PENNED: FICTION
And Then There Were Three
Katie Hughbanks, Louisville
As I pass by Room 202, I am a tangled web of feelings. Even now, when I help deliver a newborn, I am shocked at how profoundly it affects me. In the hallways and in these rooms, I walk with my head high and with a smile for every person, appearing confident and comfortable in these blue scrubs. But today, once again, I am a mess inside, watching two people become three.
Jonathan was my third love, the one I married. My first love was cross-country running, which I discovered when I was a leggy freshman at Campbell County High School. Running was all I cared about until my senior year, when I discovered my second love: medicine. Mrs. Smith’s anatomy class was challenging but inspiring, and when I graduated, I headed straight to nursing school. Only after I had finished my clinicals did I meet the tall, dark-eyed man who would become my husband. We had run side by side in a 10K race one county over—strangers chatting, flirting as we competed. I won my age group; he won my heart. He lit up my world in a way I could not have imagined, and his love made my life complete.
But today, as I pass by Room 202, little seems complete anymore. Beyond that hospital room door, a lovely woman my age—31—looks radiant sitting up in a hospital bed, despite having given birth a few hours ago. Her blond hair flows down her shoulders and spills over the pillow where she rests. In a chair next to the bed sits a man who vaguely resembles my Jonathan—dark eyes but hair a bit longer than Johnny’s. His knees push up against the bed’s mattress, and he leans forward, trying to be as close as possible to his wife, as if they are physically connected. On his lap, wrapped in a pink blanket I had retrieved from the neonatal wing’s supply closet, is the most beautiful infant I have ever seen. She is perfect, with skin like porcelain; her hair, gold-white swan feathers. Delicate as rose petals, as flawless as a newly discovered pearl. When the head delivery nurse handed that child to me in the birthing room, I could barely stand the jealousy that rumbled in my chest. As I wiped the little girl’s face and hands and feet with warm toweling, cleaning and examining her, I thought of the gifts life brings; strange that I was reminded, too, of the cruelty life can bestow.
Yes, life can be harsh; nature can be brutal. The last 3½ years have proven that to me. My Jonathan is gone—he fought like a champion, but brain cancer took him in just nine months. My light, my love has been gone more than two years. With him, the cancer took my dreams. The loss is double: I lost my husband and my future children. I am destined to help deliver other women’s babies but never my own. If only we could have had more time, could have caught the cancer sooner, could have had a little Jonathan … but there is little point in agonizing over that now. Our children were lost before they were found.
Here I am, no longer part of two—I am just one, alone, and I will probably stay that way. Jonathan was my running partner, my best friend, my everything. He can’t be replaced. When I lace up my running shoes on Saturday mornings, I know my run will be solo, always missing the man I love.
As I walk past Room 202, I can hear the unmistakable sound of that new father cooing at the precious bundle of pink. When I catch a glint of laughter from his wife, I understand that happiness still exists. As a neonatal nurse, I get to help bring some of that joy into the world, one delivery at a time.
Jonathan has left, but here in this hospital I can still find a reason to smile, to hope. All I need to do is peek in that door and look at those three.
PENNED: FICTION
The Mystery Walker
Marie Mitchell and Mason Smith, Richmond
Thanks for coming, Officer. I’m Carol-Ann Mattox, the hospitality director here at Richmond’s Tabbard Inn.
Yes. It is a lovely, old building, isn’t it? Dates back to the early 1800s. I’ll gladly give you a tour another time.
No, nothing’s been stolen. No one’s been hurt, either. But, well, I felt I should report a really odd occurrence.
When? Tonight—about two hours ago.
Here’s the thing: Four years ago, we began offering ghost walks in October. Paranormal tours are conducted in most cities these days. So, I researched local ghost stories and hired our oldest daughter, Jordan, to be the guide.
She dresses as a 19th century tavern maid and leads guests around the inn by lantern light. It’s become so popular that we now offer walks nearly every weekend, year-round.
Tonight, 10 of our 11 “walkers” were members of a women’s educational group, the P.E.O., here for a state convention.
Everything began normally until they reached the basement just outside of our wine cellar. That’s when one of our walkers, the non-P.E.O. member, revealed that she was Rain Colchester, a spiritual medium from Bardstown. She suggested that everyone should stop and take pictures to see if they could capture any spiritual orbs or full-body apparitions that might be lurking about.
Some ghosts seem to be drawn to cameras, she said, and appear to enjoy photo-bombing.
Jordan took a quick vote, and everyone was willing to participate in a short photo op. So, they pulled out their phones and started snapping away.
However, when the pictures were examined, no orbs or apparitions were detected.
Everyone was disappointed, but Jordan offered to take a group picture so they could remember the experience. She used her own phone so she could include the photo in a school project about her ghost walking tours.
Here’s Jordan’s phone, and here’s the shot she took of tonight’s walkers.
Look closely, Officer. Here are the 11 women, all smiling for the camera. At the back, inside the arch leading into our wine cellar, is a 12th guest, a man.
You can tell the figure is more than just a shadow. Look at his haggard face. Notice his red hair—and his clothes. He’s dressed like a Civil War re-enactor, someone who might have visited the inn when it was a coach house.
No, I have no idea who he is, where he’s from, or why he appears in the picture.
Rain Colchester was delighted when she caught sight of him because she’s convinced he’s a full-figure apparition, which apparently is extremely rare to capture. She’s promised to bring her ghost-hunting friends to the inn for an extended chat with this chap, although I’m not sure how one chats with a ghost.
Rain said they use some type of electronic device that lets the spirits impress words into the noise field to communicate with the living. Sounds like a bunch of baloney to me, but she was sure that, with a little encouragement, they could convince the ghost to identify himself.
No, Officer. This couldn’t be an actual person roaming around our wine cellar. For one thing, the door is always locked. And there’s only one stairway going down from the kitchen at the back of the house, so only family and staff have access.
Plus, as I mentioned before, all of tonight’s guests were female. Our cooks and servers are all women, too. My husband, Greg, is the only male in the inn tonight, and this haunted figure is certainly not the handsome man I married.
Yes, I understand that this isn’t really a police matter, but I haven’t finished my story.
After the walk, Gail Botts, our head server, noticed an older fellow had mysteriously appeared at one of her tables right before closing. She said he had red hair, wore a threadbare uniform of sorts, and ordered a Buffalo Trace bourbon, which he drank in one gulp.
Once he’d finished, Gail said he nodded politely to her, then reached into his vest pocket and dropped a quarter on the table, thanking her for her kind service. He stood up, bowed, then headed for the door, saying he had a stagecoach to catch.
Right, Officer. These days we charge considerably more than a quarter for our whiskey.
But before Gail could reply, “Poof!” He’d vanished. In an instant. Into thin air.
As you can imagine, Gail freaked out. She started screaming, which startled the P.E.O. members still in the dining room enjoying dessert or drinking nightcaps.
None of them had noticed the visitor. But it was hard to miss Gail’s shrieks.
It took me an hour to get everyone quieted down.
Sure, Officer, it might be a hoaxer.
But here’s the coin—the one the stranger left. It’s an old “Seated Liberty Quarter.” Silver. In mint condition. Dated 1862.
We googled it. Today, it’s worth anywhere from $55 to $1,800.
That’s a magnanimous tip for a shot of whiskey. Especially for a 160-year-old ghost.
PENNED: NONFICTION
Good to the Last Drop
Roger Guffey, Lexington
One thing I never saw growing up in rural Kentucky was a family member or a visitor refuse a cup of coffee. Living in an alcohol-free county limited the options for beverages to share socially, but homebrewed coffee fit the bill perfectly.
I was the penultimate child in my family of seven children, all of whom essentially were weaned on black coffee. When I was just tall enough to stand on tiptoes to reach the tabletop, my dad poured hot black coffee into a shallow saucer and gently tipped it so I could slurp up the steaming nectar. Meanwhile, he would dunk Mom’s homemade biscuits into the coffee in his cup to salvage the last few drops.
Much like Henry Ford’s boast that you can buy his cars in any color as long as it was black, black was the only choice for coffee in our home. When I was young, Mom cooked on a woodstove, and a blue-enameled tin coffeepot was always bubbling away. She would measure the grounds into the aluminum coffee basket and wait for the heady aroma of freshly brewed coffee to waft through the house to wake everyone up to start the day. After Dad bought an electric Kelvinator stove, Mom bought a sleek, aluminum eight-cup percolator with an electric cord wrapped in fabric that was only unplugged when we went to bed.
My dad always butchered hogs in November to supply us with meat for the coming year. Butchering and storing the meat took all day and into the night, but hot coffee kept us going. Dad rendered the pork fat into lard and cracklings in a big black iron kettle and guzzled fresh coffee to warm himself in the chill air. His reward for his labors was a culinary mixture he called redeye gravy. Mom would fry the country ham and save the hot grease to add to fresh black coffee. The coffee would settle into a dark puddle at the bottom, and the grease would float to the top, giving it another name—frog-eyed gravy—an artery-hardening concoction that Dad ladled over biscuits.
In the days before the café au lait and hoity toity cappuccino, coffee offered three choices: Maxwell House in a bright blue can, Folgers in a red tin can, and JFG in dark blue 1-pound paper bags. The tin cans had to be opened with a metal key to wind a strip of the can off to remove the lid before storing the coffee in a canister. Supposedly, Theodore Roosevelt coined the Maxwell House slogan on the can, “Good to the last drop.” In the 1970s, Maxwell House hired Margaret Hamilton, the infamous Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, to play a New England shopkeeper named Cora, who sold only Maxwell House in her store. Folgers ran ads featuring Virginia Christine playing Mrs. Olson, who assured viewers that a hot cup of Folgers could ease marital tensions caused by inferior coffee.
Mom occasionally switched to Folgers or JFG coffee. The coarsely ground JFG brewed a darker cup that put hair on your chest. After my older siblings married and started families, our home bulged at the seams when we were all home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Dad bought a 30-cup urn with a spigot to accommodate the insatiable demand for the magical elixir. In the mid-1970s, one of my brothers gifted Mom with a Mr. Coffee Drip Coffeemaker.
Our family never acquired a taste for the decaffeinated coffee Sanka in its bright orange can, but if you wanted to start a serious fracas, just bring up the subject of instant coffee. Mom had bought a jar of Nescafé Freeze Dried Coffee, hoping it would give a quick caffeine fix, but after watching all of us spit the vile solution out as quickly as we sampled it, she relegated the disgusting powder to the back of the cabinet before eventually throwing it away.
In our need-it-yesterday world, millions of people have invested in the Keurig K-Cups brewing systems. These K-Cups are expensive and pose a significant ecological drawback because they are not recyclable. The inventor of the K-Cup, John Sylvan, regrets inventing this disposable convenience and uses a drip pot. From a personal perspective, one drawback is that the single cup of coffee does not produce the intoxicating aroma of a fresh pot of homebrewed java to warm the cockles of our hearts.
PENNED: NONFICTION
Jane and the Bluebird
Katherine Tandy Brown, Beaufort, South Carolina
Though she’d lived in California for 30 years, Jane Gaither Campbell was one of my mom’s closest friends. The two had grown up as neighbors on Main Street in Hopkinsville and had bonded early. Like her mother, Jane was 5 feet tall and about that broad, with a huge heart, a brilliant mind and a laugh that could spark an entire room to helpless giggles. When the oldest of Jane’s five sons turned 6, she divorced their wildly attractive, philandering, alcoholic father and raised all five by herself. A faithful Al-Anon attendee for years, Jane helped start the Monterey branch of hospice.
This was one strong woman who walked her talk daily.
Though they didn’t see each other often, Mom and Jane managed to squeeze in a lengthy phone chat at least every other month and kept current with each other’s lives and, most important, gossip.
After my mother, Anne, left my dad, married her childhood sweetheart, and moved from Hoptown to Mayfield, my stepfather dubbed her “Queen of the Wingchair,” a moniker inspired by her afternoon tête-à-têtes with friends gathered round her favorite chair, all sipping iced tea and chattering till nearly suppertime.
“The Queen” was godmother to Jane’s middle child, Jamie, and, without reservation, was absolutely wild about him.
One day during her final years, while Mom was struggling with discomfort at the process of dying, Jane called. I was fixing lunchtime grilled cheese sandwiches when I heard the phone ring and Mom’s cheery, “Oh hi, Jane! Has California fallen into the ocean yet?”
It was an old joke between them. While Mom kidded about Jane’s clifftop California abode disappearing in a landslide, Jane wondered if Anne’s Graves County house had fallen into the New Madrid Fault yet.
Mom’s laughter trilled through the den. And then she grew quiet. For a long time. With no back-and-forth banter. I felt a chill. Removing the sandwiches from the buttery skillet, I slid them into a warm oven. I had a feeling the phone conversation might be lengthy, and it was.
As a rule, you didn’t get between the Queen and food, but Mom hadn’t told Jane she’d eat lunch and call her back. Something was important.
Twenty minutes later, Mom rang off.
Walking quietly through the den, I asked how Jane was. The Queen looked up. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “The cancer’s come back,” she said, “and it’s everywhere. Jane’s in hospice care. I feel so helpless.”
She began to cry.
“Oh, Mom …” I hurried over, plopped down next to her on the couch, and wrapped my arms around her. For once, the Queen—always cock-sure she could beat the world at its own game—was devoid of resources. I held her as she sobbed.
Later that afternoon, she dried her tears and gave audience to her subjects as usual, but her laughter was distracted. Her sparkle had an edge.
The next day, perky and chipper as ever, Mom called Jane, chattering about everything under the sun. No one could fill space with conversation like the Queen when she was on a roll. Seemingly, Jane had responded in an upbeat manner.
“While we were talking,” Mom told me after hanging up, “a bluebird came and perched on her windowsill. She said it was the brightest cobalt. And it sang and sang as if performing just for her. Her voice sounded stronger today.”
She smiled and dropped the subject. “Wonder which painting I’ll enter in the Art Guild show? Let’s go take a look and tell me what you think.”
Always an aficionado, the Queen had taken up plein aire painting at age 68. Imbued with brilliant colors, her works were pleasingly primitive, and often, she sold a piece or two at the Mayfield Art Guild’s annual show. We chose an oil of vivid scarlet flowers against a Van Gogh-like background of light purples and blues, a painting that now hangs in my sunny studio and often makes me smile with remembering. I wanted to ask more about Jane, but once Mom closed a conversation topic door, no amount of prying would reopen it. I knew better than to venture into that arena, and I let it lie.
Jane had first phoned on a Monday morning. They talked daily for the next four. I wasn’t always privy to the process, but Mom would tell me how wonderful Jane sounded.
“That bluebird’s still coming to sing to her,” she’d say. “Can you just imagine?” And then she’d drop it.
After Thursday’s call, Mom reported in a small voice, “Jane doesn’t sound nearly as strong. And she coughed and coughed. I’m so scared. She just can’t … What’ll I do without her?” Tears caught in her throat.
Words of comfort wouldn’t come to me. And even if they had, they’d have been lies. Jane’s life was ebbing, and she was in greater hands than ours.
“What about the bluebird?” I asked, trying to draw her focus from the sad inevitability of the situation.
“Oh, it’s still singing on the sill.” The trace of a smile lifted the corners of her lips slightly. “It must be beautiful. I told her that it was really me.”
She laughed. “That little guy is such a comfort to her. I’m glad it’s there.”
On Friday, Mom phoned Jane while I was out picking up groceries. Upon my return, the Queen was sitting in her striped wingchair. The phone rested in its cradle. Her favorite soap, “Days of Our Lives,” was not flickering on the television screen. The house was still. No friends waited to attend her. She sat, tears again tracking her cheeks.
“Mom? What is it?”
She looked up at me, her mahogany eyes brimming.
“It’s the bluebird. It didn’t come today. Jane sounded so weak. She couldn’t talk but for a few minutes. A nurse had to hold the phone for her. She kept telling me she loved me so much, and she’d see me one day. And then she said, ‘good-bye.’ That was all. Not once in all these years did we ever say, ‘good-bye.' We always said we’d ‘talk again soon, kissy kissy,’ laughed and hung up. But today, she just said, ‘good-bye.’ ”
I’d put the bag of groceries on the rattan den table by then and sat down on the corduroy couch beside the throne. Tears slid down her face. I took her hand. It felt so frail and fragile and cool. Through its parchment-thin olive skin, a livid purple bruise puddled.
And there we stayed long enough for the sun’s rays to recede into the kitchen from the den rug, bright with green leaves and orange flowers.
Jamie phoned that night. His mother had passed away peacefully in the afternoon while napping, not an hour after talking with Mom. Jane’s last words to the now-grown child she’d adored had been, “Don’t worry, love. I’ll be fine.”
Jane’s death seemed to have a profound effect on my mother. After a time of soul-deep sadness, her concerns about the hereafter eased. A year or so later, the Queen died peacefully in her sleep. I like to think that she and Jane are giggling again, only in different surroundings.
Katherine Tandy Brown was born in Hopkinsville, as were her mother, father and grandparents. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1969, she lived in Lexington until 2006, when she “ran away from winter to SC,” where she continues to reside. This story is an excerpt from a memoir-in-progress about her mother’s last five years on the earth, entitled Anne, Queen of the Wingchair.
PENNED: POETRY
When I Try to Say I’m Sorry to Those Who Are Suffering
Trish Lindsey Jaggers, Smiths Grove, Kentucky
In my head, it has a certain ring to it,
like bells in the distance, like church
getting ready to start
somewhere, a silver slice through
the clean, blue air,
no,
rather, more like a clap of thunder
against a cloudless sky
where I question whether I heard
it at all, but still, I go in, close the windows
and wait for the opening up,
for a storm to hit, hope
the wind spares the oak tree, old as Egypt,
the swing untwisting itself
on the lower branch,
the swing-path
earth worn through
to the bone of root
where I once fell,
no,
like a bird, I let go,
went singing flat through the rain
and broke my arm,
and I could hear it happen,
though I couldn’t say it,
and that hurt so much
it should have bled,
it should have bled.
PENNED: POETRY
The Kingdom Now
Lee Eric Nance Woehler, Madisonville
Here’s what wasn’t going to happen.
It wasn’t like someone
was going to finally read a book—
even this book (or that book)—
and then everyone was going to read it, and we were going to all understand and say, “Ah,” and then everything was going to be good, great. It was never going to happen.
We are human, and that doesn’t happen.
Instead, we forget.
We pervert and misinterpret.
We misread, misuse, misplace.
We ban. We bury. We burn.
Of course, also, every so often,
one of us gets it.
Even less often still,
two or more of us get it and agree.
And then it’s wonderful, perfect.
Perfect in a pocket of space and time.
Heaven here.
PENNED: POETRY
The Truth Be Told
Linda Ozier Wade, Greenville
A small gray bird sat peering
Through a ceiling window light.
A bird’s eye view had he
Of those gathered down below.
“How sad,” thought he, “for those beyond
Must hear God’s word spoken.”
The small gray bird for words cared not
The truth be told …he lives it.
PENNED: POETRY
adoration
Lily Keston, Midway
i’ve been meaning to tell you about the heron i saw
last thursday, winging soundless over the frozen reservoir.
in remembering, i rebirth my childlike love of birds
but this february, the sky is somber and gray
like the dove you almost ran over last night—
the road bent like the curve of hair over your right ear;
i noticed your veins backlit in the orange bright of 5pm.
with your hand, i rewrite my body with notes of bird calls
and things i forget to tell you about you.
pearlescent feathers, like the skin of dying ice,
smack air full of pauses when you ask
if i am content to learn forever.
learn this—
i am composed of a multitude of
reasons not to fall in love with me,
the first and only being
your blood is only in you.
PENNED: POETRY
At the Earth’s Core
Melva Priddy, Winchester
after “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” Adam Zaggajewski —translated by Clare Cavanagh
Linger over the pain,
learn to praise it for what it teaches,
how it reaches into our bones
and won’t let go. Know:
mutilation has been with us forever,
before the oceans shifted,
before the rivers changed courses,
before the word was word,
before any of us were born.
Lift your heart skyward
toward the clouds or sun or moon.
Open yourself to what is
rather than some hazy other
or what memory brings.
Know that mutilation praises
the earth’s churning core,
the loss of forever moving mountains.
Don’t let go the impossible
wrenching bliss that tears you open,
vulnerable, quaking, ripe.
An erupting world ready and raw
like eggs, butter, bananas and honey,
in the mixing bowl.
PENNED: POETRY
To a Fossil Found Along Dixie Highway, Louisville, Kentucky
Elaine Fowler Palencia, Champaign, Illinois
Between concrete sidewalk
and asphalt Subaru dealership lot
unnoticed by ceaseless traffic,
a load of rounded river stones
dumped at the base
of two brave sweet gum trees
to enhance the gritty urban streetscape.
I find you there,
across from a Goodwill parking lot
where huge cardboard containers bulge
with plastic bags tagged “textile overflow”—
used clothing to be sent on somewhere—
and nearby a set of camo fatigues
better suited for jungle effacement
lies stuffed under a bush along with a pink towel,
waiting to be given purpose
So we are both strangers here,
Vinlandostrophia ponderosa
(I’ve just found you, again, online),
me from a town in the eastern Kentucky hills
whose small homes
were built in the same era
as this struggling city neighborhood.
Here the creeks are dry dirt paths but there,
where bright streams are choked with fossils,
I once found your twin,
a grooved, shut, brachiopod shell
from an Ordovician ocean
of five hundred million years ago,
turned to stone like you
The Kentucky state fossil, you were named
in 1909, the year my mother was born
so we have that in common across the aeons
and isn’t it all about connection when
everything is and always has been
on the move, you, me, the fearful young man
who just stopped to ask directions,
but I couldn’t help him, and suddenly I see
that all the little houses have security doors.
Today, you and I and everything I see
tremble with such presence
that I feel your locked interior
contains a message for us all.
In the driveway of one bungalow
sits a bass boat, brand name Mon Ark.
Elaine Fowler Palencia was born in Lexington and grew up in Morehead, where her father taught at the university, and her mother taught at the high school. She has published many stories and poems set in Kentucky.
PENNED: POETRY
Where Does He Go
Diana Derringer, Campbellsville
Where does he go,
eyes straight ahead,
head tilted,
eyebrows lifted?
“Do you see it,
just below that bottom branch?
Oops! There he goes!”
His muted laughter
lessens the sadness of our souls.
Once again, we look,
knowing nothing lies beyond
but trees and grass,
and weeds,
colored and inhabited
by memories and delusion.
Helpless to achieve change,
we ask,
“Where?”
PENNED: POETRY
Preservation Hall, New Orleans
Brenda Drexler, Sellersburg, Illinois
The line snaked along St. Peter Street, crossed the road to the next block
We were patient, excited
We’d heard about the magic
Then before the door was visible
Before we could see the front of the line curl into
The old, crusty building
We heard
The presence of true art
The musicians played and sweat and beamed
They felt the awe that embodied the dim room
As we who waited pressed into the hall
Against others who had waited for so long
Who travelled far to hear
And no one was disappointed.
The band played on as the walls trembled
My stomach and my chest and ribs vibrated
With excitement and mystery and the luminescence of jazz
The walls, cracked with peeling plaster
Stood proud in honor of their tradition
When the band played their music
Fingers strumming, lungs near bursting on brass
Preservation hall became a place of royalty
Honoring the seminal music of New Orleans
And the musicians who keep it alive
Children and others sat on the floor so they could be close
Immersed in same space, the same air as the instruments and their players
There were no chairs, standing room only
It seemed fitting, in order to feel it, appreciate, and become a part of it all
To be in their presence was to know their souls