The Adirondack Center for Writing
"Creating A Sense Of Place Through Literature"

Writing Contest for Adult and Young Writers!

Congratulations to these winners of
the 2005-2006 WRITING CONTEST.
This contest is presented by the Adirondack Center for Writing and North Country Public Radio.

Short Story 21+
First Place
Gabriela Bartlett
The Girl

The first time I remember seeing her was while driving west down Bay Street on my way to the dry cleaners. It was early spring, a Monday. I know it was a Monday or Mundane Day as I liked to refer to the day in which I typically crammed in all of my mind-numbing chores and errands for the week. With groceries in tow, I had the cleaners, bank, and drug store to go when I spotted her.

It was late in the afternoon and the sun was at that awkward angle, hitting just below the bottom of the car visor. The slow moving traffic allowed me to visually follow this tall, wisp of a girl from across the street. At the intersection of Bay and Quincy, the traffic light changed, and she crossed in front of my minivan, affording me a better look. Her feisty red hair, barely contained under a lime green knitted cap, streamed down along her face. A hint of a miniskirt highlighted her striped leggings and combat boot ensemble. From her right shoulder dangled an impossibly small pocketbook, by anyone's standards. Was this pocketbook big enough even for a key and lipstick, I wondered? As a mother of three, I prided myself as an authority on what you could not leave home without.

It was her walk, however, that gave her away. She floated over the pavement like a day old helium balloon heaving under gravity. Her gaze, straight ahead, politely shunned all those around her.

Suddenly, the driver in the pick-up truck behind me sounded his horn and she and I both jerked. As every motorist knows, there are polite taps, but this one was really meant to make me hit the gas. Through the rear view mirror, I viewed the perpetrator as he waved his arms wildly. The light was green, and obviously, he had somewhere to go. My eyes shifted forward again and came to rest on her "Jackie-O" glasses as she shot me, (what appeared to be), a death stare from the curb. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate it wasn't me and then reluctantly moved through the intersection. The light turned red again, abandoning the pick-up driver to simmer in his own stew.

I smiled to myself; she was just as Matthew, my 3rd grader, had described her. How had I missed her until now? Lincoln was such a small town full of quite ordinary people. Until just before the holidays, she had worked as the lunchroom monitor at Lincoln Elementary. Lunchtime for Mathew and his friends had always been the highlight of their day, a time to let loose and banter. Under Miss Bizarro's regime (as they secretly referred to her) things had quickly gone downhill.

She had started in the cafeteria in September, and in less than four months, the mood of the lunchroom had become quite somber. The other lunch monitors tended to be volunteer moms who welcomed the opportunity to view their children in action. They lovingly poked straws through juice boxes and coaxed the little ones into taking "just one more bite." Miss Bizarro did not associate with these women and left all coddling and small talk to them. According to Mathew, she would systematically walk up and down between the tables inspecting half-eaten sandwiches and enforcing her "no sharing of fun snacks" decree. The children knew better than to make eye contact with her, for she would offer visits to the principal's office as one might offer candy to a child at Halloween time.

Mathew had perfected her loud sneer quite well. He would wrinkle his nose, lift his chin, inch forward, and offer up a full set of clenched teeth to deliver a simple but emphatic "eat." For any of Mathew's friend brave enough to mimic her walk while she was not looking, the world was theirs, or at least the world of an eight-year-old boy.

Miss Bizzaro's wardrobe and outlandish hairstyles offered up the only form of lunchtime entertainment left for the boys. I remember the afternoon that Mathew came home scandalized over her black mesh stockings with rips in both knees. This seemed incomprehensible to him since his favorite pair of khakis had recently been retired due to a slight tear in one knee.

"She wears her army boots all the time," he would complain. This protest stemmed, I am sure, from my policy of hiding certain pieces of clothing that Mathew would otherwise wear for days.

"She never ties her laces," he would grumble with eyes imploring me to find a way to get her fired.

Her hair color would shift dramatically from week to week; bleached blonde, fire-engine-red, licorice black. Mathew brought back full reports. She had to be twenty or so. She was not quite an adult but more like a mean older sister.

As quickly as she came, she was gone. Mathew reported sometime in December that someone that "looked like a mom" had taken her spot. Thankfully, for him, the lunch hour was back to its controlled craziness. The kids had already forgotten her. Living in the moment came quite easily for them.

Had the school fired her, I wondered? There was the possibility that she had just simply moved away. People like her did not seem to have many strings attached. She could already be living on the opposite coast, serving daiquiris at some beach bar.

I thought back to our last family move more than five years ago and the overwhelming amount of furniture, boxes, and bags that we had stuffed into 1,400 cubic feet of rented truck space. Now in our new home, it sometimes felt toxic to me to have so much to dust, organize, and justify. Our clothes alone seemed at times to take over the house. Three children, continuous growth spurts and four seasons caused clothes piles to pop up here and there like mushrooms after a few days of heavy rain. There were always piles waiting to be sorted, folded, donated, or officially classified as hand-me-downs. I had recently read about a college student who had auctioned off all of his possessions on eBay. He had only asked from the new owners that they periodically "check-in" with updates on his old belongings. How brave.

As I passed the fire station, I realized that I had missed the turn-off for the cleaners. My knapsack and some of its contents went tumbling off the front seat as I made a wide turn onto South Holmes. At the next light, I picked the scattered items off the car floor and stuffed them back into the bag's deepest compartment. Sixteen years ago when Michael my oldest was born, I had traded in my briefcase for this knapsack. The four compartments had been an attempt to keep me organized, but somehow everything was still always crammed into one. I had yet, now, to make the switch over to a purse.

That night I thought about the girl again. I reflected back fondly to a time in my life when I was single, living in Manhattan and working as an architect. My friends and I, just out of school were so eager to please. Impressionable and so desperate to conform we fell into the corporate game and worked long hours for very little pay. On so many occasions, we talked about abandoning our pressure-filled jobs and morphing into one of those "village kids" we would see while commuting on the subway. Over dinner, we would package up their lives so neatly: wild clothing, fun hairdos, major attitude, and cool jobs.

I had stopped working as an architect with the birth of Michael and now with all three kids in school I definitely felt a need to justify my existence. I would sometimes lay in bed, conjuring up new floor plan designs in an attempt to maintain that tie to another time and place. I had an entire creative side to explore, that for now had been relegated to papier-mâché projects on the kitchen table. How could I step outside that comfort zone?

I next ran into the girl at the local library. She was shelving books on the children's floor. It was during school hours and there were barely any kids to muscle other than the occasional unsuspecting home-schooled child. Peering over the research section, I scanned for project material on China for Matthew, while I curiously watched her go about her work. Her hair now a "Matilda" black was slicked back into a Geisha-type bun. A pair of chopsticks (last night's eating utensils perhaps?) crowned the whole affair. The teal blue fabric of her knee-length kimono gave off a weird sheen under the fluorescent lights. Had she worn this for the kid's amusement or her own? I peered around the corner of the bookrack and yes, the combat boots were in place. She did her walk between the shelves. No one seemed to notice her, not the parents, or the two librarians behind the reference desk. It was business as usual on the children's floor.

I left, wondering, why it really mattered so much to me what she did or wore. I guess part of me rooted for her and wanted to be reassured that people like her could really coexist in this world.

My six-week hair appointment fell on the following Thursday. At 38, my few strands of gray had begun to offend me. I had analyzed (really over-analyzed) the closest shade to my natural hair color; auburn brown with subtle red highlights. These highlights, I felt, set me aside from the other 40 million or so middle-aged brunettes in this country. I entered the salon, determined to finally submit to the hair coloring process. Tracy, my friend and stylist, had brewed my favorite herbal tea.

Sitting in the salon chair, I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Was this as far as I was willing to go? I thought about another hair color that had caught my eye. Six weeks and I could always just go back to my old brunette self. Brazen Raisin. The name gave me just a bit of pause.

"Tracy" I said with a smile. "I want a change. What do you think about Brazen Raisin?" I held my breath, not quite ready for rejection.

"I always pictured you totally as a red-head." She smiled back through the mirror.

I left the salon with a spring to my step. As I walked past shop windows, I caught myself swinging my head like the girl in the old Breck shampoo commercials. The true test would come tonight when the family gathered.

Over dinner, my husband Jack gave me an approving nod. A champion of all my creative efforts, he only drew the line at my sometimes-questionable wardrobe choices (I still owned clothes from the eighties). The kids, usually intolerant of any excessiveness on my part had more of an issue. I was not one to shop for jewelry or use nail polish. I was the mom that on late mornings could get dressed in four minutes flat so that they could be driven to the bus stop. This was a side of their mother not anticipated.

After much assurance that this was just experimental, dinner resumed and the conversation drifted back to knock-knock jokes, homework, and sports. I sat back in my chair and smiled.

A few days later, I dug out my old box of earrings, most of which had not seen daylight since college. I fingered the unusually large silver hoops each encircling a metal cross. I had purchased these during my club years. With some effort, they went through each earlobe. I took this as an omen that the old me was still in there somewhere, just asleep perhaps? The metal against my neck felt cold but invigorating. I pulled my hair back and examined my face in the morning light. Bold red lipstick in the daytime would be fun.

It was Monday, the beds were not made and the breakfast dishes still in the sink. On impulse, I drove to the mall and headed for Magenta, the store of choice for high school and college girls. It was during school hours and the shop, thankfully, was empty. The young and over accessorized girl behind the counter actually looked happy to see me.

"Are you looking for something in particular?" she asked in a routine voice.

"Yes something to go with these earrings," I replied.

So began the start of my new wardrobe and I dare say the new me. The bright colored tops, chain belts, frivolous shoes, and even miniscule pocketbooks, were gently introduced to my family over the course of the following months. The transition went smoothly. My family embraced these changes in me just like the various changes that we had supported amongst each other: Michael's deepening voice, Jenna's new found acne, Mathew's reluctance to play with his toy cars and Jack's graying head.

How could I however, explain these changes to myself? It felt like years of stale air had suddenly left my body; like that feeling of glee you get on that first day of spring when you throw open all of the windows and the drapes billow in the soft breeze.

I slowly began to find that balance between girl and mother. I settled into a new groove and my walk was one of being in the moment.

I did not see the girl for many months. Frankly, I think I stopped looking for her.

The last time I did see her, she was working as a teller at one of the out of the way branches of our local bank. As she took my deposit, I took in her new look with some amusement. She was hardly the same girl with her pearl earrings, French manicure, and brown hair tucked into a neat bun.

"Have a great day." She said with a beautiful smile as she slid the confirmation slip across the counter. Her nameplate necklace danced as it dangled from her cream-colored turtleneck.

"Thanks," I replied also with a smile.

Carly. There, at least finally I knew her name.

Short Story 21+
Runner-Up
Glenn Erik Miller
Essence

"You really have to go there sometime," she said. "You just take your shoes off and walk around" Desiree closed her eyes and paced the sparse, white kitchen, as if they were there, standing in the middle of the cemetery. Gil pictured her walking around him, shoes off and toes sinking into the grass, while he stared at the headstones, reading the names of the people she was dancing on.

"Yeah, maybe," Gil mumbled, turning to look at the snapshot taped to the fridge door. The picture showed him and Desiree, smiling at the stranger who had snapped the photo. They had driven seven hours to the Atlantic one day. It had been Desiree's idea. "Today, we get you to the ocean," she had said, pulling on her boots. "You're 24 and have never seen the ocean, and that's just not right. Get your coat, dear!" She had laughed and buzzed about him, prodding him into the car. As the miles passed, Gil grew more comfortable with the idea. They had each called in sick to work, and while he hated to lie, Desiree had convinced him that it was, in fact, a true sick day. "A mental health day," she'd said.

It had been mid-afternoon when they found a sandy road that led to the ocean, Desiree ran from the car, dragging Gil across the wet sand and they stood looking, out of breath, at the gray sky and the raging waves that seemed hungry to swallow them whole. Desiree had skipped over to an old man. Skipped like an eight-year old. Gil had smiled. The man took their picture without saying a word, then walked away. Desiree shouted after him, "Thanks, man!"

That was October. This was May.

Gil stared at the picture on the fridge in the white kitchen, at the bosom of Desiree's red blouse which poured out from within her leather jacket. It was her heart, and it had been oversized and pulsing madly that day at the Atlantic. And he remembered how difficult it had been for him to feel the immensity of it all - calling in sick, driving all day, finding the beach, shaking on the edge of the earth.

In the kitchen, he could feel Desiree's heart pounding while his own heart stumbled forward, weak and unsure. He wanted so badly to feel what she felt. He pictured himself walking in the cemetery. "Maybe," he mumbled.

"No," Desiree said, stopping her barefoot dance. "No, not 'maybe.' Yes. Yes, yes, yes! You have to do it, baby. You just have to. It's so amazing! Remember that day?" She tapped the photo on the fridge. "You were freaked out at first, then we got there, and you felt it? Remember? You could feel that way again." Desiree opened the fridge. "To be surrounded by all that death, and to be standing there...so alive! You'll feel the whole world. I know it's in you. You just have to let it out, baby." She took a slice of cheese from the fridge. "Want some?"

It was Jacob, the Irish transplant 'corporate mystic,' who had suggested Desiree walk through cemeteries barefoot. He had started this whole thing. Desiree mentioned him one night as she and Gil sat on their front porch enjoying the warmer weather.

"We've got this new guy at work - Jacob," Desiree had said as she stood and threw her arms wide. "Yeah, the bosses brought him in from Ireland - can you imagine? Ireland. Huh. Anyway, he's some sort of motivational guru who does these workshops on how to be more spiritual at work. Crazy, isn't it?"

Gil had laughed and watched his girlfriend reach her arms up toward the porch ceiling. She was on her tiptoes but was still too short to touch. She wobbled there for a long time.

"I mean, it just seems weird because a company doesn't seem like the type of place where spirituality should matter. Now, you know me - I'm all about spirit and emotion." Desiree turned toward back Gil, a strand of her hair curling around her now-soft eye. "And passion. Yeah, you know about that, huh?" She laughed and shook her behind. Gil let his gaze drop, unembarrassed, and watched as she shook, twirled, then shook again. They both smiled.

Desiree had sat next to him, throwing her leg over Gil's lap. He enjoyed the warmth of her thigh. "Jacob had us take our shoes off today. Can you believe it? Right there in the office - in the big conference room. I'm always kicking my shoes off under my desk anyway, so it was no big deal to me, but the others - you should have seen their faces!"

"What did he have you do then?"

"Oh, man, it was wild! He had us stand there with our shoes off, and then he says, 'Close your eyes now' with that Irish accent, you know?" Gil did not know, hadn't met Jacob, but Desiree's attempt at an Irish accent was cute. Awful, but cute.

"'Relax your eyes. Let your breathing slow down. Pay attention to your body. Your brow. Relax it. Let it fall. Now your fingers. Relax them. Now your feet. Pay attention to the here and now. Pay attention to what your feet are telling you. They are your most direct connection to the world.'"

Gil turned toward Desiree. She had closed her eyes. Her Irish accent was already getting better. "And, damn, if I didn't feel it," she whispered.

Gil passed St. Joseph's Cemetery every day on the way to work, and again on the way home. The cemetery settled onto the rolling hills beside Canal Street. Gil imagined the expansive plot of headstones as a quilt thrown atop the landscape, its gray bumps like nubs of fabric pulled from the ground.

A few days after Desiree had mentioned Jacob, Gil drove through the cemetery, staying on the outermost dirt road. Where would he walk when it came time? Where exactly had Desiree walked? Had she met Jacob there? Had they walked together? Had they snuck behind a storage building to feel the earth on their backs?

Gil shook the thought away. Where would he walk? He could stick to this path on the edge of the cemetery, slowly working his way toward the center, covering every inch even if it took all night.

Desiree would be proud, wouldn't she? Would she look at him with soft eyes and caress his hips when he returned to her?

But what would everyone else think? Would old women weeding flower beds see his bare feet and think Gil disrespectful for walking among the dead? Would they glare at him? Would they call to the groundskeepers to chase him off?

If he walked close to Canal Street, what would drivers think? Would they say, "Look at the hippy-freak with no shoes on"? Or would they say "Now there's a spiritual young man. There's a young man who feels the world and is unafraid of it"? Would anyone even notice?

He wanted not to care about all that. He told himself not to. But it wasn't as easy as flipping off some switch in his brain. He wanted not to care, but he did care.

Desiree had once said it was probably because of something in his childhood - some embarrassing moment. He told her about the time he had sweat against the chalkboard during a 3rd grade spelling bee, leaving behind a damp oval when he misspelled "enough." And the time when he wore green khakis in 7th grade and was called "Goon" from then on. "There are so many times," he told Desiree, and they laughed and drank. She smiled at him when he spilled wine on his shirt. "To hell with them, baby. Who cares what anyone else thinks? Just live."

On his way home from work the next afternoon, he slowed down behind a funeral procession. The cars inched toward the entrance of St. Joseph's, then turned and crawled beneath its heavy black arch - compact cars and limos breaking from the line, like a Morse code of dots and dashes.

He arrived at the post office at 4:45, fifteen minutes before the lobby window closed. An electric bill, a credit card bill, and a yellow package notice sat inside box #512. Gil pocketed the bills, then slid the softened paper of the notice under his fingernails as he waited in line.

The post office smelled sweet, as if someone had just received flowers. Gil then realized it was the woman in front of him. She was about his age, mid-20s. He looked at her brown hair, impressed by the uniform color. No streaks of blonde like Desiree's hair. It hung straight but full. He pictured Desiree, at work for another ten minutes, her hair busy with carefully placed highlights and pushed around just so as to seem carefree.

The line moved forward. Gil stepped ahead in turn, enjoying the subtle burst of smell from the young woman with plain brown hair. A thin gray scarf draped over her shoulders. It was nothing that Desiree would ever wear. Desiree's favorite scarf was so long that she needed to wrap it around her neck several times. Bright yellow mixed with sky blue in a pattern that reminded Gil of Native Americans. "Southwestern," Desiree had explained.

He tried to imagine the young woman drinking Merlot and making love on a mattress set on the floor. Was she the type of girl who would peer up and out of the window and talk about stars and galaxies, comfortable letting the moonlight fall upon her naked breasts? Was she the girl who would press her mouth toward the window and make it steam up, then write "True" inside the cloudy circle?

Gil couldn't imagine it. Not this girl. Not this girl with plain brown hair and a light, muted scarf. She would drink milk before bedtime and cover herself up after making quiet love, maybe not even taking off her flannel pajama top.

When it was the young woman's turn at the lobby window, the clerk handed her a small package. When she turned, Gil realized he hadn't yet seen her face. She was beautiful, in a simple and honest way. Gil imagined her far into the future, still lovely, wearing flannel pajamas around the house on a Sunday morning.

She turned the package over in her hands and smiled as she passed Gil. The package was white, decorated with crayons and magic markers. Gil felt the colors, pure and bright and wild. The girl left one last whiff of flowers in her wake.

"Can I help you?" the clerk asked with a sigh. Gil slid his yellow notice toward the man and glanced at the clock on the lobby wall: 4:58.

His head began to feel heavy, a thick, slippery mixture of motor oil and doubt. When the clerk returned with the package, Gil turned toward the exit, glancing down at the brown box in his hand. It was addressed to Desiree. Printed along the edge of the box was the name of a cosmetics company: Essence. It was her monthly supply of eyeliner and blush and cover-up. Something small broke inside him - just one tiny mirror on an infinite beach, but large enough to get his attention.

He hurried through the post office door and scanned the sidewalk and parking lot for a plain, brown girl carrying a brilliant white box. But he did not see her.

She had disappeared among the traffic which had grown dense as people rushed home, or to the market, or toward the post office lobby - a place that was now dark and that held the smell of flowers behind a locked door.

When Gil walked barefoot among the graves the next day, he felt nothing coming up through his feet. He stamped the ground. Nothing. He could feel the afternoon wind on his forehead. He fumbled with the items in his pocket: keys, two five dollar bills, a tube of lip balm. He could feel all these things clearly.

But he felt nothing in his feet. Why am I here? he thought. This is so stupid. I bet she never felt a thing out here - she just says that. She just wants to feel so...superior. She just wants to impress Jacob. He stopped walking when his toes touched fresh earth. Standing atop the new grave, he thought, Here I am. Only six feet from a corpse, and I feel nothing.

Moments later, as he leaned against a tree to wipe his soles clean, he laughed at how ridiculous he must look. He was afraid to look up. What would people think? He could tell himself over and over again that it didn't matter, but it did. It always would, and for the first time, he did not want to take a sharpened spade to his insides when he thought about it.

He drove home slowly and imagined Desiree and Jacob sitting on the porch. He imagined Jacob's arm touching Desiree's. They would be fixed there, as if they had always belonged together. As if they were meant to be. He imagined parking the car on the street, then noticing the small pile of boxes on the sidewalk. His clothes, his sneakers, his magazines. So few things, he imagined himself thinking. There should be more. I should have more.

Inside, Gil stared at the plate of raw vegetables. Desiree was in the bedroom.

"Jacob's coming over!" she called to him. "For dinner. Cool, huh? But he only eats raw food. You don't mind, do you? Oh, of course you don't, baby. You understand, right?" Gil poked at the row of baby carrots, upsetting what seemed to be the careful balance it had had with the stalks of celery.

He walked to the porch and sat on the top step. He could not picture Jacob. How does someone who eats only raw food and speaks with a real Irish accent look? What kind of car would he drive? Or would he walk to their place, barefoot and wearing a gaudy scarf against the darkening sky?

He held out his hand as Desiree stepped onto the porch and walked past, but she did not touch him. A bitter perfume trailed behind her. When she reached the sidewalk, she turned. She had applied the new makeup. Essence, Gil thought. Desiree had smeared the makeup on so thick that there was a clear line on her neck where the mask ended. Even in the dwindling light, Gil could see this. He imagined slipping a fingernail underneath the line, loosening it just a bit and allowing the new edge to make a slight shadow on her uncovered skin.

He looked down the street toward the cemetery. A figure appeared there, rising up from the road. Then he turned back toward Desiree. She took a step backward, craning her painted neck toward the figure.

There, now just outside the cone of light from the porch's yellow bulb, Desiree looked as if she was falling from some great height, growing smaller and smaller.

Gil watched her move away from him, and he felt nothing.

Short Story 21+
Runner-up
Paul Schimmelpfennig
Seneca Said

Driving home from work at Johnson's Auto Parts, Jim Duffy took it slow and easy on the winding Hogback Road. Andy Whitelaw was with him. He was complaining about his wife's cooking, just getting around to her salads in fact, when a motorcycle roared past them, right where the road curved around a bend of the Lamoille River.

"Wow, you see that ?" Andy said.

"Jesus, right on a curve."

"And you know what," Andy said, "We would've been right in on the smash-up. Anyway, like I was saying, you wouldn't believe all the weird stuff she's been putting in salads ever since she's been watching those food shows. Big blobs of goat cheese, warm goat cheese, then black sesame seeds all over."

"Doesn't sound all that bad," Jim said.

"Okay, how 'bout when she throws in these caper berries, these big-headed capers with stems, look like freaking tad-poles. Sends away for 'em. All the way from Michigan. I were you, Jim, I wouldn't get satellite, not worth it, 'cept for ball games."

"Too late," Jim said, "Sally"s already signed us up, even bought a new tv, one of those flat screen ones, been on a buying spree ever since her mom died, tv, new leather couch, new kitchen set and quilts. Just loves quilts. I get home and all I see are these vintage quilts hanging on the walls, I tell you the place is kind of closing in on me, zigzag patterns everywhere, turkey tracks, drunkard's path, flying geese, makes me dizzy just walking around."

"Whoa watch it," Andy said, pointing to a cow in the middle of the road.. "That's one of Roger Mann's I bet. Always getting away from him. Yep, That's him, running toward us, Jesus he runs as funny as a cow."

"Damn thing's not budging," Jim said, honking the horn. "Lucky he didn't get run over."

"Now he's moving. Now's your chance."

Jim honked again as he drove past the cow and the farmer coming up the side of the road. "I don't feel like saying hello," he said, "things we got to put up with, damn cow in the road."

"Doesn't Roger hay your meadow?"

"Nope. Sally called him off, told him we gotta keep the grass high, 'til August anyway."

"Hell," Andy said, "that's two months away."

"Know why?"

"Beats me."

"On account of that bird only nests in the grass, that bobolink."

"Ain't that the bird looks kinda like a skunk?"

"Yep and it's got the weirdest damn song, like a broken banjo, plink plank plunk. All the time. And now we can't mow, can't spray 'til it's finished nesting, Sally says. I always kept it cut nice for her mother and now we got weeds coming in like you wouldn't believe."

"Lot of folks into birds, these days," Andy said.

"That ain't the worst of it," Jim continued, "twice a week she goes into Burlington for this lecture series 'How Philosophy Consoles.'"

"Consoles. O boy. Like more than a new tv?"

"Goes into Burlington, picks up these notions and runs with them. Last week it was all about anger and frustration. Jim, she says, with life always playing these little tricks on us we gotta try to be cool, real cool, like stoic. This guy Seneca had it all figured out, she says. Seneca. Ever heard of him?"

"You kidding?"

"Guess he was some Greek philosopher. Anyway, know what she said after that car jack box fell on my foot? She said, you know Jim, it's not like that box INTENDED to hurt you."

"Well," Andy said, "the way you hammered away at it, maybe you did think that box had it in for you. Hey, maybe you should go along. Learn something."

"Yeah really," Jim said, slowing to a stop at the intersection with route 109. "Anything coming?" he asked.

"Nope," Andy said, "no cows, no cars, nothing."

"I don't know," Jim said, as he swung out onto the highway, "it's just that, according to her now, things can never get so bad that you can't think your way out of them, got answers for everything, every damn situation."

"Especially if you got some old zen fart backing up you," Andy said, "you can let me off at the post office, do me good to walk home."

"Post office it is," Jim said., "coming right up."

A man was running towards them waving his arms.

"Now what?" Andy said, rolling down his window.

"Godawful accident...just happened...cyclist plowed right into her...it's awful. Right up ahead."

Jim leaned over. "You called 911?"

"Yeah, she called, I mean she was too shook up, I called, She kept saying she couldn't see him past her furniture load.....oh shit here comes another car." He motioned to stop with outstretched arms.

"Andy, you get those flares out, I'll see what's going on."

Around the corner Jim saw a grey-haired woman sitting on the side of the road just sitting there, head in her hands. He saw skid marks zigzagging toward a red pickup in the middle of the road. Its load of furniture had spilled, a tricycle, chairs, cracked hall mirror, boxes of books strewn about, a love-seat with yellow and blue daisy pattern teetered on the edge of the truck bed. The cyclist was pinned underneath the truck. He lay on his side his arm embracing the twisted wheel of the motorcycle, forefinger extended as if trying to dial a bent spoke. His helmet was wrenched around his face, half covering his mouth and he was trying to breathe, he was making a slurping gurgling sound. Pushing debris aside, a small tv, old medicinal brown bottles, a toilet seat, Jim knelt to the cyclist. Rivulets of blood were running from the cyclist's legs pooling around the edges of a dented lamp shade. "Yeah, that's it," Jim said, "give me another breath, one more breath, you can do it. Gotta get the damn helmet off so you can breath, gotta get all this shit off you and pull ya out, can you hear me," he said pulling at the chin strap. He heard a voice behind him.

"What the hell you doing? Don't you know anything?" A man, a round-faced man, bald except for a ring of curly hair, was yelling at him. "You start moving anything, you could paralyze him, you could kill him, don't you touch nothing here! Its Willy, Willy Jacobs. I know him. He'd rather be dead than paralyzed. Here, move aside, give me some room."

"We don't do something quick, we'll lose him, He's bleeding something bad."

"We ain't doing nothing til the medics come. Can you hear me Willy? It's me Johnny Allen, medics are coming Willy, can you hear me." He turned to Jim. "I don't want you moving anything, that's the first rule, I know about these things." He held his arms out over the cyclist.

"Okay, okay. he's all yours," Jim said. As he got up, his head banged into the love-seat. "Jesus Christ," the round-faced man said, "watch it."

In the crowd that had formed, Jim didn't see Andy anywhere. A man was putting a blanket around the woman at the side of the road. Another woman was holding her hand. Jim turned. Someway was asking him a question. Something about blood. Somebody was telling him he should move his truck. In the distance he heard the wail of a siren. He walked back to his truck, got in, sat there a few seconds, got out, got back in, then drove off, eased past the accident, past others running to the scene, didn't even pull over for the oncoming ambulance, the sheriff's car, a fire truck, just sped on home, spitting gravel up his driveway, shuddering to a stop in front of the house and open meadow.

He stayed in the truck, reclined the seat, settled back, closed his eyes. What should he have done? had to get out of there, just couldn't stick around, watch people do nothing but gawk. Andy's probably wondering why he took off. Should have resisted the bald guy, should have tried to pull the cyclist out. Do something more. Maybe not though. Maybe the bald guy was right. All that blood. And that sound, that gurgle in the man's throat, same sound that deer made, the one Andy had shot, and all that blood, all that stuff everywhere. We really are at the mercy of things, he thought. Everything catches up with us.

There was a tap on the window, Sally, giving him a naughty boy look. "Jim what are you doing in there? Listening to a ball game or something? Aren't you coming in? I've been trying to decide about dinner."

He pulled up the seat, rolled down the window. "Didn't you hear the sirens? There was an accident, a bad one, Andy and I, we were....we were first ones there."

"For god's sake, you're alright aren't you? What in the world happened?"

"Cyclist racked up, it was awful, didn't you hear the sirens?"

She opened the door. "No ... but come inside, don't just sit there."

"Poor bastard skidded into a pickup full of furniture, pulled him right under, probably going too fast. Maybe it wasn't his fault though. Maybe it was. I tried to help. I don't know. Maybe he'll make it. No I don't think so."

She knelt down, reached for his hand "Jim, don't you want to come inside?"

"Not quite yet."

"Not quite yet? All right," she said, getting to her feet. "All right. I'll be inside. You sure?"

He nodded. And she touched his shoulder, turned, walked with folded arms back to the house, slowly went up the stairs, stopped, looked back, then went inside.

After a few minutes Jim got out of the car. His foot ached. Blood, there was blood on the cuff of his pants. He steadied himself on the fender. He didn't want to go inside. She'd want to talk, of course she'd want to talk. They should talk. They had to talk. But there was something about what he had just gone through, something in all its pure raw awfulness he didn't want to give up right away, didn't want to share, didn't want diluted by talk. She'll say there was nothing he could have done and she'd be right. Then again she'd be wrong. Should have stayed, should have stayed , he thought. Might have been a man's last moments. And she was waiting inside with answers, ancient answers. He stood there listening for the sound of a siren going back. But all he heard was a scratching noise in the leaves and birds calling, birds singing, chickadee chatter, a rhythmic teacher/teacher see-saw song nearby, in the distance the trailing melody of a thrush, clear as a flute, and now, as he moved away from the car, the call of a bobolink, that crazy, chaotic jumble of notes, all bubble and gurgle and twang, my kind of song, Jim thought, as he watched it flutter and quiver in circles over the overgrown grasses of his meadow.

Short Story 12-21
First Place
Mariah Wilson
Pressed Flowers

People wander in and out of the dark wood of the entryway, brushing away cake crumbs and sucking their tongues for the last tastes of expensive tea. People like lawyers, doctors, and priests. When she dies, they will memorialize her in dusty, dry pages of legal work to be lost in highly flammable legal cabinets where nervous new clerks are instructed to put the little things of little importance. I imagine the priest will try to fit her funeral in between his tea and dinner; there will not be many people there for him to sorrow with. When the doctor leaves, he briskly snaps the clasp of his black bag and whistles out the door a tune with a carnival air. They say maybe three days.

When I polish the ebony molding of the doorway, I can hear her quiet breathing from the window above the door overlooking the grey, rain glazed streets. On days when she was rather well, she would sit on the window seat, in a green silk bed jacket and watch the lighted carriages, and occasionally write something down in a small red leather book that was never very far. Inside I imagine that it is full of her words, words that she has dropped inside at odd intervals, and left there forgotten, like bent hatpins. Of a sudden there is space in the steady rhythm, seeming notes slipped from a torn piece of music. I begin a count, at ten seconds I polish faster, at twenty I am ready to leap from the stool and run inside the foyer, taking the stairs two at a time, at twenty-three I can hear her take a small shallow breath.

She has lived alone for a very long time, and I have been in the foyer, poised like a hat stand, polishing wood, washing china in the kitchen and scrubbing the stone floors of her home for a very long time. Twenty years this spring I believe. When I began I was smaller, I had a readier smile graced with whiter teeth. When I came here first there was another death in the house. But it was an old man who lay in a bed, in a dark room on south side of the brick house overlooking the gardens. Pale as the surrounding linen bedclothes he was swathed in, he looked like a crumpled linen napkin. I can remember walking into the room with my mother, her eyes set like stones and squeezing my hand. The man spoke from the folds of linen, looking at me over the top of the bindings of a book lying closed on his chest. He looked at the cheap street violets tucked behind my ear and smiled, saying that if I wished it the position was mine. I left that day and when I came back the room was empty.

There are twenty-four steps up to the landing of the second floor, and each one creaks, and must be brushed free of dust. The dust rises into the air and dances in a ribbon of sun, swirling in a mobius strip in an angular slant of a golden world. The wall against the stairs is lined with pictures of flowers; irises, the bell caps of crocus, poppies and sunflowers, a flat and scentless garden brushed by moth wings rather than butterflies. Outside she used too keep a garden of unequaled splendor, her flowers the brightly colored grosgrain pieces of her herself that she parcels out to others in place of words. I do what I can but haven't the touch that puts life into the flower beds, they seem flat and rather lack the vividness that was there when she tended them. Whatever she touched sprung up green and growing, I can only keep it free of dust.

At the top of the twenty-fourth stair I can hear her shift, the sound soft and muffled, like the beating of a moth's wing under her thick woolen blanket. She and I are the only two people in this old and empty house, though the reach of our arms and the openness of our minds have shriveled to more suit the garden shed. I stand on the stairwell, my footsteps padded on the wood by a red hooked rug, looking dreary in the ragged streams of grey light from the narrow windows. I knock very softly; "Miss Emily?" and creak open the broad door. Her room is draped in slants of white light reflected and thrown from the snowy spread of her bed, the gauzy curtains, and the dozen white dresses hanging in her open closet. She is holding another red book, turning it over and over in her hands, and stroking and turning the empty pages with an unreadable air. "Bring me some tea, please, Mary. Make sure it's hot." Her lips are swollen when she says this, as is the rest of her face and her hands and feet as well, her dark hair straggles around her sloping shoulders and brushes her cheeks, her dark eyes trained on the spine of the small book. "The rain," She says as I turn to go, "It'll do the garden good; it was too dry this autumn. Next year we must plan for dry weather." She sighs and turns towards the window, imagining spring tulips on the cobbles. "Yes, next year. There'll be a bee in every flower." I bend down next to the bed, and add "The grandest garden in New England." She smiles at this. I think, looking at her lying there about how many nights she has spent alone here, the only body warming the big lonely bed. I was married in the guest parlor here twelve years ago, and now I have two growing boys, and a small daughter curls up beside me at night, with her father's curls, soft as rose petals. I wonder what she loves besides her marvelous flowers.

Downstairs I rub dust from glass with a soft cloth, marveling at how something dingy is made vibrant again with one swipe, my hand pressed against the cool slick mirror. Hanging in the parlor is a picture of Mr. Dickinson, twenty years gone. The old man whose eyes become filled with a softer tea colored light looking at the bunch of street flowers tucked into my hair. In the picture his face is pale and has a stretched quality about it, as if he has been trying to smile for a very long time. He doesn't look like a bully, not like the grocer up the street or the barber five houses down. Their faces harshly creased and voices swollen with self-importance. But money seems to touch like a balm, or like an expensive soap, making things more seemly and kind. And, after all, all I can remember are his long fingers ribbing the book binding, and the way that he looked at flowers.

I bring her another pot of tea, the steam rising smelling of green and growing things. She is sitting up in bed writing something in her little book. I'd like to ask her what she writes about, if she writes about me, what she's writing now. There's a fly buzzing loud like a bee in the corner of the room, darting in and out of the folds of the window sash. I bustle over and quickly brandish a shoe, then there's a sound of a page turning behind me, and I can hear the flow of more words filling the leaves of the book. She says behind me, "Leave it be, it really doesn't bother me." A small pause while I let my hand drop, "Such a small thing, and such a loud noise!" She sounds fascinated rather than agitated by this sage observation. So I pour her another cup, balance two cubes of sugar on the saucer and go back downstairs.

I polish the wood of the chairs in the parlor, chairs that were once enveloped with billowing satin dresses and developed a patina from the clouds of perfume in the air. The air of grandeur about them however has faded into something that can't be gotten back with a soft cloth. The house has relinquished its days of merriment when lights filled the windows. Her father hangs in his portrait though with an expression that looks to enjoy dancing. Who might look at a whirling room of dancers with the eyes of one seeing a garden, and similarly appreciate them for their brilliant colors and dizzying perfume.

I go outside and wander the gardens at twilight, fading crests of late roses and the spice of unpicked apples scenting the air. The clouds break wide open along the lips of the horizon and all the colors of autumn are hung like a stained glass window in front of the setting sun. A world glazed in rain and set to shine silver shivers in the cold that promises winter, I love the chill, bracing and numbing both at once. A carriage a dark and gloomy color pulled by a single horse trots up the streets purposefully with a steady rhythm like the ticking of a great clock. Lanterns are being lit up and down the streets and the man with the small brown cap singing French in a soft voice pausing to look at the gardens resplendent even in their last days breathes a low whistle. This is how the people the length and breadth of the street will remember her, the woman who coaxed vines up the wrought iron fence till it seemed she had made the roses sprout from an iron stem, guarded by iron thorns. Her flowers are the things that matter to her, and I think of my growing family with a home the size of a breadbox but seeming so perfect. I know that no amount of flowers or words pressed like blossoms between pages could begin to replace them. I pass her night nurse on my way out the gate, an older woman with a very gentle manner who smiles with perfect sincerity. As I enter the rain soaked streets I hum the French melody and begin to dance in the empty streets.

Next morning I climb the stairs again, this time with a vase of flowers from my garden, wilder things that aren't tended and grow with a life and vitality all their own, climbing up the sides of my house where my children play. I think she will need the kind of strength these beautiful stubborn things have. There is radiant sunlight filling the room, and I prop the flowers on her bedside table in a vase from downstairs. She smiles in appreciation, and holds out her hand and grasps mine warmly. "Thank you, Mary. Thank you very much." I quite imagine that I glowed. Her book is open and tucked to one side of her pillow, a piece of her folded into every page. A few words trail along the top of an empty page. "Miss?" I have no notion of how to ask, to find a way to find a piece of the person that is found in the dead gardens outside and inside the pages of a half empty book. So I sit on the edge of her bed, the fullness of her soft, warm hand reminding me of the fullness of my own life, and watch as she begins to write again, while I read about how she has never seen a moor.

Short Story 12-21;
Runner-Up
Matthew Snyder
Lessons of the Field

"That stone is heavier than a dead minister!" cried the old man. His companion, really no more than a teenager, grunted in agreement. The two were working in a field which seemed to get smaller every year despite the fact that they combated the brush, ever unyielding like a green army of trees, as it sprung up along the edges. They had been removing stones for nearly an hour, most of which were about the same weight as a large sac of grain, when they happened on this stone which at present refused to move.

The older gentleman attempted to pry the stone with a metal lever set on one of the smaller stones. His face was flushed and the sweat gathered in a great lake on the front and back of his shirt. "Hey Grandpa, better let me take over before you hurt yourself," suggested the younger man.

Grandpa let the young man try his best prying on the stone while he sat wordlessly in the tall grass, giving the youngster a chance to pry the rock free. The young man pulled and pulled until the lever slid off the rock and he fell to the ground. The lever followed the boy and connected with a dull thud on his skull. He just got up and, rather sheepishly, laughed and rubbed his head.

"Thought that might happen," Grandpa chuckled "You okay, John?"

By way of answer John picked up the shovel and started to dig deeper into the earth, clearly embarrassed, but still knowing that pride was nothing worth anything. "Whacha doin'... digging to China?" the elderly man continued as he dug out his pipe, cleaning it from his last capful, reloading it and lighting it.

John retorted, "I might just do that, but the problem is this rock is in the way and I'm gonna hafta dig round it." He then gave a crooked smile and continued to dig around the stone, just as a steam shovel might. After about five minuets of digging he then replaced the makeshift lever and fulcrum and pushed as hard as he could. This time it was John on top of the leaver because it only required half the force he put in to move the stone. Now that the hard part was over, he easily rolled it to the stone boat and loaded it.

"I guess this'll hafta be the last load today," Grandpa reflected as John hefted his burden onto the stone boat, topping the mountainous pile of grey granite already there. John then sat in the peak of the mountain, the place he had purposefully left himself to sit. It was nearly a mile to where they were dumping their load and he did not wish to walk.

Grandpa started up the tractor and then climbed into the seat. Along the way they needed to cross the street and as they prepared to do so their neighbor, Bill, stopped to talk. Bill was a man of about Grandpa's age and most of his family had already passed away. He supposedly had two children, though nobody ever heard from them, even Bill. As usual the talk lead to a dinner invitation, and as it was usually considered rude to refuse a willing host, he agreed have supper with Grandpa and his family. That was one of the lessons John learnt early; if you have you aught to be willing to give to another, and if you didn't, well, pride wasn't nothing worth anything.

Bill arrived in enough time to help with the preparations - another courtesy when you either were, or were close enough to be called, family. The family was standing outside the house, the ribs of a cow, already smoking in an electric smoker converted such that the access panel, generally used to add wood chips to smoke, would accept a piece of stove pipe. An old wood fire oven was used to supply the smoke. John was trying rather unsuccessfully to light the charcoal for the sausages. The charcoal did not have enough lighter fluid, or so his father thought, and as John touched a match to the charcoal, he poured on more. Luckily John dropped the match and backed away with a yelp as the flames were about to engulf his hand. The whole family, Bill included, roared with laughter. When the coals were ready, Bill placed some sweet Italian sausages from the kitchen onto the rack.

The dinner they ate was fabulous: the smoked ribs, and sausages, home grown potatoes, corn and some leeks that came from within their sugar bush. They enjoyed it all until there was little left, and what was left went to the dogs. After eating they sat in the screen house with a fire in what they called a flying saucer, for it did look much like one with its domed top and its rounded fire place supported by four cast iron legs. They talked of this and that until finally they came upon the subject of sugaring or the art of maple syrup making.

Grandpa recalled a man he had once seen run two enormous evaporators, both fueled by chord wood, "real chord wood, not a face cord, mind you..." and a homemade smoke stack made of old oil drums welded together. A real work of art - one could tell by the way he recounted every detail, and the way he relished in the remembrance of the sweet, true-maple taste of the ambrosia that true maple syrup is. He concluded by stating bluntly, "Real maple syrup is real maple syrup; fake maple syrup is just corn syrup that knows somebody."

Now it was Bill's turn to recount on his favorite memory. "Al, remember the time I took you up to The Maples on your wife's birthday. We were so liquored up I don't think we could see straight for a week."

"Yah," Grandpa snorted, "We must have looked like we had some kind of disease!"

"We did - it's called drunkenness!" Bill laughed "and when we finally got home, must have been around midnight, there was your wife waiting for you, frying pan in hand. Boy, was she ever mad at me; I didn't dare come over for a week! When I did finally come over she hit me over the head for good measure! For a while we had matching bumps on our heads!"

The rest of the night passed on in much the same way, Grandpa and Bill doing most of the talking, John the listening. He realized that he was now starting to be accepted as one of the guys. Mentally John compared to his own chilled hood to that of his grandfather and while he did this, he noticed that though there had been much technological advancement, the reality was that the two had been really about the same. The same course of events passed on from one generation to another, and all the lessons could be learned in one of two ways-by experience, or by listening to somebody else's experience. He recalled the experience earlier in the day with the rock that had been his grandfather's way to teach him and he now understood why his grandfather had let him fail; his grandfather had wanted him to learn and to remember. These thoughts were racing through his head as he changed for bed and attempted to fall asleep.

Upon awakening the next morning, John ate a breakfast of toasted homemade bread, eggs, and pancakes smothered with real maple syrup. After he had finished he went outside and walked to the field where Grandpa was already attempting to pry a rock from the ground, his face flushing and a lake forming on the back of his shirt. As John picked up the shovel he said, "Hey Grandpa, better let me take over before you hurt yourself."

As He then took over, Grandpa started to tell a tale of another time, the first time that he buzzed wood for his grandfather and as the day went on John learnt much that day and would for the rest of his life, all because of that field.

Short Story 12-21;
Runner-Up
Catherine Sheard
Mountaintop

"What are all these cars doing here?" I mutter, flicking my brights off. The road obligingly darkens and I can't see where I'm going.

"Same thing we are?" Kate pragmatically offers as the other car zips by and I turn the brights back on.

"We're in the middle of nowhere. We're on a shortcut from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere. But that's the third car we've seen!"

"More cars than porcupines. How sad." We've already seen two porcupines since we left.

"You're mocking me. I'm serious. This road must get about three cars a week. How come all of them are on it at eleven o'clock at night?"

Kate shrugs, then shifts into a more comfortable position. She's curled up on the passenger seat, her head against a pillow. I told her before we left that she had to keep me company and that she wasn't allowed to sleep, but she still brought the pillow.

The road ends and I turn onto another road, a paved one this time. It's riddled with potholes; around here, most dirt roads are in better condition than the paved ones.

"Are we almost there?" Kate asks as I turn yet again, onto a bouncy dirt road that's belying my previous claim.

"Yeah, I think so. The trailhead should be around here somewhere - it'll be on the left. We may have some trouble finding it." I've never actually been on this trail before. My father has, but he's at home with the flu, which is why Kate is here. I am amazed that our parents would let two seventeen-year-old girls hike an unknown mountain, by themselves, at night, but they did, so here we are.

"Drat. I think that was it," I say, ten minutes later, realizing that we just passed a break in the trees. I execute my renowned three-point-turn, a product of driver's ed. "Yeah, right there, wooden sign. This is it!"

I pull the car completely off the road and turn off the engine. It's really dark. I unbuckle my seatbelt and reach into the back, tossing Kate my hiking boots and a pair of wool socks. I'm going to be wearing my father's - Kate doesn't have any of her own, and on hikes like this hiking boots save lives.

"Oh, glory," Kate breathes, looking up at the stars as we climb out of the car. Though tall trees loom over both sides of the road, the sky is magnificent; it looks like somebody spilled glitter all over it. Even in our little town, there's a fair amount of light pollution, and I've forgotten that Kate has probably never seen the sky like this, miles away from any man-made light. Pooja, my usual hiking- and canoeing- partner, has, of course, but Pooja moved to California to live with her mother in January.

"Why are we doing this at night, again?" Kate asks as we turn on our flashlights and allow ourselves to be swallowed by the woods. It's chilly enough for a sweatshirt and there are zero insects, though the frogs are making a racket worthy of a rock concert. The trail is well-maintained and flat; I hope the former will continue to be true, but I know the latter will not.

"We - well, I - have to be at the first site at 4:30, and I really didn't want to backpack up. Anyway, two girls sleeping alone, eight miles from the nearest road and thirty miles from the nearest house? I don't think so."

An hour later, the question has been altered slightly.

"Why are we doing this, again?" Kate pants. It's become very steep; she's having trouble keeping up with me. I stop and turn around to look at her. She flops down on a rock and greedily gulps from her water bottle.

"C'mon, this is fun! We're surveying birds. People all over New York and New England are going to be on top of mountains in a few hours, doing the same thing we are."

My father and I have been birdwatching together for years, and when I was in sixth grade we began to volunteer to survey rare species for various organizations. My favorite is a loon survey we do in July, even though last year it was on the day the new Harry Potter came out.

"Hey, look at it this way; you can put it on your college applications - 'participated in ornithological study.' Georgetown will be really impressed," I add, teasingly. Kate grins. Her devotion to Georgetown is famed.

We brush ourselves off and continue; I let her lead. We've been playing tag with a creek; the rocks are slick, and when our feet slip we land in several centimeters of cold water. Besides the frogs, I only hear my footsteps and breathing, which seem boorishly loud. I realize that I should be tired - I had school, so I've been up since six - but I'm more awake than I ever am during the day.

Our flashlights illuminate small circles that direct our feet, small circles that cut peepholes so we can steal a glimpse into what the forest looks like during the day, peepholes that destroy the film of darkness to reveal colors. It feels as though we're cheating, somehow, cheating by bringing our human electricity into the cool, serene nighttime.

I stop, suddenly, my eye drawn by the movement a few yards up the trail. I hold my breath, fearing that it will take off as suddenly as it alighted.

"Look, Kate," I breathe as I grab her arm. "An owl."

I quickly run through the possibilities. It's too large for a Screech Owl and we're too far north for a Barn Owl. Short-eared? Long-eared? Barred? Great Horned? Without warning, he (she?) leaps off the branch and into the night, hooting. I smile. I know what the owl is.

"Wow," Kate says softly.

"That was a Barred Owl," I explain. "Did you hear its call? Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?"

It's too bad that it wasn't a Great Horned. I've seen some of the rarest owls out there - Snowy, Great Gray, Boreal, Spotted - but I've never seen the common-as-mud Great Horned Owl.

As we climb on, winding our way up the mountain, the trees first thicken, deciduous to coniferous, then thin. The soil we crunch with our hard-soled feet becomes rockier, and the frequency of rocks increases. The air is thinning, too, like the trees and the dirt.

Many footsteps later, we reach what is the top and stop to rest. It's not yet 4. Few trees obscure our view; we can see almost the entire sky and its display of stars, as well as lights from the occasional house, far, far away from us on this mountain.

I explain that this is the last survey site; the first on the other side of the mountain, about a mile more, next to a small lake.

"You mean after all this 'up' we now have to go down?" Kate demands in mock-outrage. "And then come back up?"

Twenty-five minutes later, Kate has stretched out on the large, flat rock that marks our site, her head inches away from the water, staring up at the rapidly vanishing stars. To our left, the mountain looms over us, challenging our right to be there. It's noticeably lighter, but not yet dawn. I rummage through my backpack, locating what I need for the survey, then drop an apple and a bagel on Kate's stomach.

"Here," I say, munching on an apple of my own as I flip through Peterson. "This is what we're looking for."

I show her the sketches of the White-throated Sparrow, the Blackpoll Warbler, the Swainson's Thrush, the Winter Wren, and lastly the Bicknell's Thrush, the star of the survey. I omit the fact that I'm also counting red squirrels - not only is Kate a proud member of our school's "I Hate Squirrels" Club, she's the Vice President.

"Have you ever seen one? A Bicknell's Thrush?" Kate asks, sitting up to read the description in the birdbook. "They don't look like much."

"No. Not yet. I've been in places where they're known to be - Whiteface, Mount Washington - but I've never found one. They've got a beautiful call. You'll hear it, even if we don't find one. I have to play the tapes at each site after the survey if we're unsuccessful."

"Tapes?"

"Of the Bicknell's Thrush call," I explain, indicating the tape-recorder in my backpack. "If they're here and they just aren't singing, they'll hear the tape and respond to it. You aren't supposed to do that - it's really bad for birds - but they need accurate information on the Bicknell's if they're going to prevent its extinction."

The Bicknell's Thrush has always been my "nemesis bird," the one bird I've always wanted to see but always seem to miss. When we hiked Mount Washington, my father heard one, but by the time I caught up it had stopped singing. Our previous survey mountain had never yielded one, which is why it had been retired and we were assigned a new site. Every year when the survey results are published I pour over them, finding new mountains to hike or backpack during the summer, but despite all the time I've spent in Bicknell's habitat, they've always eluded me. I don't care if I never see a Great Horned Owl. I will be heartbroken if I never see a Bicknell's Thrush - a distinct possibility, considering how endangered they are.

Kate helps me record information on the weather - I have a thermometer in my backpack, but we need to determine if the wind is strong enough to cause "leaves to rustle" or "small branches to sway," to estimate the percentage of cloud cover, and to answer other questions complicated enough to rival the SAT. She nods at my warning to be quiet during the survey, pantomiming zipping her lips, and we wait quietly for my watch to display 4:30.

The frogs continue to screech raucously, like frat boys at a party, until at 4:31 they cease, suddenly and simultaneously, as though cut off by a conductor's cue.

There is silence.

Then, across the lake,

"Oh sweet Canada-Canada-Canada. Oh sweet Canada-Canada-Canada-Canada."

A White-throated Sparrow shatters the pre-dawn stillness in its high, beautiful voice. There is a beat of silence, and then another White-throated Sparrow answers it from somewhere above our heads. As though the sparrows were an invitation, other birds add their songs, and the dawn chorus begins.

Two hours later, we are back on the top of the mountain, sitting on the same rocks we sat on before. I have counted 13 White-throated Sparrows, 3 Winter Wrens, 2 Blackpoll Warblers, 5 Swainson's Thrushes, a whole host of other mountain-top birds, and, yes, three red squirrels. But no Bicknell's Thrush.

Dawn has come and gone; it is completely light. The cacophony has slowed, the concert ended. The view is gorgeous, but I am disappointed. I doubt the tapes will yield anything, and I'll go home Bicknell's-less for yet another year.

"It's 6:29," I say, the first words either of us have spoken since the survey began. My muscles are stiff, my legs muddy. The cold that was once refreshing is now just plain cold and several mosquitoes have already sampled my blood. "Shall we call it?"

"Sure," Kate answers, stretching. "Do we have to - "

"Wait," I interrupt. Lowering my voice, I add, "I thought I heard something...there!"

A pure note slices through air, morphing into a warbling, trilling, glorious song. I seize my binoculars, not that I expect to find the little devil, they're very good at camouflage, and grin triumphantly. I've done it.

Kate looks at me wonderingly.

"Is that it?"

"Yes. That's the Bicknell's Thrush!"

Humor 21+
First Place
Patrick O'Brien
Jerry on the Wall

Frother madness ruined me.

In Florida, in January, in the morning, you can go for a walk in shorts and a tee.

In the morning.

Get it.

It's warm.

We visited Angie down in Florida last winter. You know how it is when you move to the North Country - for a year or two it's fun, it's different - snow, ice, boots all the time, cold, cold, colds - enough is enough. Nobody's going to miss me for a few months, it's winter, nobody goes out, I don't see anybody and when I finally do see somebody I don't want to talk.

So I went to Florida.

Yeah, yeah, you want to know about the frother madness and how it ruined me. That's what I'm telling you, how it started. We went to Florida, visited Angie.

No boots, no layers, no gloves. You can walk to get your newspaper and a cup of coffee. Wonderful. The trouble is this coffee shop was special, way too intense. The coffee has names and style and directions, it's not like here. Now this is where the trouble starts - directions, double shots - you know how much caffeine, sugar, fats, chocolate and calories there are in a big, really big, cup of coffee? And something to nosh on, right? Got the picture? What you got there can bend your mind.

I'm in that coffee shop three, four times a day; hours, I'm spending hours in the place.

I was seduced. They had me pumped up on extra caffeine, they're playing mellow music - la de da, la de da - people are coming in and saying the names of their coffee, real quick and snappy, and how they want it. Had a rhythm to it, I'd sit there with my coffee and the mellow music, the snappy voices saying the words - a double latte with a double, blah, blah - the really friendly people behind the counter; so nice and so helpful. It was seductive.

And the sound behind it all was the whirr of the frother whipping everything to perfection, that's what held it all together. I started to understand. I knew what the regulars were saying to the friendly people behind the counter. I understood the words, I belonged. I was happy in the coffee shop. I never wanted to leave.

I was spending thirty, maybe forty dollars a day on coffee and I wasn't sleeping. I'm walking around in shorts, a sweaty tee and flip flops, I'm too tired to shave or go anywhere. I was a mess.

Angie saved the day; she said, "You don't want to spend that much on their coffee, we'll make coffee here at the house." I'm thinking, yeah sure but it won't be the same. Then Angie showed me what a smart kid she was. French press coffee, as strong as you want it, add the sugar and here's the beauty part - you ready? - She Had Her Own Frother. Put half and half in the micro for ten, fifteen seconds, froth the hell out of it and lay that creamy cloud of half and half froth down on top of the coffee, sprinkle the chocolate, the hazelnut, whatever, on the froth - perfect.

That did it for me, that and the intervention thing. After that I'd sit outside in the screen house and have my coffee, play my own music, I never liked that la de da music anyhow, I don't think I liked those snappy people either, and the friendly people behind the counter... ha!

Ha!

I did miss the sound of the frother. In the screen house I had Angie's frother. Once in a while I'd pick it up and give it a whirl. I liked that sound.

It was perfect but all good things must blah, blah, blah. It's spring, I'm back home. I go to the local coffee shops. Old school coffee - pour it, add some sugar, dump in some half and half and - it's coffee. I sit at a table, take my time, do crosswords, see some people, have some laughs, maybe talk a little bit. But it's not the same; something's missing in my life.

It changed that summer when the west coast Hot-Shot Sugar-Jolt coffee shop opened down the road.

Hooray! I zipped down there on opening day. Cars were backed up trying to get into Hot-Shot. The parking lot was packed, no spots. I circled the block twice. The state police were down the road giving out speeding tickets. Everyone who left there was driving too fast. People up here aren't used to all that caffeine.

While I was circling the block I spotted a green Honda Element parked around the corner and down the block in a shady spot. I noticed the doors were open and there were people hanging around and all of them were holding coffee cups from Hot-Shot.

They were acting suspiciously. When I drove past the second time there was only one guy there. I parked the car and walked over to see what was going on. I walked up and said, "Hot-Shots?" He said, "Yeah, you here for the frothers?"

I said, "What've you got?"

The whole back of the Element was filled with boxes of frothers. And you had your choice of colors. I got the mother of all frothers. Full power - it can handle major caffeine. It's bigger than the one Angie had in Florida, way bigger, took special batteries, lots of batteries.

I rushed home with the frother; the only problem was that I forget to pick up the groceries so when I got home I didn't have any coffee. I was hungry so I had a bowl of cereal. I figure, what the heck, and I frothed the damn cereal. I didn't realize how powerful the thing was, what a mess. Boy, was the little woman mad.

We cleaned the kitchen walls and the furniture. She made me put the super frother in the garage. We decided to never bring it into the house again. The next morning when we came out to the kitchen the stains were still on the wall. It might have been the chocolate syrup or the orange juice I had put on the cereal. Anyhow, the stains were still on the wall - I don't think they'll ever come out - I promised again how the super frother would stay in the garage.

Later we're having coffee with Lester; he's a French Canadian guy who used to be a priest, that's what he told us. He lives in one of the camps up the road. He's at the table and sees the wall, he spits out his coffee and says some French Canadian stuff, sack a blue or something, and he's pointing at the wall.

He swears he sees the Madonna right over the kitchen table. He ran back to the camp and got his wife who brought along a bunch of people. They came in and everybody's talking in French, English and tongues. Some of them are dropping to their knees, we don't know what the hell is going on because by now we can see that's it's not the Madonna, it's the image of Jerry Garcia. Jerry Garcia on our kitchen wall, how about that, huh?

We put them, the nut jobs, out of the house and we're trying to figure out how to cash in and sell the house on EBay.

Time is going by and we're having coffee every morning with Jerry on the wall. Lester, the guy who started all this, turns out he became a priest online. He took a course from a commune in Texas, so what's he know? He's going nuts. We won't let him into the house any more.

His people won't stop putting candles on the lawn. The best we can do is get a restraining order on Lester. We can't stop him from wearing the robes, which look like drapes we've seen in Sears, but now he has to stay on the other side of the street near the lake. We can't do anything about the hymn singers on the lawn or the ones knocking on the door, there are too many of them.

Then somehow, maybe it was EBay, word got out to the Dead Heads and a few of them came by. They were such nice people, very calm and peaceful, we showed them Jerry on the wall. Damn, wouldn't you know it, crowds of them started showing up on the lawn everyday wanting to see Jerry On The Wall. They didn't get along with Lester's bunch, what with all the smoking and stuff. That's when the police started showing up regular.

Meanwhile I'm having my own problems; she still doesn't want the frother in the house. I'm sneaking the frother out with me, into Dunkin Donuts and places like that. I had to be very careful to cover the noise. The other week I had the frother in the car and a guy cut me off so I frothered him. I pointed it at him and zapped him just like in Star Trek. I started doing it all the time, frothing everybody. That's not the worst of it, yesterday a guy in a Hummer frothered back. I'm scared.

We had to stay in the house with the blinds and the drapes closed all the time. The two mobs were out there with all the candles, incense and other stuff yelling back and forth - Madonna - Jerry - Madonna - Jerry - finally the police showed up and made them stay on opposite sides of the lawn.

Lester had to stay across the road near the lake because of the restraining order. He starts a new thing, he starts baptizing everybody. The Dead Heads are skinny dipping on their side.

Weeks go by and we're hunkered down in the house. We're buttoned up tight and the air conditioner is on so we didn't hear much. Then we heard yelling, people were always yelling so we ignored it. Then we smelled smoke. We jumped up and ran outside and saw the brush fire, the damn candles had finally done it.

The fire had started at the road and was roaring right at the house. I hadn't cut the grass for a long time because of the people always being on the lawn. I ran to the hose forgetting I had turned the water off because people were always messing with the water.

Then I saw Lester, in his 'going to the water robes', and his people running around stomping on the flames and the naked, sandal wearing, skinny dipping, Dead Heads beating the flames with their clothes. There they were, a vision of hell, Lester and his people in their robes and Sunday best, and the naked Dead Heads running in and out of the fire and smoke - everybody's screaming, 'The wall, the wall, Save the wall'.

The flames were at the stairs and I ran into the house. From inside I watched the flames ignite the lawn furniture and the foundation shrubs. We ran out the back door.

The house burned to the foundation. I lost it all, the damn Jerry On The Wall and the super frother.

I'm trying to get my life back on track. I still drive around the block down near the Hot-Shot Sugar Jolt. I think the guy with the Element got busted so I can't get another one. Maybe he'll show up someday.

Humor 21+
Runner-up
Janice Cutbush
Aunt Margaret's Uterus and Other Miscellaneous Clutter

I try so hard to be a non-clutter person, but being neat and organized is not me. I have several friends who are neat-niks and I am surprised they are friends with me. It must make them feel very virtuous to come to my house and see all my piles and clutter. I have one friend whose kitchen counters are totally naked-no toaster, blender, knife holder, or even a coffee maker. I once walked into her house and smelled apple pie baking and was looking forward to seeing her counter covered with flour and apple peelings. But alas, it was only a fake candle pie, like the ones the real estate people tell you to buy when you are trying to sell your house, only she wasn't moving. She was probably trying to make me think she used her counter space occasionally.

I become overly attached to inanimate objects-that is my problem in a nut shell. To exacerbate my attachment problem, I am indecisive. So when I finally make up my mind that something falls into the category of clutter, I have a hard time deciding what to do with it, especially if it has any sentimental value attached to it. Add to all this, the fact that I was raised by immigrant parents who lived through The Depression. In other words, I came from a family of Savers. My mother reused aluminum foil for God's sake! At any given time you could find recycled margarine containers in her refrigerator with two tablespoons of last night's spinach or other leftover food that she was planning on eating until green mold would force her to throw it out. My dad was even worse. When he died, we found dozens of Altoid containers with rusty nails, screws, washers and other things he had been saving just in case he ever got around to fixing anything. So if being a clutter bug is genetic, I came by it naturally.

To make matters worse, my late husband was a pack rat, and insisted that there may be a use some day for almost anything, that is except Aunt Margaret's Uterus. When we moved from our first home to the house we designed and built, I was hoping to get rid of a lot of stuff. But between my husband, my father and me, we managed to salvage almost every bit of useless junk from the first house and install it securely in the new basement and attic. I remember we had kept my first record turntable from grade school with built in speakers. It was about 18 years old when we moved to the second house and my husband was willing to throw it out since we had a new and better music system by then. We put it out for the garbage men, pleased with ourselves for making the decision to get rid of something old that we didn't use anymore. The next morning my mother called to say, "In case you ever want to use your old record player again, it's in our basement. Your dad rescued it." She wasn't angry, she said in a matter of fact way, like it was a good piece of information to have. After that, my husband started taking our junk to the dumpster at his workplace, so my dad wouldn't "rescue" anymore of it. The two of us were bad enough, without having a third party add guilt to the mix.

As you can tell, this was way before the word "recycle" was in the American vocabulary. Back in the early seventies, dumps were still in fashion and landfills were not nearly filled. So bringing things to the dump was an acceptable way to get rid of unwanted home goods. The move went fairly smoothly and we mostly agreed on what stuff we should save and what we should bring to the dump, that is until we had the fight about Aunt Margaret's Uterus.

When we got married, my dear old Aunt Margaret had given us a piece of Venetian glass sculpture as a wedding present. It was green and gold and had two arched tubes coming from a center pouch. It served no purpose that we could determine. At first we thought it might be a vase, and tried to pour water in it, but it the water spilled out. Then we realized it was purely decorative and put it on the hutch in our green dining room. It matched our walls and was a conversation piece for sure because of its unusual shape. One night at a dinner party, one of our friends noticed that the shape was similar to a uterus with two fallopian tubes extending from it. That's how it came to be christened Aunt Margaret's Uterus. In our slightly inebriated state, we all thought this was hilarious. My husband had always hated the thing, and wanted to "re-gift it."

"If it can't hold food or alcohol - it's useless. We should get rid of it," he once said. So naturally when we moved, he did not want Aunt Margaret's Uterus to come with us. I insisted that we bring it to the new house.

"It's a wedding present from my aunt, my dad's oldest sister. When she comes to visit once a year, she will wonder where it is. And besides, it is bad karma to chuck a gift someone gives you." I argued.

"You really want to keep something that looks like the Venetian glass version of the female reproductive system just because your old aunt gave it to us a hundred years ago?"

My answer was always yes to this question, mostly because I still feared my aunt. She was the fussiest and most critical person I ever knew. For example, she once refused coffee at my mother's house because it was not in a china cup. She also never ate chicken except in her own home, because in her words, "You never know if it has been properly washed." When she did come to visit it was more like an inspection than a visit. She would tell you if a picture was hung crooked or if there was dust on a high shelf. Her visits were a reason to get your house cleaned.

My husband also was also attached to inanimate objects, but his were of the sporting goods variety. For instance, he kept his original golf clubs which had real wood for the woods. We also stored his original heavy metal Head skis, just in case they ever became valuable as antiques. I argued that the only creatures using his skis were the mice in the basement, who used them as bridges to cross the rafters where he had them stored.

In the end I won. We brought Aunt Margaret's Uterus to the new house. When my Aunt died, my husband really pressed me to get rid of it. For some reason, this made me more unwilling to give it up and besides I was sure she would haunt us if we ditched The Uterus. He kept threatening, "Some day it's just going to disappear and you won't know what happened to it."

He moved it out of the dining room and relegated it to the basement with the Christmas decorations and other things we didn't use very often. When we decided to have a garage sale one spring, Tom put The Uterus on a table. He bet me that no one would even look at it, let alone buy it. I put a price tag of $10 on it because I knew that Venetian glass is pricey.

A rumpled looking man with a big cigar and a pick up truck, stopped by and immediately went to The Uterus. It was like someone had told him it was there. He didn't look at anything else. I thought maybe he was an estate appraiser.

"You only asking $10 for this Venetian glass? How come? Does it have a defect?"

"Uh, no, not that I know of." I was taken off guard.

He examined it like it was the missing arm of Venus di Milo.

"Okay. I'll take it."

I became suspicious when he didn't want to dicker for it. Everyone dickers at garage sales. Then it dawned on me; he knows something I don't. The Uterus is really valuable and thinks it is a steal at $10.

"Um, I changed my mind. It's not for sale."

"Why do you have it out here then lady?"

"It's a mistake. My husband put it out and I didn't know he did it. I don't want to sell it."

"Okay, but you better put it back in the house before someone tries to steal it." He turned and left.

I quickly brought The Uterus back in the house. My instinct not to get rid of it had been right. My aunt had given us a really valuable piece of glass. At the end of the day when I told Tom the story about the man who wanted to buy it for $10, he was furious.

"We could have bought a pizza with that $10. Now I have to look at that useless piece of junk until the next time you decide to have a garage sale."

After that, I put it back on the shelf in the basement where it had been since we moved into the new house. Tom still threatened to make it disappear but I didn't think he would ever carry through with his threat.

Several years later, when I was attempting to reduce the clutter in our basement, I noticed there was an empty spot on the shelf where Aunt Margaret's Uterus had been stored. I immediately questioned my husband as to its whereabouts. He swore he had nothing to do with its disappearance. He was my main suspect because he was the one who spent the most time in the basement and he was the only one who had the motive to do away with it. I also interrogated my children. My daughter said she never noticed it was gone. My son acted suspicious, avoiding eye contact when I questioned him. His refusal to submit to a polygraph made me even more distrusting. He finally broke down and admitted to having parties in the basement while his father and I were on vacation, but he claimed nothing ever got broken except an old lamp. Both he and his father adamantly denied having anything to do with the demise of The Uterus. Its fate remains a mystery. After all those years of arguing over it, I never missed it until I discovered the void on the shelf that day. The space was quickly filled with another treasure I can't part with: two stuffed dogs that sing, "I Got You Babe." How can I get rid of this keepsake when my roommate from college gave it to me as a joke one Christmas?

Humor 12-21;
First Place
Raven Hetzler
Congress Embroiled in Kitten vs. Puppies Debate

Fake News Report, April Ninth: The week-long controversy over the kittens versus puppies debate in Congress reached a fevered pitch this Friday when House Minority Leader John Boehner [R-OH] accused political opponents of being unpatriotic in their support of kittens over puppies.

"The supporters of kittens in this debate are denigrating the contribution of canines to this great nation!" barked Boehner. "The brave work of our police, rescue, bomb- and drug-sniffing dogs are being disparaged by the disloyal and unpatriotic mewling of the kitten supporters!"

House Speaker Nanci Pelosi [D-CA] nipped back at him on the House floor: "It was our founding fathers' independent and freethinking spirits that brought them to reject such dogmatism," she spat. "You and your pack of puppy partisans would cause catastrophic damage to this nation if your legislation were to pass, and it is the job of every upstanding Representative here to shred it before it can harm our nation."

Independents, meanwhile, have been heard to speak in favor of pro-rabbit legislation, and Rep. Pete Stark [D-CA] proposed a piece of pro-squid legislation, but the motions were squashed in committee.

In the Senate, kitten supporters are hissing over an insult-littered ad in the Washing Post which states, among other things, "Kitten Supporters are Pussies! Vote Puppies for America!" The ad was run by an independent citizen's group called Watchdogs of Obstreperous Felines (or WOOF).

Both People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Veterinarians for Peace, a nonprofit organization, have released statements condemning the political killings of both kittens and puppies in recent days. An estimated fifteen thousand baby animals have been found dead in politically motivated incidents.

The debate began when Senator Arlen Specter [R-PA] introduced an amendment to an Iraq War Spending Bill that would declare kittens "the most adorable small furry animal in the United States." This move raised the hackles of the influential puppy lobby, and began the debate that has crossed party lines and eclipsed both the Iraq war and the housing crisis for over a week.

In other political news, President George W. Bush has proposed a controversial piece of legislation that would make irony a Class III Controlled Substance under the jurisdiction of the FDA.

This move appears to be aimed squarely at limiting the damage caused by Bush's loudest and harshest critics - political satirists. The new law, if passed, would impose a fine for anyone apprehended viewing, reading or listening to more than one hour of ironic material per day. An unnamed White House insider expressed concern that this would limit the public's ability to listen to or view Presidential speeches and/or White House press releases.

The law is opposed by several broadcast and internet-based corporations whose primary income is made from comedy and political satire. It is expected to face tough scrutiny in Congress once the kitten-puppy debates have played out and a normal schedule is resumed.

In a recent speech, the President stated, "I urge the Congress to finish their doggoned debate that's goin' on in there now, and to pick up my legislaterive proposal to limit irony. Irony is, it's a dangerous thing, dangerous for young folks. And it - it's important for the young people to have a safe understandin' of the world, without people tryin' to confuscate them by saying things that aren't what they mean, that aren't true." During the question and answer session after the speech, the President responded to a question with "I don't know why you people keep bringin' that up. It just ain't true. I have never said 'stay the course.'"

Adirondack Center for Writing
Paul Smith's College, PO Box 265
Paul Smiths, New York 12970
Phone: 518-327-6278
Fax: 518-327-6161
Email: acw@paulsmiths.edu