Seventy Miles Southwest of Joliet
Lemonade was poured and lawn chairs were laid out across yellowing grass to the plane where
the Mann's yard ended and rolled into another to sprawl further along, hitting a pool or a swing set
maybe along the way but never finding a fence. In one plot a dog howled while the homeowners held
their own backyard rendezvous, transmitting from a radio station playing more interference than
melody.
Larsa Mann rested under the covers, seven in all. The first old and magenta, the one following
neatly sewn with lines of flowers. The middle blankets had had previous owners: Lucretia who was
twenty-one and Reynold somewhere on the cusp of thirty. Lucretia's—Larsa had never thought herself
owner—was royal purple, nothing else. Reynold's, the favorite of Larsa, was red and black, shunned as
hideous by mother Mary, and with swirls of fluidity. After these were two comforters, the top
darkening with age like worn enamel. In bed she would look out to the sun, red in a soupy tomato sky,
watching everyone. Larsa closed her eyes and pretended the remaining speckles to be Hydrogen and
Helium, nuclei dancing through fusion and the sun, beyond her eyelids.
Mary Mann was six foot two and three quarter inches. She was a member of the North Central
Eastern Illinois Tall Club, where she had met Gunther Mann, six six, after the war. She sat outside,
with her husband, on a lawn chair gripping a tall glass of lemonade (which she had prepared with one
cup of sugar, lemon, and water) and partaking in that what they did each day, watching planes travel
through the sky.
Gunther worked on aircraft during the war. He didn't remember much of it, now only
possessing an inexplicable interest in observing the passingways of airborne people-movers and why
those planes could fly upside down, aside from the angle of attack, if the Bernoulli Effect was really
true, and wrote this in a letter on a weekly basis. He was adamant about viewing parties with his wife,
where they'd spend hours looking ever upward.
Lucretia, five feet eight inches with red hair small nose oval-shaped face round brown eyes and
well-crested eyebrows, sat at the empty dinner table and read Tocqueville; she then placed the copy of
On Democracy... on the wood, prostrate and open, and reflected. Since entering her twenties, she had
been in an emptiness, the kind which Larsa's mind often wandered to, and feeling a loss of purpose.
She made herself a hamburger. She set the plate down and turned to get a glass of water. Returning to
her seat, alone, she picked up the salt shaker but slipped and fell into her lap, spilling its crystals. She
stared, and, no longer hungry, looked out the window.
Someone fiddled with the lock outside. Larsa peered through her window, and recognized
Reynold with a girl. She might meet them, but the door barred her from exit.
Upon hearing attempts at entrance, Lucretia quickly placed the shaker back to its natural
position and brushed the salt from her lap, then went to open the door.
To read more of Laurel's "Seventy Miles Southwest of Joliet," Click Here
his only physical attribute of note were yellowing teeth, crooked too like the keys of a well-wrought
wore a fuchsia-colored dress with matching heels and lip wear, calling herself Magneta Magenta.
Four o'clock swam by: Mary and Gunther counted seven planes, one helicopter and were joined
by their neighbors; Eddy with graying hair and who had also served in World War II as a merchant
marine and Margaret. With Mary's lemonade they chatted on interrupted only by Eddy's coughing and
nose-blowing—a bout of nothing too serious, Margaret explained, as he had been undergoing treatment
at the University of Chicago—until Gunther, who never partook in much conversation apart from
identifying aircraft, left for the garage.
Larsa, realizing she had not yet fulfilled part of her daily routine, stuck her hand out to the
nightstand. She grabbed the pill bottle and untwisted the cap, choosing one capsule out of many. She
put it on her tongue, swallowed, and returned to gazing.
After relaying the past decade Reynold, it turned out, had been rather successful, in studying the
migratory patterns of A. sardanapalus, spending large amounts of time in the rainforests of the
Southern Americas and then returning home to publish papers on the butterfly. This was not what
Lucretia had expected; her elder brother had always exhibited lemon qualities. He had been a handicap
to their participation in state fair's Fitter Family contests before Larsa was born, pulling down their
average in the medium category, though they still usually won first prize.
The three sat around discussing Reynold's career, and when there was a lull in conversation,
Lucretia asked Magneta what exactly was it she did.
Sucking on her cigarette like Baby K with a pacifier, Magneta replied that she was in medical
school for psychiatry and worked part-time as a waitress of sorts to pay for her schooling; she assisted
in research, she explained, involving a cooperative looking toward good usage of derivative substances
on subjects and observing their effects, like on tennis players and things. Reynold, smiling, excused
himself to go pour a drink. Across from Magneta, staring into eyes, Lucretia blushed and walked to the
bathroom.
Outside, Mary Mann continued sipping her glass at the same time Eddy, accompanied by
Margaret, vomited in a corner, turning the particular patch of soil more acidic, more yellow than what
was normal. After they had left, Mary would hose down that region of grass. Margaret soon appeared
at her side, apologizing profusely and offering to retrieve a bucket, to which Mary agreed and a flock
of geese flew by.
Vapors from the lights above sickly shone down on Lucretia, coiled against the commode.
Muffled talking slipped through the walls. Tears drew down into the porcelain when she would cough
and hiccup until acid rose in her esophagus to be ejected into the pearl-white bowl. She squeezed her
toes, contracting he muscles and curled them under her feet. Head over heels, heaved over the toilet,
her fingers moved to pull her eyelids shut as best she could do.
Margaret stood in the front yard of the Mann's ranch home. She kept a hand on her browridge to
attenuate the sun and moved to the garage. The door was pulled back, though it was such the time of
day that the inside remained shadowed. Inside, sitting on a workbench, was Gunther clenching an
animal by the ears.
“The rabbit done died,” he said.
Margaret bit the inside of her cheek.
“Must've got in somewhere.”
“Do you have a bucket I could use?”
“Bucket.” He grinded his teeth.“No, ask Eddy.”
“Magneta?”
She opened one eye. “Yeah?”
“Could you get a bandaid? Should be in the medicine cabinet.”
“What'd you do?”
“Cut my foot.”
Larsa could see her heart beating, lungs expanding through transparent skin. All things
disappeared in incineration a miasma filling the sky consuming the world, kilotons of fission
eviscerating the sun and shadow in the clouds of the atmosphere of particles passing through herself,
penetrating each cell, disintegrating hair boiling innards; firestorm flaying skin vaporizing bones and to
deform the future.
Edward, recovered and holding a glass, looked sideways and reminisced with Marilyn. She
remembered, nodding her head. A breeze from the east ruffled her aubergine dress and, gently, the
grass. Tasting his drink, he remarked that her lemonade was still sweet, very sweet.