# # #

From May Darkness Restore: Poems by Sean Sexton, Press 53, 2019

Sean Sexton was born and raised on his family's Treasure Hammock Ranch and divides his time between managing a 700-acre cow-calf and seed stock operation, painting, and writing. He is author of Blood Writing: Poems, Anhinga Press; May Darkness Restore: Poems, Press 53; and two chapbooks. His third full poetry collection, Portals, is due out in autumn 2022. He has performed at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, Miami Book Fair International, and the High Road Festival of Poetry and Short Fiction in Winston Salem, North Carolina. He was nominated for a 2020 and 2021 Pushcart Prize and received a Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowship in 2001. Sean is a board member of the Laura Riding Jackson Foundation and founding event chair of the Annual Poetry and Barbeque, now in its eleventh year. He also co-founded and curates a Poetry and Organ Advent and Lenten Concert Series at Community Church in Vero Beach, Florida (ccovb.org) featuring nine concerts each year attracting poets from all over the United States. He became inaugural Poet Laureate of Indian River County in 2016.

BODY

                                                            sun scarred body coming from between your mother’s legs, 60 extra bones scrape her full figure body. in this body you are threatened by your threatening dark skin. I see your dark sky purple grapes massaged by drunkards who refuse to look at your body for what it is. eat the white cracker (drink the purple wine). “This is the body…” they digest hums about being on knees, holding pages of rituals between shallow breaths. if only it were that easy -- shedding sin every hour like shedding 600,000 skin particles. count them. you? can’t you see them falling? the bodies? the black bodies? the black bodies of children? the black bodies of husbands? the black bodies of wives? the black bodies of prostitutes? the black bodies of pimps? the black bodies of preachers? the black bodies of parishioners? the black bodies of poets? the black bodies of the unarmed and unnamed? count the bodies in black body bags and I will count the pages in bodies of works that talk about black body subjugation, about black women body’s sexualization, about black men body’s derogation.

when I touch your black chest to make sure your heart
isn’t still, eventually you guide my fingers to read your nipples like braille. I think of the 100,000 miles of blood we traveled into these bodies and I want to know what your body feels like. if it feels like my body. if it feels like you’re running out of air. if you feel awkward walking into a room with your body because it’s so much like your grandmother’s body and your grandmother’s body wasn’t wanted even by her newborns. or if your body feels like a bullet practice target though my body doesn’t feel like that. I pull your body close to mine every moment I can as if mine is a bulletproof body shield giving warmth so you won’t die in my arms or out there later, have your body placed in a black body bag and I get called to identify your body. write your name on a tag with a permanent marker before they give me what you wore against your body against your black body against your body. this is the body, this is the body, this is the body that was broken.

 # # #

from Resurrecting the Bones: Born from a Journey through African American Churches & Cemeteries in the Rural South, by Jacinta V. White, Press 53, 2019

Jacinta V. White, referred to as a symphony, is a poet, facilitator and coach. She’s the founder of The Word Project, where she has spent more than twenty years facilitating creative workshops for those looking to use poetry and art as catalysts for healing, and she is also the publisher of the online international quarterly, Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing. Jacinta’s latest poetry collection is the acclaimed, Resurrecting the Bones: Born from a Journey through African American Churches & Cemeteries of the Rural South, (Press 53, 2019). Her chapbook, broken ritual, was published by Finishing Line Press. Called upon as a keynote speaker as well, Jacinta is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions, and her creative work has been featured in many publications. Most recently Jacinta received the City of Winston-Salem Outstanding Woman Leader award. Visit her website to learn more.

Dawn Branch

Ma’am, I need you to calm down so I can help you.”

The 911 operator sits up. On the other end of the line the woman’s voice is shrill, nearly incoherent. The dispatcher surmises enough from the panicked words to understand the woman’s daughter has fallen into the river and is in trouble. The operator asks the woman’s location, already tapping buttons on her computer to summon the rescue squad and sheriff as she tries to pinpoint the call with GPS. The mother wails from the other end of the line, and the operator presses her again for a specific location or landmark to aid the first responders in getting to her quickly. The mother calms down enough to give a few clues—a sharp bend in the river, a truck repair shop close to where they turned off the main road, a small clearing by the water where they set up their picnic—but they are enough for the dispatcher, a local woman who has spent her entire life in these North Carolina mountains, to figure out the woman is near the wide, deep bend of the Pigeon River close to the Dawn Branch. The operator alerts the rescue squad out of Crabtree. She then tells the mother that help is fifteen minutes away, to stay on the line, and to tell her when she hears the sirens. The mother is sobbing and no longer speaks.

When the rescue squad arrives at the scene, they find a woman and a man standing near the water. The man’s hair and clothes are soaked and he is shivering violently. One of the two rescue squad members hurries to the back of their vehicle and retrieves a heavy blanket to wrap around the man. The woman grabs the other EMT, a part-time volunteer in his mid-twenties who owns a bait and tackle shop in town, and pulls him by his wrist to the water’s edge. She points downstream, explaining that their daughter waded into the river and was quickly pulled away. The rescuer stares at the surging water. It has rained hard for most of the previous week, so the water level is high and the current dangerous. He hesitates to look the woman in the eyes.

The men from the rescue squad confer quietly by their truck. The girl has most likely drowned, but her body needs to be found. The older one, another part-timer who has fished in this river for over forty years and knows just how treacherous these waters can be, wonders how many days will pass before the river decides to send the girl back—if ever. He unclips his radio and calls for additional help. They’ll need equipment and a diver, maybe a helicopter from Asheville. He checks his watch. They have two or three hours at most before daylight fades.

The sheriff arrives and leads the mother and father back up the bank to the dirt road, where his car is parked. Blue lights flash from atop the vehicle, bright even in the daylight, causing the woman to squint. The sheriff leans through the window and shuts off the lights. The mother is no longer hysterical but appears to the sheriff to be on the verge of collapsing. The father, who has not spoken, grasps the EMS blanket tight around him, his mouth drooping open, his eyes red and moist. When the sheriff asks them to describe what happened, his voice is nearly a whisper. The sheriff has dealt once before with a dead child—the victim of a car wreck—and he knows he must not push too hard right now.

The mother stares at the ground and begins to tell what happened. They’d moved earlier this summer from down on the coast to a new home in Winston-Salem. Their daughter had not adjusted well. Their house had been gloomy and the recent week of nonstop rain had not helped. When this morning brought sunshine and clear skies, she and her husband came up with the idea to take a trip to the mountains to have a picnic.

The sheriff glances down toward the riverbank at the crumpled blanket with plastic containers of half-eaten potato salad and fried chicken. Near one edge of the blanket is an iPhone in a bright pink case. He writes in a small notebook.

The daughter, who’d just turned twelve, seemed to have come out of her funk, appearing happy for the first time in a long while, the mother explains. After lunch, however, the girl said she wanted to take a walk in the woods.

“We begged her to wait for us but she pouted and said she was not a baby. . .she was old enough to go alone. We told her to be careful and stay far away from the water. Ten minutes later, we heard her screaming. We jumped up, only to see her float past right there,” the woman points at the river just beyond the picnic site, “struggling to keep her head above water. But the water was rushing so fast that she was nearly out of sight before we could move. We ran along the edge of the water, but it was hard to keep up. Her head kept disappearing below the surface, each time for longer and longer. That final time, when she didn’t come back up at all, my husband ran into the river but was knocked down by the rapids, which pulled him under too. He was just able to scramble back to the shore, but we never saw our daughter again.”

The sheriff stops writing and places the notebook back into his shirt pocket. He signals to the rescuer down by the water—the other has already started searching the bank downstream—and asks the man and woman to take the EMT to the spot where they last saw their daughter. More sirens begin to sound in the distance. The sheriff waits for the additional help while the parents lead the young man from the rescue squad down the bank.

Thirty minutes later, the girl’s parents sit in the backseat of the sheriff’s cruiser and wait. They cling to each other, motionless. There are nine searchers now, and the sheriff stands on the muddy bank next to the river, smoking a cigarette and listening on his radio for any progress. The ground here is slick, and the mud has a silver-brown shine. He watches a school of minnows glide past close to the water’s edge. When his radio crackles, he jumps. His dispatcher tells him that the diver is ten minutes out. The sheriff looks across the river, to the west. Rust-colored streaks begin to appear in the sky. He goes back to the car to update the girl’s parents and to wait for the diver.

As the sheriff starts up the hill, there’s a sudden squall of voices on his radio. The girl’s body has been found. The sheriff asks if he should send the diver home. A voice he doesn’t recognize tells him that she is trapped between two large rocks. The diver will need to go in for her.

The diver is a man in his thirties, a zoology professor at Warren Wilson College, who also teaches scuba diving at the YMCA. The professor climbs into his wet suit behind his truck while the sheriff updates him. Over his shoulders the diver slings an air tank and a backpack filled with coils of rope. Walking down to the river, he glances into the sheriff’s car at the grieving parents, who stare at him as he passes by. The diver looks away quickly. Members of the search team begin to lead the diver to the spot where the girl was found. The sheriff takes a deep breath and walks to his car to inform the mother and father. Even before he reaches the cruiser he can see in their eyes that they already know.

As the diver approaches the site, a group of men and women with grim expressions stand silently. He turns to the river and, right away, spots the body. Only one of the girl’s legs is visible, wedged between two large rocks about twenty feet from the riverbank. Her bare foot floats on the surface, swaying back and forth with the roiling current, as if she is dancing to an unheard song. The diver dips his mask in the water and secures two ropes around his waist—one for the girl, one for himself should he get into trouble.

The girl is lying on her back, bobbing under the water like one of the preserved animal specimens the diver has in his lab back at the college, and in the dim light and murky water, her form has an indistinct and ghostly appearance. The diver can see clearly enough that her eyes and mouth are wide open, yet he can’t tell if it was surprise or wonder that filled her final moments. The girl’s tee shirt is torn and bunched at her armpits by the rough water. She is wearing a training bra, one side of which has been pulled away. It’s the sight of the girl’s budding breast that will haunt the diver on many nights, keeping him awake for years to come. He is battered by the swirling current but manages to tie one of the ropes from his waist around her ankle before pulling the girl’s leg free from where it became stuck in the rocks. He jerks the line three times, and from under the water, he watches the girl glide away, released from the river that tried to claim her forever.

Before leaving the river, the diver stares down into the blackness beneath the rocks and the raging river, imagining the girl’s soul there, stuck in the turbulent silt at the bottom until the end of days.

~ ~ ~

The woman is awakened by a bright light. She squints at the shaft of sunlight slipping through the bedroom window’s partially closed blinds. The light is momentarily disorienting. At last, she thinks, the rain has stopped. Another bleak day inside this house would be too much. She twists to look at her husband, who is still asleep, his back to her. The woman slips her legs off the side of the bed and sits up, stretching. Her first thought is to make coffee, but as she stands, she remembers the fight from the night before, and her good mood disappears. It was a bad one.

The woman pees and then brushes her teeth before pushing the chair blocking their bedroom door back to its customary place and heading downstairs to start the coffeemaker. At the top of the stairs, she glances at the closed door of her daughter’s room. She tries hard not to recall the ugly things that were done and said last night, but the effort only brings the memories faster. Most anguishing is remembering the conversation she had later, in bed, with her husband. The woman bites her lip hard and descends the stairs.

Their house is old, built in the first decade of the twentieth century, and the windows on the main floor are tall and wide, filling the house with early morning light. The woman walks into the kitchen and methodically begins to grind beans and fill the coffeemaker with water. While she waits for the coffee to brew, she leans against the counter, fighting her mind’s desire to replay the events of the night before. The woman looks out the window at the leaves of the large chestnut oak in the backyard shining a brilliant green in the slanting sunlight. That is when she is struck by an idea. The woman tries to ignore it but she cannot get rid of it, the idea springing back into her thoughts again and again like gum stuck to her shoe. She pours two cups of coffee and decides to discuss her idea with her husband. By the time she reaches the bedroom, her hands are trembling so violently that coffee sloshes over the edges of each cup, spattering the hardwood floor.

After more than an hour of discussion—neither coffee touched—the man and woman hear their daughter’s bedroom door open and the light padding of the girl’s feet as she goes to the bathroom. The mother and father rise and begin to get dressed.

When they are ready, the man and woman knock on the girl’s door. There’s no answer, but the woman eases it open and peeks inside to make sure the girl is dressed. The girl is sitting on her bed, still in pajamas, staring at her cell phone. She glances at her parents for a moment before returning her attention to the phone’s screen. Her mother perches on the edge of the bed, and her father stands at the bed’s end, gripping the rail of the end board hard enough to blanch his fingers. The girl’s parents explain—the mother doing most of the talking—that since it’s the first day in a long time that the sun is out and the weather is pleasant, they think it would be nice to take a drive up to the mountains and perhaps have a picnic. The girl, to the surprise of her parents, immediately says yes—anything to get out of this house. The mother and father smile and leave the girl alone to get dressed. When they step into the hallway and close the girl’s door, they look at each other, smiles melted, and hug.

It’s a two-hour drive to the place the man’s boss had told him about when they had discussed their mutual love of trout fishing. Most people in these mountains like to fish the French Broad, but this spot is on the Pigeon River, which is smaller and less well-known. The boss had said it was very isolated, that he’d never seen any other people there in the dozens of times he’d fished there, and that if you want peace and privacy, this is the spot.

During the drive, there is almost no conversation. The girl sits in the backseat, listening through earbuds to music on her iPhone. Her parents sit up front, silent, as if they’re afraid speaking will shatter the momentum of the day. The man double-checks the directions he printed off the computer before leaving Winston-Salem. He asks his wife to keep an eye out for a truck repair shop that is about thirty yards from the turnoff they need to take. Fifteen minutes later, they find the location they’re searching for. It is exactly as the man’s boss described. A small, shaded clearing splits the trees that line the river, which is swollen and turbulent after a week of incessant rain. The rush of the water is loud and oddly different from the sound of the ocean they are used to hearing from spending so many years on the coast. It sounds angrier, the woman thinks, and more urgent.

The man and woman unpack the car. They spread a blanket about fifteen feet from the edge of the riverbank and lay out the containers of fried chicken, potato salad, and coleslaw they picked up at Harris Teeter on the way out of town. They all kick off their shoes and sit. The woman fixes a plate for the girl, who is staring at the river, mesmerized. The water is scary-looking, the girl tells her parents. Her father explains that it’s not always like this. Most of the time, he has been told, it’s peaceful and slow. The girl nibbles on a chicken thigh and eats potato salad with a plastic spoon while her parents pick at their food. The man and woman are watching the river. Soon, the man taps his wife on the arm, and she nods without turning to him. The girl’s parents walk down to the edge of the water. It’s a hot day with an expected high of ninety degrees but the soft, glistening mud of the bank is cool, squishing between their toes. The pounding water sounds like a train rushing past them.

The man calls back to the daughter, urging her to come wet her feet. It’s so hot, he says, and the water is nice and cool. The girl laughs and says she’s too afraid. But the man and woman both cajole the girl until she relents and joins them down by the river’s edge. The mother takes hold of the girl’s right hand and the father grabs her left, each parent assuring the girl that she is safe.

Overhead, a hawk rides a thermal in a sweeping arc. The girl notices it and can see the orange-red of its tail against the bright sky. She follows the bird’s flight as it soars above and behind where they are standing.

The girl is still trying to follow the path of the hawk when she hears her father begin to count. She turns back to ask why he is counting, but suddenly pressure on her back propels her forward, and her head is under the cold water. She struggles to get up, but for some reason, she can’t. Something heavy stops her. Panic takes hold, and the girl squirms to free herself. She twists enough to see her father next to her, and his hand comes down to press against the side of her face, keeping her under the water. The girl tries to kick her legs, but other hands (Mommy?) are gripping them tight. Then, all at once, she needs to take a breath, the urgency building in her, replacing all of her questions about why this is happening. Everything becomes unimportant except the desire to breathe, to get some small gulp of air, to keep her nose and mouth closed even though she is desperate to open them just a little. The water is strong, slamming against her, wanting to get inside her before the air can, and the girl knows she can’t let that happen no matter what. But then she feels her nose open, and the water tickles at first and then burns, and it makes her want to cough, and she does, and water floods into her mouth, and soon the water all around her gets slowly darker and darker, and then becomes black and finally, a brilliant white, and it is then that the girl feels the water’s comforting warmth and realizes that the river loves her more than she’s ever been loved before.

When the girl stops moving, her mother and father stand up. The woman is sobbing, and the man cannot stop shaking. The woman stumbles out of the water and falls to her knees in the soft mud while the girl’s father lifts their daughter’s body to the surface. He kisses his daughter on the forehead and wades out into the river. He staggers as the rough undercurrent smacks his legs, knocking into him. He stumbles and his head slips briefly under the surface. When he rights himself, he is up to his thighs. He pushes the girl toward the center of the river. Her limp body is grabbed by the rapids and pulled instantly downriver. The man watches his daughter’s body dip and rise as it is carried away.

Back on shore, the man pulls his wife up by her shoulders and tells her she has to make the call, that she has to make it now, or the plan will fall apart. He retrieves the girl’s cell phone from the picnic blanket, dials 911, and places the phone in his wife’s hand before walking back to the water’s edge to wait for help.

~ ~ ~

The man stands in the middle of their new living room, surrounded by dozens of unpacked moving boxes. He is exhausted—not by the easy drive from Wilmington, but by the fact that this is their third move in less than two years. Maybe, he tells himself, relocating inland (away from the sweltering beach and closer to the cool mountains) will be the change they all need. Unconvinced, he begins ripping the strapping tape off a box marked “LAMPS, LIVING ROOM.”

Two hours later, when his wife and daughter return from shopping, the man has arranged all the furniture and unloaded the boxes from the living and dining rooms. Experience has made him efficient, he tells his wife, and they laugh, but it is hollow. Their daughter stomps upstairs to her bedroom so she can watch YouTube videos on her laptop. The man and woman work, emptying boxes in the kitchen. As she places the utensil tray in one of the drawers beneath the counter and fills it, the woman sighs when she sees the empty knife slots next to the neatly arranged spoons and forks.

It’s been so long now that the girl’s parents can scarcely remember when the real troubles started. Their daughter was a fussy baby, but that’s not uncommon. The first noticeable signs of serious problems occurred in preschool. The girl would squabble with the other children, push them, and hit them, and break their things. One day, she tried to bite her teacher. And while the staff was patient, her frequent disruptions eventually made it necessary to take her out of the school. The girl’s parents were diligent, reading book after book, but the solutions offered were unsuccessful in curbing the girl’s antisocial behavior. Then came a series of child psychologists who also had little effect. The family would move to another nearby town to try a new school. When that proved unsuccessful, or they were asked to leave, they’d move again. Then, inexplicably, for a short period, while the girl was in the second and third grades, there was a real hope that her behavior was finally getting better.

But that ended when her mother found the birds. Straightening the girl’s bedroom one morning while her daughter was at school, the woman detected an odd odor coming from near the bed. Looking underneath it, she noticed a shoebox. When she lifted the lid, the woman shrieked and dropped the box, spilling a dozen dead birds—mostly cardinals and robins, but there was a goldfinch and a chickadee, as well—all headless. The woman confronted the girl after school, and the girl calmly explained that the birds were saying bad things about her, calling her filthy names, and telling her to do mean things. She explained that cutting their heads off was the only way to shut them up. The girl was punished, but her mother would soon find more birds and, eventually, chipmunks and voles and small rabbits. This was the moment the man and woman became truly frightened.

They tried medication, but other than making the girl sleep more, none of it helped. The turning point came one day in the fifth grade as the girl sat bored by her teacher’s explanation of fractions. She reached into her book bag and retrieved the knife she’d taken from the kitchen that morning. While the teacher explained that one-fourth and three-twelfths were equivalent fractions, the girl reached around the side of the desk and stabbed the thigh of the boy sitting in front of her. It was later discovered that the knife had only just missed piercing an artery, which might have been fatal. The police became involved, and when questioned as to why she did it, the girl said only that she didn’t like the boy’s shirt and was sick of having to look at it all day.

The girl’s animosity focused on her parents after she was forced to stay home (she’d been kicked out of school again and would have to repeat the fifth grade somewhere else the following year). The girl began to talk about all the people who needed to die—neighbors, the mailman, the president—and when the next-door neighbor’s affable old Labrador retriever was found strangled with the girl’s jump rope, the man and woman knew it was time for them to do something drastic. Her parents struggled, however, to know what was best for everyone. They conferred with a number of psychiatrists, the majority of whom recommended institutionalization and monitoring. One doctor, though, mentioned a new program operated through Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem that worked with disturbed children. The program had had some success with children like their daughter. The girl’s parents arranged to get her an evaluation and began looking for a house there.

Looking up from the utensil drawer, the woman peers out the window facing the backyard. A massive oak tree shades this side of the house. It’s beautiful and peaceful, she thinks. The previous owners had built a large fishpond but had taken their fish when they’d left. The woman can just make out the edge of the pond in the corner of the yard beyond the tree. I wonder if fish would be safe to have.

Two months later, on a rainy Saturday night, the girl and her parents are sitting in the basement family room watching a movie—a comedy—and waiting for the pizza they’ve ordered. It’s been tranquil since the move to Winston-Salem and the parents’ hopes are high that this has been the final, effective move that will straighten out their lives. The man and woman sit on each end of the sofa. The girl is on the floor, positioned between her parents, with her back against the sofa. On the TV, an actor drives a car into a swimming pool, and the man and woman laugh while the girl says in an even tone that she is going to kill them both. The father mutes the television. He asks the girl to repeat what she just said. In the same flat tone, she informs her parents that one night, while they’re asleep, she will come into their bedroom and kill them. This is too much for the man, who reaches down, grabs the girl’s shoulder, and slaps her hard across the cheek. Dark red streaks appear on her pale skin. He yells at her that she is evil, that she has ruined their lives, even though he and her mother have given her nothing but love and support. He tells the girl that she needs to grow up and stop acting out. The woman jumps up and pulls her husband’s hand from where he is still gripping the girl. She pleads with him to calm down, but just then, the girl begins keening and starts punching her mother’s back. Instinctively, the woman shoves her daughter away, and when she does, the girl falls hard onto her back, her head smacking against the hard tile floor.

The girl gets up holding the back of her head and snatches the TV remote off the sofa. She hurls it through the small window directly behind the couch. Rain splatters the windowsill. The girl then walks over and pulls down the large television, the screen shattering with a muffled explosion. Her father rushes over and takes hold of the girl’s arm to control her. The girl begins slapping at him, but he pulls her over and shoves her onto the couch, which is sprinkled with small shards of glass. Her father fights to control his rage. Her mother holds her hands over her face, sobbing.

The girl looks up at her parents and, in the same tone of voice in which she announced she planned to murder them, says she is sorry and that she doesn’t know why she does these things. “Can’t you help me?” she pleads.

The woman sits down next to her daughter and pulls her close. A few minutes later, the woman leads the girl upstairs to bed. The man stays to fit a board into the broken window until it can be replaced.

By the time the man gets upstairs to the bedroom, his wife is sitting on the edge of their bed. She’s taken off her jeans and top and is wearing only her bra and panties. After he closes the bedroom door, she tells him to put a chair under the knob to block it; otherwise, she will not be able to sleep. He starts to protest but slides a high-back chair from the corner and angles it under the knob. The man and woman sit together on the bed and discuss their daughter. They’ve lost her, they agree. The girl will have to be sent away. They are out of options. What else can they do? She’s a danger to them and to everyone—even to herself.

The man shuts off the lamp beside the bed, but his wife begs him to leave it on. They lie in bed, each lost in their own thoughts, listening to the light patter of the rain against the windows. After twenty minutes, the man is snoring, but the woman continues to lie awake, unable to sleep.

She remembers the day her daughter was born. . .

The obstetrician hands her their daughter mere moments after she has given birth. The baby’s whole body is wet and messy, and she is crying. The woman holds her new daughter against her breasts, smiling at her husband, who is standing next to the bed with tears in his eyes. The baby continues to wail. For a moment her face turns bright red as she tries to catch her breath. The mother presses her daughter’s head against her, and the baby quiets.

# # #

From I Hear the Human Noise by Ray Morrison, Press 53 2019

Ray Morrison spent most of his childhood in Brooklyn, NY and Washington, DC but headed south after college to earn his degree in veterinary medicine and he hasn’t looked north since. He lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina where, when not writing short stories, he ministers to the needs of dogs, cats and rodents. His debut collection of short stories, In a World of Small Truths, was released in 2012. His second collection, I Hear the Human Noise, was published in Spring of 2019 by Press 53, winning the gold medal IPPY Award for Best Southeast Fiction in 2020. His stories have appeared in Ecotone, Beloit Fiction Journal, StorySouth, FictionSoutheast, Carve Magazine, Broad River Review, and others.

Worth Fighting For

Clinton came from good quarreling stock. William and Macie Slade’s bickering, arguments, and barbed debates were the stuff of local legend. After one infamous fight in which his mother had thrown a whole roasted chicken at his father’s head, Clinton had asked his father why he didn’t just leave and marry someone he could get along with. William had backhanded his thirteen-year-old son so hard that Clinton’s jaw momentarily disengaged, and blood spurted from his lip—the only time his father had ever hit him.

“I took a vow before God!” his father growled, voice full of venom. “’Til death do us part.” William shrugged off his anger like a wet coat, swiped the blood from Clinton’s chin with a flick of his finger and winked. “Besides, why would I leave the devil’s daughter, only to marry his sister, instead? All women are wicked, son, but it’s a blessing to marry one, and a duty to stay with her.”

Clinton sucked his bleeding lip, wondering if marriage was God’s blessing or His curse. He was too smart to ask.

That night, Clinton counted out the months between his parents’ anniversary and his birthday, discovered they must have conceived him in a fit of passion. He was William and Macie’s only child. Their love child.

A smile now tugged Clinton’s lips at the twisted memory.

“Stop smiling, Clinton. It’s not funny,” his wife Paula said from across the kitchen table. “I can’t stand their constant warring. We should drive into town and get a room. I can’t put up with it all weekend. I told you this would happen.” She huffed. “We should have made a reservation before we left home, like I said.”

Clinton glanced at his mother, then closed his eyes. Didn’t Paula realize she sounded just like them? Is that why he’d married her, the familiarity of conflict?

Macie yanked the dish towel from her shoulder and threw it onto the Formica tabletop, where it knocked over Clinton’s nearly empty coffee cup, spilling the dregs in an ugly brown stream across the table. “William, turn down that blasted television! I can’t hear myself talk.”

The Ben-Gay commercial spouting from the living room quieted a decibel. “That ain’t stopped you yet,” William yelled.

Macie slid the Bundt pan onto the wire rack, slammed shut the oven door hard enough to vibrate the table. “Shut your trap, old man!”

Paula’s over-plucked brows formed severe angles as she leaned again toward Clinton. “You know they’re miserable. Do you think they’d get a divorce if we paid for it? Maybe they just can’t afford it.”

“For God’s sake, Paula.” Clinton yanked the damp towel from the table, carried it to the kitchen sink, rinsed it and draped it over the lip of the sink. His parents’ relentless bickering was the one thing he could count on. He had no idea why or when they’d started arguing, but it had gone on for as long as he’d been alive. Sometimes he’d caught them grinning at one another during a heated fight, as if they enjoyed it. Nearly fifty years of marriage, and their relationship never changed. He’d be damned if he’d be the one to change it.

Paula’s answer to everything was to walk away. She’d walked away from her ex-husband the night of their first anniversary, from her final semester at college two months before graduation, and from three jobs since Clinton had married her. His marriage was a waiting game—him waiting for Paula to leave him. Maybe he was tired of waiting. Maybe he’d leave, first.  

“I don’t do drama, and I don’t do fighting,” she told him on their wedding day. Said nothing in life was worth fighting for, anyway.

Now he stared out the window at the leafless oak, picking out the last few rotting boards that had once been his tree house, his refuge from the brawling. He didn’t know how much longer Paula would stay with him before leaving, but he knew he’d never ask her to stay. Maybe he couldn’t live happily ever after with his wife, but he didn’t want what his parents had, either. It was only after he and his wife moved away from Hillsville for one of Paula’s new jobs that Clinton realized he’d made a life of doing things he didn’t want to do. Holding on to Paula wouldn’t be one of them.

“What’s a man have to do to get a drink of water around here?” William called from the living room.
“I guess he has to get off his—”

“Mom!” Clinton said. “Can you and Dad tone it down a bit, just for one day?” He pressed his lips into a thin smile directed at his wife.

“I’ll bring you a glass of water, Dad,” he called.

Paula stood and took a glass from the cabinet, handed it to Clinton. “Told you we shouldn’t have come,” she whispered as he filled the glass. “It’s always the same.” She rolled her eyes when the volume of the living room television grew so loud she had to raise her voice to be heard. “God knows why your parents haven’t killed each other and ended their misery. Ours, too.”

Clinton had heard the comment before, not just from his wife, but from aunts, uncles, the county sheriff, even the preacher at the Methodist church.

“Look at the time,” Paula said too brightly. “Mrs. Slade, it’s nearly time to leave for your appointment.” She winked at Clinton. “I can drive you. Do you want to change before you go?”

Clinton’s mother looked down at her calico, snap-front housedress, then fixed Paula in a cool stare. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

Paula shifted, smoothed her skirt. “Not a thing. You look just—lovely. I’ll—let me get my coat, and we’ll be on our way.”

“You stay here and watch the cake,” she said to Paula, then shot a warning look at Clinton. “Fifty-five minutes and not a second more, you hear?”

The television went silent. “I’m taking her to the doctor,” William called from the living room. “You two came all this way, you don’t want to spend your vacation sitting in a waiting room full of germs.” He grunted. “My luck, I’ll probably catch funeral ammonia from one of them old geezers while I’m waiting on her.”

Paula lifted her chin. “Funeral ammonia?”

“Pneumonia,” Clinton translated. “The kind that’ll kill you.” 

“Macie Slade!” his father yelled from the living room. “Get a move on. Doc Carson won’t wait all day. You ain’t that special.”

Clinton turned and grasped his mother’s arm, reached for an answer to the question he couldn’t think to ask. She pulled away, bustled across the kitchen. “Gotta get my purse, before that old fool out there leaves without me.”

“Mom, you’re seeing Dr. Carson? Why are you seeing Dr. Carson?”

His mother moved faster than her years should have allowed, ducked into the hallway and climbed the stairs away from her son.

“Who’s Dr. Carson?” Paula asked.

Clinton pushed past her on the way to the living room. “Dad, why is Mom seeing Dr. Carson?”

William Slade stood by the door, shoving his meaty hands into the same quilted, brown-twill jacket he’d worn when Clinton moved away from Hillsville five years ago. “’Cause he’s the one who Doc Fenwick sent her to, I reckon.”

“Okay, but why?

“Who’s Dr. Carson?” Paula struck an absurdly demanding pose in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, her fingers splayed against the daisy wallpaper in way that made her fingers look like petals, her palm the flower’s orange center.

William took a long time fastening the metal buttons on his jacket, his thick fingers slow, certain. “Some test results,” he finally mumbled.

Clinton stepped forward, his face a foot from his father’s as he parceled out clipped words. “What—kind—of—test.” 

Pain flashed across William’s face, quickly replaced by annoyance as his hands swept the air, missing Clinton’s nose by a scant inch. “A test! Some test. Some biopsy something or the other.”

“Biop—” Clinton’s breath ran out, stealing the word from his mouth.

Macie appeared behind Paula. “Excuse me, please.” She stepped past her daughter-in-law, scowled at her husband. “Goodness gracious, William, I thought you’d have started the car by now. You know I don’t like sitting on cold leather seats. You should have listened to me and bought a car with those nice velour seats. I never did like leather in a car. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter.”

William’s eyes found Macie, and he held her in his gaze, an odd look passing between them that Clinton couldn’t decipher. “Just shuddup and get in the car, woman. You’ll be late to your own funeral.”

 Papery lips brushed Clinton’s cheek as his mother whisked past. “Keep it up, William, and you’ll be early to yours.”

The room turned around Clinton, or maybe he turned in the room. He found himself facing Paula, breathless.

She rolled her eyes. “For the last time, Clinton, who is Dr. Carson?” 

~ ~ ~

Clinton carried the suitcases from the trunk of Paula’s Lexus into the town’s only bed and breakfast. Paula had told him before they’d married that she wasn’t a hotel kind of girl, so he’d traded relaxing swims in resort pools and morning workouts in gyms with views for afternoon teas and too-sweet breakfasts with strangers.

She appraised their room, slid a finger down a curtain made from the same silk damask that covered the upper half of the walls, and she appeared to find it suitable. “This is what your parents should do to their house.” Her eyes shifted as she licked her lips. “Get rid of those daisies in the living room and the teapot wallpaper in the kitchen.”

“Like that’ll ever happen.”

“Yeah. We’ll probably be the ones who’ll have to change it.”

“What do you mean?”

Her cheeks flushed. “Oh, you know what I mean. Someday. No time soon, of course. You’re their only child. You’ll inherit their house when ... you know.” She smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in the bedspread. “That’s a long time away. Nothing to worry about now.”

Clinton flung the larger of the two suitcases—Paula’s—onto the bed, skewing the coverlet. “We should be getting back. They’ll be home already, and I want to hear what the doctor said.”

“What’s the rush? Dinner’s not for another hour, and if we get there too early, your mom will want to give me another cooking lesson. I’m sure she’ll blame that overdone cake on me, too.” Her lips twisted to one side. “You can ask them about the test results over dinner. Maybe there’ll be less shouting that way.” 

“It was a biopsy, Paula. They sent her to an oncologist. I think it’s pretty obvious what the test results revealed.” He stood by the rolltop desk, gouged his finger into a hole dug into the wood by a former bored guest. “I’m sure there’ll be more to discuss than polite dinner conversation.”

Paula tugged at her lip, and for a moment her eyes appeared wet and shiny, and it startled Clinton that she looked like she might cry. She sniffed a deep breath, huffed it out slowly, loudly. “I just wanted a little time to decompress, you know?” She pulled out her cell phone, touched the first number on speed dial, turned her back to Clinton. “Let me check on the store, then we’ll go.” She spoke into the phone before waiting for Clinton’s response. 

Clinton sank onto the bed, stared toward the window, unable to see what lay beyond the haziness of the sheer curtain. 

“Are you listening to me?”

He turned toward the irritated tone of Paula’s voice, more than toward her words. “Yes?”

“Heather’s going to cost me the Landers’ job by the time I get back down there. She ordered the wrong upholstery pattern, and it won’t work with the other tapestries in their study.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Honestly, it’s impossible to teach that woman the importance of detail. She never seems to grasp the little things.” 

Clinton set his jaw. “Why don’t you just drive on home? I’ll go back and stay at Mom and Dad’s, take care of whatever they need on my own. You know you’ll be happier.” He wanted a fight, needed a fight. He hadn’t expected her relieved smile.

“Oh, honey, you’re absolutely right, you know? All their bickering ... well, it rattles my mind. And that doctor drama, it reminds me too much of Daddy’s sickness when I was a child. I can’t handle it.”

Clinton knew little of her father’s “sickness,” other than the man had run out on his family and drank himself to death. It hardly seemed the same.

She perched lightly next to him on the very edge of the bed, like a bird ready for flight, and lightly patted his leg. “If you’ll get our bags, I’ll take care of the front desk.” She smoothed a strand of hair back into her French twist and headed for the door. She paused there, delicately sliding her fingertips over the damask wallpaper again, then she strolled out.

Clinton followed. Disappointment pulled the corners of his mouth. What was wrong with this woman? Didn’t she realize now was the time he needed her the most? He hefted her overstuffed suitcase into the trunk, part of him wishing it wouldn’t be unloaded at home, part of him knowing it would be.

Paula’s high heels clicked on the cobblestone, and she touched Clinton’s arm. “Thank you for being so understanding about this, Clinton. I really need to make a good impression on the Landers. If she likes my work ... well, you never know where it could lead.” Her smile appeared too tight. “You’re a good man.”

“I’ll just call a cab, Paula,” he said when she walked toward the passenger side. “We’re so close to the interstate, there’s no need to drive me into the country and come back out here again.”

“That’s silly,” she said, pausing with her hand on the car door. “We haven’t had an hour alone since we got here. That’s no kind of vacation. At least let me ride with you back to your parents’ house.”

“It’s okay. Really. You should get on the road, get home before dark.”

She walked back to him. Her quick kiss caught only the side of his mouth, but this time her smile was genuine. “Tell your parents I said goodbye.”

~ ~ ~

Clinton sat in the dawning light of his parents’ living room, listening to the too-loud tick of the mantle-clock as the hour approached five. He propped his elbows on his knees, picked at a hangnail. Stage four. His mother would start chemo on Tuesday, two days after his scheduled return home. He should stay. He’d call Paula later, tell her his mother needed his help. The time apart might do his marriage good. It’d give him time to think, sort through things, figure out what he was doing with his life. Maybe his discontent with work was seeping into his life at home. He was tired of teaching history to high-school students who didn’t believe the past mattered.      

He walked softly toward the kitchen, avoiding the creaking board in the living room floor, but he stopped when he heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway. Someone turning around? The paperboy, maybe. He stepped to the window, surprised to see Paula’s Lexus. He watched her for a moment, unsure why she’d returned. She sat behind the wheel, looking up at the house’s second-story windows. Checking to see if anyone was awake at this hour, he supposed.

Clinton opened the front door carefully, so as not to wake his parents. His father’s ratty house slippers sat just outside the door, and he slipped into them. A brisk chill raced across his skin, causing him to shiver.

A relieved smile lit Paula’s face when she saw him. The car door chimed when she opened it, and she stepped out and rushed toward him. “How are you, Clinton?” she asked. “I feel so bad about leaving you when I did. I just didn’t think—didn’t want to believe—well, the news—it’s such a shock. How’s your mother? Your father? I didn’t expect... .” Her words rolled out on one foggy breath, and she slid her arms around him.

Clinton held his wife, patted her back. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t think he’d see her until he returned home, wasn’t sure she’d even be there when he arrived. “Hey there,” he finally managed.

Paula pulled back and looked up at him, her eyes watery despite her smile. “I have some good news.” She placed her hands on his chest. “I saved the Landers job, and better still, she referred me to the Reynoldses—you know, that estate home next door to her?—and Mrs. Reynolds hired me on the spot. It’ll pay enough for you to take some time off, if you want. Spend it with your mother.”

Clinton’s mouth opened, then shut, but he didn’t speak. He’d thought she’d run away again, yet here she stood in front of him. He’d thought her leaving was selfish, but she’d returned offering precious gifts of time and financial support. Nothing made sense. He rubbed his eyes with his fingers.

She tilted her head to one side and looked at him. “Did I wake you?” Paula took his hand, led him toward the door. “It’s freezing out here. Let’s get you back inside ... before you catch funeral ammonia.”

She smiled, and even through his confusion, he recognized the burning of his face as shame. It mortified him that he’d seriously thought of leaving her.

He put on coffee while Paula returned to the car to bring in a bag of fruit and a box of pastries she’d picked up at the twenty-four-hour grocery on the way through town. She put the sweet rolls in the oven to warm, and then she and Clinton cut up the fruit, the two of them working in silence.

“She’s a fighter,” Paula finally whispered as she sliced a red apple. “She’ll be okay.”

It surprised Clinton to see tears in her eyes. “Don’t, Paula. Don’t cry.” A floorboard creaked overhead, and he pointed toward the ceiling. “We need to be strong for her. No tears, okay?”

Paula swiped at her eyes. “I want to tell you, before they come down ... I shouldn’t have said what I did about them getting a divorce. They have their own way, I guess. You know ... how they love each other.”

How they love each other. Is that what it was that kept them together? Love? “I don’t know,” Clinton said. “Forty years ago, divorce might have been a good idea for them.”

“You plan on sleeping all day, old man?” Clinton’s mother’s voice carried through the heat vents. “Get up, lazybones.”

Paula’s caramel-colored eyes grew round, and she giggled, and despite the bluish fatigue beneath her eyes, Clinton recognized her loveliness. He wanted to tell her how much it meant that she’d made the two-hour drive back, how much it meant for her to stand here with him, cutting fruit at dawn. He wanted so much to tell her he loved her. Instead, he bent and kissed her forehead.

An hour later, Paula and Clinton’s father worked the daily crossword puzzle in the living room, and while helping his mother put away the breakfast dishes, Clinton offered to stay another week. She shooed him away. “I’ve made it this far without you holding my hand, young man. I reckon I can get by a little longer.”

Clinton’s mother eyed him until he shifted to the other foot. Why couldn’t he bring himself to say it? Were those three words really so difficult, so taboo, so foreign in this family that he couldn’t say them aloud?

“I love you, too,” his mother said, her mouth twisting to one side. “Besides, you and Miz Paula got business at home needs tending.”        

Clinton wondered what business she referred to—Paula’s interior design business, or the business of their troubled marriage? And was it really troubled, or was it all in his mind? If arguing could be interpreted as love, and if leaving meant sweet reunions, how would he ever know?

~ ~ ~

Two months later, Clinton again sat in his parents’ living room. “Mom, you need to stick with Dr. Carson’s plan. He knows what’s best.”

She waved her hand. “He knows what’s best for his pocketbook, that’s what he knows.”

“Don’t think of it as four more treatments. Think of it as one more. Then after that, one more. You can get through anyth—”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Clinton Slade.” His mother seemed as astonished by the sharp tone of her voice as Clinton did. She grew quiet a moment, then removed and rewrapped the paisley scarf around her head.

Clinton blinked hard and turned away from the raw pink nakedness of her scalp. His mother had lost her long, snowy-white hair after the fifth chemo treatment. 

“Only so much vomiting a body can take, anyhow,” she said quietly. Then she smiled at Clinton. “The people at the hospice place are so nice. The nurse who’s going to come here to the house is the kindest, plumpest little thing. A real sweetheart.”

Clinton sat straighter, glared at his father. “Dad, say something.”

He held out his hands. “What? What is it you want me to say, son?”

“Talk her into it! Make her go.” Clinton clenched and unclenched his fists. Of the many times his father should have acquiesced to his mother, this wasn’t one of them.

William’s eyes puddled. “Let it go, son. Leave her be.”

~ ~ ~

It was the kind and plump little hospice nurse who found them at home and phoned Clinton seconds after she called the ambulance.

“Your father was spooned right up against your mother in the bed,” she said. “Hugging her real close, so tight you couldn’t get a wedge between them. The empty OxyContin bottle was lying by his side.” She made a soft humming noise. “We had to take him in, so we couldn’t leave your mother here in the state she was in. They were both alive when they left here in the ambulance, but not by much. You’d better come, quick as you can.”

When Clinton and Paula arrived at the hospital two hours later, Paula balked at the door to the critical care unit. “I can’t go in there,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I’ll be sick.”

Clinton fixed his eyes on the door. “Wait in the lobby.”

~ ~ ~

The doctor told Clinton they’d pumped his father’s stomach just in time. “If the hospice nurse had found him half an hour later... .” She shook her head. “They must really love each other. I guess they couldn’t bear the thought of being apart.” She offered a small, sad smile. “Sharing the poison. Like Romeo and Juliet.”

Clinton blinked against the strangeness of her words. “They were married forty years, and they fought like cats and dogs the whole time,” he said, and the guilt of airing their dirty laundry at a time like this made his face burn.

The doctor’s head tilted a scant inch to one side, and she held her gaze steady on Clinton’s face. “Only the most precious things are worth fighting for. Maybe their marriage is more precious to them than you know.” She straightened and touched Clinton’s arm. “Your father will likely move into a regular room tomorrow. We’ll keep him a day or two for observation. Your mother ... she won’t return home,” the doctor said. “Today, maybe tomorrow... .” She took one of Clinton’s hands in both of hers, her touch dry and cool. “A chaplain is available to speak with you at any time.”

Clinton’s tongue thickened, stuck to the roof of his mouth. Beeping sounds from each of the unit’s rooms announced heartbeats, continuing life. He nodded, and the doctor patted his hand, then turned and pressed the giant metal button on the wall to open the doors, and she walked out of critical care.

~ ~ ~

Snow-heavy clouds hung low, and dusk approached as Clinton and Paula pulled into the driveway at his parents’ house. “You want me to go in with you, love?” Paula asked.

He stared at her a moment. So many strange words he’d heard today, this last from her lips the strangest. Love, she’d called him. “No. I’m just going to grab a few things for Dad. Mom won’t need—” He shrugged, opened the car door.

In his parents’ bedroom, Clinton stuffed pajamas and a change of clothes into his father’s old Army duffle and slung it over his shoulder. He stepped over papery tissues, dry wipes, empty packets left by the paramedics. He turned toward the bed then, saw the nest his parents’ bodies had made in the center of the double-wedding-ring quilt his mother had stitched before they were married. She should have it with her.

He picked up the quilt, draped it around his chilly shoulders like a boxer leaving the ring, walked outside, and closed the door of his boyhood home.

Paula stood on front porch steps, crying. Light snow flurried from the sky, tiny flakes settling in her hair, melting on her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, honey,” she said, slipping her hand into his.

Clinton sheltered her beneath his blanketed arm, led her to the car, gripped her hand until she wriggled her fingers against him.

# # #

From The Lightness of Water & Other Stories by Rhonda Browning White, winner of the 2019 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction

Rhonda Browning White received the 2019 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction for her debut short-story collection, The Lightness of Water & Other Stories, which was also a 2020 finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Four stories from the collection were nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her work appears in Entropy, Prime Number Magazine, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Qu Literary Journal, Hospital Drive, HeartWood Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Steel Toe Review, Ploughshares Writing Lessons, Tiny Text, New Pages, South85 Journal, The Skinny Poetry Journal, WV Executive, Mountain Echoes, Gambit, Justus Roux, Bluestone Review, and in the anthologies Appalachia (Un)broken, Ice Cream Secrets, Appalachia’s Last Stand, and Mountain Voices. Her blog “Read. Write. Live!” is found at www.RhondaBrowningWhite.com. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Converse College in Spartanburg, SC and was awarded the Watson Fellowship from Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise. She resides near Daytona Beach and is currently polishing her first novel.