Baxter by Jill Spradley

Baxter didn’t know he was born for a job, had a job, and lost the job. Here are some things that Baxter knew: the couch, the bed, the preferred bed (rugs piled together), chicken skin, the mailman (good), the FedEx man (bad), the awful winter sweater. He didn’t know he had broken limbs and records and fortunes. He didn’t know why he ran over and over toward a rabbit that didn’t exist.      

Baxter had three legs but even on a bad day moved twice as fast as me. “I just don’t understand why you’d want to take care of something so large,” said my mom, once again pointing out the size of my apartment, that I knew no one. Once again pointing out the distance between us. “He’ll break everything in his way.” “Mom, he can HEAR you.” I looked at Baxter in the rearview mirror. He was far calmer than the voice coming out of my speaker. I had braced for barking. Howling, even. The drive home from the Bucks County Home for Retired Greyhounds was quiet, uneventful.  

“Mom, it’s not running away when you’re 37.” 

“You’ll be back. Everyone comes home.” 

Baxter, do you miss Florida? Do you miss your competition? Were you and your competitors running together or racing alone? Me, I miss designated parking, I miss not spending a half hour looking for something I can parallel this bad boy into. And yes, I guess sometimes I miss my family but do not tell them that, you hear me? Baxter sat silent. 

That first winter was bad. We both hated our sweaters, and  three legs don’t mix with four inches of snow. Once around the block and it was “you’ve got this buddy,” but we looked at each other knowing we definitely don’t got this. As the snow melted we began to make inroads, loops widening. Maybe Baxter was still chasing the rabbit, but the rabbit started to look like other things: a pee-soaked tree stump, a discarded chicken wing, golden retriever puppies all inexplicably named Finn. 

It’s hard to be the new kid when you’re already several lifetimes old. I sat in the corner of the dog park and watched young couples unleash drooling balls of energy into the fold. Baxter towered above these other dogs, unsure how to engage but happy to be there. He bobbed in haphazard circles, avoiding dust ups while taking in each fence link and overgrown bush. The people dotting the perimeter spoke to him and he spoke back: 

“Hello,” said Baxter, “I am surprisingly smooth and easy to the touch.” 

“Hello,” said Baxter, “Are you prepared for this much eye contact?”

“Hello,” said Baxter, “Can you remove my sweater so that I may feel everything?” 

“Hello,” said Baxter, “I am being instructed to keep the sweater on but do not listen, instructions will not take us very far in this world, we must do what we feel is right and just.”

Homing instincts hold fast, no matter how many finish lines or state lines we cross. It’s summer now and the heat reminds me of lazy afternoons in a slow town. It’s the same sun, I tell myself, I brought it with me. Baxter sits on the patio, taking in his home, wind blowing warm from the gulf. Baxter holds his head toward it and sighs deeply. Tomorrow morning the world will be soft and bright and new.

Jill Spradley is a writer and creative director living in Philadelphia. When not awkwardly composing her bio, she can be found on twitter @sprads. 

When I Think About My Mother by C. Cimmone

When people ask what my first childhood memory is, I don’t tell them the truth. I tell them my first childhood memory is opening Christmas presents. I talk about the warmth of the fireplace and cascading limbs of a Frasier fir. It is a delightful first memory, but it’s not mine.

My first childhood memory is a spinning box fan and my mother’s smooth breasts. My first childhood memory is just a flash, a short burst of a foggy shower, a mild disturbance to an otherwise seamless day. My mother would argue that she was not a good mother and that most of our days were volatile and intentionally forgotten with overflowing buckets of guilt and shame. To hear my mother tell it, my childhood was a broken heirloom, a fractured branch of an ancestry tree that she worked tirelessly to repair.

There isn’t much left of that day, only a piece of the night, which began with a yellow glow creeping from underneath the bathroom door. The box fan cooled my face; my long hair danced in the stream of cool air. My body was limp and molded by a heap of blankets. Our dog rested against my back; my brother twisted and flopped on the other side of the bed.

The shower began, as it did each night, and draining water paced itself with the hum of the box fan. I waited for the variation of falling water, my mother’s entry to the warm shower, but there was a delay - perhaps a forgotten rag or towel. My mother’s feet eventually sank into the shower and the water ran its course, over her body and down the drain.

The gentle chirp of my mother’s voice disturbed the running water and a clap of a dropped shampoo bottle scared me into easing the bathroom door open with a careful nudge. The light was low, and in my mind, after all of these years, the light is softly falling down on my mother. The rest of the hollow room is dark, and my brother does not exist. I see my mother, her large breasts caressing her chest, her swollen thighs leaning towards the shower wall. I see her hands clenching her face; I see her long brown hair, tacky with moisture, clinging to her back. Her brown nipples are large and caring; her bare arms are tan and shaking.

My first childhood memory is of my mother weeping; it is a memory I have carried with me all over. I have sprinkled it all over my relationships and I have unpacked it each Christmas morning. I hear my mother crying when I look at pictures of my father, a man who never aged. I hear her crying in my mind when I consider falling in love. I hear shower water running when I think about my mother on her knees, begging for peace, for closure, for just a second to see my father standing tall and telling her, “I love you.”

My mother carried her grief with her to her last hour. She struggled to find a light, to see a shimmer of him somewhere along the hospital wallpaper. She reached for my hand before her last few breaths. I knew her fear was that I would only remember her pain, her unfiltered discipline, and her second-hand shirts, so I leaned in as she closed her eyes and whispered, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known, and I know Daddy will be so happy to see you.”

This story was written for my daughter; a presumptive telling of her first childhood memory...of me.

C. Cimmone is an author, editor, and comic from Texas. She’s alive and well on Twitter at @diefunnier

Acrological by Jack Bedell

My uncle believed you only named a dog so it would come when you said its name. And he never named a dog anything that started with the same letter as any of the other commands he used, because he wanted his dogs to snap to it as soon as they heard that first sound. Never used the command “come” since it wasn’t sharp enough to carry, so we always had a line of bird dogs named King or Coop or Crown or Copper. Nothing starting with an S, for sure. God forbid the dog sat down before running in. Nothing with an H, because “high on” actually meant to run off. Couldn’t have that either. No Ls. Lying down was not an option until the job was done. Bs were out, too. “Be still” was a big one in the blind. No Ds—“Drop it.” No Ls—“Leave it.” No Gs—“Go.” It was always good to know, though, that he only expected one thing to happen whenever he said a name. 

Jack B. Bedell is Professor of English and Coordinator of Creative Writing at Southeastern Louisiana University where he also edits Louisiana Literature and directs the Louisiana Literature Press. Jack’s work has appeared in Pidgeonholes, The Shore, Cotton Xenomorph, Okay Donkey, EcoTheo, The Hopper, Terrain, and other journals. His latest collection is No Brother, This Storm (Mercer University Press, 2018). He served as Louisiana Poet Laureate 2017-2019.