Silver by Gary Moshimer

Father has a new red girlfriend. Red hair, red face, red man hands. A bog creature. My mother had been all white, untouched. This girlfriend, Marta, is trying to break into my room with a knife. I’m in a corner admiring my rock collection in the egg crates. I have a fleck of silver. I’m watching to see my mother appear as a misty thing. She’s almost there. I’m also reading the letter from Lena. I had just left her in Springfield. She put some of her black, black hair in the envelope. I’m telling Marta to go away. Lena and I are in love at twelve. I picture the hair in her armpits, her small breasts.

Marta has gotten in. She holds up the shiny blade in which I can’t be bothered with my reflection. She says, Let’s go for a ride, get you out of here.

I don’t want—

We’ll go to the silver mine. She takes my fluttering hand.

She has a red convertible and she drives fast. She smokes a cigarette and ashes fly in my eyes. If she only knew her future with the smoke, the cough, the wrinkly skin, the lack of air in general. A twisting death on a beat-up sofa.

She finds a little bottle of booze in the glove compartment. She swigs and passes it to me. It burns my throat and steals my breath. She laughs.

We have to cross a field to get to the old mine. The mouth is surrounded by rock. The shaft twists down and away like a worm. Marta shows me the marks left by dynamite. She crawls in as I look through the rocks, finding a lot with specks of silver. I pocket them. I hear her say, Oh my god, and she throws something up and out. It’s a human skull. I back away as she starts to laugh.

It’s my ex, she says. He won’t be beating me now.

I touch the thing and find it’s plastic. It’s jaw hangs free, broken.

She starts to cry. I hug her, feeling her ribs rise and fall. One seems to catch and click. Then I hold her head in my hands. Unlike the rest of her it feels small, the hair in tight curls, tears on my arm. I feel sorry for thinking the bog thing. My hands are like white birds on her rough face. She lets me hold her for a while, and then she lights a cigarette for each of us. I feel my lungs sizzle and close down, but it feels good.

My mother appears, shaking her head.

At home, Marta changes into a red dress. I decide she’s beautiful. There are knots of old wounds on her legs. We look at the new silver. I squint to make it into stars. Will we be rich?

Rich comes with love and safety, she says.

I ease back into the driver’s seat, give it the gas. The road courses out silver. Where to? I say. She has her head in my lap, closes her eyes. To the tops of mountains, she says. There’s still a piece of silver in my pocket. It is burning me up. I take it out and place it on her chest and wait for the answers.

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GARY MOSHIMER — Gary has stories in Frigg, SmokeLong Quarterly, Milk Candy Review, Eclectica, Flash Frog, Necessary Fiction, and many other places.

Art by KEELY HONEYWELL — Keely is a designer and artist who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys making art for books, periodicals, and other venues. Her website is at keelyhoneywell.myportfolio.com.