The Saints Are Dead

THE SAINTS ARE DEAD
_A COLLECTION OF STORIES
"Disparate,
heady, playful,
and sharp...
~Mike Stone,
author of Tt
Foretold
I
THE SAINTS ARE DEAD
A COLLECTION OF STORIES
BY
AARON POLSON
Copyright © 2011 by Aaron Polson
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US.

Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
written permission of the publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any

similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not
intended by the author.
Published by Aqueous Books

A Danse Macabre imprint
P.O. Box 12784
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.aqueousbooks.com
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-9826734-4-7
First edition, Aqueous Books printing, April 2011

Book design and layout: Cynthia Reeser
Cover photograph: by Eugeny1988, Wall in princess
Oldenburgskaya's palace, Ramon, Voronezhskaya district,
Russia; work adapted and manipulated for cover.
fiqueous Books
THE SAINTS ARE DEAD
+
This one is for Owen and Max, with love. Your
imaginations set the standard.
Table of Contents
Gary Sump’s Hidden City ri
Dancing Lessons 14
The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable 23
Tunnel Vision 34
The Surgeon of An Khe 41
Everything in Its Place 56
In Green Water 62
Catalog Sales 73
Why We Don’t Talk About the Pumpkins 91

Anymore
Little Man, Big Eraser 104
In the Primal Library 126

The House Eaters 134.
Gary Sump is an Angry God 143
Reciprocity 146
Cut and Paste 157
Homecoming 179
Tap, Tap 192
Uncle Jackhammer and the Clockwork 206

Beet Field War
Acknowledgements 220
Gary Sump’s Hidden City
aD eae guy over there, the skinny one with the big
glasses and pinched nose, sitting alone at Java
Stop and drinking a tall regular, his name is Gary.
He has a miniature city in his backyard. I live
next door, and I’ve watched him from my second-
story window. Gary is dull—plain yogurt without
sweetener—except for the secret city.
It started simply, just buildings made of spare
wood and a couple of bricks he had lying around
his yard. Maybe he’s lonely. I don’t know. I never
see the guy on the phone, and he doesn’t go out
except for a tall regular at Java Stop. I’ve
watched him since before his wife bailed six
months ago.
Anyway, he made roads, parks, and a lake in
his backyard—just like The Sims. You remember
The Sims, right? Scott played for hours back in
the dorm; probably why he dropped out. Well,
the people came later. Little critters—they look
AARON POLSON
just like you and me, wearing clothing and

everything.
No, they aren’t dolls or action figures.
They move around.
They live in the little buildings.
They’re alive.
After a while, I started watching them instead
of Gary. I hooked up a camera which looked over
their city so I could watch what happened while I
was at work. Eight hours of video zipped by in
about twenty minutes on high speed. They work,
too. The little people cook, create art, worship.
They rearranged some of Gary’s buildings, made
one of them into a kind of church. I don’t know if
he ever noticed.
Gary goes to work at eight in the morning,
returns at five-thirty, and turns off his television
at ten. He’s an accountant or something.
Dullsville. On Saturdays he comes down here, has
a cup of coffee, and reads the paper. Not a lot of
variation.
I’ve seen him in his bedroom, sobbing like a
baby. One time I saw him look at the label on a
bottle of pills—an orange one. Maybe Gary was
pondering the undiscovered country.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he goes
outside, tilts a house on its side, snatches a few of
the people, and squeezes their heads until they
GARY SUMP'S HIDDEN CITY
swell and burst. Poof—little red cloud. After

killing two or three this way, he slumps onto his
porch steps and sobs, kind of like that night in his
bedroom. He tosses the stained bodies into the
city. After a while, he goes inside, slamming the
door.
They hold funerals. They dig holes and plant
the headless in a section of dirt near Gary’s
begonias. Kind of creepy, really—they have this
whole funeral procession thing and play sappy
music. I’ve watched these people do everything:
Work, play, swim in the lake, even have sex in
their fenced-in backyards, but I only feel like a
sleazebag when I watch one of their funerals.
Yet mostly, I feel sorry for Gary. The guy
made a whole city and still isn’t happy.
13
Dancing Lessons
The man was dead and the girl was twelve. He
was stitched together and wired to a heart of

brass and tin, a tiny dynamo that recharged with
each step; she wore summer dresses of faded blue
gingham and carried a smooth stone in her
pocket. Every day for a week, she lingered after
the carnival matinee and they would talk.
"You dance well for a dead man," she offered.
His gray head bobbed, but his eyes were
empty buttons of dark glass. "I have little
choice," he muttered.
When he was alive, the man lusted for a
whiskey bottle, and it broke him, forced him to
leave his home, his wife, and his child to follow
any job for food. With his world in a bindle, he
rode away on a freight car. His liver gave up in
baby steps, along with his heart. The carney
found him when he was broken.
DANCING LESSONS
The girl came with her mother and the crowds

the first day the carnival was in town. Bright
posters promised shadows of the netherworld, the
end of history in fire and ice, and the dead man
who, as a challenge to Lazarus, not only rose but
danced. Her mother brought her that day, worried
for her little girl’s happiness. The sweet, curl-
headed stick of a child wore her favorite dress,
thin as gauze, so lean it almost melted into her
skin.
"Mother, look, a dead man who dances," she
squealed.
"But, dear—wouldn’t you rather," her mother
said, pointing to garish signs promising the
wonder of the man with spider legs, the carousal
of mythological beasts, and the woman with an
interchangeable face. "So many other sights to
see..."
The girl crossed her arms and shook her head.
"Ride the trolley home after the show." With
a weary shrug, the mother pressed a few coins
into her daughter’s hand and shuffled away.
The girl, filled with curiosity and cotton
candy, waited until the dead man’s tent emptied.
She cautiously skirted the wooden benches and
15
AARON POLSON
trampled grass, slipping through shadows at the

tent’s perimeter.
"I’m dead but not blind," he said in rough
tones.
On her second visit he explained: "It was a

simple deal...I was dying."
He had signed a contract before his death, a
paper promise entrusting money from the
carnival to his widow and their daughter. The ink
dried, and his heart imploded with the whimper of
a dying rabbit.
The carnival men played doctor—armed with
scalpels and masks—more concerned with "could
we" than "should we." Copper wires laced the
dead man’s muscles, along with delicate lengths of
violin string. A metal stone sank into his heart-
hole, and they pickled him each night in a casket
of gold.
"You're dead now."
"They’re taking care of my wife...my little
girl." His weary eyes rolled in their sockets. "They
own me, for as long as I last."
"Does it hurt, being dead?" she asked, her
timid finger extending to the stitches on his arm.
DANCING LESSONS
Her other hand played with two coins in her skirt

pocket.
The dead man shook his head.
The afternoon sun abused the carnival tents.

"You look sad today," she said on her third
visit.
The dead man’s face moved, twisted, and
performed a dance of its own. He looked at the
girl and tried to remember—his brain was much
like a sponge in a metal dish.
"T’ve seen you before." His voice scratched like
a twig in the dirt.
"For three days now." She grinned.
After the show his rotting body would stiffen,
sorely battered by the forced dancing. He tried to
shake his head, but the wires were sleeping; even
the brass dynamo was nearly spent. "No, no. I’ve
seen you before." His voice crawled on its belly.
"I’ve seen you before." His hand fought the
mortis and tapped against his chest. "You remind
me of my little girl. Your eyes, maybe."
17
AARON POLSON
On the forth visit she brought him a tin cup of

water she filled in the elephant pens.
"For your voice," she mumbled, eyes cast
downward. The skin around his cheekbones had
started to peel, fraying like loose bits of yarn.
"Thanks," he rasped.
The girl kicked at the dirt between broken
shards of grass. "The smell is worse today," she
said.
A nod. A sip of water loosened his throat. "It’s
hot. I’m rotting. But the water feels good."
"That’s something, I suppose."
"Yes." He passed her the empty cup.
"Something. Our last stop, my first with the
show, was up north. Much cooler than here." His
gray hand made a slow sweep of the tent. "The
sun is brutal."
The girl pushed both hands into the pocket on
the front of her dress and produced the smooth
stone. She turned it in her palms, feeling the
polished surface. "My father brought this home
from France, after the war. He said it was from
the Ardennes. His best friend died there, and
Daddy used to say a bit of him was lodged in the
rock." She squinted at the stone. "I could never
find that bit."
The dead man’s body creaked and popped as
he stood. "It’s a figure of speech."
DANCING LESSONS
"Oh." She slipped the stone back inside her

pocket. "ll bring pictures tomorrow. Show you
Daddy in his army suit."
Her mother mocked her choice of friends, but

the girl dug out the cigar box from under her bed
and found a picture of her parents on their
wedding day. Maybe the dead man could see
something in the yellowed print; the dead, she
once heard, possess understanding the living
cannot fathom.
With stone and photo tucked together, the girl
waited until the carnival tent spilled its crowd.
"Hard day today?" she asked the slumping
gray scarecrow.
He managed the slightest shoulder tic. His
head rose in a slow arc, showing his face—flesh
now checkered with bone.
"Here." She ran to this side, skipped onto the
low wooden stage, and helped him to the edge.
His skin hummed warmly—too warm for the
dead—but she remembered the ball in his chest,
the electric dynamo forcing life through his
copper veins.
He didn’t speak at first, but clasped the
picture she pulled from her pocket. His eyes
19
AARON POLSON
spilled what tears they held, as the blurred man in

the photo made him imagine a mirror. "I was in
the war, too," he groaned. His voice faded to a
whisper, little more than a shuffle of brittle paper,
as he continued. "I was in France when the trees
disappeared under the rough plow of artillery
shells. Ghosts rose from the mud every night and
pointed at me with splinters for hands."
His eyes rolled to the top of the tent, black
and lost.
The girl rested her chin on her hands. "This
was my father."
He pushed the picture away. "Oh. He’s dead?"
"I don’t know." Her little fingers picked at a
frayed edge of the image. "He left us two years
ago." She buried the picture in her pocket. "Mom
said he liked whiskey better than us."
When her mother found the photo that night,

she tore it in half.
"Your father was a vagrant. A dirty, selfish
vagrant."
The girl closed her eyes. Moments passed in
silence.
20
DANCING LESSONS
With cold fingers, her mother touched her

face. "What more can you expect from a dead
man? He'll leave you, too."
The girl ran to the bathroom before her
mother noticed tears. She tore open her parents’
medicine cabinet and found an old razor,
untouched since her father’s departure. The blade,
though choked with rust, was still sharp, and
nicked her finger. She stuffed the sore digit inside
her mouth and looked into the mirror, the early
evening glass darker than it should be. She saw
the dead man’s face.
On the sixth day the girl arrived with metal

pressed in her grip. She held out her closed
fingers, and transferred the blade to the dead
man. "It’s only a little blood," she said of a fresh
cut.
Flies danced on his rotten fingers, but buzzed
away when he closed his hand around the razor
blade. His eyes, somehow brighter now, shone
between limp folds of skin. "Goodbye," he rasped
as she backed away from his tent.
He held the razor blade and sat on the low
stage until the sounds of the carnival faded into
the love song of frogs and crickets. Then, with
21
AARON POLSON
effort, he fished for the violin strings in his legs,

dug furrows in his tough flesh to find the brass
cords, and severed the work of the carnival
doctors. His wounds were deep and bloodless. One
arm was limp—cut free, too—as he brought the
other to his chest for the brass heart, and hacked
it free. The heavy orb thumped onto the hollow
stage, rumbled across, and tumbled into the grass.
On the seventh day his tent was empty, but

the girl knew. She had brought the torn picture of
her father in uniform and tucked it under the
smooth stone from her pocket, and whispered,
"Goodbye."
i)to
The World in Rubber, Soft and
Malleable
Betore he disappeared through the extra
doorway in his basement, Jarrod Ponton was my

best friend. He was pale and thin, skinny enough
to pass through the night deposit slot at the bank.
Some of the seniors called him Bird. We never
understood the joke, but I guess his nose was a bit
beak-like. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember his
face. When the weather was nice, we spent our
afterschool hours spray painting the concrete
embankment under the bridge south of town on
Highway 15.
Jarrod buried the world in paint. I had OCD.
He could cover an old mural with sweeping
swatches of bold color in the same time I laid
down a few square feet of a detailed composition.
He was fields of grass and blue sky; I was flecks of
gold on the portrait’s left cornea. We worked in
AARON POLSON
secret, in the quiet space between highway and

river, scrambling over loose rock to massage our
hidden canvas. The cops had other problems to
deal with, anyway.
One week before he disappeared, Jarrod
marked out a rough rectangle with metallic silver
Krylon.
"This’ll be my masterpiece," he said. "I’m
creating a world right here."
I shrugged and continued shaking my can of
paint, cobalt blue. Only spray cans made that
magical sound, a metal ball bouncing inside a
metal cylinder, breaking up chunks of pigment
and forcing them to mix with the base. An artist
shook a can just so, waving back and forth with
one hand as fulcrum in the middle. Shaken fast
enough, the can was rubber—soft and
malleable—and the paint could become anything.
The rumors spread as they do in small towns,

discussed over coffee at the local bakery, or by a
couple of old men leaning against their trucks at
the gas station, and before long everyone knew
about the new doors in people’s basements. Once
a person walked through that door, she was gone.
The police were involved a little at first, missing-
THE WORLD IN RUBBER, SOFT AND MALLEABLE
person reports filed, but what could they do? It

wasn’t against the law to walk through a door in
your own house.
Each week in class, each day, more empty
seats. Cori Mansfield, the girl I had a crush on
since seventh grade, was gone after Christmas. I
missed looking at her, but probably paid a little
more attention in chemistry. Some classes were
consolidated when too many teachers vanished
and there were too few substitutes to go around. I
painted little memorials to each missing classmate
and teacher. Morbid or misguided, I don’t know.
Were these people dead? Could they come back?
Would they if they could?
The space under the bridge crowded with little
commemorations, caricatured graffiti of vanished
friends and mentors.
"We ever gonna paint over this stuff?" Jarrod
asked the afternoon before he left.
"I dunno."
Jarrod was new day, new picture. I was more
than meticulous. I was patient, stubborn, stuck in
my pattern, marching lock-step to the end of high
school, the beginning of life as I would know it,
and the nothing beyond. People weren’t supposed
to walk through doors in their basements and not
return.
AARON POLSON
i.
Mom walked out of the front door when I

was seven, and I waited ten years to see her again.
Ten years—longer than I was old when she left.
In my mind’s eye, she was a patient woman—my
memory tells lies about how tender and kind she
was, probably some mash up of TV moms and
wish-fulfillment.
Flecks of gold shimmered on her left cornea.
Dad sat around after work and drank Pabst
Blue Ribbon Beer from bottles. He had to drive
thirty miles to find a liquor store that sells Pabst
in bottles, so he came back with eight or nine
cases after each trip. His drunk was a light drunk,
a four-or-five-beers-a-night drunk. I thought he
was mostly just sad, a rubbed-out man, half-
erased in a town that wouldn’t disappear fast
enough.
During the day, he ran the local auto parts
store. It was a steady job and steady income in a
place where people couldn’t let old machines die.
After a while, the old machines were all that was
left. When he was younger, he wanted to run a
garage—a specialty place that only fixed up
classics, antiques. Reality soured him. Mom’s
disappearance soured him.
"Dad, how many people do you think will go?"

I asked my father the evening before Jarrod
disappeared. —
"I dunno. All of ‘em?" A brown bottle slid
from his hand and landed on the floor with a
hollow, glass thunk. "Maybe they’re looking for
your mother."
I watched the TV over his shoulder for a
moment, unable to tell the difference between
crime investigation and hospital drama. Plenty of
blood in both and more commercials than our
town had citizens.
"Do you think we'll have a door in our
basement?"
He turned around and looked at me, trained
his glassed-over eyeballs on mine. "I sure as hell
hope so. Nobody’s going to be left to buy timing
belts and replacement headlights." He smiled.
"What are we supposed to do, Andy?"
I shrugged and thought for a moment about
going upstairs, shutting myself in my room and
popping online to chat with Jarrod, maybe flirt
with some girls who still lived in my world.
Maybe I should have taken a drive. Instead, I
slumped on the couch and watched people being
taken apart—whether by actors playing doctors
or actors playing criminals, I didn’t care. Actors
27
AARON POLSON
were actors. Lmaginary worlds were imaginary

worlds.
I usually picked Jarrod up at his house. On

the morning he vanished, I pulled into the alley
behind his place, put the truck in neutral, and
waited. No Jarrod. Five minutes passed. Ten. I
turned the engine off and hopped out.
Jarrod lived with his folks in a battered
bungalow. I think they rented. They were good
people, just not the most frugal or lucky. His
mom had some kind of cyst on her ovaries, and
medical bills mated and spawned. When Mr.
Ponton lost his job selling cell phone parts, the
family crash-landed in town. Mr. Ponton, Bob
when he tried to play buddy-buddy, had family
here. Members of his extended family were some
of the first to open their new basement doors, step
through, and vanish.
When I climbed onto Jarrod’s back porch, I
knew they were all gone. Open door, dark house—
I wasn’t exactly working for CSI, but I knew the
score. Of course I called out, maybe make a quick
once-over of the empty place, but I knew. My
guts tightened when I thought about checking the
THE WORLD IN RUBBER, SOFT AND) MALLEABLE
basement, so I only made it halfway down the

stairs.
Jarrod’s half-empty can of Krylon metallic
silver rode shotgun, rattling around on the
passenger-side floorboard.
School that day was a private tutoring

session, just me and Mr. Kirchmier. I wasn’t even
taking calculus, but he gave me a lesson.
"You know, Andy, functions don’t ever reach
zero. Really...they can get close, but never quite
touch it." He scribbled equations on the
whiteboard, stood back and nodded.
Mr. Kirchmier left after second period. I drove
home along deserted streets.
Dad was in his recliner watching The Weather

Channel.
"What’s up? Lunchtime?" I asked, wondering
why he was home at ten-thirty.
"Everyone’s gone."
"Your employees?" I took a few steps into the
living room and dropped my backpack.
AARON POLSON
"Everyone else. Everyone in town." He clicked

off the TV, rose from the recliner, and faced me.
"Everyone," he said, really looking me in the eyes
for the first time in years.
"Yeah. Jarrod left this morning. His house
was wide open. Dark. Deserted." I thought about
the silver rectangle he’d painted under the bridge.
I studied Dad’s expression. "Look, I’ve got some
stuff to do."
Dad nodded. He brushed the side of his face
with one hand. His body was in the living room,
but inside he had already followed everyone else;
his eyes gave it away.
I sped through town, running each red light

without hesitation. Nothing pushed me to drive
fast; without cops and other cars on the streets, I
just could. Jarrod and I used to steal our paint
from a hardware store on the west edge. Dibbon’s
Discount and Hardware was a jumbled place,
selling fishing tackle, hunting licenses, outdated
toys, and school supplies. It even had a few racks
of clothing.
What Dibbon’s lacked that day was a single
employee. Dad was right. Everyone was gone.
30
I dumped a few boxes of overstock in

Dibbon’s storeroom and cruised to the paint aisle.
Jarrod and I used to have a system: One of us
would ask an employee for help finding
something, like a toilet seat or whatever, while
the other stuffed three or four cans of spray paint
inside his coat. I laughed at the little orange sign
that said, "No spray paint sold to children under
eighteen," and filled the boxes with every color on
the shelf.
Dad was gone when I arrived home. I could
have picked up the paint anytime, but I went to
give him a chance to leave. I saw it in his eyes,
and I didn’t want to stop him. I didn’t want him
to stop himself because of me.
The knot in my stomach didn’t stay me this
time, and I pushed into the basement. The door
was in our laundry room, tucked in a corner
behind the water heater. He must have just left,
seeing as the door still hung.
I wrapped my hand around the knob and
tugged, and the entire door wrenched from its
hinges, revealing a concrete foundation. I shoved
the door aside and it rattled to the ground with a
solid crash. The wall was cold to my touch.
Next to the blank space, I found my door.
My eyes closed, I saw Mom and Dad together,
embracing with silly grins plastered across their
31
AARON POLSON
faces. I saw Jarrod in front of an immense wall,

white and empty like a hot summer sky, spraying
from a can that would never run out, adding to a
mural that would never be completed. I saw Cori
Mansfield, too, her green eyes blinking at me, her
smooth lips curling into a smile as though she
were happy to see me.
I opened my eyes and pulled the door open.
My stomach knotted and unknotted, twisting like
a wet rag. One hand froze to the knob; the other
rested against the jamb. The basement quiet
became the blood humming in my veins.
The colors behind that door shamed anything
the Krylon people could imagine.
Shattered the rainbow, too.
But I shut the door.
I don’t hide my graffiti under the bridge

anymore. No one else lives in town, so I paint the
buildings, especially the wide brick walls and
facades of the old downtown structures. I found
enough paint in Dibbon’s to cover each block. My
murals are mostly filled with people, meticulously
detailed down to the flecks of gold in every eye.
Sometimes I wonder how long a boy of
seventeen can live on food for five thousand, but
in the end it doesn’t really matter. ll keep

painting the people I knew—Mom, Dad, Jarrod—
not as they were but as I remember them. And
the doors. Every mural has a door. My world is
that shaking spray can, soft and malleable in my
hands. A world made of rubber.
33
Tunnel Vision
Cu Larson would start kindergarten soon, so
his father, Howard, thought one last trip to

McDonalds—the newer one south of town with
the big tunnel playground—was in order. Howard
had spent much of the past five years watching
Gabe grow, and the two had consumed a small
mountain of cheeseburgers in the last few, adding
a least an inch or two to Howard’s swelling
waistline. While they ate, sitting on a plastic gray
bench just inside the covered play area, Gabe
gawked at the bright tubes criss-crossing
overhead. He had barely touched his food.
"Hey, Dad. Where do they go?" Gabe asked,
his face wide and curious.
Nowhere. Just full of a bunch of squealing kids
and a lot of germs, Howard thought. "C’mon,
buddy, take a few more bites, okay?" He pushed
Gabe’s tray a few inches closer.
34
TUNNEL VISION
The boy broke his trance long enough to shove

a few more fries into his mouth. A dab of ketchup
dropped on his blue shirt, staining the ‘A’ in
Adidas. His eyes roamed again as he chewed,
drawn back to the hooting children and hot-pink
molded tunnels. "Can I play now? Please?"
Howard looked at Gabe’s half-eaten
cheeseburger, closed his eyes, and nodded. The
boy hopped from the bench, yanked the shoes
from his feet, and placed them on a shelf next to a
slide. He disappeared up a blue tube before his
father could think, he grew up so fast. Too fast.
As he tugged Gabe’s track across the table,
Howard began to remember. He thought about
the special time they'd shared over the past few
years, special time afforded because Howard
worked from home editing legal articles. Horribly
boring work, but it pays the bills, he thought. Gabe
had never known the interior of a day care center,
not even one of those grandmotherly outfits in the
basement of some old woman’s house.
Howard looked around the play area,
scanning the long, taffy-stretched faces of other
parents. One thin old man, old enough to be the
great-grandfather to any of the kids playing, sat
at the far end, leaning on a molded bench. God,
they look tired. Do I look that tired? He knew the
last few years hadn’t been easy, what with
35
AARON POLSON
Emma’s postpartum depression, and the grueling

hours of her new job. He knew he hadn’t shown
patience for his son, his wife, and the editing work
that kept the family afloat while she bounced
from position to position. For better or for worse
was meant to be easier, he thought.
"Daddy," Gabe called from somewhere above.
"Daddy, there are so many different tunnels!"
Howard cast his eyes toward the maze,
scanning for his son, but found no trace. "Great,
buddy. I’m glad you’re having fun." He picked up
Gabe’s half-eaten sandwich and took a few bites.
"Energetic kid you got there." The old man
had left his bench and now stood at Howard’s
side.
"What?" Howard sized up the old man’s ink-
blot eyes. "Yeah, yeah. He’s a handful sometimes.
How about you—your grand—"
"No," the man stopped Howard with a wave
of his skeletal hand. "No. None of these are mine,
grandchild or great-grandchild." He coughed,
raspy and wet, and brushed his lips with a
handkerchief. "I just like to come here...makes
me feel younger."
Howard squirmed a little, unsettled by the
man’s emphasis on the last word. He sipped the
last drops of Coke with eyes focused on the table
36
TUNNEL VISION
in front of him. From his periphery, he knew the

old man still stood, looming to his left.
Gabe scampered out of a tunnel and sprinted
to the table, snatching his cup and slurping a
mouthful of Sprite before Howard could speak.
"Dad," Gabe panted after swallowing, "there’s a
tunnel up there I haven’t seen before."
"Sounds interesting, buddy."
The old man stooped, placing a gnarled hand
on Gabe’s shoulder. "Be careful in there, boy.
Some of those tunnels go a lot farther than you’d
think. You might just land somewhere you didn’t
intend to go." He chuckled lightly, but Gabe
pulled away and flashed his dad a wide-eyed
glance before vanishing into the maze.
Howard set his cup on the table and turned to
say something to the old man, but he was gone.
Strange old coot. Hope he didn’t freak the boy out too
much. The last thing I need is to nurse Gabe through
nightmares inspired by a senile stalker at Mickey-
Ds. His glance fell on the windows; the sky had
begun its slow bleed to night.
We'll all be in that old man’s shoes someday. God
willing, after a long, happy life. Howard shook his
head, the small, curling ends of a smile
threatening his tight lips. He tilted his head back,
watching for a flash of dark blue in the netting or
through one of the clear plastic sections of the
37
AARON POLSON
play set. Even my boy, someday. Hard to believe he

has grown up so fast—
Howard Larson’s body flushed with an
infusion of icy water. A scream interrupted his
thoughts, a scream followed by rapid voices and
rushing feet in the main dining room. The cry
came from behind him, not from the play area,
but he instinctively rose, eyes darting, and called
for his son: "Gabe! Gabe! Come down now. We
need to get home."
Someone shouted, "Call an ambulance!"
Howard lurched forward, away from the
bench, his eyes moving frantically as he circled
the room, hoping for a glance of his son. The rest
of the play room was empty, swept clean of the
last few stragglers when the cry sounded. Sirens
swelled, the cacophonous mash up of police and
ambulance that answered any emergency call,
and flashing lights darted and jerked around the
room.
He’s not here. Howard shook his head. He
crawled somewhere in one of those tunnels. Howard
shook his head again and started for the doorway,
brushing a few beads of sweat from his forehead.
It’s like the old man said.
In the dining room, Howard nearly bowled
into a police officer. A small crowd had gathered,
but was pushed back. Two EMTs squatted on the
38
TUNNEL VISION
ground beside a prostrate body. Howard could

only see a pant leg, brown and polyester—the old
man wore the same pants.
"Sorry, officer," Howard sputtered, his heart
lumping away inside his rib cage. He stood on the
edge of the small group, watching as the EMTs
wheeled in a gurney and shifted the body on
board. It looked like the old man, at least the
clothing did, but something wasn’t right with his
face. The old man had a long, drooping face. This
was more rounded, almost chubby like a child’s,
but also lined and impossibly old. Gabe.
"Excuse me," Howard said, almost
whispering.
"Sir?" The police officer turned to Howard.
"My son...he’s missing. I mean, he was
playing in there, I heard the shouts, and I
couldn’t find him." Howard poked a thumb into
the play area. "I’m just afraid he got scared,
won't come out. I’m sorry to bother—I know
you're busy."
"T think I’m done here," the officer nodded to
another policeman. Howard glanced over his
shoulder and noticed the EMTs had covered the
body and were wheeling the gurney through the
doors. "Just a minute." The officer stepped into
the playroom.
NY
AARON POLSON
Howard looked at the floor, trying to avoid

eye contact with anyone, trying to hide his
discomfort. "Gabe’s fine," he whispered to
himself. No, he’s not. His eyes caught a brown
lump on the floor. The rest of the crowd huddled
around the other police officer, offering their
accounts of what happened.
"Just keeled over," one plump woman said in
a high, almost hysterical voice.
Howard moved to the wallet, and lifted it. His
fingers acted on their own, as if guided by wires.
He flipped the wallet open, looked at the driver’s
license. It was the old man, at least the way he
looked when they scooped his body onto the
gurney, and a name: Gabriel Larson. Howard
dropped the wallet, his body limp, and staggered
to the nearest bench. He closed his eyes.
"Sir?"
Howard’s eyes opened. The first officer stood
in front of him, a small boy, a boy about Gabe’s
age, but not—this boy’s face was long, stretched
like a piece of taffy. He was wearing a blue Adidas
shirt with a ketchup-smudged ‘A.’ The boy
smiled.
"Sir, is this your son?"
The Surgeon of An Khe
Hi. name was Gerard Karnowski, and he hailed
from Hoboken, New York. Legend held that some

of the guys in the platoon tried to drop the
nickname Carney—as in carnival sideshow
freak—on him, but that was before they dubbed
him The Surgeon. Before he earned the name. I
met The Surgeon during my time in-country,
stationed with D Company, 1|* Infantry, 22"4
Regiment, outside of An Khe, Republic of
Vietnam. Regulars, by God.
During my first weeks in the bush, we walked.
We walked in the rain, in mud—orange creeping
mud that sucked at your boots as a reminder that
you hiked a foreign planet. The insects, especially
mosquitoes the size of hummingbirds, swarmed
and buzzed, harassing us day and night. We
sometimes marched in the thick, humid night to
set up an ambush, waiting for the invisible
41
AARON POLSON
enemy. When we weren’t walking, we dug into

that red-orange mud, trying to create a pocket of
security in an alien jungle. While on patrol one
day, I unexpectedly stumbled across The Surgeon
at work.
He hunched over the body of a lone Viet
Cong, a sniper killed by a forward unit in our
column. Our platoon commander, Lt. Terry
Wucker, a scared twenty-two year old fresh out of
ROTC, squatted under a tree with the radio
operator, calling in the enemy KIA by the book.
A few of the men fanned out to keep watch over
the perimeter, some whispering low, maintaining
noise discipline, but I watched The Surgeon as he
sliced into the dead flesh, removing the left eye
with his bowie knife’s fluid motion.
"What the hell is he doing," I whispered to
Tallman, a short-timer who had humped the
boonies with The Surgeon for almost ten months.
Tallman once said that ten months was long
enough to sweat Vietnam for the rest of your life.
"Cutting the fucker’s eye out," he said. "What
the hell does it look like?" Curiosity, like strange
but powerful gravity, drew my eyes back to the
body. The Surgeon’s hands worked deftly. His
wide, flashing knife didn’t offer the precision of a
scalpel, but his fingers carried a swift and special
skill.
THE SURGEON OF AN KHE
"Why?"
"He collects them." Tallman spat on the
ground and smeared his saliva into the dirt with
the toe of his boot. "He fucking collects them," he
repeated, shaking his head.
I watched in silence as The Surgeon pulled a
glass jam jar from his rucksack, a jar filled with
clear fluid and a few horrible floating things—
other eyes with small bits of flesh clinging to
them, bobbing like bleached olives. After
unscrewing the lid, he held the newest addition in
his palm, rinsed it with a splash of water from his
canteen, and dropped it into the jar.
"Rumor is, they help him see," Tallman said,
laughing.
The Surgeon looked up and smiled at me as he
wiped thick blood from his knife on a tuft of
elephant grass. After he slipped the glinting knife
back into its scabbard and stood, I thought the
man a giant. He looked at me, and his mouth fell
into a wide grin.
When The Surgeon walked point, he wore the

jar on a short leather cord around his neck like a
special charm. We never made contact with the
enemy. He led us through dense underbrush,
43
AARON POLSON
often hacking at the humming thickness of the

jungle, but none of the grunts complained. He
kept us safe.
One day, the lieutenant lost it. His college
education blocked common sense—wisdom even
I, a straw-headed farm kid from Kansas, could
comprehend. After stopping the column, the thin,
green line of men snaking through the leaves, Lt.
Wucker steamed past me, approaching The
Surgeon as he knelt at the front of our unit.
"What the hell are we doing?" he asked in a
near-whisper, his voice quavering enough to belie
his frustration and insecurity.
"Avoiding traps." The Surgeon didn’t speak
often, his voice low like two slabs of concrete
grinding against each other. He looked forward,
into the jungle, not really speaking to the
lieutenant at all.
"Like hell. We’re headed the wrong direction."
Lt. Wucker squirmed a bit as he spoke, a possible
effect of the jar of swimming eyes hanging around
The Surgeon’s neck.
"Your mistake," said The Surgeon.
"I’m in command. Decker, on point.
Karnowski, you head to the rear of the column."
We didn’t march long before we recognized Lt.
Wucker’s error. While walking point, Nick
Decker, nineteen-year-old high school dropout
from Alabama, stepped into a small hole filled

with sharpened bamboo shafts—a hole like the
maw of some awful, prehistoric shark. The point
of a stake punctured the bottom of his boot,
slicing through his foot, and punched through the
boot’s leather upper. Nick released a sharp yelp
and dropped to his knees. We spent an hour
sorting out a medivac.
"Fucking Lieutenant," Tallman muttered as
we sat and smoked.
When we weren’t walking and digging holes,

we waited in the rear. The rear—sounds like we
actually had a front-line—only a newbie called it
the rear for long. But short stints at base camp
brought better sleep, quick showers, and nights of
poker under a corrugated steel roof that amplified
the rainy season.
"Linder, stop fucking around and deal,"
Tallman said, after biting the tip off his cigar and
spitting the brown plug onto the hootch’s dirt
floor. I quickly tossed five cards to each of the
guys around the table: Tallman, Dave Rowe,
Mickey Hernandez, Cliff Manalo, and myself.
"Did you guys hear about Decker?" Rowe, a
pale kid from Minnesota, asked in his slow
45
AARON POLSON
northern drawl, as the rest of us scrutinized and

organized our cards.
"Lost his foot." Tallman flipped open his
Zippo and ignited the end of his cigar.
"No shit." I looked past Tallman to where The
Surgeon sat on his bunk, casually flipping
through the pages of Hot Rod. The dim light of
the barracks cast a pall over his face, graying his
features like a silver gelatin print of some grim-
faced old salt from one of my high school history
books. The jar sat on a small shelf next to him,
covered with a green towel.
"Fucking gangrene. Had to amputate." The
cigar tip glowed as Tallman inhaled.
"Fucking lieutenant," Manalo said, laying his
cards face-down. He was a solid and square man
with a dark face and smudged jaw.
"Should have listened to The Surgeon."
Tallman tossed five cigarettes into the center of
the table. "Ante up, boys."
I didn’t find much sleep at night, any night,

but I spent that particular one stretched across
my bunk, staring at the dark ceiling of the
bunkhouse, thinking about Nick Decker’s missing
foot and The Surgeon’s jar of eyes, eventually
46
dreaming about one-eyed men marching toward

me, each extending a hand. The next morning, as
we saddled up for a return to the bush and our
hide-and-seek game with a phantom enemy,
curiosity ate at my stomach like I’d swallowed a
fistful of nails.
"I don’t get it," I said, clutching my M-16.
"What don’t you get?" Tallman tightened the
straps on his rucksack.
"Does he always just cut out one eye?"
"Yeah, since I’ve known him."
"I don’t get it..."
"What’s there to get?" Tallman shrugged and
shouldered his pack, while the deafening thump of
helicopter blades devoured us.
In the field, our days resumed the predictable

pattern of walk, dig, sleep for two, three hours,
and repeat. Lt. Wucker received word from the
CO that elements of D Company drew the job of
flushing out a contingent of North Vietnamese
regulars massing north of An Khe. To us grunts,
all this meant was more walking with the chance
that some violence would break up the tedium.
We were bait.
47
AARON POLSON
I sat on my helmet, cleaning my M-16 for the

second time that morning. Around me, other
members of the platoon milled about, smoking,
and flashing quick glances at one other without
speaking. While reassembling my weapon, my
roving eyes caught The Surgeon, standing alone,
dissecting the mass of forest before of him. The jar
rested in the palm of his right hand, and I
thought his lips moved a little, like he was talking
to someone I couldn’t see. He turned and strolled
toward the lieutenant. I stood, snagging my pot
and dropping back on my head as I meandered in
the same direction.
"Lieutenant," said The Surgeon.
Lt. Wucker looked at him, folded the map
he’d studied a moment before, and stuffed it
inside a plastic bag before speaking. "Yeah,
Karnowski?"
"Bad vibes today." The Surgeon’s eyes
wandered past Wucker.
"We have orders, Karnowski." The lieutenant
tried to meet his gaze. "I don’t give a shit about
your goddamn vibes, understand?"
The Surgeon thrust his thumb over his
shoulder toward the thick trees behind him.
"Sniper. Thought you should know." With this,
he turned and marched away from Lt. Wucker
and over to a small group of grunts—Tallman and
48
Manalo among them. Wucker stood like a white-

washed statue for a moment, before turning back
to the radio and digging his map out of the plastic
bag.
‘i
Fifteen minutes into the thick canopy and a

VC sniper split PFC Matthew Tallman’s head
with one well-placed shot. He walked only ten
feet in front of me, and with one quick snap, his
body dropped to the ground like an abandoned
marionette. I instantly burrowed, clutching my
helmet to my head, terror slashing and burning
through my prone body. I inhaled the pungent
mud and dropped my weapon. I scratched at the
ground while some members of the platoon
returned fire; the popping reports of M-16s
sounded like tiny firecrackers lit under a Folgers
can, so far away.
After a few moments of fear, I scrambled for
my gun. I caught The Surgeon boring his infrared
glare straight into me. He pointed and then
pushed toward me with his hand. Without
thinking, I obeyed, rolling to the other side ofa
jagged tree stump. A small geyser of earth
erupted where I’d lain. I swallowed hard as my
gaze was drawn by the smoking crater.
49
AARON POLSON
Members of our platoon sprayed the treetops

with gunfire until a slight man in black dropped
like poisoned fruit. He hung in space, tied toa
rope attached at the top of the tree, dangling in
front of the trunk just feet off the ground.
Lt. Wucker sent a few men on perimeter
watch while the medic attended to Manalo, his
right side ripped into a jagged, crimson wound.
Hernandez and Rowe zipped*Tallman’s nearly
headless body into a black bag. Only then did the
chattering jungle sound return. That was the odd
thing: The quiet, listening forest followed by the
slow rise of distant monkeys, birds, and buzzing
insects.
The Surgeon stood alone next to the sniper,
rolling a toothpick in his mouth. He pulled his
knife from its hilt, sawed the rope, and dropped
the body to the ground. Kneeling then, he carved
out another eye for his jar as the heavy beating of
a medivac helicopter closed in on us.
"Somebody should frag that son of a bitch."

Mickey Hernandez scowled as we hunched outside
our tents and smoked the last of the day’s
cigarettes. I looked from him to Dave Rowe, and
then The Surgeon.
50
"Yeah, fuck him. He should listen to The

Surgeon." Rowe looked at me, and my stomach
squirmed.
"Can’t be helped," The Surgeon said, as he
tossed his smoldering butt into a stand of damp
grass and ducked inside his tent.
"I still say we should frag that son of a bitch."
Mickey Hernandez puffed out his chest and
sucked in a long drag. Through the shadows just
inside his tent, I could see The Surgeon’s face,
eyes open, staring beyond the green canvas.
fe
The Surgeon continued to collect eyes until a

school swam like little fish inside the small jar.
After Tallman’s death he withdrew, talking little
to anyone, not even the lieutenant. Tension in the
platoon mounted with causalities, and we could
never wash the orange from beneath our
fingernails. After a few weeks of intense search
and destroy, the company returned to the rear, as
part of the constant cycle, for a week of rest.
The Surgeon approached the officers’ hootch
the night before we were scheduled to ship out.
While sucking on a cigarette and enjoying the
night sky in relative safety, I watched him knock
on the door, say something to the man who
Di
AARON POLSON
answered, and wait. Wucker came to the door ,

and The Surgeon seemed to be explaining
something to him, gesturing with his arms. The
lieutenant shook his head and returned inside,
leaving The Surgeon to turn and wander away.
He walked toward the perimeter, and my legs
started in that direction without conscious
intention.
"Hey, Linder."
"Hey," I said, sidling next to him, "How’d you
know..."
".,..it was you? Easy." He held the glass jar
toward me, white orbs dancing as the liquid
jostled inside. "Take it. Give it a try."
I moved my left arm to take the jar, but
hesitated, a vice squeezing my lungs.
"They won't bite." He dropped the jar in my
hand, and I felt it as a small electric pop—like
static electricity but moving through my arm and
chest. The eyes bounced and jumped. I looked at
him, his face, washed with an even pallor in the
twilight, and then his face faded, the sharp coil of
concertina wire in front of us faded, even the
night faded, as all color washed down a drain.
I glimpsed snatches of jungle, trail, rice
paddy, and even the camp at once through dozens
of eyes. I reeled for a moment, spinning and lost
with no substance beneath my feet, then, looking
down, realized I had no feet. My skull burned, but

I heard The Surgeon’s voice, saying, "focus,
focus," inside my brain. The ground rushed at me,
and I fell to my knees, my perception suddenly
thrust behind my eyes as I doubled over,
retching, on the hard ground.
"It gets easier, Linder." He held the jar again,
and offered a hand to help me stand. "Focus on
where we are right now."
I took the jar, cold and heavy in my hand,
and concentrated. The world faded, but this time
the colors melted together in an eerie, not-quite-
daylight glow. My eyes seemed to stretch their
scope into the jungle, reaching out like fingertips.
In the strange space, people—soldiers—walked
from between the trees. The whole scene vibrated
inside-out, like a shimmering photo negative.
Some of the shadow-soldiers approached and
extended black fingers. The jar vibrated in my
hands, almost dancing as the figures approached.
Each man had one eye, a space and empty circle
of white where the other should be. I didn’t really
feel anything—no fear, no revulsion.
One of the shadows stepped in front of the
others. He touched the side of his face, the area
beside his intact eye, and I suddenly stretched
through space like a thin filament, drawing into
his vision. Daylight burst in normal colors. Our
3)
AARON POLSON
company lined up outside the bunkhouses, and an

unfamiliar officer paced in front of the line of
ragged grunts. I saw faces I recognized, but no
Gerard Karnowski or Lt. Terry Wucker.
Suddenly, blackness and stars leapt at me as
The Surgeon chuckled at my side. "You'll learn."
Then a pop, a nearby but muffled sound. I hugged
the earth, fearing sappers—a surprise attack. As I
hunched to the ground, my eyes were parallel to
his boots—black but caked with too much of the
red-orange dirt. The Surgeon hadn’t even
flinched.
"That'll be the lieutenant." He knelt next to
me as I pushed myself into a sitting position. His
eyes flashed for a moment, almost bright red,
before dissolving into their usual brown. "I tried
to warn him." [ looked into camp and saw dark
forms rushing about in the night as the raid sirens
began to crank.
"What?"
"Look. You keep this." He set the jar on the
ground beside me. "I’m tired. It’s gotten too
heavy." He strolled back toward the hootches,
tumult, and commotion, vanishing in shadow and
movement. I sat on the ground with the jar,
studying the eyes for a short while, before
scooping it up and heading for shelter.
54
Gerard Kowalski was gone the next morning.

In his bunk lay his clothes and bowie knife, but
nothing else, no letter, no clues to his
disappearance. Lt. Wucker died, officially, at the
hands of a VC sapper. Most of the members of D
Company knew the truth. One of us—hell, all of
us—fragged him for not following The Surgeon’s
advice.
In time, I learned to rely on those shadow-
soldiers. I learned to "see" like The Surgeon:
Avoiding mines, snipers, and helping to make the
platoon one of the most efficient in the 1*t
Infantry. Our new lieutenant came to value the
gift The Surgeon left behind. At the end of June,
1970, I boarded a Freedom Bird and came back to
The World. The jar, wrapped in brown paper,
rested in my lap. Disconnected from war, its
power faded, but it now sits, my one souvenir now
sits on a shelf in my basement beside old
Christmas ornaments and board games—still
wrapped in plain brown paper.
55
Everything in its Place
bee mailboxes were labeled incorrectly. That
was the first hint Lucey should have canceled her

reservation at El Hotel de la Trampa. She wasn’t
too fond of other aspects of the lobby, either:
Cheap candy in gaudy foil wrappers sat in a glass
fish bowl on the counter, a strange man on the
sofa who kept looking at her...
"Can I help you?"
Lucey’s attention shifted to the clerk.
"Sorry, I was..." Lucey forced a smiled, "I
need to check in."
The man opened the guest book and pushed a
pen across the counter." Reservation?"
"Yes. Harrison. Lucey Harrison."
He turned to the mailboxes, but looked over
his shoulder. "What is it that you do, Sefiora?"
56
EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE
"Oh...?’'m not married. Why do you..."

Lucey’s eyebrows knitted together. "Well, I work
with books."
The clerk’s brown eyes burned into hers. "A
teacher?" His hand slid into one of the boxes,
fishing for the key.
"No. A librarian. Only an assistant, really."
His hand stopped, crept out of the box, and
plunged into another labeled with a ‘G.’ He
moved to the counter and dropped a brass-colored
key. "Your room. Second floor." With a nod to
her bags, he asked, "Would you like some help?"
Lucey lifted the key and shook her head. Her
peripheral vision caught the face of the man on
the lobby sofa. Was he watching her?
"Senorita?"
"No, I’m fine. Second floor?"
The clerk smiled, showing a mouthful of
yellow and mismatched teeth.
Maybe next time I won't travel on the cheap, she
thought.
: Lucey avoided the elevator and instead took

the stairs. As she opened the door to the second-
floor hallway, a shadow moved at the end of the
hall. Goosebumps crawled up her arms. She read
Sih
AARON POLSON
the key, simply labeled ‘G,’ and felt the embossed

letter’s grooves.
The first door on the right was labeled ‘H’; on
the left she found the letter ‘A.’ She walked
farther, dragging her suitcase across the worn
carpet. Room designations descended on the left
in alphabetical order, but ‘G’ came directly after
‘E.” Lucey felt the blood in her face.
"Disorder and chaos. Not very helpful at all,"
she mumbled.
Her key slid inside the lock, but would not
open the door.
"Wait a second..."
The door was clearly labeled with a ‘G’—a
brass letter screwed into its center. She touched it,
and then tried the key again. Nothing.
Lucey shook her head at the thought of asking
the clerk for help. The door was scratched around
the brass letter. Maybe a prank, she thought.
From the left side of the hall, Lucey counted
seven doors. She was at the sixth.
With a soft click, the key slid inside the
seventh door’s lock. Lucey turned the knob, and
pushed inside. The air was cool and clean. She
worried about moldy smells or the lingering odor
of tobacco after seeing the state of the lobby, but
all seemed in order. Good.
58
Her folding screwdriver set—a miniature kit

for repairing eyeglasses—was in the front pouch
of her suitcase. Lucey Harrison wanted rest, but
she also needed her room letter set right. It
wouldn’t do to have some stranger try and enter
in the night. Whoever played the prank could not
be allowed to let chaos seep into her logical world.
Worse than the books at work, she thought. She
slipped her key inside one pocket, and began
unscrewing her letter. Only three were out of
place, and she fixed them. It was quick work, as
only one screw held each letter in place. Quick
work and proper order.
Job done, Lucey tried her own door again.
The key would not work. She glanced down the
hall and counted again. Seven. The key still
wouldn’t work.
But my bag is inside, she thought. Lucey
Harrison’s stomach began to knot into a prickly,
unpleasant feeling.
She hurried down the stairs to the lobby—
something I should have done immediately, she
chastised. The first sign of things gone wrong sat
in the fish bowl on the counter. Instead of the
brightly wrapped candies, the bowl was teeming
with snails—too many, really, for such a small
container. Her eyes swept the rest of the room,
noting the now-alphabetized mailboxes behind
59
AARON POLSON
the counter, the artificial palm tree where a

display of vacation brochures once stood. The old
man still sat with his paper, but now the sofa was
a deep burgundy.
"May I help you?"
The clerk was wrong, too. He smiled, and his
teeth were white. Perfect. His once-brown eyes
had lost all color, now reflecting her startled
image in their gray irises. Lucey looked at the key
in her hand, but staggered back a few steps.
"You... you’re not..."
Lucey jumped as a hand patted her on the
shoulder.
"Come with me," the man said.
The clerk’s gray eyes sent a frost into Lucey’s
chest. She allowed the newspaper man to pull her
aside, near the main entrance.
"Is this a joke?" she asked, her voice shaking.
"T wish." The man smiled; not a warm smile,
but one of knowing. "How'd they get you?"
Lucey frowned.
"Can I see your key?" the man asked.
She hesitated, but held it out.
"Oh. Second floor." He pushed a hand into his
pocket and produced his own key. "Me, it was
numbers. See." His palm opened to reveal a silver
key with the number 5.
60
Lucey’s hands began to tremble. "I—I don’t

understand...where am [?"
"I don’t know, really. But wherever it is you
want to be...well, you can’t get there from here."
Lucey blinked. "I'll fix things. Pll change the
doors again." She backed toward the stairs.
"Good luck." The man crossed his arms. "[’Il
be waiting in the lobby."
61
In Green Water
Deere the winter of 1963, I walked, alone and
foolish, on the thin ice of a neighbor’s pond. The

white membrane cracked under my weight, and I
dropped into the water. My startled eyes searched
the green depths as my clothes drank deeply,
dragging me down. I thrashed against the cold
until pain filled my chest, my mouth sputtered
open, and my lungs filled with the frigid murk.
My feet sank into the silt at the bottom; my arms
drifted limply at my sides. The darkness
swallowed me and sang me to sleep.
In that sleep, I forgot the sun and the air, the
light rustle of leaves in soft breezes. I felt nothing
until the little fish, the bottom-dwelling
scavengers, the horrible, flopping things that
lived on waste in the mud, poked and nibbled at
my fingers and toes. Startled awake, my eyes
opened. Turtle floated through the water like a
IN GREEN WATER
great living stone and chased the scavengers

away. They fled into holes and crevices, tucked
between tree roots and under rocks where Turtle’s
great bulk and the light couldn’t follow.
He turned to me, then. The ancient gray-green
creature faced me and whispered inside my skull.
"You’re drowned, broke through the ice months
ago. Been lying in this mud."
"Drowned?" I sensed no pain, not even panic
and fear, only the smooth undulations of water. I
held my hands to my eyes and thought of the
nasty, squirming fish and their nibbles on my
fingers. White skin draped around the bone with
angry gray marks from their sandpaper teeth.
The world all around was washed green through
the stained-glass surface of the pond. "Am Ia
ghost?"
Turtle laughed. "Certainly not."
My waxen hands touched my arms, legs, and
chest. I brought them to my face and brushed my
oiled-rubber smooth skin. "What am [?"
"You are you. That’s all. The others looked for
you a while back. S’pose they gave up."
"Others? What others?" I remembered
nothing.
"So many questions. Ask me again. We have
time. All we have is time." Turtle shifted in the
63
AARON POLSON
tinted water as a black shadow and drifted toward

the bottom.
+
The pond changed with the seasons, but all

were the same to me. I had no physical needs to
meet, no simple tasks people used to busy
themselves and pass lazy hours. No urgency
existed in this world of green—just a slow,
drifting sway as the water moved with the wind
and shifted with rain or drought. For a long while
I had no memory of anything but the smooth
rhythm of water. Days and nights simply passed
as slight vibrations in the pattern—mere flickers
when the world glowed cat’s-eye green or was
shrouded in inky black.
Turtle came and went, floating through the
gloom.
"You said the others looked for me... who
were they?"
"Must’ve been your people. Call them ‘family,’
I think."
"Family?"
"Mother. Father." Turtle’s great beak turned
toward me, and he studied me with one glassy
eye. "Family."
64
IN GREEN WATER
"Family," I muttered. A hint of something

distant kindled inside my chest. Turtle turned, a
black stain drifting away.
The boys came as shimmering shadows on the

other side of the thick green water, interrupting
my world. I sometimes swam to the edge of the
pond, using my arms and legs like turtle’s great
flippers. One afternoon I found the boys loitering
in the sun. I wanted to touch them, draw them
near. [ had wanted nothing since waking to the
nibbles of those nasty fish.
1 cireled to find Turtle, excited to feel
anything. "Turtle, there are people at the pond.
Boys. Smaller, but like me."
Turtle moved his large head from within its
crusted home. "Not like you. They’re alive."
"IT want to touch them."
Turtle laughed, a slow, bubbling chuckle.
I ached. "People."
"Forget it. Enjoy the pond. You aren’t of that
world anymore. No good can come of this," Turtle
muttered before withdrawing his head.
My limbs ached. A new feeling burned in me—
one that wanted to yank Turtle’s awful, wrinkled
neck from his shell.
65
AARON POLSON
Gi
The boys came frequently, and they brought

poles and bait to catch the scavengers that hid in
the dark holes. At times muffled words floated
through the water and knocked against my
skull—not at all like the words that Turtle placed
inside my head. The boys’ names eventually
filtered through: Charlie and Nick.
I watched their shadows string lines and drop
wriggling worms. The stupid fish snaked from
their hidden places to snatch at the worms, many
feeling sharp barbs that dragged them from the
water. I remembered fishing with my father; I
remembered being alive and under the warm sun.
"I’m going to pull on one of the fishing lines,"
I explained to Turtle. "As a joke."
"You want trouble. Accept your fate. The
pond has been good to you."
I ached, wanting to touch and talk with those
boys. I stroked Turtle’s slick shell and felt for the
first time the water’s cold, especially deep where
little light trickled through. "I’m going to do it," I
said. Turtle just drew his ancient head deeper
within his shell.
66
IN GREEN WATER
I drifted in the shallows; I waited where I

knew the boys often stood on the bank with their
lines, hooks, and writhing worms. They came, and
the loneliness burned. I watched the routine: The
baiting of hooks, the twisting fingers of worm
dropped into the murk, and the little scavengers
answering the siren call.
Floating to the nearest worm, I wrapped my
white fingers around it, hook and all. My eyes
found the line, traced it to the shore, and
observed a distorted shadow—the black shape of
Nick or Charlie. My fingers tightened around the
bait, and I pulled.
The boys burst with excited noise, and the
barbed hook sank into the heel of my bleached
hand. I tugged, felt only a slight sting, and
watched the black shadow stumble toward the
water. My hand, a withered clamp of bone and
rotten flesh, held. I swam to the muddy cloud
where the boy’s feet kicked and splashed at
water's edge.
He stood over me, and through the jade
\ surface I met his eyes. I saw his tan skin, light
hair, and deep-shadowed eyes all washed green.
For a frozen moment a singular exchange between
the dead and the living hovered between water
67
AARON POLSON
and air. Then he ran, shouting as he dropped his

fishing pole.
I pushed closer to the shore and pulled the
barb from my hand. What would happen should
the water barrier break? The pond was only a few
feet deep, so I thrust my fist toward the sun. Pain
seized my hand as it broke into the air; I yanked
it back beneath the surface. I sunk back to the
soft mud at the bottom to sulk and pout.
I stayed there for a long while, not even
speaking to Turtle.
ij
In time, I remembered. The memories played

like the world above the water: Me, eighteen years
old, the thin ice, the pain and the cold. I saw my
mother’s face and heard my father’s voice. So
long ago. How they must have ached to see and
touch their son, lost in a world of green water.
When the dying leaves began to coat the
pond’s surface, closing off slivers of sun and
shading my world with brown, I heard their
voices echo like a distant dream. Was it real—a
memory? I cautiously floated toward the echoes,
sliding between clumps of decomposing foliage
and the murky shadows, staying hidden in the
dark.
68
IN GREEN WATER
They were the same boys. They talked to each

other, and I pressed my ear to the water’s skin to
hear their words.
One said, "I don’t think we should be here."
"Don’t be a chickenshit. I want my pole
back."
But
"But nothing. I’m not even sure I saw what I
saw, you know?’
One boy stepped right to the water’s rim,
moving his head from side to side, searching for
something—his fishing pole. "It’s not here. Must
have drifted out."
"Let’s go then, huh?"
"Naw, man. I want that pole." His shadow
moved to a large tree. "I bet I can see better from
up here."
"C’mon, Nick. I don’t like this place."
"Don’t be a wuss." The boy’s shape merged
with the tree shadow and disappeared.
NCarefults*
Then moments of nothing. I waited.
A crack sounded, coming at me like a muffled
ricochet, and my green world exploded.
Something punched the pond’s surface—
something much larger than rain drops or hail. I
saw the boy’s body surrounded by a faint, cloudy
halo of black and billows of angry white bubbles.
69
AARON POLSON
I pushed against the spreading ripples, moved

closer to the boy, and studied him for an instant.
Years ago, I foolishly walked on the ice, slipped
through, and sunk into an emerald depth, dragged
down by my waterlogged clothing. I drowned
then, like this boy would now, hitting his head
when he slipped from the tree, blood leaking from
a small wound.
His mouth slid open as if on a loose hinge, and
small bubbles danced out. | wrapped my arms
around his waist and kicked hard against the
water, pushing toward the shore while dragging
his weight. The mud sucked my feet, yet with
strength I shouldn’t have, I stood, breaking
through the surface while holding the boy’s limp
body.
He sputtered and coughed, little spurts
shooting from his mouth. Charlie stood a few feet
away, but I didn’t look at him until I dropped
Nick on the ground.
Charlie gasped. I turned toward him, trying to
smile. His face went white, first a light tan, and
then white. The world beyond the pond was
painted in strange colors, colors lacking the ever-
present tinge of green. He stuttered something I
couldn't understand, dropped to the ground, and
started thumping on Nick’s back. Coughing and
wheezing, Nick opened his eyes. Soaked but alive.
70
IN GREEN WATER
Turtle was right. The abusive sun told me how

right he was. I turned from the boys, stumbled
toward the water, and saw my reflection on the
surface, a dim suggestion. I witnessed my white
face, wax stretched around a skull, the eyes naked
and thrust forward, and teeth jutting out from
behind, taut lips. Tatters of those old clothes, the
ones that pulled me under, hung in strips from my
awful arms, chest, and legs.
To lose the image, I splashed the pond.
Turtle found me as I floated aimlessly. "That

was selfish," he said.
"I don’t want to talk about it."
"Theyll come now like they did before. Bring
big hooks. Not for the fish. The kind that will find
a dead man."
ihe
7ade
"They might find you. They'll take you."
"Then what?"
"Bury you. Put you in the ground."
I felt tired.
"They’ve come before. I will hide in the mud.
Wait until they leave." With that, Turtle
vanished below me, toward the bed of the pond.
71
AARON POLSON
I faced a choice: Follow him, hide in the

thickness at the bottom, or float in place, wait for
the hooks to pull me from the pond to be buried,
dropped into the ground and covered with dirt.
Alone.
I followed Turtle and burrowed into the mud.
Catalog Sales
On Halloween morning 1936, Pete Archer
meandered into the tiny town of Black Mountain,

Tennessee, towing a traveling salesman’s case. At
first he appeared as a dark sunrise smudge, but
then materialized, coming into focus as he moved
closer to the town’s center. He wore a shabby suit
of black, or one that had been black. Now, it
appeared worn and gray, patched in a few places.
He walked with an unsteady gait, just the hint of
a limp slowing his right leg. Only a few residents
milled around the square that morning, including
a thin man who hunched over as he lifted loose
papers blowing across the grass.
Pete approached, slowly and steadily, until his
features came into full view. His face was ruddy,
pink and exposed in places, the white line of a
scar traced across the bridge of his nose at an
angle. He dragged the case with one hand, its
73
AARON POLSON
small metal wheels squeaking as they rumbled

down the cobblestone street. His other hand
extended as he approached the thin man.
"How do you do, ? Name’s Pete Archer." His
voice was deep but scraped a little, the lingering
hint of a long-practiced smoking habit. The man
straightened but hesitated a moment before
offering his own hand. Pete shook it heartily, and
the man was a bit surprised at the strength of his
grip and the coolness of his palm.
"Hello, Mr. Archer. Sam, Sam Crawford." As
Sam spoke, his eyes dropped to Pete’s side. He
noticed a worn book—an old volume with a
leather cover—protruding from the man’s jacket
pocket. "Welcome to Black Mountain. I’m not an
official town representative, just helping out,
cleaning up a little." Sam waved a hand across the
square in a wide are.
"You’re probably wondering what this
stranger is doing in your little town on..." Pete
frowned as he spoke. "Mind telling me what day it
is, Mr. Crawford?"
Sam crossed his arms and glanced at Garret,
his ten-year-old son. The boy had been tossing a
ball in the air, but dropped it to climb the stone
statue of Colonel, an anonymous Confederate
soldier, a granite edifice clutching a gun in one
hand. The sculptor had chiseled thick bandages
74
CATALOG SALES
across the other shoulder and arm. "Well," Sam

said when he turned back to Pete, "today is
Halloween."
Pete’s face flushed. A small ghost of a smile
flashed across his lips, and his eyes locked on
Garret. He pulled a handkerchief from his coat
pocket and brushed his face. "Is that so..." he
said, his voice drifting away like fallen leaves
tumbling through a street. His other hand
reached for the worn leather book and pushed it
further inside his pocket.
"Mr. Archer, are you all right?"
Pete turned his attention to Sam, smiled fully,
and said, "Certainly, sir. Pete’s as right as rain."
He pulled his case in front of him and made to
open the latches. "You see, I’m a traveling book
merchant. Just a poor salesman out to peddle his
wares. Mostly children’s books. The young’uns
tend to love adventure. Does your boy like to
read?"
Sam held out a hand to stop Pete. "Look, Mr.
Archer, I don’t want to disappoint you and all,
but we’re pretty poor folk here in Black
Mountain. I can’t afford any books for Garret.
God knows, I’d like to. We barely have enough to
feed ourselves. My wife, Meg, had to stitch
Garret’s costume from old burlap sacks, but we
75
AARON POLSON
figured the boy should have some fun regardless

of the empty cupboard."
Pete’s shoulders slumped, and his gnarled but
nimble fingers snapped the latches back in place.
"T see, sir. I see. That would be Garret, then," he
said, tilting his head toward the boy. "Well," his
eyes scanned the side streets, "I'll be off, then.
Have a happy holiday." With a nod, Pete dragged
the case toward the most promising looking
neighborhood. As he walked away, he turned his
gaze to Garret once more. The boy’s eyes met the
old man’s, and, for a moment, something invisible
seemed to pass between them.
Around noon, Pete Archer parked his weary

body on a bench in the town square. He slipped
off his worn shoes and readjusted the crumpled
bits of paper that he had wedged in the bottoms
to help pad his feet. The good people of Black
Mountain hadn’t purchased a single book, leaving
no money to buy a little something to sate Pete’s
hunger. All their excuses were valid—no money
for luxuries, what with the Depression and all.
The farmland had been stripped bare, the mines
sat unused, and most of the men couldn’t find
76
CATALOG SALES
steady work which paid enough outside of

government jobs.
Pete often napped when he was hungry,
letting sleep fill his belly—at least in a dream. A
nap would do his body good, too; he had planted
plenty of seeds that morning, and if he was lucky,
it was liable to be a long afternoon and even
longer night. He carefully adjusted the case in
front of him, propped his tired feet on top,
checked the book in his pocket with one groping
hand, and closed his eyes.
Garret Crawford, thin like his father with a
rough patch of stubborn brown hair, walked
toward the square, kicking an empty can after a
meager lunch of bread with butter and canned
milk. He was a curious boy, and something about
the strange man called to him. Besides, Pa had
told him the man carried books, and Garret loved
to read. Black Mountain had yet to muster
enough funds for even a meager public library,
and the elementary school’s primers were at least
fifteen years old. He knew the funny man had
books in his case, so he crept over to investigate.
Pete’s mouth hung open as he snored in what
appeared to be a sound sleep, and Garret eyed the
old case with deep interest. It was locked tight, so
he studied Pete and noticed the book sticking out
of his pocket about an inch. Garret’s nimble
TH
AARON POLSON
fingers pinched the top of the cover. The man

stirred, but didn’t wake.
Garret slowly backed away and ran his fingers
over the smooth leather. The cover lied about the
book’s age—it must be a few hundred years old,
although Garret had no concept of antiquity.
Garret’s fingers rubbed the title, raised and gilded
with a delicate leaf. He read the words aloud, "On
Monsters." The book creaked-slightly as he opened
the cover. "So, a bit of a bibliophile yourself?"
Pete asked, startling the boy. The older man sat
as if he still slkumbered, but with an eye halfway
open.
"Sorry, sir...I...I just wanted..." Garret
stammered with surprise and a little guilt.
Pete sat forward, slipped his feet off the case,
and eyed the boy. "No need for sorry, son.
Curiosity is a gift, a positive thing, you see?" He
scratched his stubble. "You’re the Crawford boy,
right? I met your pa this morning?"
"Yes, sir," Garret said as he held out the book.
Pete extended a gnarled hand, took the book,
and tapped the bench seat beside him with the
other. "Sit down, boy." Garret eyed him
skeptically for a moment before curiosity
propelled him to take a seat. "So, you like
monsters?" Pete asked.
78
CATALOG SALES
The boy shrugged. "I s’pose. Today’s

Halloween and all. We’ve got lots of stories here,
mister."
The old man’s head swept the square, taking
in the old businesses’ facades, the stout trees that
had stood for centuries, the gray statue of the
wounded soldier, and the hint of the blue-black
mountains beyond. His eyes finally came to rest
on Garret. "I’m sure you do." He opened the
book, turning the creamy pages to something like
a table of contents, but these contents didn’t have
page numbers—just a list of strange names.
Garret leaned in and read a few aloud.
"Kobold...redcap...wendigo... I can’t say most of
these words..." He looked at Pete. "What is this
book?"
"Well, I guess you might call it a catalog.
Here, let me show you something." Pete leafed
through the pages until he found what looked like
an old woodcut. The picture depicted a small man
covered in black, with little nubs like just-
sprouted horns on his head. He looked like he was
dancing, and in the picture, trees surrounded him.
"This one is a wood goblin," Pete said with a
smile. He flipped a few more pages, stopping as he
found another that looked like a man, yet was
covered in what appeared to be fur. The man’s
eyes were wild and his teeth sharp. "Ah, the
79
AARON POLSON
wendigo...that’s a scary one, from way up north

in Canada."
"Some pages are missing, mister." Garret
indicated a jagged edge of torn paper.
"Well...once the magic is gone, those pages
aren’t much good anymore," the old man said. "I
usually give them to smart boys like you as
souvenirs."
Both man and boy were so engrossed in the
book they didn’t notice Sam Crawford sidle up.
"Garret? Time for lunch, son." Sam eyed Pete for
a moment before walking away.
Pete looked at the boy. "I tell you what—why
don’t you come by here tonight? Right around
dusk... 1’llshow you what this book can do." He
leaned closer to Garret and whispered, "You think
you could bring ol’ Pete fifty cents or so?" The
book snapped shut, and Garret jumped. Pete
smiled, a not-so-sure grin.
Garret, wide-eyed and burning with curiosity,
nodded quickly before hopping off the bench.
"I’m comin,’ Pa!" he hollered. With a furtive
glance back at Pete, he rushed after his father.
"See you tonight," Pete called after him,
propping his feet on the case and closing his eyes,
waiting for the next curious customer.
80
CATALOG SALES
Dusk dropped a blue lid on the Great Smokey

Mountains, shrouding the small town of Black
Mountain. Thanks to electricity provided by the
Tennessee Valley Authority’s latest hydroelectric
project, Pete rested under one of the town’s new
streetlights. He held the leather-bound book in his
lap, and patiently waited for customers. While he
waited, he watched a few children scoot around
the square in silly, homemade costumes. "Too
bad," Pete muttered to himself.
"Too bad what, Mr. Archer?" Garret stood to
the side of the bench, the lamp mocking his
burlap-Davy Crockett.
"Well, good to see you, son. Glad you could
make it. I was just reflecting on the lack of
Halloween spirit in this village of yours."
Garret pulled at the neck of his costume, took
off his hat, and scratched his head. "It ain’t that
we don’t have spirit...this town’s got plenty of
Halloween spirit. That’s what Pa says." He took a
few steps closer to Pete and held out two dull
quarters. "Don’t tell I borrowed it. Well...sort of
borrowed." His face turned pale with guilt. "Can I
look at that book again, mister?"
"We can do more than look, my boy." Pete
straightened on the bench and took the coins from
Garret’s small hand. "You’re paid up." He slipped
81
AARON POLSON
the money into his shirt pocket. "Sit down. Now,

what do you think youd like... wendigo? The
kobolds? How about a cockatrice?"
Garret sat. "That wendigo fella looked a bit
scary. How about the kobolds...what are they?"
"Ah, yes, little goblins of sorts." Pete began
turning pages. "Some live in houses, pretty
harmless, too—they will even do your chores for
you. Then there’s a sort that likes it underground.
They live in the mines..."
"We have mines around here. Mostly coal. Pa
used to work in one before they shut it down."
"That so...here we are." The book was spread
open to a picture of a little person—almost
human but with slightly exaggerated features.
The kobold sat on a stool and smoked a pipe. Pete
noticed the boy fidgeting. "That costume
bothering you?"
"Just itchy." Garret’s eyes swelled when the
kobold appeared to wink. "Hey—what
happened?"
Pete smiled, his brown teeth gleaming just a
little under the light. "They'll do that. Trying to
draw you in." Pete leaned toward the boy. "Say,
let’s do something about that costume... how
about a goblin?"
"From burlap?"
CATALOG SALES
"Not exactly," Pete said as he turned pages

and found the image they had looked at earlier in
the day—the dark goblin dancing in the woods.
"Here..."
Garret leaned in, curious. "How do you
suppose we turn this into a goblin?" He plucked
at the front of his burlap shirt.
"Not the burlap, but you." Pete chuckled a
little.
Garret’s face flushed white, and he stood. "I
don’t know, mister..."
"Nonsense. Like I said, you’re paid up. Pete is
an honest businessman, always gives folks what
they pay for."
"I should find my pa, ask..."
Pete acted as if he hadn’t heard the boy. He
began reading aloud from the book in a language
that Garret had never imagined. Garret wanted to
run, his brain screamed at him to run, but he
stood transfixed like a statue, he stood transfixed.
Then he started to change. While Pete read,
Garret’s skin darkened, fading to a midnight blue.
The boy’s eyes widened, swelling to the size of
baseballs in his head; their color changed, too,
bleeding from a light blue to hearty crimson while
the whites vanished under a wash of yellow.
Garret’s fingers stretched and bent, becoming
crooked feelers with gnarled knuckles and long,
83
AARON POLSON
jagged nails. His whole face stretched until it

mocked the woodcut in the book, mouth filling
with sharp, angular teeth. The goblin-Garret tore
at the burlap, dropping the costume at its large,
crooked feet.
"Have fun, boy," Pete said. He carefully
tugged at the page, tearing it from the book
before closing the cover and chuckling. His
arthritic fingers folded the sheet and tucked it
into a pocket.
The creature looked at Pete for a moment,
contorting its black face like it was trying to
remember something. Down one of the narrow
streets, a dog barked, and the goblin-Garret
flicked its head toward the noise. With a wide,
toothy grin, it scampered into the darkness.
After a few minutes, a scream sounded, followed
by an echo of shattering glass. For his part, Pete
sat on the bench with a wide smile and waited for
the next eager child—bearing fifty cents—to
arrive.
Meg Crawford was a plain woman, smart and

hardworking. Her chestnut hair hung in a limp
ponytail, her face shone with regular scrubbing,
and she stood at her kitchen sink with the poise of
84
CATALOG SALES
someone who deserved better than the back-

breaking housework she completed around town
to help earn a little money. She possessed
calmness and patience born from trying to make
do with a meager lot.
A slight tap sounded on the front door. The
house was a simple bungalow that had been in
Meg’s husband’s family for years, long before the
Depression sucked all life from the town. Now, it
was just another graying home in a town full of
graying homes. Meg wiped her hands on a rag,
and moved to answer the knock.
"Meg! You got that?" Sam Crawford hollered
from behind the house. He was splitting logs for
the fire.
"Sure do. Probably just more tricksters
enjoying their Halloween. Ten to one no one’s
there..." She reached for the knob and felt a slight
chill. Meg was a rational woman, so she shook off
the odd feeling and opened the door.
The little creature with blue-black skin and
talon hands hunched over something on the
porch. When it heard the door click open, it
rotated its red eyes to Meg and smiled. Bits of
blood and offal dripped from its teeth, and the
stench of fresh kill swam through the open door.
"Oh, God..." Meg gasped, taking a few steps
back inside the house.
85
AARON POLSON
The thing snatched its meal, the remains ofa

small mongrel—a neighborhood mutt that
yapped too much for its own good—from the
porch and held it up as a gift for Meg. The dog’s
intestines dangled like strips of wet velvet, blood
dripping on the threshold.
"God, no!"
Somewhere deep within the goblin-Garret’s
altered brain, he recognized his mother’s voice.
He hopped toward her, dropping the dog in the
doorway. Meg stumbled backward, tripped on a
rug, and fell, cracking her skull on the corner of a
wooden chest. Her body slumped to the ground,
and a small pool of deep crimson began to collect
beneath her head. The goblin-Garret jumped over
to her, leering with large eyes at the gathering
blood.
Sam heard his wife’s cry. He yanked open the
back door and hesitated for a second before
grabbing his rifle from the porch. He tore through
the house, and froze when he saw the black thing
on top of his unconscious, bleeding wife. His brain
couldn’t engage—the image spurred his shaking
hands to raise the gun and fire.
A crack sounded, the bullet grazed the goblin-
Garret’s shoulder, and the creature yelped with
pain. It snarled at Sam, bloody spittle flicking
86
CATALOG SALES
from its mouth, and then turned and scampered

away before the stunned man could fire again.
Sam crouched at his wife’s side. He slid one
hand under her head and realized the blood came
from a small gash at the bases of her neck. With
his ear pressed to her chest, he checked her
breathing. A realization hit, something that
warned of the awful monster that had just
crouched over his wife. "Garret’s out there..." He
lunged to his feet, clutching the gun with one
white-knuckled hand, and sprinted into the street.
He ran toward the city square, calling his son’s
name between gasps for air.
The square cleared of any Halloween
stragglers after the gunshot—everyone except a
certain traveling salesman. Sam found Pete
sitting on the bench with the little brown book
closed neatly on his lap. "You... have...you
seen...my...boy?" Sam panted.
"Oh...yes." Pete stood. "He was here just a
little while ago," he said, lifting a beaten watch
from his pocket and checking the time. "He
should be back soon."
"What?"
- Pete pointed at the darkness behind Sam.
"Yep, they always come back. As if they know
their time’s up."
87
AARON POLSON
A few bent and misshapen forms—Pete’s

other customers— crawled out of the darkness.
The goblin-Garret staggered out last, clutching at
its shoulder as red-black blood oozed between its
fingers. Sam turned and raised his gun, but Pete’s
hand stayed him.
"Are you going to shoot your son, or one of the
other boys?"
Sam shook. He looked into Pete’s face, trying
to read the expression. "My son...good God. That
monster?"
"Watch," Pete commanded.
The goblin-Garret stumbled toward the
statue, tripped, and fell. Sam took a few cautious
steps toward the prone figure, but stopped as the
goblin began to fade into the boy. The other
monstrous shapes contorted back to their original
forms. He turned to Pete. "How?" He caught
sight of the leather book in Pete’s hand. "What
the hell did you do?"
Pete fished inside his jacket pocket for a piece
of folded paper. "A-man’s got to have some honest
work, Mr. Crawford..."
Sam lunged toward Pete and cracked the old
man across the chin with the stock of his rifle.
Pete tumbled to the ground like a pile of wet rags.
Sam, red-faced and panting, stood over the
88
CATALOG SALES
bookman with his rifle at the ready. "What the

hell did you do?" Sam growled again.
The blow had knocked the grin off Pete’s face,
but the old man held out three folded pages in one
shaking hand. "Here...take a look..." Pete
groaned. Sam cautiously moved to take the
papers from Pete, but was interrupted bya
familiar sound.
"Pa..." Garret’s weak voice eked from his fully
restored, human mouth. The boy lay on the grass,
naked and shivering, with a small wound torn
into his shoulder and a smear of blood across his
heaving chest.
"Oh, God, Garret," Sam said, tossing his rifle
to the ground. He rushed over to his son, scooped
him in his arms, and carried him into the waiting
shadows of their dark street. The other boys
looked at one another, ashamed to discover
themselves naked, and hurried to the warmth and
safety of their homes.
Suddenly alone in the square, Pete pulled
himself off the ground and sat again on the bench,
rubbing his sore jaw with one hand. He chuckled
lightly at a joke only he knew, picked up the little
book at his side, and slipped it again into his coat
pocket. A few pieces of abandoned burlap
somersaulted across the square in the late night
breeze.
89
AARON POLSON
"Hell of a way to make a living," he mumbled,

"but if books aren’t selling, I gotta get business
somehow." He tossed the torn pages on the
ground where they joined the tumbling burlap.
After checking the straps on his traveling case,
he stood and grabbed the handle. He patted his
shirt pocket, ensuring the quarters—his
Halloween earnings—were still there. Pete pulled
the case behind him as he walked down Main
Street, back toward the east. He faded from Black
Mountain town square’s meager electric light, a
dark smudge against the night, and then
disappeared.
90
Why We Don’t Talk About the
Pumpkins Anymore
\" e ditched school the day They came to
Broughton’s Hollow. Ditching was Jimmy’s idea;

he showed up at my place with his cane pole and a
tin of worms dug from his backyard. Jimmy’s hair
was always cropped, cut within a gnat’s breath of
his scalp, and his eyes, pale blue like midsummer,
held something big. I know his family life was
pretty ugly, what with his pa in the pen and his
ma hopping around with just about any guy
who’d look twice.
He tapped on my bedroom window before the
sun rose far enough above the horizon to offer the
world much light.
"Let’s scat, Ben, ‘fore we have to go the long
way ‘round the school house."
Winter was coming and there'd be no fishing
once the creek iced over. I imagined some kids
91
AARON POLSON
were probably shuffling off to school right about

then with lunchboxes in tow. We'd need to hurry.
"All right," I said. Ma was busy in the kitchen,
so I slipped through the window. She had my
brothers and sister to look after, anyway. She’d
been going it alone since Pa’s reserve unit had
been called up. Plenty of old men down at the
Hollow’s general store muttered rumors of war,
but the thought of Pa in a real fight seemed about
as distant as the stars.
The best fishing hole in Jefferson County was
down at Willow Creek, near the big bend on the
other side of Potter’s farm. The quickest route to
the creek took us between the schoolhouse yard
and Potter’s pumpkin field. Being early October,
the field was littered with orange dots. Plenty of
pumpkins for pies and jack-o’-lanterns for the
next couple of holidays. We knew our class would
take a walk over to Potter’s field later in the
month, just as we did every year, a group of
hooting schoolchildren meandering through the
dying vines. The pumpkin patch trip was one of
our highlights during the school year. Jimmy and
I scampered down the school road before Miss
Wilson opened up and lit the lanterns out front.
We'd just made it to far side of the building when
we heard the first crash—I even felt it in my
chest.
WHY WE DON'T TALK ABOUT THE PUMPKINS ANYMORE
"What the hell was that?" Jimmy looked at

me, his eyes wide.
"Dunno." I thought about Pa’s shotgun, the
way it hit hard and the report lingered in the air.
That sound was a whole lot louder than this gun,
even though it must have been miles away, past
hills and trees, but it shared the same quality:
Sarp and lingering.
Jimmy and I looked at each other, our faces
surely pale as a fresh coat of whitewash. We ran,
then, sprinting the last few hundred yards into
the stand of trees that hugged the creek’s bends.
He moved with more agility, cracking and
snapping over saplings and downed limbs,
rustling past clumps of dead leaves that
threatened to paint the whole world brown. We
slid down the bank and collapsed beside the creek.
"You...were scared," he panted.
I sucked in a breath of cool, fall air, filling my
nose with the perfume of mud and water and
wood. "Wasn’t," I muttered.
"Thunder?"
I glanced at the clouds. "Maybe. Somewhere a
ways off."
- After catching our breath, we started fishing,
Jimmy with his old cane pole and I with a switch
of birch I’d whittled into a smooth shaft. Neither
of us had much money; some Saturdays we spent
93
AARON POLSON
picking around the creek, rescuing old leaders,

fishing line, and hooks. A rusty, second-hand
treble was the same to us as one brand new, and
the fish didn’t care between a worm dug up by
poor kids and one bought in the store. Bobbers
were usually harder to find; that morning, Jimmy
used a cork medicine stopper. I held my pole with
both hands, waiting for the sting of a lunker. If
I’d known what was coming, I’d have held firmer
those last few moments, tried to pull in all the
sounds of the water as it whispered past, all the
smells of fall, the sweetly rotting leaves, and the
crisp colors still clinging to trees. I’d have held on
to just how bright the pumpkins were over in
Potter’s field.
As it was, we sat for a few minutes, both of us
suspecting it would be one of our last trips of the
fall—as good a reason as any to play hooky.
Jimmy started whistling just before the second
big crash, the thunderous one we felt before
hearing. My guts jumped with the explosion.
"God Almighty."
Jimmy stopped whistling. His eyes caught
mine, and something more than fear passed
between us. Wonder, I suppose. Maybe it was a
sense of wonder. We dropped our poles and
scampered up the bank, closer to the source of the
sound. Funny how we ran away earlier, but this
94
time gave in to curiosity, the kind that had killed

more than one cat. Clutching at tree roots and
rocks, I caught up to him at the edge of the
woods. What I saw scooped out my guts, filling
the void with ice.
Three of them—those tall, metallic, leggy
machines They rode—stomped around in Potter’s
pumpkin field. Lots of folks talked later about
how big they were, but they just looked wrong to
me, then, awkward and out of place. Alien. Plenty
of smoke rose all around, too, black and thick like
something straight out of the pictures in
Revelations from Uncle Gentry’s illustrated
Bible. Hell on earth. The monsters—I suppose
that’s the best thing to call them—sort of buzzed
and thumped more than the kind of clanking or
metal sound I’d linked with Pa’s old Model A.
Each monster was topped with armor that looked
a little like a pie tin turned upside down.
Underneath the tin, they glowed. Glowed red and
bright like the embers of a stoked fire. The wind
shifted, and we caught a face full of bitter smoke.
"What are they..." Jimmy’s mouth hung
open, almost as wide as his eyes.
"Dunno."
"From the army?" He thumped me on the
shoulder. "Your pa would know, right?"
95
AARON POLSON
I shook my head. "Army ain’t got nothing like

that."
One pale tin head swept our direction, glaring
at us with a hell-fire pupil, and my belly started
to constrict. I grabbed Jimmy’s shirt and tugged
him back toward the creek.
"C’mon...this ain’t right."
Something bright sparked behind us, as
Jimmy and I scooted as fast.as we could through
the trees. A few branches caught me across the
face, and my trousers snagged once or twice, but
we made it to the bank, slid down the slimy mud,
and tumbled into the edge of the water.
"Get down," I hollered, just as a red eye
peered over the tree line. I reached out and
yanked Jimmy’s arm, and both our heads sank
into the cold, green water. My eyes opened, but
the water was so dark and dirty Jimmy became a
black lump and only a little sunshine found us. I
held my breath until I thought my chest would
cave in, crushed by the water and want of air.
When I popped out of the water, sputtering
like Pa’s Model A when he flooded the engine, I
sloshed over to the shore and pulled myself out.
Jimmy broke the surface a few seconds later and
we both lay on the mud, coughing and breathing
hard, covered in gooseflesh and stinking like
catfish. The red eye was gone.
96
I don’t know how long we lay there, shivering

and wet like leaves in a thunderstorm. Sound told
us the story, mostly whumps and crumps—
explosions close enough to make the ground
quake. The fight trailed off, but the strange thing,
the part I had trouble understanding, was the
quiet. The birds had stopped chirping. My ears
gave up on the creek’s whisper. Jimmy wasn’t
saying anything, and neither was I. The spot had
always been peaceful, but this was different.
Silence like I worried about at night when I
thought about being dead and buried and Ma
used to come into my room and rock me, saying
I'd be fine and I wouldn’t know it when I was
dead ‘cause I'd be in heaven with Grandma and
my old cat, General, and all my kin.
Too much of that silence forced me off the
ground. As I lurched to my feet, I patted my arms
to shake off a little of the chill. Jimmy hopped up,
too. We looked at each other without any words
shared. He looked at the ground and started
searching like his voice had fallen out. Bending
over, he picked up the old worm can, brushed it
off, and sighed.
"My pole is gone, Ben."
"Mine, too." My eyes drifted above the trees
atop the bank and found a whole mess of black
smoke, more than before. Clouds had come in
Of
AARON POLSON
pretty quickly, stone-gray clouds that’d bring

rain, but the smoke was different. It was out of
place. We started up the slope one more time,
trudging away from the creek, uncertain of what
we’d find. Our shoulders hung low, our knees bent
as we tried to make ourselves as small as possible.
Halfway through the stand of trees, bitter ashes
overtook the earthy odor of mud and wood.
Ahead, all was black.
"Jesus, Ben..."
Tears pushed from my eyes before I could
speak. Maybe the smoke caused them to water;
maybe it was the realization that struck deep
within my gut when I saw what was left of the
Jefferson County Rural School. Most of the
building was gone. What planks and timbers
remained rose into the sky like a churchouse full
of prayers. Too late for prayers, though. The
ravaged hulk continued to burn, spewing awful
billows of dark stuff into the air. It was an angry
fire, an orange fire whose roar only now met our
ears.
"I hope—" The words were caught in my
throat, stopped by Jimmy’s hand on my arm.
"Ben...the pumpkins."
The bodies of our classmates littered Potter’s
field. They lay amongst the orange pumpkins. I
thought of the explosions. My eyes swept to the
98
fire and back to the field, linking the awful truth.

Jimmy was already across the road and in the
midst of the carnage before I moved. Great holes
had been torn into the earth; some still smoked
with wisps of white mist like ghosts lost on their
way to heaven. The bodies...
Shattered bits of orange rind mixed with the
ruined husks of our friends. Bobby Jeffers had
lost his glasses and an arm. We found a boot
containing a foot. A couple of the corpses didn’t
have heads. Suzy Harwood—only six—a sleeping
angel, her hands outstretched on either side like
the crucified Christ. At least she looked at peace,
one of the only ones who did. Jimmy picked up a
shirt, a white button-down, and held it into the
air. The wind flapped through its tattered cloth.
When Jimmy let go, it tumbled across the field
and snagged on the wire fence on the far
side...toward town.
My eyes followed the tumbling shirt, and
that’s when I saw the other smoke—at least a
dozen tendrils of it, snaking into the air like black
vines. Broughton’s Hollow was dead. Ma...my
brothers and sister...
"We can’t just leave them here," Jimmy said.
I wiped my face on a damp sleeve, trying to
stop my tears. "What...what are we going to do?"
"There ain’t no one coming to help us, Ben."
99
AARON POLSON
"Bury them?"
His face was set like a granite marker. "The
fire."
I saw the look in his eye—the cold, hard look
he’d learned when the sheriff's deputies dragged
his pa from Widow Partridge's property, reeking
like a moonshine still, as the barn burned. The
widow was inside, knocked over the head and
unconscious. She died in the fire, the first really
big fire I ever saw. Jimmy’s pa never was the
same. Neither was Jimmy.
He started before I did, and his courage
stiffened something inside me. We spent the
better part of the morning numbed by the cold
and our awful vocation. Jimmy didn’t spill a tear.
Not one. By the time we tossed little Suzy on the
fire, |was an empty shell, like a cicada’s after it
crawls out of the ground sheds its old skin. We sat
at the far side of the field, two eleven year olds
going on eighty.
After a long while, maybe an hour of watching
the black smoke, Jimmy stood.
"We got to move, keep moving." He picked up
the tin can, the one that had held the worms. "If
there’s survivors...we got to find them."
I followed. Neither of us had eaten anything
since the night before, but our work had chased
hunger right out of my body. We found the
100
county road—Willow Road—that led from

Broughton’s Hollow straight up to the highway.
From there I suppose we expected to be able to
find a ride to Wichita. I figured things had to be
okay there. While we walked, the distance-
muffled sounds of explosions jostled our feet. We
hadn’t said much leading to that point and talked
even less as we hiked.
The road, rutted and rocky, was wearing on
our feet. More bodies, some in military uniforms,
spotted the fields. Jimmy and I paused and
watched the blackened hulk of a military
transport truck burn. We dipped down a hill into
a stand of trees to cross Willow Creek Bridge,
when we spotted the thing. It was one of the
metal monsters, just like the giants we’d seen
before at the fishing hole, only this one lay on the
ground, sort of leaning uphill and away from the
bridge, a long, spindly leg snapped in two. There
were holes all around, some deep and smoking like
the pits back at the pumpkin field. Trees were
uprooted and dropped flat.
I crouched, hiding in the shade of the trees.
"Jimmy, get over here," I whispered.
He glanced over his shoulder and shook his
head.
A bird called, a little meadowlark somewhere
nearby. I hadn’t heard a peep from the birds or
101
AARON POLSON
any other living creature since before the attack.

The breeze shifted down the incline and over the
bridge, rattling the leaves overhead. Shadows
shivered across the machine. I rose and started
walking. The metal monster was too foreign, too
strange—my focus remained with Jimmy and
whatever was twitching on the ground in front of
him.
"It’s still alive...and hurt," he cried, and ran,
his boots knocking in dull thumps across the
wooden bridge. Jimmy’s arm rose, the metal can
glinting in his hand, and he brought it down,
hard.
When I came around the side of the machine,
I saw a glimpse of the thing, the creature. Its skin
was brown and webbed with dark veins—thick
and ropy like worms—slick-looking like it’d be
slimy to the touch. Jimmy kept bashing it with
his empty can, a rhythmic thunk thunk thunk until
the glossy skin stopped twitching. He turned to
me, his shirt and face covered with something
black and wet and awful and smelling like burnt
cooking grease. The tar-like stuff was splattered
on his face, streaked with the first of Jimmy’s
tears. He tossed the can onto the grass at the side
of the road.
"It’s dead now," he sobbed."I cracked its head
open like one of those pumpkins..."
His tears were dry by the time an army

detachment came across us as we stumbled, half-
starved and exhausted, along the highway. They
loaded us into big trucks, covered us with wool
blankets, rattled us away from Wichita. Black
smoke rose in the distance, smearing against the
sky. When we arrived at their camp, they fed us
thin soup in metal bowls. It was mostly
vegetables: Potatoes and carrots. I picked out the
carrots and flicked them to the ground, unable to
stand their color. Jimmy ate with big gulps.
Neither one of us would ever again mention
the pumpkin field.
103
Little Man, Big Eraser
Nee Riddnour started the list the day Jake
Harris and Benny Cates tripped him as he entered

the middle school’s bathroom. His glasses skidded
across the floor. Jake and Benny each kicked
Nolan three times in the gut, , giggled, and fled.
Nolan lay on the cold, sealed concrete, curled and
crying until he mustered the strength to crawl on
hands and knees to inspect the damage to his
glasses. After school that day, he found one of his
mother’s old legal pads.
At the top he scrawled "THE LIST" in block
letters. The first two names: Jacob Harris and
Benjamin Cates.
Throughout Nolan’s tortured high school
years, the list grew. There was Sandy Patterson,
the cheerleader who dumped the remnants of her
104
LITTLE MAN, BIG ERASER
Sloppy Joe into Nolan’s lap during lunch. Vinnie

Castro and Harold Burns made the cut when they
yanked down Nolan’s pants at a pep rally. Nolan
added extra strikes for repeat offenders, Jake
victorious at graduation with fourteen strikes
beside his name.
Nolan shuffled off to college, leaving the list in
his closet, buried beneath scrapbooks, half-
finished art projects, and broken childhood toys.
A list, no matter how devoutly scribbled and
studied, is of no use to a coward.
si
Nolan discovered he could alter reality one

Friday evening while leaving the public library.
As a matter of habit, he made a weekly trip to
check out movies—often vintage suspense or
horror. He devoured Hitchcock. The Universal
monsters were old friends. He had seen Gaslight—
both versions—at least fifteen times.
Outside the building, as he walked home
holding his stack of DVDs, he saw her—a woman
with short brown hair. He saw the car, dark blue
and sporty, speed through the stoplight at the
corner.
"Stop!" he shouted, and she did. The car
crushed her.
105
AARON POLSON
Nolan dropped the movies, squeezed his hands

into fists, and closed his eyes. When he opened
them again, the woman stood at the corner,
unharmed. The speeding car was a block away.
The traffic light turned to red.
Nolan’s brain swam. "Hey," he called,
scooping the DVDs from the ground and running
toward her. She paused and turned. The car sped
past. .
"Holy shit," she muttered. "That bastard
would’ve hit me."
Nolan looked at his shaking hands. "Is...is
this yours? It was on the ground over there." He
held out one of his DVDs.
"No...no. Sorry." She smiled, and crossed the
street.
Nolan rushed to his apartment, tossed the

movies on the counter, and splashed cold tap
water on his face. His hands had been shaking
since the accident. He sat, closed his eyes, and
counted silently. Was it an accident? He
remembered closing his eyes and clenching his
fists, and then the sensation in his chest...
He stood and turned the tap on again.
Watching the water snake into the drain, he then
106
closed his eyes and clenched both fists. Smack.

Eyes open once more, he found the tap shut off
and the sink dry. He tried again.
Shut-off tap. Dry sink.
After a third trial with the tap, Nolan grabbed
a jar of pasta sauce and set it on the counter.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed the jar onto the
floor; the glass broke with a wet thunk, red sauce
oozing between shards.
He closed his eyes, clenched both fists. The jar
sat on the counter again.
Nolan touched it with trembling fingers,
delicately at first, as if the jar would shatter on
contact. He wrapped his hand around its cool
glass and lifted. Impossible. His fingers opened;
the jar fell, shattering again.
Eyes shut. Hands clenched.
The jar sat on the counter, unmarred and
whole.
Nolan Riddnour walked to work five days a

week. He lived seven blocks from Halifax Press, a
minor publisher of academic journals and
scientific reports, where he was employed as a
junior accountant. An accountant controls
107
AARON POLSON
variables, he’d decided in college. An accountant

isn’t ruled by them.
He had spent the weekend honing his new
skill, breaking other jars, a plate, and various
items in his apartment, only to reverse the
damage with a blink of his eye and quick squeeze
of both fists. He wanted to understand the
variables.
"Morning, Liz," he said to the receptionist, a
straw-blonde scarecrow of a woman.
"Nolan." She nodded.
"Um, Liz...] was wondering if you’d want to,
you know, maybe go out for dinner or
something?" Nolan’s heart pounded in his chest.
Breaking jars and dishes was one thing, but Liz
was a real, live person.
She laughed, caught herself, and covered her
mouth. "Really, Nolan, you aren’t my type."
He tightened both hands into fists and
blinked.
Liz flashed him a surprised smile, a dusting of
confusion in her eyes. "Oh, hi, Nolan. Weren’t you
just—"
"Hey, Liz. Have a nice day." He shuffled
away from her desk with a smile pasted to his face
and a rabid beat in his chest.
108
As Nolan’s fingers worked through debits and

credits, his brain ticked away on other problems,
formulating different tests for his new ability.
When he closed his eyes he saw the woman with
brown hair crumple outside the library, the
speeding car grinding her to the ground. Then she
was whole again, standing on the corner, the car a
block away.
He left the office early that day, pausing at
Liz’s desk.
"Liz?"
She looked up from a magazine and scowled
slightly, her lips puckering. "What do you want?"
Nolan’s cheek twitched. He glanced over his
shoulder. One hand flattened at his side, rubbing
the leg of his jeans.
"Nothing...nothing. Good night."
A stray cat found Nolan on his way home, a
gray tabby that spent her days in the cool
shadows and neighborhood trash cans. Nolan
stooped to pet the cat, and she approached,
cautiously, and sniffed his fingers. Nolan drew
back, and the cat brushed against his leg.
"Nice Kitty."
Nolan’s return home was slow, but he stopped
to pat the cat every few yards to ensure the
mewing thing would follow. Inside his apartment,
109
AARON POLSON
he poured a small dish of milk and carried it to

the door. The cat sat on the front steps, cleaning
her paws.
"Here," Nolan said, setting the dish on the
stoop. As the tabby lapped up the milk, Nolan
flinched. He stroked the cat again, felt the
smooth, soft fur, and then seized her by the neck
with both hands.
The cat twisted and pulled, scratching and
clawing. He winced at the assault, but squeezed
tighter. After a few moments, the animal fell
limp. Nolan glanced at the scratches, the blood
seeping from minute cuts. He clenched his fists
against the pain, and pinched his eyes shut.
The cat returned to the bowl of milk. The
scratches on Nolan’s hands still bled. A minor side
effect. A variable.
"Nice Kitty." Nolan stroked the cat and lifted
the empty dish. The tabby thrummed with a deep
purr.
Inside his apartment again, Nolan rinsed his
hands, dried them, and collapsed on his couch.
"Mom," Nolan spoke into the phone.

"Nolan, something wrong, dear?"
110
"No, everything is fine, Mom. I just have a

question."
"You usually call on Saturday morning...it
isn’t Saturday morning."
Nolan’s cheek jumped. "Do you still have my
old things, my papers from high school?"
"Um...I think, yes. I believe the boxes are in
your closet."
"I’m coming home this weekend, Mom. I have
a few things I want to pick up."
Nolan stood outside the public library that

Friday night carrying a handful of small stones.
He gazed at the fountain statue, a man holding a
jug. Nolan dropped a stone in the center of the
pool beneath the bronze giant, and ripples spread
where it shattered the water’s surface.
He waited a few moments, enraptured by the
expanding circles. He had worked his
experiments, tested his new powers, and schemed
for the future. The tabby had adopted him,
following him home the past few days for a bowl
of milk. Every evening, Nolan strangled the cat,
and every morning she was on his stoop. The
growing collection of scars on his hands was the
only reminder of his experiments.
111
AARON POLSON
He entered the library and began to browse

the DVDs.
The woman with short brown hair also came
on Friday evening. She didn’t disappoint that
night. Nolan watched her through a shelf of wire
bars that locked shadowed lines across his quarry.
Her head titled, her hair neat and trim as she
searched the spine of each foreign film on the
spare racks. As he watched, Nolan invented her
life and imagined her calico scarf, black coat, and
thick-rimmed glasses surely belonging to someone
thoughtful but lonely. His face convulsed as he
watched her move. His fingers scavenged inside
his jacket pocket, tripping over the folded and
safely hidden knife.
Nolan ducked when she turned around,
pressing his six-foot frame as deep as he could
behind the wire shelves and slim cases. His body
bent, but his eyes pushed upward, past the tops of
the DVDs, and into her face. In his mind, his
hands stroked her skin. As she turned the corner
and marched toward the circulation desk, he
bowed his head.
One week ago, she was crushed by a speeding
car. He blinked, and she stood again at the corner.
His fingers lifted a case from the shelf, and he
trailed her toward the desk, shadowing her
movement. He carefully watched her push a
single DVD and her library card toward the

librarian. Nolan’s fingers tightened around the
case, his thumb stroking the scratched plastic
cover. He listened.
"Here, Miss Diekmann. Due back in one
week." said the librarian.
"Thanks."
"Can I help you?" The old woman reached for
Nolan’s DVD.
He looked down as the woman with short
brown hair passed. "No, I think I’ve changed my
mind." His face jumped, and Nolan quickly
moved from the line to dump the case on the first
available shelf. His eyes followed the woman
through the glass doors; slowly, taking care to
appear casual, he exited behind her.
Once outside, his gaze swept the street in both
directions. She’d exited through the side door, not
toward the parking lot. The gathering twilight
almost swallowed her as she hurried toward the
corner on Nolan’s left, scarf wrapped tightly
around her neck in the autumn breeze.
The scarf gave her away. The fingers of his left
hand rubbed the cold steel handle in his pocket as
she crossed the street ahead. Before Nolan could
follow, the light turned red, and a blue-and-white
city transit bus growled in front of him. The bus
passed, and the scarf was gone. His face twitched.
113
AARON POLSON
Not tonight.
iv
"I don’t know what you want in here, honey."

Nolan’s mother leaned in his bedroom doorway.
"It’s just your high school junk, isn’t it?"
Nolan sat on the floor, sifting through boxes
of old papers. "Something I wrote." He glanced at
his mother and smiled. "Something personal,
Mom. Do you mind?"
Her face dropped. "Oh. Oh, sorry." She took a
hesitant step into the hallway. "Nolan...would
you like some lunch? I could heat some soup,
maybe a sandwich?"
"That'd be fine," he barked. She disappeared
down the hall. His fingers pulled back the brown
flap of another box, shuffled to the bottom, and
pulled out an old legal pad. The yellow paper had
mellowed with age; his handwriting was smudged,
but still legible.
"Jacob Harris," Nolan read aloud. "Yes..."
His finger traced each tally mark next to Jacob’s
name.
"Hello, Mr. Harris. Remember me?"
114
He named the cat Sonar. Nolan had never

liked an animal enough to name it, but the cat
was stubborn and demanded love. Like an echo,
the gray tabby was there every morning, mewing
her greeting. She followed Nolan home each
night. He stopped strangling Sonar after the first
week, his hands a mass of tiny cuts.
With a pat, Nolan said goodbye to Sonar on
Wednesday morning.
"Run on, now, Sonar," he urged.
Entering the Halifax offices, Nolan paused at
the reception desk. "Liz?" He relaxed his hand at
his side.
Liz turned from her computer screen. "What
now, Nolan? You run out of paper again?"
"You're a bitch, Liz," he said, and brought his
hand across her face. Her head snapped sideways.
He blinked and clenched both fists. She sat
and looked at him, mouth hanging open in
question.
"What now, Nolan? You run out of paper
again?"
He smiled. "Nope. Just wanted to say hello."
"Gawd, you’re weird,” she said, turning to her
computer screen.
115
AARON POLSON
Friday evening, Nolan waited until Miss

Diekmann arrived. Like clockwork, at twilight, he
slipped out the glass doors on the side of the
building through which she would eventually
leave. From there he watched her, dressed in the
same dark overcoat and calico scarf, and he
thought how her dark eyes haunted her face—
dark eyes rimmed pink against her ivory skin.
Nolan huddled on a concrete planter and waited.
She hastened from the library, and Nolan
hurried to keep up, staying back just enough so
that she wouldn’t notice him. She arrived at the
corner, the same spot where he’d lost her last
week, but today he was prepared and caught up
to share the light, and hung back as she turned
right and crossed again, toward downtown. The
bus passed, like last week, but he was close, close
enough to watch her fade into the shadows.
When she arrived at 15th, she paused, looking
to her right, toward bright lights and bustling
groups waiting outside a popular bar, but Miss
Diekmann crossed the street, heading for the dim
neighborhood just east of downtown, and Nolan
followed. Trailing her through residential streets
proved more challenging than in the well-lit city
center—she almost dissolved into the heavy wash
of darkness asa phantom in the night.
116
Two blocks east, just four blocks from the

public library, and she walked up to the front
door of a small bungalow. At night, the color of
the house was indistinguishable. He stroked the
folded end of his knife and squeezed his eyes
against the tic, but his cheek jumped and he felt
the pull of the widening ripples.
Something brushed against his ankles. Nolan
glanced down as Sonar writhed between his legs.
She looked at him and meowed softly.
"Sweetie," he said, picking her up. "You need
to stay home. It’s not safe out here." He cradled
the cat in his arms as they walked back to his
apartment.
Nolan studied the kitchen clock, waiting for

the second hand to hit its apex. With the black
needle between the digits at twelve, he shoved the
jar of pasta sauce off his counter and started to
count, "one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-
Mississippi..." At nine, he squeezed his eyes shut
and balled his fists.
The jar reappeared on the counter, intact.
He glanced back at the clock and waited for
the second hand to make another sweep. He
117
AARON POLSON
repeated the process, the jar returning to the

counter until his count reached fifteen.
"Fifteen seconds," Nolan mumbled. The
accountant within wanted numbers, digits to
quantify. Variables to control. He examined his
hands, noting the white lines where most of
Sonar’s scratches had healed. "Fifteen seconds,"
he said as he scooped the broken glass and red
globs into a paper sack.
At work he searched for addresses. Starting at

the top of the list, he located Jacob Harris, now a
manager of a grocery store in Peoria. Benjamin
Cates had been killed in Afghanistan. Too bad.
Nolan collected addresses for all but a few names.
He began to plan, make arrangements. Revenge
with impunity. But first to be sure...
On Friday night, he followed Miss Diekmann
at a greater distance, certain of the path she
would take. The echo. The bus passed. He turned
the corner. She paused again on 15th Street,
looking again toward the gathering crowds,
shoulders slightly slumped. She melted into the
inky neighborhood beyond the downtown
streetlights, and Nolan watched her disappear.
118
A solitary light glowed within her small house,

and Nolan, moth-like, was drawn into its sphere.
He moved quietly, carefully through the yard,
taking time for his eyes to adjust, avoiding any
spare twigs that would snap and cause her alarm.
He crept to the porch and pulled his body up to
align his gaze with the front windows. Through
the darkened front room, he could see where she
sat in the kitchen with a half bottle of red wine
and a near-empty glass.
After a moment she stood and poured a full
glass from the bottle. Nolan dropped from the
side of the porch and moved to the front steps.
She picked up her glass, the wine—deep as fresh
blood—clinging to the rim, and crossed from the
kitchen to the other side of the house.
The television glowed from her living room
window on the right side of the front door. He
crept toward that window until he could see the
silver light on the far side of the room. A dog
barked—sharp little echoes that bounced through
the night, and Nolan froze for an instant. With an
involuntary twitch, he peeked around the
window’s corner, noticing her face in profile as she
sat, balled on the couch, holding the glass of wine
and watching the movie she had checked out
earlier that evening.
A gray something brushed against his ankles.
119
AARON POLSON
"Sonar! Bad kitty," he said. "I’m going to

have to lock you up, aren’t I?"
sj
Nolan posted addresses to his bedroom wall.

He included pictures where he could, Internet
images of his tormentors. Revenge with impunity.
A fresh jar of pasta sauce rested on his counter.
He arranged the tripod and camera across the
room, focusing on the section of tile where the jar
should splatter.
Nolan’s hand shook; his face jerked. A push, a
wet thunk, squeezed eyes and fists, and the floor
was Clean.
The camera, however, had captured the
broken jar. One moment, a wet glob of red
sauce—the next moment, spotless tile. Nolan
leaned back in his chair, repeatedly watching the
scene. Broken jar. Nothing. As the jar burst, he
imagined his knife in Jacob’s gut. He imagined his
knife in Sandy Patterson, Vinnie Castro, and the
rest. Revenge with impunity. The blood. Again and
again. A loop of repeated revenge.
Sonar meowed from Nolan’s couch. Nolan
stroked her gray fur.
"D’ve spoiled you, haven’t I, by letting you
stay inside?" He nuzzled his cheek against the
cat’s fur. "One more test, and everything is

ready." He closed his eyes, seeing the woman
crushed under the car, then alive again.
Nolan grabbed his jacket and opened his
apartment door. Sonar squeezed between his legs
as the phone rang.
"Hi," he muttered.
"Nolan, honey." His mother. "You sound ill."
"Pm fine, mother...really."
"You didn’t call last week; I was worried."
"I was busy. Really, a lot of work lately."
A pause. "You sure everything’s okay?"
"Positive. Look, ’m kind of in a hurry."
He glanced down, expecting to find Sonar at
his feet. Nolan slammed the apartment door shut
and rushed toward the library. Evening faded to
twilight with no sign of Miss Diekmann. A break
in the pattern. A variable. His tic worsened with
his anxiety, almost becoming a continuous spasm.
He rubbed both thumbs against the smooth tips
of his forefingers, watching the large, pale clock
above the circulation desk as it inched beyond six-
thirty.
Just when Nolan considered leaving, she blew
with a cluster of dead leaves through the
automatic doors. Nolan forced his fingers inside
his pockets and turned his eyes to the racks in
front of him. Perspiration gathered beneath his
121
AARON POLSON
coat. She came close, and Nolan felt her radiance.

His mind jumbled, he opened his mouth to speak.
"Excuse me," she said, brushing past him in
the narrow aisle.
He moved to the side and smelled faded
cinnamon mingled with something odd, a cold
smell like stone in winter, as she moved past. His
face flushed, a deep red that bloomed across his
cheeks and forced him from the aisle. Nolan
suffocated under the fluorescent lights of the
library foyer, so he hurried toward the automatic
doors. As he stepped into the gathering twilight,
he turned to see her watching him from the other
side of the tall glass fagade.
Inside the library, she paced the foreign
section. Making her selection, she took the DVD
case to the counter and again exited and turned
left. Nolan was gone when she stepped through
the glass doorway; he had walked ahead and now
waited in the thick night surrounding her small
bungalow. He waited, listening to the faint rattle
of the leaves that clung to tree limbs; the final
leaves that would break and tumble down the
street. His hands trembled in his jacket pockets,
the left one damp against the knife as the night
air cooled his hot skin.
She interrupted his trance when she opened
her front door. He stood across the street, but his
mind floated elsewhere. He tensed, watching her

door close. Nolan moved across the street quickly,
assuming his position on the porch. No barking
dog; no echoes. Not yet. His heart grated against
his ribs.
He peered through the window as she set out a
half bottle of wine, poured a glass, and lifted it
from the table, moving into the living room. Her
face was a blank piece of paper, a sheet of ice.
Always the same. Nolan’s finger stabbed the
doorbell. During the few seconds of waiting, the
violent clatter of his heartbeat swelled, drowning
the whispering leaves.
"Hello?"
Nolan’s left hand swallowed the knife and
swept it behind his back. "Uh, hi..."
A vacant moment.
"Do I know you...the library?"
He squeezed the knife open. "Yeah, earlier
tonight."
His face jolted. The dog barked. A quick
thrust and the knife was in her gut. A simple
upward jab, his hand swallowed in sticky
warmth. A small cry, a distant echo of a scream,
and her body dropped, broken and discarded,
blocking her doorway.
His hands down at his sides, the knife tightly
clasped in his right. From inside the house,
AARON POLSON
kitchen light filtered through the screen door.

Shadows cut across Nolan’s face—bars locked
over his eyes and mouth. His cheek twitched...
Brakes squealed on the dark street behind
him.
Startled shouts. "It’s a cat!"
Nolan clenched his fists and blinked. His heart
swelled. Miss Diekmann stood in front of him
with a puzzled expression. .
"Hello?" Her eyes dropped to his hands. She
gasped and covered her mouth.
The cat. Sonar. Nolan stumbled down the
steps. Fifteen seconds. He pushed past a woman,
closed his eyes, and balled his fists. The woman
was gone. The car was coming. He glanced across
the street-—Sonar meowed and stepped off the
curb.
"No Sonar. Bad kitty!" He held up his hands,
his bloody hands.
Fifteen seconds. In a panic, he turned around.
The woman lay dead on her porch.
No. He rushed to her stoop. Eyes closed, fists
balled.
Brakes squealed behind him. No no no.
"Hello?" She asked. Her eyes dropped to his
hands. She gasped and covered her mouth.
Nolan’s face twitched. He heard voices behind
him. An untested variable: He could only change
one event at a time. He glanced at his hands. The

blood remained like an artifact, like Sonar’s
scratches. Like a dead cat in the street. Or a dead
woman on her front porch.
He turned to the street, brought Sonar back.
Miss Diekmann should have died a month ago,
crushed by a speeding car. Nolan hurried along
the sidewalk, vanishing into the darkness with the
purring tabby in his arms.
When he found Jacob Harris, he might just
forget to close his eyes.
In the Primal Library
\ hen we were twelve, Bobby Milton and I rode
our bikes to the library to look at naked pictures

in the National Geographic magazines they kept
on the second floor. We would go after school, in
the autumn of our seventh-grade year, before the
weather turned too cold for boys on bikes.
Bobby’s older brother, Nate, told us about the
pictures of bare-chested native women. Being
dumb and horny and without access to real nudie
mags—Bobby’s dad was a youth pastor at the
Baptist church and my dad was in Hawaii with
his secretary—we scurried up the creaking stairs
to the magazine room and spent an hour or so
flipping through the glossy pages.
The Springdale Carnegie Library was an
imposing structure of stone, a tomb filled with
dusty, creaking innards. The woodwork, though
intricate and beautiful, had weathered years of
126
IN THE PRIMAL LIBRARY
schoolchildren’s abuse. Railings groaned with the

slightest provocation, floorboards rubbed against
one another with wails and whimpers, and the
whole place reeked of yellowed paper and mildew.
The second floor, where the magazines waited in
tall cardboard sleeves, was illuminated by a few
naked bulbs and always rested in uneasy shadow.
We stayed long enough for the sun to skirt
closer to the horizon, almost vanishing from the
narrow windows—just long enough to find other
pictures under the yellow magazine covers,
grotesque cave paintings from Lascaux in France
and artists’ renderings of Neanderthal man.
Pictures that inspired an imaginative game of
chicken; Bobby and I conjuring the poor
Neanderthal into some hunched creature of the
shadows, a man-beast that chomped and
crunched on the bones of little boys who remained
on the second floor past dark.
"He’s got awful teeth," I'd say, "yellow-saw
teeth, for grinding and tearing."
Bobby countered: "A big, flat forehead and
black eyes for seeing at night."
"Hands as big as your head."
"Muscles and veins popping through his skin."
"Face like rough leather."
"Looks like a bear, extra hair all over."
AARON POLSON
"He bites his prey on the neck and tears out

the jugular."
Our original purpose lost, we pushed our
hideous descriptions until one of us broke and
bolted for the stairs. We clambered onto our bikes
and rode to my house because it was closer. On
the way, every crooked tree limb reached out as
the gnarled hand of our prehistoric man-thing; we
collapsed on the front lawn, heaving and panting
until our hearts slowed and our panic crackled
into laughter.
Winter came, and our trips to the library
stopped. Bobby’s father was transferred, and I
lost the courage to climb to the second floor. In
time, I forgot the Neanderthal man’s smashed
face.
It’s a shame how some things can be
forgotten.
Six years later, when I took Stacy Pfeiffer to
the second floor under the guise of studying for a
physics exam, the memories of our man-thing
resided in the most primitive folds of my brain.
Stacy said she wanted to study—alone—and my
broiling hormones permitted one motive.
"We need a quiet place to study," she had said.
[ heard, I want to be alone with you, Nick, and
my heart quickened.
128
But once she spread her homework across the

walnut table in the reading room, once she flicked
on the little lamp and started reciting equations,
once she pushed me away when I started nibbling
her neck, I knew my interpretation of "quiet place
to study" had landed wide of the mark. I was
aroused, though, perhaps prompted by memories
of the twelve year old who had climbed those
creaking stairs with his buddy to sneak a peek at
a naked breast in an old magazine.
After one more failed attempt at romance,
Stacy pushed me away and said, "Look, mister.
I’m here to work. I thought you understood." Her
face distorted in the dim light.
"Sorry," I said, happy in the shadows because
she couldn’t see the bulge in my jeans.
Embarrassed and horny, I excused myself,
intending to relieve a little tension in the
bathroom. There were three rooms on the second
floor: The big periodical reading room, with its
boxed copies of old magazines and racks of
newspapers, the nonfiction collection on the other
side of the building, and the small alcove between
with the stairs on one side and a tiny storeroom
and toilet on the other.
Stacy had just the one lamp on in the reading
room, so as I stumbled toward the bathroom I
smacked my foot against a heavy object, nearly
129
AARON POLSON
falling to the floor. My eyes adjusted gradually,

and my arousal was lost to curiosity. I lifted a
yellow-bordered copy of National Geographic; the
box was full of them, for sale—a nickel apiece.
What’s more, I recognized the cover:
Paintings from that cave in France, bizarre
renderings of men and animals from prehistoric
times. The memories started to flicker: Bobby and
I, boys of twelve; the shadow-men we imagined. I
flipped the magazine open, hungry to find the
picture of our Neanderthal that inspired so much
childish terror.
"Nick?" Stacy called from the next room.
"You all right?"
"Yeah, fine. I'll be back in a minute."
"Hurry, okay? It’s a little spooky in here. I
heard a noise."
"It’s an old building," I said.
I turned every page, but couldn’t find the
picture. I knew that magazine. We'd looked at it
so many times. Confused, perplexed, and just a
little frightened, I moved to the doorway of the
small storeroom, reached inside the opening, and
felt for the light switch.
The light flickered, illuminating the room like
a flash of lightning, and went out. A blown bulb.
In that moment, I saw images on the walls—
misshapen paintings, black-and-red stylizations of
130
deformed, not-quite human, things. There were

other beasts, too, engaged in carnal acts with the
man-things. Smears of blood. Elongated arms,
legs, genitalia. The walls spread in twisted,
pornographic cave paintings—not the hunting
images from National Geographic. Twisted. When
the light flickered off, I was momentarily blinded,
but the images remained, lurking behind my eyes.
My heart lodged in my throat.
I opened my mouth, ready to call for Stacy,
but a thumping sound stopped my voice, followed
by a heavy crash, like a body hitting a hardwood
floor. My limbs became stone; terror crept up my
spine and locked onto my brain stem—the
primitive brain. I was twelve again. I stumbled
away from the dark room, glanced to my right, to
the reading room where I'd left Stacy. Black
shapes shifted across the lamplight. I fled,
crashing down the stairs and through the front
door.
I left Stacy alone on the second floor. I
climbed into my car and drove away like Bobby
and I rode our bikes—spurred by fear, frightened
by every misshapen shadow along the quiet,
neighborhood streets. I breathed for the first time
in my driveway, panting like a child.
I rested my head against the steering wheel
and waited for my heart to stop its assault.
131
AARON POLSON
After a few moments, I laughed. I pounded

the steering wheel and laughed at myself, pricking
my courage and replacing my fear with
embarrassment. The paintings had been figments
of my imagination, memories of those afternoons
years ago, when I was a horny, stupid kid. When
the light popped, I was startled. No body hitting
the floor, just the protests of an old building. I
glanced at the clock on my car’s dash. Nine
o’clock, the library’s closing time.
Stacy was going to be pissed.
I worked through excuses, writing my script
for Stacy, trying to find a reason for my sudden
flight. As I turned down the final street of my
return trip, flashing red-and-blue lights screamed.
Police lights—and an ambulance. I parked and
wandered toward the lights, drawn like a
Neolithic primitive to the fire. A small crowd had
gathered, watching as she was wheeled out on a
gurney, covered with a sheet. Our shadows were
blown obscene by the flashing lights—strange
shapes dancing across the parking lot and lawn.
The librarian fingered me, said I’d come in
with Stacy. She said she heard me pounding the
stairs, running away. It wasn’t until closing time,
when the she checked the second floor, that she
found Stacy’s body crammed inside the narrow
bathroom. The police questioned me, took molds
132
of my teeth to compare with the marks on Stacy’s

neck and chest. Springdale broiled with the
cannibal case for four months. In the end, I was
absolved by the snatches of skin found beneath
her fingernails, the flesh that Stacy gouged as she
fought for her life.
Of course, I was as guilty as anyone, but I
wasn’t alone. That thing in the library had been
born all those years ago—in the depths of our
imaginations—of two fathers. The teeth marks on
her body may have mimicked my own, but the
flesh belonged to Bobby Milton.
133
The House Eaters
AD started to eat the house on a Tuesday.

The day was easy to remember because I went
to the bank and bought $30 in rolled pennies on
Tuesdays. After returning home, I sat at the
dining room table and sorted my pennies. Coins
bearing the year 1963, my birth year, went into
one pile; 1965 coins, Maggie’s birth year, made a
second pile. I dumped the remainder into a large
jar for re-rolling.
They came with a subtle sound like the
snapping of a branch in the wind. They started in
the attic. Maggie looked up from her jigsaw
puzzle—she loved those puzzles—pointed her
brown eyes toward the ceiling, and said, "They’ve
come."
After Mother and Father died, the house felt
excessive for just the two of us, but it had been in
the family for generations. Great Uncle Thaddeus
practiced dentistry in our parlor; under the area
134
THE HOUSE EATERS
rug were holes where his chair had been bolted. As

a boy, I dug worms for fishing from the backyard
garden. Our mother was born in the bedroom we
converted into a gallery for Maggie’s finished
puzzles—the room tucked into the back of the
house, just up the kitchen stairs. The room in
which our grandmother bled to death after giving
birth to Mother.
When I was younger, the parlor, with its
oversized windows, was my favorite. Father
allowed us to open the blinds for a few hours each
morning. The rest of the house sat in such shadow
and gloom with heavy curtains, dark wallpaper,
plush, velvet-lined chairs and sofas, and rich
woodwork. With the blinds open, dust motes
danced a garish jig, swinging to the rhythm of our
breathing. As children, we didn’t understand the
artistry of the house’s deep grain, the gentle
curves of its banisters, or the intricate shell
patterns around each window.
All we knew was that the house swallowed
light. But it wasn’t the house, not really.
Outside, the sharp, close lines of the roof,
gables, and cupola might have deceived one into
believing the house was much smaller than it was.
Our parents replaced the siding, covering the
whole facade in a drab tan. As children, it was the
only exterior we knew. Inside, the place was stuck
135
AARON POLSON
in time; outside, it faded into obscurity behind

overgrown bushes and wild trees. Lost. Hidden.
Perhaps Father knew what slept in the house,
and he preferred Them asleep.
In recent years, after Mother’s death, we'd
had the place repainted. We paid a premium for a
proper restoration: Accurate Victorian colors and
trim, new wrought iron from a specialty
contractor in Ohio. Maggie-was never satisfied. I
understood her attention to detail, her care for the
smallest minutiae, even if it was a passion I did
not share. Much of her compulsion was channeled
into her love for those puzzles.
"The solution is in the details," she would say.
She could sit all day, her fingers whispering
over the pieces, quietly snapping them into place.
I was content to arrange and rearrange my coins
or read. Father’s library was extensive and
nothing of value had been written in years, so he
often said. Maggie and I shared a simple
agreement as brother and sister who drifted
through middle age, perfectly content to spend
our days with few words passed between us.
Neither cared much for the company of
others.
I didn’t always feel that way, of course. When
I was younger, in law school, I met Sarah. Once
upon a time I even entertained the idea of asking
136
THE HOUSE EATERS
her to marry me. Perhaps we would have shared

the house. Perhaps she would have been here
when They came. But that was long ago, before
Father died and Mother took ill. Before the trial
and the questions and the first of Maggie’s stays
in the hospital.
Poor Maggie. She always knew They would
come, and no one listened.
We found a way to amuse ourselves despite
Their presence. I worked filling paper tubes with
my coins to return to the bank the next Tuesday.
Maggie enjoyed her silent aligning of small
wooden pieces in their proper places. We
purchased most from a special mail-order catalog
dealing in genuine wooden jigsaws.
Maggie always awaited new packages with
joy.
I was in the kitchen, preparing our evening
tea when They ate the back stairs. Again, it’s the
sound I remember most, the singular cracking of
that finely-wrought woodwork. The noise startled
me, and I dropped Maggie’s mug, her favorite
green one. A large section broke when it struck
the tile, and the tea washed across the floor.
} Maggie was particular about her tea; she
enjoyed chamomile before bed.
"They’ve eaten the back stairs," I announced
in the parlor.
137
AARON POLSON
Maggie looked up from her table and nodded.

She accompanied me back into the kitchen,
and paused at the sight of her mug.
"My mug...what happened?"
With my hand on the stairwell door, I turned.
"Sorry, dear. I was surprised."
Her fingers worked the broken piece back into
the crevice of the mug like a jigsaw bit. "It can be
fixed, I expect. With a little glue and time." She
almost smiled.
After she spoke, I realized the noises were
gone—They fell silent. I opened the door out of
curiosity.
Nothing was there, of course. Nothing but the
jagged, splintered ends of wood where They had
taken their fill. The rest of the space was gone.
Not empty—not a gaping hole through which we
could see the back garden, but gone. Emptiness
has a color. The depths of space wait around
indifferent stars in black silence. The back
stairwell had nothing save frayed remnants of the
house.
"We should move our things downstairs," I
said.
Maggie nodded.
Once we moved changes of clothing and the
remains of our collections, we settled again into a
comfortable pattern. Maggie’s finished puzzles
138
THE HOUSE EATERS
were gone, of course; They had taken Mother’s old

room on the same night as the back stairs. From
the outside, the devoured rooms appeared
intact—the exterior of the house stood as it
always had: Neat gutters, finely matched trim,
clean siding and windows. A passerby wouldn’t
notice anything amiss.
But inside—nothing.
We slept in the parlor; Maggie took the couch,
while I reclined in a chair. I woke most days with
a stiff neck, but safety lies in fear. Maggie talked
in her sleep, muttering snatches of old nursery
rhymes—stories Mother used to tell about
Tommy Tittlemouse and Little Boy Blue.
I was awake, listening to her spin an old
rhyme about what little girls were made of, when
They came for the rest of the second floor. Maggie
woke in mid-verse, eyes wide.
"Again?"
I perched on the edge of the sofa, patting her
salt-and-pepper curls. "Yes. Upstairs. I’m glad we
decided to move our things."
"Yes," she said, looking at her hands. "I had
hoped, maybe, that They—"
"Can’t be helped."
She looked at me, her eyes dark and heavy.
"I’m sorry."
"It’s not your fault."
139
AARON POLSON
Perhaps it would have been easier if They did

come to punish us, but no. They had always been
there, in that space, hungry before the house was
even a house.
After They took the second floor, Maggie and
I were more careful. We spent most of our time in
the parlor, dining room, and kitchen. The grocer
made deliveries. I had no need to go out and held
no desire to leave my sister alone.
At night, as I listened to the tattered
remnants of wood creak and settle, I imagined
losing Maggie. I imagined how she might be
napping in a section of the house when They
came... We had been lucky thus far, or maybe a
bit paranoid, and started spending our days in the
same room. If I went for tea, she came with me.
She sat with folded hands at the little kitchen
table while I laid out cold cuts for dinner
sandwiches or warmed a can of soup. She never
prepared food herself, of course. Maggie never
even opened the cabinets, not since Mother’s
illness.
We passed a week cloistered in three rooms.
They were silent, glutted by their last feast,
stuffed with the dust and memories of two stories
of our home. Lulled into complacency, I made the
mistake of stepping outside one evening at dusk.
Some fresh air was all I needed, and the windows
140
THE HOUSE EATERS
were sealed by swollen wood and years of disuse.

After a time, the air grew quite stale.
I took a breath, and Their sounds came almost
immediately, as if They were waiting, anxious for
one of us to be alone.
"Maggie," I cried, my voice lost to the
grinding of wood in Their jaws. The front door
was useless, opening to the nothing where our
foyer once lay. I hurried down the porch stairs to
the side of the house, to the parlor where she
would be sitting.
She came to the window, her face white. After
a scrambling moment during which she tried and
failed to work the window, I waved her off.
Seizing a fist-sized rock from the flowerbed, I
hurled it at the window. The pane broke, and
glass shards dropped on either side like
transparent puzzle pieces. I pushed the remaining
glass from the frame with a coat sleeve, and
helped my sister climb through the aperture to
the ground. What was left of the room
disappeared behind her, swallowed like the rest of
the house.
We staggered a few yards, even though They
were finished—our ancestral home devoured. All
that remained was an empty husk.
Maggie slipped her hand into mine. "They’re
finished, then." Her voice wavered only slightly.
141
AARON POLSON
"Yes," I said. I cast my eyes down the street,

toward the nearest light. "We should go."
"Where?"
"I don’t know."
She squeezed my hand. "Did you save
anything?"
"Nothing, Maggie. Nothing." Everything was
gone: My coins, the mounted puzzles, five
generations of photos, the box of strychnine with
which Mother poisoned Father and Maggie
poisoned Mother... Gone. Consumed by the
nothing in the house.
We had nothing left but to walk, hand in
hand, into the dark night and what lay beyond.
Gary Sump is an Angry God
M, neighbor is watching me again. He’s

pointing from across the street, wagging his finger
and blabbing to his friend. I know he has a
camera in one of his upstairs windows,
overlooking the city in my backyard. Probably
loads videos on YouTube, too. Freak. I should
charge him for the privilege.
Does he think I like having an army of
Lilliputians living behind the house?
My therapist suggested a hobby to help me
relieve stress. Something simple. I thought about
the train set in my basement as a kid and built a
model village—that’s all. I loved those trains,
sitting and watching the black engine whir
around the long figure-eight track. That was
relaxing.
I put up the little houses, cobbled together
some scraps of balsa wood into tiny shacks, and
143
AARON POLSON
the next thing I know, Sparkles, my schnauzer,

won't go outside because of the little people.
Seriously, I go to bed one night and in the
morning, wham, a full population. They popped
up like mushrooms. I need to find a new house.
Stupid market had to slump right when those
little freaks moved into my backyard. Nobody
invited them. Damn dog is a pansy, anyway.
My therapist said I have too much pent-up
anger, too much hate. Well, Doctor Chediak
doesn’t have little people in his backyard putting
up billboards with his face on them.
It all started last year when Gail moved out.
Said I was "too moody" and "too aloof." How can
a guy be both? Either I’m a frozen steak or a hot
skillet, but I can’t be both. We used to go
mushroom hunting in the summer, digging
around under trees, in wet, shady groves. Gail had
a special place, a secret place where we'd always
fill a whole bag with morels. The best ones were
about as tall as the little people; she’d slice and
fry them. I hated the way the mud stuck under
my fingernails, but I loved Gail. Those
mushrooms were tasty, too.
I miss her.
College boy over there has probably been
snooping for months. I hope the little people give
him a good show. I hope I give him a good show
GARY SUMP IS AN ANGRY GOD
when I come home from the office, ripe with

frustration because Mary Ruth, our overpaid
receptionist, pushed out her garish lips and fired
some sarcasm at me. Somebody needs to let her
know that fire-engine red isn’t her shade. Those
are the nights I really miss Gail. The nights I get
really angry.
The thing is, they never run. I think the little
people know what’s coming—they know ’'m
going to crush a few of them—but they don’t run.
That burns me, really boils my juices. I hate how
passive they are, how they just take it. Fight
back, you little freaks!
I hate watching them the next day, when they
hold their funerals. I almost feel sorry.
I hate that they’ve turned Sparkles into such
a wimp.
Most of all, I hate the way their blood dries on
my fingers.
145
Reciprocity
Guiding his mom’s old sedan over the Broughton

River Bridge was a simple task, even for a drunk.
Andy’s head swam, pickled brain sloshing inside a
sealed container. Eyes closed, his hands drified right,
the steering wheel moving with them. He jolted upon
impact, almost thrown from his seat, but the safety
belt caught him, cutting into his collarbone. A quick
crunch and a spray of concrete, and the car dropped
through the air....
Four and a half years ago, Andy pedaled home

from football practice with his best friend, Jason
Thomas. They dropped their bikes on the
sidewalk outside Gibson’s discount store, slipped
inside the cool, air-conditioned building, and
meandered through the aisles. At thirteen, the
146
RECIPROCITY
boys felt too old for toys, but risked a quick trip
through the bright action figures, cars, and other
gadgets. They ended their visit with the fish tank.
Andy looked at Jason, lingering for a moment
on his red, puffed cheeks. "I'd like an aquarium,
someday. Maybe in my room." He glanced at the
taut veins in Jason’s neck and felt embarrassment
creep into his cheeks. His eyes flashed back to the
tank.
"Watch this," Jason muttered as he thrust his
meaty paw into the water, seized one of the
golden things, and pulled it out. Water streamed
from his fist, running in crooked lines down his
thick forearm. Jason slowly unpeeled his fingers,
and the fish flopped from his hand and wriggled
on the floor, slipping just under the shelf and out
of reach. Andy dropped, groping for the sliver of
gold.
"Can I help you?"
Andy sprang to his feet, his skin blushing and
burning. "No...just dropped a quarter...it’s
okay."
"Yeah." The clerk glanced at Jason. "Sure."
As the store employee walked away, Jason
held his damp arm behind his back. With the
other, he stifled a laugh. "Dude, you look
ridiculous on all fours. Get up."
147
AARON POLSON
The sedan split the water’s surface. The sound,

surely thunderous from the bridge above, came as
only a muted thud to Andy’s ears. Cold momentum
pulled the steel into the depths, the car sinking
through the awful murk. Andy’s glassy eyes darted
around the cabin, drinking in the moment, finding
trickles of black water as they pushed through cracks
around the doors and windows...
Six months ago, Andy and Jason bounced in

that old sedan as they crossed the Broughton
River Bridge and followed a dirt road to the
water. Andy held the steering wheel tightly with
his left hand as his right vibrated on the gearshift
knob. Jason balanced the half-full fish tank on his
lap; when the car skidded and jumped on the
gravel, brown water crested the aquarium wall
and sprayed his jeans. Andy glanced at Jason’s
wet thigh, the awkward moment forcing his gaze
to his window and the clouds unrolling above
them—an early fall storm sure to bring lightning
and rain.
"Shit—l'm getting fish crap all over my
jeans—" Jason lifted the tank just off his lap,
148
RECIPROCITY
trying to keep the water from splashing as it

slopped over the lip.
"We're almost there." Andy reached for the
dash and turned on the headlights as the swollen
storm cut off the sun.
"Oh, fuck it." Jason rolled his eyes and set the
tank back on his damp leg. "Why the hell didn’t
you just dump this stupid fish in the toilet,
anyway?"
Andy turned to look at Jason, his face no
longer chubby but angular and firm. "I just figure
I owe this fish a fighting chance."
"Andy, you’re nuts." Jason looked down into
the top of the tank. "This guy is food for the big
lunkers. Should have flushed him, let him die
quickly." He laughed.
"Shut up," Andy said as he squinted back to
the road.
"Why'd your mom make you—"
"No room in the new apartment. Dad hates
the fish, anyway."
After sliding into park and taking the tank
from Jason, Andy walked to the river’s edge. The
water’s surface started to vibrate with raindrops.
He held the tank and looked at the lone
survivor—the fish that had weathered two years
in his bedroom. He hesitated, remembering.
149
AARON POLSON
"Come on, damn it!" Jason shouted from the

car. "It’s really starting to piss on us!"
"Good luck," Andy said as he tipped the tank
toward the flowing water and watched the streak
of gold slide into the river. With an electric flash,
the fish vanished. Andy thought about diving in
and vanishing, too. They drove back to town in
silence, something heavy floating in the air
between them. Andy looked out the window,
watching droplets explode in the dirt.
Andy’s fingers scratched and pulled at the safety

belt, trying to wrench it free as the small trickles of
water burst into full sprays. Gravity held him fast,
belly to the river’s bottom. The front grill burrowed
into the silt, and Andy vomited into the windshield.
At the beginning of his sophomore year, a

crushing tackle during the second week of practice
snapped Andy’s tibia. His football career was
over—thankfully over—but he couldn’t tell his
dad, and Jason couldn’t understand. Andy never
wanted to play. He couldn’t stand the closeness in
the locker room, afraid that someone would read
150
RECIPROCITY
secret thoughts. Most of all, he was terrified that

one of the other boys would find out and crack
through his facade, and he would face the horrible
jeers and mockery, as well as his father’s whiskey-
tinged disappointment.
His mother bought the fish, set up the tank in
Andy’s room as something to occupy him during
weeks of waiting for the slow knitting of his
splintered bone. At first there were three. "You
can name them after the three stooges, honey,"
his mother said with a smile.
Being away from the field didn’t make the
feelings go away. Jason helped with carrying his
books in the halls and stopped to visit most
evenings after football practice. "Great practice
today. I think we’re going to be good. Coach says
I might get some playing time."
"Awesome, Jay. Really." Andy forced his gaze
from Jason’s blue eyes; he stared across the room
at an overturned laundry basket. A few moments
passed in silence.
"Hey, you know that girl I told you
about...Mandy?"
"Yeah, Mandy." Andy felt hot; he wanted to
throw open his bedroom windows.
"Well, what do you think?"
"She’s nice."
151
AARON POLSON
"No, what would you give her...on a scale of

one to ten."
Andy squirmed. He closed his eyes. "Five—
six—I don’t know..."
"Wow, I was hoping for at least a seven."
Jason plucked at his sweaty T-shirt. "Damn. I
need a shower. Later, dude." He paused in Andy’s
doorway. "Hey, Mandy has a friend. Maybe we
could double."
"Sure. Whatever," Andy mumbled. After
Jason left, Andy turned to the flecks of gold that
couldn’t swim away and hide.
Something grew in the cloudy water—something

gold and shimmery. The windshield buckled as
shadows of catfish and carp swirled in the darkness.
The gold thing swelled, skating, burning, it seemed,
with its own light. Andy’s eyes caught the fins, the
translucent fans of orange waving through the water.
A sense of calm bloomed inside his chest. The
enormous goldfish moved as if to swallow Andy, the
car—everything. It loomed, blotting out the world,
shrouding...
RECIPROCITY
A few hours ago, the sky was as thick and

pervasive as spilt ink. Andy, holding an
aluminum can, stood just beyond the crowd.
Music poured from the house, and bodies moved
on the lawn in the cool, spring air. The house was
Mandy’s—Jason’s girlfriend. Her parents were
out of town; she opened the invitation. "Just a
little party," she had told Jason.
Andy paced, finished his sixth beer, and felt
the buzz. He was always outside the crowd,
always trying to vanish, to become invisible.
Springdale was so small, so uncompromising, so
unsympathetic. Two more months, he thought,
then done—gone. His father, armed with calloused
fists and bleeding that oily car smell—gone. The
feeling of scratching at the iron doors of a cocoon,
suffocating in a small town—gone. Andy was
ready to leave.
"Dude," Jason thumped him across the back.
"Some cute girls here—Cat, Mandy’s older sister,
is back from college. You remember her? She
asked about you."
Andy stepped farther away. "I...I’m not
really interested."
"Dude—she’s hot. Weren’t you guys in art
club or some shit?"
153
AARON POLSON
Andy gulped the last of his warm beer and

tossed the can behind him. "Choir, dumbass." He
crossed his arms. "Look—"
"She told me to come find you, now c’mon."
Jason leaned closer; Andy smelled his breath, saw
a flicker in his eyes. He wrapped one strong hand
around Andy’s arm.
Andy felt stifled, hot and suffocating. "I’m
not interested, all right... I’m just—"
"What?" Jason dropped his grip and backed
up, toward the party. "What—you don’t like
girls?" He chuckled. "I’ve tried to set you up
before. I try to get you a hook up with a hot
college chick, and this is the shit you drop on me."
Jason’s smile shifted to disgust.
Andy flushed—feeling naked, flayed open
beneath the purple sky. He stepped back,
suddenly afraid. "Jay...I didn’t want you to..."
Jason turned, a black giant in the night. His
shoulders dropped and swelled again, growing
bigger, menacing. He snarled as he spun. "Fuck
you, Andy." Jason’s fist found Andy’s chin—a
sharp crack, and Andy crumpled to the ground.
Jason’s shadow covered him. "You look stupid,
crying on the ground. Get up."
Andy shifted his gaze to Jason and noticed the
crowd growing behind him. He spit blood, pushed
to his knees, and slowly stood. "Jay..."
154
RECIPROCITY
"Get away from me." The shadow receded.

Andy wiped his face on one sleeve, fished his
keys from his pocket, and stumbled to his car.
The sound of music, voices, and laughter faded to
a pinprick and vanished. He climbed into the car,
bringing it to life with an awkward growl.
A fier being swallowed, Andy chose between the

darkness he knew and an impossible darkness. He
closed his eyes against the gloom inside the maw of
the fish. His chest started to warm; his heartbeat
grew tiny but fast, an almost-constant hum. He felt
torn from the mud; the car dissolved—the biting pain
of the seatbelt against his collarbone melted. Andy
flew through the water, borne from a massive
goldfish...
Andy opened his eyes on the river bank. A

billion stars lit the river’s surface, dancing as the
current pulled toward wider rivers and eventually
the ocean. Among the dots of silver, he saw a
single smear of gold—an immense blur that
turned and circled.
155
AARON POLSON
When the gold vanished, Andy felt his clothes,

realized they were soaked with heavy mud. He
pulled his shirt off first, struggling to yank his
arms free. The April breeze still held a chill, but
something inside Andy’s chest burned. The
warmth spread to his fingers and toes. Andy
pushed off both shoes before stripping off his wet
jeans. He dropped to the mud and removed both
socks and his underwear.
He stood for a moment, naked at the edge of
the shifting water. He glowed in the black world,
shimmering like a fresh coin. His lungs swelled
with clean night air, and Andy splashed into the
river—no longer trapped and drowning, but free.
156
Cut and Paste
Elesey Newsome stumbled, almost tumbling

headfirst onto his porch, because of the first
unexpected box. He caught himself, though, and
only jammed his finger on the mailbox.
Staggering to a plastic patio chair, he plopped
down and regarded the foreign object. "Hello,"
Harvey mumbled, after shoving the sore finger in
his mouth. After a moment of pain, he read the
label: "Harvey Newsome, 715 East 8 Street" I
don’t remember ordering anything.
The phone rang inside the house, and
Harvey’s hands scrambled into his pockets for the
keys. Where are they? The keys rested on the porch
beside the box, evidently dropped during the
tumult.
Before Harvey was able to jiggle the key into
the lock and snap the door open, the phone
stopped ringing. He rushed into the kitchen and
157
AARON POLSON
snatched the receiver just in time to catch Liz

before she finished her message.
"Oh, Harvey. I wondered where you
were...you’re usually home by four-thirty."
"Yeah, yeah. I, um, got this delivery today.
Didn’t expect it."
"Delivery?"
Harvey pushed his glasses farther up the
bridge of his nose. "Yeah. A-box. Don’t know
what it could be."
"Right. So, Harvey, I’m going to be a little
late for dinner tonight. Finishing a paper." A
pause. "Would you mind, you know, giving it a
once-over?"
Even though Liz couldn’t see him, Harvey
forced a smile. "Sure, no sweat. What time?"
"Maybe six-thirty? I just need to hammer out
a conclusion."
"See you then."
"Bye."
Harvey rested the receiver on its cradle and
dropped his bag to the floor. He moved to the
front door, looked at the box for a moment, and
then picked it up. Lighter than it looks, he thought.
158
CUT AND PASTE
"Dinner was simply delicious, Harvey." Liz

stretched out on Harvey’s old green couch, a
friend he’d had since college. He loved the way
Liz looked—long body, lithe arms and legs, and
tumbling, chameleon’s hair that could be brunette
or blonde with the flick of a light switch.
"Really, the Bertolli people did all the heavy
lifting." Harvey glanced up from the stack of
papers he was running through with a green pen.
Always green—never red. "Green is the color of
hope," Harvey told his students.
"So, how is it?" Liz cast an unsure look toward
Harvey.
"Better than a high school senior," he said,
and then chuckled at his own joke. "Probably
have to cut some, though."
A few moments burned in silence before Liz
sat up. "Harvey, what about that box? Did you
open it?" |
"Oh." He draped the papers over the arm of
his chair. "Yeah. Funny thing. It was filled with
more boxes. Three little ones, with people’s names
on them. Other people’s names, dates,
addresses—even times of day." He didn’t tell Liz
about the note.
Liz frowned. "What are you going to do with
them?"
159
AARON POLSON
"I dunno. I figured I'd try to call the delivery

company tomorrow."
Liz stood. "Hey, babe, I gotta work tonight.
Can I pick up your edits tomorrow? The paper’s
not due until Friday." She leaned over to catch
Harvey’s gaze. "Harvey?"
"Yeah...sorry. Thinking...edits tomorrow.
Got it. Be careful, okay? I don’t like you working
that job."
Liz kissed him, full and forceful. "Don’t
worry. Just a bunch of old guys drinking whiskey.
I think I can fend them off."
Harvey tossed for an hour before shuffling

into the kitchen, flicking on the light, and
examining the note again. " Your fixer will help
you," he read. Fixer? Who, or what, the hell is a
fixer? Harvey folded the paper twice and stuffed
it back inside the box. After gulping a glass of
water, he crawled back into bed and stared at the
dark ceiling until sleep found him.
Harvey managed his walk to school that

morning without tripping over anything, and
160
CUT AND PASTE
arrived at his desk in the back of the classroom at

seven-thirty. He tossed his bag behind him,
jabbed the computer’s power switch, and spun to
check his plans for the day. A desktop calendar
showed October 11th—Harvey always left his
calendar on the next day’s date when he went
home in the afternoon. "The eleventh..." he said,
"what’s so important about the eleventh..."
"Mr. Newsome?"
Harvey’s furrowed brow melted, and he
looked toward the door. "Oh, hi, Brad." A scruffy-
looking boy in a blue Saints’ jersey stood just
inside the classroom. "Can I help you?"
Brad took a few steps into the room. "You all
right, Mr. Newsome? I heard—"
"Just tired. Didn’t sleep well."
"Well, I need some help on that last paper."
Brad held out a few typed pages. "I don’t
understand what you mean by word choice."
Harvey rubbed his forehead, trying to work
away the gathering pain. "Yeah, word choice. I
think you could cut out some weak words, replace
them with others. Stronger verbs and the like."
He smiled.
Lunch that day found Harvey on the phone.
161
AARON POLSON
"Harvey?" The voice was unfamiliar, but

laced with a warm, friendly tone.
"Yes, who is this?"
"Harvey, right? You’re my carrier. I’m your
fixer. The first package, I need it tonight. Five
o’clock. Follow the address on the box."
"Who is this?"
"Your fixer. My name isn’t all that
important—but you can call me Steve."
The line clicked dead, but Harvey continued
to hold the receiver to his ear. The other teachers
inhaled their lunches with no interest in Harvey’s
call—all except Mrs. Dale, his fellow English
teacher and mentor.
"Harvey? Are you all right?" she asked.
He dropped the receiver on its cradle and
shook his head slightly, but said, "Yeah, sure."
Harvey ate his peanut butter sandwich without
flourish, and hurried from the teacher’s lounge.
Once inside his classroom, he snatched his bag
from the floor and dropped it on the desk. The
box—the first box—lay inside. He had packed it
last night.
"Mrs. Daphne Samuels...October 11*...5:00
PM..." Harvey gently set the box on the corner of
his desk, leaned back in his chair, and pushed
both thumbs beneath his eyebrows. The headache
had grown worse.
162
CUT AND PASTE
Once the final bell sounded, Harvey worked

his way to the lounge through the teeming mass
of teenagers crowding the hallways. He grabbed
the phone and dialed Liz’s number. The clock
showed 3:20. Liz’s voicemail sounded in his ear,
followed by a quick beep.
"Hey, babe. I’ve got something—a meeting—
after school today. I’m going to be later, okay?
I’ve got your paper. Well, love you. Bye."
For the first time in recent memory Harvey
left school before four o’clock. The box’s address
indicated a house on the other side of town,
although Springdale wasn’t a large place. He
could easily walk, but decided to drive—he would
make it home faster to prepare dinner for Liz. The
air had a chill to it that afternoon—a hint of
approaching winter. Harvey pulled the collar of
his coat tighter around his neck and shivered as
he hurried the two blocks to home. Clouds
gathered, covering the sun as it edged closer to
twilight.
"Hello, Mr. Newsome." His neighbor, Mary
Dyson, a diminutive older woman with faded red
hair, called as he cut across the lawn. She sat on
her front porch and nodded repeatedly as she
talked, offering approval for everything she said.
163
AARON POLSON
"Oh; hey.”
"In a hurry? We don’t usually see you this
early." She had a way of saying "we" even when
she was alone. The habit unsettled Harvey.
"T have a meeting, that’s all."
"Oh," she said, nodding. "Oh, a meeting."
"Well...have a nice evening." Harvey rushed
from her gaze onto his own porch.
rf
Mrs. Samuels’ house was dark at 4:55 PM.

Strange. He parked his Honda across the street
and waited behind the wheel. Beside him, resting
on the passenger seat, the box—not six inches
long—waited. Harvey noticed a man walking
along the sidewalk toward his car. He stared at
Harvey almost as if trying to recognize an old
acquaintance. The man was rather ordinary—
average height with thinning hair and wearing
wrinkled khakis. Sweat started to collect on
Harvey’s forehead.
The man approached his window and tapped
his knuckles against the glass, and Harvey
obediently lowered the window. "Harvey?" the
man asked.
"Yeah," Harvey replied.
164
CUT AND PASTE
"I’m Steve. No time to waste. Grab the box."

Steve stepped into the street. "I’m a little
surprised you came. We sometimes lose one before
a new carrier realizes the importance of his or her
job."
Harvey felt a rock move through his stomach.
"I don’t like to be late," he said. "Can you tell
me...well, tell me what we’re doing here?" He
grabbed the box and hopped out of his car,
slamming the door.
"Later. It’s better if we don’t talk until we’re
done. The client is out cold, but I don’t like to
chance it."
Harvey followed Steve into the street,
noticing the toolbox at his side. Steve moved with
purpose, surely trying to maintain some sort of
time schedule. They stepped onto Mrs. Samuels’
front stoop; Steve snapped his toolbox open and
pulled out a long, pointed device. The tip of the
utensil slipped into the deadbolt lock, clicking,
and Steve’s thin hands twisted the door open. He
dropped the tool back into his toolbox and
nodded for Harvey to enter. Feeling the weighty
pull of curiosity, Harvey obeyed, ducking into the
dark house.
At first, there seemed to be an odor—faded
incense, but Harvey couldn’t be certain. The
house was dark with all curtains drawn. After a
165
AARON POLSON
moment, Harvey’s eyes adjusted, and he could see

the cluttered interior. Steve snapped on a small
flashlight, and Harvey’s eyes chased the beam as
it wiggled across the room, illuminating rows of
family portraits that dated back at least three
decades, judging from the styles of dress.
"C’mon," Steve whispered.
They crept into a bedroom, and Harvey froze
when he saw her. Mrs. Samuels appeared to be at
least sixty years old. Her face sported the plump
yet wrinkled look unique to women in their
golden years; her eyes were closed. If not for the
slight rose in her cheeks and the steady rise and
fall of her chest, Harvey would have considered
her a corpse.
Steve moved to the side of the bed, set his
toolbox on the floor, opened it, and drew out a
peculiar, silver instrument. The tool looked like a
pair of scissors, especially the kind used in the
kitchen. The notch where a chef might snap a
chicken bone was a little wider, about the
diameter of a human finger.
"You might want to open the box," Steve
whispered to Harvey.
As Harvey peeled back the packing tape,
Steve used his flashlight to illuminate Mrs.
Samuels’ left hand. He slipped a hand under hers,
lifted it slightly, and worked her finger into the
166
CUT AND PASTE
notch. With one squeeze of the scissors-tool, he

snapped off the finger. Harvey staggered; the rock
in his stomach burst, and he caught bitter vomit
in his mouth.
"Box," Steve called. "Box!"
Harvey shoved the box forward. Steve fished
out the contents—another finger, almost an exact
replica of the one he’d just unceremoniously
amputated. Steve’s thin, nimble fingers held the
replacement digit to his mouth. He spat on the
severed end and pushed the new finger in place.
Then, almost as a sculptor would work clay, he
pushed and blended around the seam until the
thin line disappeared. The flashlight gave the
scene a surreal air. Once the initial dizziness wore
off, Harvey sputtered, "No blood..."
"Get the old bit," Steve said as he packed his
tools. "The finger—put it in the box. Can’t have
any spares hanging around."
Harvey glanced at the floor, scooped up the
severed digit, and dropped it in the box.
Steve stood before him with a smile, the
flashlight casting grotesque shadows around his
eyes and mouth. "Let’s get some coffee, have a
little talk." Harvey nodded.
167
AARON POLSON
"I’m always hungry after a job," Steve said

before taking a bite of brownie. "You sure you
aren’t hungry?"
"I’m fine," Harvey said. He glanced at the
clock above the counter. "Look, what the hell just
happened?"
"I’m a fixer. You’re a carrier. We just helped
old Mrs. Samuels to a few more years before she
shuffles off this mortal coil.""He stuffed more
brownie into his mouth. "She had a rather nasty
splinter—got infected."
Harvey closed his eyes. "A dream. That’s it. I
fell asleep on my couch after school."
"Look: ‘There are more things in heaven and
earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’
Harvey." Steve took a long sip of his latte.
"Quoting Shakespeare?" Harvey opened his
eyes again and looked at the stranger. Steve’s face
was simple, pale with a hint of a scar cutting
across one eyebrow. He was at least thirty-five.
"So, here it is: We are the good guys. Little
things—spiders, splinters, cuts—don’t generally
snuff out anybody anymore. Because of us. We
fix things."
"Right. Like anybody ever died of a splinter."
"Exactly." Steve poked a finger at Harvey.
"We fix things."
168
CUT AND PASTE
"This is insane. Splinters? Spider bites?

What’s next... hangnails?"
Steve smiled and shrugged.
"What about antibiotics, modern medicine?"
After another long sip, Steve rested the mug
on the table. "Placebos and witch doctors. People
feel better when they are in control." The two
men sat in silence for a few minutes.
"We’re guardian angels or something?"
Harvey asked.
Steve laughed. "Not exactly. We don’t
necessarily work for you-know-who."
"Who do we work for, then?"
Steve looked thoughtful for a moment. "Do
you remember that kid’s story about the elves
and the shoemaker?"
Harvey nodded. "Sure—are you trying to say
we're elves?"
"Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve only been on the
job for about a year. They ship from New Jersey;
we take care of business on this end." Steve leaned
across the table. "My previous carrier explained
it. Nobody can touch the parts until it’s time for
the job. If someone does...poof. They return to
the earth, so to speak."
"What?"
"Clay, I think. They become clay."
169
AARON POLSON
"What about the...you know." Harvey

nodded toward the box.
"What about it? Nothing but clay...ashes to
ashes, and so on."
Harvey glanced around the room and pried
open the box. Inside, a finger rested in a small
nest of clear bubble wrap. He poked it and found
that the thing gave. It was damp and moist, like
virgin clay.
"Satisfied?"
Harvey shut the box. "Why me?"
"You’re a very prompt person. Curious, too.
They’ve been watching you. Timing is crucial,
and curiosity brings you back for more. If you’re
good, you might get a promotion."
"Promotion?"
"Oh, yeah. Whole limbs, organs. That’s the
tough stuff. Right now we’re on digit duty."
They sat for a few, silent moments. Harvey
studied Steve, the box, the line of people at the
counter. "A dream. Just a dream." He stood,
lifted the box, and started for the door. "I’m just
asleep on my couch," he muttered over his
shoulder.
"See you next Tuesday," Steve called after
him, a smile spreading across his face.
170
CUT AND PASTE
Harvey did indeed fall asleep on his couch

when he arrived home. He woke to the brush of
Liz’s lips, and her warm body pressed against his.
"Long day," she whispered.
"Yeah. Long day."
"How about take-out? Chinese?"
Harvey closed his eyes and absorbed her heat.
Just a dream. "Yeah, Chinese sounds fine." When
he opened his eyes, the open box drew his
attention from across the room. Noi a dream.
Harvey squirmed off the couch, pushing away
from Liz.
"Hey...what’s—"
"Something I forgot. Just need to take
something to the trash," he mumbled as he
grabbed the box and hurried outside. Harvey
skirted the house, and tossed the offending item
without ceremony inside the trash can.
"Taking out the trash?" Mary Dyson crowed
from her porch.
Harvey jumped, but forced a smile. "Sure,
taking out the trash." He hurried inside before the
old woman could say anything else.
After dinner, Harvey helped Liz make some

minor corrections to her paper, and then they
171
AARON POLSON
made love. She usually stayed with him the

nights she didn’t work; he was glad to be with
someone.
Harvey’s eyes stayed open long after his sweat
had cooled. He listened to Liz’s steady breath, he
concentrated on her smooth, warm skin, and he
inhaled the light sweetness of her hair. No sleep
came for him until well after midnight.
The weekend passed quickly, and Monday

vaporized under mounds of student essays.
Harvey glanced at the box on Tuesday morning,
read the time—6:15 PM—off the label, shrugged,
and locked his front door behind him. He wasn’t
going to make any appointment that day. Nope,
no more strange people and waking fantasies.
His schedule progressed typically that day,
and Harvey made it home by 4:30. He nodded
politely at Mrs. Dyson. She nodded back with a
smile. "Any trash tonight? Any meetings?" she
asked, but Harvey ignored her and opened his
front door.
Liz came for dinner. Afterward, Harvey
worked some tension out of her shoulders while
she studied for an international business law
CUT AND PASTE
exam. On the way to the bar, she kissed him

goodbye at 9:30. Steve called at 9:31.
"Harvey. I missed you this evening."
"Who is this?"
Silence. "Steve. Your fixer. Mr. Kabus, well,
it’s too late, now, Harvey."
Harvey thought about the box—the inscribed
name was Charlie Kabus. Too late now. His
stomach dropped to his toes. "Too late?"
"Check Friday’s paper. The obituaries. I'll see
you Monday."
Harvey sat at a small table in the school

library on Friday morning with the Springdale
Sentinel spread before him. At the top of section
5B, obituaries, he located a grainy picture of Mr.
Charlie Kabus, 55. His funeral was set for the
following Monday. The world—everything except
the small table, the paper, and Harvey, himself—
vanished.
"Harvey?" Mrs. Dale called to him.
He slowly snapped from his trance. "Huh?"
"Harvey, you'd probably better get to class."
She touched him lightly on the shoulder. "Is
everything okay?"
173
AARON POLSON
He pushed the newspaper into a hurried pile.

"Yeah, sure. Everything’s fine."
After school that day, he rushed home and
tore open the box labeled with Charlie Kabus’s
name. Inside, nestled in a bundle of bubble wrap
just like Mrs. Samuels’ finger, Harvey found a
toe. The phone rang.
Harvey lifted the receiver with his cold hand
and muttered, "Hello."
"Harvey—you don’t sound well. You all
right?" Liz poured on the sympathy.
Harvey nodded, but said, "Not really."
"Hey, I’ve got work tonight. Early shift. Pll
bring over some soup tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah, okay."
"Hang in there."
"Sure." He hung up the phone. Harvey sat at
the table, staring at nothing in particular for a
few minutes, before picking up the open box and
stepping outside.
"Hello, Mr. Newsome," Mary called from her
porch. "More trash?" She didn’t nod this time,
and her voice sounded strained.
"Something like that," he muttered, dropping
the box into the trash can. Harvey shuffled back
inside, found the kitchen table, and collapsed into
a chair.
174
CUT AND PASTE
Ke
"Really, Harvey, it’s not unavoidable. I told

you that most carriers let one go before they show
for their first job. You just happened to skip your
second."
"But a person...died."
"Harvey, we all die sometime, don’t we?"
Steve smiled his unsettling smile. "I’m just glad
you came around in time for job three."
"Can you...do you know what did it, you
know...killed him?" Harvey took off his glasses
and rubbed them on the hem of his shirt.
"Oh. Spider bite. Brown recluse—not usually
deadly, but..." Steve jabbed his tool in the lock
and jiggled. "Shall we?" He opened the door and
gestured for Harvey to enter.
The world of strange boxes fell silent for the

next week. Leaves hurried through shades of
orange and red, snapping from the trees and
tumbling to the ground. Day by day, the sun eked
closer to the southern horizon and set earlier in
the evening. Hope started to stir in Harvey;
maybe his job was done. Maybe they fired me, he
thought.
175
AARON POLSON
"Hello, Mr. Newsome," Mary Dyson called

over the buzz of her husband’s leaf blower. "You
got another package today. I said ‘hello’ to the
delivery man. Such a nice fellow."
Harvey stopped halfway across lawn, the
blood in his veins suddenly cold as a stone.
"Package..."
"Yeah, you busy on eBay or something?"
Mary chuckled. .
"No...no...nothing like that." Harvey rushed
to his porch cradling the box under one arm, and
hurried inside. He dropped the offending object
on the table, moved to the refrigerator, and found
a can of beer. Harvey wasn’t much of a drinker,
but he needed a beer. After a few sips, Harvey
opened the box. He found two smaller packages
inside: One addressed to Liz. His Liz. "Liz..."
"Yes, Harvey?"
Harvey shuddered at her voice and tucked the
small box behind the larger one. "Liz...what are
you—"
"Oh, I thought you would be home." She
pushed the front door shut, took a step toward
Harvey, and held up one hand. "Got a bit of a cut
last night at the bar. Broken bottle. I needed a
few stitches." Her finger was wrapped in white
bandages.
176
CUT AND PASTE
"Stitches?" He glanced at the small box. "You

all right?"
Liz shrugged. "They had to dig out some glass.
Hurt like hell—they said the real danger would be
infection. One of the regulars—the old guys—bled
everywhere. I left you a message." The red light on
Harvey’s answering machine winked.
"Harvey...what’s in the box? More anonymous
deliveries?"
"Uh, sure..."
She threw her arms over Harvey’s shoulders.
"You've become so mysterious." The doorbell
rang. Liz squeezed Harvey. "You going to get
that?"
"Yeah," he stepped to the door and opened it
to find Mary Dyson. She held his school bag. Her
small, wrinkled face scrunched into a grin as she
stepped inside.
"You dropped this," she said. "Oh, hello, Miss
Gardner." Mary flashed her smile at Liz.
"Thanks, Mrs. Dyson. Thanks a lot." Harvey
reached for the bag.
"Your man has been getting some strange
deliveries, hasn’t he?" Harvey started to sweat,
and the headache crawled back inside his skull.
"Huh?" Liz glanced at the box. She noticed
the small package, and her forehead wrinkled as
she read her name.
177
AARON POLSON
Harvey turned to Mary. "Could you please

leave? Thanks for the bag." He snatched it from
her grip.
"Anything to help. Bye, Miss Gardner." Mary
smiled at Liz, and nodded to Harvey. "You're
doing good work," she whispered.
Harvey gently pushed her out the door.
"Goodbye now, Mrs. Dyson." When he turned
back toward the kitchen, he-saw Liz standing
with an open box in one hand and a finger in the
other.
"Harvey? What the hell is this?"
The world seemed to implode. Harvey’s eyes
centered on the finger. "Oh... Liz..." He stumbled
over to her.
"Harvey...this is weird. It looks like my
finger...made of clay."
He took her in his arms and pressed her close.
"I...[ made a cast the other night while you were
sleeping to send off...to size for a ring." Harvey
swallowed. "I love you, Liz."
Liz kissed him on the cheek. "Oh, Harvey.
Sometimes, you’re a little strange. You could
have just asked my size. Harvey, you’re shaking.
Are you crying, Harvey?"
178
Homecoming
On Monday morning of homecoming week I
wake next to a stranger, but this is hardly

unusual. We’ve played this game for at least a
month. In the dim bedroom light I see her dark
hair spread in waves on the pillow beside mine—a
beautiful but unfamiliar earthy brown. My eyes
automatically search the wall for our wedding
picture and I study the image of my wife, noting
her tidy, shoulder-length blonde hair, lean face,
and vivid, blue-flame eyes. She is out there, I
assure myself, and the doctors agree. She just
hasn’t found her way home, yet.
The stranger in our bed mumbles and rolls
over, shifting the comforter and dragging her hair
across the pillow. I dress in semi-darkness. A
crawling discomfort in my stomach prevents me
from talking to her, so I work with quiet diligence
and close the door softly when I leave.
179
AARON POLSON
Waking beside strangers has worked its

wickedness on my body, and I stare at a dim copy
in the bathroom mirror—a dried husk of a man,
scraped clean. Dark crescents slump underneath
my eyes, my pale cheeks show age and
exhaustion, and I try to revive my sluggish flesh
with a splash of cold water. I want to weep, but it
won't bring Liz back—it won’t help Danny.
He sleeps soundly in his cozy nest across the
hall. When I wake him, he hugs me tightly, his
four-year-old hair a tangled, curly mess, too long
to easily tame.
"Quiet, buddy," I whisper. "She’s still
sleeping.” He nods and I help him dress in silence.
We breakfast on a bagged imitation of Lucky
Charms and look at pictures of football players on
the sports page. Danny drinks his watered-down
orange juice from a plastic cup.
Before we can leave, she shuffles into the
kitchen with wide, wild eyes. The eyes are brown,
like the hair, and at that moment missing my
wife’s feels like a fist in the chest. This woman is
shorter, with a fuller body and rounder face. I
move to hug her, but she remains cemented to the
tile, watching from behind a foreign mask.
"Bye, honey," I say. "I'll take Danny to
preschool." I hug the statue.
180
HOMECOMING
After delivering Danny, I allow my mind to

drift to my wife—my real wife—the one that
must be out there somewhere. I’ve never actually
seen her phase, the word the doctors use to
describe Lizzy’s condition. They’ve tried pills,
therapy, even a couple of old-fashioned spells
that, in the end, just leave us each day with a
different Liz. We might as well throw rocks at the
moon.
At work I attempt to teach Act I of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the students ally
with school tradition and thwart me. Fairy tale
creatures inhabit their bodies. It’s a hard
realization, but I understand that my classroom
will fill each day this week with strangers,
students maddened by their age and daily themes,
dressing in odd clothing, spending their evenings
playing pranks on each other, or working on class
floats.
I don’t want this; I don’t need any more
strangers.
When I wake on Tuesday, I smell bacon, eggs,

and fried potatoes—comforting memories that
drift in thick odors from the kitchen. I find the
stranger in front of the range, tossing potatoes in
181
AARON POLSON
a skillet. Danny sits at the kitchen table and looks

at me, asking a question without speaking. The
stranger wears my wife’s clothes and fits them
well, but her hair hangs limp, a few shades too red
to recognize.
"Good morning."
"I thought you might like breakfast," she says
while watching the sizzling potatoes.
"Yeah," I say. "Sounds good."
"T haven’t been pulling my weight around
here." Her voice almost breaks as she pokes the
potatoes with the spatula, and I hesitate for a
moment to force my tears back into my throat,
carefully weighing my words and actions.
"We've been fine," I say, gently patting the
stranger on the back. "We'll be fine." She turns
and hugs me, and for a brief moment, as her body
presses against mine, I close my eyes. I’m
touching my wife again. In my mind I hold that
moment, but in the kitchen I muster courage to
leave the house, not knowing who will take her
place before I return in the evening.
"When is Mommy coming home?" Danny

asks as we drive toward his preschool.
"Soon," I say, although I don’t know.
HOMECOMING
"I miss Mommy."

"I know, buddy."
In the rearview mirror, I study his face. He
looks out the window as we drive, his blue eyes
reflecting the shadows of trees and houses.
"Daddy!" Danny yells from his bedroom. I roll

over and read 3:35 AM on the alarm clock’s
blazing face. The stranger sleeps silently beside
me, her hair tangled and blue in the moonlight.
Her face rests peacefully on the mat of hair, but
the features are alien.
"Daddy!"
I swing my feet over the edge of the bed and
bring them into contact with the hardwood floor.
Behind me she stirs but does not wake. I stumble
through the dark of our bedroom and into
Danny’s.
"What is it, buddy?" I whisper. I can just
make out his face in the glow of the night-light; a
shining streak down his cheek indicates that he
has been crying. My frustration succumbs to the
best sympathy I can muster in the middle of the
night as I softly approach his bed.
"Is there anything scary out there?" he
whimpers.
183
AARON POLSON
I kneel beside him, his eyes searching my face

for the answer.
"No, buddy," I lie.
"Stay with me," his pitiful voice commands.
"Okay."
I climb into his bed, stretching out on my side.
He buries his face in his stuffed bear and curls up
on his side, facing away. I reach out with my free
arm and rub his four-year-old back. He is much
too young to understand, and I am thankful that
I could have years before I admit to him that,
yes, there are very scary things in the world. Sleep
does not return for me, and I face the prospect of
teaching Shakespeare in a stupor.
Danny and I leave before she rouses the next
morning.
My students, mock-movie stars clad in wigs

and gaudy togs, continue to practice being other
people. I yield to a BBC production of
Midsummer. The blonde heads and large
sunglasses sit in their seats, lapping at the myriad
moving images and ignoring the content. I’m too
tired to fight them. When I suffer the video for
the fifth successive period, I fall asleep.
184
HOMECOMING
She is still in bed in the early evening when we

return. Danny swings in the backyard as I sit on
the edge of the bed.
"How was your day?" I ask.
"Okay." She looks at me with dilated pupils
and a gaunt, unfamiliar face. "I stayed here all
day. It felt safer."
"Are you hungry?"
"No, but I should get up. I'll make you
something."
"Don’t bother," I say. "ll take Danny to
Dairy Queen."
"Yeah." The stranger’s voice says. "Okay."
Later that evening, after I tuck Danny in and
kiss him good-night, I lie on the couch, unable to
force myself into the stranger’s bedroom. I try to
read, but have no endurance. My night is short
and dreamless.
The stranger walks into the kitchen as Danny

and I eat breakfast, and this time she is shorter
with cropped black hair and dark, deep-set facial
features. She stops and looks at the paper on the
table. Danny maintains focus on his cereal bowl.
185
AARON POLSON
"Good morning," I say, and she merely shrugs

before walking into the living room.
At school on Thursday, homecoming week

reaches a rolling boil as I watch "twin day"
doppelgangers haunt the hallways. The fairies
love to indulge the children. >
An after-school faculty meeting delays my
trip to Danny’s day care. Sitting through some
blather about detention hall and our in-school
suspension policy, I watch the clock inch forward.
When the principal signals the end I rush from
the room with little time to pick up my child.
When I find my car in the near-vacant lot, the
front-passenger corner dips too low. My neck
grows hot and tightens. The meeting held me too
long to change the spare and make mandatory
pick-up time at preschool, so I must rely on the
stranger to collect Danny. I dial my home
number, stand beside the crippled car, and wait—
uncertain of the voice that will greet me.
"Hello," the stranger answers.
"Someone needs to get Danny at preschool," I
say to the imposter, not bothering to fight
through an introduction.
"Danny?"
186
HOMECOMING
"Your son," [ say.

"Yeah," the voice says. "Look, who is this?"
I summon my resolve and force the words
from my mouth. "I’m your husband. Please just
go and get Danny." The phone line falls silent. I
struggle with the jack, lying on the dusty ground,
and the lug nuts resist my best effort to twist
them from the wheel. At one point my hand slips,
my knuckles scraping bare and bloody; I should
feel pain, but my mind hovers elsewhere, working
through possible scenarios, and wondering what
the stranger will do.
With the spare in place, I start for home while
dialing the preschool office, questioning whether I
should have relied on the stranger. No one
answers. When I pull into the driveway and
recognize her car, I exhale, trying to release
tension.
"Danny?" I ask as I open the door. The house
listens in silence.
The stranger lurks in the hallway leading to
our bedrooms. She is tall, bleached platinum hair,
and features far too delicate to be my wife’s. Her
eyes almost glow from sunken sockets spaced a
little closely, and her arms are crossed in front—a
stance of coldness and distance.
"You didn’t pick up your son today." Her
voice is low, tinged with disgust, and I hold my
187
AARON POLSON
breath, waiting for the words to defuse the

moment. "I’m sick of your bullshit," she says,
brandishing a boney finger in my face. No words
come. "We aren’t following you, anymore.” She
turns on her heels, sweeping toward Danny’s
room. I barely hear his voice, and reach to stop
the stranger. When my hand touches her arm she
swats it away, enters his room, and slams the
door.
"Honey, please," I say.
I knock hard on the door and try the knob,
but she must have immediately locked it. I slump
against the opposite wall and slide to the floor.
When I wake in the middle of the night, I’m still
hunched on the floor but covered with a warm
quilt. I lift my stiff self and peek inside my
bedroom. She lies under the comforter, and I turn
to see Danny’s open doorway. I don’t approach
the woman, but quietly gather clothes from my
dresser, place them in the bathroom, and lie down
on the couch, waiting for the first light of dawn to
brighten the deep red walls of our living room. I
rouse first and stuff a few essentials for Danny in
a bag.
We leave early. I take Danny to school with
me, and I’ve decided we will leave after the
homecoming game. Teaching is a wash,
Shakespeare will wait, and unquiet thoughts tell
188
HOMECOMING
me to stay close to my son. He watches as

students swathed in Springdale blue file through
my classroom: Football players looming large in
their jerseys, cheerleaders’ painted faces and bold
S-emblazoned sweaters, and the rest of the rest of
them, most infected by the same drug that draws
out school pride during homecoming.
I’d promised to announce the halftime
crowning at the game, and Danny watches with
rapt attention as football players collide and crash
on the field. As the game clock ticks down, my
stomach gradually softens and feels as though it
may pour out of my body. I’m too tired. During
the halftime show, my empty voice echoes as I
announce the king and queen candidates.
We stay until the end, watching Springdale
lose the game by the slim difference of a missed
extra point. Danny nestles into the backseat of
my car, propped into position by the booster. We
drive out of town. West of Springdale, the
highway rises over a large hill. Just as we crest, I
hear Danny’s voice.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, buddy?"
"When are we going home?"
His face is visible in the mirror, barely lit by
the soft moon and starlight. I steer the car onto
the shoulder, shift into park, and rest my head on
189
AARON POLSON
the steering wheel. I briefly imagine an escape,

fleeing from the town, from the relentless rotation
of strangers through our house, and the pang that
arrives when I realize that without the wedding
picture on our bedroom wall my wife’s face will
fade from my memory. The bitter, angry stranger
in the hallway last night would be reason enough
to take Danny somewhere safe, but I know she is
trying to find her way home. She must be trying
to find her way home each time she phases. After
a moment, I can speak again. "Now, buddy.
We're going home, now."
Danny falls asleep long before we arrive. His
limp body dangles in my arms as I carry him
inside the dark house and lay him on his bed, slip
off his shoes, and pull the covers to his chin. I
walk to the door, turning to look one last time at
his sleeping face before steeling myself to enter
my bedroom.
The room feels warmer than it has in weeks,
possibly a side effect of my quickened heart. The
woman that lies in my bed is covered well, curled
into a fetal position just like my wife used to
sleep. The room is washed in blue, and I can’t see
the woman’s hair color. I undress, carefully
crawling under the heavy blankets, clutching a
pillow as I roll to my side, away from her. I glance
190
HOMECOMING
at the wedding picture—a stolen moment of smile

and happiness. The woman shifts.
191
Tap, Tap
djhy first few taps mocked Dillon’s footfalls as he
paced the deep end, mop in hand, waiting for his

shift to end. The Olympic-sized pool had been
drained as it was every year for cleaning and
maintenance, and Dillon found himself, along
with the other lifeguards, performing a very un-
lifeguard-like task. Besides, it was late—too late
to work on a summer night. Too late to work with
half the lights switched off in the aquatic center,
and the empty pool surrounded him like a
whitewashed tomb.
"Damn bleach stinks," he muttered as he
pushed the mop over the smooth surface. His
voice echoed and faded.
"There a problem?"
Dillon looked up to the concrete slab
surrounding the pool and into the ruddy face of
Terry, his manager, a muscled veteran of
TAP, TAP
collegiate swimming. "Nope. Everything’s fine,"

he lied. The pool walls sent his words back to him.
As the echo faded, he heard the tapping again.
Terry’s face twisted into a scowl. "Then finish
up and get the hell out of here."
I'll gladly get out of here, take my scholarship
and go, Dillon thought.
He watched Terry vanish, and then turned
back to the sealed concrete that stretched in both
directions. The taps came from near the grate at
the center of the deep end. He glanced up again,
scanning the lip of the pool for anyone—anything
that may have made the noise. Three other
lifeguards worked that night, put in extra hours
to finish the annual cleaning before a swim meet
the next week, but nobody was on deck.
Then the sound, again...tap, tap...metal
against metal, but dull and strangely amplified as
if coming from underwater, maybe a length of
chain banging against the grate. It was a familiar
sound for a lifeguard, a pool sound—but the pool
was empty. This time, another noise whispered
along with the taps. A noise he couldn’t be sure
of—possibly a human voice.
Maybe outside, Dillon thought. He dropped
the mop into its bucket and brushed his damp
hands against the old pair of shorts he wore for
painting and other dirty jobs. Walking toward the
193
AARON POLSON
grate, Dillon felt a cold touch on his back and

neck, a creeping sensation like waterlogged fingers
dancing against his skin. He shivered, trying to
shake the feeling. At the grate, he knelt, peering
into the darkness. Was it his imagination, or had
the tapping started again—a dampened, metallic
ping?
No. Nothing, I guess. He smiled to ward off his
own discomfort.
He collected his mop and bucket and climbed
out of the pool. At the opposite end, he followed a
zero-entry ramp, pushing the bucket and
whistling away the nagging discomfort that
nibbled at the edges of his thoughts.
Vinnie, all bones, the scrawniest lifeguard
employed at the center, caught him in the
janitor’s closet as he dumped the stinging bleach-
water down a special drain. "What’re you doing
after work, man?" Wearing an old, cut-off T-shirt,
he scratched his shoulder while speaking.
"Dunno. Going home, I suppose." Dillon
shrugged. "It’s Wednesday. Not much
happening."
"Yeah." Vinnie leaned against the doorjamb.
"Say, earlier, when you were down at the bottom
of the pool...did you hear something?"
194
TAP, TAP
Dillon’s memory resounded with the eerie

tapping sound. "No," he lied. "Nothing. Just
Terry barking orders, like usual."
"Oh." Vinnie frowned. "Kind of looked like
you were listening for something. You tilted your
head." He modeled. "I was up on the other end of
the deck, but I watched Terry holler, and then..."
A sense of discomfort ballooned in Dillon’s gut
and washed across his face, leaving a hot trail. He
wanted Vinnie to move, to get out of his way, so
he could climb into his car and speed home, away
from the strange, empty pool and its phantom
sounds. Phantom voices. He took a step toward
the door, but Vinnie didn’t move.
"Probably nothing."
Dillon felt his mouth open without thinking
about the question. "What nothing?"
"I thought I heard something earlier." Vinnie
stared at the wall behind Dillon. "Tapping, I
guess. This sound, like an underwater chain
hitting concrete."
Dillon shook his head.
"You're right. Probably nothing." Vinnie
nodded, and turned to leave, but hesitated.
"When I heard it...I thought about the old storm
drains. Terry said one was supposed to run right
under the pool."
195
AARON POLSON
ct;
Outside, in the darkened parking lot, a hand

latched onto Dillon’s shoulder as he moved to
open his car door. His body stiffened, and his keys
fell to the ground, striking the pavement with a
dull clank.
"Hey, buddy." The voice was raspy. "Spare
some change for the bus." >
Dillon pulled away and turned, ready to run
or fight or scream. The man stood just a foot
away, close enough for Dillon to nose his stench,
the rank odor of human sweat and dirt. A layer of
stubble coated the stranger’s lower jaw, and the
flickering streetlamp above filled the lines of his
face with shadows of black ink.
"No...no change." Dillon heard the waver in
his voice.
"C’mon, man." The man’s hand pushed
toward him, fingers curled like a fleshy rake.
"Just a buck will get me downtown."
"Hey!"
At the sound of Vinnie's voice, Dillon felt
tension unknot from his shoulders. The man
receded into the darkness, muttering something
under his breath. Swallowing a deep dose of cold
air, Dillon knelt and scraped the ground for his
keys.
196
TAP, TAP
"Who was that?" Vinnie gestured.

Dillon shook his head as he rose to his feet.
"Dunno. We're close to the highway. First bus
stop on the way into town." Across a vacant lot, a
city bus groaned and sighed to a stop. Shapes
shuffled in the twilit gloom. "Don’t know why
they built the center out here."
Vinnie shrugged. "Cheap land."
"Creepy as hell." Dillon studied the red lights
on the back of the bus, watching as they blinked
off and patrons shuffled on board. The voice
circled in his head, someone in need of help. Was
it someone tapping, trapped in the tunnels below?
"Why'd you become a lifeguard, Vinnie?"
"What? Me?" Vinnie scratched his naked
shoulder. "Dunno. Coach suggested it... it was a
job." He nodded to Dillon. "You?"
"I guess I want to help. Like you said, it’s a
job. Do you think we really help people?"
The bus grumbled away.
"Only when they need it." Vinnie smiled, and
then started toward his car.
On the drive home, every stoplight turned red
just before Dillon pulled up, his engine idling with
a hum. He expected another noise. His thumbs
tapped against the steering wheel, an unconscious
gesture. Tap, tap...tap, tap. He closed his eyes and
heard Vinnie's voice. [fwe both heard something...
197
AARON POLSON
That old flashlight is still in the trunk.

Dillon made a right turn at one of the
uncooperative stoplights. He circled a quiet,
lights-out neighborhood, and turned his car back
toward the aquatic center. He fumbled, fishing for
his cell phone first on the passenger seat, then the
floor. Finding it, he flipped it open and dialed
Vinnie.
"Hey, Dillon."
"Look, I...I did hear something. When I was
in the deep end, down by the drain."
"What?"
"Yeah." Dillon’s chest swelled with the rapid
tapping of his heart against his ribs. "Sorry...1
didn’t think..."
"Did it sort of sound like a chain,
underwater?"
Dillon gripped the phone tightly in his damp
hand. "Like somebody knocked a chain against
the pool walls...maybe against the grate. I think I
heard a voice, too."
Silence. Dillon slowed at another light.
"Look, can you meet me out there?" Dillon
asked. "I want to have a look around. If
somebody needs help, or...I don’t know..."
"The storm drain?"
"I guess. Sure. I can’t shake the feeling that
somebody might be down there."
198
TAP, TAP
The bus stop sat vacant when he returned.

Across the field, the looming aquatic center stood
against the night sky. Dillon turned off his lights
before pulling into a parking stall. He sat for a
few minutes, expecting Vinnie. The moon was
absent; the world shrouded in thick shadows.
"Fuck it." Dillon muttered and climbed from
his car. Rummaging through debris in the trunk,
including some old camping gear and a deflated
soccer ball, he found his flashlight. He pushed the
button, and the light flickered and sputtered to
life with a lazy yellow glow. With a sweep of his
arm, Dillon scanned the parking lot, recalling the
grizzled hand of the old vagrant.
"Empty. Okay." He let out a long breath.
Holding the weak flashlight in front of him,
Dillon first walked to the aquatic center. Large
windows broke up three of the four walls at
regular intervals and only the faint red light of
exit signs lit the interior. He pressed against a
window, directed the beam inside, and watched
pools of shadow melt and re-form. The pool itself
was a black pit.
199
AARON POLSON
This is stupid, he thought, but he heard a

voice, a faint, calling thing. But if somebody needs
help.
Dillon turned and strode away from the
building, putting space between him and the
silent structure. The storm drains started down a
small incline on the opposite side of the parking
lot. A breeze caught the leaves of ancient trees
that flanked the undeveloped vacant field, and
their hushed voices carried. Dillon hesitated,
swallowed his fear, and slid down the
embankment.
With a sweep of the flashlight, he found the
gaping maw of the storm drain, a stainless steel
pipe buried in the grassy hill’s side. His grip
tightened as he took a few steps, small ones,
toward the drain. His feet squished in the mud at
the bottom of the culvert leading away from the
pipe. He paused.
Again: Tap, tap. A voice. Muted. Indistinct.
"Hello?" Dillon called.
Nothing...then the tapping.
I need the knife.
The thought struck him like a wash of ice
water. I have to get my knife. The buck knife from
his Boy Scout days was in his trunk, crammed
away with the rest of the camping gear. Dillon
scrambled back to his car, searched his trunk, and
200
TAP, TAP
found the weapon. Tucking the sheathed knife

into his waistband, he descended the ditch, took a
deep breath, and ducked inside the storm drain’s
open mouth.
Inside, the world fell silent, and the
corrugated walls of the drain pipe swallowed
Dillon’s flashlight. He moved slowly, his feet
splashing in a thin layer of stagnant water, and
scraped his shoulder on a loose bolt where two
pipe segments joined.
"Shit." His fingers found a small tear in his
shirt and blood, warm and damp. He studied his
fingertips under the light and smeared the blood
on his shorts.
"This is stupid," Dillon muttered to himself.
The tapping stopped. A sound—a human
voice in pain.
The knife.
Dillon tightened his grip on the flashlight and
slid his knife from its sheath. He crouched lower.
The air inside the drain was motionless, hot, and
oppressive. He brushed his right forearm across
his face, and the yellow beam skittered across
corrugated folds of metal.
Keep going.
Dillon made his way deeper into the pipe. A
glance behind revealed no night-blue opening.
How deep now? Under the building? He felt the
201
AARON POLSON
weight of brick and concrete on his shoulders. His

lungs fought for air.
The pipe ended in a small chamber. Ahead:
Wall, a pool of water, and metal bars. The
tapping was silent. No voice, either. The smell of
chlorine filled his nostrils. He knelt at the side of
the pool, and the chlorine burned his nose.
"This is pool water... how?"
Dillon scanned the hollow, pointing his beam
into the water. Under the surface, the ground
dropped sharply. He studied the metal bars,
remembered the sound. With another look back,
Dillon assured himself that he was alone.
Whatever made the sound...has to be underwater.
Maybe the drain somehow connects with the pool. He
set the flashlight down, pointing toward the
water. First one foot slid beneath the surface,
then the next. It chilled his skin.
The water lapped at his neck before he
reached the wall. With an iron grip, his left hand
clutched the knife. The light was dim and the
water murky as Dillon felt with his right hand.
His heart throbbing, he sucked in a deep breath,
and plunged beneath the surface.
The heavy chlorination stung his eyes, and he
saw nothing but the bars and bare wall, almost
like a gate. The light flickered and went out.
TAP, TAP
Dillon burst through the water’s surface, gasping

for breath. He wheeled in the water.
A shadow stumbled toward him, mumbling.
The knife. Dillon pushed the blade into the
shape. It caught for a moment, but then slipped,
the body giving way like a mass of thick mud.
The figure slumped backward, making a sound—a
human voice in pain. A familiar voice.
Hey, buddy, can you spare some change?
The shape dropped with a heavy thud. Dillon’s
heartbeat blended into a steady tap, tap, rattling
his ribs.
"Dillon?"
Vinnie. Footsteps splashed on the damp floor.
In the pipe, the sound of chains echoed. A strong
beam bounced off the walls. Dillon, sopping wet
and panting, stood with a knife in his hand above
the prone form of the old vagrant from earlier
that evening.
A dead man.
Dillon threw the knife into the water; it split
the surface with a sharp splash. Vinnie rounded
the corner, blinding Dillon with his flashlight.
"Dillon?"
"Yeah," Dillon panted. The beam highlighted
the corpse’s outline.
has 5
Vinnie stopped. "Jesus, man.
203
AARON POLSON
Dillon’s mind ran in circles, chasing its tail. "I

killed him...shit...I killed the old bastard. He—
he came at me."
Vinnie brushed his light from side to side,
taking in the whole scene. The beam rested on the
pool of water and the metal bars beyond. The
tunnel waited in silence but for the echo of their
breath. "Here," he said. A coil of chain landed
near the body with a metallic plop. "Before I
climbed inside...I dunno...I heard a voice tell me
to get my tire chains from the car."
The knife.
"A voice...you heard a voice?" Dillon took up
the chain in his shaking hands. "What...what
should I do? This will ruin everything...my
scholarship..."
"God...Dillon..."
"What should I fucking do?"
Vinnie shook his head. "Nobody’s gonna miss
this old bastard. Stash him in the water. Tie him
down to those bars."
Dillon knew the decision had been made
earlier, before he went back for the knife... before
Vinnie thought about the chain.
The boys worked together in the grim water,
lashing the man’s body to the grate in the wall.
When they finished, as they climbed out, the
noise returned, the sound of metal tapping against
204
TAP, TAP
metal as the corpse bobbed against the barred

grille, an echo that would find its way to the
empty swimming pool above.
205
Uncle Jackhammer and the Clockwork
Beet Field. War
(Pie Burlington Northern/Santa Fe line ran just
past the small stand of trees behind Uncle

Jackhammer’s beet field. That grumpy old
curmudgeon—imagine an angry Santa Claus in
overalls carrying a garden hoe—toiled and
sweated, whacking away at weeds that threatened
to encroach on his rows of prize-winning Detroit
Dark Reds. The heavy trains puffed and chugged
along, oblivious to Uncle Jackhammer,
occasionally dropping some debris or trash near
the trees. It was late May—almost beet harvest
time—when a moderate-sized but rather heavy
wooden crate marked "Captain P.T. Magical’s
Clockwork Circus" hopped from one of the
flatcars, tumbled down the slope, and crashed
against an ancient, gnarled pin oak.
206
UNCLE JACKHAMMER AND THE CLOCKWORK BEET FIELD WAR
Now, boxes don’t generally open themselves,

even those owned by Captain Magical, so the
crate sat in the shade a few days before Peter R.
Ketchum meandered down the tracks. Some
social circles might have considered Pete
Ketchum a bum, hobo, or vagabond, but he
envisioned himself as a free spirit, a wandering
soul—someone not that fond of steady work and
responsibility. Any free lunch was a good lunch,
as far as old Pete was concerned.
Pete was a whistler, and he could carry a
folksy tune. Thing was he never much paid
attention to where his feet lead him when he was
whistling. Well, he tripped over that wooden box,
nearly breaking an ankle as he toppled headfirst
onto the shaded grass.
"Aw, hell," he muttered, sitting up after
landing hard. He started to scoop up his
possessions—just a few cans of beans, an old
spoon, half a bottle of rotgut whiskey, and a spare
sock—as they had scattered when his bindle hit
the ground "What’ve we got here..." He crawled
over to the crate and puzzled at the nature of
such a thing lying in the woods.
Captain Magical’s rabbits must have smelled
Pete, as the hobo hadn’t come within fifty feet of
a bath in almost eight months. At any rate, the
crate’s inhabitants started kicking and scratching,
207
AARON POLSON
sending Pete scuttling backwards like a bipedal

crawdad. One of Pete’s more redeemable traits
rested in the form of curiosity, so after collecting
himself, dusting off his patched jeans, and
steadying his nerves, he crept up to the box again,
forced his dirty fingertips beneath a few loose
planks, and yanked them off.
Out hopped a shiny brass rabbit, a ticking
wind-up bunny complete with butterfly crank
and twitching nose. Four more clockwork rabbits
sprang out of the crate after the lead bunny gave
them, in the form of a few high-pitched clicks, the
"all clear." It was enough to knock old Pete back
to the ground, and the rabbits were on him fast,
sniffing and snuffing around his legs and arms,
their bobbing little bunny parts all over his body.
After a couple of dazed moments, Pete sat up.
The bunnies lined up before him like they were his
very own clockwork brigade. "Whew." He
fumbled with the bottle of whiskey. "What the
hell are all you...fancy gizmos...suppose to be?"
He tilted the bottle back and slugged down a few
gulps of whiskey, and then grimaced, studying
the label. Then the idea hit him like a lightning
bolt in spring: "I bet y’all are worth something."
The sky had started to darken, so Pete decided
to speculate on his fortune the next day. He rolled
out his bindle and started to gather sticks for a
208
fire. To his astonishment and delight, the rabbits

buzzed and popped after him, snagging twigs in
their shiny mouths. "Well, y’all are good little
helpers. You’re gonna be good to old Pete."
Rabbits are rabbits, even when filled with

cogs and fabricated from brass. One thing a rabbit
can't resist is the succulent leaves of a beet, and
ingenious Captain Magical had made darn sure to
inject his clockwork circus rabbits with as much
real bunny as possible. While the four other brass
bunnies chased after sticks for Pete, the first out
of the box, the one with "Snowball" engraved on
its back beside the crank, hippety-hopped
through the trees and right up to the edge of
Uncle Jackhammer’s beet field. Snowball’s brass
sniffer danced on his bunny face, and he hopped
his spring-loaded way into the garden.
Well, when Uncle Jackhammer wasn’t toting
a hoe or a shovel, you can bet he had that old
double-barrel twelve-gauge slung over a shoulder.
Sure enough, this close to harvest, Uncle
Jackhammer waited in the dusk, rocking in his
Pappy’s old oak chair, waiting for some varmint
to sneak a taste of succulent Detroit Dark Red.
"Jackhammer, you out there again?" The
voice of Uncle Jackhammer’s wife, Molly Fae,
darted out of the house.
209
AARON POLSON
"Gall darn it, woman! Keep your voice down."

He had stopped rocking and held the shotgun at
his shoulder, taking aim. "I got my eyes on a
varmint."
Snowball was picking his way to the edge of
the field. Uncle Jackhammer barely caught sight
of him, the setting sun spraying just enough light
to reflect off his shiny skin. The portly man
squinted down the gun barrel, drawing a bead on
his shiny target, muttering under his breath as his
trigger finger twitched.
Three events transpired in quick succession:
Snowball spotted the bushy-bearded man in
overalls, Uncle Jackhammer squeezing hard
against the trigger, but before the firing pin was
cool and the shot had burst from the barrel, Molly
Fae hollered, "Dinner, you old coot!" Well, her
interruption was just enough to throw off Uncle
Jackhammer’s aim just a touch, and the rabbit
shot like a golden cannonball back into the woods
when he heard the crack, hippety-hopping and not
stopping until he turned his rabbit head and
smashed into a tree in front of him with a thump
and a clang. It all happened in a snap, and poor
old Snowball lay in a heap of trembling metal.
i
The next morning, Pete stretched to shake off

his hard-ground stiffness and gave his clockwork
troops the once-over. They huddled in the crate,
each one needing a good winding to be worth a
lick for another day. He studied the box of brass
bunnies for a moment before grabbing one and
plopping it in front of him.
He wound the crank as hard as he could. "All
right, that’s one," Pete said, placing the first
rabbit on a soft tuft of grass. The bunny began
springing about, sniffing the wind, and waiting
for its brothers. By the time Pete wound the last
of the cog-laden critters, he recognized that
something was amiss.
"I’m pretty sure there were five of you fellas
yesterday..." He scratched his head. Now, it took
Pete both hands, a few restarts, and a lot of
ciphering, but he had graduated from the third
grade and learned that four wasn’t five. He was
almost certain one rabbit was missing.
Well at just about that time, like he knew
Pete was scratching his head over his absence,
Snowball came limping and jerking out of the
woods with an awful sick sounding clank clank
anda rough-looking dent on his little brass bunny
head. The four intact clockworks began bouncing,
agitated. Snowball gave a few weak clicks and
AARON POLSON
whirrs before his gears ground to a halt, and all

movement ceased.
Pete started twisting Snowball’s crank, and
soon enough the dented and dizzy bunny re-
animated, twitching and jerking. Snowball
launched out of Pete’s lap, clicking away,
attempting to persuade the others to follow him.
Bunnies one through four seemed to understand
the hums and buzzes, and bounced a circle around
Pete until he scrambled to his feet and followed
them.
Snowball led them to the edge of the trees
looking over Uncle Jackhammer’s beet field.
Towing his hoe, the fat man paced the rows of
rich leaves. All five bunnies were herky-jerking
about, wound-up into a spring-loaded frenzy by
the mere presence of the yammy looking greens.
"Hello..." barely trickled from Pete’s mouth.
One trait he shared with the bunnies was the love
of a good beet. The fact that as mechanical
conglomerations of cogs, springs, and levers, the
bunnies would never enjoy them was the magic of
“Captain Magical; he made them as real as they
could get.
Pete scrunched into the shadows when
Jackhammer spun around at the end of a row.
The mechanical rabbits at his feet seemed to hum
for guidance, looking up at the hobo as their guide
and savior. For his part, Pete started scratching

his head again, thinking hard, trying to formulate
a beet liberation plan that might get the lot of
them off Scott-free.
After about fifteen minutes of good, hard
thought, Pete addressed the troops: "Here’s what
we're going to do..."
That night, when a splinter of the moon was

flirting with clouds, Pete Ketchum, part-time
thinker and full-time wanderer, led his spring-
driven squad of brass rabbits into Uncle
Jackhammer’s beet field. He justified it easily,
stealing from the beet-rich and giving to the poor,
namely Peter R. Ketchum. Pete started at the
edge, wrapping his hands around the stalk of a
particularly tall specimen.
"Get outta my beets, you mangy pests!" Uncle
Jackhammer rumbled and tumbled from his
rocking chair, swinging the shotgun into position,
drawing its sight on one of the scattering
mechanical rabbits. To him, they looked like
flashes of gold zig-zagging across the open field.
Pete was a shadow compared to the shiny rabbits,
so he yanked hard, pulling up a beet, and then
pumped his arms and legs madly toward the trees.
213
AARON POLSON
The sky exploded with both barrels from

mean old Uncle Jackhammer’s shotgun, and a
double dose of buckshot caught Snowball right in
the wind-up crank. The metal bunny leapt into
the air, turned, and somersaulted just to trees’
edge where Pete and the rest were hiding. Uncle
Jackhammer popped the gun open, flicked out the
empty shells, and stuffed in a few new ones while
Pete scooped up the mangled bits of brass that
once was Snowball and scrambled off into the
woods.
ss
Now comes the sad part of the tale, the part

where Pete Ketchum played preacher and
undertaker at a makeshift service for Snowball.
He broke off a few planks from Captain Magical’s
box, only to hammer them into a pine coffin
mock-up for his broken rabbit friend. The other
bunnies clanked around, brass ears drooping,
looking thoroughly defeated.
"Well, fellas, I didn’t know this here metal
bunny too long, but he seemed like an all right
fella, for a machine, I guess." Pete pushed
Snowball’s crude coffin into a furrow he’d carved
in the ground with a hunk of wood. The shard of
moon slipped from behind the clouds, and dim
214
moonbeams seemed to sweep the scene. The light

struck Pete right in the thinking part of his hobo
brain. He held up the hammer boot, studying the
laces mighty hard.
"Pve got it...we ain’t licked, yet." Pete untied
the knot in the rope that served as a belt around
his tattered trouser waist, and immediately
plunked on the ground and went to wrenching off
his other boot. "And we’re gonna get us
something more than beets..."
Morning sunshine poured along the dirt road

leading in front of Uncle Jackhammer’s
whitewashed house. Pete was tuckered out,
having stayed up half the night planning and
scheming, not to mention taking the roundabout
path to the farmhouse instead of the beet field.
The bindle was heavy, too, loaded as it was with
four clockwork rabbits.
He stepped onto the porch, kicking his feet to
shake off some road dirt, dropped his bindle at his
side, and rapped on the screen door. A clatter of
pans echoed from inside, then the door opened to
reveal Molly Fae, round-faced and wearing an
apron.
AARON POLSON
"Hello?" she said, sweet as a cinnamon roll.

The bunnies twitched inside Pete’s bindle.
"I’m just a poor soul, ma’am, traveling this
hard road of life. I was wonderin’ if you could see
fit to supply me with some victuals for the road
ahead?" Pete put on his best pathetic look,
hanging his eyes all droopy and sad-like. He
tugged at his drooping pants.
"Well, sir," said Molly Fae as she measured
Pete from head to toe, noting his dusty, naked
feet and the sad state of his trousers. "I’m not so
sure we can..." Bringing her eyes back to Pete’s
face, she pushed the door open a touch more, and
on the porch, next to old Pete’s feet, four shiny
rabbits wriggled free from the bindle’s folds and
creases. They crept over to the wall beside the
front door.
"Please, ma’am. I ain’t got nothing for myself,
and I don’t ask for much."
She opened the door just a hair more. "Let me
ask my husband..." Then she turned, and the
screen door slammed with a smack. Pete glanced
at the rabbits, lined up and fully wound, ready.
"Jackhammer? Jackhammer, you old coot, leave
those beets be for a minute and come up here!"
Muttering curses as he rumbled through the
house, Uncle Jackhammer came through the
216
front door beard- and belly-first. "We don’t need

no good-for-nothing hobos around here."
"Please, sir..." Pete didn’t care much for
begging, but out of his peripheral vision he caught
a shimmer of brass as the last rabbit slipped inside
the open door, trailing one of Pete’s boot laces.
"Listen, you free-loadin’ bum, we work hard
in these parts, and I'll give you till the count of
ten to turn and march your filthy hide off my
land." Uncle Jackhammer’s knuckles whitened
around the handle of his hoe.
"I was just askin’..."
"One...two...three..." Jackhammer’s nostrils
flared like fireplace billows as he counted.
Pete’s gut told him it was time to cut and run.
Without as much as a "have a nice day," or "sorry
to bother," Pete hopped down from the porch and
followed his roundabout path back to the stand of
trees alongside the tracks, whistling almost the
entire way.
The clockwork rabbits waited, two strung
with Pete’s belt rope looped around a pair of
sterling silver candlesticks. The other two were
tied around the stems of a score or so of Uncle
Jackhammer’s prize Detroit Dark Reds with a
bootlace.
"You fellas done real good." Pete untied the
lengths of cord and rope, tucked the candlesticks
AARON POLSON
into the folds of his bindle, and re-laced his boots.

"We’re sure gonna make a good team. Maybe I
won’t try to sell you off, after all." With that,
Pete Ketchum gave each a good winding and set
off down the tracks, lugging his bindle—a pair of
expensive-looking candlesticks and a whole mess
of beets tucked inside. His brass companions
clicked excitedly and sprang after him, hippety-
hop like real trained rabbits.
Well, it just goes to show that you’re better
off sharing your prize beets, lest a hobo armed
with some clockwork rabbits shows up shoeless on
your front porch and steals your good silver
candlesticks. Or something like that.
a
- >
Ls
i a <P
q pa al oF |
4
; Py P
7 he "
r - tT OATES «re vs = * t ‘ si “yeu
hy i Ue ir)
+ RU t ‘oo
ry 7 or
oe
. es mn Tee * fi itt Titi >

> +
* ede tt wis" o > tr Bw rib ou ‘ t
“aatgre ‘wdbzsiip tt | ry twdebo tl a oe FoF
— — a mee
< eha’§ fe at Leora aarp, ‘ Aen “p>ai¥ @ietudi”
ee, se Knaigina SAM wh Yer tangent adF

te. | waid +f tpeows?
a ee
et ’ death
eo ohne qiasgre Seg peice Pek”
cm. soe, Wheolt
a SL arn a 9 Sots
ne
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
"Gary Sump’s Hidden City" originally appeared in

Everyday Weirdness
"Dancing Lessons" originally appeared in

Triangulation: Dark Glass, edited by Pete Butler
"The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable" originally

appeared in A Fly in Amber
"Tunnel Vision" originally appeared in Big Pulp
"The Surgeon of An Khe" originally appeared in

Absent Willow Review
"Everything in Its Place" originally appeared in 10

Flash
"In Green Water" originally appeared in Tales from the

Moonlit Path
"Catalog Sales" originally appeared in Necrotic Tissue
"In the Primal Library" originally appeared in Three

Crow Press: the Morrigan Ezine
"The House Eaters" originally appeared in Rose and

Thorn Journal
"Gary Sump is an Angry God" originally appeared in

Everyday Weirdness
"Reciprocity" originally appeared in The Battered

Suitcase
220
"Homecoming" originally appeared in Reflection’s Edge
"Uncle Jackhammer and the Clockwork Beet Field

War" originally appeared in Johnny America #6
NotO =
AUTHOR BIO
Aaron Polson was born on the Ides of March: a

good day for him, unlucky for Julius Caesar. He
is a member of the Horror Writers Association
and currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his
wife, two sons, and a tattooed rabbit. To pay the
bills, Aaron attempts to teach high school stu-
dents the difference between irony and coinci-
dence. His stories have featured magic goldfish,
monstrous beetles, and a book of lullabies for ba-
by vampires along with other oddities. You can
visit him online at aaronpolson.blogspot.com.
CPSIA information can be obtained at www.ICGtesting.com
Printed in the USA Mi |
I
LVOW091750171111
255452LV00008B/11/P
447
MONTEREY COUNTY FREE LIBRARIES
FICTION / LITERATURE / SHORT S1

3 3269 01216 0034
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE SAINTS ARE DEAD
Disparate. heady. playful. and sharp. The Saints are Dead left footprints on the
shores of my imagination that will not erode in weeks. months... or even
years.
— Mike Stone. author of Fourtold
\n impressive debut collection from a remarkable talent. Aaron Polson's The

Saints are Dead packs a magical punch. Step through the doorways he's opened
and you'll find places wonderful. scary and delightfully strange. { must-read.
—Cate Gardner. author of Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits (and Other Curious
Things)
Brimming with chiaroscuro. Polson's stories explore the spaces between longing
and loathing. between hopefulness and despair. his characters populating an
iconographic America that never was as they navigate the darker side of
surreality.
—Camille Alexa, author of Push of the Sky

The Saints Are Dead

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Saints Are Dead

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THE SAINTS ARE DEAD

THE SAINTS ARE DEAD

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any

Published by Aqueous Books

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America

First edition, Aqueous Books printing, April 2011

Gary Sump’s Hidden City ri

The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable 23

The Surgeon of An Khe 41

Everything in Its Place 56

Why We Don’t Talk About the Pumpkins 91

Little Man, Big Eraser 104

In the Primal Library 126

Gary Sump is an Angry God 143

Cut and Paste 157

Tap, Tap 192

Uncle Jackhammer and the Clockwork 206

just like you and me, wearing clothing and

swell and burst. Poof—little red cloud. After

The man was dead and the girl was twelve. He

was stitched together and wired to a heart of

The girl came with her mother and the crowds

trampled grass, slipping through shadows at the

On her second visit he explained: "It was a

Her other hand played with two coins in her skirt

The afternoon sun abused the carnival tents.

On the forth visit she brought him a tin cup of

"Oh." She slipped the stone back inside her

Her mother mocked her choice of friends, but

spilled what tears they held, as the blurred man in

When her mother found the photo that night,

With cold fingers, her mother touched her

On the sixth day the girl arrived with metal

effort, he fished for the violin strings in his legs,

On the seventh day his tent was empty, but

Betore he disappeared through the extra

doorway in his basement, Jarrod Ponton was my

secret, in the quiet space between highway and

The rumors spread as they do in small towns,

person reports filed, but what could they do? It

Mom walked out of the front door when I

"Dad, how many people do you think will go?"

were actors. Lmaginary worlds were imaginary

I usually picked Jarrod up at his house. On

basement, so I only made it halfway down the

School that day was a private tutoring

Dad was in his recliner watching The Weather

"Everyone else. Everyone in town." He clicked

I sped through town, running each red light

I dumped a few boxes of overstock in

faces. I saw Jarrod in front of an immense wall,

I don’t hide my graffiti under the bridge

in the end it doesn’t really matter. ll keep

Cu Larson would start kindergarten soon, so

his father, Howard, thought one last trip to

The boy broke his trance long enough to shove

Emma’s postpartum depression, and the grueling

in front of him. From his periphery, he knew the

play set. Even my boy, someday. Hard to believe he

ground beside a prostrate body. Howard could

Howard looked at the floor, trying to avoid

Hi. name was Gerard Karnowski, and he hailed