“You were right,” Susan said. “The view’s great from the other side of the road.”

Jimmy Duncan watched her approach, the sun behind her and the wind riffling her hair. She fiddled with her camera a moment, then plopped down beside him on the grassy hillside. To their left, loomed a wall of black forest; jungle birds screamed and chattered in the trees. To the right, beyond the rented Jeep, a line of ragged mountains marched away into the blue distance.

“How do you know this place?” she asked. “You never said anything about all this.”

“I don’t know the whole country. Just this area.”

She grinned. “And I thought you’d told me all your secrets.”

When he didn’t reply, Susan’s voice turned soft. “This has something to do with the accident, doesn’t it?”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I know you. The look on your face.”

Jimmy sighed. “That was a long time ago.”

“So?”

“Besides”—he plucked a blade of grass, examined it, twirled it between a thumb and forefinger before the wind took it—“I’m not even sure you’d call it an accident.”

“What would you call it?”

…

“A miracle,” the cop said.

Jimmy turned his head toward the voice. Not his eyes, just his head. His eyes were bandaged tight. “What’d you say?”

“I said it was a miracle. That car of yours was squashed so flat we thought you was too. You’re one lucky fool.”

Jimmy groaned. He didn’t feel lucky. He felt blind, and nauseated, and achy. From somewhere down the hall, he heard the sad rattle of a cart as patients were brought their lunch trays.

“The other driver?” Jimmy asked.

“Not even a bruise. Them 18-wheelers are built like tanks.” Jimmy heard a rasping sound, and realized the cop was scratching his chin. “Want some advice, kid? That truck’s company owns a thousand stores, and we got three witnesses say it ran the light. Sue ’em, settle for a couple million, and move to Hawaii. Beaches, sunsets, girls in grass skirts.”

“What if you can’t see them?” Jimmy asked.

“Yeah, well, that could be a problem.” The cop cleared his throat. “Catch you later.”

Which was a lie. The cop didn’t return. The doctor, however, did. Along with a parade of nurses and orderlies and even a few lawyers. But no friends, and no family. Jimmy didn’t have any of those.

He didn’t even have a home. For the past two months, since the layoff from the warehouse in East Texas, he’d been on the road. Footloose, but not fancy-free. His savings were gone now. He’d hoped to sell some of his paintings, but that notion had suffered the same fate as most of his other ideas. In San Francisco he’d heard about an art colony near Vancouver and headed north. Why not? He’d never seen Canada. Then, in Oregon, a truck had failed to stop for a red light. What had stopped was his tour of the Northwest.

Broke, alone, homeless, blind. Even his artwork was gone, destroyed in the crash. He didn’t know what hospital he was in, or who was paying for his treatment. Uncle Sam, probably.

He almost wished he hadn’t been thrown clear, wished he’d been squashed as flat as his 10-year-old Civic. Easier for everybody.

But life went on.

As if proving that, Jimmy soon learned to ID the hospital staff from their voices. He had little choice; his hearing was one of the few senses he had left. He wondered if he’d ever see anything again.

“Pressure on the optic nerve, plus a scratched cornea,” the doc said. “A specialist is coming in. We’ll know more then.”

Three specialists and two surgeries later, Jimmy was told he would regain his sight. Two months from now, maybe less.

His body was another matter. Multiple head and back injuries, partial paralysis. He could move his neck and his left arm, but only slightly. Otherwise, zip. Each day he was lifted into a wheelchair beside his bed, and each day he wondered why the wheelchair. Did they think he was going someplace? He was left to sit there a couple hours, and then they swung him back into his bed, like a sack of feed. Day after day.

And then he met Maria. She came one morning like a fuzzy dream while he was in the chair and whispered in his ear. He turned his head in the direction of her voice. Many people had spoken to him during his stay, but this was the first whisper. It had a Spanish accent.

“The weendow,” she said. “You must make it to the weendow.” And squeezed his hand. Then she was gone.

A nurse told him later who the woman was. Maria Renaldo, from the fifth floor. A small lady, mid-80s. She loved to talk with patients. No one knew whether her goodwill visits accomplished much, but since she was harmless the hospital allowed her free access.

Fiction: The Outside World The Saturday Evening Post

New York City’s media elite gathered at Michael’s New York to honor the winner and finalists of The Saturday Evening Post’s first-ever Great American Fiction contest.

Last Tuesday, January 8, I had the opportunity to attend The Saturday Evening Post’s event at Michael’s restaurant in New York City. The purpose of the event, which was co-hosted by Publishing Executive, was twofold: to toast the winner and finalists of the Post’s first annual Great American Fiction Contest while also celebrating the recent redesign of the magazine.

Michael’s Garden Room was packed with people when I arrived a little after 6 p.m., a palpable sense of excitement already hovering in the air. Writers, editors, agents, and reporters were crowding around the oversized reproduction of the Post’s Jan/Feb cover, complimenting the vibrant painting of Shirley MacLaine and—inspired by one of the magazine’s cover lines—debating the U.S. prison system. Servers were navigating the crowd, delivering plate after plate of hors d’oeuvres while the lines for both bars snaked around the room.

Ignoring the tempting food (and alcohol), I decided to wade into the fray to talk to some of the short story writers in attendance. As a graduate of an MFA creative writing program myself, I was anxious to talk to some other “storytellers.”

The first writer I talked to was a fellow named Jonathan Blackwood. (Good name for a writer.) He had written a short story called “Kin,” which was selected as one of the contest finalists and is also being published in the print collection. We talked about the craft of writing for quite a while. For such a young writer (he’s a recent college graduate) he certainly seemed to have a lot of the basics figured out. He also told me that “Kin” is his first published story. Starting out in a collection from The Saturday Evening Post is a pretty good place to begin a writing career!

Of course, I also spent some time talking with the amazing Lucy Jane Bledsoe, the author of the winning short story, “Wolf.” I particularly enjoyed her comments on the state of contemporary short fiction and literary journals. She made an interesting observation about happy endings, and how she feels that it’s easier (from a writer’s standpoint) to have everything go to crap at the end of the story because it’s inherently more dramatic to indulge in tragedy. In her view, crafting a positive or even neutral ending that doesn’t smack of sentimentality is a much tougher achievement.

The night ended with comments from Steven Slon, editorial director and associate publisher of the Post, as well as from Ms. Bledsoe.

All in all, the evening as a tremendous success, setting the stage for the Post’s future and launching the magazine’s 2014 Great American Fiction Contest, which is already accepting submissions now.

Photos from the event:

The Post Honors American Fiction Contest Finalists The Saturday Evening Post

It was late. Mae finally put on her nightgown and sat down in her favorite chair by the front window for her nightly cup of tea. The snow had started falling a short while ago, and already everything was blanketed in white. The flakes were so big and heavy, she could pick out individual flakes and watch them as they fell and melded in with the others. She loved the snow. She loved the way the earth fell silent and sounds were muffled and distant. She loved how the glow from the streetlights shined like halos around the lamps and illuminated the snowflakes as they fell. It was a perfect Christmas Eve. Silent night, holy night, all is quiet, all is bright, she thought.

This was Mae’s street. She felt like she owned the entire street, along with her neighbors, whom she loved—each and every one of them. Eighty-six years she’d lived on this street. She remembered herself as a little girl watching in wonder from the same window—from the same chair—the snow falling in great soft sheets as it covered the roofs of the same porches and steps.

At one time Mae’s parents had owned all the land on the block where she lived and several blocks beyond that. As a child she’d watched as the land was subdivided, houses were built, and families moved into new homes with the excitement of starting fresh. She had watched as concrete for the sidewalks was poured and streets were paved. Her first friends had lived on this street, and they spent long summer days playing hopscotch down the sidewalks and hide-’n’-seek through the construction sites.

All her childhood friends had grown up, married, and moved away. But no matter. New families had come to the neighborhood. She was always the first to knock at their doors with a pie or a plate of cookies, ready to share the stories of the neighborhood. She wanted them to know they had moved to a special street—a kind street.

As Mae looked out at her street this Christmas Eve she marveled how, when buried in snow, everything looked almost the same as it had when she was 9 years old. Without the snow, the houses showed the weight of their 80-plus years. The porches sagged, and there wasn’t a house on the street that couldn’t use a good paint job. The families had changed, too. Betty Olson was raising her grandson—her daughter had married a scumbag and was now hooked on meth. Next door were the Sanchezes, and Mae could hear them screaming at each other most Saturday mornings. There was a permanent path across her lawn where the children cut the corner on their way to school. She didn’t mind. She’d been there. She knew what went on inside people’s houses. Life was hard. For a kid, cutting a corner across an old lady’s lawn is kind of fun. Sometimes she yelled at the kids to please use the sidewalk—only because that was kind of fun, too. She liked how they waved at her and blew her kisses. Sometimes she got the finger. That made her chuckle. Those little ones thought they were so tough! In the summer when she was in her garden, kids stopped by, and she let them pull carrots and eat peas. She always made sure her cookie jar was full. She loved her street.

As was her tradition, Mae had been up and down the street today delivering plates of her cookies, carefully wrapped in green cellophane, to each family on the block. The Mitchells didn’t have a Christmas tree that she could see. All three of the kids ran squealing to the door when she came with her gingerbread men and frosted bells, snowmen, and stars with sprinkles. She didn’t think there was probably much for presents this year. Owen lost his job six months ago and she thought maybe Wanda kicked him out of the house, as Mae hadn’t seen him around. It wouldn’t be the first time. It was tough for Wanda, trying to keep it all together with what she earned.

Mae had always watched the street from her window. At times, she’d tried to help. She offered to watch a sick child or would walk across the street to Lydia’s house and knock loudly and shout at the front door to make sure Lydia would wake up to get to her day job on time. But Mae’s efforts weren’t always appreciated. She understood that.

Mae didn’t have a Christmas tree either. In fact, other than her baking, Christmas didn’t come to her house. She watched the snow deepen outside her window, and her thoughts turned to Christmases past.

Her dad would put up a Christmas tree they cut fresh from the Beartooth Mountains. She and her mother decorated it with white ribbon bows, long strings of popcorn, and snowflakes cut from white paper. As the days got closer to Christmas, packages appeared under the tree. One year she received a guitar. That was a special year.

By the time Mae’s own children were born, her parents had passed, and she and John had moved back into her childhood home with the boys. Johnny was 4 and Timmy 2. She’d gone all out that Christmas. She purchased colored glass balls for the tree, and she and John carefully placed each strand of tinsel across the branches. They bought tricycles for the boys.

Mae reached up and pulled the pins from her hair and set them on the windowsill. She unwound the coil at the back of her head, and long gray strands of hair fell down her back. She sighed deeply and gazed at the houses on her street. Most were dark now. Yellow light filtered through the falling snow from the windows of a few houses. The houses blended into one another as the snow deepened and erased toys left on the sidewalks and junked cars in the yards. She liked to think the children were snuggled in their beds, just like the story. And, their parents were whispering softly as they filled Christmas stockings and brought presents out of hiding places. But she knew on her street Christmas was one more burden. In fact, she’d decided a long time ago that Christmas was more trouble than it was worth. For the parents on her street, there wasn’t enough time to make gifts or enough money to buy the kids the gifts they really wanted—gifts that would put them on equal footing with the other children at school. She was alone. John had passed away five years ago last October. They’d celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary the spring before he died. Johnny lived in D.C. He was a doctor. Worked for a V.A. hospital. He said the nurses always asked if she’d send her Christmas cookies. She’d mailed Christmas cookies to the hospital for 25 years or more, she figured. She wasn’t sure whether she’d send cookies next year. It wasn’t the baking that exhausted her, it was the packaging and standing in line at the post office. Just too much.

Fiction: Mae’s Street The Saturday Evening Post

It was a rare, mid-autumn day in the Southeast when the drowning season of summer bursts from the surface, gasping for another breath. To his right, Hope had her arms wrapped around Lex’s hind legs as the dog paddled her around the pool. Job couldn’t decide if Lex was struggling to tear out of his daughter’s grasp, or if the animal’s survival instincts triggered and he was swimming to prevent himself from sinking underwater.

Job took a sip of whiskey and glared down the driveway. He felt as if the barren tree branches lining down the cobblestone path were pointing at him from their deathbeds.

“Drinking already?” Caren emerged from the pool house, holding a glass of iced tea. His wife’s hazelnut hair flowed down the contours of her back, tan skin contrasting with her teal, two-piece bathing suit.

“I’ll spend my afternoon the way I want to.”

“Not with your daughter?” Caren replied. Before Job could answer she continued, “You promised you’d spend more quality time with her.”

“I’ll read her a bedtime story tonight.”

“Christ, Job, she’s not 3 years old anymore.”

Job sipped his drink. “What do you want me to do, play Barbie dolls with her?”

“She doesn’t play Barbie anymore.”

“Of course not.” Job kept at it, “Why don’t we all dress up and throw a sparkling beauty pageant then? The dog can judge the winner.”

“Can’t you at least pretend to have fun with your daughter?” Caren stared at him, daring him to take another sip. “Just once?”

She turned away and shouted at the pool, “Come on, Hope. Out of the pool. Almost dinner time.”

Hope swung open the pool gate and ran across the driveway, her wet feet trickling traces of water into the cobblestone cracks. The child’s skin was brown from tanning with her mother by the pool all summer. Job noticed Caren had dressed their daughter in a teal bikini identical to the one she was wearing. Hope’s natural hair color was dirty blonde like his—several months ago she begged and begged to have it dyed hazelnut. Job had argued for weeks that she was too young, but on Hope’s 10th birthday Caren surprised their daughter by taking her to the salon while he was at work. He remembered how Hope couldn’t stop brushing, curling, and modeling her new hair in front of his wife’s handheld mirror. That evening, Caren asked him over and over “Doesn’t she look so pretty, Job?”

The girl lunged between them and thrust her arms around her mother’s waist, out of breath.

“Mom, look how wrinkled my fingers are.” Hope backed away from her parents and shoved out her palms.

“That’s from swimming for too long, honey,” Caren responded.

“Then I’m never getting in that pool again.”

Hope glanced up at Job. She turned to face him slowly, almost robotically. At that moment Job imagined the girl as some miraculous feat of engineering—white eyes powered on and beaming with electricity. He felt as if she were scanning his body from head to toe, memorizing each wrinkle of his forehead, the sharp edges of his jawline, the shadows sinking into his cheekbones. His daughter was a machine hardwired to learn who he was, but every time Hope addressed him she transmitted a frequency he struggled to adjust to.

“Will you watch American Idol with us tonight, Daddy?”

“Not tonight. I think I’ll read in the study.”

“With the Kindle Mommy and I bought for you?”

“No, paperback. I prefer writing line notes.” Caren glared at Job.

“Daddy’s no fun, darling,” Caren said. “Let’s go inside, we’ll make brownies for dessert tonight.” She grabbed Hope’s wrist and led her into the house, closing the door behind them.

Surface Tension The Saturday Evening Post

Assuming he’s even alive, it wouldn’t surprise me none if Milvey hightailed it out of his boxcar, made a beeline for the town he’s landed nearest, and entered himself into another typing contest. Another thing, which I guess has to be said, if Milvey happened to land anywhere near Dubuque, he’d probably catch the first train heading in any direction straight the heck out of here. Some folks just aren’t meant to be where they find themselves.

Milvey was short for his age. His face, well it looked like way back when somebody took his or her anger out on it. Milvey’s ears reminded you of nothing so much as sprung earmuffs catching the wind. More often than not they were red along the edges, like he’d just heard something he didn’t want to know.

Where Milvey came from is another mystery. One day he was just there stamping cans in the basement of the Quik-Buy Supermarket like he’d been born for the job.

Milvey hit centers right along with the best of them. He was fast, maybe a little nervous, but mostly he was fast. In fact, he stamped so well in less than four months, Milvey got himself promoted to stocking shelves on the main floor. Less than a month after that, Milvey copped the brass ring. Walter Walinski, Quik-Buy’s assistant day manager, made Milvey express checker, sudden prestige and a spot near the door!

It took less than a week for Milvey to get the hang of the tricky black and silver QAE (Quick-Action Electric) cash register. Folks who frequented the Quik-Buy for six items or less generally agreed, whatever else he might decide to do with his life, like as not, Milvey had found the thing he did best.

Then one day, as fate would have it, and fate always seems to get its way in these things, a stranger wearing a white raincoat and blue sunglasses swaggers into the Quik-Buy. He makes three quick purchases of six items or less. By the time I get to express, he’s back in line, two customers ahead of me, waiting to check out three more bags of six items or less. It got Milvey so nervous after ringing up the guy he asked: “How’s about I pack all your little bags into one big bag, mister?”

“Ever use your dukes, kid?” the stranger replies.

“Pardon me, sir?” Milvey says.

“You got a lightening pair of mitts, kid. Ever do any typing?”

“Any what, mister?” Milvey shoots a nervous glance down to his hands. “Any what?”

“Typing! On a machine! The one with the alphabet!”

Well, Milvey gave a giggle that turned into a guffaw, which tickled most everyone waiting on express.

So we’re standing there, coughing and sputtering, trying as best we can to hold ourselves in when Walter Walinski, fuzzy brown toupee a tad off center as it most always was, skids up to his star employee: “What’s all the ruckus?” Walt asks.

“Kid’s got typer’s mitts,” the stranger explains. “He could be famous.”

“On a typewriter!” Milvey blurts out, wiping his nose on the corner of his brown work apron. “The one with the alphabet!” he chortles.

“Is that a fact?” Walinski says. He follows that up with a nod at the QAE, a squint at the customers, and a brisk, “Ring ’em up, Milv! That’s what we’re here for.”

The stranger stuffs a business card into the top pocket of Milvey’s work apron. “See, Nat,” he says. “Nat breeds champions.”

With that, he turns up the collar of his raincoat, waits for the electric eye to open the door, and disappears into the day.

Before you know it, the fluorescents get back their glare, registers are ringing off the wall, and we shuffle ahead with blank stares, the kind you get waiting in line, knowing sure as shooting you’re gonna be overcharged for something or other.

Well, it didn’t take much for Nathan Margolias, President of the Nathan Margolias School of Typing Champions, to fast-talk Milvey into enrolling in his school. Milvey attended evening classes three nights a week. The other thing he did was buy himself this used lemon-colored portable Olivetti typewriter, complete with leather-like carrying case from Alice Winslow, owner of Elmer’s Office Supplies down on Lake Street.

A Corner Room at the Y The Saturday Evening Post

Sunday, the Ryan family—Marty, Cynthia, and the boys—stopped by with chicken soup, peach pie, and vanilla ice cream. Gloria finished the soup and pie yesterday—that was Monday. So, today was Tuesday, Meals on Wheels day. Yesterday, Janice, the Meals on Wheels lady, called to say Sam couldn’t deliver anymore. Too bad—Sam was great for bringing in the mail. Gloria certainly hoped the new driver would be courteous and efficient.

Gloria grabbed the bed rail and rolled to her stomach, anticipating the jolt of pain from her knees and hips. What they don’t tell you about getting old is that everything hurts. Well, she made it 88 years, she guessed she could make it another day. After she shimmied to the edge, she dropped her feet to the floor and reached for her walker. Her hand settled in the wet spot on the sheet, but she ignored it and the damp gown flapping around her legs. She clumped her walker to the kitchen. A cup of tea to start the day.

Helen Witt pushed the gloves, umbrella, and overdue library books to the floor of her red Ford Escort. At 42, Helen had experienced her share of bad luck. After a year of haggling, she finally received her first disability check. For crying out loud, the injury was work-related. When Helen hung the Halloween wreath over the reception area, she fell off the stepladder.

God, how they fussed—first workers’ comp and then the feds. The attorney her mother hired eventually got Social Security to approve her injury after her doctor wrote that bending, stooping, and crouching were impossible. The money wasn’t enough to live on, but it was better than listening to her mother bitch whenever she borrowed a few bucks. Lately, her mother, a heavyset woman of 65, had been nagging Helen.

“You need to get off your duff,” Mother had said.

“What do you want me to do? It’s not like I can get a job,” Helen replied, reasonably.

“Then volunteer, Meals on Wheels, something.”

“You want me out of the house,” Helen said.

“I want you off my sofa. You’re 42 years old. Get yourself together, find an apartment, and grow up. I’m not going to be around forever.”

Cancer, brain tumor, heart failure … the house would be hers.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m retiring at the end of the year and selling this house. I bought a condo in Florida. The minimum age is 55.”

“What about me?” Helen had wailed.

Her mother called Meals on Wheels, bought her a purple tracksuit, and filled her car with gas. Helen supposed next her mother would put her on the list for subsidized housing. It was that or the shelter. Still, she felt excited when she settled into the Escort. She had a lot of living to do. Just yesterday she read on Facebook: “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” Helen thought Ben Stein said that.

After tea, Gloria clumped to the bathroom. She found the toilet to be the best place to put on her therapeutic shoes. With her left arm, she gripped the safety bar and swung down her right to work her feet into the shoes. The tough part was her toes—big toes angled into second toes and bunions jutted at the joint. But once Gloria wiggled in the ball of her foot, it was easy to flip the Velcro strap. She heaved up, and as she brushed her teeth, studied herself in the mirror. Gloria had always been a beauty—fair skin, blue eyes that inspired young men to poetry, blond hair with a natural wave. All four years of high school she served as prom queen; and at the University of Kansas where she studied home economics, she was crowned Miss Hay Capitol.

The Decline and Fall The Saturday Evening Post

They were wrong.

The police were notified and squad cars crept up and down the cemetery’s curved and intertwined roadways, the cops calling his name through loudspeakers. By the time I ate my dinner that night in front of the television and surrounded by empty moving cartons, all the local channels were broadcasting live from the cemetery about Jason’s disappearance. His class picture was shown along with a phone number to call if anyone had seen a ginger-haired boy wearing khaki shorts and a white golf shirt in the vicinity of Forest Lawn.

By morning, volunteers from Jason’s school crisscrossed the grounds on foot, moving in a grid, finding nothing.

Searching the cemetery was no easy task.

Forest Lawn was inspired by the designers of Paris’ Père Lachais, who thought a cemetery should be a celebration of not only lives already lived but the life that continues after us and represented by a lush, natural, rugged setting. The cemetery consisted of 269 acres of rolling hills and valleys, spring-fed lakes, twisting creeks, and ten thousand trees. It also backed up to Delaware Park with its additional 350 acres of meadow, forest, and lake.

The Wolf Boy’s story interested me because Jason was a middle schooler, and I had just been hired to teach English at PS 64, the public middle school in the same neighborhood as Jason’s private one; I was to begin that September, and it would be my first teaching job out of college. Jason could’ve been my student, lost on my watch during a class field trip. Some of my incoming students in the fall may have known him from the neighborhood, or gone to elementary school with him, or at least seen him around.

Over those next few days after his disappearance, however, we all got to know The Wolf Boy from the news reports: how he was an average student, an only child, and had visited the emergency room several times over the years for suspicious bumps, bruises and, once, a broken wrist. We learned how the police had been summoned to his home twice this past year on domestic disturbance calls. Another picture emerged as well: how he was a Scout and loved to hike, fish, and camp. Interviewed neighbors told how his tent was always set up in the backyard and how he would sleep in it even in foul weather. It made me wonder how bad life inside his home must have been if he always wanted to stay outside in a leaky tent. As the days passed and he was still not found, we were told how family and friends clung to the hope that his outdoor skills would help him survive until rescuers found him. But he wasn’t found, and no ransom note was received, and each day The Wolf Boy was in the news less and less.

By September, I had nearly forgotten about him. I had my own problems to worry about. Because of a maternity leave, a nervous breakdown, and an unfortunate late-summer lawn mowing accident, PS 64’s Science Department was down three teachers and I was told that I, an English teacher, would not only be teaching seventh grade science for the first semester, I’d also be in charge of The Seventh Grade Fall Expedition, a semester-long study of a topic explored in depth from the perspective of as many classes as possible—history, art, geography, science, math and music. In past years students explored the development of the city, the impact of immigration, and our natural waterways. The year the Wolf Boy disappeared, our expedition focused on Forest Lawn Cemetery and Delaware Park.

The Wolf Boy of Forest Lawn The Saturday Evening Post

Back in the day, the only thing that set Big Rosco apart was his ears. Loretta swore she never would’ve given him a second look if it hadn’t been for those jumbo head-handles of his. Pete the Razorback called him Dumbo once, but Loretta wouldn’t have it.

“Elephant ears are loose and flabby,” she said, demonstrating by flapping her arms and hands like a double-jointed chicken. “Rosco’s got muscle in them things. He could hang from the Tuscaloose Bridge by ’em, safe as you please. A crane could pick him up from one just like a coffee cup. You could eat my three bean soup off ’em and never spill a drop.”

Loretta commissioned Sweeney the Artist to make double-handled mugs and bowls in the shape of Big Rosco’s face. She sold ’em for a buck a piece as Palace souvenirs. The Palace Gift Shop had never sold more than the occasional recipe book (which didn’t include a single one of Loretta’s top-secret patented pie flavors), but everything graced with Rosco’s awe-inspiring auditory organs flew off the shelves. Soon mugs and bowls weren’t enough. Folks wanted postcards and bumper stickers, clocks and thermometers, letter openers and door knockers. One fellow even asked for a coat rack. With Sweeney’s help, Loretta obliged them all. Nobody could ever say Loretta didn’t know how to turn a profit off her friends.

She marketed the stuff as Ugly Mug merchandise. Even got a passing lawyer from Atlanta to file the trademark papers in exchange for a year’s free membership to the Pewhasset Palace Pie-of-the-Month Club. A lesser man than Rosco might’ve been hurt or insulted by the name Ugly Mug. But Rosco took it as an honor to be singled out for such distinction by Pewhasset’s number one businesswoman.

“Loretta turns on the charm for all her customers,” he insisted. “But you don’t see her investing in their likeness, now, do you?” 

It wasn’t long before Big Rosco’s Ugly Mug made it onto the billboards. The Palace billboards were legendary. The Old Timer said they were better than Burma Shave signs. It took Loretta six months and half her life savings just to get them installed, but she maintained they were worth it, and not a soul in Pewhasset Flats would’ve said otherwise.  

The first billboard was planted at Interstate Exit 22. Glittering silver letters spelled out “See the Pie in the Sky at Pewhasset Palace.” There was a cartoon of a wide-eyed freckle-faced kid about to take a bite out of a flying slice of boysenberry pie. The pie even had angel wings and a halo. The best part about the deluxe billboards was the animatronics. The wings on that  boysenberry pie actually flapped. On the billboard at Interstate Exit 23, “Keep your Eyes on the Pies,” two huge eyeballs rolled round in their sockets while a giant arm scooped up a piece of lemon-ginger meringue over and over in an endless ode to the gastronomical prowess celebrated at the annual Pewhasset Pie-eating Contest. The last billboard stood just before Interstate Exit 24. A flock of wooden blackbirds arced back and forth over the slogan “Try Our Four-and-Twenty-Blackbird Special.” Beneath the slogan, a giant set of mechanized teeth chomped a half-moon bite big as a bus in a slice of chocolate-espresso cream. 

Each of the deluxe billboards had a distance countdown in fake neon:
“Only 10 miles to the Pewhassest Pie Palace!”
“6 more miles to the Pewhasset Pie Palace!”
“You’ve reached the one and only exit for the Pewhasset Pie Palace!”

Once folks got off at Exit 24, there were mini-billboards all the way to the Palace listing every one of Loretta’s 331 pie flavors (“Better than Baskin Robbins!”). But it was the deluxe interstate billboards that pulled in the tourists.

The Battle of the Pewhasset Pie Palace The Saturday Evening Post

Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Winner: ‘Wolf’ by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

As Jim tries to identify with the Yellowstone wolf trackers, both he and his wife have an awakening that changes their lives forever.

We promised to pick five runners-up, but we just couldn’t do it. Only with a certain amount of hair-pulling were we able to whittle our list of finalists to six, featured below.

P.J. Devlin

‘The Decline and Fall’ by P.J. Devlin

At 88, Gloria is in decline and needs some help managing her daily chores. Enter Helen, her Meals-on-Wheels driver, who quickly makes herself indispensable but has mischief on her mind. Who will win out in this domestic power struggle?

Stephen Eoannou

‘The Wolf Boy of Forest Lawn’ by Stephen G. Eoannou

After a young boy goes missing, his teacher and classmates learn a lesson about myths, education, and the danger of secret agendas.

Andrew Hamilton

‘Surface Tension’ by Andrew Hamilton

Isolated by the domestication of his 
family household, a desperate husband initiates 
a series of self-destructive acts in an attempt 
to rediscover the relationships he once knew with 
his wife and daughter.

Cynthia McGean

‘The Battle of the Pewhasset Pie Palace’ by Cynthia McGean

All Big Rosco has going for him is his 
love for Loretta, his big ears, and a windmill-tilting spirit worthy of Don Quixote. Is that enough 
to save the Pewhasset Pie Palace from the clutches of the villainous Taco Charlie and the destructive power of The World Famous Twelve Flags Amusement 
Park and Arcade Extravaganza?

Marvin Pletzke

‘A Corner Room at the Y’ by Marvin Pletzke

Milvey is a loner. Each time he enters the world to compete, he does something to derail himself. Believing in oneself is not always an option. Seems that some people just aren’t meant to be where they find themselves.

Caroline Sposto

‘The Conch Shell’ by Caroline Sposto

Told through the voice of a resilient
 5-year-old, a middle-class white family 
in the segregated South strives for stability 
despite the mother’s confinement in an iron lung.

Enter the 2014 Great American Fiction Contest at saturdayeveningpost.com/fiction-contest.

2013 Great American Fiction Contest Winner and Runners-Up The Saturday Evening Post

Illustration by Jonathan Bartlett.

I wasn’t exactly happy with Jim wanting to change his name to Anatoly, but I tried to roll with it. Change is good 
in a relationship, right? That was the whole reason we went to Yellowstone 
in the first place, to zest up our marriage, have a little fun, do something new.

I didn’t think we needed an overhaul, though. Nor did I think the change needed to bleed outside our marriage. But after the first trip to the park, he started asking our neighbors to call him Anatoly. It was embarrassing.

“Been reading our Dostoyevsky, have we?” said our next-door neighbor Clarence, pleased with himself for dredging up a literary reference.

The other next-door neighbor, Walter, narrowed his eyes, assessed, and then shrugged—neither agreeing nor disagreeing, pretty much just dismissing. I imagined both of them telling their wives, Cathy and Shawna, and having a good laugh on our behalf. Little did I know back then that I needn’t have worried about the neighbors; we’d soon be selling the house.

Still, in the beginning, I tried to find the humor myself. My complaints for the 30-plus years we’d been together clustered around sameness, a hazy boredom that occasionally drifted through our otherwise happy marriage. So a new name? Why not? It didn’t occur to me that it might signify an entire identity change.

Anatoly means east or sunrise. Fitting, I suppose. But how did he know that? Had he been researching wild names before we even visited the park and met the wolf watchers? I heard him tell them his name was Anatoly that very first morning, but I thought I’d misheard. He’d removed his mitten and thrust out his hand, and the reluctant recipient of his greeting had ignored the hand but nodded when Jim said, “Anatoly.” I was barely awake and figured he’d made some obscure joke the other man didn’t get. I got back in the car and unscrewed the thermos lid, poured myself some coffee.

The ranger had told us that the wolves were most active at dawn and dusk, and that the best way to view them was to look for the cluster of people beside the road with viewing scopes. It was the dead of January, but sure enough that morning as we drove out the northern park road and entered the Lamar Valley, we found seven people in one of the pullouts, standing with alert expectation in front of fat cylinders on long legs.

Clouds obscured the stars. The sky was black and the snow, a deep lavender. We parked our Ford Fiesta next to the fleet of SUVs, and that’s when Jim introduced himself as Anatoly. Forgive me for repeating that moment; it’s the part of this life shift I can’t explain. The name must have to come to him in the way dreams lay out whole stories we don’t even know exist in our unconscious. A wild name, Anatoly, parked in the recesses of Jim’s psyche, perhaps for years, waiting for the right mix of circumstances to surface. Or maybe the sight of that black sky and lavender snow, the promise of those long-legged scopes, birthed the name right then and there.

For a few minutes I watched my husband from the car. He asked questions and received brief answers from some of the wolf watchers. Others ignored him. A couple pointedly never even looked at him. I saw him tamp down his eagerness, realize that there was a culture here that he best observe rather than blunder.

This was my first moment of capitulation, although I certainly didn’t recognize it as such at the time. Viewing my husband through the windshield, as if it were a lens that allowed me to see him objectively, I saw a man in longing. For what, I couldn’t have said, but my annoyance at his enthusiasm for a predawn adventure dissolved. He was thrilled to be there, lured by the mystery of wolves, hoping to experience something new. I couldn’t fault him on that. Whatever malaise had settled over our life together, Jim himself had always had a childlike curiosity that I loved. I opened the door and stepped back into the bitter cold air.

The ridge to the east darkened, and the sky directly above it lightened. The mustard yellow burgeoned into a tangerine orange, and then came the first rays of the sun, sheer daggers of light.

A wolf howled.

2013 Fiction Contest Winner: ‘Wolf’ The Saturday Evening Post

“Wait up for Sis,” Denny called out to his younger brother Drew. Neither boy wanted Wanda along, but they knew if they sent her home, she’d go crying to the housekeeper, Lydia, and they’d catch hell.

“Come on, Wanda!” Denny shouted, beckoning her by swinging his arm from the shoulder like a windmill to convey urgency. The little girl had stopped to look at the unfinished shell of a house, fascinated by its size and emptiness. She wondered who might live in it and what color they might paint it.

Denny and Drew stopped to let their tousled baby sister scramble to catch up with them. As usual, she was wearing her Davy Crockett hat, its coonskin tail tangled in her curly, brown hair. Denny took her grimy, dimpled hand and they trudged to a clearing beyond the sycamore trees. “Wanna be William Tell?” he asked slyly.

Drew laughed.

“Who’s that?” Wanda asked.

“They shot an apple off his head with an arrow,” Drew said.

“We don’t got an apple,” she replied.

The boys ended up shooting arrows toward the sky to see whose could go highest. Wanda begged for a turn, which they reluctantly tried to give her, but she wasn’t strong enough to draw the bowstring. A strong west breeze had been blowing all afternoon and when the quiver was empty, they combed the area, but could only turn up seven of the arrows in the dense weeds. It was going on suppertime. They would have to resume their search on the following day.

When the Martin children returned to the shortcut and spotted their neighbor, Mrs. Boliver, their mouths dropped open. She was on her hands and knees, working on her flowerbed with no inkling that five arrows had fallen from the sky and plunged into the lawn around her. Hearts pounding, the children quickly and quietly gathered their arrows and began to sneak away when Mrs. Bolivar called out to them.

“Not so fast, kids!”

They stopped in an agony of dread—making silent bargains with Jesus—as Mrs. Boliver grunted her way to her feet, soiled bra straps dangling down her freckled, jiggling upper arms. She then cut a bunch of blossoming crimson azalea branches. “Take these to your mama,” she said. “I know how she loves them.” …That was it.

The moment the children reached the front porch steps, they heard a familiar Brahms piano concerto wafting through the screen door from the phonograph inside. Their mama had been a piano teacher before she got sick, went to the hospital and came home in an iron lung. For the past two years, she had been confined to the groaning, shell-like cylinder in what used to be the dining room.

Mrs. Martin was a few years shy of 40. She had the same agitated, dimpled face as Wanda. She smiled when she heard the screen door open and saw her children enter the house through the mirror mounted above her head. Denny showed her the azaleas while Drew ran to ask Lydia for a vase.

That night, an early season firefly found its way into Wanda’s bedroom. She lay awake watching its tiny lantern appear and disappear in the blackness near close to the ceiling like tiny flashes of yellow-green lightning until the mechanical rhythm of her mama’s lung on the other side of the wall lulled her to sleep.

Sunday breakfasts never tasted good. Lydia wasn’t there and Mr. Martin couldn’t cook. Nobody brushed Wanda’s hair or properly tied the bow in the back of her dress. After a plate of pancakes that were scorched on the outside and raw in the middle, and overcooked scrambled eggs with bits of shell in them, it was time for the three children to leave for church. Mr. Martin had to stay home to take care of his wife.

Once outside, Wanda put on her Davy Crockett hat. Her brothers objected, but she refused to take it off. “You’re not my boss,” she told them.

“Go ahead, Wanda,” Denny said, “look as goofy as you want, but don’t blame us if you get in trouble with Miss Kathleen.”

The Conch Shell The Saturday Evening Post

I was never what you’d call a good friend of Drew Claringbold. We were acquaintances mostly, occasional golfing buddies. Like most members of the Duffin’s Bay Golf & Country Club, what I knew best about him was his swing. His superb swing. When I was a teenager hanging out at the club and looking for caddy jobs, I would inevitably wander over to the practice tee if Claringbold was there hitting balls. On rare occasions, I’d be the only spectator present, but most of the time there’d be at least six or seven golfers watching him hit a wonderful low draw, his magnificent high fade, punch shots, slow risers, lobs. He could work the ball just about any way he wanted. I’m sure we all thought if we observed him long and hard enough, we’d walk away with the magic formula that would make our swings as fluid as his. In my case, it never happened, and let’s leave it at that.

Drew Claringbold was simply the best golfer at the Duffin’s Bay Golf & Country Club. It may not sound like much, but consider that he was 11 times the club champion, four times runner-up, and five times its senior champion. The belief around the clubhouse was that if his game was clicking, the tournament was pretty much settled before he reached the back nine. What prevented Claringbold from winning every year was consistency. Claringbold, so blessed with a swing for the ages, was also cursed with an uncertain putting stroke. He wasn’t a bad putter, just an unpredictable one.

When he was rolling the ball smoothly, confidently, he was unbeatable, and those who were with him the day he set the course record of 60 (on a par 72), swore up and down they had never seen a player putt it better. Claringbold fired at the flag all day and only a few unlucky bounces kept him from being inside eight feet on every hole. On the rare occasions he was 20 feet or more away, he holed each putt as if it were a tap in.

“Yeah, it was a pretty good day out there,” was all Claringbold said afterward as he bought drinks for his three playing partners and a few hangers-on who had walked with him from about the 14th hole, when word reached the clubhouse that he was on a birdie tear.

But that was just one magnificent day in a long, spectacular career.

None of the Duffin’s Bay old-timers could remember a time when Claringbold didn’t have that swing. Those in the know, and with a few connections, said Claringbold’s swing rivaled Ben Hogan’s. That both had tapped into some great golfing secret that only a select few had ever done. Among the stories I heard at Duffin’s 19th hole was that Claringbold had played with the great Hogan a few times and had never lost by more than a couple of strokes. One story floating around was that he even beat the grand master one autumn day in a friendly match in Texas some 50 years ago. Claringbold never confirmed it, but a faint smile would escape his lips when anyone ever brought it up.

He was a lawyer by trade and a damn good one according to most. I saw him try a couple of cases and recall the grace with which he walked around the courtroom, his lithe figure moved first to the witness, then back to his desk, then over to the jury. He showed intense concentration as he pored over his notes or deconstructed a story that didn’t quite fit the scenario. The demands of his profession, however, never got in the way of squeezing in his four or five rounds a week. Such are the perks of the small-town lawyer.

Once, when I still had the callowness and bravery of someone shy of 20, I asked Claringbold, with deepest respect in my voice, why he hadn’t pursued a professional golfing career. He looked at me quizzically, as if no one had ever posed the question, and then stared out toward one of the fairways for what seemed like such a long time that I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. But I stayed patient and imagined he was replaying some great shot in his mind before giving an answer. Finally, he looked back at me and with a shrug and said, “I guess I loved the law more.”

Then he walked away, head bent and shoulders slouched, as if he regretted his answer and his life choice.

Despite his accomplishments on the links, and the awe he inspired in all of us Duffin’s Bay golf groupies, there was one nemesis to Claringbold’s game, besides the aforementioned putting. To the astonishment of everyone, Claringbold had never been able to birdie the 10th hole. According to sources better than I, he had birdied every other hole countless times and eagled about half of them. But the 10th remained unattainable.

What made this remarkable was that the opening hole of the closing nine was far from being the club’s toughest. Running almost straight for 465 yards to a fairly generous green, the 10th was the type of hole that needed two solid, but not spectacular, shots, followed by a good putt for birdie. A few poplars, spruce, and maples hugged the right side to separate it from the par-5 first hole, and a couple of shallow bunkers protected the green on either side. But beyond a few bushes at the back, there was nothing too challenging for a good golfer, let alone a great one, to overcome.

Still, Claringbold couldn’t birdie it.

Even when he was playing his best, he could only summon par. There was no explaining it really. His woods and irons were so true that he rarely missed the green in two swings. But somehow he could never get it down from there. Twenty feet, 12 feet, eight feet, five feet. Regardless of how far his ball was from the hole, his putter would desert him. Once when I was older and playing with him, he stuck his second shot 18 inches from the flag. I didn’t dare say anything in case it jinxed him, but I could barely contain the thought that I’d be there when he finally birdied the 10th. But when he hit his putt, the stroke was just slightly fast and the ball lipped out.

“Damn this hole,” he said, in what was probably the strongest language he had ever used.

In later years, when he had retired from law, Claringbold would spend almost all his days at Duffin’s Bay. On some evenings just before the sun would set, he’d head for the 10th hole just to play it and nothing else. Sometimes he’d hit a couple of balls to increase the odds. Drew knew that a birdie under such circumstances wouldn’t count, but he had to prove to himself it could be done. Even with the rules of golf loosened, he couldn’t notch the elusive bird.

It was strange and unexplainable. Here was a guy who routinely birdied, and a few times eagled, the par-4 seventh, easily the toughest hole on the course—a landing area that was maybe 25 yards wide and 250 yards uphill from the small tee. Hit it too far left or right and you were in the woods. Hit it short of the landing area, as most of us did, and you were fighting a blind, uphill second shot at best, or else enduring the slow agony of watching your ball roll downhill to a flat spot that was maybe 100 yards from the tee.

We all cursed the seventh.

Once, when I was caddying for Claringbold, he smacked a lovely drive on the seventh. It pierced the slight wind and landed at what looked to be 275 yards dead center. When we got there no ball was seen. I walked around in circles for several minutes and finally noticed a 7-iron someone must have forgotten lying on the fairway at about the 270-yard mark. Acting on a hunch, I headed into the woods on the right, and there was his ball, dead behind a couple of birch trees in thick grass. No shot.

Incredibly bad luck. Claringbold grunted disapproval, but otherwise seemed unfazed. He looked at his shot, saw that he couldn’t go straight for the green, and asked me to walk across to the left woods to “keep an eye on this one.” I’m sure what happened next was planned. He took a 4-wood from his bag; made a short, punchy swing; and popped the ball almost straight left, watched it carom a tree near where I was standing, and saw it bounce on the green. One putt, 18 feet, for his third stroke.

He didn’t say anything until the eighth tee where he pulled out his card and pencil (he didn’t like caddies keeping his score) and muttered “routine birdie.” We all cracked up. He then took out the 7-iron we’d found on the seventh, teed his ball about 180 yards from the par-3 flag, and swung. Knocked it in for an ace before he tossed the club in the garbage can.

Geez, the guy was amazing. Except at the 10th.

When he was in his late 70s, Claringbold was in a minor car accident, which reduced some of his mobility. He still had the swing, but age and injury had reduced its power. He played occasionally for a year or two after, but he was eventually relegated to sitting in the clubhouse to watch others play the game he loved and excelled at. Ironically–he’d say unfortunately–the main clubhouse window overlooked the 10th tee.

Every so often I’d see him staring out that window and shaking his head. “I could birdie that hole,” I heard him once mutter. “I could.”

One evening in late summer, I walked off the ninth into the clubhouse and saw him finishing up his dinner. He looked up and smiled.

“How’s the score today?” he asked.

“Not bad today, Drew. I’m five over.”

“Pretty good… for you.” And he chuckled. “You going to fit in the back nine?”

“Naahhh, not enough time.”

He stood up, slowly. “Come on, a group just went off. You could do it.”

He stared at me, not saying anything, but something made me say what I hadn’t even considered for the past couple of years. “Tell you what. I’ll play the 10th and come back on the 18th if you come with me.”

“Sure,” he said, without hesitation.

“And play, too.”

That stopped him momentarily. He looked first at me, then the 10th hole, then back at me. There was just a hint of a smile. “Of course, my clubs aren’t here. They’re in the trunk of my car.” Who knows why he kept them there, long after his playing days were over.

“Really? Well, give me the keys and I’ll get them for you.”

Claringbold seemed to be doing everything in slow motion, even talking. “All right,” he said quietly. “Yeah, let’s do it. I’ll meet you on the tee.”

He moved sluggishly in an awkward shuffle, but didn’t change his mind. I went to get his clubs and took my time, knowing it would take him awhile to reach the 10th. When I got there, he was sitting on a bench, pale and weak looking.

“You sure you’re up for this, Drew?”

He coughed violently for a moment, and then stood up. “Yes, yes, I’m all right. Damn congestion, that’s all. Hand me the driver, please.”

Something about golf invigorates a person. Perhaps it’s the notion of being outside with nature, breathing the air, the quiet hum of a summer evening. But as he took his club, he appeared to shake off 20 years of age, standing tall once again and looking as if he had never left the game. Watching him take his backswing was like seeing him again through 18-year-old eyes. For a man in his condition, he simply smoked it. It landed about 220 yards out and rolled another 25 dead center.

“Not bad for an old geezer,” he said.

For one of the few times in my life, I outdrove him, but at that point I didn’t care. I was getting one more chance to play with Drew Claringbold, and he was still showing me a thing or two. He had his clubs on a pull cart, but was breathing hard when we reached his ball. He waved off any suggestion that we stop and rest. “I’m feeling OK,” he said, but the words came out languidly between breaths. He was sitting about 220 yards from the flag, and I suspect that the drive took so much out of him that there was no chance he could go for the green. Claringbold thought otherwise. “Hand me the driver again, please. I think I’ve got a pretty good lie.”

There are those that’ll tell you they were there the day Drew Claringbold hit his second shot with a driver on the 10th. They’ll rhyme off details about the wind conditions, the lie, the grace of his swing—even what he was wearing that evening. But I know it was just the two of us out there in the middle of the fairway, the sun low on the horizon. When the club connected with the ball, I followed its flight, knowing he’d hit a good one. It just sailed, and for a moment, I had the feeling it might never come down. But a sound nearby interrupted, and I looked back to where he had been standing.

I like to think that before he crumpled in a heap some 245 yards out on the 10th fairway, Drew Claringbold, before he drew in his last breath, had also watched that sweet second shot of his. I like to think he looked intently as it hit the front of the green, took a couple of bounces, and started rolling. And I also like to think that the expression on his face, as he lay there on the ground, was one of pleasure rather than some final grimace of pain more likely to accompany a sudden heart attack. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that throughout his long, marvelous golfing life, Drew Claringbold, the finest man I ever had the chance to play the game with, never birdied the 10th hole at the Duffin’s Bay Golf and Country Club. But I’ll never forget the last shot he hit and how it rolled smoothly toward the hole, before dropping into the cup.

For an eagle.

The Last Sweet Shot of Drew Claringbold The Saturday Evening Post