Ed Higgins ~ Patty Patten Tiffany ~ Ed Coonce

Tre storie

 

 

 

Ed Higgins

Kansas Return

 

A ship is setting down in the middle of Uncle Henry’s wheat field, thrusters burning hell out of maybe a half acre or more of ripening wheat. Meager crop that there is, Henry frowns, spitting on the dry ground. And Uncle Henry is naturally surprised to see a spaceship coming down in mid-afternoon August heat in the middle of Kansas. But stranger things have happen in Kansas.

 

Why, just last year four people disappeared over near Falun in a God’s honest witnessed alien abduction, he recalls.

 

Henry watches the ship dropping slowly, steadily. At first he was worried the roar and whirling dust kick-up might well be a late summer twister. Although it obviously don’t look like no normal twister, he has decided, with those flame-bursting thrusters eating up his field’s about ready to harvest wheat, for Christ’s sake, he curses, spitting again.

 

A truly frightening sight. The seemingly saucer-like ship is dropping still. Scorched ground and ash swirl upward momentarily blocking out the hot afternoon sun. And the smell, Henry notices, is what you get when your morning’s raisin whole wheat toast is stuck in the damn toaster too long. Blackening it to charcoal, raisins melting like they was chocolate chips left in a cup out on the screen porch in this heat.

 

Then at the final moment a knock-you-down tremor and louder roar hits Henry’s ears and chest in what sure-as-hell sounds and feels like a goddamn twister is upon him. The glowing saucer shape, more than apparent now, has stopped spinning; the settled ship slowly cooling. Uncle Henry sits slowly up, then stands, dusting off his overalls of charred chaff, recovering somewhat from his knock-down blow. Wide-eyed, he shakes his head in fretful puzzlement.

 

After about twenty stunned minutes of staring at the cooling machine Henry wonders if he should maybe go back up to the farmhouse and call the Sheriff.

 

But then a ramp mechanically drops from the apparently cooled enough ship. Not more than three or four yards in front of him.

 

Uncle Henry having recovered his feet, and his good sense, if not quite fully his hearing, remembering, steps quickly over to his Model-A pickup grabbing the rusty single-barrel .410 he uses in the field for crows and rabbits--that’s lying on a rolled-up burlap sack in the pickup’s bed.

 

He raises the shotgun in nervous but determined anticipation. No damn Falun-like alien abductions for me, NO FUCKING THANKS! he shouts toward the ship’s dropped ramp. Not if this .410 has anything to say about it!!

 

Just then scampering down the long ramp comes a grinning Toto with a pair of ruby slippers clenched lightly between his teeth. Dropping the ruby slippers at startled Uncle Henry’s feet, Toto wags his tail in excited greeting, “Hi Uncle Henry, I’m back, is Dorothy here yet?” “Not yet, eh?” Toto says, looking toward the Model A. “Ok, she should be arriving soon though, I must have gotten ahead of her.”

 

Uncle Henry is dumbstruck, lowering the shotgun to take Toto’s extended paw. “Well, says Toto, let’s ride up to the farmhouse and tell Aunt Em to break us out a couple of cool ones, its been a long trip and do I have a helluva story to tell.”

 

 

 

Ed Higgins' short fiction and poems have appeared in various print and online journals including: Tattoo Highway, Triggerfish Critical Review, Plum Tree Tavern, and Blue Print Review, among others (including DM). He and his wife live on a small organic farm in Yamhill, OR where they raise a menagerie of animals. Ed teachs writing and literature at George Fox University, south of Portland, OR. and is Asst. Fiction Editor for Brilliant Flash Fiction.

 

 

 

Patty Patten Tiffany

The Door

 

“No,” she murmured,”Noooooo,” a louder sleep-muffled scream.  Coiled for protection, she felt a touch, his warmth, and heard vaguely, “Sam, Samantha, you’re dreamin’. Sweetheart. Wake up.”

 

She shook slightly, leaned into her long husband and finally stretched out to seek his arms.

 

“But it’s real,” she whispered to him, in a voice still throaty with sleep.

 

“No, Darlin’, it’s not,” he said and held her a little tighter.

 

Dozing again, she drifted back…sharp wind snaking over rocks, the cold sand soil on her feet, and then the door.

Dark, thatched almost, wound with twisted branches.

 

The door that was opening. Fearful, her mouth went dry.  She wanted to look inside but wanted to run just as much. What door, she wondered, and what dark, cold field?

 

But if there was an answer, it didn’t come. At least not this night.

 

Maybe next time.

 

And maybe next time Michael would tire of her dreams and anxieties, even though he said he wouldn’t. Her PTSD was tiresome even for her, and she wondered at his patience.

 

<><><>

 

“OK, Sammie-Bird,” she’d hear, “Let’s do it.” And she’d jump into flight gear and be running onto the field where the helicopter waited.

 

“Whadda we got?’

 

“Looks like advances on a platoon pinned down, and they need some fire power in there quick,“ said Hal, the best pilot she’d ever known. He had died so long ago.  How many times, she wondered? How many attacks amid the smoke and screams and zigzag light of antiaircraft?

 

<><><> 

 

Even in the silence of the endless green of their farm near the Blue Ridge, she heard the old voices. But some days there, she would hear only the hum of the bees on apple blossoms, the soft whoosh of  tall grass in the meadow, and gaze reverently at the giant, green mountains whose shade protected them from the harsh heat of summer.

Those were the good days.

 

Work seemed to help, so a long day of weeding, pruning, feeding chickens and goats, mucking pens around the barn, and the endless tasks of a small farm were precious to her.

 

She’d wave to Michael, when he came down the dusty lane from town…you needed a day job now to have a farm life, and he was a crackerjack at remodeling for all the rich folks that dotted the mountainsides with their luxury second homes.

 

“Hey, Baby,” he’d say with the slow grin she loved. “Any highlights today?”

 

“Samson tried to eat the fence to get at the new hay.” (Their prize goat was a known troublemaker.)

 

“We’ll shore up that fence tomorrow. But let’s get some dinner and figure that out later.”

 

“Right,” she said. Let’s do something tactile, no guessing. No hazy borders where the past comes in.

 

Then the evening proceeded as ever…light cooking with pasta and vegetables, some sauce from the freezer and great bread from a baker friend. After a little red wine and an hour on the porch swing, and it almost felt like heaven.

 

Leaving Nellysford, her tiny hometown, she had wanted to prove herself, be part of the fight somewhere, to show that her heart was strong enough to defend the life and country she loved.

 

Her family was against it, but she insisted. At just eighteen, she trained, endured and made it to an elite team off the radar of the press and general knowledge, but deep in a conflict that no one understood.

 

So, just after she met Michael, in 2011, she deployed with her secret team. Trained as the first woman to be the point of the spear, she lived like a fox among coyotes…surviving each assault mission, along with a few lucky others.

 

The heat of the day, the chill of the night, and the desperation for victory within her squad was resolute, in stark contrast to weariness of the long embattled Afghan tribesmen and the kamikaze style attacks of the Taliban.

 

<><><> 

 

“Deke, Jimmy,” she’d call as they rounded a mountain before touchdown, “We are away.” Touchdown was brief, and the scramble to fan out frantic.

 

There was always gunfire. Always. Flashes brighter than the night.

 

But that was often distant, because they came to kill. And their targets were selected with careful precision.

 

So many kills.

 

<><><> 

 

But now she was at her window again, looking out at the fading light on the Blue Ridge, and hearing the sound of Bonnie Raitt wafting into the kitchen. Michael knew how to get her attention. He always had.

 

When she came home from the war, without a scratch, everyone cheered their marriage, and the heroine who could live happily every after.

 

That’s when the dreams came.

 

<><><> 

 

“Deke, Deke”, answer me. When she found him, he choked a final goodbye, and “Tell Sally…” but he never told her what to tell Sally. She held his bloody hand until the others dragged him away. “I’m fine,” she lied to everyone.

 

But the next week, Kandahar province blew up, and she, Jimmy and the reinforcements went into a hell no one could imagine.

 

It was impossible to find the targets, yet the hail of fire rained down on them incessantly. They stumbled from rocky outcropping to stonewall for cover, without relief. The stark peaks and endless desert reminded them that they were aliens here. Unwelcome.

 

Then they saw it. A few huts with a little light that might be a village…somewhere to hide or rest, just for a moment.

 

“Run for it, Jimmy,” and they all did. 

 

“Anybody there,” she called? “Let’s move; secure the area.”

 

And for the first time on that treacherous day, she let out a breath.

 

They gathered and went to the first huts, one empty, the next with only women quivering in terror. She told them in her limited Urdu not to be afraid. “Make tea for us.” she said, the parlance of peace in Afghanistan.

 

The next hut was also empty, even though there were embers in the fire. Someone had fled perhaps…but to where?

 

The last hut had a blanket for its closure and a thick mat of sticks over it, black strands woven tightly. She called out to ask who was there, but no answer.

 

Carefully, she pulled back the stick door, and blinked from the firelight. She saw nothing, then a form, then a long dark object with a magazine in the middle...quick flash of danger. Before she could speak or call out, Jimmy shot one, two, three times, directly into the figure.

 

“Stop, Jimmy, stop,” she cried, and ran into the hut. There on the ground was a little boy, bright jacket red with blood.

 

“No, “she had cried, “No, no,” all the way to the base. All the way back to DC and then home to the Blue Ridge.

 

<><><> 

 

“Where are you, Miss Sam?” asked Michael. He let her brood for only so long.

 

“Just wandering a bit.”

 

“Well, wander back to this moonlight.” He held her on the porch swing, and they let their eyes follow the fireflies on the field and the mist rising.

 

“Let’s get to bed,” she said. And they did. She clung to him as ever. Another peaceful day ending.

 

Sleep came eventually in the new night, soon followed with the long parade of memories and ghosts.

 

She twitched and felt the cold air around her, the cold sandy dirt on her bare feet. 

 

Peering into the dark night, she saw the door and walked silently toward it. As it opened, she smiled and pulled a little Afghan boy into her embrace.

 

 

 

Patty Patten Tiffany writes from the Florida Keys, USA.

 

 

 

Ed Coonce

Storm's 'A Comin'

 

          The two brothers sit at an old wooden table on the front porch, surrounded by dead possums. Some of the possums are on the table, a couple are on a chair nearby, and three are lying on a plastic bag on the ground.

 

          “There’s a storm a-comin’,” says BillyJimTom.

 

          “No, there ain’t,” replies his brother FergusWilly. “Y’all jist hope there’s one comin’ so’s we don’t have to skin these possums. Now listen to me, BillyJimTom, I don’t need no weatherman to see which way the wind blows.”

 

          “Whut in East Hell does that mean?” says BillyJimTom. “Besides, you know that rain can ruin a perfectly good freshly skinned possum. The meat’ll be all soggy and it’ll mess up the deep fryer. You know that!”

 

          “Whatever,” replies FergusWilly. “Just shut the hell up and keep skinnin’.”

 

          Younger sister Lurleen walks up onto the porch, just getting back from her shopping trip to the Medical Marijuana 7/11. “You boys look like you’re having so much fun,” she says. She unloads some cans and boxes and clear plastic containers. “Here’s the pepper and chipotle and two fingers of that nasty skunkweed you asked me to pick up.”

 

          “Thanks,” says FergusWilly.

 

          “We won’t be needin’ that stuff,” says BillyJimTom. “Storm’s a’comin’. He thinks a moment, then adds “Well, maybe the weed.”

 

          “That’s right.” Lurleen agrees. “Heard it on the radio news on the way here.”

 

          FergusWilly starts skinning the first possum, slices him wide open with his razor knife. BillyJimTom watches and shakes his head.

 

          Lurleen unslings her Kim Kardashian Kollection shoulder bag, takes out her phone, dials a number and listens. “I’m on my way,” she breathes into the phone. She addresses her possum-skinning brothers.

 

          “I got me a date, gotta git goin’. Have fun with them possums.”

 

          “Who’s yer date?” asks BillyJimTom.

 

          “Some guy I met at the East Hell Mall,” she answers. “His name’s James...James Patterson or Pattinson, something like that. He’s got kinda strange eyes, but seems really nice.”

 

          Lurleen gets in the car, looks in the rear view mirror and fusses with her bangs. She takes a moment and re-curls the eyelashes on one eye. She is just pulling out of the long gravel drive onto the highway when the first raindrops hit. She shivers, thinking of dead possums, and turns on the radio. Trace Adkins is singing “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.”

 

 

 

Ed Coonce is a writer, artist, and actor from Encinitas, CA. He is the president and creative director at Theatre Arts West and hosts East Hell Writers, a weekly critique group. Ed also is on the board of directors for the Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation, producing five events a year, including art, music, literary and film festivals. He has participated in the San Diego Fringe Festival and makes the best cauliflower souffle ever.