Heat Lightning

Heat Lightning

by Jocelyn Whitney

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Oklahomans need at least two porches: one with deep shelter to watch the storms roll through, spraying you like the ocean; the second is the open patio, the porch, the deck to get that unobstructed view of the sky. Particularly the night sky. Last night lightning in the north held me transfixed. Fifty years ago six kids sat on the concrete steps with dad, watching the heat lightning in distant thunderheads. Last night the clouds were scrambled, fuzzy and as ill-defined as memories. Fifty years ago though, we awed at the pristine formation, distinct pillows of a mountainous Zeus who stopped at lighting the sky. You don’t hear anything if it’s just heat lightning. Last night the adult watched and finally listened to the storm, waiting and straining to hear the distant rage of the atmosphere. Fifty years ago we went in early, to the stillness of bedtime stories, those comforting fictions that heat lightning lacks thunder and that mom was gone to a retreat. She had retreated but not in the holy sense we believed. Like those clouds in the distance, the past becomes fuzzy, bolts mysteriously, randomly, illuminating both truths and fictions. That night the silent storm was needed to allay our fears. We watched in wonder, safely innocent while she rested her spirit for a time, distant, silent to us in her despair.

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by Tulsa Review

Everything Is Fine

Everything
Is Fine

by Allison Thomas

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His hair was brown, but it looked auburn in a certain light. He was six feet tall. By all accounts he was an attractive young man with green eyes and wire frame glasses. His hair was curly, and he had only recently learned not to hate how disheveled it always looked. Charlotte was his girlfriend.

They had met in high school. She sat in front of him in AP Government. She always brought up controversial topics in class. She would always find a way to understand things from a new perspective. She never hesitated to raise her hand. Simon admired her for that, her fearlessness. He only raised his hand during roll call, and even then, he didn’t fully extend all of his fingers. He sat in the back of the class and doodled on his notes staring at the red hair in front of him, marveling at Charlotte’s confidence.

They got paired with one another for a project. That’s how it started.

They talked and laughed, and eventually there was more. Simon was sixteen, but he had never kissed anyone before. It’s not that he didn’t want to, he was just shy, and it all seemed like a lot. Everyone acted so casual about kissing and sex, most of his friends had lost their virginities, but it wasn’t casual for him. He wondered if maybe something was wrong with him. He wondered that until he was sitting on Charlotte’s bed with papers and textbooks strewn between them, and he caught himself not listening to her as she spoke about the interaction among branches of government but rather staring at her lips. He realized he wanted to taste them. She stopped talking, but he didn’t stop staring right away, his eyes lingered a moment too long before allowing his ears to take over again.

He shook his head slightly, “Sorry, I zoned out for a minute.”

He smiled weakly but knew that she wasn’t stupid enough to believe his cover. She smiled, pink coming to her cheeks and nodded going straight back to her homework.

After the assignment was turned in, he asked her out for celebration milkshakes, it was there that he had his first kiss. A couple months later they were horizontal on the floor of his poster covered bedroom next to a now ruined game of scrabble. They had never gone quite this far, and he loved every minute, feeling her every second until her hand began going south and his heart began to beat rapidly and his breath came out shallow, he felt like he was dying.

“Stop, please, stop!” he sobbed.

She immediately stopped, sitting up and pulling her shirt back on. “What happened? Di- did I do something wrong?”

Simon was still hyperventilating and couldn’t respond.

“Simon, you’re scaring me!”

He was scaring himself, he had never felt such panic before, he couldn’t think straight. He just sat there clutching his chest until he was able to form a coherent thought. He opened his eyes, not being fully aware that he had ever closed them and saw Charlotte, brave and beautiful Charlotte clutching his shoulders, her brown eyes full of worry.

“Simon, can you hear me?” she said softly.

He nodded.

“I think you just had a panic attack.”

“What?” he questioned, shaking his head back and forth attempting to process what had happened.

“A panic attack, they happen wh—”

He stopped her mid-sentence. “I know what a panic attack is, Char,” he had seen her have a couple in their time together. She suffered from them since her dad died last year. They always looked terrible, but fuck, he had no idea this is what she was going through.

She nodded and looked down nervously at her fidgeting hands, “Right, well I think you just had one.” She looked up at him, into his big green eyes, and self-consciously asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

Simon sat there as it came back to him slowly, as he realized what had triggered this. He shook his head, “No, no Char, this has nothing to do with you, I promise.”

She must know, he thought, or at least suspect, what teenage boy freaks out while making out with his girlfriend? He was mortified and asked her to go. She tried to stand her ground, not wanting to leave him like this, but he was adamant. He lied about the all the homework he had and how tired he was even though he already knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

They didn’t speak for weeks after that. He always looked exhausted even if he had gotten a full eight hours. A long night’s sleep just meant eight hours of reliving it, reliving the pain, the fear, the shame.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She marched up to his front door and knocked twice just below the holiday wreath. She was determined to get answers, to understand, to help him understand that she still wanted to be with him. He opened the door and let out a deep breath, knowing she wanted to talk and wouldn’t be shrugged off with a lie about homework over winter break.

“Simon, you don’t have to tell me anything if you aren’t ready, even if you’ll never be ready, but I miss you.” A single tear left his eye, and he broke open.

He told her what had happened when he was twelve. They had matching tear stained cheeks as he recounted the moment he had buried deep inside his mind until then. He hadn’t told anyone, but he trusted this fierce redhead with his soul as he poured it out right in front of her. He felt more naked than when they had been shirtless and sweaty. He felt raw and bare to the world. He had to get it out, had to say it before it devoured him from the inside out. She held him until they fell asleep on his bed watching old reruns of Cheers.

He hadn’t told anyone else since the snowy afternoon with Charlotte. He never mentioned it to his parents or his older sister. It all just seemed so awkward. They would look at him differently. If they knew, it would change everything. Even though Simon’s world was changed four years ago, he wasn’t sure he was ready to alter his family’s world quite yet. He knew he probably should tell them. He was discussing it with his therapist. He was still working through it himself. His nightmares were happening less often but they were debilitating as ever when they did occur. He no longer had panic attacks when he was with Charlotte. He was normal. Just a normal sixteen-year-old boy in love with a pretty girl.

Charlotte was out of town visiting her sister when he found out that Grandma Ida had died. He was sad, but she was old, and he knew she had lived a full life. Her death was expected. The funeral was set for Saturday morning, and his mom wanted him to be there. Family gatherings always made him uneasy. He never liked his mother’s family. They were all aggressively evangelical and judgmental. He didn’t see it as a coincidence that those two things seemed to always go hand and hand. Nonetheless, family was important to his mother, and it was the least he could do for her.

He sucked it up and put on his black suit, slightly taming his curly mop and adjusting his silver rimmed glasses. He nodded at his reflection, sad that Charlotte wasn’t there, but today wasn’t about him. Today was about being strong for his mother.

The church was small and unimpressive, no grand steeple to speak of, just a small cross in front of the gravel parking lot. It looked the same to Simon now as it always had to him growing up, except today there were distant relatives in shades of black surrounding him and his palms were sweating.

He never liked funerals. Not that anyone is very fond of them, but Simon especially hated them. He hated the whole ritual. It all seemed so false to him. He was fidgeting with his black tie when he saw him. His mouth went dry and his heart doubled in speed. Simon hadn’t seen his uncle in four years. He rarely showed up at family events, and no one in the family really kept in contact with him. Uncle Carl looked just the same as he remembered, except for the new disgusting addition of a goatee. Becoming increasingly nervous, Simon ran his fingers through his hair and excused himself into the church bathroom.

He went into a stall and leaned his head against the germ ridden door with a youth group flyer full of smiling children on it. He leaned over the toilet and vomited up his sustenance from the last seven years. His face was now covered in sweat. He wiped the back of his across his forehead and took a deep breath, beginning to count as his therapist had suggested. He felt so defeated. He was supposed to be over this shit. Taking another deep inhale and exhale, he pulled himself together. As he exited the bathroom to the sea of blackness, he saw his mother talking to her brother. Talking to the man that had tried to rape him when he was twelve. He turned to find a seat in the sanctuary, but his mother waved him over. He gulped down his panic, put his hands shaking uncontrollably in his pockets, and approached them. Simon was there for his mother. He never felt so small. In this moment, there was no loving parents, supportive older sister, or perfect girlfriend, no, it was him, and he was a scared little boy, all alone.

“Well, you have really grown up haven’t you, how old are you now? Seventeen?” his uncle inquired.

Simon wondered how he smelled the same, after all these years his breath still reeked of cigarettes and menthol. Simon barley got out his response, tasting bile as he spoke, “Sixteen,” he corrected in the calmest voice he could possibly muster.

His mother was pulled away by a family friend, and it was just him and his uncle Carl. Such a stupid name, Carl, who was named Carl anyway. Simon stared at his uncle trying to understand how he could be so casual. Just walk away, Simon thought. Get the fuck out of here. He was stuck, somehow frozen, gone back in time. Carl put a hand on Simon’s shoulder making him jump a bit.

“A bit jumpy? These things are always so hard,” Carl squeezed Simon’s shoulder, but it felt like the hand was on Simon’s neck, suffocating him.

Simon managed a nod. There were people, all in black, passing tissues and old stories back and forth as the pastor approached the pulpit. No one around him knew what had happened. Everything was fine, other than Grandma Ida dying, everything was just fine.

---

by Tulsa Review

A Homeless Tragicomedy

A Homeless Tragicomedy

by Tyler Gambill

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The morning light filters through the upturned blinds—giving the white-walled room a cloud-shaded feel. A couple of her stray hairs—blonde but auburn at the roots—dance in the breeze of the box fan and tickle right below my right eye, as I kiss her sleeping lips. She smiles: “Good morning,” while her eyes are still closed. Then they open—with a couple of those slow-half blinks associated with breaking through the sandman’s sand—and are a kinda green-blue like meadow intermingling with sky on the horizon—one color in the eyes of the onlooker.  Yet so much closer: her face probably only six inches away and statuette-like as it embosses itself on my vision with the aid of the natural light—eyes and freckles so vivid as to make the background blatantly out of focus. All I see is eyes and freckles and two-tone hair.

She holds my stare until my eyes cross and even the eyes and freckles become blurry. I close my eyes and press my face between her left shoulder and neck as I roll over onto her, wrapping my right arm over her right shoulder and my left arm under her left armpit, then—using my right hand to grip my left forearm—I  pull her as close as she can get. I squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until my arms are suddenly pressing against my chest—right crossed over the left, much like a vampire or corpse inside a coffin. I open my eyes, and everything is black.

I wake up and shoot straight off of the concrete or grass or sheet, darting directly towards my right as if I’m late and about to jump in the shower before work then realize that I don’t have a job or a shower, and that it’s pretty much impossible for me to be late nowadays. Then I get a helping of irony after I come to a little more—through the sound of cars scooting down the road or birds chirping in a tree overhead—and realize that I’m not just having issues with managing the cognitive transition between sleep and wake (as would be the case if I was actually dreaming about getting ready for work), but also unconscious problems with the associative properties of dreams: as in since I’m associating these freckles and eyes with the feeling of working a 7-3:30, I’m waking up as if I were dreaming about being late for work instead of about lying in bed with some girl who only symbolizes the feelings of consistency and stability associated with a job.

At this point in my day, I know it’s time for a drink: thinking these sorts of thoughts constantly is much more exhausting than blue-collar work, and I think it goes without saying that I’m not homeless because I have an affinity for working hard. Now the reader may be thinking “but hey, why is this guy homeless anyways? He seems kinda smart.” To which I reply: no. That’s a hard no. You’re getting ahead of yourself, reader. Just cause I can half-ass articulate a problem I experience does not make me “smart.” Remember, I’m drinking to negate those “smarts,” so how smart can I be?

Maybe still smart, who knows. Who cares, really. All of those standards are relative to something or another so who can objectively judge? I knew a guy that was damn near a textbook on law after a pint of vodka. In fact, he only practiced law after his pint. So was he smart? I’m not sure, but I think it added to his flare: the idea of an alcoholic-homeless-lawyer is pretty satisfying. I can’t remember his real name, or if he even told me it, but I remember him as Lawman.

The first day we met he was drunk. The day before I’d had a pretty good kick back from the folks exiting off HWY 64 at Utica/Peoria (I say “kick back” because my begging provided an opportunity for them to feel good about themselves and, simultaneously, elicited my reward or “kick back”). My work ended that day about 8:30 when a guy in a Beamer gave me a twenty and we exchanged “god blesses.” Then in a flush of near ecstasy, I rushed right down to the gas station and caught a real bit of luck when I hit for seventy-seven bucks on a Lucky 7’s lotto ticket.

I lit a freshly purchased smoke, left the gas station parking lot, crossed Utica, and strutted straight down Cherry Street—an artsy part of town where the affluent mosey around with shopping bags full of name-brand clothes— with my right hand in my pocket rubbing the crisp bills together, almost hearing that gritty-papery sound even with all the cars driving past. I had my chin tilted unnaturally up, and my eyes straight ahead to meet the eyes of every well-to-do person I could, smiling in a smug way that must have seemed menacing based on the reaction of the women I passed (possibly confidence coming from an obviously homeless man as a perceptually disturbing contradiction). I felt like a gritty-crisp hundred dollar bill.

Normally I would have just bought a bottle for myself, but because I hit so lucky I thought I might have a go in a bar—it’d been awhile. So I turned left off the street and into a little nook bar that was just a bar with one table in the back. Almost John Wayne like, I swaggered up to the bar.

“How about a drink, cowboy.”

“How about an ID, tumbleweed.”

The bartender was fifty-ish with jazz-musician-like slicked-back greyish hair. Patrons were smoking inside. There were no windows. I liked the place already.

In my state of god-blessedness I’d left my proof-of-self—along with all the rest of my stuff—on the other side of the overpass where I was working. For a moment I stood there unable to think straight because of the panic of losing my stuff combined with my unsatisfied—and worsening—desire to drink. Then, once my brain kicked back on, I strolled out of the bar without a word—seeming calm as possible—and power-walked back down Cherry Street as fast as I could, my eyes never leaving the sidewalk, my feet barely shuffling above it.

I got back to the office around 9 and my stuff was still there. I rummaged through my old Jansport backpack probably fifteen times before remembering that I’d just bought cigarettes at the gas station. A sudden flash of memory hit me: “A pack of cowboy killers.” “ID please.” A folded twenty-dollar bill sitting on top of my ID and them both sliding across the counter. “How about one of those lucky 7’s too.” Scratching the lotto ticket with my lucky 1969 penny. Tipping the cashier a dollar. Pocketing the rest of the money, my ID still sitting on the counter, and the door chiming as I walk out.

I slung my bag on and sprinted under the overpass back to the store. A sign on the door said they had closed early: “sorry for any inconvenience.” Sorry for any inconvenience! Sorry for any inconvenience. Winded to the point of lightheadedness, I sat on the curb and lit a smoke. I really needed a drink and a wallet and a drink.

The liquor stores in Oklahoma close at 9 so I decided I’d do something about the wallet situation. I wanted my proof-of-self to have a safe resting place when I retrieved it the next day.

The feel of the sidewalk beneath my feet seemed a half-second delayed as I walked down Utica towards the Family Dollar on 11^th. There was a high frequency ringing in my ears, and each whoosh of a car driving past—also a half-second delayed—produced a low pitch “wom” that made my right eye twitch and my head nod forward-then-back as if I were fighting sleep. By the time I was passing the hospital my vision was filling with those cigarette-burn type film-reel spots that flicker on the screen, and a couple of nurses on a smoke break seemed not so interested in my health (or their own, I guess), so I looked at the sidewalk instead.

I was still looking at the sidewalk when I started to cross 11^th and the sudden roar of a car horn and blast of headlights spiked every nerve in my body—producing an instant of pain I imagine is the equivalent of being hit by a train.

“Watch where you’re walking you fuckin’ idiot!”

I tried to flip them off, but when I raised my left hand, all that came up was a contorted claw-like gesture, as if were reverting back to the animal ways and saying “grrrrrr, I’ll claw you.” I hobbled across the street with a half-rock gait, my angry claw still raised. They beeped their horn a few more times as they drove off: “fuckin’ loon!”

I made it to Family Dollar.

“We’ll be closing in ten minutes sir,” the clerk said as I walked in.

“Mhmm.” Both eyes were taking turns twitching now, and my left leg felt about six inches too long.

I grabbed a fake-leather wallet. The fluorescent lights made me feel like I was in a nuthouse. The store would be closed in eight minutes. Family dollar sold beer now. I had to think fast: did I want to try and buy without my proof-of-self? Nope, I didn’t like asking for favors or rejection, plus I had a backup plan: a big bottle of Listerine original flavor and a bottle of off-brand cough and cold syrup, grape flavored.

“Well that was a close one,” The clerk said as she beeped my three items.

“What’re-you-talking-about?” My words scatted out like ants flooded from home by a sadistic five-year old.

“We close in a minute. You just barely made it, hun,”  she looked about fifty with long-suffering dark eyes and a close-lipped-slight-curl-at-the-corners smile that somehow matched the “Jesus Saves” gold-cross pen on her collared work shirt.

“Yeah-thank-god,” I pointed at her pen with my eyes and nodded my head back-and-forth, smiling.

She smiled. “I’ll pray for you,” she said as she handed me my change.

I looked at the ground and walked out and around to the side of the building. I sat down on the concrete against the brick wall and behind the dumpster and downed about a third of the bottle of Listerine. At about 25% alcohol, it’s a little over twice as strong as your average wine. That being said, it’s not as easy to stomach as wine. I gagged a couple times but had the willpower to keep it down. I put my money in the wallet and lit a cigarette.

After about 15 minutes the only thing that felt bad was my stomach. The Listerine was still hard to drink, but I got it about halfway done and stood up to leave. As I was walking towards the front of the building, the clerk came out with the trash. Her steps were slow and her back was rounded like she was carrying her own cross.

“Shit! You scared me!” I was feeling a bit more mentally acute.

“What’re you doing out here? I’ll call the police.” I was about 15 feet away, but she was still on edge, her crooked body arching towards the door.

“Hey, hey, hey, now there’s no need for that. But anyway since you’re here, would you have sold me beer without an ID?” I took two steps towards her.

She cocked her head and the suffering in her eyes shattered like stained glass, judgment a ray of light flooding from inside.

She drudged back inside shaking her head. Then—through the barely cracked open door—she yelled back out at me: “Judgment day is coming. You better get your name in that gold book before it’s too late.”

“I know who I am lady! I don’t need to prove that to you or God or anyone else!” I yelled in the direction of the locked door.

I drank the cough syrup, threw the bottle on the ground, and started walking back towards Cherry Street. The cars and people were a little blurry but not frightening. (Maybe less frightening because they were blurry). My steps were a little stumbly but felt more natural—atleast until the cough syrup started really kicking in: then my legs got real stiff, and I felt like I was walking on stilts. My eyes started widening and everything gained a surreal clarity: the street got bigger—the buildings became imposing—the trees swayed in unison like bowing actors—the people I passed were shadowy caricatures with exaggerated expressions. I needed to get back to the office. My brain was bleeding. I needed to not throw up. I started whispering to myself “I know who I am, I know who I am,” and for some reason this helped with the nausea. I somehow made it to the overpass and somehow wobbled up the incline to the stereotypical-where-us-homeless-people-sleep-flat-top-part. The sounds rumbling overhead combined with the echoes of cars passing under the overpass created a comforting-because-condensing sense of pressure. I laid my head on my Jansport backpack and repeated the identity mantra until I was asleep.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

So that was the night before I met Lawman. As it would happen, I fell asleep with my right side facing the street. The astute reader will immediately see the problem here: the dream. The dream is why I never slept under the overpass. The cough syrup is why I forgot I never sleep under the overpass.

 The cough syrup made the dream weirder.  But it was essentially the same and I woke up the same way: I’m late for work. I fling myself up out of bed and to the right. SMACK, and I was rolling down the concrete incline towards the lunchtime-busy street at a decent speed. BAM, and I was stopped. A car sped by honking about 6 feet away.

A pair of polished black leather shoes was next to my head, and I looked up to see a hand extended towards me. With a helping tug, I stood up and saw a man in front of me wearing a well-tailored-three-piece black suit. He was clean shaven—which amplified the masculinity of his already solid jaw line—and had slicked-back black hair. His irises were nearly black, albeit a strange looking black next to the yellowy whites of his eyes. Basically he looked really familiar, like an Italian lawyer or entrepreneurial millionaire one might see on evening television.

“Well that was close. Technically, if that car had hit you, it would have been jaywalking and you would have been liable for all the damages. That is, assuming you survived.”

I was still stuck in the unconscious-dream-association haze and paused for a good 8 seconds.

“Good to know. Thanks.”

I smelled alcohol on his breath. I started brushing dirt off of myself as if I wasn’t normally covered in it.

“Hey business man, having a drink on your lunch break?”

“Actually, I’m currently unemployed. Unfortunately it’s illegal to drink inside a courthouse.”

“How ‘bout I buy you a drink right now then? Whether I would have died or not, I owe ya.”

“Certainly,” he checked his fancy leather band watch. “I have some time to spare.”

I ran back up the incline and grabbed my bag. On the way back down I noticed he had the same one.

“Nice bag.”

“Likewise.”

I lit a smoke, and we started walking down the street towards the gas station. Once inside the store, the smell of incense burning immediately turned my stomach over, and I went to the bathroom to throw up the grape syrup and the dream and the Listerine. I pulled the nearly empty bottle of Listerine out and chuckled—almost spitting the mouthwash out on the mirror—as I swished it around in my mouth to get rid of the taste of vomit. The cashier gave me back my ID. I put it in my wallet as the door chimed its hello-and-goodbye, and we started heading towards the nook bar.

Cherry Street was busy with people on their lunch breaks. Cars were coming and going and most people were dressed in business-casual-like attire. Relative to them, I looked underdressed and the Lawman looked overdressed. He looked better than them, except his backpack looked a little out of place.

“So what’s up with the backpack? It’s off kilter with the suit.”

“It’s more practical than a leather shoulder bag right now,” he said in a collected, straight manner: his head held upright and level, his eyes calm and steady.

I was a little off balance from the night before. I still smelt the alcohol on him and that made things level. We didn’t talk much the rest of the way.

We got to the bar and the same old jazz guy was working. I showed him my ID: “see, I know who I am.”

He looked at the Lawman and then me in a way that intimated a perceived incongruity.

“What’ll you gents be having?”

Lawman asked for a double well-vodka and tonic. I followed suit then paid the bartender. We moved to the table in the back. The bar was the dark where everyone looks a little pretty. I had about forty-five bucks left.

“No drinking in the courtroom huh? You a lawyer?”

“I was a lawyer. The BAR suspended my license after all that.”

I lit a smoke and offered one to the Lawman. He passed.

“So what’s up with that?”

“Well, it’s kind of a funny story: I specialized in cases involving clients arrested for operating motor vehicles while drinking. Ironically, I was arrested and tried for the same thing.”

“So you were drunk in the courtroom while being tried for a DUI?”

“Actually, I was intoxicated while defending myself on trial for a DUI.”

We both finished our first drinks.

“Shit,” I took a long drag on the smoke, “that is ironic.”

A business-casual dressed couple stood up and walked out of the bar. Sunshine flooded in through the open door and for a moment I could see thousands of dust particles floating around in the air. Lawman went to get the next round, and I went to the pisser. I closed my eyes and let go and felt the sweet release of pressure from my bladder and heard the yellow stream rushing against the urinal. Once I opened my eyes I noticed one of those conveniently-placed-right-above-the-urinal posters, which were there to either make pissing less tedious or make standing by another guy at the urinal less awkward (i.e. prevent the wandering eye). This particular poster was especially well fitted for a bar bathroom: “THE DUI DUDE” it said, with a picture of a handsome Italian-looking lawyer below. The very bottom read: “No suspended license guaranteed or the Dude drops the fee.”

Shit, that is ironic, I thought as I walked back to him. A few steps away, I saw him sitting at the table alone, fidgeting with his right ear. In the dimness he seemed a bit more sullen than confident, like an old oil painting with the darks bleeding into the lights in a way that somehow seems more real than the stark boundaries we see in real life. He could have been the blind sculptor of a tragedy there in the dim light. That or the sculptor’s last statue before fate blinds him. He was staring at his left hand and tapping something metal against his glass. I pulled my lucky penny out of my pocket and set it on the table as I sat down.

“Thanks for the drink. What’s that?”

He looked up at me with his face still pointing down. For a couple seconds he gauged my intentions, my sincerity. I unconsciously slid the penny around in a figure eight pattern on the table.

“A wedding ring,” he said, and saying those words uncorked something inside him. In a very lawyeresque way, he proceeded to tell me about how his wife had left with their six-year old son, their German shepherd, his Porsche and pretty much everything else after the fiasco—leaving only enough money for him to get himself through the court case (he had to get a lawyer after losing his license); about how he had been an alcoholic for years and how it ran in his family (the absence of his father growing up being the reason he chose to become the “DUI Dude” in the first place); about how he really only felt comfortable or competent in the courtroom when drunk; and about the clever ways he masked his intoxication: such as wearing cologne that blurred the smell of alcohol by being somewhat alcohol-like in scent and also just never being sober around any of the court officials so that they could never tell the difference in his personality.

When he told me about choosing to be homeless because he felt too ashamed to contact his friends for help, something cracked in his legalistic manner.

“No one offered a fucking dollar. They know who I am,” he said, the emotion in his voice striking a chord somewhere in me.

We locked into one of those stares where the universe kinda suspends itself for a second and all of the surroundings become the visual equivalent of white noise; it was just me seeing him seeing me seeing him seeing me, etc. An indistinct sound metronomed at an increasing pace until we simultaneously realized—by way of our glasses breaking—that the noise had been his ring and my lucky penny pinging against our glasses.  We both looked at the shards and laughed much louder than we probably should have. The old bartender, without any sort of humor, told us to leave immediately. We both tipped him a few bucks as we walked out elbowing each other in the ribs.

“That was different,” I said while my eyes blinked rapidly trying to adjust to the daylight.

“I could have gotten us off on a technicality if that old fucker wanted to take it to the courtroom.” He laughed.

“It’s pretty early still. How about we get some food and a bottle?”

He agreed. We walked down to the liquor store and got a half-gallon of Korsakoff’s then picked up a couple to-go burgers at the Irish restaurant down the road. I insisted on paying for everything and was now broke. The weather was that cool sorta atmospheric temperature where the boundaries between your body and the air blur a little so we walked down to Centennial Park, eating the burgers as we went.

Normally cops don’t mess with the homeless anyway because there’s no money to be gained, but Lawman was in a suit and neither of us really wanted to go to jail. So I pulled the sheet out of my bag and we sat down on it behind some evergreen bushes and beside an auxiliary walkway. A retired-looking woman jogged by in spandex athletic wear and smile-waved at Lawman. I pulled the bottle out and forced it into his hands.

“I bet she thinks you’re out here trying to reel in a lost soul.”

“Ah, the whole Devil is a lawyer joke? Very original.”

“I was thinking more like a Jehovah’s Witness.”

“I’m gonna have to plead the fifth, your honor.”

“I’m gonna have to drink a fifth, of this bottle, if you keep it up with that legal shit.”

I took a couple good gulps and passed him the bottle. A breeze blew soft. I laid back, looking at the sky. A plane smearing a face-shaped cloud across the blue made my heart start spinning.

“Did you know perjury actually…”

“Would you please just shut the fuck up with that legal stuff. You’re not even a lawyer anymore.”

I lit a cigarette and closed my eyes then exhaled a big puff of smoke towards the sky.

“Maybe I’m not.  But at least I was something. What are you? Who are you? Nothing, that’s what you are, you fucking bum.”

I glanced at him through the corner of my right eye as he took a drink off the bottle. His eyes were locked on the downtown skyline. I reclosed my eyes and exhaled another puff.

“I’m a homeless man that would rather have been hit by a car than listen to you talk anymore.”

“You’re nothing, that’s who you are.”

I snatched the bottle and started downing it until I couldn’t down it anymore then threw up to my left.  The vodka felt like lava coming up with the stomach acid and burgers. I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. As I was fading out, I heard him mumbling something like “great fuck life” or “hate truck wife” or something, before the sound of his feet dragging through the grass dissolved into the distance.

$$$$$$&&&&&$$$$$$$

I woke up to ambulance sirens heading East on Sixth street. Up and to the right, I tumbled into the bushes, scraping my faces and arms.  I closed my eyes, breathed in the piney scent and became somewhat oriented. Struggling to get up out of the bush, I noticed a wallet on the blanket. Guilt sprung up in my chest and wrung my insides out—I threw up again. The sun was beginning to set. Lawman’s picture was on the wallet’s ID. I slipped the wallet in my back-right pocket.

An anxiety crept across my body as I noticed the sirens had stopped screaming. Instinctively, I grabbed all my stuff up and headed towards where the sound had last come from. My steps felt unnatural, my eyes were twitching again. All I could smell was the vomit on my clothes.

Across Peoria, out front of a coffee shop, I saw skid marks leading up to a truck parked with its hazards on. Ten to twenty people were in the street—gawking around the truck. The paramedics were kneeling in the middle of the circle, beating on a suited man’s chest. A man in hand cuffs was being guided towards the back of a cop car, stumbling side to side. I turned the other direction, bumbling towards downtown as fast as I could.

&&&&&&&&&&&

So I guess that’s why I’m still homeless nowadays

---

by Tulsa Review

Waking Up

Waking Up

by Eric Tackett

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I followed the long scar of earth left by the now overturned SUV. Nearing the front of the vehicle, the sounds of crushed metal trying to flex back into appropriate shapes clashed with the slow trickle of raindrops passing through the surrounding trees. White light flooded the area as headlights reflected off the ground now too close. As I neared the driver side door, I could hear the buzz from the broken radio, scratching into spurts of lyrics before grating back to white noise. The smell of oil and burnt rubber singed my nose. I bent down, and I was surprised to see myself still seated; feet pinned into the crumpled floorboard and seat belt securely fastened in its proper place.

“I blame you for this,” I said peering into the car. “You’re right, this road is beautiful. It’s perfect for all those late-nights of deep thought and screaming into the windshield.” I sat down into the mud taking my hand from just inside the shattered window. “Did yelling really require both hands? Steering the vehicle is typically an important part of the process.” I ran my fingers across the cuts from the blown windshield before letting go causing it to fall back to the ceiling with a thud. Following the trail of injury up my arm, I counted the slits of red that peeked out, to my bruised face, and stopped at my abdomen where a small red circle appeared as it soaked through our shirt.

“He’s dying,” I yelled past the vehicle at the deer that laid perpendicular to it. The catalyst of our situation created an awkward contrast of cause and effect; hard and soft; winner and loser. “Well, honestly, we’re both dying,” my focus shifted from the deer to the view of dangling arms and that growing red spot. I wondered what shape it would take. As it elongated with gravity. How fast? I pictured the wayward piece of twisted metal plunged into our right flank. Hopefully, it missed my kidney. 

“It makes sense. That a deer would decide when you end up overturned and bleeding to death. You’ve never made a decision that was just yours. Always motivated by someone else,” I lifted myself back to my feet and leaned into the driver side door with both palms flat on chilled metal. I listened to the car moan from its tortured position, small gasps of steam periodically released like dying breath, each sporadic burst a waning cry for survival.

“You hung on every word they said. Conversations about choices. Choices that weren’t yours.” Your purpose was preordained.

We were going to lift the family from its embarrassing existence of the middle class. A middle class that bordered too close to low and required too many off-brand canned goods to maintain. “Being you was supposed to get easier after college, but you got comfortable. Comfortable denying that you had once wanted something else and that their voices replaced yours,”

I could see the steep bank the car slid down, and the road barrier destroyed by our high-speed collision. Faintly, the sound of distant vehicles rushing down highway 12 carried across the wilderness, each car accelerated by as their GPS systems beeped for upcoming exits; all bypassing the scenic route of a two-lane twist and turn now littered with broken glass and tiny pieces of red and yellow headlights. Our haphazard mosaic.

Turning back at the metallic smell of blood, I returned to the window, kneeled down, and, this time, leaned in. “You did it all right. Finished school, got the job, and the girl,” I pressed my hand just past the door to balance; the glass pressed back, and I waited for a pain that never came. “But, how long did you think you could hide the unhappiness?” The red spot caught my attention again, it had doubled in size. It snaked its way down our shirt and swallowed every piece of pale fabric along the way.

“Sarah noticed. She was just too busy to mind as long as you continued to smile.”

Sarah fell in love with our smile, and she loved telling the story of how. She used every gathering to illustrate our first date. She’d recount every detail of the café on the corner with oversized bay windows. Each one allowing the sunlight to flood in revealing the imperfections in the tile floor. Tables made for two, walls of scattered paintings by local artists, and the constant sound of pressurized air filled the space.

“He was running late, so I found the perfect seat, a straight eye line from the door,” she would say leaning in with a smile to clarify her cleverness. She’d hold her breath, “The door was too small, creaky, and it would always get caught in the wind,” she breathed out with a playful eye roll, “then he came in, the breeze caught the door, like always, and he barely got in without falling.” She laughed and braced herself in a loose hug, “Our eyes met, and he smiled. I knew I loved him right then,” she would finish and turn slightly to give us a wink. To her, it was the perfect date crafted from all the classic ideas; even if it was a lie.

“This life isn’t yours. It all belongs to them, and they’ve taken enough of you,” I whispered. Blood covered our face. I realized I couldn’t recall the time. The smell of iron competed with fried electronics and stray gasoline that started to seep in.

 The cab seemed larger, and I realized it encompassed me. Staring up at myself, I hear the radio began to play consistently and lyrics of familiar songs filled my mind. I murmured the words involuntarily, and suddenly, I’m eight years old in the park from my childhood.

“Feet on the ground,” I yell, but the words falter in my mouth. I’m tired of playing hide-n-seek. He always cheats and hides in the tree, so I go there first. I stand at the bottom and peer into the branches barely able to see through the dense brush. Grasping the bark with my right hand, I begin to climb by throwing my left hand to the nearest branch. I’m three branches up, and my red shirt catches on something. “Hey!” I yell into the darkness above me. My shirt is ripping, and I am singing my favorite song. My hand slips, and I lose my balance. I begin to fall as my shirt tears free.

“I want to go back. Just not like before. Not for them,” I cough into the words as they sputter from my mouth.

My right eye is matted shut, but the left is blinded by the sudden burst of the morning light. The slow beat of my heart pulses near my ears; quickening as I comprehend my inverted perspective. I hear muffled voices surrounding me as someone takes my hand before reaching across me.

 “I want to get up now.”

---

by Tulsa Review

Cobh

Third Place Prose Winner

Cobh

by Emily Forrest

---

After two days in the city, everything outside of it feels fresh. I look out the window and watch the world quickly change from stark pavement to soft mountains, painted green with yellow flowers and scattered with sheep. Everyone always says that Ireland is so green, but that feels like an understatement driving out of Dublin into the countryside. Two hours of driving and more than half of the island later and I find myself in Cobh (pronounced as “cove”, I come to learn), a little town on the Southern coast. Two hours. That’s all the time we have here. I don’t think much of this town, it’s just a stop, a break from the road. I wander into a quiet immigration museum and realize the silence comes from my friends having taken off. I soon learn that millions of immigrants left Ireland from Cobh. This town was where the last passengers boarded the Titanic and in 1915, the citizens took care of the survivors of the Lusitania, the man says. This town doesn’t seem to have luck with large ships, I think. But millions of people left Ireland at this port, he continues. Really, it’s just the tragedies that history remembers.

            I find my friends again and we wander out of the museum to look out at the ocean, but find a better view after climbing steep stairs to the top of a hill. Cobh seems small and rather empty. But oh, I hear music floating from a band playing in a nearby park. Once we walk past the park, the rest of the town comes into sight. Row houses line the streets in muted shades of nearly every color, with a massive cathedral on a hill towering over all of them. It doesn’t take long for us to decide that we need to see it up close. After climbing the steep, stone streets, I discover it to be St. Colman’s Cathedral. It is a Catholic church, graced with Gothic architecture despite its relative youth at merely one hundred years old. The last passengers to board the Titanic watched this cathedral fade from sight. I am amazed. At the grandeur of the architecture, of course, but also by the amount of information that can be learned from a humble plaque. The doors are finally reached and pulled open. I should have expected that a building with such an intricate exterior would be just as grandiose on the interior. But I enter the cathedral with zero expectations (the best way to go about things) and let it astonish me.

            The day before, I had wandered through St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A rather busy place, given its nearly thousand-year history and location in central Dublin. Three days after that, I found myself in another small town, in its main cathedral. This cathedral held a sense of reverence as a church in use. Paper cut-outs from the children hung about and a praying woman in the back. I didn’t stay long, out of respect. But this cathedral on the coast? An entirely different experience, with different emotions.

            Besides the sound of other people trickling in, the cathedral is perfectly silent. My breath slips away when I catch the first glimpse. It’s like any other church or cathedral in that it’s lined with pews, facing an altar. But this is beautiful in a way that I have never seen before. Stories and saints frozen in intricately etched marble walls, while granite pillars hold up the sloping arches. The ceiling is a deep, dark wood The lights are soft and the evenly scattered stained glass is bright, even on this cloudy day. If a choir sang here, it would resonate so beautifully that it would be overwhelming. But that’s how I feel now, I realize, as I wander about slowly with tears in my eyes. Beauty often leaves me speechless and content, but this is something else. This is a sense of awe and of finally finding something I’ve never been able to catch. A sense of the divine as I’ve never felt before.

            I walk slowly around each side of the space, taking in the beauty. I want to remember this moment. This exquisite, breathless, peaceful moment that I unexpectedly find myself in. I realize that I am the last of my friends lingering in the cathedral. They’re leaving too quickly, I think. I take my time, trying to take in every bit of the place. This space demands my full attention and I willingly give it. I move slowly to the center, deeply enthralled, as I breathe in the beauty of the dancing light and sacred stillness.

             I eventually make my way back to the doors, hesitating as I turn back to catch one last glimpse. As I marvel at the exterior one last time, I can hear my friends – they aren’t as far as I had thought. Maybe I should convert to Catholicism and move to this lovely town, I ponder, as I leap down the steps.  I would live in a blue house across the way, where I could walk to the cathedral each Sunday. In the summertime, I could watch the ocean until the sun sets, well past ten o’clock. And I would knit all winter to keep myself warm. I run into a French couple on the steps, knocking me out of my thoughts. “Excuse me,” I say. “Sorry, excuse us,” they laughingly reply, or so I assume. I don’t speak French, so I wouldn’t know. But they seem apologetic and not at all snobbish, as the French supposedly are towards Americans. I smile at this encounter and continue hurrying to meet my friends before I lose them.

            We explore the little town and they drag me into a waffle shop, of all places. The Irish enjoy waffles too – who knew? The man making the waffles seems amused but is patient and kind as he deals with Americans. With such friendly locals, it wouldn’t be hard to make friends living here. If I lived here, I would invite my new Irish friends over to my painted house. I would cook and they would bring whiskey or wine, because the Irish love their alcohol to a fault. I would reprimand them for it, but still enjoy their kindness. The Irish people are kind, much kinder than I had expected. I’m going to miss them and their lovely accents, I think as we leave the shop.

            We cross the street and I see the ocean again. I’ll probably never live on this side of the ocean, I tell myself. But right now, in this moment, I am here. Fully alive with the salty wind whipping through my hair and heart dancing from the exquisite, holy beauty it had just felt.  Never again will I be twenty years old, feeling wildly independent, with the thrill of exploring such a beautiful country. And soon, far too soon, I find myself leaving this town, likely never to return, like millions have done before me.

---

by Tulsa Review

Panoptico

Second Place Prose Winner

Panoptico

by Dustin Springer

---

Elroy hadn’t shaved in three weeks and four days or had a hair cut in eight months.  To cover it up he usually wore a ball cap everywhere he went. He wore white t-shirts for days and had a problem with sweating — they were always stained with massive yellow rings around the collar and pits with a small circle on his lower back. He’d often go days without a shower and if he had it his way showering is just something he wouldn’t do. It felt like a waste of time, until he smelled himself or someone made a comment, or he developed some kind of fungus on his inner thigh or lower stomach. He never knew why he sweated so much, never knew it was a real medical condition and developed a complex about it around the same time most boys started bragging about how far they made it with girls.  

When high school passed and it still hadn’t happened for him, and then when he turned twenty-one and all his friends departed to raise kids or move to some interesting place because they said they didn’t want to be boring all their life, he realized it may never happen for him, that he may never know what it’s like to lay next to a woman or feel her body press into his or feel lips on his, so he sort of just gave up. He was very tall and round, but he felt small until someone said something about how big he is or made a joke about being afraid of making him angry, and he did beat up two guys once because they were bothering his friend outside a bar downtown.  

Since then he knew he had a power, a power to intimidate, a power he really didn’t like or want. When he got angry because the line he’d been standing in was too long, or someone messed up his food, or someone was especially rude to him, or he was just drunk and belligerent and he simply expressed his dissatisfaction or allowed himself to vent, people quivered in fear and treated even a minor harsh word as an extremely hostile threat against their life, so he learned to restrain himself and his anger in most situations. Maybe it was because of his size or the sound of his voice booming out of his huge neck, but people always assumed he was dumb when he spoke and treated him like a child, or just intellectually inferior anyway, so then, around twenty-three, he gave up on that too and always tried to say as little as possible in all situations. Living alone, with no friends, no place to go, no women, never speaking, and working as a forklift driver for all the major manufacturers in the area at one point or another with only a few beers or shots of liquor to ease the loneliness (along with of course television which had all his conversations for him). He had managed to live a relatively simple life and keep to himself for his thirty adult years and didn’t even go to prison until he was forty-seven.  

In prison it’s nearly impossible to not speak because everyone gets into your business at some point. Being quiet was still an advantage though because nobody likes a smartass and even though Elroy was too big to mess with (but of course the gangs could have made sure he knew who was the real “big guy”) under pressure he actually managed to crack a joke and everyone knew that even though he could crush their skull like a grapefruit, he was all right. They left him alone. He even managed to make friends with his celly, Nick, who was in for writing bad checks and forging an opioid prescription. Elroy made it through his little one-year stint without a fight or being messed with in any sort of gay way or having any trouble at all really (except when the correctional officers wanted to remind everyone that even a guy as big as Elroy was under their control they of course would make scene with Elroy front and center, but ole Elroy was so easy-going about it and just played along so well that even they couldn’t help but like the guy after a couple of months) and he actually even made a friend, so, fortunately for Elroy, he got out pretty quickly and served the rest of his three-year sentence on parole.

So, oh yeah, Elroy was sitting at home one night, uninterested in the new programs that had come on since he’d been away, being unable to jump into the middle of a series because all the shows had become long-running serial dramas like in the old days, but he was still trying his best to get into whatever the plot was supposed to be (something about asteroids bring viruses or aliens -- he couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be -- to earth while there was also some kind of famine and a crooked oligarchy everyone liked because they were forced to sing on TV and the audience called in to vote on who’s be in charge every week) when he ran out of beer.  

He didn’t think twice about how the rest of the evening should go. He just put on his ball cap and denim coat and drove down to the convenience store. He grabbed a cold thirty-pack of Miller Highlife and got in line. There were nine or ten people ahead of him, and this was a store that prided itself on speed and service. The guy in front of him was standing without any beer or food and maybe no reason to even be there, but he seemed like the type to stop the line to complain or flirt or cause some kind of scene because maybe he was all about himself or wanted something for free. A couple was in front of him, probably stoned—they were buying all candy and sweet coffees and being very withdrawn and their eyes were puffy.  

A Mexican guy was in front of them with a bag of beef jerky, but he looked nervous, probably because of the cop the store had standing by the counter at all times, or because the money changers were there in their bullet-proof vests and tank-like containers they carried around on dollies, loading up tens of thousands of dollars out of the safe below the counter while the cop looked on. The scene made Elroy’s heart beat loader too, of course sweat dripping off his nose, running down his hand, making the beer’s cardboard handle mushy. He looked down at his stamp: T6. The noise in the room sounded thinned out like underwater or music blasting through a wall. His eyes felt puffy and focused over his flushed face. The cop made some banal joke to the money guys about getting rich or something. Elroy felt the handle on the beer rip a little, the sweat was dissolving the cardboard.

One night after lights out Nick asked him about his life outside—who his friends were and what they were like, what kind of women he likes (women came up a lot actually which wasn’t that hard to talk about, but Nick got suspicious when he realized the only women Elroy talked about were the perfect-figure/perfect-10 types, like all the women on TV), and who his girlfriend was.

Nick realized he was probably Elroy’s only friend in, at least, a very long time and felt the significance of their relationship and kind of started to even honor its importance to Elroy, thinking he would never betray or hurt Elroy in any way, a sort of brotherhood like people only find in their deepest youth, but also, deep down, he knew he didn’t care as much as he knew Elroy thought he did and wasn’t beyond giving him up for a little better spot in life. But really Elroy wasn’t as naive as Nick thought he was maybe and, deep down, knew Nick wasn’t ever going to get that opportunity and decided Nick was safe as long as they both believe he was. So, he told him everything.

“What? Never? You never been with a woman? Goddamn,” his hand hung over the side of the bunk. It was stamped AF3. “I mean you know what prison is right? Haha, I guess some of us never are free…”

The guy in the front of the line holding everything up was pleading with the clerk. The clerk was busy working the register, talking to the money guys, keeping an eye on everybody, and trying to shoot the shit with the cop all while listening to something on the TV behind the counter; he would look at the guy and shrug and then look around and talk and then point at something for the other guy to do and then return to the story the cop was telling.  

The TV was saying something about force or enforcement, about protection and need, about a nation. The Mexican guy set his jerky on the rack he was next to and went to leave. The cop noticed. He radioed something into the mic he had on his chest, some code, and dropped the conversation with the clerk, becoming very serious all of the sudden. Elroy knew that song and dance too well—it was never benign. There was a woman with potato chips and soda pop standing almost at the counter. She was wearing a denim skirt and yellow blouse she filled in with a few little frumps around her hips and chest and her sleeves were full of her loose upper arm. Her hair was blond and done up big with hairspray. Her face was a little puffy, a little saggy, and had a few lines. But she still looked good in makeup, and Elroy could smell her heavy perfume from where he was standing. GTA1 was on her hand. The handle ripped a little more. The Mexican man took off running as soon as he was out the door. Red and blue lights flashed outside the window and down the street. Elroy took the beer back to the fridge and put it away, slipping out the side door unnoticed.

He drove around a little while not knowing what to do with himself. He could have just called it a night, the beer wasn’t even important to him anymore, but the thought of going back to his apartment, probably with a sack of McDonald’s Double Cheeseburgers and the pale flicker of the TV, just felt so empty, at least empty without refreshment.

He felt the need to go, to get away, to put some space between himself and…he didn’t know what. Something at that store, or maybe it wasn’t something in the store at all, maybe it was something he’d forgotten about or something out in the night. He drove under the soft orange light of the street lamps making right and left turns whenever he came to a crossroads so he wouldn’t be going in circles. The city is all concrete and dirt—nothing here for him; nothing here for anyone.  

The streets are empty, mostly. Around every corner Elroy plays a game, guessing whether or not he’ll see police lights somewhere down the road. The safe bet is that he will. The cheat is to look at the houses. If there’s a wall around the house, or even around the neighborhood, the road is usually safe, usually. The size is an indicator too, when the houses get small and the buildings are kind of far apart and dilapidated, there’s usually some kind of police action going on somewhere along the road.  

He turned the radio on to maybe drown out the lost feeling, the worry about whatever wasn’t there, the empty confusion; some guy was talking about the death of America, the potential to destroy everything, and the virtue of caution. A helicopter flew overhead, shining a light into the neighborhood off to his right. The guy on the radio kept saying “security” over and over and something about his father. He said he liked the drills, that that was part of his duty as a citizen and that they filled him with pride. He was yelling and getting more and more excited, more impassioned, and Elroy didn’t know whether he agreed with him or not, but it felt good.

He found a bar down on a corner of a deserted shopping mall.  

He wasn’t sure about going in, sort of knew there would be some guy in there who’d want to fight him just because he’ll be the biggest guy there, but also thought it felt better than going back home. The inside was almost empty except the three guys playing pool and the four guys on the corner of the bar and a couple at a table and some lady dancing by herself in front of the jukebox. The bartender was short and round and kind of cute, she put some blond color in her black hair, but had it pulled behind her head and wore glasses, but for some reason he knew that of course she was off limits. Without making eye contact with anyone, he sat himself at the end of the bar, as far away from everybody as he could possibly get.

“Hey big guy, what’ll it be?”

“Miller Highlife…”

“You wanna slide down a few?  Make my job a lot easier; they won’t bite I promise…”

He would drink one beer, just drink a beer and then go home, maybe two.

He moved himself down closer to the guys on the corner, keeping a seat open between, not wanting to be in anyone’s space.  She sat the beer down on the bar; her hand was marked AB4. The stamp reminded him he had to see his parole officer in the morning and had a court date, a final court date in three weeks or so.

The guy closest of course turned to him and had something loaded and ready: “How’ll the bar’ll hole ya?”

One beer. Just one.

“You doe talk?  Margie, he doe talk…”

“You’d better watch it Boyd, he don’ look like he like you much…”

“Yeah, join the club,” and just like that he turned back to his buddies.  

There was always a moment near the beginning he felt passed by, like he would be left behind by everyone and everything going on if he just held to himself and didn’t say anything. Now he was free to finish his beer. A jet flew overhead, drowning out all the noise so that everyone had to stare and hold their tongue for just a moment until it passed and then of course the old men complained about the drills, about it being the middle of the night. Everyone was tired of the drills, but more people, at least younger people, complained mostly about the complaining.

A is for addict.

Just before he took his last gulp, the dancer came over.  

She sat right next to him in the stool between him and the drunk. She tapped the drunk on the shoulder and he turned and gave her a cigarette without much fair and returned to his buddies talking about the old days and people they knew, bursting into laughter every few lines. She lit it and took a couple drags then turned to Elroy with a certain attitude of impression.

“My daddy used to sweat like that, well probably not that bad,” she took a drag and studied his unease - he wouldn’t even look at her. Shy men aren’t all that unique, and more trouble than they’re ever worth. He wants to sit alone, let him sit alone. She took the ashtray from the far side of the bar and carefully put out her cigarette, keeping the snipe, and got up. Before she left, she turned to him with her full body and stuck out her hand, “I’m Debra.”

Elroy shook her hand meekly, feeling like she was making some joke about him, and mumbled his name. The skin on the back of her hand was loose and soft, and she held his with light affection. Her hand was stamped H8.

She left him to go see what the guys playing pool where like, they were at least trying to have a good time. Elroy finished his beer, then ordered another.

He drank it quickly and ordered another, then had another beer after that. Debra gave up on the guys playing pool, they were more interested in the game than her. She came over to one of the guys sitting on the corner, the guy on the far side, and bummed a dollar from him to put in the jukebox. She danced alone in the little space between the bar and pool table; Elroy watched her the entire time.  

She was maybe a little older than he was, or maybe not, maybe she’d just been living hard. Her hair was pink, probably dyed red a long time ago, and stood up and away and was matted a little in some spots where she’d been asleep not too long ago. She was skinny but sort of round in some places too. Her face was puffy like the woman from the store, but her makeup was done up too much, too red and everywhere. Something about her eyes were like she wasn’t all there, or not there in the room at all, but not gone, just empty. She danced slowly to all the songs, not keeping to any beat, repeating the same moves over and over, rocking her hips from side to side, occasionally clapping over her head like it was a grand gesture. Elroy ordered another beer. It was getting late.... The couple went home. The guys playing pool settled down to a table, one or two of the old men left. Elroy eyed those old men with suspicion, wondering which one she belonged to. Elroy ordered another beer and Margie said, “Last Call….”

Elroy finished his last beer slowly, letting everyone else leave the bar, trying to time it, so that he and Debra would find the door at the same time.

Debra was going around to everybody saying goodbye with hugs like they all must be good friends. The last one she came over to was Elroy. She told him goodbye and gave him a hug, when he wouldn’t let go, she pecked him on the cheek. She got away from him and went over to the old drunk. Something was said, and she got upset, stamped her feet and cussed and then started yelling. Everyone seemed used to it. The old drunk left without her. She went back over to Elroy; no one else was there.

B is for battery.

“I know you don’t know me or anything, but could you just give me a ride home?”

“Sure,” he said.

T is for theft.

They walked out together to his truck.

“It’s Central Manor, you know where that’s at? They’ve been doing ICCE raids there, and I’ve been trying to stay out of it; I mean how many times can you listen to all that guns goin’ off and screamin’ and cryin’ and kids; I know it ain’t fair but you know that’s what you get when you mess around an threaten us; to be honest I really don’t care for ‘em anyway; I’m just worried they’re going to Hiroshima our ass into last century, haha, like just let me stay out of the way; you know they keep running these drills, calling them drills and all that but you know the drill is over like it’s real now; they’re really doing it now; but I just get the heck out of dodge, like I am not one of these people like the rest of ‘em….”

Her apartment was lit up like Christmas when they pulled up, red and blue flashing all over the street and in the parking lot from the ICCE vehicles. They pulled around to her apartment. She said he can come inside but that she threw out all the furniture because she’s getting all new stuff tomorrow.  

Elroy came in and sat on one of those folding camping chairs that was barely big enough hold him, sank down into it, the thing nearly collapsing under the stress of his size. Debra sat herself on the carpet in front of him to show him this old magazine collection she had that belonged to her father. She didn’t know why, but Elroy reminded her of her dad, and she was just following the feeling. In one of the magazines, her father published a poem, but she never could figure out which magazine it was in. It was about loneliness or togetherness or something, about the magic of finding someone really special or about how nobody is really special at all or something; something about acceptability, or maybe it was rejection.  

Elroy didn’t know what to say so he just sat there and smiled awkwardly when he thought she wanted him to. There was banging on the apartment next door, someone yelling to open up and lights from a flashlight would flash onto the wall through the blinds sometimes. Elroy’s hands started shaking uncontrollably, he never thought he cared, never thought he’d care about being alone with a woman but now that the time had come his heart wouldn’t rest or leave him alone; he tried to conceal his hands by crossing his arms.  

Debra put a magazine back and got another one. Oh yeah, she remembered, the poem was called “Panoptico.” She crawled over on her hands and knees from the stack of magazines at the bottom of her bookshelf to sit right in front of Elroy again. A helicopter was circling overhead, the noise drowned everything out. For what to Elroy seemed like no reason, and maybe a little out of the blue, she took her sweater off. The helicopter shot its searchlight right down on the apartment; the window lit up white and blinding. With a bang the door next door got kicked in.  

Large red splotchy patches covered most of the skin Elroy could see on her shoulders and belly and probably under her bra. She found a bottle next to the bookshelf and turned it up over her mouth to drink. Next door they came marching in, barking orders, their guns pointed. A woman screamed. Debra moved in closer to Elroy, putting her hands on his knees. The helicopter drowned everything out.

“What does H stand for again?” Elroy asked.

The woman next door screamed and screamed, and a man’s voice barked some order and a baby started crying and the woman never stopped screaming.

“Oh,” the room was flashing red and blue, the walls lit with solid white light; overhead a helicopter circled, “It doesn’t matter... as long as we’re together.”

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by Tulsa Review

What God Feels Like

First Place Prose Winner

What God Feels Like

by Meredith Wilson

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My knees are sore and sticking to the kneeler. I shift my weight, resting on the pew behind me for a few seconds before I sit back up to avoid my religion teacher’s watchful gaze. Nervous with anticipation, I shuffle through the booklet she gave me. When we’re not in church, Mrs. Campbell is a fun teacher; she takes us to soup kitchens, dresses up like different saints, and gives us Smarties when we get the answers right in class. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession,” I mutter to myself, trying to make the words stick in my brain. I have already made up my mind to recite every sin listed in the pamphlet, convinced that I’ve committed each of them at least once in my 12 years of existence. One by one, my classmates make their way to the reconciliation room, where Father Tim waits to guide them through the sacrament of penance. One of his eyes droops perpetually, giving him a hangdog appearance.

Father Tim, however, is not a hangdog. He towers over the elementary schoolers and makes us scrape gum off the sidewalks in detention. He’s the reason that girls can’t be altar servers at our church anymore. I used to help light the candles and ring the bells, but now he doesn’t allow women near the altar during Mass. He also tried to bring back head coverings, but that movement has been unsuccessful so far. My mom likes him more than I do; she calls him her “spiritual advisor,” whatever that means.

Some students take longer than others. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Nohemi Gaeta make her way to the back of the chapel. She walks with a confidence I don’t have, prancing, hips swinging side to side like a much older girl. Last week, she tore a piece of paper out of my notebook and drew a picture of me with scribbled hairs on my legs and a unibrow. She passed it around to all the boys in our class. I had tried to ignore the laughing, pretending I didn’t notice and burying my head in my hands. Nohemi has 10 brothers and sisters, so I try to cut her some slack. I have a feeling she’s going to be in there a while. I wonder if she’ll tell Father Tim about the drawing.

There is a knot in my stomach as I wait. I’m worried that I’ll forget to confess something. I imagine myself leaving with a single, stubborn sin clinging to me, deprived of inner peace because Father Tim scared me into silence. My class learned the difference between mortal and venial sins last week, but I’m still fuzzy on the details. I know that mortal sin is the one that damns you eternally, but how can I tell if my sins are mortal or venial? Murder will definitely send me to Hell, but what about digging my nails into my sister’s arm because she lost my favorite scrunchie? I cross my fingers tightly and hope that any wrongdoing I forget turns out to be venial.

It’s late in the afternoon, and I can feel myself growing tired from lunch and recess. I wish I could go home, but I know that even after this is over, I’ll have to wait in after-school care until my parents get off work. I’ll eat pretzel sticks with the lunch ladies and sit on the cafeteria floor to watch an old VHS tape. I think they’re playing Matilda today.

The incense hanging in the air makes my throat dry. I swallow forcefully, looking around at my sleeping, praying, or pamphlet-reading classmates. From the way Mrs. Campbell talks about Reconciliation, I am expecting a sense of relief after I confess. She says that once she lets go of her sins, her heart feels lighter, and she knows she’s closer to God. That is the upside to telling the Father everything I’ve ever done wrong; I can be certain that if I die immediately after, I will ascend directly into Heaven. I’m anxious, but I think it will be worth it to clean my soul. I’ve been dirtying it up ever since I was baptized.

I hear the door open and realize it’s my turn. I slide the kneeler back into place too harshly, and Mrs. Campbell casts a stern look my way as the noise of metal on metal clangs throughout the church. With stiff legs, I stand up, exit the pew, face the altar, and genuflect. I try to mentally rehearse what I’m going to say as I enter the room; everything is moving too quickly. Panicked, I choose to kneel behind the divider, so he can hear my voice but not see my face.

“BlessmeFatherforIhavesinnedthisismyfirstconfession.”

Silence. The athletic shorts under my jumper are riding up, and my hair sticks to my forehead. I’m grateful that I don’t have to look him in the eye.

I begin to quote the sins I had memorized from the list, mixing in the specific incidents I can remember. “I took the Lord’s name in vain, I didn’t clean my room when my mom asked me to, I used bad language, I was jealous that Lucy Martin had more Webkinz than me, I bore false witness against my neighbor, and I copied Ben Thornhill’s math homework because I don’t understand fractions.”

“Sin harms our relationship with God and prevents us from living in His image,” the Father tells me. “Are you sorry for these sins?”

“Yes,” I assure him, trying to make my voice convincing. “They won’t happen again.”

“Perform your Act of Contrition.”

I fumble in my jumper pocket for the prayer card I snuck in with me and hurriedly apologize for offending God. The Father grants me mercy and gives me my penance: five Hail Mary’s.

My heart hits my ribs as I walk back to my seat and clumber onto the kneeler. I try to breathe through my nose, but every breath echoes in the quiet chapel. I wonder if I did it right. I begin to pray, searching from the depths of my stomach to the ends of my fingertips for something that feels like God. I’m not sure where the soul is located, but I don’t feel any lighter. Heaven doesn’t seem any closer, but maybe I forgot something. Maybe it doesn’t matter how I feel. I tell myself that maybe when I take my first Communion, I’ll understand what Mrs. Campbell was talking about.

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by Tulsa Review

Rollercoaster of Emotions

First Place Visual Art Winner

Rollercoaster of Emotions

by Roxana Quintero

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by Tulsa Review

2018 Issue

A special thanks again to everyone involved in our publication.

Read Here.

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by Tulsa Review