Tuesdays with Story

Fifth Tuesday stories
August 29, 2017
Writing challenge: Write a fishing story.

Max length: 500 words

The tree and He

Amit Trivedi

He poured himself a glass of wine and gazed outside through his window. The pain was still there, and he knew it would get worse. The long shadow of the barren oak tree reminded him of the long, unadorned tresses of a poor bride. What do I remind the tree of? he wondered.

They both had grown together – his father had planted the tree when he was born nearly ninety two years ago. He would not last much longer, but the tree had many years left to suffer!

Memories wrapped themselves in tears. He saw himself climbing the tree, gathering its leaves, tying a hammock and breaking his wrist when the rope had come loose. Instinctively, he touched his wrist and ran his finger over the mark that was still there. And he saw his wife lying in the hammock, reading Omar Khayyam.

There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see;
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was – and then no more of Thee and Me.

“Do you remember?” he asked, looking at the framed picture of his wife next to Khayyam’s book.

He knew his memories, like the picture, would soon fade, and there would be no past. And without a past, was there a future? Of course, there would be tears and laughter, but they would be associated with nothing. They would be meaningless! He had survived a stroke, just like the tree had survived a lightning strike.

He brought up a flask that he had hidden under his chair and poured a portion of its contents into a wine glass. He hid the flask again. Does it matter?

The question made him smile. I should hide the flask in some small crevice in the tree. It will be a mystery for them to solve!

Picking up the flask and putting it in his shirt pocket, he reached out for his cane, got up and slowly walked outside. “Now tree, tell me where should we hide this?” he asked when he got close.

He circled the trunk and found a small hole at eye level. He slipped the flask in there and patted the trunk. An acorn fell. “No need to shed a tear for me, tree,” he said. He wanted to pick up the acorn, but he could hardly bend, so he touched it lightly with his cane.

As he walked back to the house, random thoughts arose like the flames of a funeral pyre. Why had he not given the tree a name? I should have made a bier out of its fallen branches. Why did I never build a tree house? If I become a ghost, I will live in it – live in the tree.

Back in his room, he sat down and stared at the wine glass that had waited for him. He looked away, out through the window at the world beyond, got up and lowered the shade. He sat down once more and picked up the glass.

One more beer

Mike Austin

After a twelve-pack of Pabst and a couple of hours, Lee and Tony got the engine halfway up the hill in Ellen’s new garden trailer when the headlights bounced into the junkyard. They dropped, sweating, behind the trailer.

“What the hell?” muttered Tony.

The car stopped and a minute later the sodium yard light flickered blue, then pale white, and Crazy Eddie staggered out of the shed. He peered up into the valley of junked cars and up along the hillsides. It seemed he was looking right at them once, and they ducked as tightly as they could behind the trailer.

“What’s he doing here?” whispered Lee. “Think he can see us?”

“I dunno. I heard people say he just kind of knows things.” Mostly drunk at three in the morning, it made sense to Lee. Some sixth sense had told Eddie that thievery was afoot.

They peeked around the trailer again. Eddie raised an arm, pointing up the valley. Not pointing. He held a pistol and began firing over and over at a ’68 Pontiac wagon, punching holes all along the body. He reloaded, cackling, then reeled around and fired at random up the hillside.

“Shit,” whispered Tony as they ducked back. The bullets thudded into the ground around them. One whanged off the engine block, then a final one shattered the trailer side, and Tony was on the ground writhing and hissing air through clenched teeth.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!” Lee wondered drunkenly what he should do, and if the shooting was going to start again. He risked a glance as the yard light went out again. A minute later, the car was bouncing back out the gate. Tony was swearing.

“My ribs, man! Burns!”

“What you want me to do?”

“Nothing. I don’t want to take my hand away. Let’s just get the hell outta here.”

Lee helped him up and steered him up the hill. “No way man! We’re taking my motor!”

“It’s like 500 pounds, man!”

Tony didn’t move. Lee sighed. “I can’t do it alone.”

“I can push. I’ll just lean on it.” He groaned around to the back of the trailer. Lee picked up the handle and pulled. He pulled with little help through the hot summer predawn, bouncing over ant hills and cow paths, through cow pies to the top of the slope and into the woods to the truck. He fell on his back behind the truck, panting, sweating and finally laughing.

“We did it, eh buddy?” Tony staggered to the truck and pulled out two cans of beer, handing one to Lee. Tony poured half on his bleeding side, chugged the rest, and crumbled to the ground.

Lee reached down and shook him once, and again. “Tony? Hey Tony!” He swallowed the rest of his beer and sat down with his back against the truck. “Aw, jeeze.”

The birthday party

Bob Kralapp

Walking up to the bright, loud house, we decide to stay for just a little while, have some birthday cake, maybe something to drink, then leave. When we arrive, cake is nowhere in sight, but wine is flowing as is every other sort of alcohol. We recognize some people on our way to the kitchen – gaining a bottle of beer on the way – where bowls and plates of cheese and shrimp cocktail and blueberries and all manner of crackers are arranged across the counters. At the table, white-haired men – medical doctors by all indications – trade war stories of the bad old days when the local Mafia dropped off bloodied men for them to repair as best they could.

As it happens, the birthday boy is right outside on the patio. A big white cake is out here as well, half eaten, with pieces of it set out on paper plates. While wishing him a happy birthday, Olive sees a friend she hasn’t talked with in a while. She encourages me to stay with the birthday boy who appears to be deep in his cups, and, while we make small talk, his wife glides by and blithely delivers a memorably snarky comment. Olive and Nell, meanwhile, catch up on each other’s lives. I wish him another heartfelt happy birthday and take leave.

All I know about Nell is that she is a behavioral psychologist or some such, and, before long, she is telling about a man who calls asking for help with this obsession. Nell asks what the problem is and he says that he is happily married, but enjoys wearing his wife’s underthings. She asks if this worries him and he says no, it doesn’t, but the problem is that they’re just too damn tight. It was that kind of birthday party.

Rejected

Kashmira Sheth

Fresh from Mumbai, India, I ended up on a farm in Iowa. It was my aunt’s family’s farm, and along with my uncle, aunt, and a baby cousin, we were spending the last few days before Iowa State University began its fall quarter. For me, everything was new. When they said they were going to visit a neighbor and we got in the car, I was confused. Coming from a big city, the next-door neighbor was literally as far away from you as the next door. You could stand in the gallery and call them. I didn’t know donuts were not served at dinner and was disappointed when we went to a restaurant and I ordered them. The waitress looked at me confused and said they didn’t have them. I had no idea that anchovy was a fish, and, since I was vegetarian, it was important to know. I found out when I ordered a Cesar salad and my uncle pointed it out.

One hot August afternoon, my aunt’s dad offered me a cold drink, root beer.

“Root beer?” I asked confused. “I don’t drink beer.”

“It is root beer,” he said.

“But it is beer.”

“It’s okay. You can have it.” My uncle came to the rescue, my aunt’s dad or mine, I couldn’t tell.

I was unsure. The more I hesitated, the more they insisted. And that made me more and more suspicious.

Finally they gave up, and I didn’t have root beer.

After a year or more, we went to A&W Root Beer. My aunt ordered a root beer float and gave my little cousin a taste of it. I figured if my two-year-old cousin can have it, I could, too. I loved the root beer float.

Yet, for some reason, I don’t like root beer. With ice-cream it is okay, but just the plain root beer itself doesn’t appeal to me.

Is it because of my first rejection that our relationship never blossomed?

The troubles

Jack Freiburger

It’s an old story, but perhaps you’ve not heard it:

Seamus felt his head spin. He’d been drinking at the Rosen Dub (Black Rose) since an early dinner and had imbibed quite enough. It was time to go home, to give up the stories, song and fellowship of the Quin pub fellowship and head to a warm bed and dear Moara, where he’d share a pillow with the dear old thing.

The wood paneled walls were dark with pipe smoke as was the plaster between the ceiling beams. The mirror behind the bar twinkled with the lights that shown though the fog of dust that refracted the flame from the candled wall fixtures. The heavy oak door was ajar so the Connemara cold November night breeze could thin the sour smell of spilled ale and Guinness, the life blood of Ireland, that had lacquered the pine plank floor tonight as it had for two hundred years.

The red nosed publican yawned, and Seamus’s mouth opened automatically as he gulped smoky air. Late, time, time to be off. Would call last call soon in any case. “Hurry now, time to go. Hurry now” was just minutes off. This evening he would be not the last cat to be hung this parkked* night. No. Not the last.

He rose unsteady from the stool and set a foot towards the oaken door. There was no crash, just Seamus rumpling to the floor, legs akimbo. “Bloody hell, don’t that bitch it all,” he said as he clawed the bar edge to regain his footing. “If stagger I must, then stagger I shall,” he said to himself as he launched towards the timber column that braced the summer beam.

He did not make it. His hand reach out, but there he be, floor faced. He listened for laughter, but heard none. Old friends, he thought, been like this themselves, too. No laughing matter.

He climbed the column and stared at the open oak doorway. Make that for certain, then out in the bracing night and across the street to home.

Again he launched, but made the door only a minute later, full crawl it was. The arch of his decent was bent right tight, tight as Seamus. So he dusted a trail across the pine until he could pull himself up at the smooth worn frame.

“Must consider now, the desperation of the situation. Home over there. Long target. Can’t swim the Irish Sea, so Seamus shall make it that lamp post, then across the street to key the welcoming door of home.” He sucked in through his nostrils the crisp night air. Sober now for sure, he thought, but the post, discretion rules. He launched.

The sidewalk was hard and the brick irregular. His hand hurt, but naught was broken.  He’d gain the post with a belly crawl, rise up like Lazarus, without Jesus’s call, and make for home, full steam or else, lighted by the municipal gas light, as if by Moses’ fiery column.

“Hell and damnations all around. Whose forking horse had left that there! Aught to be a law. Diaper on them beasts. A man does fall sometimes!”

It was a long crawl, and he did smell such that even the clean air above the street did not erase, dilute or ameliorate that which clung to his right wrist and jacket arm. The brown stain was wet. He crawled fast until he reached he own dear door, inserted the key, turned the latch and kissed the floor, but not of his own volition.

He kicked the door closed with his damp and dust trousered leg. The couch it would have to be. The ups and down of the evening hard wrung him drier than a camel driver’s turban. He crawled thus, heaved upon it cushions and slept the slept of the innocent until Moura’s voice awoke him.

“Seamus, you were drinking at the Dub, were ye not!”

“Oh, aye, just a bit, home early. Couch so as not to trouble you.”

“Tom called. You left your bleeding wheelchair there again!”

*Cold or frozen

The Tonic of Gin

Eva Mays

*Note: The saga of Cronkhill Hall continues. There has been an invasion from outer space. This episode picks up right where Eva’s May submission left off, with Maria saying, “Erm…I beg your pardon…but how long have you been my mother?”

The little green invader wheezed, then the black eyes seemed to grow wider, as if it had just realized something. Bending down, it rummaged through the empty dress that was puddled around its ankles.

“Ahem,” said Maria. “Did you hear me?”

The creature didn’t look up. “Well, I suppose —damn! Where is it?–I suppose it’s been about twelve years.”

“Twelve years? How can that be? The star ships only arrived last night!”

“I am a reconnaissance agent, as it were. We have been here for a long time, waiting for the right moment to strike.” With a squeak of joy, it pulled from the pile of fabric the silver flask that Maria’s mother habitually kept tucked in the top of her stays. The squeak was followed by a groan, however, when the flask was found to be devoid of spirits. The creature gave a miserable little cough. “Hang it all. What am I going to do now?”

“You could tell me whether or not you killed my mother,” Maria said, her hair fairly smoking with anger.

The creature appeared to be grossly offended at the suggestion. “Oh, no, my dear. She was already dead when I took her form, I assure you. I can explain it all, but right now, I really need some –”

Suddenly, it doubled over, drawing quick, gasping breaths. “The thing is,” it said, then collapsed to the floor, flopped around a bit like a landed fish, then lay still.

Maria took a step closer. Was it dead? That would mean one fewer creature to eradicate from Shropshire, but she almost hoped it still lived, for it could possess information that could help rescue Lieutenant Ashton. She nudged it in the ribs with her foot. “Excuse me, starwoman…or, starman,” she added, realizing she didn’t know which it was. “Are you dead?”

The eyes flew open quite suddenly, causing her to jump back with fright.

“G-i-i-i-i-i-i-n-n-n-n-n-n,” it croaked.

“Why, you insufferable little sot. You came back from the dead for that?”

The creature revived enough to give Maria a sharp look of motherly reprimand. “Don’t take that tone with me, Maria Welles,” it said. “My home world is very different from this one. The wavelengths of your sun, the elements in the air, it all causes a process of cell degeneration that ends with complete breakdown within seventeen minutes.”

“I don’t know what that all means, but it sounds very unpleasant. What does it have to do with gin?”

“There are antioxidant compounds in juniper berries that reverse the liquification process. It was a wondrous discovery. Mine, in fact. We can survive here, but we need to imbibe gin almost constantly.”

“Well, that sounds very tiresome. Why invade this world if it means either death by melting or a lifetime of headaches?”

“Never mind that, girl,” it rasped, dabbing at its alarmingly moist brow with the hem of the discarded dress. “Just get me some of that Blue Ruin!”

Lemonade? Not!

Millie Mader

It wasn’t a date, date.  My kid sister and I were just fourteen and fifteen, and the two guys were the sons of two of our parents’ Sheepshead club friends. They were a couple of years older than us, and one of them actually drove a car! They took us to a movie one night when the card players were at our house.

After the movie, the guys decided they wanted a beer—maybe a couple. My sis and I gasped. “We can’t go in a bar,” we said.

“Oh, it’s okay. The bar owner is a friend. We always get served.”

“Well, we hate beer,” I said.

The guys just laughed. Then one said, “We know just the right drink for you.”

“Yeah, a sloe gin fizz. It tastes just like lemonade,” his buddy chimed in.

With mild misgivings, we both said okay.

The drinks actually were delicious and, indeed, did sort of taste like lemonade.

We foolishly each ordered a second sloe gin fizz. The tavern soon closed. Jeez, it was midnight and we had only sipped on the seductively sparkling second drink.

“Don’t worry. Bottoms up, girls. We’re friends with Rick, the owner, and he won’t throw us out.”

At that precise moment, there was a loud knocking on the door. Terrified, my sister and I ran and hid in the ladies’ room. To this day, I can’t account for our quick thinking. We hoisted ourselves up on two toilets so our feet wouldn’t be seen. We had heard about the under-age drinking raids. To be honest, we were sort of tipsy.

What seemed like an hour had passed. I guess it was more like fifteen minutes. We had no idea what the law did to under-age drinkers, but we were weary and just wanted to go home. Facing our parents was too daunting to even ponder right then.

We poked our heads out the door, and there were the guys, hoisting their mugs and laughing it up with Rick and an older man. No sheriff, no police.

We ventured out, and the boys just hee-hawed at our terrors.

“Meet Bob. He owns the bar on the next block, comes over after-hours to chat with Rick. Finish your drinks and we’ll get you home.”

We didn’t finish the drinks, just dumped them on the sidewalk. Relief washed over us. Neither of us cared much for lemonade after that.

After Midnight

Larry Sommers

“Congratulations,” yawned the man at the all-night liquor store on Lighthouse Avenue, after inspecting the Air Force ID I had shown him, which proved that I was already some minutes into my 21st birthday; and he passed the bottle of Jim Beam across the counter.

I joined my four accomplices, who waited in the shadows outside.

(In my head, the voice of Sergeant Joe Friday said: “Cuff him, Frank. Let’s book him on a 421.” “A 421, Joe?” “Yeah. Contributing to the delinquency of minors.” Dum-Da-Dum-Dum!)

In 1966, Monterey was not yet much changed from the old days. The ghost of John Steinbeck peered authorially from doorways, puffing his pipe, and sloshed across the tidal flats, seen at a distance, collecting specimens.

We walked under the long sardine chutes of the silent canneries and stalked through the railyards to where moonlit waves crash and foam against huge blocks of granite. We clambered up the rocks and sat with starfish and sea urchins, misted by drifts of salt spray, as we passed around the bottle of Beam.

We did not solve all the world’s problems; but then, the world had a lot of problems.

We left the empty bottle there (“We’re taking you in on a 518, Son—Littering a public beach area.”) and emerged on Ocean View Boulevard in Pacific Grove, in those days a sleepy little burg that occupied the tip of the Monterey Peninsula.

A skinny man, unshaven, beckoned us from under a street lamp. He pulled five cans of Coors from a brown paper bag. Pop-top aluminum cans had been invented earlier that week, and he popped a cold one for each of us.

That’s when the squad car pulled up, red and blue lights flashing.

“You boys aware that P.G. is a dry town?” asked 240 pounds of night constable. We all shook our heads. His cool eyes gauged who and what we were—the haircuts gave us away—and he turned his attention to the swaying, glassy-eyed beer man. It was quickly established that the man’s name was Mike, that his surname eluded him, and that he was shocked to learn he was not in Bakersfield. (As the cop cuffed Mike and stuffed him into his car, I expected him to turn and say, “I’ve got you all dead to rights on a 387.” “A 387, Officer?” “Yeah—Aiding and abetting public intoxication of grimy old derelicts.”)

But all he actually said was, “You boys better report back to base. Your colonel might miss you.”

As we walked back along the railroad tracks, I suddenly found myself nowhere. Total darkness, the moon was gone. My feet stood solid, but I could not work out where I was.

I heard my friends chatting, a long distance away.

“Hey!” I shouted. Rob Stelle and Bill Martinez hoisted me out of the four-foot-deep, maintenance pit into which I had fallen.

“We’ve got you on a 687,” said Billy J. Satterwhite.

“A 687?”

“Disappearance without public notice. Book him, Rob-O.”

Pukey warm milk

Tracey Gemmell

Flamstead Junior School, 1967

The bottles rattled in their crates as Mr. Ashwood carried them across the Kindergarten classroom. Twenty sets of eyes followed their progress.

‘Please let this be the day he drops them.’ Ben wished hard. He waited for the dreamed of smashing of glass. Nothing. He stifled a dry retch as the headmaster placed the crate on top of the radiator.

‘There you are, Mrs. Birtley,’ Mr. Ashwood said. ‘Nice drink of warm milk after playtime. A real treat.’

Ben’s eyes darted from Mr. Ashwood’s retreating back to the window. ‘No, milk! Yes, playtime!’

‘Ben Riley! Enough!’ Mrs. Birtley marched over to Ben and tapped her wooden ruler on his desk.

Ben frowned. ‘Sorry, Miss.’ He never understood how sometimes the words were in his head and sometimes they were out in the room. And who knew how to control that, anyway?

Mrs. Birtley walked towards the coat racks. ‘Playtime. It’s cold outside, so no arguments about wearing gloves. If you don’t have gloves, go to the spare clothes box.’ She looked at Ben.

Ben just knew he wouldn’t find his gloves in his coat pocket. Things were never where he left them. Except frogs. Dead frogs. That caused trouble, too. He closed his eyes again and wished his gloves to be in his pockets. He hated the walk to the spare clothes box. At least it wouldn’t be for underwear this time.

He struggled into his coat. He dug in his pockets, then waved his gloves in the air. ‘Blimey!’ Best thing that had happened all day.

‘Ben Riley! One more outburst, and you’ll be staying indoors for playtime.’

Outburst? ‘Blimey’ isn’t an outburst. Ben had his gloved hand over his mouth to make sure the words stayed in his head. What Dad yelled during football matches, that was an outburst, according to Mum. He decided to leave explaining that to Mrs. Birtley until after playtime.

Playtime was a blur of screams and snowballs and handfuls of snow shoved down the backs of the girls’ coat collars. ‘Ben Riley!’ echoed across the playground, along with stupid girl sobs.

‘Not time to go in yet!’ That was out loud on purpose. Because Ben had a right to know why playtime was over after only five seconds.

Apparently not.

Mr. Ashwood pinched a little ear between his fingers as little feet struggled to maintain contact with the pavement.

A milk bottle slammed down on Ben’s desk. A straw thumped down beside it. The yellow cream floating on top got thicker and warmer as Ben stared at it.

He watched Mrs. Birtley. She watched him. No good trying the accidental spill trick. He closed his eyes and sucked down the disgustingly warm milk, faster and faster, until the loud slurping sound signalled the end of the torture.

‘Ben Riley! Nice boys don’t make that noise.’

‘Nice teachers don’t make nice boys drink pukey warm milk!’ Was that in my head!

Apparently not.

It was this big

Jerry Peterson

He stumbled into Kenny’s Not Here, a tavern in La Crosse, the place smelling of beer and shucked peanuts.

Beth, the bartender, glared at him. “You drunk already?”

He looked back at the threshold. “Just tripped.”

“Oh, yeah. So where you been?”

He made his way over to a stool and clambered aboard. “Fishin’, on the Big Miss. Gimme a Leinie, wouldja?”

“Coming up.” Beth the bartender chucked a stein under a tap and pulled back on the handle. She watched the stein fill, foam billowing up. Just as it spilled over, she set the stein in front of the fisherman.

He sliced the excess foam off and guzzled down the contents. “Damn, tastes good,” he said and banged the stein down on the bar. “Hotter’n the hinges of hell out on the water.”

“Catch anything?”

“Oh, yeah.” He held his hands out a good yard and a half apart.

She refilled his stein and stared him in the eyes as she placed it in front of him. “This the Paul Bunyan muskie people talk about?”

“Yup. Big fella. Strong, too.” He dipped a digit in his beer and sucked his finger dry. “When I set that hook, he yanked me outta my tennies and my boat, me hanging onto my fishing rod, and him dragging me through the shallows out into the deep water.”

She snickered.

“He did. He really did,” he said. “Finally…finally, I manage to swing around so I’m on my butt in the river with my feet up ahead of me. It was an effort, but I pushed my feet down into the water, and I pop up barefoot skiing in that fish’s wake.”

She smirked and poured herself a diet water.

“It’s true, scout’s honor.” He held up two fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “We pass the Mississippi Queen, you know, that big paddlewheeler, and I’m waving and yelling for help, and the people along the railing they’re cheering me and applauding. I tell you, Beth, that fish must’ve heard ’em because he wheeled around and pulled me streaking down past the other side of the Queen to more applause and cheers.”

Another customer slid his stein to the bartender for a refill. Before she could oblige, the fisherman grabbed her sleeve. “You know how hard that water gets on the bottom of your feet? Felt like I had blisters about to bust open. Anyhoo, Paul Bunyan’s fish, he cuts in front of some fat girl on a jet ski, and the jet ski shreds my fishin’ line, and down I go.”

“You still down there?”

“Fun-ney, fun-ney. Hell, no. I bob to the surface like a cork and manage to dog paddle to shore, right near where I’d left my truck. So here I am.”

Beth the bartender leaned on her elbows on the bar. “That is one heckuva fish tale. I’m going to have to talk to Kenny about getting you a prize.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“When have I ever?”

“But I got proof.” He brought out his cell, tapped in a couple commands, and turned the screen to her. “InstaGram. Those passengers on the Queen, they were snapping pictures of me flying by, great sprays of water going up, and posting them.” He touched the image on the screen. “That blur there, that’s me,” he said.