Issue Twenty-Three, Volume Three

From the Desk of the Editor;

Hello and welcome to the 23^rd issue of volume three of Larks Fiction Magazine! In this week’s issue we are featuring works about the dog-days of life. Those feelings that make you bark with anxiety and yip with joy.

In news we are moving our offices again back out of the city. This time it we are purchasing a building rather than renting and hope to be completely transitioned by December. As the new office is devoid of a roof we are hoping we will meet that goal (pictures to come soon). We apologize for any delays this might cause.

Thank you for reading and please check out our monthly issues online at Smashwords.com!

Yours,

Daniel J. Pool

LFM Editor

The Boy Who Became a Dog

Lewis J. Beilman III

The Johnsons bring their boy to the doctor’s office. They don’t know what to do with him. Mr. Johnson has the boy wrapped in a white blanket. He uncovers the blanket to show the doctor the boy’s face.

“Doctor,” the father says, “please look at our child. He no longer talks…and he can’t stand straight on his two feet.”Mrs. Johnson is crying. She turns away from the blanket.

The doctor screws up his eyes and shakes his head. He looks at the father, then at the mother. “Are you serious?” he says. The doctor opens the door and calls to a nurse.

The nurse comes to the door. “Yes, doctor,” she says.

“Did you let the Johnsons in to see me?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “They were in the waiting room last I noticed. They said little Jimmy was sick.”

“Take a look at little Jimmy,” the doctor says.

“Oh my,” the nurse says. From behind the blanket a black nose quivers; little Jimmy yelps and his yellow tail pokes out and wags from the other side of the blanket. The nurse giggles.

The doctor tells the Johnsons to get out.

“But doctor…” Mr. Johnson says.

“Get out,” the doctor repeats. “You need a vet, not a doctor.”

The Johnsons go home.

*          *          *

The Johnsons were worried about Jimmy recently, even before he turned into a dog. A few weeks ago, Jimmy had started kindergarten, and his teacher, Mr. Woodhouse, had called the Johnsons at the end of Jimmy’s first week to discuss Jimmy’s behavior. When the teacher had spoken to them, he had said Jimmy had grown enraged in class at another child who had taken a toy from him. Jimmy had grabbed his chair and hit the child with it. When the teacher had gone to take the chair from Jimmy, Jimmy had thrown it at him. After that, Jimmy had sat on the floor and stared out the classroom window. When the teacher had asked Jimmy to get up, Jimmy had barked like a dog and refused to move.

The Johnsons indeed thought Jimmy’s behavior in school strange. Until recently, Jimmy had been a loving child who had never fought with anyone. Still, the Johnsons chalked Jimmy’s behavior up to him having trouble adapting to days away from home…they chalked it up that way until what happened yesterday morning.

On that morning, the Johnsons woke to the sound of a dog whimpering. Although the sound seemed closer than it should have been, they attributed it to one of their neighbors’ dogs and paid it little attention. As Mr. Johnson remained in bed and read the newspaper, Mrs. Johnson went about her routine of making Sunday breakfast. The smell of eggs and bacon frying in butter permeated the house, and Mrs. Johnson expected Jimmy to stagger into the kitchen with his hands at his face rubbing the sleep from his eyes. When she didn’t see him, she left the kitchen to check on him. It was then that she found the little Labrador in Jimmy’s room. She looked for Jimmy under his bed and in his closet but was unable to find him.

*          *          *

After finding no signs of Jimmy in the rest of the house, the Johnsons began to call their neighbors. Each neighbor who answered told them that he or she had not seen Jimmy that morning…or the previous night for that matter. The Johnsons were unable to reach the neighbors who lived across the street and decided to go there in person to see if the neighbors’ son was home. The neighbors’ son, Billy, had babysat for Jimmy a few times during the past month when the Johnsons had gone out to dinner or visited with friends. They thought that maybe Jimmy had gone to see him.

The Johnsons knocked on the neighbors’ door. Billy answered it and said his parents were out shopping. When the Johnsons asked Billy if he had seen Jimmy, Billy said no. Billy added that Jimmy would have no reason to see him. “No reason at all,” he said. His pale eyes bore at them from above his freckled cheeks. He closed the door on them. They stood silently at the door for a few minutes before they turned away.

After they spoke with Billy the babysitter, the Johnsons continued their search throughout the neighborhood. They looked through some nearby woods where Jimmy and his friends often wandered. They went to his elementary school to see if Jimmy had ventured to the playground there.  They checked an oak tree in a neighbor’s yard where Jimmy sometimes went to rest in the shade or climb to its middle branches. Still, they found nothing, so they went home.

*          *          *

When they were home, Mr. Johnson said, “Why don’t we call the police?” Without answering, Mrs. Johnson went to get the phone.  She thought it was the right thing to do. As she picked up the phone, though, the dog began to bark in the living room’s bay window. She and Mr. Johnson followed the sound and looked outside. The neighbors’ son, Billy, lurked across the street at his mailbox, and the dog raged. Spit flew from the dog’s mouth as he stood, shoulders erect, with his front paws on the sofa’s back. As the Johnsons stood at the window and watched Billy, they knew something was wrong.

“That dog knows something,” Mr. Johnson said.

The Johnsons looked at each other, he into her blue eyes, and her into his brown. They both thought the same thing. They named the dog “Jimmy” to acknowledge what their son had become.

*          *          *

To make Jimmy feel more at home, the Johnsons bought a crate and set it up in Jimmy’s bedroom. The Johnsons had owned a dog before Jimmy had been born and, from that experience, they knew the crate would bring Jimmy comfort. The crate was made of polished wood, and the Johnsons placed Jimmy’s favorite blanket and his favorite stuffed animal, Mr. Rabbit, in it. They also furnished his room with chew toys, rawhide bones, and a cedar-chip dog bed. The Johnsons fed Jimmy beef tips from a local delicatessen. Jimmy leaped up, pawed at their thighs, and tried to lick their faces as they bent towards him. There wasn’t a happier dog in the world.

They went to bed that night and slept well. In the morning they realized that Jimmy must have slept well too. They had not heard him whine all night. Mr. Johnson called in sick to work that morning, and he and Mrs. Johnson had coffee in the sunroom and then took Jimmy outside to walk around the backyard. After Jimmy irrigated various trees and shrubs in the yard, the Johnsons took him around the front. The school bus came northward up the street, and Jimmy’s fur on his shoulders stood on end. Billy the babysitter walked out of his house to board the bus. Jimmy snarled and bared his teeth.

The Johnsons watched the rage build inside Jimmy. Mr. Johnson bent down to pet Jimmy, hoping to calm the dog. The Johnsons loved the dog, but they missed their son. They resolved to bring Jimmy to the doctor’s office that morning to see if anything could be done to reverse his transformation.

*          *          *

After having visited the doctor’s office, the Johnsons know that no one will be able to bring Jimmy back…at least not the way he was before. They know, too, the school will soon call, or the neighbors will contact the police, and people will start to ask, “Where is your son?  Where is Jimmy?”

The Johnsons sit that Monday afternoon, in the kitchen, with two cups of coffee and a bag of liver treats on the table. They savor the taste of the cream-and-sugar coffee, and Jimmy savors the taste of the chicken liver. The Johnsons smile at each other because they know these may be the last moments they share before the calls come or the doorbell rings. They reach down and tug gently at Jimmy’s ears as he licks their hands. Mr. Johnson stands and walks to the window over the sink that looks into the backyard. Mrs. Johnson follows him and puts her arm over his shoulder. He kisses her on the forehead.

When the doorbell rings…and it will…the Johnsons will stand side-by-side and answer the questions put to them. All the while Jimmy will pace at their feet and growl, not at the interrogator before them, but at the shadow of the boy across the street. And, over the hullabaloo of the barking dog, the Johnsons will answer, “No, our boy is not lost…our boy is not gone. He is right here…right here with us.”

The End

About the Author;

Lewis J. Beilman III lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his two cats, Elvis and Rico. He writes short stories and poetry in his spare time. His story, "The Gator and the Ibis," appeared last year in Larks Fiction Magazine, and, last month, Red Fez published his story, "Exposure." In 2009, he won first prize in the Fred R. Shaw Poetry Contest for his sonnet, "When They Leave."

The Townhome

By Michael Andrew Tate

The smell is what I noticed first. That fresh yet repulsive odor that finally registered in my nose only after I caught my breath and had a glass of cool water from my kitchen tap. It didn’t take long for me to locate the culprit, finding the source on the bottom of my left running shoe.

I took it off and held it out in front of me, trying to keep the foulness as far away as possible. Proceeding back towards my front door where I could toss the shoe onto my porch, I was careful not to step in the evenly spaced brown smudges in my carpet. My brand new carpet that I spent hours and hours of my time on finding the exact, perfect one. How could I have been so careless as to walk on it with my shoes? Shoes that had been outside for the love of god.

I tossed my shoe onto the concrete slab, and there, from my vantage point, traced my tracks down my steps and sidewalk to the origin in front of my neighbor Amber’s door. There it was, yet another clear violation of Section 6 article 14 of of the townhome association’s bylaws. That woman and her dog, Smokey, had done it again to me. Ever since they moved in they had eroded away the peaceful enclave I had grown to love, and each little incident like this was just another drip of acid onto my rapidly fraying patience.

I slammed my front door shut.

On cue, Smokey started yelping again. Even from across the extra thick, sound proofed walls I paid so dearly for, I heard that devil clear as the night sky from the middle of the ocean. I had been led to believe that the larger ones barked far less frequently, but not Smokey. And not only was it incessant, but he had recently began howling like a wild wolf every time I wanted a moment of quiet. That dog itself was a violation I swear. I would have bet my entire life savings that it was above the forty pound limit established by the bylaws.

I had brought that up to the board as well at the last meeting, and once more they took no action. After that final dismissal by those seven tyrants who held sole jurisdiction over the matter, I realized that the next time I would be on my own, especially since my candidacy this year for the afore mentioned board was once more a complete failure. I had never considered myself to be the type of man to resort to vigilantism, but then again I had never considered that in this world, the justice system could fail one of its citizens so egregiously.

I retrieved a small box of dog treats from the back of my closet. I kept them for Dixie, a schnauzer my neighbor Doug watched for his parents a couple weeks a year. She was safely under the size limits and whose temporary guardian, I am quite confident, adhered to Section 6 article 14. I suppose it wasn’t dogs that really bothered me. They were, after all, only animals. Their owners on the other hand…

I put a handful of the treats in a plastic bag and opened up the cabinet under my sink. I reached in deep to where I kept the rat poison. I never had any need for it since I moved in, but I kept it in case I had a pest problem. The small white chunks ground up with little effort, and when I poured the powder into the bag and shook it up, it evenly coated the treats.

For the next two hours I scrubbed my carpeting with the aid of no fewer than six different cleaners. My therapist would have told me that the stains only existed in my mind — That’s what she always says — but I swear that they were still there. It wasn’t that I could see them: it was the smell that lingered. With my hands wrinkled from all the water and chemicals, I looked out my window. The sun was dipping below the horizon and the neighborhood was blanked in the soft yellow glow of porch lights. I supposed that this would have to do for tonight.

By the time I had put away my cleaning supplies, it was already 7:58pm. If anything, Smokey was reliable, and at 8:33 plus or minus thirteen minutes at one standard deviation he would want to go out. I put on a dark coat I no longer wore and proceeded outside towards Amber’s door. I carefully stepped around the violation still on the sidewalk, quickly glancing into her front window. Her television lit her living room with a flickering blue and white light with Amber herself hypnotized by the picture while she reached into a bowl of popcorn.

I scanned the street once more to be sure nobody was out. Thankfully, they were all inside like Amber. I placed a small handful of the special treats on the corner of Amber’s porch. As soon as Smokey came through the door and smelled them, it would only take one bite for the white powder to enter his body and send him back to hell where he belonged. And Amber, that irresponsible young woman, might be inspired her to re-think her behavior over the last year. In the end, she would become a better person.

With it being garbage day, I strolled down the block and discretely disposed of any evidence that would point to myself, including the jacket, treats, and rat poison, in another resident’s bin. Granted I’m sure with my record of complaints to the board, I would be a lead suspect, but if there was no evidence, then all the motive in the world made no difference.

I walked past my house to my other neighbor’s door. Doug had so far been the best neighbor I had ever had. Despite the excitement that evening, I had to make sure I was conscientious of our weekly movie night lest I jeopardize our friendship. He let me in and his parent’s schnauzer ran up to me and barked a couple times in excitement; a bark so similar to Smokey’s that the rage it conjured urged me to kick the thing.

I steadied myself and pet her, gliding my hand from the top of her head all the way down her back. Once more she barked and once more I struggled to restrain myself. I wondered if Dixie could have been the dog I had heard that evening, but I was confident that the sound came from Amber’s side. It had to have been. I scratched her under her chin and she settled down, curling up next to me on the couch.

“I didn’t know you were watching her this week.”

“Folks dropped her off last night.”

“Very good. What’s on the docket tonight?” I asked.

Doug held up a copy of Taxi Driver. “Ever see this?”

My soul smiled. “I have. Excellent choice.”

Throughout the movie I noticed that the main character, Travis, and myself were quite similar. I had never considered this before, but the more I analyzed, the more it made sense. By the end, while Travis gunned down the pimps and thugs I fantasized that I, myself, was the one pulling the trigger. We we both heroes in our own worlds. We both did the right thing. We both made the world a better place.

Before the movie concluded and the credits could splash across the screen, a knock came at the door. I stood up, reminding myself to act casually with the police, who would inevitably come canvasing the neighborhood for the culprit. I would tell them nothing, and they would in turn never find out it was me. However it was not the police. It was Amber, and she was crying.

Doug ushered her in. He motioned for her to sit down on the couch next to me.

“What happened?” he asked.

She took a couple deep breaths between sobs and said, “It’s Smokey. My friend Mary was dropping him off. She was watching him while I was away.” Amber collapsed into the couch. “Some sick bastard poisoned him.”

“What? How? Who would do that?”

“I don’t know. Somebody left some doggy biscuits on the…he ate themand just…fucking bastard!”

On the screen, Travis drove off to a smooth soprano saxophone in the background while Dixie jumped down from the couch and began to howl

The End

About the Author;

Michael Tate is an author based in Minneapolis Minnesota. He has been
active in the flash fiction community since 2010. This is his first published short story.

Thank you for reading this issue of Larks Fiction Magazine! Please join us next week for more great tales of indie fiction or see one of our other great editions.

Issue Ten, Vloume One

From the editor's desk,

       Hello all. I would to thank all of our readers. Thank you for helping this magazine to be better and better. I would also like to extend my apologies for a mistake I made this on the past issue. I (rather dumbly) did not post the last issue on time. So Issue Nine can be found here and will be re-posted at a later date, May 8th.

       The theme of this issue of Larks magical realism. Places that seem real but with just a hint of the sublime. Good reading!

Yours,

Daniel J. Pool

LFM Editor

Dubious Gifts from the Magic Shop

By—William J. White

Petey stood by the front door, looking out the screen as his Uncle Sulley squeezed his kind-of-round body out from under the steering wheel of his vintage ‘clunker’.  Sully was assisted in that endeavor, no doubt, by the use of some words seldom heard in Petey’s household.  As his Uncle waddled his way toward Petey, the boy checked the lock “Hello,

“Uncle Sully,” he said, wishing he could have gone along with his mother to the store. But as Sully reached for the door knob, Petey really wished that he had gone with his mother.

“Hey, Petey,” his uncle remarked, trying to twist the knob with his stubby hand, “Ain’t you gonna let me come in?”  His wide grin showed an uneven row of tobacco-stained teeth, causing Petey to shiver nervously.

“Can’t do it, Uncle Sully.  Mom’s orders…”

“So she’s still mad, huh?” He wiped the sweat drops from his balding forehead, with an equally sweaty, and hairy forearm.  “Boy, ‘neph’, for a widow raising a nine-year old kid, it must be the ‘rancid pits’, but… well, she just doesn’t know how to forgive.  And I don’t know why.”

“Well, for gracious me, Uncle Sully,” Petey remarked, attempting to hide his sarcasm.  “You don’t  think it might have been the fountain-pen from your Magic Shop that you gave her; that shot black ink all over her new white rug…nah, couldn’t be.  Maybe because you couldn’t stop laughing…”

“My sis-in-law,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “ just doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

“You know, Uncle Sully…I think you might be right.  When you gave her that stick of gum that made her mouth turn green for two weeks, she didn’t like that a bit. From the Magic Shop?”

Uncle Sully and his yellow teeth grinned down at Petey.  “One of our best sellers.”  He wiped his head with a nasty-looking handkerchief, and said:  “Sure is hot today, Petey. I guess since you won’t let me in to cool off, I’ll just have to take my Magic Shop’s gift to you back home and put it in some water.”  He wrapped his fat fingers around the ‘kerchief’ and squeezing out the sweat, replaced it back into his hip pocket.  “They need lots of water,” he said, turning to leave.

Petey waited until his uncle was near his car, than shouted:  “Uncle Sully… What kind of gift?”  The boy opened the door, leaving it to slam shut while he ran to his uncle’s car.  “Can I see it?”

Sully reaching through the open car window, retrieved a shoe box which he held toward Petey.  With a wide smile on his face, he pulled it back, opened a corner, and peeked in.  Turning to his nephew, he said, “It looks thirsty, Petey.  Why don’t you go fetch that wash-tub hanging against the house, get the hose, and fill it up…”

 “Can I see it?”

Placing his sweaty hand on the back of his nephew’s head; tousling his hair, he said, “Not only can you see it, but when you’ve filled that tub, I’ll let you hold it.”

Petey was away in a flash, with his uncle waddling behind him.

While filling the tub, Petey looked up at his Uncle Sully. “It isn’t a snake, is it?  Mom would never let me keep a snake…”

Peeking into the box, Sully replied: “Not a snake…”

“She might let me keep a goldfish, Uncle Sully.  I’ve never had a goldfish before.”

“Petey, I think you have enough water, it’s about to run over…No, kid, it’s not a Goldfish. Come over here and take it out of the box.”

Rubbing his hands on his pants, Petey reached for the lid, hesitating for a moment to ask Sully:  “It won’t bite, will it?”

Smiling down at his nephew, he replied: “Oh no, kid.  He won’t bite…He might lick you with his tongue, though.”  With that said, a few chuckles burst from his wide mouth.  “Go on now, nephew. Reach in and grab him.  When you have him tight in your hand, bring him out and put him in the tub, and hold him against the bottom.”

Reaching into the box, Petey felt something moving against his hand; something that kept trying to evade his  searching fingers.  “Gotcha!” Petey shouted, removing it from the box.

“Oh, it’s a bullfrog, Uncle Sully… Oh, I’ve never had a bullfrog before… thank you oh, so much…!”

“Hurry, nephew!”  Sully said harshly, pushing the boy against the tub.  “Get him under the water… Keep him there until I get to my car… I don’t want to scare him.”

While holding the frog--which seemed to be getting bigger…and stronger--Petey turned to watch his uncle scurrying to his car.

Over his shoulder, Sully shouted out some final instructions:  “No matter what kid don’t let go of him.”

Even before Sully was able to manage himself between the car seat and the steering wheel, Petey’s hands were beginning to lose their hold.  His pet was indeed growing at an enormous rate.  By the time Petey’s hands were no longer able to encircle its body, its head was protruding above the tub; water was being sloshed all over his clothes.

In desperation, Petey grabbed his pet around its fat neck. In an instant, he was dragged off his feet, and finally losing his hold, fell backwards onto the ground, from where he could see large dark eyes blinking at him. Before he could move, the huge flat mouth opened wide, and he was snatched up by long pink tongue so sticky he was unable to unwrap himself.  He only had time to scream, before he was whipped into darkness.

While good ‘ol Uncle Sully was speeding away, he was laughing so hard, the tears were spraying from his eyes.  “Okay, Sis,” he said aloud, “I bet you’re gonna love that gift from my “Magic Shop!”

The End.

About the author:

William J. White is retired after working for twenty-seven years for the city of Cincinnati in Ohio. He and his wife of fifty-eight years built their home adjacent to Lake Cumberland in Kentucky.  He has been writing since February of 2010 and intends to do so until his fingers drop off.

The Gator and the Ibis

By—Lewis J. Beilman III

           

Back then I used to escape to the Everglades.  On my way to the old Aerojet road on the outskirts of Homestead, I’d stop at the Robert Is Here fruit stand, buy a mango shake and beef jerky, get back in my car and dust past the corrections facility.  It was the same routine every time.  Since the Aerojet road was gated to prevent people from driving in and looting the deserted rocket factory, I would park outside the gate and walk the road alongside the canal until I came to a narrow clearing a few hundred yards in.  It didn’t matter whether the air wobbled with humidity, mosquitoes darted at my extremities, or a swift winter breeze kicked at me from across Florida Bay—I was there any time of the year, whenever I felt the need to leave the concrete towers and gated neighborhoods of South Florida behind.

Jack—at least that’s how I knew him—seemed to sense when I was coming and would greet me immediately.  As soon as he saw me move through the clearing and cut down the bank, I’d hear a crackle in the sawgrass across the canal, see the sawgrass part, and catch him tumbling snout-first into the water.  Sunlight glistened on his back, and his rows of white teeth contrasted with his black eyes and gray scales as he swam toward me.

Once he had crossed the canal, he’d use his stubby front legs to work his twelve-foot body up the bank and then, splaying his front legs out, adjust them one after the other to turn his thick body around and sidle up beside me.  He loved to tell variations on human jokes, and the first one I remember him telling me was a bad rip-off of a peanut joke. 

           

“What happened to the flayed piece of beef when it wandered away from the cow?” he said.  I shrugged my shoulders.  “It got a-salt-ed,” he continued, laughing.  “Get it.  Like a piece of beef jerky.”

That’s how I got the idea to bring him beef jerky whenever I came to visit.  I’d break them into two-inch pieces and drop them in his mouth.  His jaw would snap shut around the meat, and, with the upper row of his teeth exposed, he’d nod his head up and down, open his mouth again, and wait for the next piece.  Then, after I was through feeding him, he’d tell a story.  It was nothing too exciting usually. Mostly a recounting of his day.  About how he wrestled with an upstart bull, bellowed at a female gator that swam by, or crushed a soft-shell turtle in his vise-like maw. 

I didn’t say much.  I knew he liked to get stuff off his belly, and his voice, which sounded oddly like Jimmy Durante’s, delighted me.  Plus, not wanting to dwell on my quotidian struggles, I had little to say about my day.  If I were to contribute anything, I would bring a book along and read aloud to Jack.  Over the year or so we spent together, I learned that he enjoyed the classics and felt an especial affinity for Shakespeare and lyric poetry.

At some point last spring, however, Jack’s stories began to change.  Instead of his normal tales of alligator bravado, he told darker, more introspective lays about things like a tree island piled with alligator bones, a bull who devoured his young, and the many doomed lovers of the animal kingdom.  It was the latter subject that got my attention.  Otherwise, I would have thought Jack was maturing and perhaps just worrying about the long-term effects of the recent regional drought on his habitat.  But there was something else there. 

At first I thought that a particularly ravishing alligator may have spurned his advances, but the way he talked about love and hopelessness made me think that there was more to it.  Then, one day in May, he asked me if I wanted to see the woman he loved.  I told him sure and began to follow him. 

He splashed into the water, and I stepped ankle-deep into the shallows of the canal shelf.  As I slogged along, he slid his tail back and forth beneath the water’s surface to propel himself forward and to stay close to the bank.  He led the way south for about one hundred yards until he reached an area across from a patch of mangroves and stopped.

           

Jack pulled his head up and pointed his snout toward the opposite bank of the canal.  “You see her over there?” he said.

I looked at the water in that direction, but didn’t see anything.  “No, not yet,” I said.  “Is she under the water?”

“No.  Look higher.”

I scanned the sawgrass on the bank.  Squinting, I struggled to detect a snout and black eyes peeking from between the stiff blades.  “Maybe I’m missing something,” I said, “but I don’t see anything over there other than that Anhinga drying its wings.

             

“Getting warmer,” he said.  “Keep looking…but higher.”

Puzzled, I peered up into the mangrove branches.  What gator can climb a tree? I wondered.  I became suddenly afraid, thinking that there might be swarms of gators less friendly than Jack lingering in treetops ready to pounce on unexpected wanderers.  Still, I saw nothing other than a white ibis watching us from one of the mangroves. 

“Jack, I don’t see anything other than the ibis there,” I said.  “Am I missing something?”

Jack looked at me forlornly, or as close to forlornly as an alligator can look.  “You see her then,” he said.  “Isn’t she beautiful?”

I sat down on the bank, my feet dangling in the water.  Screwing up my eyes, I said, “Are we talking about the same thing?  Or are you pulling my leg?”

“I wouldn’t pull your leg about something like this,” he said.  “She’s the bird of my dreams.”

With that, Jack turned toward the opposite bank, pushed off with his hind legs, and shimmied to the other side.  He crested the bank and moved to the base of the mangrove in which the ibis rested.  When she saw him come, she fluttered her wings and descended to the ground.  She approached him and nudged her curved red beak against his snout.  Although from across the canal I couldn’t hear what was said, Jack and the Ibis appeared to colloquy. 

On occasion, Jack nodded his head and gestured toward me with his snout.  The ibis would steal a furtive glance and look away from me quickly.  After a few minutes of this, Jack turned, dove back into the canal, and swam over to me.  The ibis remained on the opposite bank watching me.

“She’s scared of humans,” Jack said.  “I told her you were OK, but she’s a little nervous.”

“Humans?” I said incredulously.  “But alligators she’s all right with?”

“Go figure,” Jack said, shrugging his shoulders.  “She loves me, though.  Do I have your blessing?”

“Of course,” I said, “but you shouldn’t have to ask.  If it works for you . . .”

“It’s just that I’m getting some flak from the other gators,” Jack said.  “And her parents definitely aren’t happy about the arrangement.  It’s kind of like the Montagues and Capulets.”

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“It’s a little hard to pronounce,” Jack said.  “It sounds like ‘Urnk’ followed by a series of nasal squawks.  I call her Juliet to make it easy.”

I nodded my head.  “Juliet it is, then,” I said.

Over the next few months, Jack vacillated between the heights of happiness and the depths of despair.  At times, he would meet me with his toothy grin and tell me how Juliet had rested on his back as he floated down the canal into Florida Bay, the seemingly endless River of Grass drifting by them along the way.  He would tell me how at peace he felt with her when the breeze passed over his back and through her feathers on those languorous journeys. 

Other times, he would meet me with vacant eyes and tell me how he went to see Juliet only to find her parents near their mangrove meeting place.  Juliet’s parents would tell him that he should be ashamed of himself, lusting after something as lovely and white as a pearl.  “Stick to your own,” they’d say, and, in the distance behind them, he’d hear the sad, nasal honk of Juliet’s sobs.  Thwarted, he’d cast off to a tree island, scoop a hole out with his jaw, and bury himself in the muck until the morning.

“Oh that this too, too sullied flesh would melt . . .” Jack exclaimed once after recounting one of these somber run-ins with Juliet’s parents.  I knew how he felt, having experienced something similar years ago, but all I could do to comfort him was to rub his snout gently and encourage him that things would get better, although I did not necessarily believe my own advice.  Then, the tears flowed…and, if it is true that crocodiles shed tears to beguile relenting passengers, then alligators shed tears without ulterior motives, but instead with genuine sorrow.

The confrontations didn’t end with Juliet’s parents either.  According to Jack, the torments came from other alligators too.  Jack said one bull started in with him as Jack was sunning himself on the west bank of the canal.  “What’s with you, Jack?” the bull said.  “Alligators aren’t good enough for you?  Next thing you know you’ll want to soar through the clouds instead of swim towards the sea.  Don’t go chasing the feathers, buddy, if you know what’s good for you.”

“And I thought he was one of my friends,” Jack said.  “We grew up together.”

Things got worse after that.  The taunting from the other alligators increased, and Juliet’s parents prevented her from seeing him almost at all.  Occasionally, she would steal away, and they would meet stealthily in a nearby road culvert, but those liaisons were few and far between.  Then, Juliet disappeared.  I’d ask Jack if he’d seen her, but he’d clam up.  He’d lift his eyes in the direction of the bay, shake his head slightly, and sigh.  “She had to go away,” he’d say, “but I don’t want to talk about it.”  Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get anything else out of him.

Soon after, Jack lost weight, and his Falstaffian penchant for humor dissipated.  He also stopped eating the beef jerky I brought for him.  He still came to see me when I visited, but his heart wasn’t into it.  At that point, his heart didn’t seem into anything.  He would alternate between pining for Juliet and making bitter remarks about the futility of life and love. 

One afternoon, as I settled down with him by the canal bank, I read to him from a book of Tennyson.  Unfortunately, I went from The Charge of the Light Brigade into In Memoriam.  When I got to the lines, “’Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all,” he looked at me and shook his head. 

“Are you kidding me?” he said, screwing up his eyes and arcing back his head.  “Did that guy really write that drivel?  If so, he hasn’t loved, much less lost.  If he were here right now, I’d take a chomp out of his lily-white behind.  In fact, he’s lucky he’s dead—or else I’d teach him a thing or two.” 

To keep Jack from getting too worked up, I grabbed a book of Coleridge and started reading Kubla Khan, which I rightfully figured was safe, and Jack calmed down, numbed by the opium-inspired words: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure dome decree. . .”  I left shortly thereafter.

I stayed away for a couple of weeks, which was the longest time I had gone without seeing Jack since we had met.  When I came back, he moped toward me from the far bank of the canal and stepped into the water.  He took a while crossing and, at times, got swept off course by the slow current.  When he reached the bank near me, I noticed that his normally dark gray scales looked ashen and his black eyes cloudy.  He looked up at me, his mouth slack. 

“So you came back,” he said, his voice trembling.  “What for?  To snatch me out of the jaws of death?”  I didn’t know what to say and stood there silently.  “Don’t worry about it,” he added and forced a smile.  “Anyway, I’ve been working on something since the last time I saw you and I want you to hear it.” 

Not knowing what to expect, I sat beside him on a shelf of exposed limestone and patted him on his scales.  He cleared his throat, tapped his right front foot, and began.  His tremulous tone grew stronger and rang through the crisp, dry-season air as he recited the following:

 “’Why would you leave me, feathered friend?’

The gator asked the ibis.

‘I thought we’d watch this river wend

As life rolled slowly by us.’

The ibis craned her head away;

She could not face his stare.

She looked out over Florida Bay

And saw her life’s path there.

The gator sensed that she would leave

And shed a gator tear—

The gator had begun to grieve

His life without her near.

‘But ibis, dear,’ he croaked, ‘with whom

Will I wake early now

To watch the sun rise through the gloom

And light the morning clouds?

With whom will I share fish for lunch

Or lie out in the sun?

And when the thunder cracks its punch,

To whose side will I run?’

The gator dragged his stubby limbs

Up from the shallow glades

And pressed against one who—for him—

Had brightened life’s dark days.

The ibis nudged the gator’s brow

And shed an ibis tear.

She wailed and moaned and wondered how

She’d live without him near.

‘Will you please stay?’ the gator cried.

‘I know we’re different.

But we should not toss love aside

Before it has been spent.’

Her tears slid down her crescent beak

And rained upon his snout.

She mumbled as she tried to speak,

But still the words came out:

‘I love you, gator dear.  My heart

Is yours and yours alone.

But I must leave, and we must part,

Although it pains me so.

You have rough, dark-gray, scaly skin

And I have feathers fine.

And—though it hurts—I must begin

To live life with my kind.’

With those words her wings cleaved the air

And she hurled toward blue skies;

And left the gator standing there

With tears welled in his eyes.”

“Well, what do you think?” Jack asked.  “I call it The Gator and the Ibis.  The title’s a no-brainer."

My cheeks were wet and I pressed my body to his.  “It’s beautiful,” I said, and I asked him if he could read it to me again so I could write it down.  I transcribed the verse on the back cover of a copy of Hamilton’s Mythology.

“Let’s take a walk,” Jack said, and we trudged through the brush beside the canal.  “I want you to know that I’m going away.”

I asked him where.

“To the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns,” he said.

“But you have so much to live for,” I said.  “Look how you turned your sadness into a work of art.  You could use it to create something good.”

“Listen,” Jack said.  “I know you mean well.  You’re my best friend, and you don’t want to lose me.  But I have to live with this every day…and I’m tired.  Now come on. . . Let’s rub noses and be done with this.”

Our eyes had tears in them as I bent down to rub his nose.  Afterwards, he turned away and plunked himself into the canal.  His last words to me were “Adios, pal.  Parting is such sweet sorrow.”  With that, his tail propelled him out of sight, and I turned toward the old Aerojet road and didn’t look back. 

I returned to the spot a few weeks later on the off chance that Jack had had second thoughts, but he was nowhere to be found.  I called his name. . . No answer.  I called once more. . . Still no answer.  Once again. . . Still nothing.  I knelt down, bowed my head, and left a dozen white roses on the side of the canal bank.  I made a cross out of two pieces of beef jerky and set it down next to the flowers.  Jack was gone.

*****

Back in Miami I learned to live with the traffic, concrete, and bluster.  I settled into my studio apartment with its view of the downtown skyline and never returned to the old Aerojet road.  Instead of walks along the canal bank, I walked along Brickell Bay Drive and let the salt breezes clear my thoughts.  I was back in the world, as they say.  I went about my daily life, until, one day, I ran into a friend who worked as an editor for a small literary magazine.  I saw him at one of the readings at the Miami Book Fair and told him I had a poem I wanted him to see.  He agreed to meet me for a beer later that week.

           

We met at an Irish pub in Brickell, where I don’t think a single Irishman lives—but that’s beside the point.  I read him Jack’s poem, and he said he liked it.  “It shows promise,” he said.  “A little archaic, but I think I could do something with it.  What else you got?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“You mean that’s your first and only poem?” he said.

“No, it’s not mine.  It’s a friend’s.”

“What’s his name?  He may have a future.”

I told him that the poet’s name was Jack Gator, and that he had no future anymore, that he was dead.  But my friend just laughed. 

“Are you telling me the guy who wrote a poem called The Gator and the Ibis is named Jack Gator?” he said.  “That’s a hoot.”

“It gets better,” I said.  “Jack Gator was an alligator.”

My friend spit out his Guinness and slapped his knee.  “Jack Gator—a real live gator and poet.  That is a hoot.  And I thought you were too serious to make up something like that.  A real, scale-and-blood, lyric-writing gator.  Now that’s a story.”

“I guess it is,” I said.  I finished off my beer.  My friend paid the tab.

“I just might use that poem,” he said as we rose to leave.  “And I’ll even attribute it to Jack Gator, if you’d like.  In the meantime, show me some more of your stuff if you’re still writing.”

I nodded, and we walked out and stood beside one of the towers that had sprouted up on South Miami Avenue.  My friend shook my hand and took his leave.  I lingered for a moment on the sidewalk.  I looked up at the sky, cloudy on a moonless night.  It was black, like an alligator’s eye.

The End

About the author:

Lewis J. Beilman III lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his two cats, Elvis and Rico. When he is not working at his day job, he writes short stories and poetry.  In 2009, his sonnet, "When They Leave," won first prize in the Fred R. Shaw Poetry Contest.

Thank you for reading and we here at Larks Fiction hope to see you all back here on April 10th for female writers of fantasy and science fiction.