The Amateur Masters: Essays, Poetry & Fiction

By Pinewood Books

THE AMATEUR MASTERS is a collection of short pieces from an eclectic group of writers, poets, and memoirists. In this anthology, each author exposes a little piece of themselves with a comfort, trust, and companionship of a long lost friend. Every piece fits together, conjuring brilliant memories that burn like a camp fire. And like camp fire tales, it is the warmth around the fire that brings each unique work together.

A good line can change your core body temperature, make you feel whole, or it can shake you to pieces. Sometimes you ache for that missing piece, yearn for it, like a loved one far away. Sometimes it is that simple task of searching that gives you a hope of redemption. We hope that every work in this anthology will spark your curiosity, and linger with you like the embers of a fire long gone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pinewood Books
• Release date: Jan 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310075261

Book preview

The Amateur Masters: Smashwords Edition

Edited by Jeff Simonds & Dominic Perri

Published by Pinewood Books at Smashwords

Copyright 2013, Pinewood Books

All rights reserved by the original authors

Artwork by Lisa Beerle

Pinewood Books Logo by Colby Grenier

Visit us at http://www.pinewoodbooks.com

CONTENTS

Megan Taylor

A Day At The Tire Store (March 22) ● Mermaids ● Blue ● The Lottery

Dominic Perri

The Canines

Jane Summer

Furnished Room

Katy Chatel

Peach Trees ● Posing Pregnant

Jeff Simonds

Apophis

Katy June Abrams

Seven ● Nine ● Eleven ● Thirteen

Jordan Neville

Sketch #8 (The Cleopatra) ● Sketch #43 (How To Grow Your Own Candy)

Andrew J. Kerbel

Navigations (Suite)

Kelsey Knoedler

Sehr Erfreut ● The Corners Of My Dreams ● Peach Tea

Jigsaw ● Loving Him Was Like Ordering A Coke

Thomas Palmer

Cordyceps

Megan Taylor

A DAY AT THE TIRE STORE

(March 22)

The air compressor kicks on. We’ve just finished a few cars, and everybody’s left for the time being. It’s just us now—just the staff. The mechanics shuffle into the office, their uniforms, when they wear them, streaked with grease and bright green fix-a-flat. I don’t mind them coming in, but I am aware that when my father was alive, when he ran the store, they did not come inside, did not touch the inventory books with those greasy hands.

The five of them sit in the wooden chairs my father reupholstered; the seats are wrapped with deep, ocean blue leather like you’d find on a boat and pinned on the underside to hold them in place.

There is a moment of silence in an otherwise clamorous place.

Chad speaks up: I don’t know about you, but I attract psych cases and crack heads and actresses, mostly.

Ken: Fuck that. I’m done with women. I ditched every one. Minimal commitment—that’s what you want.

I interrupt (addressing Ken): What about Wendy? Weren’t you seeing her for a while?

Ken: I got rid of her a long time ago. She threatened to have me arrested.

I wonder about this: arrested for what? My brother’s helping me at the front desk today. Ken turns in his direction.

Ken: Hey, Matt, it’s rice night down at the Chinese restaurant.

Matt: Rice night? (Matt smiles)

Ken: Yeah, don’t pretend like you don’t know. You know all about it. Get yourself a hog and bring her with ya.

Ken goes on. He tells no one and everyone who he fucked last week (apparently not Wendy). They talk over one another, never finishing a story before the next one starts, never listening to one another, just picking up their own story line again.

After sex, the topic turns to drugs. I don’t want to hear this for liability’s sake. They are discussing posh, a new drug on the market, and which of their friends is smoking it. They are discussing whether or not it should be legalized, this new drug. After drugs, the topic turns to cars: who is fixing what and when. Ken is putting a new engine in, Jason is trading this for that, Chad is sleeping with his girlfriend’s sister, and we’re back to sex.

I am paying bills at the counter. The air compressor kicks on. It grows busy again, and the mechanics head outside to jack up the cars. The seats are occupied by customers now. There is no rhyme or rhythm to this; we do not require appointments.

The mechanics are outside, the customers are inside, and I am behind the counter. This is the business side to the store, the side the customers see. Two boys come into the shop with their mother. She has a flat tire, and we find a screw in it. You got screwed, I think to myself. When a screw punctures the middle third of the tread it’s often fixable, but when it punctures too close to either sidewall, it’s not. The too-close-to-the-sidewall people always think I’m lying about this.

While we are patching her tire, the boys find the bucket of toys in the corner of the office by the coffee maker. Some are old toys, my toys from when I was a little girl, playing in the back office of this store, and the one before this, and the one before that. Some are new toys that my mother bought—toys we can give to the children when they go.

The boys bypass the dirty old fire engine and the cars and head straight for a couple of alligators. It was a set my mother bought at the dollar store: four alligators in swamp colors, a couple of flimsy palm trees, and three gray rocks.

The brown-haired boy suggests How about if my alligator kills your alligator?

His brother’s reply: Die, alligator, die!

They position the gators in a primal position, one’s mouth engulfing the other.

Earlier in the day, a mother came in with two girls. I think they were friends rather than sisters. They went straight for the alligators too, but they played house instead. One gator was the mommy, the other the daddy, and then there were the kid gators.

I am thinking about the girls playing house and the boys playing, well, kill, when Ken comes in from the outside. He has been searching for the tires for