MAY 2008 WINNER
First place, publication and $150 goes to 
Emily Lupita Plum, Atlanta, GA
Calloused
Emily Lupita Plum is a writer and
artist. Her awards include the Faulkner-Wisdom Gold Medal for the Poem. Her poems are forthcoming in the North American
Review, International Poetry Review, Poetry International and in the anthology Poetic Voices
Without Borders 2. Emily is the author of Water and Stone, a book of poems about Japan. http://www.emilyplum.com
Second Place:
Richard Lutman,
Myrtle Beach, SC
Lopez
and The Colonel
Third Place: Josh Ray, Atlanta, GA
The
Worst Thing You Ever Did
Emily's winning entry appears below and will be featured in the annual
scratch anthology. Both runners up
will be strongly considered for inclusion.
We
thank you all for the opportunity to read your clever and innovative stories and are grateful for the pleasure it
gave us.
In selecting the May winner, Judge Jack
Riggs said,"The author made me feel New Orleans, all the colors, sites and sounds. The music and the deeply drawn
character was wonderful. At times, I felt the protagonist to be a bit melodramatic, but then I would realize I was reading
a story about a woman at the very edge, and then it began to work again. I loved the feel of this story, the psychological
depth of the character and how the author spun it all into a kaleidoscope of overlapping senses for the reader to absorb."
Now enjoy, Calloused.
It was my last
chance to speak to Julius Thibodeaux, and I did not speak. I
had come back to New Orleans to end my own life. I arrived
in the mist of
early morning and sat on a metal bench in Jackson square to watch the fog
lift, the sun rise, to
listen as the cathedral bells rang, summoning the
city¹s workers, tourists, and seekers to her very center. An old
man sat
beside me on the bench, red guitar in hand. He sang, “Oh, I know, cher. I
know. The river flooding
its banks, oh, cher, the feeling of despair.”
He sang all morning as tourists dropped quarters and folded
up dollar bills
in his hat. I did not speak. I sat and watched, enjoying this, my last day.
The old man turned to
me after several hours, pointed at my thin, pretty
feet and began to play a bayou dancing tune.
“Now
dance, woman!” the man laughed. Red guitar in hand, his fingers
quivered on the strings as he moved them to the
rhythm of the tap tap tap of
my feet on the slick square stones of Chartres Avenue.
I stood in Jackson Square
and spun around, around and around in my long blue
summer dress my sister had made by hand. The hem of my dress lifted
up,
floating in and out of my sight as I danced across the courtyard, the blur
of colors on St. Ann Avenue passing
by me. The grey horses, the silver
carriages they pulled, the black man with a red guitar, the orange-tipped
hair
of a white Goth bride, the stark white walls of St. Louis Cathedral,
the pink flowers, the pink, the pink, the pink show
they swirled and the
sound of the fountain how it grew louder and louder until birds bursting
forth from the tall
reaching tree just across from the Mississippi River
startled me and my turning world and I fell to the soft lines of
grass and
lay looking up past the bronze saddle towards the antiqued metal glare of
Andrew Jackson’s stern,
ugly face, his arm trust before him, sword in hand
to fight battle upon battle upon battle.
I lay on the grass
watching people pass in Jackson Square – the saxophone
player wearing nothing but shorts and suspenders, the palm
reader in giant
jewels on her way to set up shop on the corner, the portrait sketcher
washing his hands in the fountain
between patrons. I lay on the grass in
Jackson Square in New Orleans watching people pass – the gangster in chains
on his way to pray, the hot dog vender taking a piss in the bushes, the
tourist in sunglasses taking photos of me laying
on the grass in my handmade
blue dress with the hot dog vender taking a piss in the bushes, blurry,
behind me in
the background.
I lay on the grass in Jackson Square in the French Quarter on the day I
planned to die filling
up the fountain with my tears, with my tears absorbed
by the roots of the trees, by the stems of the flowers, by the
droppings of
the birds as they flew overhead, the little balls of despair falling from
the sky, drop, drop, drop
after drop into the beautiful fountain, up through
the stone tunnels, and burst out the top spraying the vampires and
the
businessmen and the street dancers, and the clusters of kids on tour from
Uptown – all hit right in the
face with the strongest smelling and most
exquisite tasting microscopic balls of despair, a fine and genuine despair
that only the fine city of New Orleans, herself, dare allow to fly freely
about the air.
This did not go
unnoticed.
“Rough day, yeah?” A man in low-ride street-scraping black jeans sat just
next to my face
lying flat with the grass. He had been there before, to that
place where I lay with my face pressed into the ground.
“Yeah.”
“Well, I know how to cheer you up. I’ll make us an easy twenty bucks. Want
to
see how?”
“Sure.” I didn’t need money. I didn’t need a friend.
“Okay, so all
you gotta do is go with me up to that man there, you see him,
with the annoying polo shirt and two little boys with that
pretty darling of
a wife?”
“Yeah.”
“Just stand next to me and don’t say nothing,
just stand like all you got in
the whole world is this here beautiful patched up dress of yours. That’s it!
Easy twenty bucks, don’t you think?”
He jumped up with such conviction that I rose and followed him across
Jackson Square to the corner of St. Anne and Decatur, stood next to him as
he confronted the family, quite obviously
from out of town touring the city.
“Hey, man. I’ll bet you twenty bucks I can tell you where you got
your
shoes,”
The man in the annoying polo shirt turned his head slightly so he could look
at me
and at my companion at the same time. His wife tugged on his arm. The
kids moved slowly behind their parents. “Come
on, man. What are the chances
I¹d know where you got those shoes of yours, man. Come on, now. I’m
harmless,
here. And this is just a harmless little bet we got going on, now,
man. Come on, now,” my companion coaxed the
man in.
The wife had a hold of both her children; she had started to move back.
There was something about
her outfit that intrigued me, all sorts of little
red and blue stars on a white short-sleeved shirt. All kinds of little
points lining up with other little points, little fireworks going on in her
shirt, little sparks lighting up in her
heart as she held onto her children
and her husband and took a step back.
“Alright,” the man in
the red polo shirt said, puffing up his chest a bit.
He was grinning and rubbing his hands together. “It’s
alright,” the man in
the annoying red polo shirt said to his wife and kids. “Just a game, here.
And
I’m about to win.” The two men swayed back and forth just slightly. The
game began.
“Well,
now. Seems to me,” my companion said slowly, “that you got your shoes
there,” he paused and tapped
his left pinky finger against the right side of
his jaw, the chocolate brown of his face and the whiteness of his cuticles
glaring against each other in the sun, the long, pointed fingernail making
the smallest little scraping sound against
his skin, “that you got your
shoes there on your feet, man!”
My companion let out a slow joyful
chuckle, a rocking sensation that came
from deep inside his belly. He knew he had won. “Alright, man. Give me the
twenty bucks, I won fair and square.”
The tourist in the red polo shirt laughed nervously and slapped the
sides of
his khaki pants with the tips of his fingers. He reached for his wallet and
took out a twenty-dollar bill.
“You got me, alright,” the tourist said
cautiously, handing the twenty to my companion and examining the
bills left
in his wallet.
“Thank you kindly,” my companion called out after them as they
backed away.
He held his belly with two hands, leaning back slightly, letting out a long,
slow giggle, the twenty-dollar
bill he’d promised flapping to the side of
his pants.
It was at this moment that a third hand, a brown
hand with fingertips lined
with calluses, grabbed onto that twenty-dollar bill. The man with the
calluses on his
hands wore sunglasses, but these sunglasses did not hide his
eyes. His eyes were the color green I imagined was found
only deep in the
ocean, where light never reaches, where only the large, slow fish go to
live. There was a slick
film on the lens of his sunglasses, a slick film of
the green of his eyes seeping out. This was Julius Thibodeaux. This
was the
man I had fallen in love with on the streets of New Orleans so many years
ago.
“Now, you.
Git. Leave this here pretty lady alone, ya’ hear?” Julius with
the calloused fingertips and green film falling
from his eyes said in a
firm, calm, quiet voice. My companion brought his pointed fingernails
attached to his dark
brown hand attached to his arm with a full-color tattoo
of a women with a large, curvy body and a small, shrunken head
tied up to a
stake with nails in her arms down near his thigh and let go of the
twenty-dollar bill.
“Okay,
man, okay,” my companion said in the same firm, quiet, calm way to
the man with the calluses on his fingertips
and those green eyes behind
sunglasses whose heart I took into my mouth and crumbled into pieces with my
tongue
all those years ago.
The two men, my companion and Julius with the calloused hands, they were
talking so gently,
so closely, that from across Jackson Square, you’d think
they were friends exchanging hellos, arranging a place
to meet up later for
dinner, or perhaps one was introducing to the other his new girlfriend
wearing her sister¹s
hand-made patched-up blue dress.
The man with the wet film seeping from his eyes that pierced my own so many
years ago was bigger than my companion by what seemed like a few feet,
though it couldn¹t have been. He was wider,
fuller, stronger, with a single
armband tattoo wrapped around his right bicep. His eyes were the sort of
green that
never relents, the sort of eyes that never stops their piercing
glare. These Julius eyes were the sort of eyes that would
bring a woman all
the way back to New Orleans just to see them one last time in her life. My
companion backed slowly
away as he realized this. Julius of my desire with
the green film on his sunglasses and single armband tattoo watched
as the
man with the full-color tattoo of the woman tied to a stake with nails in
her arms took off and turned to
wave at us before disappearing into the
crowd of people on the sidewalk. As Julius in the sunglasses that did not
hide his eyes with the strong, full body and those calluses on his
fingertips waved back, I took off running into one
of the thin streets
leading away from the French Quarter.
I turned to see if Julius was following me, the
noise of the cars and prance
of the horses, the echo of the footsteps of tourists and bartenders on their
way to
work and students on their way to tour the cemetery with above-ground
white-washed tombs filling up my head, making me
dizzy and sick to my
stomach. He had not followed me. I watched him as he stood in the center of
Jackson Square.
I thought about returning to Julius, running up, throwing my
body into his, confessing that it was me, it was Starlight,
the girl of his
dreams from that night on the street in New Orleans so many years ago. I
thought about running back
to him to tell him I had returned to say goodbye
at last, that I had returned just to disappear again in the morning
light
before he awoke lying in the grass next to the Mississippi River.
I watched Julius as he hesitated next
to the fountain, the soft spray of
water landing on his sunglasses, making the green of his eyes run down his
face.
I saw him stop and wait, just for a moment, saw him look my way up
that long narrow street in New Orleans. I did not
speak. I waited there, in
that very spot, until night came and the city exploded with color and song
and long lines
of dancing crazies and here and there a wandering soul asking
for change. I never spoke again. I never left that spot
after that night,
standing there surrounded by the sound of coins changing hands. I am still
waiting for Julius
to look my way again, to follow me down that narrow
street in New Orleans. If you happen to visit the city, stop by,
say hello,
spare some soul, drop some change.
