Fall - A Collection of Short Stories (Almond Press Short Story Contest) Read online

  “What do you make of that?” Eoin asked.

  “I don’t think I’m sure.” He replied. His body convulsed with shivers.

  It was too cold for autumn. Too cold even for winter, he thought. The frost on the grass was sharp and painful. They hopped between the stones set out by their mother in the small garden she created for her own pleasure and nothing more. A thriving vine wound itself around the trellises she erected, and dead honeysuckle flower heads littered the floor. Ice on the ornamental pond glinted, the dark steel water below shifting like sheet metal under the shadow of the ice. Imprisoned until spring, when the heat of the sun softened the water to sexual velour.

  Sheep shied away from them as they passed through their field and made their way out to the woodland which covered the East border of their farm. He could smell the dull bracken, as well as the heather and gorse tinting the air. The sound of nocturnal birds seemed reptilian and terrifying. His ankles, swollen with cold and heavy with blood, made him unsteady as he walked bare foot, following his brother. The sole of his feet brushed over leaves fringed with frost.

  Without warning, the flesh of his right foot was stung by a dark brown piece of glass. He leant his arm against a nearby tree, stooped slightly and at the same time brought his foot in toward his stomach. A shadowed reservoir of blood promised to spill forth should he remove the glass from his foot, and it did so, gracefully and without much feeling of pain at all. He set his foot down lightly, leaving it hanging just above the ground. He brought the glass to his eye and tried to study it in the darkness.

  “It’s a piece of a bottle.” Eoin said, having walked to him in order to discern what was wrong. “I’d say someone must have smashed one.”

  “What should I do?” He asked.

  “Does it hurt you much?”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “Then set it down for now, we’ll tend to it when we’re home.” His brother began to walk away, but his route was new; his course changed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Come on,” Eoin called without looking back, “I just know we should go this way, is all!”

  He could hear Eoin’s feet snapping sticks and thin branches as his brother started to run. He moved his feet faster and faster, though he could feel the blood beating out of his foot with each stride.

  The sound of Eoin ahead of him disappeared and he thought himself lost with no point of reference. His chest tightened and fear sunk down into his marrow. He ran forwards, stopped, ran back. Moonlight dripped through the dying leaves and cast dangerous shadows which stretched away from tree trunks. He covered his mouth with one hand, and strained to hear sounds from his brother.

  Some whisper of noise through the rustling leaves caught hold of him. Someone called his name, struggling to make themselves heard over choral voices singing harsh melodies. Running, he moved toward the song, feet falling blindly and painfully on exposed roots and sharp white stones which shone out from the earth.

  His father and uncles clustered together beside a stony river. The trees drew themselves away from the river bank and seemed to have been penned in by a recently constructed fence. Eoin stood beside one of the large wooden stakes he saw at their house. Though the stake was dug deep into the ground, it towered over Eoin who clapped his hands and called out when he saw him.

  “He’s here!” Eoin cried. “He’s here!”

  The men turned around and for a moment they continued to sing some incomprehensible ode which tailed off as they stared at him, blinking. He stepped forward into the clearing and saw that his father’s face was flushed, drops of perspiration clung to the skin of his forehead. He carried on toward them, putting a slight limp in his step as he remembered his lacerated foot. His father came out to meet him and he fell into his body, trembling.

  “Are you afraid?”

  He nodded.

  “You only feel the fear you create for yourself. Do you understand?” His father’s voice was choked and heavy. He wiped mucus from his running nose with his shirt sleeve.

  “They’re building a big fence.” Eoin reported from his post by the stake. “Something to stop animals moving from farms with the disease onto ours.”

  “I saw the chicken wire.” He said.

  “Here’s a story.” His father told him after moment. “After the Chinese army joined up with the communists in Korea and swept down through the country, thousands of Americans were taken prisoner.

  The Prisoner of War camps were small and designed to house as many men as they could in as little space as possible. Some of the guards made chicken noises as they passed by the prisoners who looked back with old eyes, dressed in spoiled uniforms.

  On the 4th of July, the Americans set off a couple of home-made firecrackers. They sang songs.

  ‘Hey Yanks,’ One of the British officers who were also in the camp asked, “how can you sing about freedom in here?’

  They didn’t need any more fear. They didn’t need to feel trapped. That’s a story that never happened, but the truth of it remains the same. There’s reality there, if you think about it.”

  He stood patiently for a moment after his father stopped speaking. The aging man seemed to expect him to say something. Behind him and beyond the river, you could see out into the valleys, and look out into the brooding patchwork of farmsteads and, far away from them, the roosting towns which hid in the shadows of valleys.

  His father lit a cigarette and turned away from him, returning to join the other men beside the river. Increasingly unable to stand the silence which pervaded, Eoin and he soon walked over to the river bank also, and looked down into the coursing water.

  “The river is full of lost sharks.” One of their uncles told them. “Sharks which swam by some misfortune into this river through estuaries and inlets. They want to find their way back to the sea, but they can’t; and this makes them very angry. You wouldn’t want to jump in.”

  He rubbed his eyes.

  “He’s very pale.”

  “How can you see in this light?”

  “You can see.”

  His knees could no longer stand the weight of his body. He felt himself fall apart and twist around as he dropped to the ground.

  “Not again.” His father murmured.

  “There’s a wound in his foot that is badly ulcerated. Your boy is not well, Jack.”

  He felt himself carried, perhaps even saw himself carried in some dark recess of his mind, his consciousness. He woke with a pain all through him.

  “My darling.” His mother stood by the window of his room. The curtains had been taken down.

  He raised his hand to his mouth, for this was where the pain was most intense, and his eyes shone with horror as he counted missing teeth, and stroked disgusting ulcers which seemed to erode his gums.

  “The doctor removed three of your teeth, my darling. We must also rub this into your gums, to stop the virus spreading from your mouth.” She proffered a glass jar of translucent jelly. He closed his eyes, trying to weep.

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  “My darling.” His mother whispered, and sat on the bed beside him. “My darling.”

  With his foot almost healed, and the signs of the virus receding, he went out one morning with his brother and sat in the back of their truck sharpening pieces of wood Eoin handed to him.

  A piercing and fearful bleating sounded out. They looked out toward the fields, where his father strode quickly toward the house, dragging a dishevelled ewe. The animal’s hooves dragged through the grass and pulled up the mud beneath. Every now and then it slipped free and trotted back a few steps. Its hind legs were filthy with mud and faeces. His father, exhausted, reached the partition between the field and his mother’s ornamental garden. With great effort, he a
lmost threw the beast against the fence and called his mother’s name. She must have seen from the kitchen window, since she was already out of the house and running toward her husband.

  “Stay there!” She screamed at her children. But they would not listen, and he and Eoin pulled themselves out of the truck and ran to join their parents.

  “It’s done.” His father repeated over and over. “It’s done. It’s done. It’s done.”

  His father pulled the ewe close to him and, holding its skull still with one hand, peeled the lips back from the mouth. It was filled with burst ulcers. Some of the skin from the animal’s gums fell away at his father’s touch and at the sight of the disintegrating flesh covering his hands his father let out a low and primeval moan. A guttural sound that expressed some ultimate reality that words could not. His mother was crying, stroking the sheep’s ears and saying sweet nothings to the creature. Eoin ran to the fence and beat his head against the wooden support beam. Whilst he himself put his fingers to his mouth and felt out each of the spaces where his teeth once were.

  He lay in bed and watched the smoke rise from the fields of their own farm. A second window was fitted behind the first, as some attempt to stop the impossible smell from seeping into their house.

  “Was it me?” He asked as his mother entered, bringing him a glass of water. “Did I bring the disease here?”

  “This. This is not your fault.” His mother set the glass down and tried to hush him with lullabies.

  “Do you need to throw me on the fires?”

  She shook her head. “No, my darling, no. Never. No.”

  Eight miles from their farm, out on the coast, the family owned another stretch of land through some consequence of a relation’s will. His father was thankful the soil was not good for much, for if it was, he thought his brothers might hold some bitterness against him. There were one or two fields on the farm, always in farrow. Littered between these, the shells of old farm houses fell apart on their lonely foundations. Ancient varieties of trees stood gathering about each other in large copses; Speckled Adler, Hawthorn, White Ash, Silver Birch, Quaking Aspen, White Elm, Shortleaf Pine, Sassafras, Hemlock, Snowbell, Sourwood. Crows perched on crumbling stone walls overturned by weeds and grasses which pulled the stones out from the wall. In the final field, the land ran, first downhill, then up, suddenly rising up in three large tumuli built to be the final resting place of famous warriors. From atop one of these creaking graves, you could overlook the nesting place of gulls on the cliff-face, and on from there, out to the sea where cresting white horses rode fantastic waves. The sea never calm. Always the waves were driven by some unseen current or wind.

  Having only ever heard of this place, his body busied itself with excitement the morning his father took him and his brother out to see this other stretch of land for themselves. With the truck pulled up in front of a canted gateway, he was out of the vehicle and away from his father and Eoin, speeding out as fast as his feet would take him, toward the burial mounds to face the sea beyond.

  He reached the top of the farthest grave faster than he thought possible, and stood there blinking from the salt in the wind.

  ‘I could run and jump off this.’ He thought ‘I could leap onto those rocks and I would not fear a thing. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to fear.’

  He felt the wind suddenly drop away. He cast his eye out to the sea and could not believe that there were no white horses on the waves: for there were no waves to speak of. The sea was still. So still, that it seemed almost to go backwards, sucking itself away from the land and the cliffs which it previously sought to erode.

  He started. The pressure on his head as his father tousled his hair forced him out of himself and he looked about and behind.

  “Look how far down to the rocks it is.” Eoin gasped.

  “Does it scare you?” His father asked.

  “No.” His brother replied.

  “Yes.” He said, after a short while. “The sea looks so calm.”

  His father followed his gaze. He let a deep breath of air into his lungs through his nostrils, then shook some thought from his mind and exhaled. He stooped down and picked his youngest son from the ground and placed him on his shoulders. Eoin followed beside them as they passed their truck and continued on, across fields, along thin roads and over old bridges. Birds in arrowhead formations followed them home.

  Two Esthers – by Corrina Austin

  Esther’s father, Edward Cole, had been a minister. He was contained now, in Esther’s memory, in shades of sepia, like old photographs. As in pictures, his face in her mind never moved—his eyes were grim, and his mouth set in a firm, unwavering line.

  Esther never understood how her parents managed to court and marry, and her mother, over the years, did not elaborate on that. Esther suspected that her mother, as a young girl (some ten years younger than Edward Cole) simply did not have the nerve to refuse him. He had been that overwhelming. Esther’s mother, Rose, had been only seventeen at the time of her marriage, the oldest in a large family of rowdy, hungry children. There had not been an abundance of money in Rose’s house, and where there is not a lot of wealth, there is always enough work to make up for it. Perhaps Rose grew weary of the stacks of dishes and dirty shirts, the endless lines of diapers to peg up, the row upon row of beans to pick. It must have made Rose’s heart falter to think that this educated and respected man would even consider her—barely a woman, and never having completed grade school. Her arms in suds up to her elbows, she must have imagined his quiet, orderly house—the ticking of the polished mantle clock, perhaps a gray cat, seldom disturbed, curled on the kitchen mat.

  And so she married Edward Cole, and he brought her to the rectory, in a town far from her family’s farm. She brought with her two dresses, sewn by her mother, the shoes on her feet, and an old trunk she called her hope chest. There wasn’t much inside—a few tattered books, an English china cup (no saucer) which her mother had given her for a family heirloom (having nothing else), a braided rug, some lace doilies crocheted and neatly starched, a knitted tea cosy. It all stayed in the trunk.

  “Everything you need is already here,” her husband told her. He instructed Rose to buy two new dresses and a pair of serviceable shoes, as well as two plain hats—one for Sunday, and one for every-day. Nothing fancy. Dark colours, no prints. The other dresses, flowered and meticulously pressed, were to be packed away in the old trunk. Unsuitable. Rose kept the teacup out, and hid it away under the bed, next to the post nearest her head. At night, she could let her arm dangle down where she could stroke the cool china rim, and think about her mother. There must have been tears on the pillowcase. But even they must have been carefully measured, and not poured out until after Edward Cole had gone to sleep.

  Esther and her brother Gabriel spent their early childhoods in rigid silence. They were not to speak during meals. They were not to move when their father bowed his head and recited the lengthy mealtime prayers. They were not to leave the yard or dirty their clothes. They could read only specific, previewed materials. Singing was reserved for church. Toys were for indulged, undirected children—Esther and Gabriel had their chores. Santa Claus was a pagan fantasy; Christmas trees and presents were a hedonistic waste. Rose, her heart in her throat, sewed little rag dolls and knit them tiny dresses while her husband was in the study writing his sermons. Esther laid them carefully under her mattress, battling an unholy combination of deep joy and sick dread, least her father sniff them out. Gabriel got his mother’s books—worn and yellowed, spirited away from the old trunk. They too could fit beneath a mattress. Dolls, cups, books—bits and pieces of a normal life, all contained in secret places under their heads as they slept.

  Esther’s mother must have been a beautiful girl when she first arrived at the rectory. Sometimes, at certain angles, Esther and Gabriel could glimpse how she must have
looked. Rose’s hair, though pulled back in a severe roll, was almost red, and when she got sweaty or flushed, little curls escaped and sprang recklessly around her face. She had a pert little nose, dusted innocently with freckles, and her eyes, when she raised them, were blue, like forget-me-nots. She was far too pretty, in spite of her husband’s efforts, to be a minister’s wife. Even in her plain dresses, her hands folded quietly in her lap, there were many sidelong glances directed Rose’s way as she sat with her children in church. It made her husband, sequestered in his pulpit, livid. In her bed at night, Esther could hear his bitter, accusing voice, her mother’s quiet protests. Their bedroom door would bang shut, her mother would sob, and then the bed would creak and groan, creak and groan.

  Esther did not want to know about what went on in there. She put her head under her pillow and whispered fiercely, “I will never get married, I will never get married.” By the time she said it one hundred times, the house was usually quiet.

  Esther and Gabriel were the first of the babies born, and the only two that lived. The minister’s wife was pregnant each year after, but she grew thinner and weaker each time, and inevitably miscarried. One grey evening, Esther sat at the dinner table, soundlessly chewing her bread, and watching her mother push her food around with her fork. It occurred to her suddenly, and with absolute certainty, that her mother was going to die. Even as Esther watched, a shadow seemed to descend around Rose’s thin, white face; the forget-me-not eyes had grown dull, as though covered with dust. The corners of her mouth sagged like an old woman’s. She would die, and Esther and Gabriel would be left alone with him.

  After that, Esther had dreams of the three of them, standing above her mother’s open grave, her father in his black suit, reciting a psalm. Every time Esther sobbed, her father would pinch the back of her arm. She woke with her face pressed hard into the pillow; even in her sleep, she was smothering her cries.