Eleanor wasn’t sure there had been a voice.

  The hogs had been restless and noisy all morning because an oil company was fracking nearby and the ground shook and shifted and part of the cornfield toppled sideways and fell into a hollow in the ground just before the pump water turned a filthy color that was probably the work of you-know-who as she pointed to the floor again.

  Her father held up a glass of the water that had been clear and tasty the day before and pointing to it hollered at Eleanor and her mother that they had poisoned the Lord’s blessing with their blood. Eleanor wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “We must leave this place of sin. We must seek out our kind so that we may be cleansed.”

  Mrs. Carlisle said, “Go on. This is interesting,” and set a glass of lemonade in front of Eleanor as they sat at the kitchen table. Eleanor thanked her and said her father used to hit her if she went on, but Mrs. Carlisle insisted she wouldn’t hit her.

  When her father came in from the corn, Eleanor’s mother was sure her husband was suffering from sunstroke and told him he needed to wear a hat but he replied that he would never cover his head in reverence for the Lord because God’s light touched his brain clear through his skull and wrapped its fingers around his thoughts until he realized the Lord Almighty had called the family to leave the farm as soon as they could pack up only their clothing because they were heading west to join the Sons of Melchizedek and practice a new way of life. This had happened to her father before and when they picked up and left they always returned because the ways of man were a disappointment no matter how godly his fair creatures – and that didn’t include flies – tried to be.

  When Eleanor was eight, her family joined a group of the faithful where the women were instructed to wear long dresses no matter how hot the day was and set their hair up in an up-sweep above their eyes as if an angel lifted their womanly elegance from their foreheads so they could look unto the Lord above and feel His power and know His wrath. Eleanor’s mother had not been happy because Eleanor’s father wanted his wife and children, including Sadie who was only two, to obey his solemn commands. Crying was considered disobedience.

  Eleanor took three long sips of lemonade and continued. Something happened to Sadie. Her mother wouldn’t say what. Either the baby had fallen ill or she had cried after her father commanded her to obey him but after that Sadie was gone without explanation. She asked if that was being inconsiderate and Mrs. Carlisle agreed that it most certainly was. Soon after the baby’s disappearance, the family returned from the Sons of Gabriel to the family hog farm and Eleanor had to work twice as hard because the county was trying to take the land for back taxes and Eleanor’s father was being charged with cruelty to animals because he’d walked away from his livestock and left the hogs and a cow to fend for themselves. The cow was caught several farms away but the hogs didn’t do well because they were penned up.

  As she and her mother dragged the hogs from the mud of the barnyard where they had fused with the land, the sacred land as her mother called it, Eleanor bent over and was sick from the smell. That’s why she asked Mrs. Carlisle not to serve her bacon for breakfast after her guardian put a hearty plate in front of her the morning after Bob dropped her at her safe house. Mrs. Carlisle made great eggs. Her secret was a little bit of garlic powder. Eleanor told her they tasted wonderful but asked if her guardian was just a little bit afraid of the you-know-who down you-know-where who had something to do with garlic but Eleanor wasn’t sure what. Mrs. Carlisle said no because her mother had been born in the south of France where everyone loves garlic and would eat it no matter what. Eleanor told her the eggs were better than a boiled potato.

  “Is that all you ever got for breakfast?” and Eleanor replied un-huh, especially after her father’s vision in the cornfield that sent them to live with the Children of Melchizedek.

  Did Mrs. Carlisle know who Melchizedek was? Mrs. Carlisle nodded but Eleanor told her anyways. He was the angel who came to visit Lot and Lot’s wife who turned to a pillar of salt for not obeying her husband, and M – she wasn’t permitted to say his name too often – came to visit Lot and his family because he was going to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Mrs. Carlisle agreed. Eleanor continued that the Children, better than the Sons because sons expect something and children just need to be seen and not heard and most of the time not seen at all, was ready to lay down their lives to destroy the wickedness of the cities, especially if they had railway stations and large office towers where wicked things happened.

  “Like what?” Mrs. Carlisle asked.

  Oh, just about everything wicked. I don’t know everything that’s wicked because I was not permitted to read or write and Bob says that’s a disadvantage in this world and I have to weigh the pros with the cons, whatever they are, and just dive in and read and write and catch up from the ten years I was shut off from the world. The compound where the Children lived was lovely. There were mountains off in the distance. The summers were cooler, the winters were harder. Sadie caught sick with something and even though we prayed she went to Heaven to be with Jesus. I am frightened for her though.

  “Why?” asked Mrs. Carlisle.

  Eleanor stared out the kitchen window at the backyard and replied that Sadie didn’t know how to read or write either and what would happen if she went to Heaven to be with Jesus and she had to sign in or fill in a job application? There’d be no one to teach her unless Eleanor showed up and she didn’t want to do that because there’s more to life than I thought possible. I never dreamed there were streets with cars on them. I never dreamed there were expressways and shopping malls and Happy Arches where people could walk up to the counter and choose whatever they wanted from a menu of nutritious offerings with recommended food guidelines posted on the tiled wall though no one ever bothered to read them. I want to into an office tower. I want to get on a train and go somewhere because they’re like Facebook. They exist without anyone knowing they are there, just like I always thought of the Lord Almighty existing and no one realizing He was there right beside us as we worked in the fields without our hats on and only put on our scarves or caps as a sign of reverence when we came inside our houses.

  “Tell me more about the Children of Melchizedek,” Mrs. Carlisle said. “Did they ever speak of what they wanted to destroy?”

  Eleanor didn’t know. She said she had seen a map. Her father beat her for having looked upon it because he said the large paper spread upon the kitchen table late at night was a new form of scripture that would lead to the land of glory for the Children. It was pretty. There were lines all over it and I think those were highways. There were two blue snakes that met and became one snake, and her father and the other men had circled a darker area where dark lines were closer together like pieces of a quilt sewn together to make a patchwork. Momma made a patchwork quilt but she wrapped Sadie in it as she wept and we set Sadie in the Earth and my father screamed that his child’s death was the work of man and I was frightened because I knew he would beat me if I even thought out the map and all its lines. But now that I have put it all behind me I want to know what the work of Man is. I want to imagine that those blue snakes are rivers and the dark patchwork is made of streets just like this one. I want to learn to read the names on the map so I can remember what it is my father and his brethren want to destroy to pull down the works of Man before the Lord Almighty.

  Mrs. Carlisle asked Eleanor if she would like to take a train trip on her next day off and Eleanor was very happy replying that there had been cars and trucks and once when her family was still a family and they were driving along the highway and trying to ignore people in the other cars who stared at them because they mistook them for you-know-who down you-know-where I looked up and above me, there was a long silver train with windows moving faster than a bird chasing a fly on a summer morning, and I asked what it was and before my father could hush her words my mother said it was a train. Not just any train but a passenger train and it was heading to the city. It was full of people who were reading newspapers or books or just minding their own business and admiring the scenery as they rolled past it and they were calm. That’s when my father pulled the car to the side of the road and beat my mother in a ditch. I cried but I told myself that someday I would be one of those people on a train.

  So three days later Mrs. Carlisle woke me earlier than usual and made me garlic eggs and we got in her car and went where she said it was downtown, but not you-know-where down. The light was reflecting off the glass of tall buildings. The street was a rainbow I had seen once on the creek at the edge of our hog farm, and I hurried to keep up with Mrs. Carlisle who stood in line and bought two pieces of cardboard and called them tickets from a woman who sat behind glass. I heard voices like angels speaking to me from the air and then Mrs. Carlisle took my hand and led me to the top of a staircase with a number in lights on a sign at the top.

  That’s when I saw my father and his friends. They used to say only sinners ride on trains. They are sinners because they stare out their windows and look at all the poor folk and don’t do nothing for them. How could they? They were traveling. Sinners have to go somewhere. That’s why they ride the train.

  He saw me. He saw me like he’d seen a vision and he stared at me. I wanted to call to him but Bob said I mustn’t have anything to do with him again and I was frightened because I didn’t want him to beat me anymore, not there, not then. And as we descended the steps I could see the train. It was silver and had dark windows that were staring with mystery and just as Mrs. Carlisle and I were about to grab hold of long metal handles and step up to the train my father grabbed me by the arm so tight it hurt and raised a hand to strike me but his palm never touched me because the hand of the Lord came down as if it was smoting a fly against a wall and the station exploded all around me. I said don’t to him but he wouldn’t listen so I pulled away and he called after me, but I ran as hard as I could to the far end of the train and Mrs. Carlisle leaned out from the top of the steps and called my name but my father shouted Thy Will Be Done and Mrs. Carlisle and my father disappeared and I got knocked to the ground as if it was the hand of the Lord and everything was smitten if that’s the word for being smote and I tried to say don’t but nothing would leave my lips except blood and blood is holy so I was certain the Lord was there among us because the train rained down on me in pieces of metal and I had to love the Lord because there was no other choice that I still wanted to say don’t.

  A Short Film About Seagulls

  (shortlisted Fish Flash Fiction Prize)

  By the end of September, the days were still as warm as they’d been in July with the only difference being the deserted streets and the shuttered cottages that reminded me how time passes and leaves its silences behind.

  We’d been residents since May.

  She was up early every morning, long before I was awake.

  She’d disappear down the beach with her camera and tripod, her Capri’s darkened where the waves touched her shins above the frayed cuffs and the wind making her hair wild as if she spent time in a lover’s arms.

  Even in rough weather, when the sea turned grey and the tidelines shifted precariously toward the dunes that separated the cottage from the sound, she’d return by ten, her head and back sandy, saying it had been tough to get the shots she wanted.

  As I put my manuscripts in cartons and wove the flaps together the way someone might have clasped her hand, I realized I had failed to script my own life, and having given up being a character, was out of the picture.

  I pressed the trigger.

  The camera was empty. The feed sprockets whirred. Frame by frame, nothing had captured the illusions.

  Gulls didn’t follow her the way she said they did, but one hovered motionless over the cottage deck, its wings spread, pages in the middle of a story. That’s when I saw him kiss her goodbye. That’s how this film ends.

  Worldly Goods

  (The Song Between Our Stars)

  The storage facility was open twenty-four hours a day because physicians kept their records in the padlocked cells that reminded me of prisons I’d seen on television. Two in the morning had seemed a good idea when I began. I didn’t want to be alone but the longer I shifted and hauled my late aunt Shirley’s left me, the more exhausted I felt and the more I was overcome by a feeling of disturbing the dead.

  My aunt and I had never been close but I inherited her worldly goods. My mother often admitted she found her sister Shirley overbearing. My aunt insisted on being the keeper of my grandparent’s belongings. She scooped up everything and hoarded it. When Shirley died it all went into storage. There was the sofa with traces of lily of the valley perfume that remained from Gran’s afternoon naps.

  As I struggled to shift a dresser, I realized hell is keeping other people’s possessions long after they are dead. Shirley locked her mother away in the twelve-by-ten vault, entombing her like a Pharaoh for ruining her future.

  Shirley never married and blamed my grandmother for chasing away suitors. I sat down in an overstuffed easy chair from the Thirties and wondered if I should be unpacking the dead and their troubles.

  I closed my eyes and moved through the rooms of my grandmother’s house. It had been a happy place for me. I remembered the things that weren’t there – the claw-foot bathtub, the cast iron kitchen sink draining board.

  I thought it would be nice to surprise my Mom with a photograph of the three of them. They were standing beside a lake, smiling, if I remembered the picture correctly. Happiness. A rare moment lost in time

  I had been through dresser drawers and cedar chests and poked among the layers of two lives. I was ready to give up when I found what I was looking for in the buffet that still held my grandmother’s silverware, tarnished from years in the dark stillness. I held the photo to the light.

  They weren’t as I remembered them.

  Shirley was scowling at my grandmother. My mother was the only one smiling. The past hadn’t been worth the trouble of finding it.

  Dawn was coming.

  I had to put everything back where it had been, including the ghosts. They cannot handle a new day and they fade the moment they are touched by sunlight.

  The Brothers

  The Galle-Gamache brothers were into Christmas trees. I’d help drive loads down to the city and sell them to suckers for five times the price just before Christmas. Everyone in the north works an angle. We have to if we’re going to keep afloat. The favorites are contraband tobacco, unexcised liquor from the reserves, and Christmas trees from Crown Land. There is so much Crown Land nobody misses them.

  The brothers were both called Hal though they had different names. Henry Hal was the more erudite of the two, haughty but people believed him. He had what I’d call “nurture.” He could sell a pipe cleaner to someone desperate enough on Christmas Eve. The other brother was Harold Hal. He was a “nature” man. He knew his way around the bush and could drag ten to fifteen medium-sized trees out in one trip. He was an expert on snowshoes. Harold Hal could sleep rough. His unkempt beard made him fearsome. The Ministry of Natural Resources men stayed clear of him even when he was hunting out of season or hauling pine and fir saplings to his truck.

  The brothers heard the MNR replanted the far side of Skid Lake about five years ago after a burn-off. The trees would be the right size. Skid is on the map but a map isn’t useful because no one ever goes there. As they were crossing, the lake the ice broke beneath Harold. The air was warm but the water was frigid and Harold refused to let go of his load or kick off his boots and snowshoes. He disappeared. Henry couldn’t swim. He kept jabbing a tree into the hole hoping Harold would come up and grab it.

  There was no way Henry could tell the cops what had happened. He’d be charged with deforesting Crown Land. He drove his load south as if nothing had gone wrong.

  I haven’t seen Henry since last summer. I was picking blueberries. Henry had on scuba gear and clutched a fistful of flowers. He dove into Skid, chased by a water moccasin, but not before shouting he’d bring Hal back to life.

  Toothbrush (Hash Journal)

  If a lie is different from a secret I will never tell where the rabbit went because when I was four I learned to brush my teeth and knew I was unhappy but had no way of going to a happy place. My family was not the problem. My parents were loving, my grandparents doting. But the boy across the street came into my garden and hit me until I cried.

  He was six. His name was Leslie Yawnton and he beat me up because he said I was a little liar who told stories.

  One morning on television I saw a man in a rocket fly into the sky.

  The voice on the television said, “Possibilities are now as vast as our imaginations.” I asked my mother what imagination was.

  “Think of pictures in your mind. Think of faraway places,” she said.

  “Where is the man in the rocket going?”

  “Wherever our imaginations take us.”

  “Do I have an imagination?”

  “Yes, dear, you do, though sometimes you have too much.”

  “Like when you don’t believe me if I tell you Leslie hit me?”

  She didn’t answer. Maybe she wanted to believe me, but she never caught Leslie in the act of sitting on top of me and hitting me repeatedly in the face.

  The day I saw the rocket man, Leslie appeared in my garden. He had climbed over the fence or undone the gate. I told him I had seen a man go up into the sky and fly among the stars.

  Leslie said I was lying and kept punching me in the head.

  In a puff of smoke, the spaceman in a white helmet and silver suit who carried his air in a box made me imagine I could go somewhere else. Leslie grabbed me in a chokehold.

  “You are a dirty little liar who tells stories.”

  He slapped me until I couldn’t fight back the tears, insisting there was no one in the sky and if anyone went there they would fall down and die. I “needed my mouth washed out.”