Survival by Barry Garelick, affogato

 I interviewed for a job at a warehouse for a chain of department stores in Detroit. It was a summer job and the HR guy knew that I was in college. He was a black man, and he seemed to like me. He offered me the job and then said ‘Let me give you one piece of advice. Whether you’re on the floor of the warehouse or the campus of University of Michigan, or in the jungles of Viet Nam, just remember one thing: Survival!’  He shook my hand and wished me luck.

I suppose he was warning me about the culture of the warehouse, which was largely working class, some African Americans, and then the summer crop of college kids who were widely despised by the lifers. It was the summer of 1968, a year after the Detroit riots, the Viet Nam war raging with an ever increasing amount of young boys who were not in college drafted, while college kids like me had a deferment.

I did alright keeping out of harm’s way. There were only two times I was harassed. The first was for being a ‘college kid’. The second time it was for being Jewish.

The first time, I had to move a large pile of boxes from one location to another while counting how many were moved, under the watchful eye of Ellis, a large black man who didn’t put up with crap from any of us. Helping me was a boy my age who had worked there for a few years and made it quite clear how he felt about college boys. ‘Hey college boy, you think you can move faster?’ he kept saying, and the more I didn’t acknowledge his taunting the louder he became. I knew this boy couldn’t have been too bright if he was carrying on like that in front of Ellis, and I also knew it would be a matter of time before Ellis would put a stop to it—which he did.

Ellis erupted suddenly, and leaped up from the box he had been sitting on and standing upright, which emphasized his six foot two frame yelled ‘Leave him alone!’  The boy didn’t say another word, and we finished the job.

The second time was shortly before my time at the warehouse was nearing an end. I sat across from a boy named Don at lunchtime who decided to join the table where I usually sat with guys I worked with. He asked me ‘What’s your nationality?’  It was the first time I had ever been asked that, and instinctively I answered ‘Jewish’ though I don’t really know why.

Don pretended to be friendly toward this disclosure and said what he thought would be something that would make all Jewish people relaxed, comfortable and friendly: ‘Pretty good job you’re doing in Jerusalem.’

This made absolutely no sense to me. He kept going, asking where my parents were from and my grandparents, and then finally the question he had been dying to ask: ‘Why’d you kill him?’

‘Kill who?’ I asked.

‘Jesus Christ, you idiot!’

My sense of history and heritage was weak, so I answered him the best I could. ‘The Jews didn’t kill Christ; the Romans did.’  This was met with groans from everyone at the table who all believed that the Jews alone were responsible, though my interrogator was the only one who thought it should be brought out in the open.  ‘Bullshit,’ he said.

Lunchtime was over, and we went back to our assigned work spots. He worked stacking boxes on the upper shelves of the warehouse. Don took advantage of his various ‘sniper’s perches’ by throwing an empty box at me whenever he happened to see me.

It was his last week at the warehouse. He had enlisted in the Marine Corps and was hot to trot, telling his coterie of admirers at the warehouse about this. On Friday of that week, I was standing in the line by the punch-out clock. There was a kind of game to this; if you punched out even two minutes early, you were docked an hour’s pay. There was a way to punch out with a minute remaining and not get docked; it was a game of chicken.

A man probably in his thirties was waiting in line. On Fridays he would always ask me if I was going to go out on a date over the weekend. I had grown tired of this question, mainly because my answer was always ‘No’. But that day I decided to answer ‘Yes’ to which he suddenly got rather preachy and started talking in rhyming couplets, saying things like ‘Keep your eyes in your sockets and your hands in your pockets.’ 

He came to my rescue that day. As we were standing in line, the future Marine suddenly decided to get some sympathy and attention and announced ‘Wow, tomorrow at this time I’ll be on a train heading for Parris Island to be in the Marine Corps.’ Don shook his head woefully as if to say ‘What have I done?’

After a few rounds of such talk I piped up and said ‘Did anyone hold a gun to your head to join the Marines?’ His face turned red and he was getting ready to deck me one, when my rhyming couplet friend held him back and told me ‘Punch out now even if you get docked and get the hell out of here, now!’ Which I did.

I don’t know what happened to the guy. I like to imagine that his drill instructor was Jewish or he insulted the wrong Jewish person and got the shit beat out of him. He’s likely alive and well, having survived the war, and still hating on people. Or he may well have not survived the war, and died in battle, mourned by those who loved and adored him.

About the author  

Barry Garelick has written non-fiction pieces that have been published in Atlantic, and Education Next. His fiction has appeared in The Globe Review, Cafe Lit and Fiction on the Web. He lives in Morro Bay, California with his wife. 

 

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Vne – the velocity that should never be exceeded in normal flight by Dave Sinclair, Affogato

  

I met Jim in 1964.  That was the year that the UK gliding championships was at Dunstable, and since it was just two weeks after we got married, that was where we spent our honeymoon.  It was an abrupt transition from blushing bride to dutiful wife and glider crew – neither of which I felt adequately prepared for, but since I felt that married life must inevitably bring its changes and challenges I would simply wait and see what each new day brought.  We duly arrived on the Friday at Dunstable Gliding Club in a Morris Minor, towing Jim’s Skylark behind in a large wooden trailer, and spent the evening unpacking a tent, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and a week’s worth of bacon and eggs.

 

The next morning, I helped Jim pull the glider out of the trailer and attach the wings and tail plane.  While Jim then went off to the competition briefing to find out what the task of the day was, I lay on the grass by the glider, trying to ease the throb in my back and thinking that despite its fragile appearance, the wood and fabric of the glider weighed a lot more than I had expected.  Looking up at the early morning puffs of white cumulus in the sky above, it was a puzzle to me how something as ephemeral and apparently made of cotton wool could also generate the thermal lift that sustained the gliders in their flight over the countryside.

 

‘Come on, let’s get her out to the launch point – there’s no time to lose,’ Jim said.  ’They’ve set an out and return to Bristol.  That’s over a hundred and twenty miles – so the sooner I start the better.’

 

We pushed the glider onto the runway and Jim climbed in.  A helper attached the winch cable, and a few seconds later the glider rapidly disappeared down the runway and into the air.  I went back to the tent to fetch my paperback and to find a quiet part of the airfield where I could lie in the sun and escape into a more romantic world.

 

It was four in the afternoon when the airfield tannoy made the announcement I had been hoping not to hear:

 

‘Glider 496 has landed out.’

That meant Jim was in a farmer’s field somewhere.  He had suggested that this might occasionally happen to a glider, especially in a competition.

 

‘You could never be sure,’ he had said, ‘especially in an English summer, that the soaring conditions would be as good as the forecast predicted. After all, that’s why it’s a competition.  It’s a test of your skill as a pilot to make the best of the weather.’

 

As I walked over to the competition office I wondered if Jim was really as skilled as he thought he was.  I was beginning to learn that perhaps Jim’s greatest skill was not in his actions but more in his imagination.

 

In the office, they gave me a copy of the message that Jim had phoned in:

Landed out 2 miles north of Chipping Norbury, grid reference SP310271.  Meet at Royal Oak pub in village.

 

‘Well, it’s all part of the adventure of marriage,’ I told myself as I drove the Morris Minor round to where we had left the trailer and hitched it up.  I’m not sure I sounded very convincing though.

 

Chipping Norbury turned out to be village very much in the traditional English style, complete with thatched cottages made of Cotswold stone the colour of honey and fudge.  I half expected Miss Marple to be sitting watching the cricket on the village green – and for a fleeting moment the image of a body lying under glider popped into my mind – maybe I was feeling a bit lightheaded as I had not had anything to eat since the bacon and eggs at breakfast.  It was nearly 8pm by the time I parked the car and trailer outside the Royal Oak.  I was beginning to feel quite tired – it had been long drive, particularly with the trailer on the back of the car.   But I perked up when I saw a sign that said ‘Best Bed and Breakfast in Gloucestershire’ by the pub doors. Inside I found Jim in the snug, playing bar billiards with a couple of the locals.

 

‘Ah, well done, lass – you made it then!’ he said as he saw me stumble through the door.  ’Come on, let’s go and derig the glider – it’s going to be dark soon.’  Before I could reply he had started bustling me out of the snug, calling over his shoulder to his new billiard friends, ‘Thanks for the beer and the game, lads – keep the table warm for me’.

 

‘Are we coming back then?’ I asked as we got into the car.  ’That seemed rather a nice place to stay the night – it looked like they might have a nice comfy four poster, and I’ve hardly eaten all day.’

 

‘I’m afraid not, love.  Mind you they did have an excellent home made steak and ale pie, but I expect it’s all gone now,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we’ve got to get back to Dunstable tonight, so I can be ready for tomorrow’s task.’

 

‘But it will be well past midnight before we get back to the airfield, surely?’ I protested.

 

‘Well, we’ve got plenty of bacon and eggs.  And I want to get back and see how well I’ve scored.  I’m sure there must have been lots of other pilots landing out – it was really hard work today.  I hope I haven’t lost any points on the leaders,’ he replied.

 

I thought about this in silence while we spent the next hour getting the Morris Minor and the trailer up a long, rutted farmers track and down to the bottom of a mown hay field, where Jim had managed to land the Skylark.

 

‘Right,’ said Jim, manoeuvring the trailer in front of the glider.  ’You go and open the trailer doors while I unhitch the trailer from the car.  Then we can start by taking the tail plane off and then the wings.  I’ve already disconnected the controls so there’s hardly anything to it.’

 

I did as I was told and went to the back of the trailer and opened the doors.  It was quite a surprise, to say the least, to find that there already was a glider in the trailer.  I looked across at Jim’s glider and then back at the trailer, and then it dawned on me that the number on the tail fin of Jim’s glider was 496.  The numbers stencilled on the back doors of the trailer were 469.  I had brought the wrong trailer.

 

‘Jim,’ I said, ‘You are not going to believe this….’.

 

A year later Jim had swopped his vintage glider for a modern Cessna with an engine.  Happily, I had swopped Jim for a different significant other too.

 

About the author 

 Dave Sinclair is a retired engineer who now writes poetry and short stories for fun. He also starts novels, but no-one, not even himself, knows if he will ever finish. He is studying for a Creative Writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University. 

 

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Everyone Has Secrets

 

by Meagan Elixabeth

affogato

 

            The old man grabbed an oriental rug by the corner and pulled. His bones creaked with the effort. “This house is older than I am,” Grandpa said. He took a moment to cough into the crook of his elbow. The rug slid across the floor to reveal a wooden trap door. “A bomb shelter, supposed to be.”

            I sprang from my seated position. “You never mentioned this before.”

            He grinned, rows of gums showing through parted lips. “I never mentioned this to your grandmother, either. Everyone has secrets, my boy.” His knees popped as he bent to open the door. “I don’t have the money you asked for.” Wrinkled hands grasped the large bolt holding the door closed. “You want your wife to recover? The answer is down here.”

            A ladder had been nailed into a cinder-block wall. Grandpa took the lead, the steps creaking louder than his bones. My heart pounded as my fingers brushed against splintered wood. I tensed, expecting the weight of my body to push my foot through each step.

            A cord dangled from the ceiling. Grandpa pulled on it, awakening an exposed lightbulb. It swung from the motion, causing shadows to dance along the walls. A lifeless face stared at me, a man with a feathered cap and untamed hair.

            “What is this?” I asked.

            Grandpa stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He stood before a portrait of a ship, rocking in the waves of a storm. “Rembrandt,” he said. “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.”

            “I don’t understand.”

He shuffled to the other portrait. The face continued to stare at me, black ink on white canvas. “This is Rembrandt himself.”

            “Grandpa, what’s your point?” My eyes traveled over the two portraits to settle on the old man, who was grinning from ear to ear.

            “This is your answer.”

            “No.”

            Grandpa’s smile dropped. His shoulders sagged, as if pressed down by some invisible weight. “No?”

            I studied Rembrandt’s self-portrait, my eyes gliding over the various ink strokes. The ink captured eyes that looked as hollow as I felt. “Grandpa, this is stolen art.”

            “Worth millions, my boy.” His weathered hand clasped my shoulder. “They would solve many problems beyond your wife’s recovery.”

            My knees wobbled. “My wife…”

            “Take the art, son. Sell it. You will be better off.”

            “No, Grandpa.” Sobs shook my body as I slunk to the floor. “Not with stolen money. She would never forgive me.”

            He patted my back as I cried. The way he did when I scraped a knee many years ago.

            When I regained composure, Grandpa pulled the cord to extinguish the light. We climbed our way back to the top in silence. The old man moved to close the door, but I stopped him.

            “My wife needs an honest man,” I said. The door closed with a thud, and I secured the bolt. “Not more secrets.” With combined strength, Grandpa and I pulled the oriental rug back in place, the trap door hidden beneath.

About the author

Meagan Elixabeth is a student, writer, and volunteer English tutor who works with adults to improve their English skills. Meagan enjoys her coffee with French vanilla cream, no sugar, accompanied with a fantasy novel. Visit her website at www.meaganelixabeth.com.