-four hours. They told me to tell the colony . . . “ But no one listened.

Again, the jellyfish pulsed, and Hudson appeared to hear. He seemed to wake up at these words. “I’ve got to warn them.” He started to head off, but turned back to me with a frown. “If I return, they’ll kill me. We were banished.”

“And if you don’t return, they’ll all be killed.”

We both held ourselves steady in the water, as several moments ticked by. The jellyfish continued to linger near.

“Why do the sharks hate the colony?” I finally said. “They blamed me for all of this, but I’ve done nothing. Can’t you just let me return to my human form? I’ll go back to my family, and you’ll be forgiven, and you can save your people.”

He reached past the jellyfish to gently caress my cheek. “What’s done is done. You are a siren. It must be part of your genetic past, that you have ties to Parthenope, Ligeia, Leucosia, and others from antiquity. Your full transformation means that you come from mer-blood.”

The jellyfish flashed white and contracted its bell to shoot out from between us. The sharks had returned, surrounding us not with a trio but an entire frenzy.

So I was never going back.

Given the sharks’ reappearance, I didn’t have much time to grieve over that loss. I could either flee or stay and fight, and neither option held the promise of a good outcome. Or, I could shift my perspective.

If I was a siren, my voice should be able to affect others. Dredging up information from an Intro to World Mythology class, I remembered that sirens lured sailors to their death. Perhaps I could lure the sharks away from Hudson, as well as the colony. What did I have to lose, besides my life?

“Come with me,” I sang. “Let me show you paradise.” I beckoned with my arms.

“Gloria, don’t,” Hudson said, trying to hold me back. “It’s too dangerous. There are too many of them.”

I blew him a kiss and swam away, repeating the refrain of “come with me.”

And the frenzy followed, almost drunken in their path. Now that I’d started the lure, I knew I wouldn’t be able to pause or they would attack. My plan was to draw them to the pier area. I could emerge from the water and still breathe, but they would die on the beach.

Gloria, Trevor's Sister

Part of "A Fish Out of Water" (Spring 2023)

The truth was, despite my loud objections, I didn’t have a work shift that day. It was a lie; I admit it. But I’m nineteen and summer seasons are short, and it’s not every day you’re invited to hang out with a hunk named Hudson. Driving myself to the rendezvous was my strategy. No one would be the wiser.

Until Trevor intervened, ruining my plan. It’s the curse of having a younger brother: They never listen.

I was starting to hyperventilate when Ben finally came to the rescue and offered to drive me to work. Okay, not my first choice, but I would take it.

“I’ll drop you at the diner on my way to pick up Sarah. Mom’ll get you later.”

He headed out of the neighborhood and onto Beach Shore Drive.

“I’m not a baby, you know.” I rolled my eyes for extra effect. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, like making a big stink when you couldn’t have my car?” Ben can be snarky, too. He’s had it in for me ever since I arrived home as a newborn, supplanting him as the focus of our parents’ attention.

I looked in my purse as the blocks ticked past, ignoring him, and pulled out my work shift sheet. I feigned shock. “Can’t be,” I said.

Ben took the bait. “What?”

I sighed, perhaps a smidge dramatically. “You’re going to kill me, but it looks like I actually don’t have a shift today. False alarm.”

Ben swerved the car to the shoulder and slammed on the brakes. “You little—”

“I’m really sorry,” I interrupted, trying to sound sorry. His eyes were throwing knives at me. “I don’t have a shift, but I do have plans.”

“Those plans do not involve me.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “In fact, you can get out right here and walk back home. It’s probably only half a mile.”

This was not going as I’d hoped. “Just drop me at Oyster and Main.” I let a bit of pleading slip into my voice. “It’s also on your way to Sarah’s.”

With the engine idling, Ben stared at me for a few beats. “You aren’t doing anything stupid, are you?”

I shook my head.

“Like running away, or meeting that nice axe murderer from the wanted poster at the post office?” He continued to stare.

If anyone could keep a secret in our family, Ben was it. Trevor, forget it; he’s ratted on me too many times to count. And Dad—well, he’s got Mom, and everything he hears he passes on to her.

I put a finger to my lips. “I have a date. I know Mom and Dad won’t like him, so you can’t say a word.”

“Do I know the guy?”

“No.” When Ben didn’t respond, I added, “His name’s Hudson. He’s nice. I met him at the Clam Shack.” And so good-looking he took my breath away, but that wasn’t for Ben to know.

Ben shrugged. “It’s your love life. But since you’ve asked me a favor, I’ll ask you one back, and then we’re even.”

I grinned in victory. “Sure.”

He paused. “I may not be back today, but don’t tell Mom and Dad. Sarah and I . . .” He ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. “Let’s just say, we have plans, too.”

***

Hudson sat at one of my tables during the first shift of the summer. He resembled a Greek god, with a mop of brown curls, sculpted biceps, and a chest broad enough to sport the word Brigantine without wrinkling the letters. I pegged him as an Olympic swimmer training at the Shore.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune. This was the summer I’d have the fling that Carly and Jenn boasted of last year. It was their turn to be jealous.

The first time he’d appeared at the Clam Shack, Carly had sized him up and decided to take over that table. She’s got two years’ seniority over me, so I couldn’t do a thing about it. Then Jenn muscled in the next time he showed up for lunch. But funny thing is, they gave me back that table—and Hudson. No persuasion needed.

“What’s up?” I finally asked Carly during a lull, as we rolled the flatware into napkin bundles.

She placed a handful of flatware rolls in the storage basket.  “Nothing,” she said, then looked at me slyly. “He’s all yours, Gory.”

“You know I hate that nickname.”

She just grinned. From the day I’d started at the Clam Shack, she’d dubbed me Gory, all because I blanched when Frank, the owner, plunked live crabs into a boiling pot.

“He’s too weird for us,” she said. “A slob. And damp, too.” Her nose wrinkled.

I’d be my own judge of that, I decided.

The next time he arrived at the Shack, I was finally able to attend to him myself. I rushed over to where he was seated, at table four, beneath the suspended, stuffed swordfish.

“Hi,” I said, hoping my Clam Shack shirt still looked fresh. Sexy was too much to ask. “I’m Gloria, your waitress today. What can I get you?” How about me with a side of steel-cut fries?

His eyes, two pools of seafoam green, met mine. In a blink, I was transported to my favorite place in the world: floating in the surf, on my back, face to the never-ending sky, watching the gulls circle and dive.

“Two crabcake sandwiches, please,” he said, his voice soft and deep, with the hint of an accent.

With effort, I pulled myself back to the Shack, to the table, and flipped open my order pad. “The usual condiments? Coleslaw? Chips? Anything to drink? We have soda, iced tea, water.”

His teeth, when he smiled, gleamed, and his face relaxed into a friendliness that was an invitation to . . .

Somehow I was sitting opposite him. Quickly, I glanced around for Frank, who would yell at me for taking too much time with a customer. The place was packed for lunch.

“Gloria,” Hudson said. My name coming from his lips sounded, well, glorious. Totally unlike the way Trevor usually spat it out.

“I’ve got to get back to work.” I pushed myself to my feet, as though the pockets of my shorts were filled with lead. “As you can see, we’re super busy.” Glancing back at my order pad to give myself time to regroup, I added, “I’ll have your crabcakes in just a few.”

For the next hour I battled the chaos of lunchtime, juggling eight tables, including number four. Hudson slipped away just after I handed him the check. Disappointed, I bussed the table. He’d left crumbs and spills, smears of crabcake sauce, wadded-up napkins.  Remembering Jenn’s words, I wiped corner to corner on the table, following Frank’s strict busing instructions, A sheen of moisture remained on the vinyl cushion where Hudson had sat. I shrugged. This was a beach diner, filled with folks who had spent the day riding the waves or wallowing in the water. Dampness was a given.

I picked up the payment book and headed to the register. Nestled inside with a wrinkled twenty, which more than covered his meal and my clean-up, was a scrap of paper.

Meet me at Oyster and Main tomorrow an hour before midday.

***

“Here,” I said, pointing as Ben rolled to a stop at the corner.

Ours was a typical beach town. At that corner three blocks from the dunes, where the land lay flat as the proverbial pancake, it was obvious no one was waiting. I gulped in disappointment, wondering if I’d guessed what Hudson meant correctly. Ben shot me a dubious look.

“He’ll be here; I’m just early. I’ll be fine.” I opened the passenger door, praying that Hudson hadn’t stood me up.

“Wait.” Ben’s brow furrowed. “I’ll be responsible if something happens to you.”

With a huff, I stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. “I’ll be fine,” underlining my repeated phrase by raising my voice.

“She will be fine.” Hudson put a damp arm around my shoulders, peering into the car. “Don’t worry, big brother.”

To cover my astonishment—and relief—at Hudson’s sudden appearance, I leaned through the open door. “See?” I was pleased that Ben’s jaw had dropped. He nodded and drove away.

It was then that part of me pointed out I didn’t know Hudson at all beyond his good looks, his apparent slovenliness when dining, and a propensity to wear wet clothing. What if he was an axe murderer? I’d just sent away my lifeline, promising him that I was perfectly safe.

“You are perfectly safe,” Hudson said, his arm still comfortably around my shoulders.

Had I spoken aloud?

A pay phone stood five feet away, and I stepped to it, searching my pockets for a quarter. “Let me call my dad right quick, to let him know where I am.”

I saw a moment of puzzlement in his eyes.

“Beneath the surface is the best way to call,” he said. “The vibrations travel more quickly via saltwater.” With a gentle but firm hand, he turned me away from the phone.  “In any case, your father knows where you are. We will send a message later.”

“But—” Prickles made the hair rise on my scalp.

“We do not have much time if you want to see what I have to show you.”

The breeze lifted his curls and swept up small whirlwinds of sand, ever present along the sidewalk.

I heard Carly’s words. He’s too weird. Still, something drew me to him, and whatever it was lay deeper than his good looks. I felt like the tide being pulled by the moon.

“Gloria.” My name again sounded magnificent on his tongue, like the clear chime from a large bronze bell. He placed one finger on my cheek to turn my face to his . . .

The sun shimmered, and we stood on a narrow strand of beach, high dunes and sea grass behind us, the blue ocean lapping at our feet. My idea of heaven.

“How did you do that?” I shook my head to clear the haze that seemed to fog my vision.

Hudson smiled, and I suddenly didn’t care what magic he was wielding. All was right with the world.

A loud pop and the guttural roar of a single prop plane pulled us out of our reverie. We were no longer alone, but surrounded by the usual towel and beach umbrella crowd of a summer day at the Jersey Shore. The plane pulled a banner that floated behind it: Sandcastle Contest Today.

I grabbed Hudson’s arm. “This’ll be fun. Let’s go.”

“A castle of sand is ephemeral,” he said, his steps slowing. “The first wave would demolish it.”

“That’s the fun of it,” I said and led the way through the knots of sunbathers and picnickers.

Cordoned off from the beachgoers, the expanse of sand reserved for the contest had been transformed into a wonderland of strange creatures and ornate fortresses.

“Hey, girl!” Hannah hurried to me. We’d gone to high school together, and now she was running an events business in town. “You’re a townie, Gloria,” she said, beaming. “Would you mind serving as one of our judges? And your friend—Hannah’s eyes roamed Hudson’s magnificent physique and I felt a twinge of possessive jealousy—he’s welcome to judge as well.”

We walked among the sculpted creations, eating fried fish on a stick and later, chocolate dipped ice cream cones. Hudson laughed at the cyclops with the seaweed hair and the giant clam edged with teeth. “The sea has nothing like this.” Then, he rounded a nearby castle turret and stopped. I nearly stepped on his heels.

“Bruno!”  

He was focused on an octopus the size of a small car. But was it an octopus? The sculptor had added too many arms.

“Someone you know?” I teased.

Hudson bent down to examine the carefully fashioned tentacles, his lightheartedness gone, replaced by a seriousness that was new to me. I sank down beside him. He sighed, then got back to his feet.

“Gloria,” he whispered, and even in that low voice, my name on his lips sounded sacred. “It is late. Time to go.” He again touched my cheek with his fingertips and we were back on that narrow patch of sand, with no one around.

He stripped off his tee and wrapped my purse in it. He tucked the small package into a thicket of grasses.

“No one will take it,” he said.

“Where are we?” This was no section of shore I’d ever walked on.

“This is what I can show you,” he said, an arm outstretched toward the horizon. “You are not afraid of the water, no?”

Water, no. Strange man, maybe.

“Why me, Hudson?”

He crinkled his nose into a frown. “I do not understand you.”

I stepped away from him. “Why are you asking me to do this—whatever it is? You don’t know me at all.”

Clouds scudded overhead, racing inland. The sea grass whipped in a frenzy, and the surf churned. As Hudson stood on the beach, watching me, I felt in my gut that the wind and waves were his doing. Don’t ask me how.

“Ah, but I do know you, Gloria. You yearn for freedom, as do I.” He pulled from the pocket of his jammers a thin strand of shells, exquisitely tiny, and slipped it over my head. That small act stirred a dim memory: a birthmark on my shoulder, now long faded, its shape—a fin?

“Take my hand and you will see.”

I did.

We walked steadily into the water, hand in hand, until we were chest deep. In the distance, a lifeguard blew. Then another joined in. With a kick, Hudson let go and dove under the surface. Instinctively, I followed.

By the time we reached the lighthouse point, his legs had morphed into a long fish tail. A wave washed over my head, and I marveled as I realized I had no need for lungs.

Tales Well Spun

Literary Learnings, Winter 2022

This past year, I read Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. It was her debut novel way back in 1984. She’s subsequently written more than a dozen other novels, one of which, The Night Watchman, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021.

Erdrich wasn’t new to me as an author; I’d read several of her other books. But this one started it all. According to Stephen Graham Jones, whose The Only Good Indians … I loved, she was a major influence on his writing. He cites Love Medicine in particular.

After reading the novel, I can see that influence.

In her body of work, Erdrich, who is part Chippewa, has created a fictional North Dakota area that includes a reservation and several small towns. She returns again and again to that setting, bringing certain characters back but from different vantage points. And within some of her works, including Love Medicine, she weaves the story from multiple voices. It’s a mix that’s been compared to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, another masterful tale.

In Love Medicine, we meet the members of several interrelated families—the Kashpaws, Morrisseys, and Lamartines—whose lives and loves are intertwined over several generations. 

She continues that exploration in the sequel, The Beet Queen, from 1985, and its sequel, Tracks, from 1988.

After several other books, Erdrich wrote another trilogy, beginning with A Plague of Doves, in 2008. Plague is about the fallout from an unsolved murder that happened in the previous generation.

Erdrich followed that with a dive into the legal intricacies of reservation land in The Round House, from 2012. The story starts with a rape, but it’s unclear who owns the land on which the violent crime happened. Under which jurisdiction does the crime fall? Who can arrest the suspect? Will justice be served? Does anybody outside of the reservation care?

In LaRose, the third installment in 2016, she examines the impact of tribal customs. When a man accidentally kills the young son from another family, he and his wife give up their young son to help make amends. But what about the living son’s preferences? How will this unrelated boy fit into a household steeped in grief? As you might guess, things don’t go well.

Her themes often delve into what it means to be different, what it means to be loved, and what it takes to survive. And she paints her characters with such vivid brush strokes that they live with you long after you’ve finished the book.

Erdrich’s works are highly regarded. A Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. And The Night Watchman, based on Erdrich’s grandfather, who was a night watchman at a factory, earned the prize last year. About that novel, the Pulitzer committee said:

A majestic, polyphonic novel about a community’s efforts to halt the proposed displacement and elimination of several Native American tribes in the 1950s, rendered with dexterity and imagination.

Dreaming of Electric Sheep

Literary Learnings, Summer 2021

Over the last year or so, I have read several novels and a collection of short stories by Philip K. Dick, a prolific writer of science fiction and what we might call today dystopian scenarios. In his works, he returns again and again to two basic questions: What is real? and What is human?

By coincidence, I also recently read Eric Weiner’s The Socrates Express, in which the author explores the lives and ideas of fourteen philosophers through the ages who asked more or less the same questions.

Dick, who died in 1982 at the age of 53, has been hailed by fans and critics as one of the best science fiction writers of all time. Ironically, he only wrote stories of science fiction because it was the best fit for his ideas; he longed to be a mainstream writer. His work that came closest to that goal was The Man in the High Castle, an alternate history tale in which America and its Allies have lost World War II. It was recently made into a television series for Amazon Prime.

I turned first to Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? One of my all-time favorite movies is Blade Runner, and I had long wondered how the book that inspired the film compared. Although the book is much different in plot from the movie, Androids explores the same questions: Do humans have the only say in who lives and who dies? Do the things we as humans create have their own agency?

The climactic scene in the movie, in which android/replicant Roy Batty has reached the end of his programmed, four-year lifespan, touches me every time I see it. His is a very human lament—that when he “dies,” all of his memories die with him.

The end of Androids is darker, less upbeat, as is often the case in Dick’s fiction. In the novel, Deckard is married, and he returns home after dispatching the menacing androids. With him, he brings what he thinks is a real toad–a miraculous find because they have become extinct in this dystopian future. It’s his wife who discovers that the toad is essentially a robot, not real after all. Or maybe that reality is what the “natural world” has become: where household pets and domestic animals are all artificial even if they act like the “real” thing.

According to a New York Times essay about Dick, critics have often compared his writing to that of Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, and Italo Calvino. I can see why. The mixing of the real and unreal is something that all four do, and do well.

Jonathan Lethem, author and screenwriter (Motherless Brooklyn), wrote of Dick’s lifelong exploration of his key questions:

“[Dick] sought to answer them in any framework he thought might suffice. By the time of his death, he’d tried and discarded many dozen such frameworks. The questions remained. It is the absurd beauty of their asking that lasts.”

Dick’s short stories address those two questions, and also play with time. In “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts,” the title characters, like astronauts attempting to reach space, try to make it to the future, only to blow themselves up on their return. They end up (maybe) stuck in a time loop, doomed, a la Groundhog Day, to repeat the sequence over and over for eternity.

And in “Minority Report,” made into a movie of the same name, time and reality are fluid. If you can predict the future, can you change it?

In “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” the main character, Douglas Quail, takes a “memory implant” trip to Mars and realizes that he’s been there before. Yes, this was the premise of the movie adapted from the story: Total Recall. But the Dick story is more satisfying because it relies on Quail’s intelligence instead of his brawn to resolve the mystery of who he really is. And the twist ending is perfect. (Interestingly, Neil Gaiman did a riff on the theme with his short story “We Can Get It for You Wholesale.”)

Of the stories of Dick that I’ve read–and I have many more to go (he wrote about 150)—the one that strikes me as the most whimsical is “King of the Elves.” In this story, Shadrach Jones, an ordinary guy who works at a gas station in Derryville, a small, ordinary town, ends up as the leader of the Elves, who are battling the evil Trolls. Who knew there were Elves or Trolls in Derryville?

In the Delivery

 Dianna Sinovic

(Featured, Spring 2017)

The right rear tire blew just blocks away from his second stop of the night. Julius heard the rubber flapping against the pavement and cursed his bad luck. He was already running late and still had a third pizza to deliver.

            It was a fitting end to a trying day. He’d overslept and missed his first class, flunked the calculus test because he’d blown off studying to attend a friend’s CD launch party, and now a flat. With only about fifty bucks left in the bank, he’d have to ask his dad for a loan. Your brother never has to ask for money. Yeah, well, Miles is perfect and I’m just average, as you so often remind me.

            Julius pulled into the driveway on Highquarters, one half of a brick duplex. He opened the back door of the car and lifted out a large box of sausage and onion pizza. The steam rose from the box against the evening's chill.

            He shivered as he pushed the doorbell. From inside, he heard the thunder of TV explosions, interspersed with thumps, crashes, and loud dialogue. "Pizza!" After a moment with no response but another splintering crash, he pounded on the door. Sherilee and her husband, Roy, were regulars. Every other Friday, one large pie, sometimes hamburger, most times sausage. Sherilee always gave him a five-dollar tip and a warm smile. Roy was usually yelling from the living room for Sherilee to bring the pizza in before it got cold.

            Julius pulled on the storm door but it was locked.  This wasn’t like Sherilee. 

            He pulled out his cell phone to call Giustino, his boss, but it was dead. "Shit!" If he left for the next delivery, this pie would be too cold to bring back. If he stayed much longer, the other pie would cool past the point of return.

            He walked next door and rang the bell. The light overhead came on and the door opened cautiously. A thin man, perhaps in his sixties, in a blue bathrobe, looked out at him. 

            "Sorry to bother you, but I'm trying to deliver a pizza next door."

            "No one is home." The man in the bathrobe spoke with a slight accent. Was he a Turk? Italian? Julius couldn't tell. The room behind him was dim and quiet.

            Julius explained again about the pizza. He gestured with the box and his free hand, as if that would give his words more meaning.

            "They are not at home," the guy in the bathrobe insisted.

            "The hell they aren't," Julius said, exasperated. "Excuse my language but Sherilee gets a pizza every other Friday. This is their Friday. They have to be home." It was useless to go on. "Okay, well, thanks." The door shut behind him as he turned away. He tried the door bell at Sherilee’s one more time. Still just the explosive soundtrack. Giustino would be pissed, but it wasn't his fault.

            He put the pie in the insulated bag out of habit. It was already cold, and the other pie wasn't exactly hot by now. Then he remembered the flat tire. He got out the flashlight he kept under the driver's seat to find street numbers at night. The right rear tire was sitting on the rim. He lifted out three boxes of books he was keeping for Tavy and found the jack, but the spare was flabby. The whole night was going to be a wash. Maybe Giustino would spring Alessandro to finish the route. Sandy would rather be driving his Mustang around town than busing tables, but his uncle knew better than to turn him loose for a whole evening.

            Julius rang the bathrobe guy’s doorbell again. After a moment, the door opened a crack, as before.

            "They are not at home," the man said. He was barefoot and still wearing the robe.

            "I know. I'm not here about the pizza," Julius said. "I have a flat tire." He spoke each word distinctly, trying to get his point across. "I need to use your phone. I need to call someone for help."

            "I let you use the phone, you leave the pizza." The man was matter-of-fact.

            "Well." Julius was surprised. In the two years he had worked for La Italia, he had never bartered for payment. Dead-beats, yes, people a buck or two (or three) short, prank deliveries, but not a trade. "I'm not sure I'm allowed to do that." The man didn't respond but continued to look out the door at him. Julius ran through the rationale in his mind: If he didn't hand over the pie, he would have to walk at least half a mile to the gas station at the corner of Highway 42. It might be closed for the day. He could try another house in the neighborhood, but it was already late. "I'll be right back," Julius said.

                                                            ***

            Inside the house, Julius set the pizza box on the kitchen table, and the man handed him a portable phone.   

            "I'll just be a minute," Julius said. He held out his hand. "By the way, I'm Julius."

            "Spiridon Petalas," the man acknowledged, then opened the pizza box.

            Julius called Giustino. Sandy had just left with three pies but would pick Julius up on his way back. Then he called Tavy.

            "Julius!" she hissed. "I'm supposed to be taking reservations. You know this is the crunch. We're backed up and I'm getting dirty looks from the wait list."

            He told her about the flat. He couldn't talk about the weird delivery, with Spiridon standing in the same room, eating Sherilee's pie.

            "I'll get you at Giustino's when I get off. You're sure you can't get the flat fixed tonight?" She sounded halfway annoyed. He heard her muffle the phone to answer someone’s question. Then she was back, her voice softened to almost a whisper. “I’ve gotta go, babe. But be careful. And don't lose my books."

            "Not a problem. They're safe." He handed the phone back to Spiridon. "Thanks."

            "You want a piece? I share with you. You sit down, wait."

            Julius was not in the mood to hang out with a stranger in a bathrobe, making small talk and eating pizza. He wanted to put the day behind him, to forget the flat, the bad grades, the doubt that ate at him when he talked to Tavy.

She had sat next to him in Econ 101 the second week of class and they shared a laugh as the guy in the next seat over started snoring. Later, she confided in him her dream – to own her own restaurant. She had her path already planned: work as a server and learn the ropes while getting a degree in business. He admired her ambition and fell for her gray eyes. Now she wanted to move in with him to save rent money – they both would, she reasoned. But did it go beyond that? He just couldn’t tell.

"Thanks, but I need to get the spare on. Then I can move the car out of the driveway."

            "Your name is Julius," Spiridon said, slipping another pizza slice from the box. "Like the emperor, Caesar."

            "He wasn't really an emperor."

            "Wienie, weedy, witchy."

            Julius shook his head. The night was getting weirder.

            Spiridon repeated the words, with a knowing look. He pointed at Julius' right wrist, at the small, tattooed words veni vidi vici.

            Julius felt his face flush. "Just a stupid thing to do, I guess."

            "You inscribe the words on your body because you would like to think you are Caesar, yes?"

            "Of course not." Julius was embarrassed to realize how easily this man who did not know him could uncover his fantasy. He was tired of competing for his father’s approval. Miles was always first – the older son, the better son, and Julius was forever second rate. Someday, he would show both of them, when he was at the top of his game. If he could only figure out what that was. He envied Tavy’s assurance about her future. He daydreamed of making the next big tech breakthrough, of leading the IT industry with his mastery, but he’d never get there if he couldn’t even pass math. "Caesar ruled the Roman Empire. I deliver pizzas and go to community college. There's no comparison."

            "But you dream." Spiridon took a bottle of clear liquid and two shot glasses out of a cupboard. He poured a small amount of liquid into each glass. "To your dream." He held up his glass and motioned for Julius to pick up the other.

            "I'm not supposed to—" Julius started, but the man looked at him so fiercely that he fell silent and held the glass up. Spiridon drained his glass in one swallow, his eyes closed, and Julius followed, his eyes tearing up at the intensity of the alcohol. The man refilled the glasses and led the way for round two. Julius gasped as the second shot burned his throat, and he put his glass down. "I need to go now," he said before Spiridon could refill it again. "My friend will be by any minute." Sandy wouldn't hesitate to rat on Julius if he got drunk.

            "One more, one more," the man said, pouring a third round. "Then you go. You give me pizza, I must be a good host."

            "I can't. I appreciate it, but—" Again Julius stopped in mid-sentence. Again the two men, one old, one young, swallowed the fiery liquor. The warmth spread through Julius' chest and into his arms. "Thanks." He walked to the front door more gingerly than he had come in.

            The man was behind him. "Julius, you know the date for today, yes?"

            "It's Friday, yeah. Have a good weekend, Mr. Petalas."

            "I mean the number on the calendar."

            "March fifteenth." His head was swimming, but the date finally registered. "Shit, it's the Ides."

           "Watch yourself, Julius. The day is not over yet."

            Julius took Tavy's books back out of the trunk, heaved out the spare and set up the jack. Four lug nuts came off with some effort, but the fifth would not budge. He took a rock from Sherilee's flower bed and began pounding on the wrench, hoping the extra force would loosen the nut. His head buzzed from the alcohol and he sat down for a moment, leaning against a low stone wall that edged the driveway. The ground was cold, but it didn't matter. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, his thoughts slip-sliding into one another. He woke when it began to drizzle. He pushed himself off the gravel and moved Tavy's boxes into the trunk once more. He kept hammering on the lug wrench with the rock.

            Alessandro pulled up, his high beams on. "Hey, Jules, let's roll. I got to get back. My uncle's bitching 'cause I'm taking too long."

            "I've got to get the car out of the driveway." Julius pounded on the wrench.

            "Let me try."

Julius handed him the rock. "Be my guest."

            Sandy stepped closer and sniffed. "You're drunk."

            "No, I'm not."

            Sandy grinned, which in the glint of the flashlight made him look especially sadistic. "You're gonna get canned." 

            "Fuck off, Sandy. Just see if you can get the nut loose."

            Sandy worked with the wrench for a few minutes, cursing when he lost his grip and brought the rock down on his thumb. "It won't move." He threw the rock down. "You're stuck here. You want a ride or not?"

            "Hey! What's going on here?" A woman stood at the front of the car, anger in her voice. She was silhouetted against the duplex’s porch light, and Julius couldn't see her face, but he recognized her voice.

            “Sherilee?”

            She stepped closer to the two men. “Who’s that?” she demanded.

            “Pizza delivery. You didn’t answer your door.”

            “Oh, the pizza.” She laughed, a short bark full of sarcasm. “Of course.”

            "Do you still want it?" He prayed she would say no. Her pie was on Spiridon’s kitchen table, half-eaten.

            "I think I broke every plate in the cupboard," she said.

            "Excuse me?"

            "I threw one and it felt so good to see it shatter, that I threw another, and another.”  She was talking more to herself than to Julius.

            "What?" The night had shifted from off-kilter to bizarre.

            "I pictured his face on the wall and I aimed at it. That bastard. Orders a pizza, then delivers the killer—he’s leaving.” She almost spit the last two words.

            "She offed him?" Sandy said, loud enough for Sherilee to hear.

            "Shut up." Julius said. This night was more than he’d bargained for.

 “He said we were a mistake.” Sherilee spoke slowly, with vehemence. “A mistake!” She gave another short laugh. “He’s going to Aruba with someone he met at work."

            Sandy whistled in appreciation. "It's nice there. My cousin and his friends went a couple of years ago."

            Julius turned the flashlight on Sandy. “You are truly a moron.”

            “Whatever," Sandy said, his hands up. "I gotta get back. You coming?”

            Julius turned back to Sherilee. He had to find out something first. Gently he asked, “Is Roy okay?”

            The faint mist turned back to a steady drizzle, and the wetness seemed to defuse Sherilee’s fury into bitterness. “I hope the hell not, wherever he is. I hope he’s hurting big time.” She pushed her damp hair out of her eyes and sighed. “I think I’ll just go back inside.”

            “Is there someone you can call? I can stay here until they come.” He’d never get back to the restaurant at this point. “Anyway, my car’s not going anywhere tonight with that flat.”

            “Suit yourself,” Sandy said. “I’m not hanging around.”

            “Tell Tavy to pick me up here, will you?”

            At the same moment Sherilee pulled open the car door. “I’ve changed my mind about the pizza.”

            Julius felt as though he had fallen into a strange continuum of time, one that started and stopped in jerks. What had Spiridon said about the Ides of March?

"I’m sorry, but I gave yours to someone else. I’ve got one with pepperoni, though."

            "You gave somebody a free pizza?" Sandy said, almost gleefully. “Wait ‘til my uncle finds out.”

            "Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it." 

            Sherilee hesitated. "But Roy doesn’t like pepperoni."

            "You said he left! Is he gone or what?"

            Sherilee began to cry.

            "That was smart, Jules." Sandy said.

            "I'm sorry, Sherilee. It's been a long day."

            "You're comparing a flat tire to my husband leaving me?"

            "Forget it. I said I was sorry." Julius sighed. 

            Sherilee blew her nose. "I thought I knew Roy, and then I found out things I didn't want to know. He denied them, of course. Then pulls his suitcase out of the closet. He puts a twenty on the table for the pizza and doesn't even say goodbye. Sixteen years and he can't say goodbye."

            "So Aruba was a guess?" Sandy said.

            "He put it in a letter. The jerk couldn't own up to it in person." 

            Sandy fake whispered to Julius. “Maybe he’s really lying in there, head bashed in, blood all over.”

            "Shut up," Julius said. It was time to finally take charge instead of letting life – his father, Miles, Sandy – walk all over him. “This is what we do. Sherilee, you are coming with us. I’m not letting you stay here, not by yourself.” Not with a houseful of broken pottery shards. “Sandy and I need to get back to work. We’ll drop you at the restaurant, and you can have a pizza on me.”

            He moved Tavy’s boxes to Sandy’s trunk, and checked that Sherilee’s house was locked. He settled Sherilee in the back seat of the Mustang next to the pizza bag and then slid into the front passenger seat. Sandy was momentarily subdued. Both he and Sherilee seemed to have accepted that he was in charge. He didn’t know how long it would last, but it felt good. “Let’s hit the road,” he said.

            At the restaurant, Julius escorted Sherilee inside and ordered her a pizza. She was smiling, if tentatively, her face streaked with mascara and her hair frizzy from the rain.

“I have a few things to take care of,” he said. “But when I’m done, you’re spending the night with me – us – my girlfriend and me.” Sherilee started to protest, but he stopped her. “We’ve got a couch. It’s no problem.” He hoped it wouldn’t be with Tavy.

Sherilee hugged him. “You’re a good kid.”

He was transferring the last book box from Sandy's trunk to the restaurant foyer when Tavy honked.

            "My books?" She took the box from his hands and groaned at the weight. Her face was flushed from the cold and damp. She looked vulnerable, a trait he'd never considered for her. "I forgot how heavy they were."

            "Then let me carry them.” At that moment, he knew he could do anything. 

            "Are you done for the night?"

            Julius nodded. "Sandy said he’d take the rest of my shift.” He paused. “Are you sure about this?"

            She looked at him, puzzled. "About carrying the boxes?"

            "You don't have any dark secrets I need to know about?"

            She laughed. "Life is full of secrets. Sometimes you have to take a chance. You have to trust your gut."

            Julius let the box of books drop into Tavy’s trunk. What had his namesake said before he crossed the Rubicon? The die is cast? "Stay right here," he said. "Two more boxes to go."  

The Top Ten . . .  

Signs of Spring

Dianna Sinovic 

Springtime: The snow finally melts into pools of mud, and the earth is reborn in 50 shades of green. These days, I live in a rural setting, but I’ve also welcomed spring in the city and watched my family’s fruit trees blossom as a girl in suburbia. Spring in the country is the best, I think. Here are some reasons why:

1.     Purple crocuses. Yes, this is the stereotypical first bloom of spring. In my yard, the small, cupped flowers keep spreading each year in an ever-wider swathe from my front door.

2.     Longer days.Minute by minute, day by day, evening recedes a bit more, and dawn arrives a tad earlier. I don’t have to drive home from work in the dark.

3.     Spring beauties. These tiny white flowers (Claytonia virginica) shout, “Spring is here!” But you have to look closely to see them, nestled among the other foliage.

4.     Tapping woodpeckers. The downy and red-bellied woodpeckers have been around all winter, but in late March and early April, they begin hammering on hollow trunks, their steady drumroll a mating call.

5.     Scurrying chipmunks. The weather is finally warm enough to entice these striped rodents—could they get any cuter?—from their dens to forage for birdseed and the almonds we put out on the porch step—just for them.

6.     Roar of mowers. After a winter of dormancy, the grass barely has time to turn green before Team Scythe fires up their engines.

7.     Pollen count. In April, the pines lining our driveway make their own clouds that drift across the lawn, the propane tank, and the car windshield, until a yellow scrim has settled over all.

8.     Odiferous olives. Invasive Russian olive shrubs, that is. Some people enjoy the intense smell of their flowers, but it turns my stomach. Another invasive, multiflora rose, might be a sly thorny troublemaker, but at least it has a delicate scent.

9.     The Bluebell Trail at BWHP.One of Bucks County’s hidden treasures, Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve is a perfect place to welcome spring back to the landscape.

10.  Wood thrush.I look forward to May 1, when the wood thrushes, catbirds, yellowthroats, phoebes, and other migrating songbirds return to Pennsylvania. I revel in their early-morning chorus, but it’s the wood thrush’s trilling, flute-like song that stops me in my tracks every time.

By the Numbers

Diana Sinovic

(Sept/Oct 2016)

My friends say I'm obsessed with ranking others, particularly men, measuring their psyches against a kind of Mohs' scale for personalities. They say I'm looking for a diamond and I'm a fool for wanting one. Diamond is a ten, the hardest mineral, able to stand up to anything—except another diamond—and come away unscarred, smooth.

But I can't help myself. My name is Mica, like the mineral, a hardness of six, maybe seven. It was my mother's idea to name me after a rock. She was in love with the chair of the geology department where she worked. I guess she was trying to impress him, and my dad didn't have a clue.

I pegged Jonah at a four—just a little harder than a copper penny—because he was too gullible. I could tell him anything, and he would swallow it and not get mad when he found out the truth. So different from Sammy, who never believed me, even when I told him to leave me alone.

I was watering flats of flowers outside the nature center when I first noticed Jonah. I saw his sandals first, the hiking kind, with the big treads. I don't wear sandals when I give tours of the preserve because of the ticks and snakes.

"Are you leading a walk today?" he asked me.

"Put on some sneakers and you can come." When he started to shake his head, I added, "I saw a water moccasin last week. On the Swamp Rose Trail."

His brown eyes widened slightly. I could see him trying to take in his surroundings, without appearing to, watching for my made-up snake. His green cargo shorts were wrinkled, but his T-shirt with Eric Clapton stenciled across the front looked fresh. He had pushed his sunglasses up on his head and they slipped back down suddenly, cutting off his stare. Instead, it was I who looked back from the lenses. Two of me, the stripe of dirt on my cheek, my frizzled brown hair, the blue collar of my shirt, damp with perspiration.

"Anyway, Kate's already left with the two o'clock walk." I pointed past the building, toward a clearing in the trees. "You missed the start. If you hurry, you can catch up. I think she was going down along the creek."

He watched me watering. "You didn't answer my question."

I gave him a private walk. I wasn't supposed to. The rules for trail docents say unequivocally: Nature walks must be for groups of at least two. That's for the docents' safety, I was told the first day I led a walk. I always wondered why they thought two people couldn't be as scary and brutal as a lone predator, but out on the trail I tried not to think about that.

Jonah, I sensed, I could trust. I can read most people, and if I'm off on the hardness, it's only by one. Jonah was a definite four. Sammy, I wouldn't have invited on the trail even if three other docents were along. I led Jonah down the Switchback Trail and then down the Elderberry, to show him the falls. Everyone likes the falls, even in the summer dry spell, when they trickle more than hurtle over the brink.

Jonah stood on the edge of the creek bank, looking up at the layers of limestone and granite. The water spilled over the rim of the cliff, finding its way down in small rivulets. It made soft splashing sounds as it finally fell into the pool at the bottom. He squatted, looking intently at the pool. I liked the way his eyebrows came together as he studied the water. I squatted beside him. The pool was an inky green.

"How deep?" He tossed a small stone near his feet into the water. It sank from sight.

"Don't know. But I can push you in to find out."

He looked at me then, surprise drawing his gaze from the water. "Are you always so ..."

"Such a wiseass?"

He glanced at my docent name tag. "Mica—that's a gemstone or something, isn't it?"

"A mineral." I stood up. "My mom thought Mica was a pretty name. I guess it's better than cinnabar or galena."

Jonah came back the next day and signed up for the nature walk. I noticed he was wearing lightweight hiking boots instead of his sandals. He still had on his wrinkled cargo shorts, but the band on his shirt had changed to Nirvana. Four other people were on the walk: an older couple in matching red shirts and walking sticks, and a shy woman and her nine-year-old son, who carried a guidebook on amphibians. This time, I started off on the Columbine Trail and then turned onto the Pond Path. I knew the boy would enjoy the frogs and turtles that lie silently on the pond's still water. The day was hot, and by the time we reached our destination, the older couple needed to sit in the shade for a few minutes. The boy jumped up and down, pointing out the green frogs, with only their eyes and foreheads visible at the water's surface. They blended well with the duck weed.

Jonah watched me watching the others. "You know a lot," he said, a note of awe in his voice.

I shrugged. "It's my job. Do something every day and you get good at it."

"Unless it's something you hate." He wasn't looking at me now, but watching the boy bending toward a frog. "Then you don't care."

"Is that you?" I might be able to tell who was a softie and who was a son-of-a-bitch, but I was no good at guessing what they did in life. He could have been a bartender or a banker, for all I could tell.

Jonah didn't say anything for a moment, pretending to be interested in the boy at the pond's edge. The frog dipped beneath the surface, and the boy turned back to his mother. "I quit last week." The words were so low I almost missed them. "They were going to fire me anyway."

I reached over and squeezed his hand. "Then you're free. No more galley slave." I paused for a moment, weighing the possibilities. "Tell you what, when I'm done with this tour, you can help me with the watering. I've also got repotting to do. I could use you."

Jonah spent the next two weeks helping me and Kate and other staff members at the preserve. Two days into it, he followed me home. By the next week, he had moved in with me. Like I said, he was a real softie. Jonah, at a hardness of four, was like fluorite, a rare gemstone of deep purple.

We were in our third week together when my past caught up with me. Sammy showed up on a Wednesday evening, after I had led two walks and Jonah and I had transplanted forty sensitive ferns into larger pots. We were both ready for a shower and a beer, but Sammy was sitting on the front step of the house, blocking the way. How had he tracked me down? His brown hair, streaked with blond from the sun, was pulled back, but instead of the casual clothes I was used to seeing him in, he wore pressed twills and a polo shirt.

"Who's this?" Sammy stared at Jonah, but his tone was respectful and he rose to shake hands. "I'm Sam, an old friend of Mica's."

"Sam, what are you doing here?" I could feel my insides scrunch into a familiar knot. "I'm tired, Jonah's tired. We just want to get cleaned up, change clothes."

"Yeah, we're bushed but not too tired to share a beer. Come on in." Jonah seemed to have decided Sammy was no threat. I gave Jonah a warning look, but it was too late. Sammy stood up and grinned at me. Jonah and I were still on the front walk, and Sammy, on the step, with his stocky six-foot-two frame, was an unnerving presence. Was this polished politeness a show or had he really changed? Six months ago, I had dragged myself out of the relationship after nearly two years of trying to steer clear of his temper. Sammy was an eight, pure topaz and harder than nails.

Inside, Jonah and Sammy talked sports and I showered, wishing I could wash away my memories with the sweat and soil. Gradually, as winter had turned to spring and then to summer and Sammy still hadn't shown up, I had stopped looking over my shoulder. Now all systems were on red alert again.

In the kitchen, shaping burgers for the grill, I knocked over a glass, which shattered on the floor. Jonah helped me clean up the debris. Sammy was watching the news in the living room. "You're shaking, Mica." Jonah looked at me closely. "What's going on?"

I thought over what I'd told Jonah about Sammy. As far as he knew, Sammy was just an old, hot-tempered boyfriend. At first, that's all I thought he was, too. It was a rush to face him down when he was angry, demanding to know where I'd been, what I'd been doing. He grilled me no matter where I went, even when I'd been working. Hey, I've got scruples. I don't cheat. But he was a doubter, never content with my answers. A little arm twisting. A pull of the hair. A grip too hard for reasonable people to endure. "It's the truth I'm after," he would say.

Then one day I ran into a friend from high school who was chaperone for a troop of Boy Scouts taking a tour of the preserve. Colin and I were old buddies—nothing but talk and teasing, no overstepping of personal space. We agreed that I would meet him after work at a bar in New Hope to catch up. When I parked in front of the apartment later, all the lights were out, but Sammy's Camaro was there. It was probably ten-thirty—too early for Sammy to call it a day.

He was waiting in the foyer, in the dark. I didn't even have time to drop my backpack.

The ER doctor set the bone and sewed up my hand. I stayed with Kate while I healed, and my dad pushed me to file charges. I couldn't take that step.Was I afraid of Sammy or afraid of having others hear about my problems? Instead, I found a house to rent in a neighborhood Sammy didn't know and crossed my fingers.

**

Kate knew before I said a word the next morning at work. "He found you." I nodded and waved Jonah on into the visitors' center so we could talk on the steps in private. "Did you call the police?"

I told her about Sammy's surprise appearance, my anxiety attack, his new image. He had stayed for dinner but left just after I cleared the table. He hadn't argued or been rude. He did give me an odd look at the door and moved in close. I froze, but all he said, softly, was, "I’ve missed you."

"And you believe him?" Kate never liked Sammy, even before he broke my arm. She's a seven on my scale, a bit harder than me, but I don't mind. I think of her as an agate, with bright, crazy bands of crystalline color.

"I want to, but I've known him too long." Or, did I know him? Had Sammy really changed?

"Girl, do not believe him." She was emphatic. "Repeat after me, 'Sam Slater is a mean motherfucker, and I will not forget that.'"

"Jonah thinks he's cool." After Sammy left, I gave Jonah an abbreviated version of my history with Mr. Slater, and he was convinced a miracle had happened. I was disappointed not to see any tremors of jealousy in Jonah. Didn't he care that my ex-boyfriend was back?

"You did tell him Sammy beat you up?"

"He's sure Sam has seen the light."

"If he's there tonight, don't even get out of the car," Kate said. I started to protest. "I mean it," she said. "Don't let Jonah get out either. Just drive away." She slung her workbag over her shoulder and headed toward the center entrance. "You can't stay there, you know. You'll have to move again."

I knew she was right.

***

While Kate and I discussed scheduling with the docent educator, Jonah left with Chris, the center director, for a day conference in Doylestown on land use issues. Chris liked Jonah and wanted him along as a go-fer. Maybe he saw Jonah as a potential employee. The groundskeeper kept talking about heading back home to California, and if she left, I could see Jonah taking over that job. Jonah was a good fit. He had fallen into the rhythm of the place with little effort, and it pleased me that he wasn't doing it for me. "I need this," he confided, after poring over one of my field guides. "There's an order to nature that makes me happy. Too much of what I see in people hinges on chaos and unpredictability."

At two o'clock, I was scheduled to take a class of third-graders from Morrisville on a special tour, but the morning dragged and I missed Jonah. He probably wouldn't get back with Chris until after the center closed at five. Some small part of me still loved Sammy and wanted to believe he had changed into a decent man, but I knew in my core that what I had seen last night was a ruse. The hell with my fixation on hardness. If Sammy was an eight, I was crazy to want a ten. A diamond tip could cut through mica like soft cheese. Instead of going up the Mohs' scale, I realized, I could just as easily go down. After all, gold, at 2.5, is prized for its malleability. Pirates tested their booty by the tooth mark: The purer the gold ducat, the easier it was to bite.

I was standing at the dribbling falls, explaining to a dozen nine-year-olds and their chaperones how the original settlers to the area had harnessed the water power for a grist mill, when one of the boys pointed behind me.

"What's he doing up there?"

"Who?" I turned toward the water splashing and gurgling down the splintered granite and saw Sammy across the stream at the top of the falls. He was still, his arms folded across his chest, and he was watching us. "He's just out for a walk like we are." I tried to pick up the thread of my lecture, but my mouth was suddenly dry. His stealth at following us and his silent stance scared me.

My walkie-talkie buzzed and crackled. Cell phone reception sucked in this terrain, so the preserve relied on old-fashioned two-way radios to stay in touch.

"Mica, where are you?" It was Kate.

"I'm at the falls, with the students." I needed to tell her about Sammy. "Kate, there's—"

"Mica, cut the walk short. Rabid animal report. I've called Chris." She was using our code. Someone out there is trouble. Come back immediately. She must have seen Sammy, too.

"Got it, Kate. We're heading back." I looked at the kids, who had shifted their attention from Sammy to each other, sensing the urgency in my tone. "Why don't you call animal control just to be safe?" Call the police. I've seen the person.

"They're on their way." Kate had understood.

One of the parents, a woman with a pinched, worried face, stepped next to me. "What are we going to do? What if it attacks us?" One of the children started sobbing, "Mommy! Mommy!"

I motioned for the group to come close and pretended a confidence I didn't feel. I glanced back at the falls, but Sammy was gone. "We need to walk back quickly to the visitors' center right now. There's a sick animal in the woods that we don't want to meet." I had the children hold hands and told them to stay close to me and the other adults on the trail.

"It's the man on the waterfall, isn't it?" It was the same boy who had spotted Sammy.

I hoped I was able to hide my startled reaction. "A rabid animal might be a squirrel or a raccoon," I said smoothly. "We'll be fine if we stick together. Animals are afraid of people, and it will run away if it sees us."

"Shouldn't we warn the other hiker?" The woman with the pinched face was walking beside me.

"Other staff people are out on the trails. They'll escort him to safety." She seemed satisfied, but I was angry and confused. Sammy was no nature lover; he liked the outdoors as long as it was in a stadium, preferably with beer. I could think of only one reason he was in the woods that day. As we neared the center, I made a decision. Mica is a metamorphic rock, transformed by heat and pressure from feldspar and quartz into something altogether different. I wasn't the same person I was six months ago.

I herded the children and chaperones into the visitors' center, then went out to the parking lot to wait for the police with Kate and two other staff people who had gathered at the picnic tables. I was twenty feet from them when Sammy emerged from the woods. I stopped, took a breath, and faced him.

"Are you following me?"

His eyes were hard to read, but his lip curled into a smirk. "Where's your whale man?"

"Nothing's changed after all, has it, Sam?" He reached for my arm, and although I tried to pull away, he was stronger. Topaz always scratches mica. "Let go of me." I didn't shout but drilled the words into him.

"I just want to talk, Mica."

"We have nothing to talk about. You broke my arm, remember? I was civil to you yesterday but that doesn't mean I trust you now. Especially after stalking me out there." That night in the foyer I had no warning—and until then no real understanding of just how far he would go. I wanted no part of him now. "Let me go."

Sammy gripped my arm tighter still, the increasing pressure and pain making me lightheaded, but I willed myself to stay alert. Then his hold broke and his face registered surprise. Jonah, back early from the conference, brandished a five-foot walking stick at him. A police officer every inch as big as Sam barked a command to release me. Within a moment it was over, and Sammy sat handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser.

I sagged against the fence that rimmed the parking lot. Kate and the preserve staff surged around me, walling me off from Sammy and the police car. Jonah, my calm cool friend, hugged me in relief. I was safe. Whatever tomorrow might bring, I would have to deal with it, but I wouldn’t be alone.