Love on the Road 2015 (18 page)

‘Pull!’ Leonard’s supervisor had shouted, and Leonard had grasped a warm, slick leg and yanked. The calf slid free, and, as he and the newborn slipped to the floor, he’d hugged it to his chest. The smell of blood and raw flesh washed over him. Then his supervisor and the dairy farmer swore at the same time: there was a second calf, a twin, left in the womb. ‘Stillborn,’ his supervisor had determined with a plumbing arm. The cow and the senior veterinarian struggled to deliver the dead calf while its sibling shivered next to Leonard on the barn’s dirt floor, waiting for its mother to lick it to its feet.

Mindy’s legs! Her greeting dropped from above: ‘Morning, Doc. You sleep okay? You were dead out when I came through to pee. Both times. I’m going to wash up, then I’ll
give you the key so you can free yourself.’ She straddled his hips. Water hummed through the pipes and splashed in the sink over Leonard’s head. A hand descended with a wet washcloth, and she washed her legs. Her skirt rose and fell with each stroke. He caught a glimpse of her pale underbelly and closed his eyes, opening them when he heard the jingle of the handcuff key.

By the time Leonard released himself, Mindy sat on the edge of the bed, watching him. He craved a long, groaning stretch, but resisted, unwilling to admit his discomfort.

‘Hurry up and do what you’ve got to do,’ Mindy said. She clasped her paisley bag under one arm. ‘Leave the door open, please. Any funny business and you’ll be sorry for it. I’ll shut my eyes – that’s the best I can do for privacy. What’re you staring at?’

The tattoo of the eyeball was missing. There was only a dark smudge on Mindy’s lid. ‘Your third eye – it’s gone.’

She snorted. ‘Oh, yeah, that was washable marker. You don’t think I’d really tattoo something on my eyelid, do you? Who’d do that to themselves?’ She picked up her gun and looked at its muzzle. ‘This is all the “third eye” I need, right, Doc?’

Leonard didn’t answer. He washed his face and rinsed his mouth, then used the toilet, peeking now and then at Mindy, who, to her word, didn’t open her eyes. A smudge instead of a tattoo on her lid was a disappointment – no twin patches; no pirate gang.

Back in the Escalade, Leonard behind the wheel, they breakfasted on Twinkies, corn chips and Mountain Dew
from the machines in the tiny lobby of the Blue Daisy Motel. The morning sunlight sharpened the borders of the black highway that sliced through parched land. The broken white line leapt at them like machine-gun flak as they made their way south, and the blue sky spread over them as if they were in an enormous tent. Mindy’s thumbs fluttered over Leonard’s phone.

‘I’m going to crack your access code,’ she said. She bent over her beach-ball belly, her unwashed curls hiding her face. ‘What’s your date of birth?’

‘Why don’t I just tell you the code?’

‘No, I want to figure it out. I’m good at it.’

‘My birthday’s June 28, 1970.’

‘6-28-70, no, no,’ she grunted as she tested permutations. Leonard peeked at the gun in the folds of her skirt. ‘Hey, that’s tomorrow! Happy birthday, Doc.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, surprised. He searched for a birthday memory, but found nothing. Instead, the moment when he realised he’d never marry rose: he’d just finished neutering a ferret and was transferring it to a recovery pen. Its limp body hung from his gloved hands like a necktie. He’d looked at its tiny, shut eyes and thought, ‘I will never have a wife.’ The words had struck him like a chest punch, and he’d had to sit down, the ferret still dripping from his hands. His failed sperm donation had come soon after.

‘I’m in!’ Mindy laughed. ‘Wow, “628vet”.’ I’ll check your messages. Then I’ll send some. I’ll tell all your contacts that you’re on your way to Alaska. Okay, good, the GPS works. I see where we are – and there’s Mexico! I love the GPS! It’s like a big eye in heaven that’s picked us out of nowhere. Mmm, looks like no text or voicemail messages for you, Doc.’

‘Thank God for air conditioning,’ Mindy sighed. Even with open vents blasting at full power, she was flushed and sweating. They weren’t far from the Mexican border, according to the last highway signs they’d seen, a fact corroborated by the GPS. The blue had drained from the morning sky, leaving a pale midday haze. Leonard suspected Mindy was planning their assault on the border, and his heart beat faster. She’d been texting busily for an hour – his phone hummed like a jar of bees in her hand. Now and then she mumbled or laughed at something she read without telling him why, and he wished she trusted him enough to share. It had been years since he’d been in the company of another person for so long.

‘I have an idea,’ Mindy said. ‘Let’s pretend we’re refugees. We’re on the run—’

Weren’t they? Leonard wondered.

‘There’s a joke my father used to make. I think it’s from my father. I heard it when I was little. Whoever it was said that Mexico and Canada were planning to attack the United States together. There’d be Eskimos attacking from the north, pulled by sled dogs and waving harpoons. Riding up on horseback from the south would be Mexicans with big floppy hats and rifles and those bullet belts crossed on their chests.’

‘Bandoliers.’

‘Right, okay. They were going to squeeze in on us from the top and bottom. They’d call themselves the “Meximo Army” – Mexicans and Eskimos, get it? You and I are running away from them. We’re refugees of the Meximo invasion!’

‘We don’t use ‘Eskimos’ anymore,’ Leonard said. ‘It’s “Inuit”.’

Mindy hesitated. ‘That spoils the joke. It’s so easy to ruin a joke. What if,’ she began matter-of-factly, ‘what if my mother died giving birth to me?’ Leonard pictured his own dead mother and the ‘handsome boy’ lines that marred her smile. He prepared a ‘sorry’, for Mindy’s loss, but hesitated to offer it for a ‘what if’. Mindy patted her belly and huffed: ‘Woof. Sometimes I forget what I’ve got going on here. But never for long. If I had no mom, that would explain why I lack a nurturing impulse – no maternal role model. Incubation would be my limit. Would you please pull off here at this exit? Take me off the interstate. I’ve got to pee before our next move.’

Off the highway, they headed due west along a narrow tar road. Weeds grew in its cracks. The dry land, the sparse brush, the gullies and arroyos, the distant hills and cattle fences looked the same as they had from the Interstate, but Leonard felt different, as if the scene had swallowed them, and they were seeing things from the inside. He wondered how difficult it would be to engage the four-wheel drive. The Escalade’s owner’s manual was in the glove compartment. Would they have to ford a river? Would there be a border patrol that shot first and asked questions later? He sneaked a look at Mindy. She had picked him, something no woman had ever done before. Though they weren’t pirates, they shared something. They were pioneers of modern survival. Leonard had been rejected as a sperm donor, but Mindy had given him a new purpose: she was an
incubator in need – an
entrepreneurial
incubator – and he was a deliverer.

‘Here is good,’ Mindy said when the road cut through a sandy stretch along a dry creek bed. Leonard slid the SUV to a stop, the tires crackling and shushing. Mindy still toted the gun, but Leonard doubted she’d force him to follow her while she went off to squat behind a bush or outcrop. She probably wouldn’t even ask for the keys. After she did her business, they’d plan the crossing – from north to south, right through the southern outpost of the Meximo Army.

But Mindy didn’t budge. ‘I think I just saw an animal in distress,’ she said, staring straight at Leonard, her face as cold and flat as a china plate. ‘I did. Definitely. Down that empty creek bed. It was limping.’ Leonard peered past her, to the right and left. There wasn’t a sign of movement, and he could see for miles. ‘It was a burro, I think,’ she added. ‘Probably escaped from a ranch. Poor thing. A burro or a mule. What’s the difference?’

Leonard focused on the gun, which seemed to have woken up and taken an interest in his chest. Mindy braced it on her belly next to the phone. He choked the wheel. ‘A mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey,’ he said. ‘Mules are sterile.’

Mindy shook her head. ‘I meant what’s the difference
what
it is? You’ve got to investigate, right? You’re the Emergency Vet.’ She started a deep breath, then cut it short. ‘Doc, there’s no Mexico City. I couldn’t drive that far in my condition. But we’re less than an hour from the border now, and my associates are going to meet me when I cross. I’ll flash your passport card. Believe me, nobody’ll give it a second look. We kind of resemble each other, in a way.’

Leonard’s thoughts unspooled – he felt light-headed.

‘No contractions yet,’ Mindy said. ‘I don’t need insurance anymore. But it’s been nice talking to you. What I would like now is for you to get out and walk down the creek bed – off the road a ways, please. Leave the keys. Just right there in the ignition, thank you. This is a beautiful vehicle. Real value.’ Mindy gazed up and down the road. Leonard noticed for the first time that her eyes were the colour of lilacs. ‘Let’s go, Doc. Think of that suffering creature out there. Who’s going to investigate if you don’t?’ She gestured with the gun. The phone hummed, but she ignored it. ‘Go on, open the door and step out.’

Leonard lost his balance as he swung the door open, staggering as he set his shaking legs on the baked ground. Fresh tar oozed from the cracks in the road. The air above it shimmered with heat in both directions. His cheek muscles tightened, and he held his hands out to his sides as if he’d dropped something. His gaze swept across the terrain to the horizon. There was no injured animal.

‘Which way did you see it go?’ In spite of the dry air, his voice came back to him as if he was underwater.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Mindy said. ‘Just start walking. And don’t look back. That way, I guess, off the road. Hurry up.’ As he shuffled around the Escalade, Leonard heard the passenger window whine open. He kicked up dust on his way to the creek bed and glared at his feet: his brown moccasins looked new. When had he bought them? Where? He passed rocks and pebbles striped with glitter. When he was a kid, he would have collected stones like them, pretending they’d make him rich. Maybe it had been a hundred years since anyone had looked at these. Maybe they’d never been noticed by a soul.

‘Keep going!’ Mindy’s voice sounded as if she were just a few feet behind him, but he’d walked at least thirty paces. He shivered a breath. His shadow leaned away from him, and he watched it pass over larger rocks and the shrivelled bushes that would become tumbleweeds when they broke off in the wind. A half-hope rose in his throat. Maybe Mindy didn’t mean to shoot him. She wouldn’t have to– she was going to Mexico. His elbows brushed his hips; he regretted never having learned to walk proudly, and he tried to stand straight. But he didn’t want to march. He waited for an instinct to tell him to run. The Escalade started, and the drone of its engine rolled out to him. This would end up no worse than a desertion, he reasoned. He’d need water.

What if Mindy’s water broke? What if, as she lowered her smudged lid and tightened her finger on the trigger, she suddenly exploded? The water would gush between her legs and flood the upholstery. Her dress would be soaked. Contractions would begin. Driving would be impossible, and she’d need her insurance policy once again. She’d call Leonard back to the Escalade, but he would plant his feet in the dust, fold his arms over his chest and wait. Until she begged. Time would crawl by. He’d outlast her. Where are your associates now? he might chide. Leonard would have to deliver the baby.

There might be complications. The newborn, a fine boy, would slip into Leonard’s steady hands, but Mindy, lying back on the reclined passenger seat of the Escalade, might haemorrhage uncontrollably. He’d drag her bloody and unresponsive body from the car while the infant squalled. Leonard would cover the young woman – she’d either be dead or the next worst thing – with brush and rocks and
sand. Then he’d drive south overland while the phone buzzed with orphan messages and all of nature drew toward Mindy’s body. Scavengers, sun, and wind would pick her clean until her bones merged with the country.

The boy belonged as much to Leonard as to anyone. Years in the future, Leonard would share with the handsome child the true story of how they came to live in their villa. The Meximo invasion would have dissolved all borders, but Leonard would faithfully describe the world as it had been: he saw himself flipping through a picture book, lingering over each illustration, pointing out details.

But each turn of a page was a scuffed step into the plain, and, as Leonard edged further from the SUV, a question rose like a monument – would he hear the shot before he felt it?

Tendai Huchu,
who wrote ‘The Queue’, is the author of
The Hairdresser of Harare.
His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in
The Manchester Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Gutter, AfroSF, Wasafiri, Warscapes, The Africa Report, The Zimbabwean, Kwani?
and numerous other publications. His new novel,
The Maestro, the Magistrate and the Mathematician,
has just been released in Zimbabwe.

Marlene Olin,
who wrote ‘Sunrise Over Sausalito’, has had stories published in
Upstreet Magazine, Vine Leaves,
the
Saturday Evening Post
online,
Emry’s Journal, Biostories, Edge, Poetica, Arcadia, Ragazine, Poydras Review
and the
Jewish Literary Journal.
In the coming months, her work is forthcoming in
Meat for Tea, The Broken Plate
and
Escape Your World,
a collection distributed by Scribes Valley Publishing. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Miami, Marlene attended the University of Michigan. She lives in Coconut Grove, Florida with her husband. She has two children and two grandchildren. She recently completed her first novel.

Shirley Fergenson,
who wrote ‘Not a Finger More’, was raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She received her undergraduate degree cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 1973, having majored in English. Shirley
moved to Baltimore, Maryland in 1974. After raising four children, she returned to university and received an MA in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2005. Shirley has continued to reside in Baltimore, with some time spent in Costa Rica and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since 2001, she has served as the literary fiction specialist at The Ivy Bookshop, an independent bookseller in Baltimore. Her fiction has been published in the
Baltimore Review.

Nod Ghosh,
who wrote ‘Janus: A Path to the Future’, lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, where she has completed a creative writing course at the Hagley Writers’ Institute. Her short stories and poems have been published by
Takahe, Christchurch Press, Flash Frontier, TheGayUK
and
Penduline Press.
She has won several writing prizes and competitions. Nod is currently writing her second novel,
The Iris Tattoo.
Many years ago, an aunt urged Nod to take up writing. On thanking the aunt for her perceptive insight, she was told, ‘Oh, it wasn’t to do with the way you write. You were born on the 23 April, such an auspicious date, the Bard’s birthday. I felt you ought to be a writer too.’

Ghosh titled her story ‘Janus: A Path to the Future’ because, in Roman mythology, Janus was the god of beginnings and transitions. Often depicted as having two faces, he watched over doorways, gates and passages. Looking in both directions, Janus oversaw the future and the past.

Catherine McNamara,
who wrote ‘Enfolded’, grew up in Sydney and studied visual communication and African and Asian modern history before moving to Paris. She worked in pre-war Mogadishu and lived for ten years in Accra, where
she co-managed a bar and art gallery. She now lives in Italy, where her jobs have included translating welding manuals, physics papers and World War I signage in the Dolomites. She plays classical piano, loves telemark skiing and has impressive collections of African sculpture and Italian heels.

McNamara’s collection
Pelt and Other Stories
was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize 2014 and a semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize in 2011. Her stories have been shortlisted and published in anthologies by Virago, the University of Plymouth and Labello Press. Her story ‘Magaly Park’ (Labello Press) received a Pushcart Nomination in 2014, and ‘The Wild Beasts of the Earth Will Adore Him’ was shortlisted in the inaugural Hilary Mantel/Kingston University Short Story Prize. She has also published an erotic comedy,
The Divorced Lady’s Companion to Living in Italy
(Indigo Dreams Publishing UK) and a children’s book,
Nii Kwei’s Day
(Frances Lincoln Publishing).

Stanley Kenani,
who wrote ‘We Will Dance in Lampedusa’, is a Malawian writer, one of the winners of the SA PEN/HSBC Literary Award. He was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2008 and 2012. In August 2011, Random House Struik in South Africa published his first book,
For Honour,
a collection of eleven short stories which present the nation of Malawi as a theatre of the absurd, where minority groups such as gays and lesbians are oppressed, people struggle with issues such as childlessness, and major problems like marital rape and human trafficking are suffered in silence. Stanley is working on his first full-length novel.

Barry
Reddin,
who wrote ‘At the Mouth of the River’, is an Irish writer and theatre director currently living and working Brussels. Originally from Portlaoise, Ireland, Bar studied fine art at the Waterford Institute of Technology before relocating to Belgium where he is teaching at the English Youth Theatre in the European capital.

Tendayi Bloom,
who wrote ‘Manila Envelope’, is a migration-policy researcher currently based in Barcelona, Spain. It was while in Manila in the Philippines for work in 2012 that she got the idea for her story. Tendayi’s published fiction appears in the anthologies
She’s The One: Anyone Can Be a Heroine
(2013) and
Ferry Tales
(2013) and she is now finishing her first short-story collection, set in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. Her fiction is influenced by her academic and policy work on migration and noncitizen justice, which can be found in reports, journals and blog posts. She also tweets on these themes @TendayiB

Lily Mabura,
who wrote ‘Kaveh Mirzaee and the Woman from Lashar’, is an assistant professor of English at the American University of Sharjah, in the UAE. She has a PhD in English from the University of Missouri-Columbia, in the USA. She was a pre-doctoral dissertation fellow at the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies, University of Rochester, New York. Her areas of research and teaching include women’s studies, gender studies, post-colonial studies and creative writing. Her first collection of stories is titled
How Shall We Kill the Bishop and Other Stories
(African Writers Series, Heinemann-Pearson, 2012). Her fiction awards include the
Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers Award, the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature, and the National Book Week Literary Award – Kenya. Mabura has also published a novel and several children’s books.

Jackie Davis Martin,
who wrote ‘In the Heat’, divides her life (so far) into thirds: childhood in Pennsylvania, parenthood in New Jersey, maturation, of sort, in California. Her vocation of teaching literature has consistently blurred into the avocation of reading and writing. She’s taught high school in English on both coasts and presently teaches at City College in San Francisco, a city where she and her husband pursue – almost relentlessly – the plethora of arts and scenery that San Francisco and the Bay Area offer.

She has had stories and essays published in journals that include
Flash, Flashquake, Fastforward, JAAM, 34th Paralell
and
Sleet
. Her most recent work is in
Bluestem, Enhance, Counterexample Poetics, Fractured West, Dogzplot
and
Gravel.
Her novella
Extracurricular,
was a finalist in the Press 53 Awards of 2011, and a short piece won second place in
Past Loves Competition and Journal.
Several stories have been anthologised, most recently in
Modern Shorts
and
Love Is a Rollercoaster.
A memoir
Surviving Susan,
which deals with the death of her daughter, was published in 2013. Jackie is presently working on a short story collection.

Alice Bingner,
who wrote ‘Honeymoon in Mata de Limon’, was raised in the village of Lapeer, Michigan, in the USA. As an adult, she has chosen to reside in small and remote places. She spent three fascinating years in Grand Cayman and six months in Grand Turk, before these islands became
well-known, as well as five years in a railroad village called Mata de Limón, in Costa Rica. She lived in Texas for two years and Florida for eight, as well as in California and Mexico. She now permanently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Each of her four children has at times shared her exotic adventures.

Journalism was her career of choice – reporting, editing, proofreading and feature writing on weeklies, a daily, a monthly newspaper and a monthly magazine. Rivalling her fascination with writing has been her interest in teaching English as a second language, first as a volunteer for six months in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico and then for two years at Bridge International School in Florida.

Now retired, she has written
The Cayman Islands as They Crest: Letters to Eunie,
about her first year in those islands. She is contemplating another that will incorporate Mata de Limón, her unique 1972 discovery.

Gregory J. Wolos,
who wrote ‘Refugees of the Meximo Invasion’, lives and writes in upstate New York, on the bank of the Mohawk River. His short fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in
Post Road, Silk Road Review, Nashville Review, A-Minor Magazine, JMWW, Yemassee, The Baltimore Review, The Madison Review, The Los Angeles Review, PANK, A cappella Zoo, Superstition Review
and many other print and online journals and anthologies. His stories have earned four Pushcart Prize, Best of the Small Presses nominations, and his latest collection was named a finalist for the 2012 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. For a full list of his publications and commendations, visit
www.gregorywolos.com.