Audio Story – Z.G. Watkins

Boiled Fish & Vodka

The sunset after a bombing is especially beautiful. It must have something to do with the dust and the smoke. The way light passes through particles. Another version of a rainbow.

Ana and Dimitri sit on a pile of shattered stone and charred wood. The concrete is still warm and a good place to rest. The strangers gaze upon home. Minsk. A flock of dazed starlings wander their erased world, black specks moving across the red flag sky, searching for a place to perch.

They share a pot of boiled fish and pass a bottle of vodka back and forth. It feels wrong to, but they smile. They grip one another’s hand.

The news will say that German bombs fell from the clouds. But Ana and Dimitri share a different theory. God punched the earth, and God missed them. Or did his calloused fingers push them together?

The two will wonder about this in front of the altar. The two will wonder about this in the presence of children and grandchildren. The two will share a familiar meal every June 24th. They will pull back the curtains and look at the sunset and they will not let go of one another’s hand. They will stare and they will wonder if anything can compare to boiled fish and vodka.

Do You Take This Woman?

“Will you marry me?” The woman asked. Her hands were slippery. She rubbed them up and down the coarse fabric of her shirt.

“What?” Beth groaned. She sat on a stool across from the woman. Tears smeared her makeup. Snot leaked from her nose. She wiped the mess off her face. She tried and failed to smile.

“I’ve got a ring,” the woman said. She dug into her shirt pocket and pulled out a small white band. “Made it myself. Toilet paper and spit. I dried it over the vent,” the woman explained. Her hand shook as she held it up for Beth to see.

Beth fell from the stool. Her knees hit concrete. She knew the cameras were watching, but she didn’t care. She crawled to the steel cage and stuck her left hand through the bars. She said “yes.” The sound shuddered out of her. A dying noise, like she was an animal that had been shot in the woods.

The woman slipped the paper ring on Beth’s finger. The clock in the hallway ticked.

They remained married for a little while longer. And then Beth escorted her prisoner to a small room with a black bed that looked like a comfortable crucifix.

The Good Lord and the state of Mississippi were done waiting.