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pa
English as a First Language
Narrative Sampler
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Table of Contents
A&P by John Updike
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Ladybirds for Lunch by Hanif Kureishi
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When the Wasps Drowned by Clare Wigfall
12
My Little Lie-Green Lie by Charles Antin
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The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
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‘My Feelings’ from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
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Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff
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Teacher Sample, with components
Teacher Sample, with figurative language
Teacher Sample
Student Sample
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36
Questions
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A&P
by John Updike
In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my
back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye
first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet
broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems
to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers
trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell.
She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and
no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty
years and probably never seen a mistake before.
By the time I got her feathers smoothed and her
goodies into a bag -- she gives me a little snort in
passing, if she'd been born at the right time they
would have burned her over in Salem -- by the
time I get her on her way the girls had circled
around the bread and were coming back, without
a pushcart, back my way along the counters, in
the aisle between the check-outs and the Special
bins. They didn't even have shoes on. There was
this chunky one, with the two-piece -- it was
bright green and the seams on the bra were still
sharp and her belly was still pretty pale so I guessed she just got it (the suit) -- there was this one,
with one of those chubby berry-faces, the lips all bunched together under her nose, this one, and
a tall one, with black hair that hadn't quite frizzed right, and one of these sunburns right across
under the eyes, and a chin that was too long -- you know, the kind of girl other girls think is very
"striking" and "attractive" but never quite makes it, as they very well know, which is why they
like her so much -- and then the third one, that wasn't quite so tall. She was the queen. She kind
of led them, the other two peeking around and making their shoulders round. She didn't look
around, not this queen, she just walked straight on slowly, on these long white prima donna legs.
She came down a little hard on her heels, as if she didn't walk in her bare feet that much, putting
down her heels and then letting the weight move along to her toes as if she was testing the floor
with every step, putting a little deliberate extra action into it. You never know for sure how girls'
minds work (do you really think it's a mind in there or just a little buzz like a bee in a glass jar?)
but you got the idea she had talked the other two into coming in here with her, and now she was
showing them how to do it, walk slow and hold yourself straight.
She had on a kind of dirty-pink - - beige maybe, I don't know -- bathing suit with a little nubble
all over it and, what got me, the straps were down. They were off her shoulders looped loose
around the cool tops of her arms, and I guess as a result the suit had slipped a little on her, so all
around the top of the cloth there was this shining rim. If it hadn't been there you wouldn't have
known there could have been anything whiter than those shoulders. With the straps pushed off,
there was nothing between the top of the suit and the top of her head except just her, this clean
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bare plane of the top of her chest down from the shoulder bones like a dented sheet of metal
tilted in the light. I mean, it was more than pretty.
She had sort of oaky hair that the sun and salt had bleached, done up in a bun that was
unravelling, and a kind of prim face. Walking into the A & P with your straps down, I suppose
it's the only kind of face you can have. She held her head so high her neck, coming up out o
those white shoulders, looked kind of stretched, but I didn't mind. The longer her neck was, the
more of her there was.
She must have felt in the corner of her eye me and over my shoulder Stokesie in the second slot
watching, but she didn't tip. Not this queen. She kept her eyes moving across the racks, and
stopped, and turned so slow it made my stomach rub the inside of my apron, and buzzed to the
other two, who kind of huddled against her for relief, and they all three of them went up the catand-dog-food-breakfast-cereal-macaroni-rice-raisins-seasonings-spreads-spaghetti-softdrinkscrackers-and-cookies aisle. From the third slot I look straight up this aisle to the meat counter,
and I watched them all the way. The fat one with the tan sort of fumbled with the cookies, but on
second thought she put the packages back. The sheep pushing their carts down the aisle -- the
girls were walking against the usual traffic (not that we have one-way signs or anything) -- were
pretty hilarious. You could see them, when Queenie's white shoulders dawned on them, kind of
jerk, or hop, or hiccup, but their eyes snapped back to their own baskets and on they pushed. I
bet you could set off dynamite in an A & P and the people would by and large keep reaching and
checking oatmeal off their lists and muttering "Let me see, there was a third thing, began with A,
asparagus, no, ah, yes, applesauce!" or whatever it is they do mutter. But there was no doubt, this
jiggled them. A few house-slaves in pin curlers even looked around after pushing their carts past
to make sure what they had seen was correct.
You know, it's one thing to have a girl in a bathing suit down on the beach, where what with the
glare nobody can look at each other much anyway, and another thing in the cool of the A & P,
under the fluorescent lights, against all those stacked packages, with her feet paddling along
naked over our checkerboard green-and-cream rubber-tile floor.
"Oh Daddy," Stokesie said beside me. "I feel so faint."
"Darling," I said. "Hold me tight." Stokesie's married, with two babies chalked up on his fuselage
already, but as far as I can tell that's the only difference. He's twenty-two, and I was nineteen this
April.
"Is it done?" he asks, the responsible married man finding his voice. I forgot to say he thinks he's
going to be manager some sunny day, maybe in 1990 when it's called the Great Alexandrov and
Petrooshki Tea Company or something.
What he meant was, our town is five miles from a beach, with a big summer colony out on the
Point, but we're right in the middle of town, and the women generally put on a shirt or shorts or
something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women
with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care
less. As I say, we're right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see
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two banks and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices
and about twenty-seven old free-loaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again.
It's not as if we're on the Cape; we're north of Boston and there's people in this town haven't seen
the ocean for twenty years.
The girls had reached the meat counter and were asking McMahon something. He pointed, they
pointed, and they shuffled out of sight behind a pyramid of Diet Delight peaches. All that was
left for us to see was old McMahon patting his mouth and looking after them sizing up their
joints. Poor kids, I began to feel sorry for them, they couldn't help it.
Now here comes the sad part of the story, at least my family says it's sad but I don't think it's sad
myself. The store's pretty empty, it being Thursday afternoon, so there was nothing much to do
except lean on the register and wait for the girls to show up again. The whole store was like a
pinball machine and I didn't know which tunnel they'd come out of. After a while they come
around out of the far aisle, around the light bulbs, records at discount of the Caribbean Six or
Tony Martin Sings or some such gunk you wonder they waste the wax on, six-packs of candy
bars, and plastic toys done up in cellophane that fall apart when a kid looks at them anyway.
Around they come, Queenie still leading the way, and holding a little gray jar in her hand. Slots
Three through Seven are unmanned and I could see her wondering between Stokes and me, but
Stokesie with his usual luck draws an old party in baggy gray pants who stumbles up with four
giant cans of pineapple juice (what do these bums do with all that pineapple juice' I've often
asked myself) so the girls come to me. Queenie puts down the jar and I take it into my fingers icy
cold. Kingfish Fancy Herring Snacks in Pure Sour Cream: 49¢. Now her hands are empty, not a
ring or a bracelet, bare as God made them, and I wonder where the money's coming from. Still
with that prim look she lifts a folded dollar bill out of the hollow at the center of her nubbled
pink top. The jar went heavy in my hand. Really, I thought that was so cute.
Then everybody's luck begins to run out. Lengel comes in from haggling with a truck full of
cabbages on the lot and is about to scuttle into that door marked MANAGER behind which he
hides all day when the girls touch his eye. Lengel's pretty dreary, teaches Sunday school and the
rest, but he doesn't miss that much. He comes over and says, "Girls, this isn't the beach."
Queenie blushes, though maybe it's just a brush of sunburn I was noticing for the first time, now
that she was so close. "My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks." Her voice kind
of startled me, the way voices do when you see the people first, coming out so flat and dumb yet
kind of tony, too, the way it ticked over "pick up" and "snacks." All of a sudden I slid right down
her voice into her living room. Her father and the other men were standing around in ice-cream
coats and bow ties and the women were in sandals picking up herring snacks on toothpicks off a
big plate and they were all holding drinks the color of water with olives and sprigs of mint in
them. When my parents have somebody over they get lemonade and if it's a real racy affair
Schlitz in tall glasses with "They'll Do It Every Time" cartoons stencilled on.
"That's all right," Lengel said. "But this isn't the beach." His repeating this struck me as funny, as
if it had just occurred to him, and he had been thinking all these years the A & P was a great big
dune and he was the head lifeguard. He didn't like my smiling -- -as I say he doesn't miss much -but he concentrates on giving the girls that sad Sunday- school-superintendent stare.
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Queenie's blush is no sunburn now, and the plump one in plaid, that I liked better from the back - a really sweet can -- pipes up, "We weren't doing any shopping. We just came in for the one
thing."
"That makes no difference," Lengel tells her, and I could see from the way his eyes went that he
hadn't noticed she was wearing a two-piece before. "We want you decently dressed when you
come in here."
"We are decent," Queenie says suddenly, her lower lip pushing, getting sore now that she
remembers her place, a place from which the crowd that runs the A & P must look pretty
crummy. Fancy Herring Snacks flashed in her very blue eyes.
"Girls, I don't want to argue with you. After this come in here with your shoulders covered. It's
our policy." He turns his back. That's policy for you. Policy is what the kingpins want. What the
others want is juvenile delinquency.
All this while, the customers had been showing up with their carts but, you know, sheep, seeing a
scene, they had all bunched up on Stokesie, who shook open a paper bag as gently as peeling a
peach, not wanting to miss a word. I could feel in the silence everybody getting nervous, most of
all Lengel, who asks me, "Sammy, have you rung up this purchase?"
I thought and said "No" but it wasn't about that I was thinking. I go through the punches, 4, 9,
GROC, TOT -- it's more complicated than you think, and after you do it often enough, it begins
to make a little song, that you hear words to, in my case "Hello (bing) there, you (gung) hap-py
pee-pul (splat)"-the splat being the drawer flying out. I uncrease the bill, tenderly as you may
imagine, it just having come from between the two smoothest scoops of vanilla I had ever known
were there, and pass a half and a penny into her narrow pink palm, and nestle the herrings in a
bag and twist its neck and hand it over, all the time thinking.
The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say "I quit" to Lengel quick
enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero. They keep
right on going, into the electric eye; the door flies open and they flicker across the lot to their car,
Queenie and Plaid and Big Tall Goony-Goony (not that as raw material she was so bad), leaving
me with Lengel and a kink in his eyebrow.
"Did you say something, Sammy?"
"I said I quit."
"I thought you did."
"You didn't have to embarrass them."
"It was they who were embarrassing us."
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I started to say something that came out "Fiddle-de-doo." It's a saying of my grand- mother's, and
I know she would have been pleased.
"I don't think you know what you're saying," Lengel said.
"I know you don't," I said. "But I do." I pull the bow at the back of my apron and start shrugging
it off my shoulders. A couple customers that had been heading for my slot begin to knock against
each other, like scared pigs in a chute.
Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He's been a friend of my parents
for years. "Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad," he tells me. It's true, I
don't. But it seems to me that once you begin a gesture it's fatal not to go through with it. I fold
the apron, "Sammy" stitched in red on the pocket, and put it on the counter, and drop the bow tie
on top of it. The bow tie is theirs, if you've ever wondered. "You'll feel this for the rest of your
life," Lengel says, and I know that's true, too, but remembering how he made that pretty girl
blush makes me so scrunchy inside I punch the No Sale tab and the machine whirs "pee-pul" and
the drawer splats out. One advantage to this scene taking place in summer, I can follow this up
with a clean exit, there's no fumbling around getting your coat and galoshes, I just saunter into
the electric eye in my white shirt that my mother ironed the night before, and the door heaves
itself open, and outside the sunshine is skating around on the asphalt.
I look around for my girls, but they're gone, of course. There wasn't anybody but some young
married screaming with her children about some candy they didn't get by the door of a powderblue Falcon station wagon. Looking back in the big windows, over the bags of peat moss and
aluminum lawn furniture stacked on the pavement, I could see Lengel in my place in the slot,
checking the sheep through. His face was dark gray and his back stiff, as if he'd just had an
injection of iron, and my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me
hereafter.
8
Ladybirds for Lunch
by Hanif Kureishi
It was a special occasion, a party day.
The identical twins Theo and Jake knew it was, because immediately after breakfast their mother
scrubbed the remains of all baked beans, bits of egg, and pieces of toast from their hair. Then, as she
hurriedly fitted them into their matching Chinese silk jackets, the boys noticed another strange sight.
Their father was helping in the kitchen. It was most unusual for him to wander that far from the television,
particularly in the morning.
The two boys looked out of the window and saw what a lovely day it was going to be for a lunch
party in the garden. Rather unusually the sun was shining and the few flowers the boys hadn't flattened
with their football seemed to be glowing in the misty morning air.
This wasn't just any old lunch, said father, crouching down and adopting his 'listen-to-me-seriously'
voice. Unfortunately though, since he had decided to let his sideburns
grow and now looked as though two hairy slugs had settled on the side
of his face, Theo and Jake found it difficult to not to giggle when he
was talking, and had to keep pinching one another.
All the same, they were informed by their father's pointing finger
that the guests, Frazer and Sabina Binswanger were very important
people who helped decide on the programmes which appeared on
television. And since Mother hadn't had a job for over a year, she was
very keen to have Mr Binswanger employ her.
Father added that the Binswangers had a villa in France with a
swimming pool and servants, where the most glamorous and exciting
people went to escape London and meet everyone they knew. Mother and father desperately wanted to be
invited to this fashionable gathering. Except there was one problem. The Binswangers only liked children
some of the time, and not all of the time. If the family were to receive an invitation the boys had to be on
their best behaviour today, and must allow themselves to be kissed, tickled, tousled and tossed in the air,
when required, by the Binswangers.
"Best behaviour," promised Theo.
"We are the good boys!" said Jake.
They slapped hands with their father and each other, and skipped out into the garden.
Excitement mounted all morning. Father frantically searched the house for an item of clothing
unstained by crushed biscuit. Mother hunted for her curlers. This involved her glaring at the probable
culprits Jake and Theo: she had to 'enter the mind of the criminal' before foraging in the obvious places.
One curler was in the fridge, embedded in the butter, another was installed the front of the video recorder,
and the last one had been neatly placed in the watering can.
Then, with her curlers in - and her head looked like a bowl of pasta - mother went into the garden
with a trowel to shovel up the numerous piles of cat poo. Cats came from miles around, she claimed, to
crap exclusively on her earth. Glancing furtively around to ensure that no one from the Neighbourhood
Watch was looking - she was a leading member - mother hurled the cat droppings over the fence into the
next garden and scurried back into the house.
The cats were practically the only wildlife there was in Shepherd's Bush, apart from the people on
the street, and of course the beautiful ladybirds, hundreds of which congregated around the garden bench
to compare spots and talk about what was happening.
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While mother and father rushed in and out of the house carrying bread and wine, cutlery and
napkins, and laying them on a trestle table covered with a white tablecloth, Jake and Theo, playing in a
corner of the garden, had gone very quiet. On a normal day such a silence would have aroused suspicion.
But today their parents were too busy to notice.
Theo had gathered a group of ladybirds in his hand and was intending to place them, for the
afternoon, in a cardboard box, so the insects could party together. Jake was hunting for others in order to
give them to Theo. Once the ladybirds were gathered in the concert hall of the box, the boys - who loved
to play mad jigs on their numerous instruments - would make music and watch them dance.
Before the boys had located a box, they were disturbed by voices.
Frazer and Sabina Binswanger, the important guests with important names, were entering the garden
like Royalty at a film premier. Sabina's jewellery jingle-jangled and her high heels punctured father's new
lawn, while Frazer's confident voice boomed across the neighbourhood. They both wore sharp perfume
which caused all flies in the vicinity to immediately become unconscious. However, the ladybirds - snug
in the warm booth of Jake and Theo's hands - were not affected.
The boys tried to disappear under a hedge but mother was calling for them to greet the Binswangers.
Theo quickly looked around for somewhere to lodge his insect friends until after lunch. But there was
nowhere - until he spied a crusty pie with a hole in the top, sitting conveniently on the table. He thrust the
ladybirds into the pie.
"Good idea," said Jake, doing the same thing.
Theo hastily covered over the gap with a loose piece of pastry, and they pushed each other towards
the out-stretched arms of the guests.
They all sat down to lunch.
The cutlery clinked, wine was poured and the voices rose. Theo and Jake, who had Sabina's lipstick
kisses imprinted on their cheeks and forehead like pink butterflies, smiled up politely at the Binswangers
as instructed. Occasionally either Frazer or Sabina would grab the end of one or other boy's nose, as if
they were public property, and give them a sudden hard twist. This was their way of being friendly, which
the boys knew they had to bear if they were to be invited to France on holiday.
Meanwhile the boys were kicking one another under the table. They knew they had to do something
about the ladybirds, who were suffocating inside the pie. Theo whispered to Jake that they had to try and
release them.
But as Theo leant over to grab the pie, his mother tapped him on the wrist: "Wait a minute," she
scolded. "Guests first!"
"But mum-"
How could he explain?
"Mum!" echoed Jake, as she cut into it.
It was too late. A moment later a piece of the pie was on Frazer Binswanger's plate.
"Yum, yum," he said, licking his lips. "I'm very hungry." He looked at mother. "Everyone says your
food is wonderful."
"Thank you," she said, with a happy smile, thinking of her new job.
Soon the pie would be in Mr Binswanger's mouth. Theo and Jake could only look on in dismay.
Now Frazer Binswanger was a man of such sophistication and importance that he was allowed to
have bad manners. Theo and Jake watched as he picked up the pie with both hands, put it to his mouth
and took such a large bite they thought he might swallow the whole world.
"This is delicious," he said, spitting out bits of pastry, one of which struck Jake above the eye.
Jake removed the pastry from his eyebrow and looked at Theo. They knew ladybirds were rather
crunchy but soft inside, like tiny prawns. With sauce they might be tasty: but it was not a good idea to eat
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them alive, particularly if you were unprepared for the experience.
"Delicious!" said Frazer Binswanger.
As Mr Binswanger's teeth champed into the crust again, the ladybirds hurried out of the pie, rushing
away like dodgem cars propelled by silent electricity. Some of them flew into the air, but many others,
drawn by the heat of Mr Binswanger's face, merely crawled over his soft, sticky cheeks and settled down
in a swoon, having swallowed the alcohol he was sweating. Others ran about in a panic, not knowing
where they were.
Jake and Theo saw their father notice this first. His eyes widened and he glanced fearfully at mother.
Looking at Frazer Binswanger's face she almost fell backwards off her chair in horror. She would never
work again!
Then Sabina Binswanger, with her fork at her mouth, glanced up to see a whole company of
ladybirds moving across her husband's face.
Mr Binswanger so loved to talk that he failed to realise the pink surface of his face was spotted with
moving dots. In fact several were already swinging from the dark hairs that stuck out of the top of his
nose like wires (it was said they could pick up foreign TV and radio stations, like aerials). Everyone
watched in fascination as one of these ladybirds then trotted up his nostril like an explorer in the rain
forest. Other ladybirds lined up to run into the mysterious and winding caverns of his ears, clambering
over bits of old potato and carrot lodged there, until a battalion of them entered the spacious living room
of his mind.
Jake looked at Sabina Binswanger in amazement. She had stuffed her napkin into her mouth. Theo
wondered if she was so hungry that she wanted to eat it. But he realised she was trying to stop herself
laughing.
When Mr Binswanger saw the astonished faces of his friends around the table and felt what was
happening to him, his red face turned the colour of a peeled potato. Soon he was aware that the living
room of his mind was alive with ladybirds. He threw down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate and
began to knock himself on the side of the head with his fist. He began to wave around in his chair like a
tree in a strong wind.
"Something not nice has happened to me!" he moaned in disbelief. "I've been invaded by aliens!"
It was true. Theo and Jake knew ladybirds loved parties and that by now they would be making
themselves comfortable inside Mr Binswanger's mind. Soon they might be swinging from the light
fittings, playing records and videos, smoking cigarettes and even dancing.
But it was also obvious to the twins that banging yourself above the ear was no way to extract
insects from inside your head. The thudding noise would only frighten the ladybirds and they would
scuttle deeper and deeper into the interior, perhaps into the memory area, so that every dream of the past
that Bingswanger now had, would be sprinkled with ladybirds, like pepper on an omelette.
What could the boys do? It was an emergency.
Usually their mother rid the garden of ants by pouring boiling water over them. But the twins knew
their chances of going on holiday to France wouldn't improve if they shot hot water up Frazer
Binswanger's nose or into his ears.
Without saying anything, the same thought occurred to the boys simultaneously.
Theo threw back his chair and dashed into the house to fetch his tambourine and a pan and spoon.
Jake jumped up and raced indoors for his battery-operated keyboard. They sprinted out into the garden
and began to play a cool bossa nova. They had rehearsed this song many times. It was one of their
favourites. But still Jake and Theo were nervous. Mother and father were glaring at them with very
serious 'I'll-get-you-for-this-later' looks on their faces.
Theo and Jake knew that all insects, like all children, could be moved by music. The boys' sweet
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voices rose like doves into the air, and across West London the ears of shoppers pricked up. People
dropped their bags to feel the delicious rhythm working through them.
As the music swung, even Sabina Binswanger's foot bounced and she clapped her hands. But Mr
Binswanger, who had gone rigid with distress and annoyance, remained perfectly still as the ladybirds
frolicked on the levers and wheels of his mind.
After a few moments everyone saw, pushing through the opening of one of his hairy nostrils, the
black and white head of a ladybird. But they could also see that Mr Binswanger, with a cruel and
vengeful expression on his face, was about to crush it into jam between his thumb and finger.
Jake shook his head wildly and Theo banged furiously on the pan. Squashing a ladybird wouldn't
encourage the others to come out. Surely Frazer Binswanger understood that? Adults could be very stupid
at times.
Fortunately, heeding Jake and Theo's warning, Mr Binswanger refrained from his murderous action.
And as the rhythm of the music built, the ladybirds began to emerge from his ears and nose into the
sunshine, shaking their bottoms and waving their legs. Some of them looked a little dazed, as anyone
would, had they spent time within the foggy labyrinth of Mr Binswanger's brain. But most were dancing,
and many gathered on Mr Binswanger's forehead, where they hopped and capered like a line of animated
billiard balls.
Soon they were all out and Mr Binswanger's face returned to its natural Ribena colour. Once more
Sabrina was laughing and drinking. Mother and father were so relieved they even smiled at one another.
The boys, settled under the table, played a calm Moroccan tune that they were perfecting.
"Those boys can certainly play," said Sabrina, clicking her fingers and resisting her desire to twist
their noses.
"But they are often quiet too," father explained firmly. "Sometimes for hours...and hours...and hours
on end."
"Yes!" confirmed mother.
"Not too quiet, I hope," said Sabrina. "For they'll certainly entertain the other guests on holiday in
France - if they bring their instruments!"
"But we're always telling them to shut up," said mother.
"I wouldn't do that," said Sabrina. "Those boys have talent!"
"Talent!" murmured Frazer. He lit a big cigar and relaxed after his disturbing experience. Talent was
his favourite word. He loved to say it, but most of all he loved to find it, particularly in his own
neighbourhood, and during lunch. "I'm going to put those boys on a television show. They really helped
me out. Those ladybirds were tickling my brain so much I thought I'd go insane!"
"I wonder, though," murmured Sabina, "How they got in that pie in the first place?"
"I don't know," said father, looking uneasily at the innocent faces of his identical sons, "But people
say that ladybirds always follow the talent!"
"Like me," said Frazer Binswanger, sipping his drink, and patting the boys on the head. "Jake and
Theo - play on please!"
And they picked up their instruments and sang.
12
When the Wasps Drowned
by Clare Wigfall
That was the summer Therese stepped on the wasps' nest and brought an end to our barefoot
wanderings, when the sun shone every day and everybody commented upon it. Old ladies on
park benches, fanning themselves with well-thumbed issues of Woman's Own, would sigh, 'Oh,
isn't it hot?' And I, hungry for conversation, would sit tall on the wooden seat and smile as I
agreed, eyes darting to see if they might say anything more. The heat was all anyone ever seemed
to speak of, and I knew that when the weather changed we'd still be talking of the same thing,
only then we'd be blowing at our hands and complaining of the cold.
The chemist sold out of after-sun that summer, and flowerbeds dried up, and people had to queue
to get into the swimming pool. Towels hung over their arms or squashed into carrier bags, we'd
see them waiting along the wall outside, listening to the shouts echoing on the water within,
envious of those who emerged coolly with hair slicked damp and eyes pinkened by chlorine,
carrying bags of crisps from the vending machine.
It was the first time the garden walls seemed confining, when finally I was tall enough to peer
over their mossy tops and look across the line of gardens and see sheets, dried out in the heat,
listless in the still air, and hear the tinny music of distant transistor radios, and the ache of cars
moving slowly in the hot sun, their windows wide as if that might change anything.
That was the summer they dug up Mr Mordecai's garden.
We heard her screams from inside. I was standing at the sink, barefoot on the lino, washing up
the breakfast dishes, soaping them lazily as I watched the light play on the bubbles. Tyler was
curled under the kitchen table pushing a toy truck back and forth, smiling at the rattle of its metal
wheels. Her screaming, the way it broke the day, so shocked me that I dropped a glass which
smashed on the tap and fell into the dishwater below. She was running in circles round the
garden, shrieking, a halo of angry wasps blurring her shape, her pigtails dancing.
For the first few moments I just stood, mouth agape, watching her through the grime of the
kitchen window, not wanting to go anywhere near Therese or all those wasps. As I ran to the
back door, Tyler rose and toddled after me. I remember him laughing as I turned the hose on her he thought it all a joke. Dripping with water, her sundress clinging to a polka-dot of red welts,
Therese continued to scream into the afternoon. Around her on the grass, wasps lay dark on their
backs, legs kicking, wings too sodden to fly.
Mum was out at work all day, leaving us to our own devices. Sometimes I'd take them out,
Therese picking at her scabs, Tyler strapped in the buggy. We'd walk down to the park and I'd sit
by the swings and watch the boys. They'd stand in a huddle by the public loos, puffing on
cigarettes.
13
Other days we'd just lie out back in the heat. I'd fashioned a bikini from a pair of pink knickers
and an old vest which I'd cropped just below my nipples. I had a pair of green plastic sunglasses
I'd bought at the corner-shop and the yellow flipflops Mum now insisted we wear. I'd sunbathe
while Therese scoured the grass for wasp corpses. When she found one she'd place it on a paving
slab and, using a stone, pound its body to dust. Tyler would squat sagely beside her. I'd watch
them idly, lift an arm perhaps to point out another dead wasp lodged between blades of grass.
It was maybe early August when she and Tyler started to dig under the garden wall. Sitting in its
shadow, they scratched away with sticks, collecting the dry earth in a plastic bucket. 'Help us,
Eveline,' they'd say, 'we're digging to Australia,' but I'd just roll my eyes and turn the page of my
magazine. The task would occupy them for a while and then they'd come and loll next to me.
Tyler flat out on his stomach, snuffling as the grass tickled his nostrils, Therese plaiting together
thin strands of my hair.
So we'd lie and wait for Mum to come home, her uniform sweaty round the edges. Then she'd sit,
her legs up on one of the kitchen chairs, complaining how her feet were swollen, watching as we
prepared the fish fingers or chicken nuggets.
In that heat, everything seemed an effort. There was a day I remember; I was lying on my side,
eyes closed. Therese, finished her digging, was flopped next to me. One plump arm was curled in
a damp embrace around my knee. She was breathing hotly against my hip. I opened my eyes in a
slow squint against the sun. Therese's other arm was flung out above her head.
It was the glint that caught my eye. I only saw it as she jerked her hand at the buzz of a fly.
Wedged on her thumb was a thin gold ring, studded with small diamonds. There was dirt lodged
between the stones, but still they caught the sunlight and glimmered. At first I didn't react. I just
lay there, watching.
'Therese,' I finally questioned, 'where'd you get that ring?'
'Found it,' she sighed.
I heaved myself up by one elbow and took her hand in mine to look more closely at the small
piece of jewellery. 'Where?' I asked.
Therese yawned before rolling onto one side and up. She walked me to the hole they'd been
digging. It was deep and long now, tunnelling under our wall and into Mr Mordecai's garden. We
knelt down and peered into its depths. It was too dark to see much. Therese took my hand and
guided it into the hole. Straight away I knew what it was I could feel, but I told Therese to run in
and find the torch. She came back a moment later and we angled the light. At the end of the
tunnel, a pale hand reached towards us.
We said nothing as we looked. The skin was mauve in places, the fingernails chipped and
clogged with soil. Suddenly the day around us seemed unbearably quiet, as if everything was
14
holding its breath.
'Therese,' I said eventually, 'I think we'd better fill up the hole.'
We collected the plastic bucket and shunted the piles of earth back where they came from,
patting the ground flat with our hands.
Leaning across to her, I took the ring from Therese's thumb and slipped it onto my right index
finger. She didn't protest.
And so the digging stopped. We ignored the bald patch of earth by the fence, the mark of the
aborted Australia project. The ring I cleaned with an old toothbrush and wore sometimes, but
only ever while Mum was at work.
The long days continued to melt into one another. Mum would put us to bed and it would still be
light outside. Beyond the curtained windows the world continued and we could hear it all, ever
clearer than winter nights when it was dark. Tyler and Therese were too hot and tired to feel they
might be missing anything but I would lie awake under the sheets, listening to the street and the
muffle of Mum's radio downstairs.
One night Therese woke crying from a bad dream. She padded through to Mum's room and I
could hear them across the landing, Mum's voice comforting and sleepy, Therese's diluted by her
tears, 'and I was watering the garden, Mum, with a blue watering can, and it started to grow...'
'Sleep now, my love, shhh.' I wanted Mum's gentle shush in my own ear. When I closed my eyes
I could see Therese's dream, the arm growing up through the soil like a plant.
The holidays began finally to peter to a close. The days were still stifled by the heat and, at a loss
as to how we might fill them, we'd even begun to miss going to school. Very occasionally, Mum
would leave sweet money. Then we'd buy Smarties, lick the shells of the red ones, and rub
swathes of scarlet food colouring across our lips. That's what we were doing when we heard the
doorbell ring. I flipflopped through the cool of the house to open the front door. A man and a
woman stood on the step.
'Is Mum or Dad in, love?' As she asked the question, he peered over our shoulders into the
hallway.
I blinked up at them through my sunglasses. Therese and Tyler were both clinging to my bare
legs, Tyler fingering the elastic of my bikini bottoms. Pouting Smartie-red lips, I told them Mum
was at work, wouldn't be home until six. I held my right hand behind my back.
She bent towards us and smiled. I tried to stand taller. 'Maybe you can help us then. We're from
the police department, just want to ask a couple of questions.' She held out a photograph of a
15
late-teenage girl. A holiday pic. The girl was sun-browned, smiling at something beyond the
camera lens. 'Do you think you might have seen this girl?'
We all looked, then shook our heads.
'Are you sure?' She held the photo closer. 'You wouldn't have seen her on the street or anything?'
We all shook our heads again. The man loosened his collar, wiped a trickle of perspiration from
his forehead. He caught my glance and smiled. I didn't smile back.
'Well, that's all, then,' said the woman, lowering the picture to her side. 'You've been very helpful,
thank you.' She stretched out a hand to ruffle Tyler's curls. He pressed closer against my leg.
I shut the door and we waited a while, heard them walking down our garden path and unlatching
Mr Mordecai's gate next door. My fingers, fiddling unconscious, played with the ring for a
moment as we stood together in the dark hallway. None of us said a thing. Taking Therese and
Tyler by the hand, I turned, and we stepped back out into the sunlight of the garden.
16
My Little Lime-Green Lie
by Charles Antin (this is actually a non-fiction story)
My father loves Key lime pie. Though he's a hematologist who you'd want cooking your dinner
about as badly as you'd want Mario Batali doing your bone-marrow transplant, he claims that his
palate can differentiate between Key lime pies made from fresh Key lime juice and those made
from concentrate. So, for his 55th birthday, I decided to buy my father a Key lime tree.
After doing a search online, I found Four Winds Growers, a California nursery that specializes in
dwarf citrus trees. Most of these trees reach a maximum height of six feet, yet bear full-size fruit.
For $35, I could have a one-year-old dwarf Key lime tree shipped directly to my New York City
apartment within a week.
I e-mailed the service rep, Toby, at Four Winds to discuss my purchase. "I want to buy a dwarf
Key lime tree for my father," I wrote, "but he lives in Massachusetts and, knowing my father, the
tree probably won't get much light, water or fertilizer. Will this be a problem?"
"Yes," Toby responded. Key lime trees are extremely sensitive to cold and require eight to 12
hours of sunlight a day. What's more, he explained, most of the Key lime lore I had been taught
as a youth was untrue. Key lime trees are native to Southeast Asia, not Key West, Florida. In
addition, the majority of Key limes, C. aurantifolia, consumed in the United States aren't even
grown in Key West; they're grown in Mexico. In fact, the Four Winds website lists the tree as
"Mexican (Key)," as if to say, "This is a Mexican lime tree, but we have to put 'Key' in
parentheses so that the ignoramuses among you who know nothing of citrus provenance and
husbandry have some idea what we're talking about."
Toby suggested that I purchase the more hardy dwarf Meyer lemon tree instead. I weighed my
options. Would a Key lime tree ever survive a Massachusetts winter? Since the sun starts to set
around 4 p.m. in February, probably not. Would my father be just as happy with a Meyer lemon
tree? Since you can't make Key lime pie with lemons, most definitely not.
Also, for reasons I have never fully been able to comprehend, my parents refuse to heat their
house in the wintertime. When I was a shivering 12-year-old and it was the middle of January,
with eight-foot snow drifts blowing against the windows, they would tell me that the heat would
still not be turned on until mid-February, if then, so go put on a sweater. If my father let his own
son freeze, what would happen to a helpless dwarf Key lime tree?
In the end, I bought my father the dwarf Meyer lemon tree instead. I decided I would tell him
that my intentions were good, but I figured it was better to have a live Meyer lemon tree than a
dead Key lime tree. He'd just have to get his Key lime pies on trips to Florida. At the very least,
he would own a miniature citrus tree, a conversation piece. The conversations would be boring
and about dwarf citrus trees, but at least my gift wasn't a necktie.
The tree arrived at my apartment less than a week later. It was maybe a foot tall, with about 30
dark, waxy, Kelly green leaves, and it was as cute as it's possible for a tree to be. The day before
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my father's birthday, I boarded the Chinatown bus to Boston (by far the cheapest and best way to
transport plant matter across state lines), dwarf Meyer lemon tree in tow. The next day, I gave
my father his present.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Guess," I said.
"Is it a Key lime tree?" he asked.
And that is when things went horribly wrong. My father looked at me with his bright blue eyes,
tired but hopeful with the thought of his first Key lime harvest. This is it, I thought. A chance to
bring some happiness into those eyes. A chance to repay him for the endless hours of playing
backyard catch with a son who ended up taking ballet for phys ed credit in college. A chance to
repay him for all the cars I've crashed over the years (and there have been quite a few). So, at the
thought of bringing a bit of happiness into my father's limeless life, I looked him straight in the
eye and lied.
"Yes. It's a dwarf Key lime tree," I said.
It turns out that my father, a Harvard professor, is more easily duped than I always thought
(something it would have been nice to know in high school, when I was carefully refilling vodka
bottles with water). He leaped up so suddenly that I thought he had been stung by an African
killer bee, perhaps one that had been smuggled to Boston on the Chinatown bus.
"This," he said, his voice quivering, "is the greatest present anyone has ever given me."
And then he hugged me.
Flash forward about a year. My father pulled out green thumbs I never knew he had. In addition
to mowing the lawn and watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, he took up botany as one of
his hobbies. He fertilized the tree, he watered it, he discussed current events with it. He probably
would have written it a letter of recommendation for medical school if it had asked. In some
ways, it was the son he never had. It didn't light off firecrackers in the basement; it didn't spend
years studying the works of Milton instead of whatever it is people study in premed courses.
When my father went away for a weekend in February, it didn't crank the heat to 95 degrees and
throw a luau, complete with roast pig and mai tais.
The Meyer lemon tree, or, as my father referred to it, "my Key lime tree," just puttered along on
the kitchen table. Eventually, it flowered, self-pollinated, and one of its tiny ovaries began to
swell.
Periodically, my father called to inform me of the painfully slow growing process of what he
thought was a Key lime. As it grew, so did my guilt. "It's about pea-size now," he'd report. Then,
a month later, "It's probably somewhere between a grape and a small rubber ball." Then another
month later, "It's about the size of a walnut." Dwarf citrus trees are like babies: They all pretty
18
much look the same. The only difference is, of course, the fruit, and Meyer lemons don't turn
yellow until the late stages of development, so there was nothing to tip my father off that what he
had was not the real McCoy.
Two months went by, and I hadn't spoken to my father in some time, so I called him. We talked
for a while about the weather and the Red Sox, and then I
hazarded, "So, how is the Key lime?"
"Delicious!" he replied. "When it got to be just a little bit
bigger than a squash ball, I snipped it off."
This is it, I thought. The jig is up.
"What did you do with it?" I asked timidly.
"Well," he said, "one isn't enough for a Key lime pie, of
course, so I had a gin and tonic."
Was he toying with me? Did he know how hard it was for me
to lie to him, and then to swallow that lie for over a year? How
could a Key lime connoisseur like himself mistake the flavor
of a Meyer lemon for that of a Key lime? How many gin and
tonics had he had?
"And…how was it?"
"It was interesting—when I cut the fruit open, it was yellow inside. It must be a strain I'm not
familiar with."
"Must be," I said.
"Didn't matter though," he said. "It was the best Key lime I've ever had."
The tree doesn't get enough light on a Massachusetts kitchen table to produce more than one
"lime" at a time, but about once a year, its little white flowers self-pollinate and a tiny fruit
begins to swell. And when the Meyer lemon gets about as big as a Key lime, my father snips it
off, makes a gin and tonic and garnishes it with a wedge. He doesn't seem to care that he'll never
actually have enough fruit to make a pie.
Sometimes during the summer, when the days are longer, I get nervous that the tree will have a
growth spurt and a lemon will grow large and yellow before my father has a chance to harvest it.
But it hasn't happened yet. Other times, I worry that he'll realize there is no strain of Key lime
that has golden flesh. Likely he won't, though—I suspect because he doesn't care. He loves his
yearly gin-and-tonic-with-a-wedge-of-Key-lime tradition. And that's what makes my tiny limegreen lie worth it.
19
by Edgar Allan Poe
TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am;
but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my
senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the
heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily
--how calmly I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.
Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never
given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture
--a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees --very
gradually --I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should
have seen how wisely I proceeded --with what caution --with what foresight --with what dissimulation I went to
work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about
midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it --oh so gently! And then, when I had made an opening
sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my
head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so
that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so
far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this, And then, when
my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously-oh, so cautiously --cautiously (for the hinges
creaked) --I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long
nights --every night just at midnight --but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the
work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I
went boldly into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and
inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to
suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves
more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers --of my sagacity. I
could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was, opening the door, little by little, and he
not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me; for he
moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back --but no. His room was as black
as pitch with the thick darkness, (for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I knew
that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old
man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?"
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear
him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to
the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of
grief --oh, no! --it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.
I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own
bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the
20
old man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the
first slight noise, when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been
trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself --"It is nothing but the wind in the
chimney --it is only a mouse crossing the floor," or "It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp." Yes,
he had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in vain. All in vain; because
Death, in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was
the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel --although he neither saw nor heard -to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little --a very,
very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it --you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily --until, at length
a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.
It was open --wide, wide open --and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness --all a
dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of
the old man's face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct, precisely upon the damned spot.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? --now, I say,
there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that
sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum
stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I
could maintain the ray upon the eve. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and
quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say,
louder every moment! --do you mark me well I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead
hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to
uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder,
louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me --the sound would be heard by a
neighbour! The old man's hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room.
He shrieked once --once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then
smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This,
however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I
removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and
held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eve would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the
concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the
corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then
replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye --not even his --could have detected any thing
wrong. There was nothing to wash out --no stain of any kind --no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for
that. A tub had caught all --ha! ha!
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock --still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the
hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, --for what had I now to
fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A
shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information
had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
21
I smiled, --for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream.
The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search -search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the
enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues,
while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath
which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I
answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them
gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became
more distinct: --It continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it
continued and gained definiteness --until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound
increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when
enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more
vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent
gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with
heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God!
what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it
upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And
still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They
heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I
think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear
those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder!
louder! louder!
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating
of his hideous heart!"
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24
25
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27
Bullet in the Brain
by Tobias Wolff
Anders couldn’t get to the bank until just before it closed, so of course the line was endless and he got stuck behind two women whose
loud, stupid conversation put him in a murderous temper. He was never in the best of tempers anyway, Anders – a book critic known
for the weary, elegant savagery with which he dispatched almost everything he reviewed.
With the line still doubled around the rope, one of the tellers stuck a “POSITION CLOSED” sign in her window and walked to the
back of the bank, where she leaned against a desk and began to pass the time with a man shuffling papers. The women in front of
Anders broke off their conversation and watched the teller with hatred. “Oh, that’s nice,” one of them said. She turned to Anders and
added, confident of his accord, “One of those little human touches that keep us coming back for more.”
Anders had conceived his own towering hatred of the teller, but he immediately turned it on the presumptuous crybaby in front of him.
“Damned unfair,” he said. “Tragic, really. If they’re not chopping off the wrong leg, or bombing your ancestral village, they’re closing
their positions.”
She stood her ground. “I didn’t say it was tragic,” she said. “I just think it’s a pretty lousy way to treat your customers.”
“Unforgivable,” Anders said. “Heaven will take note.”
She sucked in her cheeks but stared past him and said nothing. Anders saw that the other woman, her friend, was looking in the same
direction. And then the tellers stopped what they were doing, and the customers slowly turned, and silence came over the bank. Two
men wearing black ski masks and blue business suits were standing to the side of the door. One of them had a pistol pressed against
the guard’s neck. The guard’s eyes were closed, and his lips were moving. The other man had a sawed-off shotgun. “Keep your big
mouth shut!” the man with the pistol said, though no one had spoken a word. “One of you tellers hits the alarm, you’re all dead meat.
Got it?”
The tellers nodded.
“Oh, bravo, “Anders said. “Dead meat.” He turned to the woman in front of him. “Great script, eh?
The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes.”
28
She looked at him with drowning eyes.
The man with the shotgun pushed the guard to his knees. He handed up the shotgun to his partner and yanked the guard’s wrists up
behind his back and locked them together with a pair of handcuffs. He toppled him onto the floor with a kick between the shoulder
blades. Then he took his shotgun back and went over to the security gate at the end of the counter. He was short and heavy and
moved with peculiar slowness, even torpor. “Buzz him in,” his partner said. The man with the shotgun opened the gate and sauntered
along the line of tellers, handing each of them a Hefty bag. When he came to the empty position he looked over at the man with the
pistol, who said, “Whose slot is that?”
Anders watched the teller. She put her hand to her throat and turned to the man she’d been talking to. He nodded. “Mine,” she said.
“Then get your ugly ass in gear and fill that bag.”
“There you go,” Anders said to the woman in front of him. “Justice is done.”
“Hey! Bright boy! Did I tell you talk?”
“No,” Anders said.
“Then shut your trap.”
A famous short story by Earnest Hemingway about
two men who are planning a murder.
“Did you hear that?” Anders said. “’Bright boy.’ Right out of ‘The Killers’.”
“Please be quiet,” the woman said.
“Hey, you deaf or what?” The man with the pistol walked over to Anders. He poked the weapon into Anders’ gut. “You think I’m
playing games?”
“No,” Anders said, but the barrel tickled like a stiff finger and he had to fight back the titters. He did this by making himself stare into
the man’s eyes, which were clearly visible behind the holes in the mask: pale blue, and rawly red-rimmed. The man’s left eyelid kept
twitching. He breathed out a piercing, ammoniac smell that shocked Anders more than anything that had happened, and he was
beginning to develop a sense of unease when the man prodded him again with the pistol.
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“You like me, bright boy?” he said. “You want to suck my dick?”
“No,” Anders said.
“Then stop looking at me.”
Anders fixed his gaze on the man’s shiny wing-top shoes.
“Not down there. Up there.” He stuck the pistol under Anders’ chin and pushed it upward until Anders was looking at the ceiling.
Anders had never paid much attention to that part of the bank, a pompous old building with marble floors and counters and pillars, and
gilt scrollwork over the tellers’ cages. The domed ceiling had been decorated with mythological figures whose fleshy, toga-draped
ugliness Anders had taken in at a glance many years earlier and afterward declined to notice. Now he had no choice but to
scrutinize the painter’s work. It was even worse than he remembered, and all of it executed with the utmost gravity. The artist had a
few tricks up his sleeve and used them again and again – a certain rosy blush on the underside of the clouds, a coy backward glance on
the faces of the cupids and fauns. The ceiling was crowded with various dramas, but the one that caught Anders’ eye was Zeus and
Europa – portrayed, in this rendition, as a bull ogling a cow from behind a haystack. To make the cow sexy, the painter had canted her
hips suggestively and given her long, droopy eyelashes through which she gazed back at the bull with sultry welcome. The bull wore a
smirk and his eyebrows were arched. If there’d been a bubble coming out of his mouth, it would have said, “Hubba hubba.”
“What’s so funny, bright boy?”
“Nothing.”
“You think I’m comical? You think I’m some kind of clown?”
“No.”
“You think you can fuck with me?”
“No.”
“Fuck with me again, you’re history. Capiche?”
A slang word meaning “do you understand?”. It has
been used so much by ‘mobster’ types that now it
seems silly.
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Anders burst out laughing. He covered his mouth with both hands and said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” then snorted helplessly through his
fingers and said, “Capiche – oh, God, capiche,” and at that the man with the pistol raised the pistol and shot Anders right in the head.
The bullet smashed Anders’ skull and ploughed through his brain and exited behind his right ear, scattering shards of bone into the
cerebral cortex, the corpus callosum, back toward the basal ganglia, and down into the thalamus.
Parts of the brain.
But before all this occurred, the first appearance of the bullet in the cerebrum set off a crackling chain
of ion transports and neuro-transmissions. Because of their peculiar origin these traced a peculiar pattern, flukishly calling to life a
summer afternoon some forty years past, and long since lost to memory. After striking the cranium the bullet was moving at 900 feet
per second, a pathetically sluggish, glacial pace compared to the synaptic lighting that flashed around it. Once in the brain, that is, the
bullet came under the mediation of brain time, which gave Anders plenty of leisure to contemplate the scene that, in a phrase he would
have abhorred, “passed before his eyes.”
It is worth noting what Ambers did not remember, given what he did remember. He did not remember his first lover, Sherry, or what
he had most madly loved about her, before it came to irritate him – her unembarrassed carnality, and especially the cordial way she
had with his unit, which she called Mr. Mole, as in, “Uh-oh, looks like Mr. Mole wants to play,” and “Let’s hide Mr. Mole!.” Anders
did not remember his wife, whom he had also loved before she exhausted him with her predictability, or his daughter, now a sullen
professor of economics at Dartmouth. He did not remember standing just outside his daughter’s door as she lectured her bear about his
naughtiness and described the truly appalling punishments Paws would receive unless he changed his ways. He did not remember a
single line of the hundreds of poems he had committed to memory in his youth so that he could give himself the shivers at will – not
“Silent, upon a peak in Darien,” or “My God, I heard this day,” or “All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?” None of
these did he remember; not one. Anders did not remember his dying mother saying of his father, “I should have stabbed him in his
sleep.”
He did not remember Professor Josephs telling his class how Athenian prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite
Aeschylus, and then reciting Aeschylus himself, right there, in the Greek. Anders did not remember how his eyes had burned at those
sounds. He did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate’s name on the jacket of a novel not long after they graduated,
or the respect he had felt after reading the book. He did not remember the pleasure of giving respect.
Nor did Anders remember seeing a woman leap to her death from the building opposite his own just days after his daughter was born.
He did not remember shouting, “Lord have mercy!” He did not remember deliberately crashing his father’s car in to a tree, of having
his ribs kicked in by three policemen at an anti-war rally, or waking himself up with laughter. He did not remember when he
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began to regard the heap of books on his desk with boredom and dread, or when he grew angry at writers for writing them. He did not
remember when everything began to remind him of something else.
This is what he remembered. Heat. A baseball field. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the
neighborhood gather for a pickup game. He looks on as the others argue the relative genius of Mantle and Mays. They have been
worrying this subject all summer, and it has become tedious to Anders: an oppression, like the heat.
Famous American
baseball players.
Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. Anders has never met
Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen
sides and someone asks the cousin what position he wants to play.
“Shortstop,” the boy says. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at him. He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat
what he’s just said, but he knows better than to ask. The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar. But that
isn’t it, not at all – it’s that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. He
takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself.
The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled
skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. That can’t be helped.
But for now Anders can still make time. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying
ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.
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Teacher Sample – with components
Write a short story that begins with the following sentence:
“The bus didn’t stop.”
Use the exact sentence from the prompt.
Not the Worst Day Ever
The bus didn’t stop. Marcie watched as it drove right past the stop on Greenback Avenue
where she stood, shivering in the icy breath of the January morning. She frowned.
She stood there for a whole three minutes debating in her head whether she should just give
up and go home to bed or walk the 27,000 blocks to school. She was almost ready to turn around
when she remembered that she had to retake her Math midterm that day. She sighed loudly, zipped
her heavy coat higher up her neck, readjusted her hat, and stomped off in the direction of school. It
was the worst day ever.
First her stupid brother let Dickens out into the snow that morning and the large yellow
Labrador came back into the house soaking wet and decided to crawl into bed with her – bad.
When she went down to breakfast, her mother gave her the ‘good’ news that Mrs. Colson had
called and wanted Marcie to baby-sit for her two devils that night and while Marcie was glad it
meant $30 in her pocket, she was not looking forward to spending time with those two brats – also
bad. Now the bus hadn’t picked her up. And of course there was also her Math test – the
awfulness, like an avalanche, was falling on top of her. Yes, it was the worst day ever.
When she got to the corner of Melvin Drive and Lancaster Street, the light changed and she
stopped on the curb to wait. A dark blue beast came skidding to a halt beside her and its large tires
splashed up a sheet of ice water and melted snow onto her legs. She screamed and jumped, trying to
avoid the water but her feet slipped on the ice and she fell backwards, slamming down hard on the
freezing pavement. She landed in a mound of sloppy slush and snow and Marcie gasped as a
freezing fire spread through her clothes to her skin.
Mention one CHARACTER, give the
SETTING, and describe what it is like there.
If you haven’t already given the CONFLICT,
do it here.
Say what is going on NOW in the story.
Say what events, the BACKGROUND, led to
the current situation.
Return to what is happening NOW and add
more events to lead to the CLIMAX. This
moment should be a SCENE – which means
it has specific details, happens in real time,
and has DIALOGUE.
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She couldn’t bring herself to get up; she was too cold and too miserable. In the distance, she
heard a car door slam and then felt someone standing over her.
“I’m so sorry,” said a boy’s voice. “That was really stupid of me.”
Marcie looked up – Dalton Walsh was looking down at her. Marcie was pretty sure that
Dalton Walsh, the school’s star soccer goalie and one of the most popular boys, had never looked at
her before but he was there now, staring at her with his eyes wide.
Dalton reached down to help Marcie up.
“Are you okay?” he asked, then shook his head. “Of course you’re not, you’re freezing.
Here, get in my truck and I’ll give you a ride home. You can change and then I’ll drive you to
school.”
For a moment Marcie wondered if she had hit her head when she fell onto the ice but when
Dalton took her hand and guided her to the door of the truck, she decided that this was in fact real.
Maybe today was going not going to be the worst day ever after all.
WC: 510
Write a RESOLUTION, where you resolve
the conflict, and create and END. Try, if
possible, to connect it back to the
beginning or the title.
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Teacher Sample – with figurative language
Not the Worst Day Ever
The bus didn’t stop. Marcie watched as it drove right
past the stop on Greenback Avenue where she stood, shivering in
the icy breath (PERSONIFICATION) of the January morning.
She frowned.
She stood there for a whole three minutes debating in her
head whether she should just give up and go home to bed or walk
the 27,000 blocks (HYPERBOLE) to school. She was almost
ready to turn around when she remembered that she had to retake
her Math midterm that day. She sighed loudly, zipped her heavy coat higher up her neck, readjusted
her hat, and stomped off in the direction of school. It was the worst day ever.
First her stupid brother let Dickens out into the snow that morning and the large yellow
Labrador came back into the house soaking wet and decided to crawl into bed with her – bad. When
she went down to breakfast, her mother gave her the ‘good’ news that Mrs. Colson had called and
wanted Marcie to baby-sit for her two devils (METAPHOR) that night and while Marcie was glad it
meant $30 in her pocket, she was not looking forward to spending time with those two brats – also bad.
Now the bus hadn’t picked her up. And of course there was also her Math test – the awfulness, like an
avalanche (SIMILE), was falling on top of her. Yes, it was the worst day ever.
When she got to the corner of Melvin Drive and Lancaster Street, the light changed and she
stopped on the curb to wait. A dark blue beast (METAPHOR) came skidding to a halt beside her and
its large tires splashed up a sheet of ice water and melted snow onto her legs. She screamed and
jumped, trying to avoid the water, but her feet slipped on the ice and she fell backwards, slamming
down hard on the freezing pavement. She landed in a mound of sloppy slush and snow
(ALLITERATION) and Marcie gasped as a freezing fire (OXYMORON & ALLITERATION)
spread through her clothes to her skin.
She couldn’t bring herself to get up; she was too cold and too miserable. In the distance, she
heard a car door slam and then felt someone standing over her.
“I’m so sorry,” said a boy’s voice. “That was really stupid of me.”
Marcie looked up – Dalton Walsh was looking down at her. Marcie was pretty sure that Dalton
Walsh, the school’s star soccer goalie and one of the most popular boys, had never looked at her before
but he was there now, staring at her with his eyes wide.
Dalton reached down to help Marcie up.
“Are you okay?” he asked, then shook his head. “Of course you’re not, you’re freezing. Here,
get in my truck and I’ll give you a ride home. You can change and then I’ll drive you to school.”
For a moment Marcie wondered if she had hit her head when she fell onto the ice but when
Dalton took her hand and guided her to the door of the truck, she decided that this was in fact real.
Maybe today was going not going to be the worst day ever after all.
WC: 510
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Teacher Sample
Prompt: “The big decision” Write a narrative composition with this as a title.
The Big Decision
Ben moved uncomfortably in the driver’s seat of the car and nervously checked out the
mirror to see if anyone was watching the car. He worriedly scratched at the beard that was
starting to grown on his face – he figured he’d better shave or his mother would yell at him.
In the backseat, Kyle and Darren were digging into their bags. They pulled out three
black ski masks and Kyle handed one into the front seat to Paul.
“Now remember,” Paul said, “we go in together. Kyle, you take the back of the store and
make sure there is no one leaving out the back door. Darren, you use the baseball bat to knock
out the video camera. I’ll take the cashier.”
Darren sniffed loudly and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “What about the cops? The
cashier might have like a button to call the cops.”
Kyle laughed. “Don’t be stupid man. It’s a convenience store – not a bank. There’s no
magic button.”
“All you have to worry about is the camera, Darren. I’ll worry about the cashier.” Paul
took a last drag on his cigarette then tossed it out the window. “And you, Benny, don’t forget.
Have the car running so that we can just drive outta here real fast.”
Ben nodded his head slowly.
The robbery had been Paul’s idea, just like everything always was. Paul pretty much ran
everything for the four of them. In Ben’s mind, Kyle was the pretty boy – the one that always
got the girls; Darren was the sheep – he followed everything everyone else did; and Paul was the
one in charge – even if you didn’t want to do what he said, you still did. He had that way of
looking at you (or sometimes slamming you into a wall) and you just agreed to whatever he said.
And Ben…who was Ben? This question often bothered Ben and it seemed like he had been
thinking about it ever since Paul brought up the idea last week. Now he was there, sitting in the
car, Paul in the seat beside him and his friend (or this guy who he sometimes thought of as a
friend) wanted to rob some place.
Paul pulled on his ski mask and told the others to
get out of the car. He motioned to Ben to start the engine
and then he too jumped out. The three boys walked into the
convenience store and Ben watched them until they were
out of sight. He heard a low scream and then nothing. He
felt sweat start to run down the back of his neck. What was
he doing here? Was he this guy – the guy that just listens
and does stupid things because his friends do them? Was
he like Darren – a sheep?
He caught his face in the mirror, his sharp blue eyes
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staring back at him. No, he thought, I am not that guy. He put the car into drive and taking a
deep breath, he pulled away from the curb and started down the street. Suddenly he heard a loud
banging on the side of the car – Darren and Kyle, without their ski masks, were pounding on the
windows.
“Man, let us in. This is crazy!” Darren’s face was screwed up. He looked terrified.
Ben stopped and the two boys jumped in. Kyle coughed and slammed his fist into the
seat cushion.
“He’s got a gun, dude.” Kyle’s voice shook. “Paul’s got a gun.”
Ben took one last look back at the store and then punched the car forward. As the boys
sped away, a gunshot rang out across the street.
It was a long walk down the aisle to the front. The casket was open and a large picture of
Paul stood beside it. His mother’s sobs echoed in the large room. At first Ben shuffled his feet,
feeling both shame and guilt but as he got closer to the body of his friend (or this guy who he
sometimes thought of as a friend) he started to feel something else. Anger built up inside him,
anger and resolve. What Paul had done was stupid, stupid and unforgivable. But he, Ben, had
been stupid too he knew; stupid to let himself get mixed up with someone like that. He took his
seat behind some of the others from school and motioned for the other two boys to sit next to
him. Kyle and Darren took a long look at Paul’s body and then sat down.
WC: 750 (too long for EFL)
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STUDENT SAMPLE
Prompt: Write a story that begins with the line, “The snow was falling so heavily that it
was hard to see the road.”
The Wrong Face.
The snow was falling so heavily that it was hard to see the road. Jacky got up, putting on
his coat, and then washed his face. After dropping some
bread in his mouth, Jacky took his umbrella and left the
dormitory.
The falling snow was impressively big. Jacky was
making footsteps in the snow. Luckily, it was not too bad
and the ground was not so slippery as to make him fall over.
On the way to his classroom, Jacky met the girl he liked, but
he just followed her because he hadn’t prepared what to say.
After one minute, Jacky opened up his mouth and barely pronounced the easiest word, “Hi.”
Because it was a cold winter day, both of them wore a lot, so it was not easy for the girl to rotate
her neck – she just rotated her neck about 90 degrees to respond to Jacky’s comment.
Jacky then said, “It is so cold today, isn’t it?”
The girl responded, “It sure is.”
“I have some hot water, would you like to have some to warm yourself up?”
“Thank you. That’s so nice of you.”
After a few minutes of silence, Jacky made an audacious decision: he asked the girl a
question. “Can we have lunch together at noon? I’m lonely at that time.”
“Of course we can,” the girl responded immediately.
At that time, there were no words to describe how happy Jacky was. During the whole
morning, Jacky’s attention was totally out of class and he was wondering what to say and how to
behave the whole time.
The morning was so long, but finally the lunchtime came; Jacky rushed to the café room.
But he was shocked when he opened the door – he saw Lionel and his girlfriend, Susanne, sitting
on the sofa waiting for him. Jacky then realized that because of the heavy snow, he just thought
that Susanne was the girl he liked because they looked so similar in the snow. Jacky was
embarrassed and didn’t know what to do then.
Lionel opened up his mouth and said, “What a day! Jacky wants to have a meal with us!”
Luckily Jacky and Lionel knew each other and Jacky also knew Susanne which made the
situation not become too strange. So he smiled and sat down, trying to behave as if nothing had
happened.
After finishing the meal, Jacky walked out of the café room and laughed. ‘What a funny
experience!,’ he thought. He then thought that he was pretty lucky because he hadn’t talked to a
girl that morning whose boyfriend he didn’t know. It was the only good news, perhaps.
WC: 442
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Questions
Please answer the questions assigned by your teacher.
1.
Read “When the Wasps Drowned” by Clare Wigfall. Look carefully at the first six paragraphs.
How does Wigfall create a sense of oppression, threat and danger in the first six paragraphs?
2.
Read “Ladybirds for Lunch”' by Hanif Kureishi. Note down what your impressions of the main
characters in this story are – how do you feel about them? How does Kureishi help us get to know the
characters in such a short time?
3.
Read “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe. How does Poe use language to create suspense
in this story?
4.
Read the chapter 'My Feelings' from the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan
Safran Foer. Why do you think Foer has chosen to write in the first person (ie. 'I') rather than the third
person (ie. 'she')? What are the advantages of the first person perspective in this extract?
5.
How is time used in “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff? What is different or unique about
time in this story as compared to most stories? How does this technique help/enhance the story?
6.
In “My Little Lime Green Lie” by Charles Antin, why does the author lie to his father about the
tree? Why does he say that his father believes the lie? What is the author trying to tell us about people
and TRUTH with this short story?
7.
In “A&P” by John Updike, what motivates the main character, Sammy, to leave his job at the end
of the story? What is Updike trying to tell us about him? What do you think Sammy means when he says
in the last line, “…my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me
hereafter”?
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Word and Page
Definition
Word and Page
Definition
Word and Page
Definition