Issue 77 February 2020 Flash Fiction Online February 2020

The two most beautiful words in the English language are “crew cut”, but the bleached-blonde beautician doing my hair apparently doesn’t agree. I told her what I want, but there must be no ears under the poodle-like perm sitting on the top of her head. Although the hairdresser seems not to hear, she can see. She sees my long brown hair and blue eyes and decides I want a little trim and some makeup tips. She probably wants to give me mall bangs and blue eye shadow. That is not what I want. I have this image of myself—white tee-shirt, Levi’s, black plastic unbreakable comb—cool and classic like James Dean. Butch. If she gets this right, I won’t even need the comb, but it’s part of the fantasy, strong and sexy. I know just where I’ll keep it.

She can’t see me because I’m in disguise. I’m ready to come out of hiding, but I need her help. I can buy my own jeans and tee-shirt, but I don’t want to cut my hair myself. Someday I’ll get my own clippers but I’m still on Lesbian 101: cut your hair, find a girlfriend, come out to your mom. I thought the haircut would be the easy part.

The beautician, Monique, spins my chair around so that I can see her work in the mirror. “I know you wanted it shorter,” she said, “so I’ve given you a cute little bob.” I look in the mirror and I look just like that redhead Molly Ringwald from the Breakfast Club. Why is it that every time there’s a popular new actress they try to make everyone look like her? Monique picks up a can of Aqua Net like she’s armed for battle.

“You’re not listening to me,” I say, gesturing at her to put the can down. “I want a crew cut.”

“But you’re such a pretty girl,” she says, “and that’s a man’s haircut.”

Or a lesbian’s, I think, but I’m not ready to say it out loud. What if she freaks out and calls me a queer? What if she starts screaming about the Bible? I heard enough of that at St. Benedict’s growing up, and now that I’ve graduated I can’t take any more lectures about how sick people like me are. Practically everyone in this town is Catholic, and I’m sure some of them believe I’m going to hell, but New York City is two hours away and too far for a haircut. The best I could do today was riding a bus to the other end of town where I wasn’t likely to run into anyone I knew. I’m not ready to get yelled at for my “man’s” haircut. I take the chicken’s way out.

“I need it for ROTC,” I tell her. “I’m going into the army this fall so they’ll pay for my college.”

“Oh,” she says, “thank you for your service.” She puts down the hair spray with metallic finality.

I close my eyes as she starts the clippers and my disguise falls to the floor in little brown tufts. When I look in the mirror this time, I start to cry. Sometimes the fairy princess is a butch dyke in 501s and a tee-shirt waiting to emerge from captivity and once she’s free you’ll never let her be trapped again. I realize I have come out. They’ll see me and they’ll know. I can’t tell everyone I’m joining the army, and now I don’t want to. I want to march out of the shop and have my own private Pride parade.

I smile at Monique. “This is perfect, thank you.” I give her a big tip. When I’m back out on the street I whisper “And Monique? I’m a lesbian.” Then I say it a little louder. Then louder. That woman shouting? It’s me. I’m the sexy one with the black plastic comb in her back pocket.

You should have seen this, Rowan.

From the observation platform on the converted oil rig, I watch the giant conveyor lift the chunks out of the ocean, see them climb to the coastal plain, see the freeway width of the belt disappear over the horizon, and feel like a Lego figurine in a life-sized industrial zone.

The solid wall of noise makes me sweat as much as the heat does. The shouting, the mechanical roar of the conveyor, the screaming crunch of the ice, and the shattering splashes of the chunks crashing back into the ocean make it hard to think. So I don’t think, but let the memory of you pervade me, a bittersweet sensation I love and dread.

* * *

While I was still trying to fight the greenhouse effect, lobbied for emission agreements, invested billions in sustainable energy, strengthened sea walls around the globe, you were way ahead of me. I called you a pessimist when you said global warming was a given, the inevitable result of humanity’s carelessness. You told me nothing we could do to mitigate our mistakes would have measurable effects on any useful time scale. You argued that it was too late to fight causes, that all our influence and wealth were better spent dealing with the consequences. I called you fatalistic, mocked you for a harbinger of doom.

In the end, you relented, chose our marriage over your beliefs. This keeps me awake at night, that you gave in, relinquished your conviction to support my follies instead. Is that what love does to us?

I should have listened to you.

* * *

Another iceberg drifts stately into the bay, propelled by a trio of power pushers and its own embedded engines, into the maws of the Nutcracker. You would have loved that name. The enormous steel jaws rise from the waves and squeeze together, seeming to stop dozens of meters from the tip of the iceberg. Under water, the automatic drills deliver their charges, and the berg shudders with muffled explosions, the jaws recommencing their unrelenting squeeze until the ice shatters into house- and car-sized chunks. As the nutcracker opens, the sweeper ships move in, herding the chunks deeper into the bay. For all its violence and chaos, the operation runs smoothly, and in fifteen minutes, the first chunks rise from the ocean to be conveyed inland.

The explosions, the waves, the rumbling of the conveyor, travel through the rig until my chest vibrates. Sweating, I climb the stairs to the ancient waiting Chinook, its twin rotors attempting to overwhelm the symphony of shudders.

This is how the dyke shook before it collapsed.

* * *

We were there at the breach when The Netherlands were lost. The worst south-western storm in the history of Western Europe took giant bites out of the Dutch dunes even as the Zeeland Delta Works succumbed to the onslaught. The evacuation of the country, that I had fought to postpone because the sea wall would damn well hold, wasn’t even halfway complete.

Was it guilt that kept me hauling sand bags? Was it love that kept you by my side? At least I know what it was when the dyke crumbled, and you were swept away while I was dragged to safety, screaming your name until my throat bled.

That was punishment.

* * *

I’m making amends now, Rowan. Don’t mourn what’s already lost, you told me. Deal with what’s left. You’re gone, my love, but I’m still here.

“They’re going to melt,” you said, shrugging. “Both of them, north and south. There is no way you can reverse that process now.”

“But if we let that happen, sea levels will rise by as much as six meters. Whole coastal regions will be lost, millions of lives. You think I’m just going to sit by and let that happen?”

You shook your head and smiled.

“They’re going to melt. The question is: can we let them melt where a gazillion gallons of freshwater will do some good?”

* * *

The Chinook passes over Nouamghar and follows the conveyor belt. On either side, the scorched sands of the Western Sahara stretch to the shimmery horizon. From up here, the conveyor looks like a foot-wide black strip loaded with crushed ice. But I know its actual width, and my mind locks up trying to calculate how much water is traveling inland.

We’re already raising the water table, Rowan. It took the fortune I amassed with sustainable energy and draws every gigawatt of solar power from the Algerian farm, but it’s happening.

Sixty miles inland, Melting Station A feeds the Benichab irrigation hub. From the helicopter, I look down upon the slowly expanding circle around the hub, the green land, wadis that used to be dry most of the year now supporting dates and coconuts and meadows.

You should have seen this.

Originally published in Reckoning 2, 2017, and Little Blue Marble, March 2019. Republished here by permission of the author.

Punch, November 11, 1941

I had done the second hole (from the vegetable-marrow frame to the mulberry-tree) in two, and was about to proceed to the third hole by the potting-shed when I thought I would go in and convey the glad news to Joan. I found her seated at the table in the breakfast-room with what appeared to be a heap of tea spread out upon a newspaper in front of her. Little slips of torn tissue-paper littered the floor, and on a chair by her side were several empty cardboard boxes. The sight was so novel that I forgot the object of my errand.

“What’s all that tea for, and what are you doing with it?” I asked.

“It isn’t tea; it’s tobacco,” Joan replied, “and I’m making cigarettes for the soldiers at the front.”

“Where on earth did you get that tobacco from, if it is tobacco?” I went on.

“Let me see now,” mused Joan, pausing to lick a cigarette-paper — “was it from the greengrocer’s or the butcher’s? Ah! I remember. It was from the tobacconist’s.”

Joan gets like that sometimes, but I do not encourage her.

“But what made you choose this Hottentot stuff?” I enquired.

“The soldiers like it strong,” Joan replied, “and this looked about the strongest he’d got.”

“What does it call itself?”

“It was anonymous when I bought it, but you’ll no doubt see its name on the bill when it comes in.”

“Thanks very much,” I said. “That’s what I should call forcible fleecing. Not that I mind in a good cause — ”

“Isn’t it ingenious?” interrupted Joan. “You just put the tobacco in between the rollers, and twiddle this button round until — until you’ve twiddled it round enough; then you slip in a cigarette-paper — like that — moisten the edge of it — twiddle the button round once more — open the lid — and shake out the finished article — comme ça!”

An imperfect cylindrical object fell on to the floor. I stooped to pick it up and the inside fell out. I collected the débris in the palm of my hand.

“How many of these have you made?” I asked.

“Only three thoroughly reliable ones, including that one,” she replied. “I’ve rolled ever so many more, but the tobacco will fall out.”

“Here, let me give you a hand,” I suggested. “I’ll roll and you lick.”

“No,” said Joan kindly but firmly. “You don’t quite grasp the situation. I want to do something. I can’t make shirts or knit comforters. I’ve tried and failed. My shirts look like pillow-cases, and anything more comfortless than my comforters I couldn’t imagine. I wouldn’t ask a beggar to wear an article I had made, much less an Absent-Minded Beggar.”

“What about that tie you knitted for me last Christmas?” I said.

“Yes,” said Joan, “what about it? That’s what I want to know. You haven’t worn it once.”

It was true, I hadn’t. The tie in question was an attempt to hybridise the respective colour-schemes of a tartan plaid and a Neapolitan ice.

“That,” I explained, “is because I’ve never had a suit which would set it off as it deserves to be set off. However, if I can’t help I won’t hinder you. I only came in to say that I had done the second hole in two. I thought you would like to know I had beaten bogey.” And I retired, taking with me the little heap of tobacco and the hollow tube of paper.

When I reached the seclusion of the mulberry-tree I found that the paper had become ungummed, so I placed the tobacco in it and succeeded after a while in rolling it up. The result, though somewhat attenuated, was recognisably a cigarette. I lit it, and when I had finished coughing I came to the conclusion that if only I could induce Joan to present her gift to the German troops instead of to our Tommies it would precipitate our ultimate triumph. I had to eat several mulberries before I felt capable of proceeding to the third hole. When I got there (in two) I found it occupied by a squadron of wasps while reinforcements were rapidly coming up from a hole beneath the shed. Being hopelessly outnumbered I contented myself with a strategical movement necessitating several stiff rearguard actions.

Joan, growing a little more proficient, had in a couple of days made 500 cigarettes. I had undertaken to dispatch them, and one morning she came to me with a neatly-tied-up parcel.

“Here they are,” she said; “but you must ask at the Post Office how they should be addressed. I’ve stuck on a label.”

I went out, taking the parcel with me, and walked straight to the tobacconist’s.

“Please pack up 1,000 Hareems,” I said, “and post them to the British Expeditionary Force. Mark the label ‘Cigarettes for the use of the troops.’ And look here, I owe you for a pound of tobacco my wife bought the other day. I’ll square up for that at the same time. By-the-by, what tobacco was it?”

“Well, sir,” the man replied, “I hardly like to admit it in these times, but it was a tobacco grown in German East Africa. It really isn’t fit to smoke, and is only good for destroying wasps’ nests or fumigating greenhouses, which I thought your lady wanted it for, seeing as how she picked it out for herself. Some ladies nowadays know as much about tobacco as what we do.”

I left the shop hurriedly. The problem of the disposal of Joan’s well-meaning gift was now solved. I returned home and furtively stole up the side path into the garden. Under cover of the summer-house I undid the parcel and proceeded rapidly to strip the paper from those of the cigarettes that had not already become hollow mockeries. When I had collected all the tobacco I went in search of the gardener, and encountered him returning from one of his numerous meals.

“Wilkins,” I said, “there is a wasps’ nest on the third green, and here is some special wasp-eradicator. Will you conduct the fumigation?”

As Joan and I were walking round the garden that evening before dinner Joan said —

“I don’t want to blush to find it fame, but — do you know — I prefer doing good by stealth.”

A faint but unmistakable odour was borne on the air from the direction of the third green.

“So do I,” I said.

Punch, or “The London Charivari,” was a British humor (sorry, ‘humour’) magazine that ran from 1841 until 2002. It still has a Web site and cartoon library.

We were not able to find information about the authors of individual stories, so this author will have to remain anonymous. Project Gutenberg has the complete text of many Punch magazines, and you can find this issue here.

We are one and we are many. We are shrubby willow and cotton-grass; we are moss and heather. All we need is this peaceful state of being. Enjoy the sun, listen to the birds, drink the mist. But there’s a new voice among us, and she won’t let us rest.

Night and day, she whispers about a man in town.

An image flickers in the dark. Brown eyes, strong arms, warm tanned skin. The glow of red-hot iron. No matter what we tell her, she won’t let go of him, the young blacksmith she was to marry before the fever took her.

“I must go,” she says. “I can’t stay here.”

“You belong with us now.”

We surround her, prod gently at the invisible wall that separates us. It keeps us from merging; it shouldn’t be there. She has no body to cling to. Along with her wedding dress, it has long been decomposing in the moorland churchyard. Yet, somehow, her mind remains singular.

#

The moon keeps changing; mists come and go. We’re all here, so close together, yet not close enough. At peace, almost. Our embrace waits for her right outside her wall. When she is ready, we tell ourselves, feeling the grit of sand as much as the sun. Soon, we say, the shuffling of worms as loud as the goldfinch’s morning song. When the wind blows, we are stalks of grass bending one way while she sways the other.

The animals sense the disarray and begin to avoid the restless moor. The merlins abandon their ground-nests. The foxes leave, followed by the hares.

She sees their departure in a different light, her heart’s desire acted out.

We understand her better than she knows. We, too, have wanted. We, too, have yearned. But all the dead need is here. We push and pull and beg, but she will not join us, won’t even let go of his name.

Some days all she does is repeat his name like a heartbeat, “Dan, Dan, Dan.” A powerful, dangerous chant.

Today is such a day. The day we feared.

“I must return to him,” she says and means it with all her soul.

She wills herself a new body. Shrubs and roots coil into a wiry skeleton, and with strong willow legs, she rises from the moor. Long yellow grass pads her body and frames her face. Two freshly plucked crowberries give her sight.

The roots at her feet stretch to the point of snapping as she tries to pull free of us. It’s our last chance to stop her, even if it costs our peace. We speak over each other instead of as one:

“He won’t even know it’s you.”

“You will frighten him to death!”

“They will chase you away with torches and pitchforks.”

We raise our voice until it’s wind howling in her wooden ears, but it’s her heart that won’t listen. In her chest beats a lump of moss and heather to the song of its singular want.

Dan, Dan, Dan.

She marches over us, towards town.

#

Counting days matters little on the moor, weeks even less. Our time is measured in slow wingbeats and raindrops and drifting marigold petals. Each moment is precious.

It has been many skylark’s flights since she left. We should be as we were before, but her absence leaves a hole in us. It is small and quiet and won’t disappear.

We won’t let it.

We caress the hush of it, wrap ourselves around it. We will carry it longer than the earth holds her bones. We will wait.

With or without her, peace and balance must be restored.

We turn our marigold-heads towards the sun and chatter about the shape of clouds. We watch the fluffy seeds of cotton-grass blowing in the wind. The deer and their fawns graze upon us, and soon enough, we spot the familiar sight of foxes chasing hares.

The animals are coming back. Will she?

#

We feel the vibrations of the ground long before we see her.

She returns, a tangled height of sticks barely holding together. The mist hangs heavy on her shoulders, like the veil she never wore. Her feet drag through the wet grass. When she stops, so do the vibrations. She’s alone.

We gather around her, relieved to have her back but waiting for the damage.

Her whole body trembles as she speaks, shedding slivers of grass and small leaves. “I found him, but I didn’t let him see me. I watched him from the shade of trees. He is well. Older, but in good health. I wanted nothing more than to go to him, but he looked so peaceful. Happier than I last saw him. His wound has healed. I couldn’t be the one to tear it open.”

She hugs herself to steady her body, not succeeding. A deep splinter enters her voice. “I should have left then, but instead I waited. And then I saw him with the milkmaid and understood. He is more than well. He has married another.”

We lean closer, brushing softly against her feet.

She casts one last look behind her, dark juices running down her willowy cheeks. “You tried to protect me. I should have listened. This is where I belong.”

She is a pile of sticks falling into our heathery arms. Once more, her breath returns to the wind, her limbs wither, her body crumbles into the earth.

No more boundaries or resistance. Like a teardrop, she slips in and makes us whole. We sense her love for the blacksmith, sweet violets and starlight. We taste the bitter salts of her sorrow. We feel the sword of her pain. Our pain.

In time, all blades will dull. Until then, beneath the blooming heather and green moss, our whisper echoes: “Patience. One day, he will be ours.”