2020-2021: Cowards and Heroes by Kim Calhoun

a poetic reflection of 21 months

I never knew I lived among so many

Frightened humans

The vestiges of collapse

The impropriety nature of fear

Digging claws into news channels

Hanging hope on medicinal bottles and needles

Junkies clinging to cloth masks and plexiglass

But you can’t call it “fear”

You can’t call it “cowardice”

Cowards call it caution, wisdom, “smart”

Heroes call it by name

Fear

Heroes know kryptonite

Dark jokers

Paralyzing ghosts

Spiritual wickedness

Rigid mountains

But they climb anyway

They don’t stay inside while the city burns

They don’t hide

Instead, they turn and fight

Tooth and nail

To the death if they must

Because they heard the wail of sorrow in their dreams

They climb that wall

They stare down the barrel of the gun

They send signals to awaken other heroes

“Rise to attention!”

They yell it from towers

They echo God’s voice from their Bibles

I met heroes in the hyphen

I met generals who stood guard

They saw the smoke

Raised an alarm

While the city slept

They said it was coming

While the city slept

An enemy did this

While men slept

That enemy sits in high places barking orders

To his demons

While their pockets jingle to the bank

Money is the root of evil

The spirit of fear spinning the media like a ravaging typhoon

The destruction is so widespread

We think it’s normal to drown

The news normalized fear

Fear is teaching students in institutions

Sitting in coffee shops by windows

In churches on the pews

In shopping mall food courts

Between families at dining tables

Cruising the streets

Breeding more spirits like itself

Looking for houses among men to dwell

This roaring lion is a walking tyrant

Seeking to devour and drown the world in fear

Control men by fear

BUT God has NOT given His people a spirit of fear

I am grateful for the heroes

I pray for the cowards

Because you don’t make it into the Promise Land

If you only see the monsters

instead of the milk and honey flowing

rivers in deserts

But men love darkness because their deeds are evil

and darkness only sees fear

eats fear

spreads fear

speaks fear

lives fear

sells fear

and cowards buy it

tormented by Goliath

five smooth stones wait by the waters, quietly

The Cure by Kim Noble Calhoun

This short fictional piece is from my collection of short stories, which explores dreams and a little magical realism.

They told me I might die.

My family sat in the living room with the yellow train set that squeaks down an old black track. Papa loves that train. He spotted it at a yard sale we visited while returning home one day from Jackson Fields. Little trains of all sorts and colors run at the conventions in Jackson, and after that particular visit Papa got inspired to buy another one for his collection. The man who sold it said it wasn’t the most favored of the bunch, but the little yellow train served its purpose for his son who now designed big trains for a living. Papa had turned the yellow train over in his hands several times and smirked the way he does when he comes across a perfect find.

Papa said they are called model trains because of their small size and people can't ride on them. But the model trains blow real steam and whistle loudly like the large trains so I've imagined all sorts of rides on the tiny sets.

On the rides of my imagination, my body shrinks to fit into the boxcars, and the boxcars are filled with plush couches, bubbly soda drinks, ponies, and sweet treats. The conductor is a burly man, whose voice booms louder than the intercom, vibrating in harmony with the wheels and sounds of the train. The whiskers on his mustache crawl up his face into a sinister smile, and his belly shakes when he speaks and reminds me of the teeter-totter ride at the fair that tosses little kids around as they scream for their parents.

He nods at me when I board, his whiskers snaking with the contours of his grin.

My waitress on the tiny train is a fairy named Lucy with a pink dress and magical green wings that appear only when she needs to fly. She doesn’t fly much because she prefers to ride with me on the tiny train. I have only seen her wings once—the one time I questioned her fairy abilities since she lacked wings. She allowed her wings to appear, stretch, and flutter, tickling my face. I laughed then. Then I ran my fingers along the silk span of one. It was soft like Mama’s fur coat, but strong. After that touch, I secretly longed for my own set of magical wings to appear.

Lucy is the same height as I am, or maybe an inch taller, but I can still see straight into her eyes when I stand tall. I see that she sees the answer to the wish I would wish when she grants me my wish, but she hasn't given me any wishes to make yet. Fairy etiquette does not allow me to preempt Lucy’s methods and request the wish on my own. For now, we ride on tiny trains together and share bubbly drinks and eat sweet treats and brush the tails of ponies and laugh at the booming voice and shaking belly of the sinister conductor in harmony with the train whistles.

I think I saw Lucy arrive early—then leave quickly—after standing in the corner of the living room today.

All was quiet except for the buzz of Papa's yellow train running around the track. Every two inches or so the train wheels made a tiny squeak. Papa always said the wheels only needed a little oil and that there were no squeaks that a little oil couldn’t fix. I wondered about the squeak of a frightened field mouse as we waited for Papa to speak. Mama sat in the opposite corner of the room where I think I saw Lucy stand first, and Mama kept wringing her hands together and making occasional hums. Then she stood, smoothing her dress and walking with calculated short steps to the window. She started tapping the sill and humming again. I know Mama was scared, and I was scared a little too but not nearly as scared as Mama. Mama was even scared of the field mice that often got into the corn, and I wondered if Papa ever told her about the oil.

I'd overheard her and Papa talking about me several months ago. I woke late that night. It was one of my really hard nights, the kind of night I never tell Mama or Papa about because I knew they would've driven me straight down the road to the hospital. But I have learned to master my painful nights with dreams of Lucy. I woke on one of those nights and headed toward the kitchen for a little water. I stopped when I heard Papa’s voice telling Mama about me. I heard Mama cry. It’s far worse to hear a person cry than to see it. I felt her tears eat through me like a vicious bacteria, and then I heard Papa tell Mama to be brave and strong. I have seen Mama in strength, but not a lot of her courage so I don't know how Papa could expect so much from her, but I know he hugged her and tried his best to give her some of his bravery.

They wanted to make it easy for me to hear. But I already knew before they told me. I knew it when I first got sick. I knew it when blood spilled from my nose and splashed against the white linoleum sink. I only don't know what death feels like, but I do know pain. When I was about ten years old, I started visiting the doctors, the white coats, the serious faces, the clipboards, who would prick me so much I felt like I'd fallen into a dungeon of bouncing pushpins. I crawled around in that dungeon and was punctured until I could no longer play hopscotch. Later, I could no longer attend school. The last lesson I remember was from my science class. Ms. Boyd taught me how to form a hypothesis and about the scientific method. But she never taught me what to do when I became the experiment. She never taught me what to say when doctors scratched their heads after their scientific methods left them without an answer and without a cure for me. Blood drained from my body because of my illness and more was taken for tests. I imagined breaking into the hospital with Lucy to steal my blood back from the clutches of those doctors.

I overheard a lot of big words and scary possibilities from Mama, Papa, and the doctors. Infections attacked my fragile body already mutilated with microscopic holes. I required weeklong stays in rooms that smelled of medicinal cabinets. Dietitians prescribed a bland assortment of foods I never enjoyed eating. I followed the sound of the wheeled food carts and learned to time the delivery of my flavorless tray. I ate because Mama watched. And Mama watched because she was scared. Antibiotic cocktails flowed through my veins and I imagined flying with Lucy's green wings and exploring places I learned about in geography. I flew to Holland, Beijing, Spain, and South Africa. I flew to the top of Everest and into caves with stalagmites that I learned about in Ms. Boyd’s class. I saw the pyramids in Egypt and walked through the Taj Mahal.

I wanted to ask Lucy why she hadn't granted me any wishes yet, but I thought that could break the fairy laws of operation. I figured I could wait it out, but the attacks continued to weaken my immune system. The cure evaded the doctors like a terrorist and the infections tunneled their way into my body, creating a systemic breakdown of my organ systems. Teams kept digging. The disease dug deeper. Researchers devised strategic plans to capture the terrorist cell that camouflaged itself in my body better than a chameleon. Sometimes the doctors thought they had it surrounded and my family would celebrate. But when the doctors opened my body to obliterate the monster it proved to be a decoy, another unsuccessful surgery.

Time was running out. And while time ran I spent more time with Lucy.

**

I looked up at Papa from my wheelchair in the living room. His face was calm as always, watching the yellow train make its rounds. His mouth opened every so often to speak. Then he decided to remain silent. I know he was trying to find a way to tell me the words he thought I needed to hear. I suppose speaking the words out loud would make the undiagnosed diagnosis more real. But it was already real to me.

“You know,” Papa said, “I might put a little oil on that squeak today.”

“There’s no squeak that a little oil can’t fix,” I responded, as I sat up slowly in my chair.

Papa walked over to me and straightened my blanket a bit. He turned off my IV—my last dose for the day. He stared at me the same way the conductor does when I board the train—smiling, but with a strained look as if he is examining me on a witness stand.

Mama started humming a song she used to sing to me when I was small enough to ride a rocking horse.

“Papa, what if a little oil can’t fix the squeak?”

“Then I just add a little bit more.”

“But what if it never stops squeaking?”

“Well, then, I guess we will just have to hope for a little bit of magic,” he said quietly.

Papa leans over and hugs me, and I watch Mama as I rest my head on his shoulder. She hums and taps the sill. Lucy is standing behind Mama now and I see a flutter of a green wing appear. I want to ask Lucy for wings. But I also want to ask her to stay in this room with Mama humming and Papa holding me in his arms as the whistling yellow train runs the tracks, squeaking in a soothing rhythm for a little oil.