Back Roads Literary Review Short Story Anthology - Spring 2024

By Michael Van Natta

Back Roads Literary Review Short Story Anthology Spring 2024 is a collection of short stories written by emerging authors addressing the themes of "Secrets, Subterfuge and Dissembling. This is the third biannual publication of this series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Back Roads Literary Review
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798988490456

Michael Van Natta

Michael Van Natta has been active in the writing world ever since he turned a fishing guide into a novel of unrequited love. He has written six other novels, and countless short stories, including "Grant Park" (Abaton, 2008).

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Short Stories – Spring 2024

Back Roads Literary Review

Michael Van Natta, Editor

Copyright © 2024 Back Roads Literary Review, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

ISBN: 979-8-9884904-5-6 (EPUB) Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Some of the places depicted are fictitious embellishments of actual places but beyond that, names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

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First printing edition 2024

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Contents

Short Stories – Spring 2024

Foreword

National Park Marcus Chevez

Kell Valarie Frederickson

VIP Nyssa Del Traken

Catspaw Stephen L. Brayton

Parched L.H. Dillman

Secret of the Red Fox Joann VanSchiz

Owner of a Lonely Heart Laura Butrell

Confession Davros Jovanka

A New Start Mary Walker

Final Curtain Stewart Lethbridge

The Pepperoni Perp Romana Tamm

Mustn’t Tell Deb Miller

Open Relationships Michael Roby

Premonitions D. Wayne Paxton

So Shall You Die Donovan Threse

Foreword

Alright, buckle up readers! The Spring edition of Back Roads Literary Review 2024 brings us into the juicy world of secrets, lies, and all that good stuff that keeps us turning the pages, reading way too late at night. From ancient epics to modern thrillers, these elements have been the bread and butter of storytelling, adding spice, intrigue, and a healthy dose of moral ambiguity to the mix. So, hold your known world close to your chest as we bend across genres of crime, mystery, thriller, humor, psychological suspense, horror, and probably all the rest. It’s no secret that secrets are ubiquitous and oh-so-delicious.

Let’s talk plot twists: Subterfuge on the part of the characters (and the authors) are the driving force behind some of the most heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat moments in literature. Take Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance. You’ve got murder, betrayal, and enough family drama to make the Kardashians blush–all thanks to one little secret about dear old Dad. And, of course, Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo. The granddaddy of revenge tales, where our boy Edmond dishes out justice disguised as a fabulously wealthy aristocrat. Some resonance in there somewhere these days?

These are not just plot devices–they can be windows into the human soul. Look at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, whose whole gig was built on an elaborate lie. Underneath that glitzy exterior lies a cautionary tale about the pursuit of the American Dream and the emptiness that can come with it. It’s like one big metaphorical slap in the face, reminding us that sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s better than living a lie. In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother is watching (still…more than 40 years later), and he’s got a front-row seat to all your dirty little secrets. It’s a cautionary tale on steroids, warning us about the dangers of living in a world where truth is just an oft-repeated sound byte by self-appointed truth-propagators and reality is whatever the powers-that-be say it is. Sound familiar?

Our collection from emerging writers is quite diverse as it circles around the themes, highlighting the diversity of their imagination. The Anthology includes a tale of Michael Roby’s Open Relationships; a story of suspense, supernatural intrigue, dark horror and unexpected twists, exploring the blurred lines between desire and danger, loyalty and betrayal. In The Pepperoni Perp, Romona Tamm gives us a hapless Hap who has everything figured out…except…except. This this theme is mirrored in Vip, by Nyssa Del Traken. Everyone knows fishing requires a certain amount of luck.

Starring at the face of an ethical dilemma, lawyer Ben Pearson, the main character in L. H. Dillman’s Parched, finds himself confronting corporate corruption for better or worse. It’s a tense story swirling around water rights and usage set in the desert southwest, a contemporary story that harkens back to Chinatown while evoking the current plight seen in today’s headlines.

Several of our stories seek to find humor and, if not peace then a certain contentment, in the very human nature of never completely knowing the chaotic world, the well-known strangers among us, even the self. In Mary Walker’s A New Start, a heartwarming tale wherein Gloria Canaday, a dedicated secretary, navigates the challenges of her high-pressure job while secretly longing for connection and meaning in her life. D. Wayne Paxton spins a poignant coming-of-age yarn where humans salve the tragedy of death with comic relief in So Shall You Die.

Clothed in World War II Chicago, soldier-wife factory worker Betty pines for a different, more glamourous life in Secret of the Red Fox, by Joann VanSchiz, only to discover the hard way that care must be exercised when wishing.

Then, sometimes the people we think we know the best disappoint us but as Laura Butrell hints at in Owners of a Lonely Heart, there are lessons and learning to be had.

Do cats evoke secrets? Is there something about the feline that is mysterious, unknowable? Several of our authors must think so because they’ve placed cats in a spotlight. In Catspaw, by Stephen Brayton, the obsessed and maniacal Johnathan Spangler finds himself interrogated about a crime he attributes to a mysterious cat. A cat plays an alter-ego role in Pepperoni Perp by Ramona Tamm.

Speaking of dissembling, several of our stories revolve around obsessions. Fledgling online relationship broker, the eponymous Kell, finds herself entangled in a dangerous game of love and deception in Valarie Fredericksons story that ultimately changes her perspective on life and romance.

National Park renders a mountainous landscape where an aging Ranger Hale confronts a couple of modern criminals. Author Marcus Chavez conveys Hale wanting nothing more than to get home to his wife.

In Final Curtain, Stewart Lethbridge sets the stage for a tense story of dissembling, of blurring the lines between real people and who they think they are. When the curtain comes down on this story, readers might ask, as I did, what do we really know? Following a similar theme, Mustn’t Tell" by Deb Miller invites us into a Nursing Home Memory Unit which has attracted some less than altruistic employees.

Finally, reality-bending Sidney comes to better understand the psychological cross she bears in the Donovan Threse’s Premonition.

Enjoy… but don’t tell anybody.

Michael Van Natta

Editor in Chief

National Park Marcus Chevez

The dusty bent-up Chevy Blazer sat head-in on the gravel turnaround at the trailhead, its windows all rolled up. It’d been there when I come by the first time on my rounds, which take me of a midday up the winding Gunter Road, up to Pearson’s Pass high on and back. The trip takes the best part of three hours and on the way down it was still right there, even dustier, if such a thing’s possible. Hadn’t moved an inch. Been that way for God knows how long. Nobody, though, on the graveyard shift had mentioned it when we did rollout that morning.

I don’t go in much for those profiling things. A person’s got a right to look and act the way they want in this country. It’s still a free country, far as I know. I don’t hassle people like some of the new rangers do on account of how people look. But I could tell there was something just not right about that vehicle. Call it a hunch, maybe. I learned a long time ago that you got to follow your hunches.

The trailhead goes straight up from the parking area for maybe quarter mile then becomes the trail which soon gets lost in amongst thick scattered lodge pole pines and boulders large and small, twisting and turning up a gradual slope for another quarter mile. It then goes real steep with lots of switchbacks up to the summit at eleven thousand feet. Not a place for tenderfoots.

I pulled up next to the Blazer and ran the plate.

Not stolen, Jesi said when she come back on the radio. Registered to a one Clyde Davis, Freemont, Montana.

Probably nothing, I said.

Yeah, likely.

Tourists, I said.

Makes the world go round, Hale.

Don’t it, though.

Say hi to Wilda for me, willya Hale.

I will, Jesi

I stepped out of my Jeep after holstering my service revolver and peered into the vehicle. There was nothing remarkable about the front and rear seats, just a crumpled pack of Marlboros, a map on the dash and a can of Dwyer’s in the console, but in the way-back, a tarp covered up something, some gear or some such, I couldn’t make out what from the outlines.

I grabbed for my hat as a gust come whistling through. They make us wear these sweaty pith-hats with the most god-awful chin straps I ever seen but it does seem to keep my scalp from getting sunburned. If I had some hair up there, I probably wouldn’t wear the silly thing.

The overheated wind come down out of the pass hot enough to blister paint, dragging with it a haze of red dust. The sky was opaque with it. Clouds were building up like popcorn high on the range to the south and the air had that peculiar earthy gun-metal smell of a storm brewing up.

The Tetons is tough country, always has been ever since even before that Frenchman came and saw it the first time and named the peaks after his girlfriend’s bosom. Leave it to Frenchies. But it’s no place for a novice lessn’ they stay to the marked roads. Parks goes up a dozen times a year after some glorified boy scout wannabe caught out in a storm or didn’t come out when he said he was going to. Costs the country a bundle, it does.

I swung up my binoculars and glassed over what sections I could see. Scud brush and jimson and occasional wildflowers mostly, and up on a crag, a lone elk, antlers medium-sized. There’d for sure be more behind him or below him. I didn’t catch any persons in my trace. Somewhere up there.

I was split between going up or waiting them out. Whoever it was had a right to be up there. No crime been committed.

I walked over to the trailhead marker knowing what I’d find. Sure enough, this whoever hadn’t registered. That made him stupid. As well as him being whatever he was that stirred my hunch in the first place. I say him but standing there with the grit grinding between my teeth, I knew it was a them. Another hunch. Three of them, my hunch said.

I looked off to the west and saw through the haze that whatever storm mother nature was coming at us with was soon on. The gullies tend to wash out pretty fast. Not like the desert arroyos, not like them, but if they catch a person off their guard, a person can get pretty banged up if not dead from smashing into the rocks.

Such thoughts got me moving up. I went back to the Jeep for my hand-held radio and clipped it to my belt. Cell phones were a might sketchy all through the park.

About halfway up the second stretch, I heard a harsh sound that come on me real fast, branches breaking and rocks sent askittering. I put my hand on my revolver, dropped to a crouch and froze. About a hundred yards up a medium-sized black bear come crashing through the trees, left to right. He wasn’t that big, maybe only a ton or so. He paid no heed to me, just went on eyes forward, mouth slack, loping through the underbrush. It took me a minute to start breathing normal. It occurred to me then that I knew where whoever was at. They was up toward Hook Outlook, one of the many out-of-the-way natural attractions.

I circled around behind the outcrop, took the high ground above and come down from there. Finally, I saw two figures sitting by a stream the size of a horse trough about a quarter mile from me and just as far below. I glassed them up and peered at a man and woman, both smoking cigarettes. A backpack set off to one side.

The man, Clyde probably, looked like those skinheads that come in from Idaho. He was sitting on a log, dragging a stick across the dirt. In a strap tee shirt, tattoos covered his arms and I thought I could make another trying to tumble off his forehead into his left eye. The girl, a petite thing who looked no more than a teenager, had long straight hair and wore ragged cutoffs and flip-flops. She sat a little higher up, balancing on a rock. If ever there was people who need some nudge to get off the mountain, it was these folks in the face of what was coming. Nonetheless, like I was saying before, they weren’t breaking no laws. They had just as much right to be out here as anybody.

I kept the binoculars trained on them. There was something fascinating about the way they treated each other. The man appeared to say something and the girl responded right away with animated arm movements and then a hand wave as if to say he didn’t know jack. Whereupon the man hung his head even lower and continued drawing something in the dirt. She jumped off the rock and paced a bit and jumped back up, nimble as a mountain lion. That sort of thing went on for some time. Then they both got up and walked along the path that led down.

I thought, good, I don’t have to go near them. But as I watched, just about the time they went around a bend in the path behind a stand of trees, the man, who was bringing up the rear, stopped and bent down. The girl stopped, come over and bent, too. Then they both stood up close to one another, looking at something. My vision is none too good but if I squint,