First Place: "Lost My Dog" by Bo Kearns, Napa Valley Writers
It’s dark and I’m driving home from the late shift at In-N-Out Burger. I reek of French fries and hamburger grease, but I don’t care. Payday happened and there’s money in my pocket. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel to Justin Timberlake singing “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” My shoulders sway. I sing along. All happy like.
I startle when my car’s high beams illuminate a dog on the side of the road. Going fast, I hurtle past, before slamming on the brakes. I check the rearview mirror and with no cars behind I back up. The dog’s coat, a dull gray with patches of black, reflects its stray heritage. Its rib cage protrudes: its head hangs. I don’t need a dog, yet that dog needs me, or someone. My mom’s a sucker for strays. She took in my dad just long enough to have me.
I get out of the car and stoop down. The dog’s eyes are wary. He looks everywhere but at me. I move closer. He snaps and growls. It’s okay, I say. I remember the spilled French fries on the floor of the car and get a handful. I toss them on the ground. The dog gobbles them up, licks his lips and whines. I open the rear door of the car and throw the rest inside. The dog climbs in and I head home.
The trailer I share with my mother is around at the back of the complex, the one with the hanging baskets of red geraniums and patio of artificial turf. I know my mother will be there. She takes care of old Mr. Norris next door. She never goes anywhere. She checks in on him, gossips with the neighbors and watches the news. When I get home she turns off the TV eager to hear stories about my job and my jerk-face boss. His name is Quimby. His moods wax and wane with the moon. Yesterday he got upset when the line at the drive-thru became so long customers sat on their horns. He yelled at me to speed things up. I started flipping burgers like crazy, losing track of the mediums and the well dones. My mom says I need to get another job. Tonight there will be no Quimby tales. The dog will take center stage.
I open the car door and the dog hops out. He sniffs me and licks my rubber soled work shoes. On the patio, he lifts his leg and pees on my mother’s potted palm, finishing before she opens the door. My mother stands there wiping her hands on her red and white checkered apron. I brought you a present, I say. She comes out, drops down and hugs the dog. She remarks how skinny he is. She goes inside and returns with a pan of water and leftover spaghetti. The dog devours everything. I ask my mother what she is going to do with him. Keep him she says. He needs a home.
The following week after the day shift, I drive back to the trailer park. Things hadn’t gone well at work. Quimby slipped on a lettuce leaf, fell on the tile floor and strained his back. He blamed me. I kept flipping. The spot where I found the dog is just ahead. I see a man sitting beside a sign, ‘Lost My Dog.’ I pull over and get out. He has a scraggily beard, tattered pants and worn shoes. I put a dollar bill in his cup and ask what his dog looks like, though I already know. He worries it may have gotten run over. Or run away. Or someone stole him. I put another dollar bill in the cup and leave.
That night I tell my mother about Quimby slipping on the lettuce leaf. She laughs and laughs. I don’t dare tell her about the homeless man. She’s gotten attached to the dog. She named him Fred after her last boyfriend.
The next day at work I can’t concentrate thinking about the homeless man and the sign. I wonder what to do about the dog. I’ve gotten attached to him, too. Fred greets me when I come home in the evening. His tail wags. A customer sends back a hamburger order. I forgot to leave off the onions. Fortunately, Quimby didn’t catch the mistake. He would have gone berserk.
Driving home I see the homeless man at the same spot, same sign. I’ve brought him a double cheeseburger and a chocolate shake. He eats the food, pulls a rumpled cloth from his back pocket and wipes his mouth. I tell him I hope he finds his dog.
The next night I bring him two burgers, no cheese. He tells me how much he misses his dog. Tears glisten in his bloodshot eyes. This time I tell my mother. She scolds me for not telling her sooner. She says Fred has to go back. I tell her the homeless man can’t take care of him. He can hardly take care of himself, I say. Her eyes narrow. Doesn’t matter, she says. You can’t just take his dog, probably the only thing he has left in the world.
The next night, I drop off more food and tell the man I’ll be back. At the trailer, my mother comes out with Fred. She hugs him and cries and puts him in the backseat. I return, arriving as a woman drops a five-dollar bill in the homeless man’s overflowing cup. Hope you get your dog back, she says. I set Fred down beside the ‘Lost My Dog’ sign. Found him, I say. I expect gratitude. Instead, the man says people feel sorrier for him because he lost his dog. He glances at the dog, ribs no longer protruding. Seems he’s better off too, he says. I lead Fred back to the car and open the door. He jumps in.
Second Place: "The Swim" by Jim Wolff, San Fernando Valley
I hadn’t been to the beach or gone swimming in the ocean since my daughter was a teenager. I looked up from my reading and saw a scuba diver waddling down the sloping Malibu beach toward the water. As teenagers, my friends and I would hitchhike here to relax, bodysurf, and swim to the large beds of brown kelp growing hundreds of yards from shore. We would dive down to explore the undulating stems and leaves in the dim blue light near the surface, but the bottom remained hidden in hazy darkness. I would try to dive to the bottom but the aching pressure in my ears and inadequate ability to hold my breath always prevented me from going far enough.
Sitting on a large red blanket I shared with my daughter and granddaughter, I smelled the moist marine air, sunscreen, and burnt wood from a recent campfire near the rocky cliffs. The overcast sky admitted only enough sunlight to cast blurry shadows. Small waves broke close to the shore. Intermittent sets of larger waves broke further out. Each receding wave painted a curved line of white foam that marked the progress of an ebb tide. The bubbly sound of these waves harmonized with the random swoosh of speeding cars on Pacific Coast Highway.
Watching the diver’s transition from a clumsy land animal to a buoyant seal-like creature entertained me. Without thinking, I set my book down, got up, and jogged toward the water. My daughter looked up and asked me what I was doing. I just waved and shouted over my shoulder, “Going for a swim.” After splashing through the small waves, turning sideways to break through the taller waves, and keeping my head high I began to swim toward the diver. The shock of chilly water made me shiver, but once I started swimming, I relaxed and quickly caught up to the diver and we swam together.
“Are you heading to the kelp?” I asked.
“I’m going outside the kelp.”
"How cold is the water?"
"Maybe somewhere in the low fifties."
"Wow, that’s cold!"
"It will catch up with you eventually."
“Guess I am kind of naked compared to you.”
“Just keep moving and you should be okay for a little while.”
My feet could no longer touch the bottom. "How deep is it out near the kelp?"
"Maybe twenty feet or more."
We stopped and treaded water near the kelp now about two yards away. The deeper water felt colder. I turned to look back at the shore and realized how far away we were. A lifeguard walked along the beach approaching two teenage girls applying sunscreen. The faint buzz of cars on the highway were barely audible. My daughter and granddaughter looked tiny. I couldn’t tell if they could see me. When I reached up to wave at them, I splashed water down my windpipe causing me to cough violently and struggle to remain afloat.
Suddenly, I began to feel uneasy. Treading water near the diver, I realized he was about to leave me alone surrounded up to my chin, trapped in dark claustrophobic wetness. I shouted to the diver, "Stay safe. I'm heading back!" The diver looked over, nodded, and submerged.
I turned toward the beach and felt the ebb tide’s power pushing against me. The icy water felt like a heavy overcoat pulling me under. My breathing quickened. A panic took hold. I began hyperventilating, and my heart fluttered strangely. Gasping and kicking I struggled to keep my nose and mouth above water. If I faint or have a heart attack, I could slip below the surface; my last exhalation mixing with the diver’s well-regulated bubbles, while the lifeguard flirts with teenage girls, cars speed by on the highway, and my daughter and granddaughter chase each other across the sand.
I tried to swim toward the shore but when I put my face in the water the panic increased. I felt helpless. Waves of fear shot through my body. My only thoughts focused on, not dying. My mind fought for control over my body. Get your nose and mouth up. I rolled on my back and tried to relax. Thin clouds were breaking up to reveal blue sky. The up and down motion of the swells soothed me, and I felt the warm sun on my face - A perfect day. Control your breathing and everything else will take care of itself. Just look at that sky, so peaceful, so beautiful.
My breathing began to slow but my heart still skipped. The water felt colder. I had to move. Reaching back with my stiff arms. I grabbed handfuls of water then pulled them back toward my waist. Using this slow awkward backstroke, I began to push toward the shore. I’ll be okay, I’ll be all right.
Finally, I felt the waves starting to break around me, I knew I’d made it. My feet pressed into the soft sand. Fighting the undertow to recover my balance I stood up. I stumbled through the waves and out of the water. Staggering over the sand I reached the blanket and dropped to my knees. I turned to lie on my back with my hands behind my head and closed my eyes. The breeze on my wet skin made me shiver. My daughter tossed me a towel to dry off.
"How was your swim, Dad? You were really out there."
"It got pretty cold.” I whispered, not really wanting to talk. Could she tell how scared I was?
“Not bad for an old dude,” she laughed.
I sat up to dry off, then lay down again, looked at the sky, and closed my eyes. The sun felt good - a perfect day.
Third Place: "Rhonda" by Leanne Phillips, Coastal Dunes
Rhonda came to us for help. Rhonda with her acne-pitted face still visible under too much foundation two shades too dark. Rhonda with her thick blue eyeshadow, like it was 1976 and not 1980, and her black Maybelline Great Lash mascara in so many layers it clung to her sparse eyelashes in clumps. Rhonda, who still listened to the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and wore silver platform sandals. Disco Rhonda had a date with a boy who went to the local community college.
“He has two friends,” Rhonda said. “I need to find dates for them.” Rhonda who’d doused herself in too much Tabu cologne. Rhonda with her skinny white body in bell-bottomed jeans and a busy, patterned blouse. Rhonda with her dry as weeds, reddish brown hair. Rhonda who was much too much.
“No way,” Kathy said. She tapped the long ash of her Marlboro cigarette against the lip of a nearly empty beer can. It fell inside with a sizzle.
“No way,” I said.
Me and Kathy, we had our own Saturday night plans, and they didn’t involve going out with college boys. They involved partying with our real friends—the boys from the old northside neighborhood—drinking beers out of cans until we ran out or passed out.
I can’t remember how we met Rhonda. Probably at some keg party. She worked at the Jiffy Mart and lived on the bottom bunk in a bedroom at her mother’s house. She came over to our apartment every weekend and sometimes crashed on our couch.
“Please,” she begged. “I really like him.”
#
Saturday night was five dollars a carload night at the Skyview Drive-In. That’s where the three college boys took us in a white cargo van with two seats in the front and no seats in the back and a cassette deck that played the Doors on repeat. Rhonda could do what she wanted, but me and Kathy, we weren’t lighting anybody’s fire. We were stoned and a little drunk—we’d smoked a joint while we got ready, sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of a floor-length mirror, laid on its side and tilted up against my bedroom wall, so we could put on our makeup and drink our getting-ready-to-go-out beers.
Rhonda’s date parked the van sideways in the last row and slid the side door open so we could watch the kung fu triple feature. We sat in the back, Kathy and me, on the bare floor of the van. The three college boys hadn’t bothered to dress up and didn’t spend a dime on us. No popcorn or soda. They didn’t bring any liquor either. This seemed a strategic miscalculation on the part of three supposedly educated boys who wanted to get lucky with some bad girls.
Kathy’d had the foresight to bring a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill with a twist-off cap. We passed the bottle between us and didn’t offer to share. We ignored the two boys who sat in the back with us—all these years later, I can’t remember their names or their faces.
Up front, Rhonda’s date pulled Rhonda onto his lap. They were making out, and Kathy was rolling her eyes like she did. After the second movie, we insisted on going home. Rhonda didn’t want to go—her date lived with his parents and she had the bunk bed situation and she knew there was no way in hell we were going to let her have sex in one of our bedrooms. But we’d had our share of kung fu fighting, and we were out of strawberry wine and wanted some beers and maybe some popcorn—the smells of it had been coming in through the open side door of the cargo van all night, and we had a bag of Jiffy Pop at home.
Back at the apartment, our friends were waiting. Tommy with his Harley-Davidson parked in the middle of our living room so nobody would mess with it. Ricky with his drumsticks in his back pocket. Donnie with his long hair and the scar on his cheek and his pretty smile and his big, throaty laugh. They were playing Bad Company and Rolling Stones and Scorpions albums because they had good taste in music and weren’t trying to impress anybody with some fake highbrow love of psychedelic sixties bullshit. We didn’t invite them in, but Rhonda and the three college boys followed us into the apartment.
“Who are those guys?” Charles asked.
We told Charles with the craggy face and the black leather jacket and the chains hanging from his jeans’ pockets and the Bowie knife tucked into his hard scuffed boots, “Charles, we don’t want those college boys in our house.” We watched and laughed from the window while Charles, who always looked out for us, Charles with his low, rough voice and a bad temper when he needed it, Charles who would end up in Soledad Prison in a few years’ time, chased the boys away.
Rhonda left with them. We didn’t try to stop her. We didn’t ask her to stay. We weren’t her friends.
#
When Rhonda didn’t show up at our apartment the next weekend, we went to her house. Her mother invited us in and led us to the bedroom with the bunk beds. Rhonda was lying on the top bunk on her back, listening to KDON-FM on the radio, staring up at the white ceiling inches from her face. She didn’t come down. She turned on her side and lifted herself up on her elbow and looked down on us over the rail.
No, she didn’t want to hang out. No, she didn’t want to talk about it. No. No. No.
Rhonda who’d washed her face clean of makeup. Rhonda who looked as if she might cry if only she’d let herself. Rhonda who’d had the wind knocked out of her by three college boys who thought Jim Morrison was a god.
Honorary Mention: "Smudge Pot" by Cristina Goulart, Redwood Writers
Memories emerged from a storage box as Katie went through it for the first time in years. She removed a paper-wrapped item that emitted the scent of sage.
“My smudge pot!” A partially burned sage stick rested in a clay pot the size of a grapefruit. The ochre exterior was painted with shiny glaze, a procession of colorful bison marching on a fertile plain.
The smudge pot was a relic from her “Indian Wannabe” phase, dabbling in what her sister called Pagan Rites. As she breathed in the scent of sage, a memory popped into her mind and pushed a laugh out of her. “The Ouija Board!” She and her sister and brother had been home alone one evening at their parents’ house when they were all still teenagers. She had bought a Ouija Board from the Goodwill, and after a dinner of pepperoni pizza, Katie had produced the game from her room, saying in a silly ghost voice, “ooh, we will call spirits from the dead!”
“No way!” said her sister Anna.
“It’s just for fun! It’s not real,” said Katie.
“That is so dumb,” said their brother Joe.
“Come on, please?” Katie set the game out on the coffee table and pulled her siblings by their arms to sit on the floor with her. Katie still remembered the tired shag carpet on her parents’ floor. Could that really have been thirty years ago? The three of them had sat on the carpet and lay their fingers on the wooden planchet.
“Hello? Is anyone out there?” asked Katie.
Nothing happened.
“Hello? Is anyone out there who wants to talk to us from the spirit world?”
The planchet suddenly moved, carrying their hands with it. It pointed to the word, “Hello.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Which one of you did that?”
“Not me,” both girls said.
“Whatever. This is so dumb,” said Joe.
“Are you a friend?” asked Katie. The planchet slid to the word “yes.”
“Do you have a message for us?” Again, the planchet slid to the word “yes.”
“Joe, keep your fingers on it!”
“Are you two feeling creepy yet? I’m feeling creepy,” said Anna.
“This is cool,” replied Katie.
“This is so dumb,” said Joe.
“Please, spirit from the beyond, tell us what your message is,” said Katie.
The planchet began to slide back and forth across the red-stained board, pointing at letters carved into the wood. Katie read the letters aloud.
“D-E-A-T-H”
“Joe! Stop!”
“It isn’t me!”
“It’s moving again.”
“C-O-M-E-S …S-O-O-N.”
Katie and Anna yelled at their brother.
“That’s not funny!”
“It wasn’t me!”
Katie and Anna could see that Joe looked spooked, which spooked them more.
“Ok, I’m getting my smudge pot,” said Katie.
“I’m getting my rosary,” said Anna.
Katie lit her sage stick and walked around the living room, wafting the smoke and repeating the phrase “go in peace” while Anna walked behind her reciting the Hail Mary. In a burst of energy, Joe grabbed the board and planchet and headed to the garage, his sisters trailing behind him. Joe took a hammer and swung it against the planchet and board, breaking them into pieces. Moments later, the Ouija Board was in their backyard fire pit, turning to ash.
Death had come soon. It shouldn’t have been a surprise as their grandfather was past 80 and had been sick, and their grandmother, also past 80, had no will to go on without her husband of 61 years. Still, it was creepy, and the siblings made a pact to never tell their parents they had called forth a spirit who foretold their grandparents’ deaths.
Another death occurred in the family, but it was the slow death of the bond between Katie and Anna. Katie had gone to college and gradually allowed herself to think she was in all ways superior to her family, especially her sister. Anna had married her high school sweetheart and repeated what all the women in their family had done for generations: have kids, go to church, help the needy. Sitting in her garage years later, Katie felt the pain of regret for how she spoke to her sister the last time they were alone together. Katie had shared that she thought her own husband was having an affair.
“Maybe you should pray to God for a path back to your husband,” Anna had said.
“Maybe you should pray for God to take away your gluttony, you fat cow,” Katie had replied. It wasn’t kind, but she didn’t stop there. “Do you think your husband is faithful to you?”
Anna had stared at her sister until tears spilled down her cheeks. She then picked up her purse, and walked out without a word. Since then, the sisters had been in the same room together at an occasional wedding, but hadn’t spoken beyond stiff greetings.
Katie set down the smudge pot, grabbed her purse, and drove straight to her sister’s house. Her hand shook as she knocked on the front door. Her brother-in-law answered. “Is everything okay?”
“Yep. Just wanted to know if my sister wanted to sit in adoration with me at St. Ignatius.”
“Is this a joke?” asked John.
“Nope.”
“You’re an atheist. Aren’t you?”
“Not entirely.”
“Huh?”
Anna emerged from behind the door, “Is this a prank?”
“Nope. I just thought we could go sit in church together without a priest talking.”
Anna took a moment to take her sister in. “You promise to keep your mouth shut? I mean in the car too, not just church?”
“Yep.”
“Ok, then.”
Anna touched John’s hand as she walked past him. As the sisters walked to Katie’s car, Anna said, “Looks like you gained weight since I saw you.”
“Yep. Looks like you lost some.”
“Yep.”
Before sitting in the passenger seat of Katie’s car, Anna picked up a CD off the seat. “Metallica? Really?”
Katie laughed. “I know, right?”
As Katie started her car, she looked at Anna. Her sister was smiling.
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