THE

WINNERS

Thanks to all of the writers that shared their

incredible tales with us.  Every single story was a gift.  Full of memories, history, wisdom, pain, humor and love - each tale brought us right to the heart of the storyteller's life.  Each entry was full of reverence and respect. Some were full of wonder and magic.  All of the tales resonated with what it means to be human.  Our treasures may vary, but what they bring to our lives are universal.  Our judges struggled to choose these winners for our Spring 2010 Writing Contest...

FIRST PRIZE   $500     "Cigarettes for Melvin"

by Emily Sloan   Charlottesville, VA

I left things for her to find.  Small things.  Nails on the floor, windows shut when they were open, keys where they weren't before.  It was as much as I could manage; what 60 years of practice would allow.  I wasn't sure she noticed.

Footsteps back and forth, on the pinewood floors still golden and unscarred, my paces limited within two dim rooms stuffed with stale attic air.  Can she hear my boots above her head?  When she walks her creaky floorboards downstairs, up late again, is it because my steps woke her up?  I like to think so.  Back to bed she goes, I hear her quiet the dog (did I spook the hound? They see with animal eyes), hear the soft thump as the cat jumps up and settles.  Sleep some more; I'll be here when you wake.

Listen!  Her feet loud on the stairwell, a yellow shell of light surrounding her body as the old door swings inward.  She comes with a cigarette and a pail of water, a mop and soap.  She wears blue jeans and plugs in a radio.  My windows were painted shut years ago so I know, as she struggles with them, that this air she breathes is my air, and these decades of dust make me sad and unreachable.

This little brick bungalow is hers now, but she is not family.  She is Now, she doesn't know about Then and What Happened; she's not afraid of change.  She washes the baseboards, surveys the drywall, cracked and swollen from water, peels away ragged wallpaper layers like an onion, revealing an archaeology of time and pattern.  I watch as she pauses at the thickened stains running down the wall like dried up little rivers, north to south.  She holds her breath as she scrubs them away.

The half door in the corner leads to unfinished space, where bare roof beams slope and loose planks form a path.  She is curious, I can tell.  She pulls the latch to the small door.  I hold very still.  She crawls inside.  There are no lights here and September heatwaves rise to the beams and sweat into her eyes.

The click of a flashlight.  She is close, I am here, she is right here with me.  Keep going, go more, past the old chamber pot, the broken umbrella, Dad's old leather satchel with the buckles rotting away.  Shine your light on the shadow in the corner.  Go back as far as you can.

The trunk is so heavy that when she tries to drag it back to the light, it won't even budge.  A spoonful of silence weighs a ton.  So she holds the flashlight between her cheek and neck and uses both arms to crack open my chest.  My ribs ache as the dark wooden lid opens on its hinges.  Her eyes widen at my treasure.

Her neck hurts, holding the light that way, so she balances the beam across the surface of the trunk casting deep crazy shadows across my life, hostage to a sea chest hidden in the eaves.  She is reverent and for this I am glad.  She carefully, ceremoniously, peels back each layer and takes her time.  Breathing dank heat and dust stuck to sweaty skin.  She smiles when she finds my favorite plaid shirt and my best leather jacket, oh did I look sharp in that.  She rattles the heavy cardboard box, full of hundreds of marbles.  I was a champion when I was a kid, that's why I had so many.  Look at all that kid stuff: an old leather mitt, those boxing gloves Dad got me, a cloth bag of jacks.

But see, I was a man, see there's my wallet, yes, take that out and look inside.  Wow those pin-up gals sure were fine.  Oh now don't look at that, that's not meant for the eyes of a lady, that old list of mine.  Maybe she won't know what I meant, penciling down all those girls names and then with a check mark for every time we made it.  We'd put on those 78's, see them all there in the carrying case?  Old Hank Williams and Patsy Cline, all those country records, that really got girls in the mood.  Yeah some of them have cracked from all this heat and time but boy they sure were good, you can find the phonograph back behind that beam over there.

What else.  Keep going.  This is me.   My old cap.  A pair of shoes.  A deck of cards.

The gun.

The gun.

She stops at the gun.  It's in a cloth and she slowly unwraps it, weighs it in her hands.

Well what am I supposed to say?  Don't look like that.  You try being 19 and your parents think they know everything but they don't know anything and the whole world has gone mad and you're here in this nowhere town and you keep trying and trying to find something different but no one understands and the girls liked me but not enough and there was something else out there I could feel it but I couldn't find it so what was I supposed to do so I did That and then everything stopped and before you know it everyone just shuts up and packs up all my stuff into this lousy trunk and shoves it back away and no one even talks about me anymore and so all I can do is sit alone in this stupid attic and look at the stupid stains on the wall they forgot to clean up.

But now, she's here now, with my stuff and I can tell she would have liked me.  Is she lighting that cigarette and opening up that cold beer for me?  She sets it on the floor with a candle and just leaves it there, so I think maybe that's right.  She knows my name, it's Melvin, from my ID in that wallet.  She says my name.  Takes my favorite record, the Hank one, and puts it on her turntable, and turns it up loud.  It sounds scratchy and fuzzy but she plays it anyway, and she takes 3 of my biggest marbles and puts them in her pocket.  Oh I think we are going to be friends.  Maybe I won't stomp around upstairs anymore trying to wake her; I don't want her to be scared of me.

I'm glad she's not family.  Soon the young relatives come to clean out all that junk in the attic: newspapers from 1951, the old sewing machine, bed frames, plastic flowers.  They save that chest for last; oh they know it is there.  She pulls a son-in-law aside to ask about me and my chest wide open bleeding my life.  They can only whisper what happened, far away from the aers of my sister, so old now, and sitting in a chair white as a ghost.  When they heave it out from the dark space they don't treat like she did.  They toss my life into cardboard boxes and dump it into their pickups.  Fifteen minutes for my disfigurement.  Later on they take it to the county dump.

I know she would have done it different.  Maybe my old plaid shirt would have fit her.  But she couldn't ask them, not after they threw it away as fast as they could.  That's why I'm glad she secretly snuck those marbles into her pocket, and hid my old Hank Williams 78 among her own stack of records.  That way I can still be around, here in my old brick bungalow.  Sometimes I think I'll still make a noise or two, just to let her know I'm here, and thank her for that cigarette.

SECOND PRIZE   $100    "My Treasure"

by Remona Gail Tanner    Sulphur, LA

Of all the many treasures in this world, none are more cherished than those without a price tag attached.  There are people who treasure some very precious, priceless things.  It will take a vain person a lifetime to realize this.  Individuals who choose only to be thankful for shiny things will miss the opportunity to stumble upon something truly amazing.  I'm one of those people who can see past glamour.  It's because of that, I found a very special treasure or perhaps it found me.

My mother, like most mothers, kept me away from death ceremonies as long as she possibly could.  I was seven when I finally joined my mother and older sister at a funeral.  It was on this day that I first saw what is now my treasure, but back then it meant nothing to me.

During the service, the wife of the dead man entered the church.  I turned all my attention to her.  She was cloaked in all black from head to toe and her face was covered by a black veil.  Her high heels echoed from wall to wall.  She made her way to the casket and lifted her veil, as if to give her one true love one last passionate gaze.  Then it was like flood gates had burst open.  The widow cried out and heartache brought her to her knees.  I watched from my seat in awe.  I thought, "Why is no one rushing to comfort this woman?"  Instead of running, family members slowly walked over to the broken woman and joined her on the floor.  Then a man dressed in all white, pulled out a pale colorless handkerchief from his pocket.  It was so spotless and white that it seemed to glow.  She looked up at him with a more peaceful disposition, as if she knew that he knew the extent of her pain and didn't intend to tell her it was alright because it clearly wasn't.  He placed the cloth in her hands and she picked herself off the floor.  She made it back to her seat and clutched it tightly in her hands.

I attended lots of funerals after that and never saw anyone feel that type of pain.  I always felt guilty for not feeling that type of sorrow, having never lost anyone that close to me.  Most times I barely knew the person who died, sometimes I was too young to remember them, or didn't care enough to look around me and shed a tear for those who knew enough about the person to cry.

It wasn't until almost a decade later that I felt that pain and reunited with my treasure.  It was the funeral of my only sister.  She had been killed in an accident.  I stepped inside the church and broke down just as the widow did years ago. 

I felt so alone and lost in a room full of people.  In fact the only thing I remember is a hand, a hand reaching out to me holding a pure white handkerchief.  As I stared at the cloth, I felt something.  I felt a small bit of tranquility in the central point of my emotional typhoon.  I managed to pull myself up.  I held that handkerchief close to my heart for the remainder of the service.  I still have it years later. My tears are still there, invisibly dried into the fabric.  I like to think that the handkerchief, my treasure, is more than a sympathetic token.  No one rushes to the wounded at a funeral because letting it out is a soul-cleansing process.  The hankie represents purity.  No matter how many tears you have to wipe on it, it never reveals them to whoever holds it after you.  It's more powerful than a diary with twelve locks.  The handkerchief cleanses and helps you get back up.  My treasure will continue to circulate this world and help people get back up again.

OUR FALL CONTEST OPENS ON JULY 1, 2010

DEADLINE OCTOBER 13

DON'T MISS OUT!