A big thank you to DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Suzanne Craig-Whytock, and judge Rod Carley for choosing my short story ‘The water ran cold’ as the winner of DarkWinter’s Second Anniversary Contest.
DarkWinter has become an exceptional showcase for fiction and poetry, Congratulations to all who entered and contribute their work!
The water ran cold channeling down her back. She sighed and she mmm’d and she lifted her hair to expose her neck. Strays dangled between her fingers, the loose threads of age, she said. Tacks of diluted blood purled around her thighs. He squeezed the last of the soapsuds from the sponge, watched them glide down her skin in whorls and elongated S’s, across her freckles to the mole above the small of her back. That she would trust him in this, her purest state of vulnerability, troubled him. more
Fresh cut oak was stacked behind the restaurant, a scent thickened by rain. He recalled Miss Tracee liked the way it burned in a stove but complained about the stink. Hiccuped out of pig mud, she said. She wouldn’t keep it in her house, she had him bring it in from the woodshed whenever a fire was required. He carried it wobbly over stone ground, and the bark sometimes poked holes in his shirts. She fussed at him for not using the wheelbarrow. Or carry it with your hands, she said, not your arms, I can’t keep repairing your clothes. Lord, child. Spelman heard those words enough, every time he stepped inside, came in from the rain, had not bothered to scrape his boots with equal vigor on the outside doormat. Lord, child.
Distant, he noticed a torn restaurant bill taped to the door, something written with blue ink in a spidery hand. A woman watched him from the cash counter and shook her head. He wasn’t wearing his spectacles, couldn’t read what was written, but he saw the expression on her face. He pushed on the door, but it was locked firmly enough not to rattle. The woman frowned and turned away. Spelman wished he had a smoke, something to keep his hands busy, to root for matches, or hold between his fingers. He didn’t want to think about Miss Tracee any more. She finally went blind, he heard, sometime during his first year in prison. He couldn’t remember who told him that. Her vision was always poor, even with strong bifocals. That was the last thing he heard about her. He couldn’t recall who told him that, or if it was even real.
No seats? said Albert Tine.
Don’t know for sure, said Spelman. Place is locked. I can’t read the sign on account of no spectacles.
No? Let me take a look. He leaned into the note and squinted hard.
It says, We are closed to the public tonight on account of paying our respects to Brother Jonny Wine of Ashwagandha Baptist Church. There will be a Bible study after the meal. Thank you and come back tomorrow. Albert Tine cleared his throat. So I guess that means we’re out of luck for a meal.
We can’t just go in? They don’t know we’re not here to pay respects.
Yeah they do. It ain’t worth it. I’ll pick us up a couple of cokes and candy bars to get us the rest of the way. If you have to use the toilet, there’s some bushes behind the kiosk.
I wouldn’t go in there even if it was free food, Spelman said. He spat on the pavement. The hell with them. Didn’t care for the way she looked at me.
She who?
The one behind the cash register. Like I was nothing. No one.
Don’t take it personal. You are no one. And so am I. These people keep to their own, don’t care for strangers.
Doesn’t give them the right.
Yes. It does. This is their place, that’s all. You and me, we don’t have a place, but we will, once we land where someone will have us. Do you have a sweet tooth or a salt one?
Spelman grinned. I can eat sugar by the pound, but it don’t always agree with me.
Maybe tonight it will, he said, and steered Spelman, reluctant to leave, towards the car.
I just want to get away from here, he said. I don’t have any good thoughts about anyplace lately.
City lights and music, that’s what you need, said Albert Tine. He pulled out his wallet and fumbled with a few bills. The wallet was old and thin. You go on over and get us something while I unlatch my fiddle and play something for you. I told you I would, and so I will.
What, here?
Yessir. Right here in the parking lot, under the stars and before God and the righteous and dead pastor from Ashwagandha Baptist Church, may he rest in peace above these continental clouds.
Alright, said Spelman. And amen, if he’s deserving of it.
The boy there wasn’t much more than eighteen. He looked like a girl trying to look like a boy, but he was polite and looked at Spelman with rightful suspicion. Inside the kiosk the lights were soft and colorful with Christmas bulbs draped over cigarette ads and Coca-Cola signs. A brighter 100-watt burned above the cash register and the countertop and part way on the crossword puzzle the boy was attempting. Spelman saw at least twenty types of gum and candy bars, different sizes and flavors of coke, shiny potato chip bags, a rack of cigarette brands he’d never heard of. I only got nine dollars, he said. What’s your name, son?
Ed, said the boy.
Well, Ed, tell me what I can get for nine dollars. And I’d like some change back, because it doesn’t seem fair to spend all my friend’s money. I’d like two cokes and whatever else.
I don’t understand you, said Ed.
I am asking for suggestions, Ed. I’ve been away a long time and I don’t know what this cash will buy me. Fill up a bag and I’ll be fine with whatever you choose. Otherwise, we’ll be here all night, me trying to decide, and neither of us wants that.
Umm, okay, said Ed.
There’s no need to be scared of me.
Oh, I ain’t scared. You’re the second person who’s talked to me tonight, the first being your friend. I make two-fifty-five an hour, and they won’t even let me use the toilet in the restaurant because I’m not staff, and I’ve been here longer than some of those waitresses. Hell, you can have the whole goddamn place if you want, and I will gladly give you change.
I ain’t robbing you, Ed. Don’t want that, I’m an honest man. You can do whatever you want with the money, but don’t be calling me a thief.
Wouldn’t do that. I just want out of this shithole.
Yessir, said Spelman. I can understand wanting that.
Ed started to fill up a bag. Do you smoke, mister? We got fresh packs of Marlboros yesterday.
I thank you, no. Keep a pack for yourself if you want.
I’ll save them for yonder Baptists and waitresses.
That’s fine. You about done? My friend over there is wanting to play me a song or two on his fiddle.
Does he play loud? I’d sure like to hear it.
I’ll mention it. I’m sure he’d be agreeable.
Ed held up a sagging plastic bag and he only took eight dollars for it. Appreciate the conversation, mister, he said. I don’t get much of that here.
Go find something you like to do, Ed. Make some money, be fair to others as you’ve been to me. I can’t guarantee you’ll go anywhere, but you will be thought of kindly.
Yessir, I will, said Ed, and he poked a pack of Marlboros into his shirt pocket. Thank your friend for the music even if I can’t hear it.
Spelman said he would, and he walked back to the car where Albert Tine had already unlatched his fiddle from its case. He was passing the bow across a rosin cake. Haven’t played her in a long time, he said. Spelman watched Tine’s hands and saw a kind of tenderness he hadn’t expected. The man cleared his throat theatrically and nestled the fiddle below cheek and chin, shifting it just so. This one, he said, is called Drowsy Maggie. I learned it before I married Maybellene the first time.
And he played with no pauses or hesitation or shyness, just played it clean out of the box, and Spelman thought it was the most profound thing he’d ever heard. He closed his eyes about the middle of the song, and an image came to mind of taking a slow train trip across a flat countryside, soft hills a soul could walk on for miles. He was both inside that train, watching himself walk, and outside that train, watching himself ride past. He held his breath until he thought he might fade away to such a place. When Albert Tine stopped, he grinned a little shyly. Not too bad for an old man, he said, though I’m not as smooth as I once was. Grit gives it a different flavor, I’d say.
Play it once more, said Spelman. That was –, he said and he could not find a proper word for how it was. That was fine, he said. More than fine, that was better than fine. Play it once more.
No sir, that’s a special one I only play once every thirty years or so, in between marriages. But I do have another. It’s a sad song, something I picked up in Virginia a long time ago under suspicious circumstances in an inauspicious saloon. Elk River Blues it’s called.
And he played it, slow and simmering with a lonesomeness that flowed from his fingers and into the air, a sound that rose above the black cypresses and sank into the crevices of the oak pile behind the restaurant. Some folks were peering at them from inside, their faces shiny from their own reflections, set in candlelight. Some were pointing, but most just watched. Spelman turned and saw that Ed had stepped out of his kiosk and was moving both feet on the pavement in a kind of clumsy dance, and he wore a big smile on his face, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. If Albert Tine noticed them at all, he did not show it; his own face was lost to something older than him, older than all of them. Then he stopped and the sound vibrated a little longer, bound for somewhere else.
Lord, said Spelman, and he lowered his head and coughed out some phlegm. I don’t want you to drive away without me, he said.
Albert Tine set a hand on Spelman’s shoulder, and then started to put the fiddle away, and it was like watching him put a baby in its crib. A single pole shone varnished yellow light upon them, and he decided he wanted to go to Hendersonville after all. He walked over to Ed and borrowed a smoke, and together they smoked for a while, watching Albert Tine pack things up. The cigarette smoke made his eyes water up a little, which was, in that particular moment, a good reason for his eyes to be a little shiny.
Each leaf is traced in bone and silver by 5 a.m. The shadow of their collective drapery spreads across porches like bayou moss. Dogs bark from near/far and their timbre echoes between the trees. Windermere Street is old, or feels old, and the houses, post-war and tired, are unhappily wed to crabgrassed and feathered dandelion lawns. You just know that a broken picture window or a busted water tank will finish a family. It’s cheaper to rent over on Ross Street, where there are no tall trees but plenty of scrub around the parking lots. Radio Flyers in the front yard are the new sacrament these days. Shirtless boys in Superman underpants, and girls in red one-piece swimsuits are stuffed into inflatable pools like jelly into donuts. They drape over the side of the blown-up plastic, panting, complaining about the heat with the same disdain as their fathers. It is learned behavior. But that’s all for later in the day.
Right now, as his mother would say, is the time for silence and not for fat tap-dance shoes. He didn’t understand the meanness of that phrase until much later. Don’t show off, buster. Be quiet. It is never ‘the creamy caramel softness of dawn,’ but goddamn morning light, okay?, or just morning. Or, better yet, just shut up about it, everyone knows what time it is, it doesn’t have to be so fah-la-la.
And so he walks Windermere Street every morning in silence, as he has for many years, two miles in from the lean edge of Shiloh. He walks before the paperboys roll out their bicycles, before the milk trucks deliver to the stores, before the first wren scratches out a worm. There is that oddly specific coolness on the back of his neck that tells him he is alive and still vital. The dogs will eventually lose the scent or the interest. The noise of his shoes on pavement, or crunching on gravel when he crosses the intersection by the old middle school, seems subtractive. Of course the silence isn’t absolute. There are always voices from behind kitchen windows, drifts of radio music, dishes rinsed, toilets flushed. And prayers, always prayers: help us through this day for Christ’s sake, in exhausted supplication, without pause between the words, without understanding what they’re asking for, and which bear no more weight than the animal drippings from a backyard grill. Help us find silence in ourselves is what they’re asking, and that may be the only thing he understands. He knows about learned behavior better than most.
Asunder, Baby by Steven Baird is a profound collection of prose and poetry. In his introduction, Baird conveys that short stories have never been easy for him to write. Yet, his words flow seamlessly, creating such vivid settings that I can’t fathom him having any difficulty at all. His stories and poems reveal loss, beauty, love, and despair with an intensity that digs deeply into the hearts of his readers. Baird’s originality and authenticity in portraying his characters and backdrops are the brilliance of this intellectual compilation.
I found myself dog-earing page after page. Many of the stories and poems turned into favorites, but a few I’d like to highlight are “Where we go dancing,” “Your father’s Delta 88,” “Cinnamon Suites,” “The last angel of the Lord,” and “Rhapsody.”
An example from “Where we go dancing”
“…I can dance the ears off a row of corn when I have a mind to. Why, that corn becomes ashamed of itself and wishes it could be half as worthy as old dry cabbage or a leaf of backfield tobacco then have to endure another minute of the spectaculation of my feet.”
And from “Your father’s Delta 88”
“…and watch the eddies pull quilt-shaped flowers along their creases, folding them, unfolding them, pressing their petals into wine.”
Asunder, Baby is the first book I’ve read from this author, but I look forward to reading more of his incredible storytelling and poetic verse. Highly recommended for those who love prose and poetry that have you pondering and deeply feeling at the same time. – Lauren Scott
I first encountered Steven Baird’s writing several years ago when a mutual friend posted a link to one of his short stories. I was enthralled and begin to follow him on his website, anxiously awaiting each new piece. Steven never—and I mean never—disappoints. His writing is always evocative, his characters compelling, and he creates emotional landscapes that stay with you years later. This new collection is no different. I keep going back and re-reading the stories and wishing there were more. – Suzanne
“Asunder, Baby” is a unique assortment of short stories and poetry. The entire book has a poetic flare and presentation with a mixture of beautiful and dark images. I enjoyed many stories and poems and how some characters and storylines appeared more than once. Here are a few that caught my eye: “Where we go dancing,” “A gopherwood box,” “Appomattox,” “The middle of a very rainy afternoon,” “Louisiana baptism,” and “Pentimento.” This is for those who enjoy short stories and poetry that take them into a moment with vivid and insightful descriptions. It differs from other collections, and I appreciate that difference. – D.L. Finn
Asunder, baby is a chronological series of short stories with different but similar settings and small-town characters. Baird is a literary author, and some of the stories have atypical punctuation (still totally clear, though; as an example, the story titles do not have conventional capitalization). Other stories include poetry verses or the lyrics of retro-popular songs. With the songs comes a bit of nostalgia. I bet ya start singing the songs in your head like I did.
Baird’s dialogue passages are marvelous in that they move the story along while defining the characters who speak it. Baird is also good with quotable bits. I can’t help but put one in this review:
“…An age ago when we were an age that never impressed us much.” (Ain’t that the truth?!)
“Light of the West Saugerties” at the beginning of the collection and “This day, just now” at the frame the collection with stories of Birdie and Harry. You get a sense of what’s gone on between them over the years that are missing while the other stories in the collection take over. It makes for an incredibly gratifying journey.
Overall, this collection is literary and intellectual and slightly experimental, and it’s written with the obvious skill of an author who has the writing chops to pull it off. Five huge stars! — Priscilla Bettis
Steven Baird’s atmospheric, genre-blurring collection of short fiction and poetry is the work of a true original. Baird’s use of language is so finely tuned for sound and cadence, there were times I would be hard-pressed to label the piece one genre or the other–nor did I want to.
The writing reminded me of William Faulkner’s work, both in terms of prose style and the ability to put the reader in two worlds as once: the real world of Delta 88’s, Wonder Bread, and television and the world his characters inhabit that could never exist outside of Baird’s pages. (To be clear, I do not make this comparison lightly.)
While the stories and poems are varied in subject matter, time period, and narrative stance, they all have in common the rending of family or psyche, in one form or another. Some relationships are ripped asunder by abuse, while others are torn in small, ordinary ways that slip by unnoticed until the damage has been done.
There is Audrey, who discovers that her recently deceased husband was not the man she thought he was. Or take Daniel, whose act of kindness does not end well. Fifty-seven-year-old Joseph remembers his childhood as “being dust.”
Then there are Harry and Birdie, whose relationship, told over the course of multiple stories, is more of an unraveling than a tearing asunder. At each stage of their relationship, regardless of from whose point of view the particular story is told, my heart went out to both of them. In fact, their relationship was the standout in the collection for me.
I highly recommend Asunder, baby as character-driven stories that achieve Their power through interior monologue and narrative voice. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, these characters have lived the agony of bearing an untold story inside them–until Steven Baird gave their stories voice. Moreover, most of the stories are told in first-person, as if to say, “This is MY story, not yours, and only I can do it justice in the telling.” – Elizabeth Gauffreau
We witnessed the waves as bystanders, watched them spill into limestone gulleys, and we waited for something different this time: a new color, perhaps, to percolate from their churn, or for the sun to gild the shore with a little more gold.
You pilfered persimmons
but only for the seeds
from Missus Mead’s trees
she can only eat one piece of fruit at a time
unless she slices them for pies
then I will inform her of the deed
but if the trees grow elsewhere, will they even be hers?
they will be closer to the water
such a long walk from her orchard
they will grow in her memory
but they were still pilfered
and now I fancy strawberries
Your words do not weigh enough, my father said. We need to build you up. You know how to use a walkie-talkie, right?
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. Words don’t weigh enough? Walkie-talkie? I had just finished high school two weeks earlier, was about to turn 18, and he signed me up to work on a road crew. With muscles unleavened and shoulders like butter knives, I didn’t think that was a good idea.
But to look at him, even casually, you knew the word ‘no’ was not an option. His dimensions were broad, but, you would think, unremarkable; his face, a modest clay, was a little too plain without benefit of finely-tuned details. Chin, just so, maybe slightly too flat, but not insubstantially so, though his nose, a scintilla too blunt for a man who, you would suppose, possessed a diminished sense of smell; a broad forehead, yes, shaped for good hats, like a fedora or a gray felt Homburg. And eyes: well, that’s what would stop you from thinking him average or dull. Dark green, swamp green eyes. Curious eyes, but not yearning or imploring. You would conclude: here was an intelligent man, but wait, also a troubled man, but no, pointedly philosophical, brutal, vivid, imaginative. You never knew his temperament before he spoke, and the man was not a talker. His voice was naturally soft, but it carried, and it made you interested in what he had to say, made you crane your neck so you could watch him strip the words to their plainest enunciation.
So ‘no’ was not a choice. I joined a work crew as a flagman on my eighteenth birthday.
He wrote:
You craved the wild fruit of Pompeii, you exclaimed
and as a young man, i sought it
there was no such flora in northern California,
so of course in Sausalito, i just bought it.
I was to be put to rest in the second cheapest coffin he could afford. They haggled, Mr. Bueford D. Weill, Jr. and he, but the words ‘dignity has no price tag,’ put him off.
“That I should kiss my son’s cheek and lay my hands square on his shoulders is all the dignity he requires,” my father said. “He was not a ‘mahogany and antique bronze finish’ kind of boy; planks and sturdy bolts and a comfortable mattress would do him fine. He respected a dollar and a firm bed. He won’t think less of me, because he’s deceased, of course, but I think he might respect me, even dead, if I did not have to forgo a mortgage payment for the sake of a fluffed pillow and half a chesterfield.”
It was agreed, then, that I should be put to flame, and whatever residue remained of me be poured into the lake or, more likely, latch onto a substantial happenstance of a come-along wind to play-along with my ash.
I don’t know what I thought of this much fuss, with all corporeal appetites for sight and such no longer of any interest to me. I was waiting for him, I think, to say goodbye in a way that would end all complications between father, son, and whatever ghosts wound between us. A simple, even clumsy, goodbye, would be fine, but he held onto his grief with both hands.
My dream had a beginning, he said. We walked along a canopied path, prolific with beach grass and the skeletons of striped bass, and we were the same age. I could not feel the warmth of the sand, but I told you it was warm and you agreed, yes, it was warm. And then it was gone, all of it, except for the water, and it was gray and filled with stones. I told you it was cold, and it felt cold, and you said, yes, it was cold. You gathered persimmon seeds, my hand reached to receive them, and I woke up holding nothing.
And I told you that a Buick Skylark ignored my Stop paddle and sped past me, filled with boys my age, and they all wore the same cartoonish grins, shiny with spit and noise. I waved, frantic, to Ronny and his crew, who noticed the car, of course, and I was reprimanded by Mister Douglas Hawkes as we stood beside his pick-up truck. What else could I do? I memorized the license plate, but what else could I do? I forgot that I could speak, that I could yell, I only waved, waved like a dunce, as if I could command the waves to relent.
And my father, still dreaming, said, I dreamed of something that became nothing, and that was the beginning of our goodbye.
A big thanks again to Suzanne Craig-Whytock at DarkWinter Literary Magazine for giving my short story ‘Lamentations of a Farmer‘ a wonderful home. She promotes and publishes so much great work and I’m so pleased to be included there. It’s well worth the visit. Thank you! And the artwork she chose to accompany it is perfect!
The only breeze that blew through Nannie Dee’s front yard carried a miasma of malt liquor fumes and hyacinth perfume, Millicent’s step-mother’s favorite and thereby unavoidable. Nannie could count the number of real Christians in her front yard with the fingers on one hand, and the rest of them could have the back of the other one. Still, she would be polite. She would offer refreshments and compliment them on their new shoes (or their new blouses, or their fashionable ties, if they bothered to wear one), and her countenance would not change. This was Millie’s day, and none of their frowny-face pantomimes were going to change that.
“She’s with God now,” proclaimeth Judith Meyers, the new-ish teacher who taught Millie ‘Northern History’ and was likely from someplace like Boston or Newport, but who had tamed her accent to fool the local folk. Oh, she probably came from good stock, alright, raised in some third or fourth generation Italianate style home, on her second marriage at the tender age of thirty-four, and, no doubt, already eyeballing her next Mister. There were stories about her, but Nannie Dee would be charitable: “Thank you, honey, God bless.”
Next up was Courtney Everding, Millie’s Academic Advisor, and her husband Darryl, a stately-dressed cowboy-type — a mustached goober, really — and the man who most likely raped Millicent. He was currently squeezing a sausage biscuit to death. “So sorry for your loss, Missus Dee,” she said, and offered her a hug. The goober nodded, distracted by all the young women wandering the yard. Millie’s friends.
“Appreciate the kindness,” said Nannie, then whispered: “And if you was to cut your husband’s throat and cock when he falls asleep tonight, I would gladly alibi you without any complaint from my conscience.”
Missus Everding acknowledged her with a crisp nod as her husband squeezed that biscuit until crumbs started to fall on his shoes.
Next up didn’t matter. They were all cotton flowers from the same patchwork quilt around here. Oh, she would judge them in her old-style way, everyone did that, always judging each other until that judgment didn’t even matter any more. This was Millicent’s day, and if Nannie Dee — the girl’s grandmother, after all — made a sour face for just the tiniest of seconds, it wouldn’t be more damning than if her dentures had slipped a little. And who would fault her for that?
“God bless you, honey,” she heard herself say to a boy who rode over on his tractor. She would complain to his grandfather tomorrow, because the boy tore up a small patch of her sweet alyssums. Things like that did not sit right with her. Boys had to learn early, or look at all the trouble they’d cause later. “Give my best to your mama, you hear?”
A big thank you to Suzanne Craig-Whytock for publishing my latest flash fiction, Touch/Either/And/Or Adoration at her brand new literary magazine, DarkWinter at darkwinterlit.com. Please pay a visit and check out the other works (fiction and poetry), and feel free to add something to this growing publication. Suzanne is an award-winning Canadian author, and she’s extremely talented and funny. Also check out her must-read hilarious blog, mydangblog. Thanks for reading.
Welcome to the launch! Today, I’m proud to present the newest book — Liars and Thieves — by my friend Diana Wallace Peach, an extremely prolific and gifted author of dark fantasy, and a great supporter of independent writers. She’s written a new series, Unraveling the Veil, and I’m happy to shout it out.
Book One: Liars and Thieves
Behind the Veil, the hordes gather, eager to savage the world. But Kalann il Drakk, First of Chaos, is untroubled by the shimmering wall that holds his beasts at bay. For if he cannot cleanse the land of life, the races will do it for him. All he needs is a spark to light the fire.
Three unlikely allies stand in his way.
A misfit elf plagued by failure—
When Elanalue Windthorn abandons her soldiers to hunt a goblin, she strays into forbidden territory.
A changeling who betrays his home—
Talin Raska is a talented liar, thief, and spy. He makes a fatal mistake—he falls for his mark.
A halfbreed goblin with deadly secrets—
Naj’ar is a loner with a talent he doesn’t understand and cannot control, one that threatens all he holds dear.
When the spark of Chaos ignites, miners go missing. But they won’t be the last to vanish. As the cycles of blame whirl through the Borderland, old animosities flare, accusations break bonds, and war looms.
Three outcasts, thrust into an alliance by fate, by oaths, and the churning gears of calamity, must learn the truth. For they hold the future of their world in their hands.
Unraveling the Veil series
Three outcasts, thrust into an alliance by fate, by oaths, and the churning gears of calamity, must learn the truth. For they hold the future of their world in their hands.
Diana, how do you define success?
In all parts of my life: Happiness. We only get this one life; there are no second chances, no do-overs. We are each miracles, here through the perfect alignment of billions of years of evolution, choices, and chance. It’s not a gift to be wasted. Happiness means different things to different people, but for me it’s choosing an attitude of kindness, care, and compassion and acting on that choice. Writing is something that brings me joy, no strings attached.
Diana’s very creative trailer, well worth watching:
Author Biography
D. Wallace Peach
D. Wallace Peach started writing later in life after the kids were grown and a move left her with hours to fill. Years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books, and when she started writing, she was instantly hooked. Diana lives in a log cabin amongst the tall evergreens and emerald moss of Oregon’s rainforest with her husband, two dogs, bats, owls, and the occasional family of coyotes.
Ordinary Handsome 