Late in the Standoff

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My warmest thanks to Marjorie Sandor, Ehud Havazelet, Keith Scribner, Marshall Terry, Robin Whitaker, and the SMU Press family: Keith Gregory, George Ann Ratchford, and Kathryn Lang.

“The Standoff” originally appeared, in slightly different form, as “Late in the Standoff” in the Chattahoochie Review. “City Codes” originally appeared, in slightly different form, in The Story Behind the Story, edited by Andrea Barrett and Pete Turchi. I’m grateful to the editors for permission to reprint.

Wallpaper the color of lemonade. Sarah liked it especially now in winter, when you wouldn’t drink real lemonade because of the cold. The walls reminded you of summer, of firefly-nights and frog leg barbecues, big glass pitchers of lemonade filled with sugar as thick as the Milky Way.

Here in Oklahoma, in her grandma’s house, she slept in the front bedroom. The bed was soft and high, the comforter the dark green of strawberry leaves. Moonlight through slats in the window blinds striped the scuffed oak floor like flashlight beams. Just outside the bedroom door, big as a bear, was an old Crosley radio that didn’t work anymore. It had scared her when she was littler. Her grandma had told her voices used to rise from it, the voices of singers, of funnymen, heroes, and presidents warning of war. In summer, when Sarah couldn’t sleep after the thrill of a cookout in the park across the street, she’d creep out of bed and sit in front of the Crosley. She put her ear to the speaker. It felt like a sponge. What if it soaked up her voice? She’d go through life croaking for food, for love, and no one would understand her.

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