Ampersand, Mass.

By William Walsh

One of the most original and intelligent writers publishing in the indie lit world today, William Walsh impresses again with this collection of odd/funny/sad/surprising stories about the citizens of Ampersand, Mass. in all their flawed and compelling humanity. Walsh’s stories are both innovative and deeply moving. A rare and brilliant combination.
— Kathy Fish, author of Tenderoni

Ampersand, Mass. is a glorious and ripe bruise. Walsh’s stories sneak, peer through curtains – there is a town here, inside of his words, and it is shaking us. Ampersand, Mass. should be ingested whole, deeply. These are characters to haunt us from within.
— J. A. Tyler, author of A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed

William Walsh is the author of Pathologies, Questionstruck (both from Keyhole Press) and Without Wax: A Documentary Novel (Casperian Books). His stories and texts have appeared in Annalemma, Artifice, Caketrain, Quick Fiction, Rosebud, New York Tyrant, Lit, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Juked, The &Now Anthology: Best of Innovative Writing,and Dzanc Best of the Web 2010.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keyhole Press
• Release date: Aug 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452488783

William Walsh

William Walsh is the author of seven other books, including the award-winning collection of poems, Fly Fishing in Times Square (Červená Barva Press). He is the director of the Reinhardt University undergraduate creative writing program and the MFA program. Widely published in some of the finest journals including Five Points, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, and Literary Matters, he is also known for his literary interviews, which have included: Czeslaw Milosz, Joseph Brodsky, A.R. Ammons, Richard Blanco, Eavan Boland, Pat Conroy, Harry Crews, James Dickey, Rita Dove, Mary Hood, Ursula Le Guin, Andrew Lytle, and Lee Smith. Born in Jamestown, NY and raised in Lakewood until moving south in 1972, his historical family has resided in Chautauqua County since pre-Revolutionary War. A graduate of Georgia State University and Vermont College, he resides in Atlanta with his family. He is the director of the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs at Reinhardt University, in Waleska, where he teaches literature and creative writing. He is the editor of the James Dickey Review. When not writing, he spends time with his family, enjoys competitive tennis and golf, as well as playing chess internationally.

Book preview

Ampersand, Mass.

stories

William Walsh

Keyhole Press

an imprint of Dzanc Books

www.keyholepress.com

Ampersand, Mass. Copyright © 2011 by William Walsh. Smashwords Edition. All rights reserved. Source texts presented with permission of the author. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Portions of Ampersand, Mass. originally appeared in AnnaLemma & Crescent Review & FlatmanCrooked & Issues & Keyhole & LIT & McSweeney’s Internet Tendency & Night Train & Onionhead & Pank & Pear Noir & Rosebud & The Q Review & Quarterly West & Quick Fiction & Sulphur River Literary Review & Tatlin’s Tower & Titular & Wheelhouse & Necessary Fiction.

Cover design by Peter Cole.

ISBN: 978-1-4524-8878-3

Contents

I.

A Bed for Sleeping

Two Pies (A Story in Outline)

The Five Events

Brother Hobo, Brother Hermit

Master

Murphy Bed

Dr. Maroon

II.

Chaos

Pathology

A Prayer to the Patron Saint of Pretty Girls

Footboy

Icewater

The Apple on Your Head

Hard Lady

Muse

The Kennedys

III.

Barber vs. Heart Disease

Substitute

Mr. & Mrs. Abbott & Costello

Rations

Walt Williams & the Vibrating Sofa

A Bed for Sleeping

Between naps I go down to Rosano’s Fish. Joe Rosano lets me go out back where you can see the whole fish before it becomes just a fillet without a head or tail. Their eyes are wide open, all pupil. With some, it seems as if they don’t have any lids.

I ask Joe if fish sleep with their eyes open, like horses sleep standing up.

He gives me that look he gives me. I don’t know, he says. They’re fish. It’s how they taste.

Out front, I count my money, wondering if I need breadcrumbs or lemons. Even if I don’t, I can always use more. Besides, there’s a new unseasoned breadcrumb that I’ve been wanting to try.

I get three lemons because they look good and because Scott has taught me how to juggle. When I graduate to eggs I’ll show off for May, if we ever make it as far as breakfast.

Joe pushes the bluefish, then he pushes the scrod and then he pushes the tuna steaks. He likes to give the impression that he caught every fish in the case himself.

Joe, I say. You know I’m a haddock man from way back.

The phone is ringing when I get to my apartment. I answer it the way I have been lately, without saying hello. It’s rude, I know, but they called me. Also, I think it’s funny.

My mother doesn’t think it’s so funny. She asks me where I’ve been. She says she had to let the phone ring eleven times.

I was at Rosano’s Fish, I say.

I didn’t know you liked fish.

Just recently, I say.

She asks me how school is and I tell her fine. I still haven’t let her know that I’m not going anymore.

She asks me how I like living off campus. Is it better than the dorms? she asks.

Yes.

Before she hangs up, she asks me if she should send money.

I tell her it’s up to her.

Back in my bed again, I fall asleep as soon as I shut my eyes. Since I’ve dropped out, all I want to do is sleep. More than that, I’ve found it’s the one thing I do really well. I love sleeping. I guess you could say it’s what I do best.

Scott is just the opposite. For him, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the things he wants to do. Sleep just gets in the way. He regards sleep as a necessary inconvenience, and most of the time when he is in his bed, he isn’t alone and he isn’t sleeping.

He’s good with girls. It comes easy to him. It’s what he excels at. I’ve seen a lot of girls go into his room, and some of them I didn’t see come back out again. But that’s only because they left early the next morning before I woke up.

Aside from my mother and now May, there have only been two women in my life. The first was Penny, my imaginary friend from age three to five. The second was Lily. Lily was from last semester. She lived down the hall from me in the dorm. We slept together on the weekends when it seemed like it was only the two of us left behind after everybody else went on their way. But all we ever did when we slept together was sleep.

The unseasoned breadcrumbs really let the true flavor of the haddock sing, and the lemons are an event. They taste more lemony than any other lemons I have ever had. I cook enough for Scott, but a girl name Beth is on her way over and he doesn’t want to be smelling of fish. When she arrives, Scott introduces me as Chris Fish.

Scott and Beth spread their books out on the kitchen table, tack a map of the human body on the wall above the toaster. I bring the phone into my room to call May. She answers on the first ring, Yellow.

I say, Green, orange and bluefish.

She says, The dish towels are drying on the rack.

To which I reply, The shoes that you sent fit me quite nicely, cousin Eugenia.

It started out as a little joke between us after I made fun of the way her hello, sounded like yellow. But it has evolved into a kind of cryptic code that’s always changing. I’m sure May gets more of a kick out of it than I do. Occasionally, she uses a sly Germanic accent for enhanced effect.

She says, Shirley is pretty name for a girl.

I say, I used a new kind of breadcrumb on my haddock this evening.

When she stops laughing, I ask her what she’s doing.

Reading.

I don’t have to ask her what. She’s been on a Sarah Orne Jewett kick for the past month.

I ask her if she wants to come over or if she wants me to visit her.

Neither, she says. She has a lot of work to do and an early class in the morning. But be sure to call me tomorrow night.

As I step from my room with the phone, the door to Scott’s room is closing. I stick my head into the kitchen to see their books stacked in two neat piles on the table. The human body map is still up.

The thing about our living room is we have two couches. There’s the one I sit on when I want to watch television, and there’s the one I sit on when I want to listen to what’s going on in Scott’s room.

I sit and hear Scott say, Urine, feces, sweat, jism, spit, snot. What else?

Beth says, Ear wax.

Ear wax, Scott says, adding it to their list with an official tone. But he vetoes navel lint, saying, That’s just dried sweat.

Beth says, Blood.

No, Scott says. That’s only when you cut yourself.

Beth clears her throat and says, On behalf of womankind, I beg to differ.

Scott says, Okay. Blood.

They’re quiet for a time, then Scott says, Oh, breath, or maybe he says, Oh, Beth. I can’t be sure. They’re quiet again, but for longer this time and not exactly quiet. They’re just not saying anything.

I’m thinking of the spray that comes out of your mouth sometimes when you yawn, but I figure Scott would say that would fall under spit.

Then it dawns on me. The one they aren’t getting. The obvious one. Tears.

I’m asleep when the delivery guy comes with the fish tank from my mother. When I answer the door, he says, I have a robe just like yours. I sign where he tells me to and give him back his clipboard. My wife gave it to me, he says.

At first, I don’t know it’s a fishtank. It isn’t until I open the smaller box packed inside the tank and take out the pink crushed stones, the little treasure chest, the frogman, and the filter, that I understand. Then I read her note:

Christopher,

You’ll have to stock this pond on your own!

The young man at the pet shop said it wouldn’t be a very good idea to ship the tropical fish I had picked out for you unless I could be assured they would be kept at a constant temperature while en route.

Please find enclosed check. It should be enough to buy as many pretty colored fish as you could possibly want at that fish place you go to.

Love,

Your Mother

As soon as I step through the door, Joe says, Another day, another haddock.

I say, Joe, you must be psychic.

He asks me to come out back, there’s someone he wants me to meet. The someone is his grandson, Little Joe.

On the way to his office, Joe explains that Little Joe has just had an operation. Kid was in the hospital six days, Joe says. Today’s his first day out. He’ll be six this Saturday.

Little Joe has a light blue surgical cap on and a face mask is hanging around his neck. There’s a plastic dinosaur on the tabletop that’s attached to his wheelchair. Both of his legs are in casts with metal braces screwed into the plaster at his knees and ankles.

Joe introduces me as a friend from the old days and Little Joe and I shake hands. I point to his dinosaur and ask him what his friend’s name is.

He doesn’t have a name.

If he doesn’t have a name, how’s he going to come when you call him?

Little Joe says, Dinosaurs had two brains, one in their heads and one in their tails.

That must be why they were so smart.

No, says Little Joe. They’re all dead. Then he asks me, Do you know what the dinosaurs died from?

No.

He turns to Joe, asks him the same question. Joe shakes his head.

Extinction, says Little Joe.

Once he sees that Joe and I aren’t laughing with him, he says, It’s a joke. He repeats the punch line for us again, Extinction.

Instead of going back to my place I go directly to May’s.

I’m standing in the hall outside her room, right in front of her door, but I’m not knocking. I’m thinking about Little Joe and about his operation.

They had to break my legs in two places, he explained. Then they put pins in to make them stop growing wrong.

I put my ear to May’s door, but I can’t hear anything. I picture her sitting on her bed, wearing one of her Little House on the Prairie dresses, reading Sarah Orne Jewett like it’s going out of style.

I don’t want to give my dinosaur a name, Little Joe had said as I was leaving.

It doesn’t matter that I don’t knock on May’s door because she isn’t in her room. She’s standing behind me, her arms filled with books.

It’s good you’re here, she says. Reach into my pocketbook and get my keys.

In her room, she drops her books on her roommate’s bed and opens a window. She sits on her bed and takes off her shoes.

What have you got? she says

I hold up my package of fish and say, What? This?

Yes, she says. That.

After I say, Fish, I worry that maybe she had thought I’d bought her a box of candy or some other nice gift.

Fish, she says, making a funny face. I don’t know what the big deal is.

Then she picks up her phone, though it hasn’t rung, and says, Yellow.

I’m a little slow in catching on, and May gives me an impatient look.

Green, orange and bluefish, I say.

May says, The almanac has promised us a mild winter and an early spring.

I say the only thing I can think