by Mike Sweeney



There are innumerable jokes to be made about the Garden State in some quarters, but if you’ve ever seen Central Jersey in late July, just after the azaleas have bloomed and just before the cicadas come out to sing in August, you’d have no problem believing why the nation’s third state was nicknamed so. Read the letters of the Revolutionary War soldiers – Colonial, British, and Hessian alike – for their description of what New Jersey once was before industry and chemical. An earthly paradise where anything would grow, it was said.

And, today, in Central Jersey – the part that identifies with neither Philadelphia nor New York – that’s still true. The land is rich and green like in the days of old.

Well, it is in spots, anyway.

There is no better time to observe the lush greenery of Jersey vegetation than during a summer rainstorm, the kind that move in from the south and berate the coastal counties before sweeping off into the Atlantic just as quickly as they appeared. The water soaks the carpet of green grass that covers the rich horse farms and the small suburban homes alike. The rain renews the ubiquitous red oaks, the stately yew trees, and the solemn weeping willows, replacing what the day’s heat has wilted away.

It’s a moment of reverence.

Time seems to slip away and the land is what it always has been. Things that once were are again, things old and unseen. They roam the earth they called their own long before there was a New Jersey or even an America. They wander here and there and, occasionally, when the ashen sky cracks and opens, they ask to come in from the rain.

Little Ashley May Rue was by all accounts a well-mannered and polite little girl. Quiet, but strong, it was said. She was her mother’s rock in the days and weeks after her father’s death. Her teachers all thought she would do well and the neighbors all thought she would keep her mom – and her little baby brother – anchored and sane in the difficult years that lay ahead.

It was a lot to ask of an eight-year-old, but Ashley May never complained or cried. It was like she knew something the others didn’t.

But even if she hardly ever showed it, she missed playing whiffle ball with her Daddy and her cousins in the backyard, where the above ground pool was a home run and the swing set was a foul. She missed her Daddy holding the back of her bike – the pink sparkly one with the Power Puff Girls seat – as she wobbled and wavered along the sidewalk before lunch. Mostly, she missed the trips down the shore and the long walks with her Daddy in the sun, while Mommy sat feeding little Ben his bottle.

When she felt sad about not being able to do those things with her Daddy anymore, or when she just felt sad about all the things that had happened, the one thing that could always make her feel better was the rain.

It was her Mommy’s own daddy who taught her to sit with the garage open on the late summer afternoons when the thunderstorms would roll in from the south and drench the world for one half hour or maybe two. Grandpa showed Ashley May just the right distance – the length of an old picnic-table bench – to sit from the end of the garage so that you could feel the rain passing by without ever getting wet. They’d sit side-by-side in the rusty old beach chairs, the webbing frayed and yellow, and hum a song as they watched the water fall in sheets. Or sometimes, they would say nothing at all, and Grandpa and Ashley May would just hold hands and let their arms swing lightly as they stared off into the deluge.

It was where Ashley May learned to think of nothing when she wanted to think of everything. It was where she learned to find the calm even when everything around her made her want to cry.

Of course, her Grandpa was dead now too. From the cigarettes he smoked, they told her.

But Ashley May still loved looking at the rain.

It was three o’clock and almost as if on schedule, the slate sky began to crack and patter and another afternoon thunderstorm commenced. Little Ben was upstairs sleeping and Ashley May would have at least an hour to herself before she needed to change and feed him. She hoped the rain would last the whole hour.

She stopped using the beach chairs to watch the rain, as it didn’t seem right to sit in them without Grandpa. So she stood – and occasionally twirled a little like a ballerina – exactly one picnic-table-bench-length from the edge of the garage and let her eyes and mind drift off into the sheets of rain and the occasional streak of lighting.

In truth, Ashley May wasn’t quite thinking of nothing as the Werebear approached. She was concentrating on the poplar tree that dominated the front lawn of her family’s house. She was earnestly trying to decide if it was called “poplar” because it was a popular type of tree. At least two of their neighbors had one as well, so it didn’t seem that strange of an idea. She was just deciding her theory might have merit when the Werebear’s nose poked around the corner of the open garage.

Ashley May had seen a great many animals – deer, wild turkeys, raccoon, and, of course, bunny rabbits – while watching the rain. But this was her first bear. The turkeys – loud and brazen – had given her quite a start. The bear didn’t alarm her quite as much, as he was quiet. But he also was quite big and uncomfortably close. She took three steps back and looked to the door that led into the house at the back of the garage.

The Werebear cleared his throat and spoke. “Please don’t be frightened, young miss.”

Most people would be more than scared not just by a bear, but by one that spoke. But Ashley May had seen a great many things in her eight years and she wasn’t frightened. Not quite, anyway.

“You can talk?” she said. It seemed a good idea to her to get that out in the open straight away.

“Yes,” said the Werebear, in a deep, smoky baritone. “I can also catch cold.” He let his eyes drift up to the rain pouring down on his snout and shook himself a bit to show that his fur was getting quite inundated.

Little Ashley May Rue furrowed her brow. This was a pickle. Her mother had been quite clear on what she was supposed to say to any visitors while she was away at work. Ashley May had repeated her mom’s words exactly – to the social worker, to the mailman, to the college student who tried to sell her cable TV. But she didn’t know what she was supposed to say to a bear, let alone a talking bear.

The Werebear cleared his throat again. “I don’t mean to be forward, young miss, but might I – just for a few moments – come in from the rain?”

“You won’t eat me?” said Ashley May, asking what seemed to her an honest, if slightly rude, question.

The Werebear’s snout twisted into a frown. He exhaled disgustedly and turned to head down the driveway.

“Wait!” Little Ashley May Rue cried. “You… you can come in.”

“Are you sure?” said the Werebear in his rich rumble of a voice.

“Yes,” said Ashley May. “For a little while, anyway.”

The Werebear nodded and lumbered into the garage, blocking out Ashley’s May’s view of the rain – of everything – before sitting on her right.

Ashley May didn’t like this. It was where her Grandpa used to sit. She wasn’t sure she had done the right thing.

“Grizzly,” said the Werebear.

“What?”

“You were wondering what type of bear I am.”

Ashley hadn’t been but she didn’t say so. Instead, she asked, “Do all grizzly bears talk?”

“No,” laughed the Werebear. “I’m special. And I’m not entirely a bear.”

“Not entirely?” asked Little Ashley May Rue.

“I used to be a person. A long, long time ago. Or at least I think I was. That’s how I learned to talk.”

“But now you’re a bear?”

“A werebear is the precise term. You see, something happened. I used to be a human, then I was a bear and a human. After a while, I just stayed a bear.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s all I know now,” said the Werebear. “It’s been so long since I was a person.”

“What’s the best part?”

“Eating little girls,” said the Werebear. Then he turned his head to look at Ashley May and laughed a loud and hearty laugh. He sat back on his hind legs and rubbed his belly with his front paws as he guffawed to show the little girl what a good joke he’d made. Ashley May laughed with him though she didn’t quite know why.

The Werebear shifted back onto all fours and walked around the garage a bit. He sniffed at the old rusty snow shovels, pawed a bit at the stacks of bound newspapers, and cast a disparaging eye at old the picnic-table bench Ashley May used to mark the correct distance for watching the rain.

“Where is your mommy?” he asked after a fashion.

“At work, but she’ll be home in a few minutes,” Little Ashley May Rue replied dutifully, saying exactly what here mother had told her to say.

“And your daddy?”

Ashley May was quiet for a full minute before answering. She waited until the Werebear moved back to her side before speaking.

“My Daddy’s dead,” she finally said.

“I see,” said the Werebear. “Well, I am sorry to hear that. It must be hard on you being here all alone.”

Ashley May didn’t say anything more. She stared off into the rain. She remembered that the rain made things better, made her feel safe. She wanted to be safe. She wanted the Werebear to leave, didn’t want to hear his breathing through his thick fangs, didn’t want to listen to the way he subtly sniffed at her. She liked the silence with her Grandpa, but with the Werebear it just made her more uneasy. Ashley May desperately searched for something to say. She blurted out the first thing that came into her mind.

“Do you know Winnie the Pooh?” she said somewhat sheepishly.

“You know, I could eat you all in maybe three gulps,” said the Werebear

“What?”

The Werebear stopped looking at the rain. He moved his bulk full round Ashley May, blocking out her view again. When he spoke, his voice was still deep, but had an edge to it.

“I said, ‘I could eat you all in maybe three gulps.’ Shall we find out?”

“You said you wouldn’t eat me!” cried Little Ashley May Rue.

The Werebear laughed and it was not a nice laugh.

“I said no such thing. I never answered you. I was walking away when you stopped me. When you invited me in from the rain.”

Ashley May took two quick steps backwards and the Werebear lunged forward positioning his snout an inch away from her nose.

“Going somewhere, young miss?”

Ashley May tried not to cry. She said the only thing she could think of to save herself.

“Do you like babies?”

“What?!” growled the Werebear.

“Do you like babies?” repeated Little Ashley May Rue.

The Werebear nodded slowly. “Of course. Babies taste best. So soft and tender. One big bite.” He clamped down his jaws to show Ashley May just how he would eat one.

“My brother… my baby brother. He’s upstairs.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” said the Werebear. He turned his nose to the air and sniffed hard twice. “Yes, yes he is.”

“You could take him – instead of me.”

“I could,” said the Werebear.

“He tastes better than me.” Ashley May’s voice was small and cold.

“Why shouldn’t I take you both?” asked the Werebear.

“Because I have the key to the door to the house,” said Little Ashley May Rue. “It’s metal and you can’t break it down.”

“Can’t I?” scoffed the Werebear.

“No, you can’t,” said Ashley May. “At least not without making a lot of noise and attracting attention.”

The Werebear nodded. “All right. You open the door for me. And I won’t eat you. But I want to hear you say it again.”

“Say what?”

“Say, you want me to eat your little baby brother and not you. Say it for me again.”

His snout was right next to her cheek and Ashley May could feel the Werebear’s breath, wet and foul.

“You promise you won’t eat me? For real this time?” Ashley May said.

“I promise,” said the Werebear. “For real, I promise.”

“My brother,” Ashley May whimpered. “I choose my baby brother. Eat him.”

The Werebear laughed his dark, edgy laugh again. He didn’t rub his belly. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Little Ashley May Rue reached into the pocket of her shorts – the denim ones with the SpongeBob face on both back pockets – and pulled out a small key. Her breathing was shallow and fast and she tried to slow it. She stepped to the door, placed the key in the lock and turned it. She felt an almost instant relief.

“There,” she said, stepping aside.

The Werebear brushed passed her and placed his paws on the door. A smile, if you could call it that, played on his snout. The Werebear didn’t normally go out of his way to be cruel, but he didn’t like this little girl very much. He couldn’t quite help himself.

“You know,” he said in his thick, smoky voice, “it’s really too bad your Daddy’s gone and left you here all alone.”

Ashley May swallowed hard and said what she said to all the others – to the mailman, to the social worker, to the man selling cable TV.

“I said my Daddy was dead. I didn’t say he was gone.”

She heard the door to the house open and covered her ears as the Werebear growled in agony, his roar echoing like thunder in the garage before trailing off into whimpers and the limp scratching of claws on concrete as he was pulled into the house.

Little Ashley May Rue still very much loved her Daddy, but she hated to watch him feed.

She turned her back and forced herself to focus on the downpour, the way her Grandpa taught her, and thought of nothing till everything just drifted away.






MIKE SWEENEY lives in Central New Jersey where he writes constantly but never quite enough.

by Mike Sweeney



“We got the name like this,” said the Old Sounder, holding up two rusted machetes and clanging them together. “Every time you entered a burned out house or abandoned building, you’d make some noise right off the bat. The Things aren’t smart enough to stay quiet. You step in, do some banging and if you don’t hear that God-awful shufflin’, you know you’re okay.”

Eddie always wondered about that. Sounders? Huh.

The Old Sounder told him that story that first night as Eddie lay feverish and twitching by the fire. His antibiotics saved Eddie’s life, keeping the stump of what had been Eddie’s left arm from turning gangrenous. Without them and the Old Sounder, Eddie was sure he’d be dead now, baked to death in that wretched dumpster.

Eddie still didn’t know how the old man found him. But that was part of the legend: the Old Sounder, Scourge of the Things, Last Hero of the West.

The next night, the old man told Eddie he thought his real name was Ben, but he didn’t like to use it anymore. Then he spent three hours telling Eddie the story of his life, or at least the story of a life before the world ended. The Old Sounder spoke the whole time in the third person, telling Eddie about a man who sold insurance for a living and had four daughters and a wife named Beth and three brothers that he grew up with in Iowa. He told Eddie all about that man and his family: who drowned young and tragically, who married well, who served in Vietnam, who was disowned by Papa, who had the sweetest laugh, who gave the best Christmas presents, and, Eddie’s personal favorite, who crapped themselves that one time in church.

As Eddie sat listening to the Old Sounder, he forgot about the Things for a while. That was the other gift the Sounders gave to one another: stories. Money and gold might be worthless now — well, they could serve as toilet paper and slingshot projectiles, respectively — but a good tale was more valuable than ever.

Eddie knew on this, their last night together, it was his turn. He surveyed the Old Sounder, a mass of denim, leather, and flannel hulking over the fire, and wondered what to say. Behind the old man, the last glint of sunlight disappeared over the Sierra Madres leaving the sky a dark blue bruise.

“Don’t take too long thinkin’ about it, kid, I’m pretty old,” chuckled the man-who-used-to-be-Ben.

How old? Eddie wondered. Fifty? Sixty? Eddie thought the man-who-used-to-be-Ben might now be the oldest person on the planet.

“Okay,” Eddie began hesitantly, still not entirely sure what he was going to say. He surprised himself with what came out next.

“There was this girl, Kerri. Kerri with an ‘i’.”

The Old Sounder nodded as he lit his pipe. Eddie still didn’t know exactly what he smoked in it. It wasn’t the tobacco Eddie’s grandfather smoked after dinner on Thanksgiving; it wasn’t the marijuana Eddie and his friends used to smoke under the bleachers Friday nights in high school.

“So,” Eddie tried to start again, “there was this girl, Kerri. She and I were… friends.

“And… uh… back east there was this drive-in, outside of Baltimore. ‘Benji’s’ it was called. Like the dog in those old kids’ movies. And it was, I think, the last drive-in on the East Coast before it all ended.

“And Kerri… she had this thing where… she was a bit of an exhibitionist.”

Eddie stopped to check the Old Sounder, to see if maybe this wasn’t the story he wanted to hear. But the old man just sat transfixed on the fire, the pipe resting in one corner of his mouth.

“So, Kerri and I were dating and she had this thing where she wanted me to take her to this drive-in and… and the funny thing is my friends and I always went to that drive-in when we were in high school. And we were seventeen-, eighteen-year-old guys and not a one of us knew how to even talk to a girl, let alone…”

Eddie realized he was blushing but something made him want to keep going. The Old Sounder sat staring into the fire, not moving. Eddie could swear the old man was smiling, if just a little.

“So, this was when I was twenty-three and Kerri was about twenty-two, and the idea that she wanted me to take her to the drive-in… well, it felt like making up for lost time, all those nights my friends and I spent at the drive-in just throwing the football around or knocking on people’s car windows and running away… all the dumb stuff guys do when they’re wishing they were someplace with a girl and not each other.

“And the whole week before I was supposed to take Kerri, she was texting me.”

“What?” the Old Sounder said.

“Texting,” Eddie repeated. “It was a bit like email but you used your phone for it.”

“Oh,” the Old Sounder said and returned his gaze to the fire.

“So, uh, she’s texting me what she’s going to do to me and what she’s going to wear. She had this idea that she should wear a bikini under her clothes so if a cop or anyone caught us she could pull it up quick and just say she was hanging out in the back seat with me wearing her bikini.”

Eddie laughed at this and the Old Sounder laughed with him.

“These are the things that make sense to you when you’re young and want to get laid at the drive-in,” Eddie went on and to his delight the Old Sounder kept chuckling.

“Anyway, she’s texting me all week about these different bikinis she’s trying on and it’s to where I can barely keep focused at work. Friday night finally rolls around and I pick her up outside her job. There was no one around and she was wearing this big baggy sweater over her jeans and she pulls it up to flash me the red bikini top she’s wearing underneath.

“She had the nicest breasts.”

Eddie stopped checking the Old Sounder. He was telling the tale for himself now.

“We get in the car and we head out to Benji’s and the whole ride she’s playing with my hair and kissing my ear and whispering how hard she’s going to whatever me and I’m just about to burst and we pull up to the drive-in and I pay the guy and…”

Eddie sat for a moment till he was sure his voice wouldn’t crack when he spoke again.

“And there’s kids all over the place. Kids playing whiffle ball in the back by the swings, kids riding on their fathers’ shoulders, kids sitting with their parents in lawn chairs in back of their family minivan, kids eating popcorn and cotton candy.

“Kerri and I just look around and we know there’s no way in hell we’re fucking in the middle of all these families and it was just… it just made you laugh. A whole week of building up to it and her texting me about the thong bikini she’s going to wear and then, bam, it’s a Munchkin convention at the drive-in.

“I mean, I guess, it always was even back in high school, but I didn’t think of it like that back then.”

Eddie’s voice trailed off, but both he and the Old Sounder knew the story wasn’t finished. Eddie smiled and started again.

“It turns out they show movies at the drive-in too.

“It was a triple-feature, one of those bizarre combinations you only get at the drive-in. The first movie was just ending. It was one of those Pixar flicks, Cars. Then next it was a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, I honestly forget which at this point. Finally, the late show was Vampire Circus, which was my favorite horror movie as a kid, probably because the station out of Philly forgot to cut the nudity out the first time they aired it.

“We walked around a bit before the pirate movie started and it was like everyone was giving Kerri and me the eye, the one that wants to know when you’re going to have your own kids.

“When you go places on a Friday or Saturday night as a teen — whether it’s the mall or the movies or wherever — you and your buddies are the outsiders. But when you start getting into your twenties and you show up at the same places with a girl — a woman — it’s like you’re becoming part of the inside, of the community.

“There was this one moment where I went off to the men’s room. Kerri and I had been splitting a cotton candy — the blue kind, I remember, because she insisted it tasted better than the pink kind, even though I told her it was all the same, just different dye.

“My hands were all sticky and my Mustang was brand new. I didn’t want to get the steering wheel or the shifter sticky when we went back to the car. I know, I was ready to fuck all over the leather seats but now I’m freaking out about my sticky cotton-candy hands.

“So I come back from the men’s room and Kerri’s there with her friend Ella’s little girl. She was maybe three or four and just a little blob of pink: pink jacket, pink pajamas, pink socks, big clunky pink sneakers that lit up on the soles when she walked.

“And Kerri lifts the little girl up and hands her to Ella and then she turns and watches me walk towards her. Just as I get there, Kerri reaches up and brushes a little piece of blue cotton candy out of my stubble. Then she slipped her arm in mine and we walked back to the car. I remember looking up and seeing all the stars, the ones you used to not be able to see in the city. And I had this moment where I could see it all: me and Kerri and the rest of our lives with the three little girls we were going to have and how we’d come back with them and our minivan and our lawn chairs and they’d have sneakers that lit up when they ran too.

“And it scared the shit out of me. I was content and happy and it filled me with absolute terror.

“God help me, I was relieved when they showed up.”

Eddie didn’t look to the Old Sounder for a reaction. He didn’t look at the fire or up at the sky.

“When they first started creeping out of the woods, I thought it was a stunt. Like the drive-in was having a Romero triple-feature in two weeks and they wanted everyone to know about it.

“I think that one guy thought the same thing. He was standing outside his SUV smoking a cigarette. He just had that look: his wife wouldn’t let him smoke in the car, so he’s standing out in the cold smoking fast because he needs to.

“And three of the Things lumbered up behind him and it was like he was playing along, like he was in a spook house at Halloween, the kind that is really lame but where the dad fakes being scared so his kids will laugh.

“That’s just what he was doing: making a fake scared face when they grabbed him. He had a second to get pissed off before one of them bit right into his shoulder. Then he was screaming and so were his wife and kids in the back of the Blazer. And there weren’t three of the Things anymore, but somehow there were sixty of them.

“Kerri had sent me back to the concession stand just as the pirate movie was starting. I told her I didn’t want her eating in the Mustang. But she said what she always said when she wanted to get her way: she told me I could fuck her in the ass later. It was like a running joke with us. ‘Honey, you can buttfuck me if we can have Chinese instead of pizza,’ or ‘Baby, if we can watch the Sandra Bullock movie instead of Saw, I’ll totally let you buttfuck me tonight, maybe twice.’ It always worked even though she never let me. I think I just liked hearing her say it.

“And that’s why I wasn’t in the car when they came for her. That’s probably why I’m alive today.”

Eddie coughed something like a hoarse, hollow laugh.

“Alive because of false promises of buttfucking. That’s me.

“I started running as soon as I saw them bite into that first guy. Dropped the popcorn and took off straight for the Mustang. There were four of them around it when I got there and I could see Kerri banging on the windshield looking for me. Her eyes found me just as one broke through the passenger window.

“I know she saw me as I turned and ran away.”

Eddie didn’t try to stop his voice from cracking now. He just wanted to finish.

“I don’t know that I could’ve saved her. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have. There were no weapons and we didn’t even know what we were dealing with those first few days.”

“But I didn’t try. And what bothers me, even now, is it’s not that I was scared… I mean, I was. But I wasn’t scared of the Things. I think it was I was more scared of saving her.”

Eddie expected to sob, but nothing came. The only sound was the warm desert wind blowing through the cool night, stoking the brush, and the soft crackle of the fire.

After a few minutes, the Old Sounder’s boots creaked as he stood and crossed to Eddie. The old man put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. He stood like that for a few minutes, then stamped out his pipe and set his bedroll down for the night.

In the morning, the Old Sounder was gone. Standing there shivering in the cold desert dawn, Eddie felt more alone than he had in some time. He supposed he’d get used to the loneliness again soon enough.

Eddie turned his back to the sunrise and decided to keep heading west. Once, a long time ago, he promised himself he’d see the Pacific before he died.






MIKE SWEENEY lives in Central New Jersey where he writes constantly but never quite enough.