"The weather’s perfect for a bonfire, Mike. Why don’t you and Andy gather the brush pile and get things started?” my mother-in-law, Cindy, asked. “Twyla and I can run down to the store and get things for s’mores while Sophie cleans up.”

My husband grinned at his younger brother across the merrily set table. He took a sip of his beer and set it back down on the warm red tablecloth. “I don’t know, Andy, you think we can keep from burning any major buildings this time?”

The family laughed as Andy glared ruefully at his brother. I even managed a small, preoccupied smile. These jokes were old, safe, familiar. The humor was only by habit; the event Mike was referring to had happened eight, nine years ago. The bonfire that had gotten out of control was a family-famous event, but more so because it was the night Michael had stolen my heart. I held still as a brief memory flashed: the ruddy light flickering in his green eyes, the flush from the fire not quite concealing the blush on my sixteen year old cheeks as I solemnly realized I loved the boy watching me from the other side of the fire. The memory came with remembered heat, and the faintest tinge of pain; I shoved it aside.

The men, boys again, bounded outside to begin the preparations, and my mother and sister-in-law headed off to the store after checking the pantry cupboards.

“We’ll be back soon, Sophie,” Cindy called as she headed out the door. I cleared the table, still in the half daze I’d been spending most of my days in. I loaded the old dishes into the dishwasher, and then reached into the sink to wash the old cast iron pot that had been in the family since before my mother-in-law was born. I grasped its weight familiarly; I belonged to this family just as much as it did. My mind wandered as my inattentive hands washed the heirloom, and I gasped as a sudden sharp pain pierced my fingers and the dishwater blushed. The pain, a minor inconvenience, took me by surprise. Examining the cut, I realized it was only a slight nick despite its exuberant bleeding. I stuck the offending finger in my mouth without thinking, and looked out of the window above the sink.

I’d spent the past few months refusing to think too much, to feel too much, to see too much. I knew my husband’s patient understanding was waning, that his family’s doting tolerance was beginning to turn to questioning. And still, I could not bring myself to wake up. I wasn’t a silly little girl, and I knew my level-headedness was part of why Mike loved me as much as he did. I knew I was losing them, and I knew I was being irrational. The tiny slice on my finger throbbed, and I sucked on it absently as I watched my husband and his brother trying to light the fire outside. Andy, ever the inventive one, was experimenting on the not-quite-dry pile with dried grass, paper trash, even a starter log which refused to take hold. Mike stood there, my patient husband, crouched on the gravel with a long match and a small pile of bracken. Andy’s pile flared and I could hear his triumphant cry, but I heard almost as quickly Mike’s answering laugh as the flame died down to an ineffective smolder. I smiled again, this time without a touch of pain, and wandered outside to watch the two men.

“It’s too wet,” Andy said finally. He kicked at the side of the pile he’d been working on, then turned at the sound of his wife’s car headed up the drive. As he shambled forward to meet them, I walked to my husband’s side. He stilled, the way he had one day when we discovered a terrified, wounded kitten trapped underneath our porch. The image of his gentleness warmed me, and I crouched beside him.

“Do you think you can start it, or is it ruined after all?” I asked softly.

Mike looked at me steadily, and then smiled. “Watch.”

He leaned forward, blowing carefully on the smoldering pile below his bracken. The tiniest slip of a flame appeared, dimmed, then flickered strongly to life. With a crackling sound, the hungry fire jumped to life. The orangey light crawled over the piled wood, tinting the darkening air with the acrid, homey scent of burning. I gasped, and the merry little fire blazed in confidence as if it had started on a whim of its own, without being coaxed along by stronger hands. And I smiled again, a smile finally not tainted by the loss of my tiny daughter, but kindled by the promise of life and love. As the heat from the blaze grew, forcing us to take a step backwards, and then another, I knew the weight of my grief was fading. Mike wrapped his arms around me, and we watched the fire grow.  LS

The towheaded blue eye blew his nose in my shirt and I hoisted him high in the air.

“Is that what you meant to do?” I asked him, smiling.

He giggled in my hands and I gave him back to his mommy, who I had called my mommy too, sucking on her chest under pink light, hooking fingers into what I’d assume were much tighter quarters. 

“That wasn’t nice Nathan-why don’t you say you’re sorry?”

“Sorry,” he said with his finger in his mouth, snot dripping out of his nose.

“That’s okay, Natey Boy,” I assured him.

“He’s still learning his manners.”

“Who isn’t?” I laughed, though her mom always told me I was so polite. 

“Isn’t that the truth,” she sighed.

I wondered what that meant.  Probably nothing, in response to my verbal nothings, which used to sound different and coil in her ear.  She kept my love notes even after the new guy stepped in, she told me one time.

Nathan hiccoughed and his mom cradled him, meeting her nose to his.  We didn’t have much more to say to each other, any one of us.  So we all smiled.  

I got to meet Nathan at least, who I had heard so much about in the supermarket the other day.  Much more than she told me about Nathan’s daddy...I think. 

When she walked away, past the trees and the gazebo in the park, telling me it was nice seeing me again, it was just like she was walking past the cereal boxes shone under fluorescent lights, her apple ass shaking cutely again.  Leaving the aisle past breakfast food and to the checkout line or leaving the bed past the closet and to the bathroom it still rocked gently and lively as only a woman’s can.  The kid didn’t rob her of that.  

Which, whether she was permanently loose lipped or not, made me hate Nathan’s dad all over again, just like it was three years ago when I first heard his name, “Nathan.”

 "Grass here is wrong," her mother said, when they visited the house. For Tessa, it had been love at first sight from the back seat of the car. Now, she thought she was going to lose her dream home before she'd even set foot inside. This was where she wanted to live. It was right. Tessa had opinions, too.

"You can cut grass," the estate agent told her mother. "I can cut grass," said her father. He was always looking for opportunities to prove he was a man because people said he wasn't. Tessa pictured her father pushing one of those new mowing machines. She would help him, emptying the box where the grass collected when it was full. They would shout to each other above the engine noise. Caught up in her dream, for a moment, Tessa forgot she didn't want the grass to be cut.

A doctor lived next-door. The estate agent couldn't have realised how big a selling point this would be for Tessa's mother. The doctor came out of the house carrying his brief case, trotted down the steps, and the house was virtually sold. "You could always build a patio if you don't like grass," the estate agent said. Tessa hated patios. At the back of the house there was more grass. There was almost a field of it, and at the bottom of that almost field, was a real field, with a pony. Tessa's Mum got her patio and Tessa got her grass. Her Dad got to mix concrete and look like a man. He made friends with the doctor next door, and
Tessa's Mum was happy. She didn't mind when her husband stayed drinking in the doctor's back yard. Tessa watched them, in a glow of tungsten light, from behind her bedroom curtains. One afternoon she went down to the field to feed the pony. Peering through the long grass, she watched her father and the doctor lying in each other's arms.

Tessa's Mum's stiletto heels left small, round marks in the soft plaster wall, the day after the farmer found the two men in his field. Tessa watched her father leave. The doctor stayed. He was the only doctor in town and people needed him. Tessa heard the neighbours call him queer behind his back, but they never said it to his face. When the farmer broke a leg, driving his brand new Nuffield tractor too fast at harvest time, Tessa saw the doctor put the leg in plaster. When a leading member of the town council had a heart attack, in bed with his twenty year old secretary, Tessa didn't see, but she knew it was the doctor who saved him, and his reputation. Tessa's Dad made secret visits to see her when her Mum was out at bingo. Afterwards, he made secret visits next door. Tessa watched from her bedroom window. Now, the men stayed inside. 

Kate Brown is a British film-maker and writer, living in Berlin. Recent short stories are published by Cinnamon Press and in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology 2010.

Above us there are children jumping off the dock. We see them enter the water in a torpedo of white. Their feet churn around the dark square of the dock. They fight to get back on, and fight each other off. In the other direction, the small beach at the lake. From under water it looks like a little bright spot, a break in the reeds and pussy willows. There are adults up there on towels, with beach umbrellas and picnic baskets, shouting to their children, or talking about them to each other. We are not children anymore; we have been discarding our childhood in thin veils to each other. The adults cannot see us down here. We have put all of this dark water between us. We have crept away to the bottom, to the mud and algae, you and I. Here your skin is soft and tinted with green, here your clothes are pushed to the bottom like leaves. Your body is a white stroke in the green water; a fish with desperate arms. From above, we may look like two ripples of sunlight passing into each other through the water, trying to become two people at once.

Matthew Zanoni Müller was born in Bochum, Germany and grew up in Eugene, Oregon and Upstate, New York. He has an MFA from Warren Wilson and you can read more about his work at www.matthewzanonimuller.com

“Never contact me again.”  

At night, in her small house outside Wambli, an Oglala village on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Jimmy Means loved her, made her love him. Hot, quick, intense, orgasmic. Terrific. She loved the slick of him on her naked body, her breasts against him, his mouth on hers. She thought he would always love her.  

Now he’s like rotten meat.  

Beautiful, not knowing it, Anna Black Elk hikes toward Ghost Canyon on the rez near Quiverhill. Snow is heavy on the branches of the ponderosa pines. She looks toward the Pine Ridge Escarpment and its badlands.  

She’s done with Jimmy Means.    Jimmy didn’t even face her, didn’t even call. He texted, defriended her online.  

She studies the deep ravine around her, violent dreamscape where things are swallowed up. The forest and pale wall and arroyo are silent in the heavy snow. Even the wind, for once, is still.  

She knows people have vanished here, come to die, come to hide, been dumped here by killers, never found, found too late. She knows the stories from her own relatives.    

As she moves upcanyon, she sees a pile of bones, sheltered from the snowfall at the base of the claystone walls, where something worked out of the soft cliff. A skull. It is old. Rusty brown. Strange. Not human. Has sharp teeth, a long face. She thinks it is a creodont, an ancient predator, 35 million years old. She sells dead things to collectors.  

Snowfall, soundless, surrounds her, the sky coming down in white pieces. Cold, she looks at the skull, a killer dead so long ago she cannot imagine the span of time. Beautiful, not knowing it, strong, she sighs, deletes the text.  

Jimmy’s made a mistake.

"Grass here is wrong," her mother said, when they visited the house. For Tessa, it had been love at first sight from the back seat of the car. Now, she thought she was going to lose her dream home before she'd even set foot inside. This was where she wanted to live. It was right. Tessa had opinions, too.

"You can cut grass," the estate agent told her mother. "I can cut grass," said her father. He was always looking for opportunities to prove he was a man because people said he wasn't. Tessa pictured her father pushing one of those new mowing machines. She would help him, emptying the box where the grass collected when it was full. They would shout to each other above the engine noise. Caught up in her dream, for a moment, Tessa forgot she didn't want the grass to be cut.

A doctor lived next-door. The estate agent couldn't have realized how big a selling point this would be for Tessa's mother. The doctor came out of the house carrying his brief case, trotted down the steps, and the house was virtually sold.
"You could always build a patio if you don't like grass," the estate agent said.
Tessa hated patios. At the back of the house there was more grass. There was almost a field of it, and at the bottom of that almost field, was a real field, with a pony.

Tessa's Mum got her patio and Tessa got her grass. Her Dad got to mix concrete and look like a man. He made friends with the doctor next door, and Tessa's Mum was happy. She didn't mind when her husband stayed drinking in the doctor's back yard. Tessa watched them, in a glow of tungsten light, from behind her bedroom curtains. One afternoon she went down to the field to feed the pony. Peering through the long grass, she watched her father and the doctor lying in each other's arms. Tessa's Mum's stiletto heels left small, round marks in the soft plaster wall, the day after the farmer found the two men in his field.

Tessa watched her father leave. The doctor stayed. He was the only doctor in town and people needed him. Tessa heard the neighbours call him queer behind his back, but they never said it to his face. When the farmer broke a leg, driving his brand new Nuffield tractor too fast at harvest time, Tessa saw the doctor put the leg in plaster. When a leading member of the town council had a heart attack, in bed with his twenty year old secretary, Tessa didn't see, but she knew it was the doctor who saved him, and his reputation. Tessa's Dad made secret visits to see her when her Mum was out at bingo. Afterwards, he made secret visits next door. Tessa watched from her bedroom window. Now, the men stayed inside.

Kate Brown is a British film-maker and writer, living in Berlin. Recent short stories are published by Cinnamon Press and in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology 2010.