THREE SHORT STORIES

by Steve Frederick

SHELLS 

I sliced mussels to the hinge, impaled the umber necks on number 4 hooks, flung the rigging far into the Oregon surf, piled gleaming perch behind me like pie tins scattered in the dry sand. 

She picked henlike at the Pacific jetsam, gathered shells in a bucket, her hair done up in buttery braids, the Nordic version of a Hollywood squaw. She smiled from the hub of her poncho, called herself Rainbow.

This was way back, a weird Nixonian summer. I boiled her a chowder, fried fish in her skillet that night. "Living off the land is where it’s at," she said, braids undone, nipples bobbing in the firelight. When I answered the doorbell in boxers the next morning, her landlord didn’t seem surprised. "No driftwood," he said, aiming a thumb at the ashes. "Salt eats out the chimney."

I was faking it on the county crew, flagging traffic on gravel roads, sitting for hours on my steel hard-hat, batting rocks, smoking Camels. "I’m an artist," she’d boast, walking naked through the hallways, drinking apple wine from the bottle. A moving banquet of smells — patchoulie, epoxy, marijuana — she stirred resin and catalyst by the bowlful, rimmed mirrors with abraded bits of pastel bottle, limpets, crab claws, sand dollars, peddled them to the tourist traps on Highway 101.

For awhile I got into it, combed the driftwood for planks, dried lumber on the uncut grass. I built her a table of silvery boards sawn by the sea and sanded by the breakers. I came home to find her dusted in calcium behind a rattling curtain of shells, the snails strung on 20-pound mono, my three-sixteenths drill bit ground to a nub. She’d lined the floor of the rusty shower stall in flat beach stones, tacked shingles to the walls. "The old man’s gonna shit," I said.

When winter came I stood early in the Nestucca River in turned-down boots, ice gathering in the guides, and reeled in a salmon for the smoker. I gutted it in the sink. She wept. 

"What the hell?" I said.

"Fish have souls," she answered.

It froze hard after that, broke the pipes, sent her packing in the microbus. My Miles went with her, the Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins. She spurned her Cat Stevens, Melanie, the Moody Blues, the covers dealt aside like a bad hand. I sailed them high over the surf. 

I pocketed a prism that dangled in the morning light, spraying dabs of color. I left behind a bucket of shells.

ALTAR

Wallace discovered her at the entrance to the Mayan city. Dressed in the white cotton blouse and prim plaid skirt of a Honduran schoolgirl, she reclined against the iron gate of the ruins, apart from the chattery cluster of teen-agers vying to guide foreign visitors among the crumbling pyramids and granite masks. He hesitated, savoring her mahogany eyes and sharply drawn lips, her wiry, delicate fingers. As his eyes rose from her unshaven legs he found her returning his gaze, giving away nothing in her expression. He turned away, unsettled, sweat stinging his eyes.

A plump boy stepped between them with a damp palm extended. "I can read terrible stories for you from the stela -- the statues with hieroglyphs," he said. "I can show you the altar where the Mayan priests broke the skulls of men and squeezed blood from their hearts."

The boy called himself Chico, wore short pants and glasses, a small crucifix dangling outside his shirt. Wallace handed him an American dollar. When he looked back, the girl was gone.

Wallace followed the boy along shaded trails under the rain forest canopy, ignoring the well-rehearsed account of the site’s history and the local university’s efforts to restore it. From time to time he’d see the girl in company with a tall, bearded American, who posed her for his camera at each chiseled head. 

Their paths intersected in the ruined city’s center court, at a stone dome topped with a palm-sized depression and grooved with spiraling channels along its sides. With melodramatic gestures, Chico explained that the heart of a human sacrifice would be ripped from the chest, still beating, and placed atop the altar, the blood flooding down the gashes. 

Wallace caught the girl glancing at him, smiling as she lowered her eyes. "My name’s Wallace," he said, shaking the bearded man’s hand. "I’m from Idaho. You’re an American, right?"

The American introduced himself as Carver, a machinist from Colorado. They traded jokes about their flights and the long bus ride to Copan, discussed vacation plans and, at Wallace’s insistence, agreed to meet later in town for a beer. The girl fussed with her nails; the boy stood with his arms crossed, his back turned to her. Wallace caught the scent of the girl’s perfume, counted six silver rings spaced along the rim of her ear. Carver rested his hand between the girl’s shoulders and excused himself. "There’s still a lot to see," he said.

That evening, as Wallace sipped coffee in a noisy village café, the girl entered and took a table near the opposite wall, her dark skin glistening in the candlelight. He watched as she ordered a tumbler of rum and lit a slender, hand-rolled cigarillo on the centerpiece flame, closing one eye as the smoke swirled past her lashes. She paid for her drink with an American bill, counted several more before returning them to her handbag.

Returning his lingering stare, she rested an elbow on the table, her chin in her palm. "Anna," she shouted, extending a hand, mocking his handshake. She drew the cigarillo from her lips, flicked an ash to the floor and laughed. 

INTERMENT

I rode my bicycle down the lane to visit my neighbor, the one who drags his leg. He was burying his dog and couldn’t work the spade. "Still no license, eh?" he asked. "One of these days you’ll quit the drinking or have a very stout heart." Mortified, I grabbed the shovel and set to work while he lit a cigar.

The dog stank. He’d leaned its turgid body, clad in a tiny tailored jacket and red bow tie, against a tree. I told the old Marine I didn’t want to touch it. A nimbus of his cancerous exhaust sweetened the air. "It’s the old woman," he said, bitterly. "Fed him bread and gravy until he plugged up so bad his little eyes popped from the sockets."

Inside the kitchen, his wife pulled aside an embroidered curtain and glared at us. He rolled the cigar between the stubs of his fingers. "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster," he said.

He’d cornered me again. That Korea stuff was before my time. "MacArthur?" I guessed.

The light left his eyes. As I toiled on, the frozen ground crunched and turned to powder. He worked to re-light his cigar, but the ancient Zippo wouldn’t flare. Flicking aside the butt, he skidded off toward his woodworking shop. "Leave the little bastard if you want," he said. "He’ll keep."

The dog’s lips drew back in a stiff smile. I let the shovel fall. Geese jammed the sky, flapping, honking.