Object No. 5 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Joe Meno, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final  price: $48.50. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

(A note found in grandfather’s chest of drawers.)

Dear Small Vessel,

“The Brief War of 1851: a compleat (sic) novel in miniature”

Prologue: On the green-twigged outskirts of Macon, Georgia, one Mister Bradley Granger meets the fair, emerald-eyed Miss Melissa Stuart at a cotillion when she perchances to drop a white handkerchief. Courtesies are exchanged. Miss Stuart’s dance card, as it turns out, is full. But under a cowardly moon, said handkerchief is pressed into Mister Granger’s hand as a token of mutual admiration. Bradley Granger, an orphan, nearly eighteen, holds the perfumed handkerchief to his face, repeating the young girl’s name on his long walk home, issuing romantic vows to cloudless stars.

Chapter One: The very next day, the entire city of Macon, Georgia declares itself a sovereign nation, some ten years before the War Between the States (1861-65), through a poorly-worded telegraph sent to President Zachary Taylor’s attention.

Chapter Two: Bradley Granger is pressed into military service. Because of his social standing and his dead father’s renowned fearlessness during the War of 1812, he is appointed as a junior grade lieutenant.

Chapter Three: Bradley Granger kisses Melissa Stuart beneath a gum tree and declares his intentions to return to her after the war is finished. Once he rides off, all she can remember is the smell of cordite and smoke.

Chapter Four: Soon after, Melissa Stuart begins her course of schooling at Wesleyan College against her parents’ wishes, as it is the first college of its kind to grant degrees to women. Her studies include field dressing a head wound and how to tie a proper tourniquet.

Chapter Five: Supplies in the city become drastically limited: and so it is decided that everything will continue to be produced but in complete miniature. Canons, horse carriages, parasols, candlesticks, pistols, hats, spectacles, rain barrels, vases, all of it the same but one tenth the actual size. This does not bode well for a poorly-armed Macon militia.

Chapter Six: During his first raid against the Federalists, Bradley’s tiny rifle misfires, and he loses the use of his left eye. His is indefatigable however and, on horseback, he leads his men to burn a Federal encampment to the ground, using very small torches. Miss Melissa Stuart writes miniature love letter after miniature love letter to her beloved, asking him to please be safe. Bradley keeps this small letters in the cuff of his left sleeve.

Chapter Seven: Bradley is shot through the shoulder by a Federal soldier riding a dun-colored roan. He falls into the Macon Creek. Bradley’s horse, Up-and-away, finds him downstream. In his agony, Bradley takes the reins, and is dragged to a nearby cave where he hopes to recover.

Chapter Eight: Miss Melissa Stuart’s miniature letters are found amongst the trenches of the dead Maconite soldiers. Who can assume anything but the worst in moments such as this?

Chapter Nine: Thinking her beloved is dead, Miss Melissa Stuart accepts neighbor John Handley’s marriage proposal. Bradley returns to town, leaning on a crutch made of rough-hewn branches. A duel is fought between Bradley and John, their weapons rapiers one tenth the normal size. Parry. Riposte. John Handley is dead. Overcome by his feelings of guilt, Bradley retreats to the woods, where he attempts suicide, but the miniature pistol he holds to his head only causes minor harm to his right ear.

Chapter Ten: The city of Macon burns to the ground and soon after issues its surrender.

Epilogue: Bradley and Melissa are reunited and ride off to the north astride a very small horse.

No. 2 of 5: Epistolary Week

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by James Hannaham, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $28.50. This is part of a series of five epistolary stories guest-curated by Ben Greenman. Proceeds from this auction will go to One Story.]

June 6, 2010

Mr. R.S. Pennyback
Shady Acres Estate
Houndsville, AL 35808

Dear Mr. Pennyback:

It has recently come to my attention that certain practices of your establishment, hereafter known as “Shady Acres,” have affected my client, whom you know as Bethuna, in an extremely negative fashion. We have therefore decided to take legal action against “Shady Acres” on multiple charges, including fraud, discrimination in hiring, forced labor, and sexual assault. Ms. Bethuna is seeking damages, including retroactive wages owed as well as compensation for psychological and physical distress caused by “Shady Acres,” its associates, and their relations.

In a sworn deposition which she gave to me on May 19-21, 2010, Bethuna stated that her tenure with “Shady Acres” began at her birth, on September 14, 1855. Yourself and the previous proprietors of “Shady Acres” (see Appendix A) required my client to operate as a culinary, housekeeping, gardening, landscaping, and childcare professional. During the ensuing one hundred and fifty-five (155) years, my client prepared an estimated 168,987 meals, including 121 Christmas and 107 Thanksgiving dinners, made 15 beds a total of 56,206 times, dusted 18 rooms over the course of her life, and nursed a total of 54 children, 33 of whom were not her own—including yourself—and the balance of whom were the issue of herself and various proprietors and associates of “Shady Acres.”

While initially these practices were not punishable by law in the state of Alabama, my client contends that the owners of “Shady Acres” conspired to conceal the change in her legal status indefinitely, thereby preventing her from discovering and curtailing the criminal activity of “Shady Acres” to the extent that this required keeping her from acquiring any skill in the reading and writing of the English language, and prohibiting contact with any persons, organizations, news outlets, or other publications which may have informed her of the change in her legal status.

My client also maintains that during her tenure at “Shady Acres,” she suffered frequent and unrelenting physical and sexual abuse, culminating in the removal of a circular portion of her lower abdomen, through which the owners of “Shady Acres” then threaded a string attached to a piece of paper intended to advertise a sum of money for which her services would be rendered to similar local organizations at no compensation to herself. The whereabouts of, and/or the purpose to which the removed cylinder was put by “Shady Acres” were not divulged to my client. In addition to back wages, the monetary equivalent of benefits, legal fees, and other damages, my client’s lawsuit also requires that the abdominal subdivision in question be returned to Ms. Bethuna’s possession and repaired to the extent that medical science may accomplish such a reparation.

Sincerely,

Ms. Minerva Lee Battle, Esq.

The winner of this auction will also receive James Hannaham's story, pictured, mailed by the author.

]]> http://significantobjects.com/2010/06/15/napkin-ring-james-hannaham-story/feed/ 1 http://significantobjects.com/2010/04/30/corked-bottle-ben-greenman-story/ http://significantobjects.com/2010/04/30/corked-bottle-ben-greenman-story/#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 13:38:16 +0000 Ben Greenman http://significantobjects.com/?p=6415

No. 50 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ben Greenman, has ended. Original price: 33 cents. Final price: $59.50. This is the last of three stories in our Identical Objects series. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]

“Dennis, Nell, Edna, Leon, Nedra, Anita, Rolf, Nora, Alice, Carol, Leo, Jane, Reed, Dena, Dale, Basil, Rae, Penny, Lana, Dave, Denny, Lena, Ida, Bernadette, Ben, Ray, Lila, Nina, Jo, Ira, Mara, Sara, Mario, Jan, Ina, Lily, Arne, Bette, Dan, Reba, Diane, Lynn, Ed, Eva, Dana, Lynne, Pearl, Isabel, Ada, Ned, Dee, Rena, Joel, Lora, Cecil, Aaron, Flora, Tina, Arden, Noel, and Ellen sinned” (the longest known name-based palindrome)

Dennis shot a man dead in Key West.
Nell told Ada to have sex with Dennis’s brother, Dan, in exchange for drugs.
Edna lied.
Leon lied.
Nedra lied.
Anita cheated.
Rolf was greedy.
Nora was greedy.
Alice was greedy.
Carol was wrathful.
Leo lied and was slothful.
Jane wore a new dress on a date with Dennis and then returned it.
Reed took naked photographs of young boys and sold them to a pawnbroker in Hialeah.
Dena worked for the pawnbroker but looked the other way.
Dale cheated on his wife.
Basil was slothful.
Rae sold used mattresses as new.
Penny should have picked Dennis up at the Miami airport, but couldn’t get out of bed.
Lana did coke and had a threesome with Dennis before he left St. Louis.
Dave suffered from spiritual torpor.
Denny suffered from spiritual torpor.
Lena suffered from spiritual torpor.
Ida ate too much.
Bernadette ate too much.
Ben hit and killed a dog while driving with his friend Ned and drove off.
Ray did a shoddy job inspecting rides at an amusement park; a ride collapsed, killing three.
Lila stole.
Nina stole.
Jo stole.
Ira falsified a work injury and sued for damages.
Mara ate too much.
Sara was prideful.
Mario was prideful.
Jan was prideful.
Ina lied.
Lily lusted after her cousin.
Arne, Lily’s cousin, lusted after her.
Bette, Lily’s mother, boasted about her daughter’s grades but was blind to the situation with Arne.
Dan, Lily’s father, left her for a much younger woman.
Reba lived in Key West; Dan came to live with her and open a restaurant; they dealt drugs out of the back.
Diane fell in love with Dan and felt despair.
Lynn fell in love with Dan and felt wrath.
Ed envied Dan.
Eva stole.
Dana was greedy.
Lynne was enraged that Dan could not tell the difference between her and Lynn.
Pearl was slothful.
Isabel, who was in love with Dan but despaired ever having him, wrote down her desires on a piece of paper, rolled it up, pushed it into a miniature souvenir bottle, and dropped the bottle on the beach behind the restaurant.
Ada coaxed Dan out onto the beach one night with the promise of sex.
Ned hit Dan with his car; when he heard the thump, he thought of the dog he and Ben had hit and just kept on going.
Dee, Ned’s passenger, felt despair.
Rena, who witnessed the accident, felt despair.
Joel, a cop, heard about the accident from Rena; he was sleeping with her while his wife was dying in the hospital.
Lora, Rena’s sister, was in the threesome with Dennis in St. Louis, and she told him that Dan was dead.
Cecil bought pictures of boys from the pawnbroker.
Aaron lied.
Flora was vainglorious.
Tina, also vainglorious, came upon Isabel’s bottle, pocketed it.
Arden, Tina’s lover, accepted the bottle as a token of Tina’s affection.
Noel, Arden’s lover, rubbed cocaine on her gums during sex with Dennis and casually mentioned that if someone killed her brother, she’d take revenge.
Ellen was having sex with Ned when Dennis burst into the room and squeezed off two shots.

No. 47 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The bidding on this object, with story by Peter Rock, has ended. Original price: $3.00. Final price: $10.50. Proceeds from this auction go to Girls Write Now.]

What Amanda notices most about Mr. Neidorf is not his muddy boots. Not his scalp, glossy through his thinning hair, not the way his beard grows up high on his cheeks — not a beard, exactly, but a darkness beneath his skin that underlines his eyes. The scraping way he walks, she notices, and the humming under his breath, and the fact that he is shorter than she is, yes, but these are not what she notices most. It is his hands. How he holds them cupped inward, always, fingers bent as if he is holding something that he can never put down, that taps on everything he tries to touch.

If he looks at her, there is not much to notice. A girl on her way to the office, in tights and a skirt, a girl whose short, dark hair is parted on the left. A girl who lives alone, who lives with only her dog.

It is her dog, Ranger, who senses the words before they arrive. Ranger leaps to his white chair, eyes staring and ears perked, and in a moment the words rise through the apartment’s floor: My veins are like wires all wrapped around inside the meat of my body and I can hear your radio in my heart. And a tapping on walls, on the ceiling, as if Mr. Neidorf is accentuating his words, making sure he has Amanda’s attention. I’ll throw you down in my dirty bathtub, your front teeth chipped. I’ll fill your ears without turning on a faucet.

Amanda sees him in the elevator, neck bent, staring at the numbers above the door. The top of his head glints. She knows his apartment number, reads his name on the mailbox in the lobby. She doesn’t have to ask anyone about him. She just has to listen.

The tape recorder is always ready. Ranger’s tail hits the stand and the microphone spins a slow circle; it sweeps the air for the thickening that means the words are about to start again:

I’ll wipe your ass on the walls, I’ll burn off all the hair on your body, I’ll turn you to a blind porcupine and birds will make nests out of that hair and then sing a song about your cracks and sweet crannies.

She records it all. On the quiet nights she listens to Mr. Neidorf through her headphones, turned up high: Wheelbarrow? I’ll put things in you — Tap, tap, tap — wheelbarrow you all around. I’ll make you lick my sweet outlets. She lies on her bed in her underwear and her running shoes, ready and shivering, his words in her head. Perhaps it is not his hands she notices most, yet she feels him holding her, his fingers curve around. Eyes closed, she sees the tiny porcelain doll he’s made in her likeness, and one of Ranger, too; he holds them, white, one in each hand, tapping and tapping, calling her.

She will go. She’ll pour his tea, unlace his boots, do all he cannot do while his hands are so occupied. And once she has taken care of these small needs, she will attend to the larger ones. Shivering, she imagines the cold, smooth touch of porcelain on her skin, all the sweet things she will let him do to her.

Object No. 38 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Scott Boylston, has ended. Original price: $1.99. Final price: $9.50. Significant Objects will donate proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now.]

It’s not nearly as kinky as it sounds. I mean, jokes are meant to tweak reality a little, after all, right? Anyone might have done the same thing just for kicks, if they’d only open themselves up to the creative moment. And, really, if they can’t, then they’re drips, and they can go piss off, plain and simple.

I can’t remember where my wife got it: Maybe from her brood in Dallas, or maybe something one of her dad’s renters left behind.  Frankly, it’s not the kind of thing I keep in long-term memory.

So, there it was, in the bedroom—in the frickin’ bedroom, of all places. I hadn’t seen it in so long I had forgotten we even had it; why she insisted in keeping it all these years; and even how it got that godforsaken crack on the edge. I also didn’t give it much thought as to why it was on the bedstead; maybe Rosa left it out while cleaning, maybe my wife re-discovered its lost magic—whatever that had been—and was going to use it for her incense or some such thing.  What I’m saying is, who the hell knows how these things happen.

So, out of the shower I strut. I throw the towel aside to get her Texas giggle going, and she can see right away I’m open for business. Microsoft, it’s not…in either sense of the word, if you know what I mean. She does her usual feint, “My Word, Bill…”  Then I see the canister glinting in the dim light, and think, yeah, why not? What a trip, right? A shining knight; a glinting castle on the hill; a totem of exquisite starlight (yeah, I can be poetic).

I say to her, “You wanna see some innovative hardware?” and I flip one of the tops off. Then I give the canister a good ol’ Tom Cruise Cocktail swirl and bring it down right onto Sir William.

My instincts have made me what I am, so I don’t ever question them. What’s done is done, and move on from there. But curse that frickin’ crack. Curse that tiny, frickin’ nick on the edge. Who could’ve ever guessed it could do so much damage? And that was nothing compared to when I pulled it off. I don’t give a flying twig what it ever meant to my wife. I threw the frickin’ thing out myself just as soon as Melinda stopped the bleeding, and I managed to get off the floor.

Object No. 35 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Jim Shepard, has ended. Original price: donated. Final price: $15.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now. This object was part of a collection curated for Significant Objects by Paola Antonelli; the story was co-published on Core77.com.]

When I was little I’d ask my mother what I was getting for my birthday. I’d ask like the morning of my birthday. It always pissed her off because my birthday was December 27^th.

“Look under that tree,” she’d tell me. “You want to know what you’re getting for your birthday? Go look under that Christmas tree.”

When I got older I stopped asking. Then this last December when I’d been home a year she said “I got you something for your birthday.”

“I’m still not getting a job,” I said.

“Why are you so miserable to me?” she asked.

“So what is it?” I asked her a little while later. She went into her room and came back with a little package wrapped in candy cane paper. I tore off the wrapping and I’m standing there with a little box of Clone Wars collectible cards in my hand.

“You always liked Star Waters,” she said. One time in school a teacher asked what my mother’s first language was and I told him she didn’t have one.

“I’m thirty-three years old,” I told her.

“That means you can’t like cards?” she said. “That means you can’t enjoy anything any more?”

Everybody on the front of the box had a weapon. “That was nice of you to get me the cards,” I told her.

“You can’t be grateful for one thing?” she wanted to know.

“That was nice of you to get me the cards,” I told her. Later on I wrote the same thing down, and stuck it on the refrigerator.

Object No. 34 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Scarlett Thomas, has ended. Original price: donated. Final price: $21.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now. This object was part of a collection curated for Significant Objects by Paola Antonelli; the story was co-published on Core77.com.]

You can find all kinds of crap in the back of drawers. Here is the string we once used to tie the handles of the French doors together so that Julius wouldn’t open them and walk into the pond. Here is a thimble, and a seam-ripper, although I don’t think anyone in our family ever ripped a seam on purpose. Here is an incomplete pack of cards with topless women on the backs, the best ones stolen by my brothers. Here is dust, dust, and underneath a pair of dice: one small and black; one big and red. There is a blister pack with no tablets in it and the silver tape measure that bites your fingers when it snaps back. There are the birthday candles I bought when I was seventeen. After I bought them I walked home from the corner shop imagining the hot wax dripping onto my naked skin and Mark, who still owed me for the mayonnaise thing, peeling it off after it had dried.

Object No. 32 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Ron Currie Jr., has ended. Original price: donated. Final price: $41.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now. This object was part of a collection curated for Significant Objects by Paola Antonelli; the story was co-published on Core77.com.]

They were a silly thing to get so obsessive about, in retrospect. What can I say? I was in my early twenties, so I imagined my fixation on Homies would come off as a moderately hip eccentricity. Like, “He’s cool enough not to take himself too seriously.” Or, “He’s self-possessed enough to not care if anyone thinks that collecting arguably racist figurines is just, well, you know, kind of gay.” Something like that.

And that was exactly how she saw it, at least when we’d first met and were both perfect, before all the craziness that came not too much later. I had this tic — couldn’t leave the grocery store without popping two quarters into the Homies vending machine and turning the dial. Even had a little ritual I performed, like a muted rain dance, to ensure I didn’t get a duplicate. Early on, she found all this hilarious and endearing.

There were all kinds of ways she tried to brand me, but here’s the worst: she took my two favorite Homies, Shady and Wolfe, the first two I’d ever bought, and stuck them to the dashboard of HER car with Gorilla Glue. Without asking. We’d been together all of three months. She showed me what she’d done and she smiled and put an arm around my neck and said, “Don’t they go great with Dashboard Jesus?”

It was the first indication that I was in trouble. There were others to follow. Three years’ worth.

She was honest, though, I’ll give her that. She told me about both times she slept with other guys, for instance. The first one, I let it go. Maybe she was right, maybe I was withdrawn and hadn’t been holding up my end of the bargain. She’d had a rough go of things, too, really rough. They ate out of dumpsters when she was a kid. That stuff figured into my thinking. The second time I wasn’t interested in making excuses for her.

While she packed her shit I went downstairs and put my elbow through her driver’s side window and tried to unstick Shady and Wolfe, with no luck. I knew she’d be a while so I went to my buddy Jazz’s place and asked to borrow his jigsaw.

Jazz told me later, while griping about the two broken saw blades, that all I’d needed to do was pour some kerosene on the glue and it would break down. I tried this, and lo and behold. Shady and Wolfe made their way into storage, and eventually into the garbage, but that piece of dashboard went in a 4×6 picture frame. No, seriously. It’s right over there, take a look. That’s genuine Mazda 323 hide, my friend, and I earned every square centimeter.

Object No. 31 of 50 — Significant Objects v3.

[The auction for this object, with story by Helen DeWitt, has ended. Original price: donated. Final price: $20.50. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now. This object was part of a collection curated for Significant Objects by Paola Antonelli; the story was co-published on Core77.com.]

I need an agent to deal with my agent. This was the thought. Bill was to be the buffer: Jonathan is a pathological liar, I am a pathological truthteller, and Bill was to be the man-in-the-middle, the go-between, the Janus — something intermediary, anyhoo. That’s what middlemen are for. One day Bill resigned.

On a market stall I happened to see, oh how lovely! a SARS mask within a plastic envelope. You needed protection yourself, Bill; you needed your very own personal plastic envelope. And I didn’t know. And more to the purpose, because life must go on, here was a chance to practice my Japanese! The label included both English text and an enchanting title for the object incorporating both hiragana and katakana: よyo こko はha マma スsu クku. I didn’t know that masuku was Japanese for mask, Bill, did you?

Object No. 30 of 50 — Significant Objects v3

[The auction for this object, with story by Sari Cunningham, has ended. Original price: 25 cents. Final price: $30.00. Significant Objects will donate the proceeds from this auction to Girls Write Now.]

Two days after his bypass surgery she walked in on the nurse adjusting his catheter and dispensing dietary advice. “No more omelets,” and then a playful laugh, cut short by her entrance. She studied the nurse. Asian. Young. A plain oval face, opaque except for a birthmark streaking the right cheek like chicken shit. The name tag read ‘Tamako’ — ‘Precious child.’ Tamago, she thought, means egg in Japanese. The difference of a letter. A bird outside the window cried out three times. Something cracked inside her. A cuckoo, she reflected, lays its eggs in another bird’s nest. And then, bitterly, and they say the Japanese have a sense of honor.

He had a penchant for making extravagant 10-egg omelets for his lovers, which explained why his cholesterol had reached so high a level. He liked to experiment with different flavors, depending on the tastes of his paramours. That’s how, two years ago, she had discovered he was warming his skillet with his Mexican secretary — the receipts for chili peppers and cartons of eggs, accompanied by the onset of an acute attack of gastric ulcers, had given him away. He was intolerant to spicy food. It had been pleasurable to watch him sweat.

To his credit, he’d always shaken his egg whisk outside of the home. Until last month, when she returned from a weekend at her daughter’s to be confronted by a glistening mountain of slimy eggshells in the garbage can. A half-spent tube of wasabi paste nestled triumphantly against the shattered remains. She knew what those shards meant. He denied it, of course. What a chicken. At the same time, she had discovered the foreign egg whisk in the kitchen drawer — a cutesy, gimmicky, feminine-looking article. “A gift,” he had said off-handedly, “from a friend.” She knew of the potential for behavioral changes post-surgery, even though he hadn’t allowed her to accompany him to the hospital for his consultations. She had closed her eyes on that obscenity of eggshells and pictured him on the surgeon’s table, ribcage cracked open, the yolk of his heart revealed. When he wakes up, he’ll have a different one.

She walked out of the hospital and went home to pack her bags. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Which was as good a reason as any as to why she had stayed so long, but he was permanently scrambled, and no surgery could fix that. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men… On the way out of the house, she swiped the egg whisk. She had no use for it, but it gave her satisfaction knowing that he’d miss it. Later, when he left angry messages on her answering machine, she’d take it out and beat the air with it. The egg whisk always managed to take on Tamago’s expression — properly surprised and somewhat frightened.