Tag: Fiction

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

Now Caitlin too was becoming angry, her face flushed. “Padraig has never wanted me. You do him a great injustice. He only wants to see me married to you. Until then there can be no more sinning.” She felt her anger subside like a guttering candle. She held her hands out to Michael, enticing him to come close to her again.
He did. He took her hands in his and gazed into her eyes with a mix of love, disappointment and confusion.
“You know I’m going to church again, Michael,” Caitlin said gently, soothingly. “I am a baptized Catholic. Father Riordan baptized me and Nora when we were born and my mother died. He was afraid that we might die too. Unbaptized. And be put in a sack in a hole behind Killyshannagh Chapel.”
“Finn MacLir would never have allowed that,” Michael said. “He would have seen you buried properly. Along with your poor mother.”
“My father was too distraught to know what was going on,” Caitlin said. “Una Slattery, when we were very little, used to take us to church when my father was at the fishing.”
“Do you realise how much you have abused your father’s trust, Caitlin?”
“I never did,” Caitlin protested. “I was a new-born baby when I was baptized. I was a little child when Una took us to church. You’re right though. These things were done without my father’s knowledge or consent, but don’t blame me or Nora.”
Michael remained dubious, his simple heart troubled. Though he knew that Caitlin and Nora were not to blame, he still felt that Finn MacLir had been cheated by others. But he could not put his feelings into words.
“Be that as it may, Michael,” Caitlin continued, “before I could receive Communion I had to go to Confession. I had to tell Padraig everything. Everything about us, Michael.”
“Does this mean, Caitlin,” Michael began awkwardly, yet with a heart-stopping surge of hope, “does this mean that you are going to marry me?”
“Yes, of course, I am going to marry you, Michael. You know I am. I love you.”
“When, Caitlin? When will we be married?”
“Soon. It takes a lot of planning.”
Caitlin’s answer sounded evasive to Michael. Hope dropped from him like a rock from a wall. Suspicion filled the hole it left. He lowered his eyes and half turned to walk away. “Whenever you are ready, Caitlin,” he said, his voice charged with controlled anger, “come and let me know.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562888

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763203

Small Change

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Excerpt

“It’s kinda like football. All you gotta do is get through dat gimlet.”
I thought, it’s gauntlet, you ignorant shit. Then I started running.
They tried to stop me, with their arms, their legs, with kicks and punches,
but they didn’t tackle me or stand in my way. When I broke through and
stood panting on the grass, I had a fat lip and I could feel some blood trickle
down from my eyebrow.
Buster nodded. “Okay. Now you gotta have a name.”
“I already have a name.”
“A gang name, pal. A gang name.”
Buster thought about this for a minute, biting his lips like a
schoolgirl, then he laughed.
“I got it! Yer name is lucky cauze, like I said, dis is yer lucky day.
You gotta knife?”
“No.”
“Dat’s all right, yuh kin use mine. Yuh hafta cut yer gang name in
yer arm like dis,” he said, holding up his freckled forearm. Thin, crooked
letters scarred the sunburned skin with what looked like BUSTER. I
couldn’t believe how stupid it looked.
“But first yuh gotta do one thing.”
The gang spread out and formed a large circle with Buster and I at
its centre.
“Yuh gotta fight,” he said. “Yuh gotta fight ME.”
He went into a crouch and poked a fist in my direction. I thought, if
I had a gun, I’d shoot him. Suddenly the whole morning struck me as a badly
drawn episode in a comic book. I shook my head, “No way.”
Buster came out of his boxing stance. He looked puzzled. He
came up and patted me on the cheek. Then he drove a sharp left into my
stomach. There was barely time to tense my abs and the shock of it drove
me back a step. I crossed my arms over the pain and took a deep breath.
“Come on dere, Lucky, you gotta. It’s the ‘nitiation.” He sounded
sweetly reasonable, as if all the world agreed, this is the way things are
done. “An hey, if ya win, you kin be leader.”
“I don’t want to be leader, Buster. I don’t even want to join your
gang.”
“Too late, pal. An I’m gonna keep hittin ya till ya tryan hit me
back.” He laughed a mean little laugh and backed down into a crouch. The
ring of gang members moved in a little closer, their bodies tense,

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763157

George Seferis – Collected Poems

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…shrinking, yet unable to vanish completely. I don’t know what I have to say or what I have to do. Sometimes this obstacle appears to me as though a tear drop flopped on a music composition that will keep it silent until it dissolves. And I have the unbearable feeling that all the rest of my life won’t be sufficient to dissolve this tear drop in my soul. And a thought haunts me that if I were to be burned alive this obstinate moment would be the last to surrender.
Who would help us? Once, when I was still a seaman, one July noon, I found myself alone on an island, crippled in the sun. A soothing breeze brought to my mind tender thoughts, it was then when a young woman with a diaphanous dress revealing her body lines slender and willing like a gazelle’s and a somber man who stared in her eyes from a yard away, came and sat not far from where I was. They spoke a language I couldn’t understand. She called him Jim. But their words had no weight and their glances, mingled and motionless, left their eyes blind. I always think of them, because they were the only people I saw that didn’t have the grasping or haunted look that I noticed on everybody else. That look that makes them resemble either a pack of wolves or a flock of sheep. I met them again the same day in one of those island chapels that one finds as he goes by and loses them as he walks out. They still kept the same distance from each other, then they came together and kissed. The woman turned into a cloudy image that disappeared as she was of small stature. I asked myself whether they knew that they escaped from the world’s nets…
It is time for me to go. I know of a pine tree that leans near the sea. At noon, it bestows a shade upon a tired body and at night, as the wind passes through its needles it starts a strange song, like souls that have abolished death at the moment when they start becoming lips and skin. Once I spent a night under such a tree. At dawn I was as fresh as if they’d just cut me off the quarry.
Ah, if one could live like this, irrelevant.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TTS37J

Fury of the Wind

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excerpt

“Quite right, my dear, and if you don’t mind me saying so, I wish
you would take that responsibility a little more seriously and keep
the things we hear in confidence to yourself.” Robert Carson folded
his hands, placed them on the desk in front of him, and smiled at
Emily as if to atone for the harshness of his words. “Having said
that,” he continued in a gentler tone, “I will tell you what Ben wanted.
You would have to know in a day or so, anyway. Ben’s getting
married on Friday.”
Emily’s mouth dropped open. She had been about to take offence
at his inference that she was a gossip, but his last words erased every
other thought from her mind. And she certainly paid no heed to his
advice because, within five minutes, she was on the phone to Molly
Andrews, her best friend in Nimkus.
As in most small communities, a class system existed amongst
the residents of Nimkus. The town matrons would have denied it
but the divisions, although very subtle, did exist. There was no doctor
in town, no dentist and no lawyer. For services supplied by these
professionals one had to travel to the neighbouring larger town of
Bradshaw. With the absence of such elite families as these, the responsibility
of maintaining the position of upper crust fell to the
wives of the banker, the minister, the station agent, the town clerk,
the druggist … and on it went.
Had the principal of the three room school on the outskirts of
town been a man, his wife would certainly have been included in
this group. But the principal of Nimkus School happened to be,
and had been for some time, a single woman. Although well regarded
by the parents of the children she taught, Miss Donna Carrington
had no status in town because she had no husband. And a
single woman, no matter how brilliant and ambitious, was secretly
regarded as a nonentity by the town matrons.
Immediately following Ben Fielding’s visit to the vicar, Mrs. Carson
telephoned Mrs. Andrews. The station agent’s wife then called
Jean McKinnon, the banker’s wife. Mrs. McKinnon just happened
to be on her way to do her grocery shopping. And, of course, she let
slip the astounding news she had just heard as soon as she began
to give her grocery order to Mr. Stratton, the owner of Stratton’s…

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073530

The Qliphoth

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excerpt

Lucas:
Grand Junction
The light filters through a drifting barrage of cloud, early evening mist blurs a
green froth of trees and Lucas doesn’t know anything any more. Now that he’s
walked out he feels uneasy about his paternal rescue mission. No one stops for
the lone hitcher. The B-road wanders everywhere and nowhere. All the signs
are overgrown.
He staggers into Abbotsburton railway station. At least he can dry out and
ponder. From the doorway of the deserted waiting-room, he studies the slant
of the rain. No way back to the motherland now. He gazes along a curve of single
track. Squat oaks crowd the edge of the trackbed. They bulge with
growths, puffs of whiteness.. The dankness of this landscape might dissolve
the sticky molecules of his identity.
The waiting room window is pointed, forming pseudo-gothic lancets with
small leaded panes. There’s a peculiar stained-glass armorial motif at the apex,
a stylised flash of green lightning bursting from blue-tinted clouds, with initials:
WGJR.
This must be the privately-owned ‘restored’ line, probably run by enthusiasts
in woolly hats and anoraks. Perhaps they’re hoping to reconnect
Abbotsburton with the local coastal resorts, miles away across the moorlands.
Yet their steam-age revival has apparently failed already. The cracked canopy
leaks, and this room is a sparsely furnished shed, offering a slatted wooden
bench, scarred with ancient rune-like graffiti. The faded adverts for
Brylcreem, Park Drive cigarettes and Philco Radio-Grams are the kind of
time-capsule memorabilia his father used to sell.
He is atomised, all his bits and pieces are in free fall. Best not to think too
hard about past, future, any time at all. Of course, he has left his bleeding
watch behind.
Lucas turns up the collar of his black bomber jacket and walks out to the far
end of the platform, where nettles split the asphalt. There’s no sign of a timetable
or platform staff. He scans the rusty rails. They curve in from the woods
and continue out into a steep cutting, between slopes of thick wet bushes.
On the far side of the track he can see a low windowless red-brick building,
overgrown with creepers. A derelict sub-station; or a wrecked trackside
memorial to some defunct moorland industry?

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562839

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Swamped

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excerpt

…awkwardly. “It’s about Frances.”
“What about her?” Eteo replied, smiling.
“She’s crazy about you, Dad,” Logan finally said. “She has asked
me twice now about what she can do to get you to go out with her.”
Eteo laughed. “I’m aware of Frances, son. I’ll approach her when
the time comes, don’t worry about her.”
“Be careful though, Dad. She sleeps around, you know.”
“I’ll be careful. No worries, son.”
When Logan went back to his desk, Eteo sighed and began to
make some calls. Yanni. Spiro. Angelo. Tom. Nick. It was time to update
them on their accounts and let them know what he had in mind
to do for them. As usual, they all said it was up to him to choose what
to get into and when to sell their accounts. Eteo felt his chest expanding.
He knew he would make some good money with these clients.
He always made the most with the ones who just said, “Do what you
think is best.” Clients like Ariana who had said exactly that when she
opened her account and deposited a hundred thousand dollars in it.
He dialed her number.
“Hello, sweet baby” he said when she answered.
“Hello, my love,” she replied. “How is your working day?”
“Pretty good, sweet Ariana. How’s your mother?”
“She’s fine, though she’s in her own world these days, I’m afraid.”
“Want to meet for lunch? When I’m done here, I mean. We could
go to the White Spot on Lonsdale or the one at the Royal Park mall.”
“I’d love to, my love. Either place. Just come and get me when
you can.”
“Soon as I’m done, then. I’ll be at your place no later than 1:45.”
“I’ll be ready, baby.”
At exactly 1:40, Eteo pressed Ariana’s buzzer. She came down at
once, and his day turned more pleasant just as quickly. He kissed her,
led her to his car, opened the door for her, and drove to the White
Spot at Lonsdale and 23rd. Ariana ordered their legendary hamburger
with fries and Eteo the equally famous Mediterranean chicken
salad. They shared a half liter of red wine, the house Shiraz, a respectable
Okanagan product, and laughed as they clinked their
glasses, enjoyed their unassuming meals, and talked of simple things…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562976

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WP3LMPX

Poodie James

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excerpt

“What’ll it be?” he said.
“Can of Prince Albert, please.”
Gritzinger walked to the shelves. Sam looked over at the big
man. Something about that voice.
The man glanced at him.
“Pardon me, sir,” Sam said, “is your name Clarkson?”
The stranger turned and looked steadily at him from behind
rimless glasses that imparted an air of orderliness to a man otherwise
in dishevelment.
“Why do you ask?”
“Years ago, I spent time in a courtroom with a lawyer by that
name, one of the best I was ever up against. He whipped me. That
rarely happened. I didn’t forget it.”
The man’s gaze softened a little as he continued to study Sam’s
face.
“Condolences on your loss,” the big man said at last. He handed
Gritizinger a few coins, slipped the can of tobacco into his jacket
pocket, dipped his head and said, “Good evening to you both.”
“Glad to see you after all these years,” Gritzinger said.
“And I you, sir. Good evening.”
Sam watched the man’s back as he walked out of the market and
headed north. He turned to Gritzinger only after the door closed
and the sound of the bell interrupted his musing.
“You know him,” he said.
“Used to”, Gritzinger said. “Haven’t seen him since before the
war. He’d come through here on freight trains and stay in that
hobo camp down by the old Thorp place. Poodie James brought
him around. Did a few odd jobs for me. Spent a day once stacking
two cords of cedar in the woodshed out back. Called himself Fred.”
Fred, Sam thought. Fred Clarkson?
When Darwin Spanger walked into the showroom of Torgerson
Packard, the proprietor was conducting a couple on a tour around a
black sedan. With a nod of his head, Torgerson directed Spanger…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562868

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W7SHCMV

Jazz with Ella

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excerpt

off a stool lightly for one of her advanced years, and beckoned them. She opened the cage door, then the elevator door, and ushered them in. She waited patiently while Jen, Lona and Maria assembled their baggage. Three persons plus operator appeared to be the elevator’s capacity. Then she closed the doors carefully and pulled a brass lever. Grunting with effort, the box lifted. “Three into seventeen,” Maria calculated as the box jerked upward. “How many trips will this thing make, do you suppose, before we’re all upstairs?”
Ordinarily, I would find this hotel an intriguing anecdote, thought Jennifer, something to tell the folks back home. Right now, I just find it all an intolerable delay. She was becoming quite adept at all the procedures. As she exited at the fifth floor, she went immediately to the dezhurnaya’s desk and rapped smartly on the table. The clerk, another septagenarian, was nodding off in an easy chair. “Key to room 503,” she said briskly in Russian, and proffered her card. This woman could be someone’s grandmother, she thought, and though it’s difficult to view her as the enemy, a nosy floor clerk who noticed that Volodya was Soviet, not Canadian, would be a nuisance or even fatal.
Jennifer opened the door to her room. It was dark and close but not what she would have picked for a briefing session. There was a private bathroom, she discovered with relief, and opened the door thankfully. It held a square, chipped, pedestal basin, a small bath, and gigantic toilet that sat lordly on a dais. Its tank was secured onto the wall above the bowl and there was a chain to pull that worked the flush. Either the last guest had pulled too enthusiastically or the fixture’s age had rendered it incontinent. It had overflowed onto the floor.
“I’d better start working on getting this cleaned up right away,” she muttered. “I don’t want staff in the room while Volodya’s here—that is, if I could even get staff to clean it up.” Once again she was talking to herself—problems, delays. And underneath it all—fear.
Consequently, it was nearly six o’clock by the time Jennifer finally left the hotel, walked briskly along the riverbank, and turned onto the same bridge they had driven across on her way to Red Square. Possibly there was another telegraph office than the one she had already discovered near the east wing of the Hotel Rossiya, but it would save time to head directly toward the familiar one. As she walked, she thought how to word the telegram: “Returned to Moscow. Hotel Bucharest.” That part was easy. Then what? “Jazz with Ella” and maybe she’d better add…

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

The Circle

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excerpt

important areas of support for the regime, along with the rest of the surrounding
region called “The Sunni Triangle”. Many inhabitants were Sunni and were
employees and supporters of Saddam’s government. During the same era,
Falluza became an industrial center with many large factories. About half the
houses were destroyed in the war, and most of them have still not been rebuilt.
Indeed, this city still looks like a war zone. A lot of the houses are only
half-standing. Others are leaning against one another as if supporting one other,
yet people sit around in the coffee bars drinking their special tea or coffee, and
one can see they take life in stride. It seems they know this is the way things work
out when you stand up and try to claim who you are, against people who think
they know who you are and insist on telling you so.
So, the inhabitants of this forsaken place sit stoically, with a perseverance that
defies even the strongest of wills, knowing deep in their hearts that what goes
around comes around. They know deep in their hearts that what you throw out
there in the balance of the cosmos comes back and hits you on the head at
another time or place without exceptions. People sit with all the anguish of the
world on their shoulders, a world that has gone wrong, a world that defies their
right to be alive, to be with their flesh and blood, with their wants and dreams
and expectations of life. They sit and don’t care that their homes have been
destroyed, since they know they will rebuild sooner or later. They will deploy all
their efforts again to rebuild what human madness has destroyed.
Rassan goes around and asks for Talal’s family and is told they need to go a
few blocks down the road and turn to the right to find Talal’s grandparents.’
house. Two minutes later they are outside what they expect is the house. Rassan
gets out and yells from the top of the yard door to the inside of the yard; a young
man about fifteen comes to see who is calling. Talal gets out of the car and sees
his younger brother, Abdul Aziz, coming through the gate to the road.
“Abdul, my little brother,” Talal approaches him with open arms. Abdul
looks at him and realizes this man is his brother.
“Talal, what a surprise this is!” he says, and his eyes fill with tears.
Talal is crying as well and among the sobs asks, “Where’s everybody?
Where are Aesha and our grandfather?”
“Grandfather is at the coffee bar for a while; our grandmother died four
months ago. Aesha is here; come in, come inside.” He urges all of them to come
in and leads the way.
Emily and Talal walk together through the gate and Rassan follows; they find
Aesha working in the kitchen. She is so surprised to see Talal after being away for
seven years that she hugs and kisses him, throws herself in his arms sobbing with joy.
Talal introduces Emily.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562817

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524

In Turbulent Times

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‘Right, Joe. And even with the tractors and the rest, Michael and Danny Boylan are still finding it difficult to cope. They’re working long, hard hours every day.’
‘They could bring in a couple of land girls,’ Joe suggested teasingly.
‘They’re not that desperate,’ Caitlin retorted. ‘A lot of farmers don’t want city girls in the fields. I don’t know of any around these parts.’ Then Caitlin leaned forward in her chair with a serious look on her face. ‘Joe, I’m glad you’re here and Michael isn’t. I want to talk to you about something important.’
‘What would that be?’
‘Nora. She’s not happy, is she?’
Joe felt uneasy. ‘Oh she seems content enough.’
‘Joe, you’re not being honest with me,’ Caitlin interrupted. ‘You and I both know she should never have married Liam Dooley. Oh he’s been a good husband. I’m not complaining on that score. He worships her. He’ll do anything for her. Maybe he does be out a lot, but he’s a teacher and he’s involved in a lot of out-of-school activities. Local history societies, the WEA, and all that. But he’s not the man for Nora. He’s twenty-two years older than she is. He’s set in his ways, and they’re not Nora’s ways. He’s stuffy and fussy and a creature of habit. Nora needs someone who’ll … who’ll open doors and windows and let her fly. If you see what I mean.’
‘I do, Mrs Carrick.’
Caitlin got up to pour tea into two cups on the kitchen table and added milk and sugar. ‘I’ll be glad when the war’s over and rationing ends,’ she said. ‘Will you have a scone, Joe? Or a slice of treacle bread and butter? Home-made country butter.’
‘No thanks, Mrs Carrick.’ Joe accepted the proffered cup of tea.
‘Joe, why did Nora marry Liam Dooley?’ Caitlin asked unexpectedly.
Joe was taken by surprise. ‘I suppose she discovered that she loved him. They were working together at …’
‘Blethers, Joe. I want an honest answer. And I know she would have told you. You above all people.’
Joe, put on the spot, tried drinking tea to cover his discomfiture. ‘Haven’t you asked Nora herself? You’re her mother.’
‘But not a good mother,’ Caitlin declared with commendable honesty. ‘She’d be more likely to confide in Michael than in me, but she hasn’t. Not in this case. Nora and I have never been all that close. Not as close as a mother and an only daughter ought to be. We get on badly, she and I.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562904

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763270