April Flash Fiction Winners
Winner:
Hands
by Jaime Gill
Genre: Romance/Historical
Prompt: (Act/Event) Teaching…
Word Count: 1000
Author: Jaime Gill
Hands
Lesson Reports: Northern California Refugee Association
Completed By: Katrina Scholtz, Student Volunteer, English Program
March-12-1981—lesson-1—“introductory”.
Summary—Goal was to assess Bora’s English abilities. I failed.
Observations—Was so out of my depth. Correction: I was drowning. Camila, the programme coordinator, introduced me to Bora and then left us. He instantly clammed up, staring at his desk like he was trying to ignite it. Camila said teaching refugees was difficult, but I’m good with difficult – Bora was impossible. Answered every question with monosyllables or silence. All I learnt was his age: 23. Only two years older than me, but his hard eyes suggested a hundred more. His silence made me desperate. I started babbling and said stupidest thing possible: “sorry, this lesson must be stressful.” I actually told a genocide survivor that taking a class was stressful. Wanted earthquake to strike so ground could swallow me.
Takeaways—Camila says it gets easier.
March-16-1981—lesson-2—“basic conversation”.
Summary—Basic conversation? If only.
Observations—How can I teach someone who won’t look at me, who looks so angry? I’d hoped I’d make a friend doing this: Dad’s always telling me I need more friends. Now I’d settle for Bora not hating me. Dad’s right. I’m book-smart, not people-smart.
Takeaways—Need to get help, be more inventive.
March-20-1981—lesson—“everyday objects”.
Summary—Progress, thankfully.
Observations—Camila’s advice: switch the dynamic. Brought objects for Bora to name in Khmer, making him the teacher. Orange, book, pen, spoon, etc. He looked at me like I had brain damage, then named them, but not just in Khmer: in English, French, German, Thai. Told him he was smarter than me, since I only spoke English. He said he wasn’t smart, just learnt words in the refugee camp from foreign volunteers – sometimes didn’t even know what language he was speaking. He said all that in English. Not perfect, but understandable.
Takeaways—Don’t think Bora hates me: I think he’s shy. I know shyness, can work with it.
March-23-1981—lesson-4—”locations/family”.
Summary—Catastrophe.
Observations—Everything started well: taught Bora how to talk about where you live, where you’re from, etc. Then moved onto families. Wrote nouns on the blackboard: mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister. Why didn’t I think? Bora stared, then got up, took the chalk, and methodically drew a line through every word except sister. He paused, then said “probably dead too” and crossed that out too. He walked out even as I yelled pleading apologies after him. How could I? I did this program because I thought I was educated on this stuff and could help. I remember the first news report I saw about Pol Pot and Cambodia: millions dying while I was in high school crying because nobody invited me to parties. I felt ashamed then. But not as ashamed as I feel now.
Takeaways—Hope. Pray?
March-26-1981—lesson-—“past tense”.
Summary–Back on track!
Observations—Spent three days panicking. Called Camila daily, but she couldn’t reach Bora. Was terrified he’d abandoned the official process to go undocumented. My Mexican aunt tells horror stories about how illegals are treated. When I saw Bora waiting for me in the classroom, almost wept with relief. We both started saying sorry, each trying to take the blame, talking over each other. Then we laughed and I saw his teeth for the first time. How has he kept his teeth so beautiful? After, we learnt past tense. He told me about his childhood on a farm, the cow he secretly named though his brothers laughed at him. “Then Khmer Rouge came, took it all.” I wanted to reach out and squeeze his arm, but knew I mustn’t.
Takeaways—Stay on track.
March-30-1981—lesson-6—“future tense”.
Summary—N/A
Observations—Got off bus outside community center, sensed something wrong immediately. Streets empty, a strange hush everywhere. The Chess players in the park had abandoned games to listen to radios. “The President’s been shot,” one told me. “Commies, I bet,” his friend said. It didn’t feel real, like something from history, not now. I didn’t vote for Reagan but didn’t want him dead. It frightened me. Sat down, did my breathing, vowed not to say anything to Bora. Why should he care about one man possibly shot by Communists when he’d seen millions definitely murdered by them? But when I walked into the classroom he already knew. “I am sorry,” he said formally, as if rehearsed. “It is painful when your country hurts.” I don’t know what happened then. Some of it was the moment. Some of it was realizing how good his English was and how little he might really need me. Anyway, I started crying. His hand moved toward me, then pulled back. We left class and walked to the park. A Chess player said Reagan would survive and Bora beamed at me. How did I think his eyes were hard? They’re soft, warm pools.
Takeaways—N/A.
April-03-1981—lesson-7—“future tense (again)”.
Summary—Wonderful.
Observations—Brilliant lesson, talking about our hopes for the future. Stayed professional but wanted to whoop “look how far we’ve come!” Bora kept smiling, too.
Takeaways—Celebrate?
April-06-1981—lesson-8—“learning in action”.
Summary—Joy.
Observations—When Camila allocated a budget for “real world learning” she suggested visiting a mall. But Bora had mentioned seeing the ocean from the plane, though never being near it. I love the beach, but usually go alone. This time I took Bora. It was lovely having someone sat next to me on the bus. I wondered if other passengers thought we were a couple. When we arrived, Bora was hypnotised by the waves. We took off our shoes and I waded out but when I looked back he was still on shore, face frozen in fear. My heart turned to marshmallow. This man who survived so much – scared of water. I coaxed him in. When the icy Pacific touched his feet, he squealed and I hid my laugh. He stepped nervously out to me, shivering, eyes cartoon-wide. A sudden swell knocked him off balance. He grabbed for something to hold onto and found my hand, but when he recovered his footing he didn’t let go. I didn’t want him to.
Winner:
Burning For Vengeance
by Wendy Markel
Genre: Crime/Western
Prompt: (Act/Event) Arson…
Word Count: 995
Author: Wendy Markel
Burning For Vengeance
Billy Blackthorn died. No one cried; not even his momma.
#
Two days earlier, the travellers had set up camp by a small spring, just as their brackish drinking water ran dry. Cries of relief and laughter split the air. Families dashed to dip their faces in the cool liquid. They refilled barrels and watered the drooping, depressed animals before letting them loose to feed on sparse patches of stringy prairie grass.
Billy didn’t like water, he said. He’d hoarded bottles of whisky; traded from the saloon in the last dead-beat town they’d encountered for his pa’s gold pocket watch, stolen from his momma’s purse. He drank for two days; his voice, loud and hoarse, railed and hollered at everyone till the younger men dragged the Prairie Schooner away from the group of settlers. Ma Blackthorn took her three daughters, and they huddled like brooding hens under the large Conestoga wagon carrying their supplies; the diminishing bags of grain, coffee, iron pots, a coop with six chickens, brake jacks and spare axles. They fell into exhausted sleep, like Billy fell into his bottle.
The white canvas of the circle of covered wagons glowed like fire under the setting sun. An effect enhanced by the flames leaping like demons from the wagon set two dozen yards from the main group. Crackling and snapping of dry tinder alerted the sensitive ears of dozing horses and mules, whose anxious whinnies and hee-haws woke the would-be look-out at the edge of the camp. His yelling and hoots for attention brought settlers out of their beds.
“Form a chain. Get pails of water.” Jack Hollis said. “Billy’s in there.”
But the spring had become a trickle. The settlers shuffled their feet in dry dust, not looking at their appointed leader.
“There ain’t no water, Jack.”
“Then we’ll have to breach the barrels.”
“I ain’t lettin’ my family die of thirst to save that drunken wastrel, Jack. Nor my mules.”
Other voices joined in; a chorus of dissension to the verse of Billy’s youngest sister’s screaming. Jack instructed men to gather shovels, dig a trench around the wagon, and clear the few brittle trees and bushes that would spread the fire. But Billy’s drunken snoring wouldn’t trouble his mother and siblings again.
Sarah Blackthorn stood watching, hands on hips. Her face, coarse and reddened by the harsh prairie sun, wore a scowl that would sour buffalo milk. Jack stared at the dried up water-bed, then pulled the stub of a fat cigar from his waistcoat pocket.
“Any of you boys got one of them new-fangled safety matches?”
Heads shook. Sarah fumbled in her pocket, then pulled out a tattered handkerchief, blew her nose and dabbed her eyes.
“I got a tinder box, Jack,” a voice called from the crowd of onlookers. “We all got tinder boxes.”
He pondered as he tucked the cigar away. Billy was too drunk to leave his bunk. Someone else set the wagon alight. Although Billy was a nuisance, and a shirker, he wondered who could hate him so much.
#
Moist soil around the spring was easier to dig than the arid land. Jack and Sarah watched as two men buried Billy.
“He wanted a soft bed and a useless life,” Sarah said. “And what he wasn’t given, he took for himself.”
Although few items from the wagon were salvageable, its charred remains would be a marker to Billy’s grave. One of many on the Oregon trail. The menfolk helped reload the Conestoga; hitching mules and oxen to the wagons, making ready to leave. They were three months from their destination of Calico, California. Half way through the long trek west.
“Thank God you and the girls weren’t sleeping under the wagon, Sarah. Could have been real nasty.”
“Worse things happen, Jack. I tried to keep him righteous, but my son took a bad path.”
“Who’d want him dead?”
Sarah shook her head.
“I don’t want us lynching the wrong man, Sarah.”
“I don’t think it’ll come to that, Jack.”
He scratched his head. It was his job to uphold the law in this group of travellers, but so far, he wasn’t getting much help. No one had a good word for Billy.
#
Shoe leather wore thin as days dragged into weeks. Sarah and her eldest daughter, Abigail, drove the wagon while the younger two walked behind, laughing with friends. Tired limbs were glad of overnight breaks and occasional forays into frontier towns. Jack’s questions yielded less than the arid land, but Sarah didn’t press him.
Two weeks from Calico, a day out from Fort Hall, Sarah pulled the Conestoga off the trail. Jack’s wagon was up front; a dozen more behind. She sent her youngest to run ahead.
“Tell Jack I gotta set up camp now.”
A pan of water bubbled on the fire and a group of women gathered around a hastily erected tent. Long, low wails of pain shattered the hushed whispers of the women. Sarah emerged from the tent, a small bundle of bloodied rags in her arms. She placed it on the ground with a sigh.
“Another of my family to bury, Jack.”
“Not Abigail?”
“My grandson; Abigail’s boy… and Billy’s.”
Jack’s face blanched.
“I told you, that boy took what he wanted. I had to protect my girls, just as you have to uphold justice. Abi will be looked after. There’s a marshal’s office at Fort Hall.”
Jack sat on a crate by the fire and pulled the fat cigar stub from his pocket.
“You got one of them safety matches, Sarah?”
She reached into her apron pocket, handing a small box to Jack. He lit the cigar and puffed deep and slow. The matchbox spun from his fingers, revolving in the air before landing in the fire. It flared for a moment. He extinguished the cigar in the dust.
“Billy was drunk, Sarah. It’s my guess he dropped his smoke in the wagon. Come on, there’s water boiling. I need coffee.”
