The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Jane DoeDirector: Lindsey Story
Photographer: Jasmine Thompson Stylists: Amy Gatewood and Sidney Shuman Model: Sarah Hatley Makeup: Rachel Thibault QuailBellMagazine.com The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The CatBy Beth J. Whiting QuailBellMagazine.com Talluah looked at the school administrator seriously. “I want my child to be enrolled.” The principal had to hide his smile. “I’m sorry, but it’s a cat.” “It’s the only thing I have. I would like to give it an education.” “Throw a ball. That should be good enough.” Talluah frowned. Talluah was an old woman. It appeared that she was starting to lose it. Her leggings were bunched up. Her pure white hair was thrown together in a bun. Her glasses reached forward to the tip of her nose. She had on a knitted white sweater. She was a plump woman, and she wasn’t going down without a fight. “I don’t see what’s wrong with putting it in with the kindergartners.” “Do I have to tell you that animals and humans thank differently? Kids are far more advanced. The cat will only take up space. It will also shed its hair all over the place.” “I’ve been telling Kitty for the past year about this. You’ll break her heart if she doesn’t get enrolled.” It didn’t help that the tiny cat gave him a sad, mopey face. “It will try the best it can.” “Why don’t you take it to an animal school?” The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Buzzin' AroundDirector: Lindsey Story
Photographer: Jasmine Thompson Stylists: Amy Gatewood and Sidney Shuman Makeup: Rachel Thibault Model: Paula Blue QuailBellMagazine.com The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Late Breakfast at the CorvairBy Matt Tompkins QuailBellMagazine.com The baby showed up on a Wednesday, the day Evan learned about his Uncle Jim’s death. Jim died unexpectedly in his sleep; they still didn’t know the cause—maybe a heart attack, maybe a stroke. They would find out before long, and it wouldn’t change anything. The cause, Evan thought, was not nearly as important as the reality of the loss. The force of the grief—sudden, unanticipated, heart shattering—hit Evan like a satellite fallen from the sky. On the phone, after she broke the news, Evan’s mother said something to him about arrangements and services, but he had a hard time focusing on her words. She just kept saying how sorry she was to be telling him. After a few minutes, neither of them knew what else to say, so they said goodbye. Evan left for work that morning in a stupor, and he remained at work all that day in a fog, typing absentmindedly at his computer, daydreaming through meetings, staring at sheaves of paper, trying—and failing—to pull meaningful information from memos and PowerPoint presentations, staring at them as if they were inscrutable hieroglyphs. Everything, everywhere, reminded Evan of his uncle. Seeing a manager pat one of his subordinates on the back, coach-like, Evan remembered Jim standing on the sidelines at hundreds of tee-ball and little league games. He could hear Jim’s voice: “Bring it home, kiddo!” Jim called Evan “kiddo” long past when Evan could rightly have been called a kid, and Evan had always liked that. A crumpled sheet of paper in a recycling bin brought to Evan’s mind the crinkly lines around Jim’s eyes, lines that never fully relaxed because Jim was nearly always grinning. Even when he was serious, his eyes seemed to be smiling compassionately. The sound of a car’s revving engine outside in the parking lot—even this made Evan think of his uncle. The story went like this: When Evan was an infant his father disappeared suddenly, without warning or explanation. According to Evan’s mother, Evan’s father’s car was just gone from the driveway one morning and neither the car, nor the father, ever returned. For years after Evan first heard the story, his heart skipped a beat every time he heard a car engine running outside the house. Jim, on the other hand—at least, to hear Evan’s mother tell it—never skipped a beat, never hesitated: Without any unnecessary fuss or formality, he stepped in as Evan’s father figure, like most people step into their shoes in the morning. As Evan understood it, Jim and his wife, Helen, hadn’t been able to have kids. As a result, Jim had seemed to relish the opportunity to unofficially adopt Evan. Eventually, Evan came to associate the sound of a car engine with Jim, rather than with his absent father, because Jim so frequently came to pick Evan up for weekend or afternoon excursions. Evan remembered, with a swirling mixture of fondness and sadness, some of the outings that Jim had taken him on, to ball games, parks, zoos. Jim had been there for Evan’s birthdays and graduations. He had accompanied Evan to Bring-Your-Parent-to-School Day when Evan was in third grade and his mother got called in to cover a shift at work. Memories like this shadowed Evan through the day, cropping up at every corner, and precluding, with their persistence and omnipresence, any bit of functional, work-oriented thought. At one point, Evan walked to the copy room and made 500 copies of a blank sheet of paper, came back to his desk, and only then realized what he had done. He stood up to take the ream of paper back to the copy room, but then immediately sat back down in his swivel chair and picked up a pen from his desk. He pulled a sheet of paper off the top of the thick stack and wrote: “Breakfast with Uncle Jim. Friday. 8:00.” The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
On the Run, Not Left BehindBy Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com Clifton could not read, but since he was quiet, nobody knew—except for me. He crouched behind a book like a rabbit hides behind a rock as a fox sniffs; quivering, shivering, terrified of the claws as much as the cruel hees and haws that would surely fill the classroom if any of them discovered what I had. Clifton could not write, but since he was quiet, nobody saw—except for me. He slipped under papers like a seal escapes beneath the glaciers to the sea, wiggling through ice and tearing through numbing waters to avoid the spears that would surely pierce his pride if any of them discovered what I had. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Scare TacticsBy John Grey QuailBellMagazine.com Make me read Chaucer will you. Force Dickens, Tolstoy down my throat. Instill in me the literary genius of long dead white men until I’ve got Dante coming out my ears. Okay, so we sip more gentile Jane Austen from time to time. And Wuthering Heights, though wasn’t that a Kate Bush song. You plop me in a chair and may as well strap me to it. You open up a book, typical bright light in the eyes job. You start reciting Wordsworth, stop at the end of the first line, slap my face a little with rhythm and meter, demand to know what does the poet mean. I swear I have an alibi. I wasn’t born in 1830. I didn’t drown Shelley. I didn’t tell Emily Dickinson her work was totally unfit for publication. I just wandered into this literature class because mathematics was a kilometer over my head. I haven’t read a book in years. And that was just a paperback I picked up in an airport store. It wasn’t Homer. It sure wasn’t F. Scott Fitzgerald. Just the story of some megalomaniac who wanted to take over the entire world. Make everybody read Dostoyevsky or something. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
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