“No—” Brad shook his head. He had started to cry. “No, okay, I won’t, I promise—”
Ellie jumped to her feet. She turned around and took one look at Lily. The little girl’s face was all smeary with tears and she’d bitten right through a spot on her lip. But she didn’t look scared anymore. Her eyes were big and shining as they gazed up at Ellie.
Ellie pocketed the knife, and ran.
They ate Ellie’s macaroni and cheese for dinner, and her mom said it was good.
David kept his eyes cast down, refusing to look at Ellie. He wouldn’t quit cradling his cast, which already looked grimy.
When their mother tried to coax him to speak, David’s voice reached a high-pitched, teetering note. “I said I don’t want to talk!”
The next day, David stayed home from school because he said his arm was hurting. Ellie figured he’d play his DS all day long. He’d gotten pretty good at it left-handed.
At recess, Ellie spotted a little boy in the grade below hers. He was sitting on a railroad tie at the edge of the playground, clenching his hand.
Ellie went over and sat down beside him. “How come you’re not playing?”
“I can’t play,” the little boy said. After a moment, he slowly opened his hand.
Ellie looked down and studied his palm. He seemed to be holding a fistful of rosebuds, small red blooms across the skin.
“What happened?” Ellie asked.
“My sister,” the little boy said. “She made me hold onto a whole bunch of rocks. Little tiny ones. Then she squeezed my hand as hard as she could.”
Ellie nodded.
“She likes to do medical speriments,” the boy went on. “Today I have to tell her if it hurts a lot or a little less. Like a seven or a two.”
Ellie nodded again.
After a while she asked, “Do you have a closet?”
Copyright © 2012 by Jenny Milchman
Mischief in Mesopotamia
by Dana Cameron
Dana Cameron has had an extraordinary string of successes with her short stories over the past couple of years, earning, most recently, the Agatha Award for her Anna Hoyt story “Disarming” (EQMM 6/11). Her previous Hoyt story, “Femme Sole,” received nominations for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. The Massachusetts author rejoins us with an entry in her Emma Fielding archeology series. The lastest novel in that series is the Anthony Award-winning Ashes and Bones.
I sat across from a row of decapitated kings, gods, and heroes waiting for them to speak to me. I didn’t know a word of their language, and they’d been dead — their monuments erected, sanctified, and decaying — long before anyone speaking my language was born. Still, I waited, if not as patiently as they did.
In the end, it wasn’t the statues but my husband Brian who spoke first:
“Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown/ And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command/... and then something, something, something, then My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Brian was standing on the stone platform next to me, in what I assumed was meant to be a dramatic, declamatory posture, feet apart, arms raised. Several of the other members of our tour started clapping, and he bowed, then sat down, carefully holding his new, heavy, and very expensive camera to his chest as he did so.
“Moved to poetry?” I said, a little surprised.
“Nah.” He shrugged, looking away, pretending disdain. “My tenth-grade English teacher always said memorizing poetry would be useful in later life. Now I can finally check it off the list.” He turned back, smiling, and nudged my shoulder with his. “Worth the climb, huh?”
“Amazing.”
We’d hiked the half-mile from the parking lot up to near the summit of Mount Nemrut. Two thousand meters above sea level is a lot when you live about a mile from the ocean, and the heat, exertion, and altitude had made the trek surprisingly tiring, given all the time we’d spent training at the dojo together. But when we reached the top, and saw the line of stone statues, their massive heads removed and placed in a row in front of them in an act of genuine iconoclasm, it was worth it. In fact, I realized the effort of climbing was probably something intended by the original builders, to leave the viewer of the tomb site breathless and stunned on arrival. After thirty minutes of huffing and puffing with your head down, trying not to slip on loose, sharp stones or the weeds growing around smoothed stone steps, sweating in the hundred-degree heat and avoiding evil-minded donkeys with no objection to kicking, the first view of the Eastern Terrace was an incredible moment. Positively sublime.
“Who’s that, Ozymandias?” Randy Ashmore asked. His pink face was almost beet-colored from the hike; his khaki hat was so large, it made him look like a mushroom with a bulbous nose and small eyes. “Was Ozymandias the king who built this?”
Lale Mehmet, our Turkish guide, had just finished explaining that the tomb and statues had been erected by Antiochus I in 62 BCE. I bit my tongue, refusing to take the bait Randy had proffered. The didactic habits of a professor were not easily put aside, but sometimes I learned faster than others.
Randy pushed past to get a better look. He stepped on Jack Boyle’s foot.
“Oww!” Jack limped a few steps. “No, it’s another name for Ramses II, Nineteenth Dynasty in Egypt. A whole other time and place, my friend.”
“My friend” sounded more like “you jerk.”
“Well, you’d think whoever it was would have put a toilet up here too. I’m on the run with the Tehran trots.”
Once, I had, out of that professorial habit, pointed out that Tehran was in Iran, while we were in southeast Turkey. Undismayed by mere fact, Randy had made a series of attempts to find an alliterative expression that combined the local place and his illness. Now I just kept as far away from him as I could.
The transcendent moment was now officially over. “There’s one down at the base, Randy,” Lale, our guide, said hurriedly. “We’ll be stopping there on our way back, or you’re welcome to start down now—”
We all held our breath, hoping Randy would leave us to enjoy the rest of the site.
Remarkably, he nodded, and having borrowed a lira, which he would not pay back, he left, calling loudly for his wife Rose to follow.
“Best money I ever spent,” Jack said, putting his wallet away. He wiped the sweat from his face and ran his hand through his dark hair before he replaced his baseball cap. He was a Mets fan, so I, a member of Red Sox Nation, had no beef with him. “But I’m grateful to Randy.”
We were a very polite group. It was only now, on the tenth day of the tour, that we had started tentatively expressing our true opinions about each other, to selected comrades, very cautiously.
“Why on earth?” I whispered to Jack. “Grateful to Randy?”
“Because of the old saying — if you’re in a group and you look around and can’t find the dickhead, you must be it. Randy reassures me.”
I couldn’t smother a laugh, but when I caught Lale’s eye, I clammed up. Despite years of habit, I’d tried very hard not to answer questions asked by the other tourists, and tried to be respectful of the tour leader when she lectured. She smiled and continued her talk. No harm done.
As we carefully picked our way down the steep, scree-covered slope, the sun burning and glaring so the buff stone was nearly white, I asked, “How is Steve Osborne feeling? Has anyone seen him today?”