101 Words

Klaus is an excellent liar. He puts this look in his eyes, this tremble in his voice, crookedly adjacent to sincerity. He’s easily believed. So, he’s the one holding their hands as they die.

“You’ll be fine, see; they’ll patch you up. Honourably discharge you I’ll bet.”

“You’re going home soon. Your wife’ll be pleased.”

“We’re gonna win, we’re close. Of course, it’s worth it.”

He feels their hands go lax in his, every time. He remains as they shift the once-men, now-corpses, freeing the bed for the next.

It doesn’t bother him. Not one bit.

Klaus is an excellent liar.

Marta casts hooks baited with sardines, sacrificing everything she has left to pray for something bigger. Her child curls at her feet, weakened by hunger, lulled by rollers.

Before, a storm had raged.

She’d stared unflinching into the oncoming violence, preferring it to the world behind. Sails tightened, she steered as close-hauled as she dared. When the screaming wind harmonized with vibrating rigging, she screamed back. Held her course. Out-raged nature.

Now, the sea is settled. The sky all mauve sunset and winking stars.

The line jerks. Marta hauls up two mackerel. The ocean’s peace offering, they will taste like survival.

It was Independence Day and Ainsley’s candy bag was half-full before it started to pour. Her flight from the parade route was swift, as were the excuses.

“A pop-up storm. Can’t be helped.”

Parades were simple then. Cornucopias of swag: suckers flung asunder, cracking on impact; children competing for a single piece of sour apple taffy; flyers distributed but not read, damp papers sticking to the streets and bottom of shoes like gum.

Now, amid fear of spiked candy or racy flyers, handouts are disallowed. Gone. Along with trust of our fellow man.

Just one of those things. Can’t be helped.

He shoved the trinkets into his pack with his dirty snout and clumsy hooves.

Mother’s jewels.

Check.

Farmer’s gold teeth.

Check.

Neighbour’s purse.

Check.

The growling was closer. The hair on the back of his neck rose, yet he could taste the honey of hope. No more laboring at dawn with his annoying brothers. It was his turn for success.

He flung the front door open.

“Quick! Shelter here,” he shouted to his terrified brothers.

As he ran out the back door, bolting it hastily, he felt the force of the wolf’s rancid breath blowing the straw house apart behind him.

My family toasted my father on his sixtieth birthday, but I looked into my rice bowl—suddenly, I was no longer thirty, but ten, coming home and seeing my dog hanging from a tree in the yard, its skin already peeled. I was now the little girl looking at the dog stew in tears.

Dinner over, my father said, “You haven’t been home for a year. Can’t you stay tonight?” I shook my head, remembering how he’d enjoyed the stew. How, when I’d confronted him twenty years ago, he’d said, “Your grandfather did it,” and I’d replied, “But you let him.”

For his seventieth birthday, Leo returned to his home town.

The town had gentrified; little remained of what he’d left at fifteen. He was glad of that. He checked into an upscale hotel, ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, then relaxed until dark.

The old cemetery was sad and unkempt, but the white marble grave marker gleamed in the moonlight. For the next several hours, Leo’s mallet and chisel removed every trace of his parents from that hunk of rock.

Later, while showering, he could swear that the round, purple-brown burn scars on his arms and chest seemed to be fading.

We met my mother in a parking lot near her house, my boyfriend and I. The blue spruce we tagged at the farm in November was stuffed in his trunk—tucked among crushed Camel Lights cartons and empty wine bottles. In silence, we placed it in her car—bitter air piercing my lungs. We said nothing of the fact that in November, I didn’t know I would not be welcome home. Nothing about the fight with her boyfriend who would be there on Christmas. I watched as she drove away. Her face in the rearview mirror colder than winter in Maine.