Deborah Kaple

"Flint"

"Flint was drunk. He knew he was drunk as he stuck his commodious hind end out over the barstool and leaned his bulky midsection onto the bar. He was all right with being shit-faced, in fact, he was thrilled. This was how life should be, he thought, as he glanced across the bar at the darkened mirror. What looked back at him wasn’t Flint now, but Flint as he wanted to be. He wasn’t the 45-year old slacker asshole his ex-wife Sharon said he was, nor was he the shitty father his kids thought he was, nor was he the guy whose apartment was a smelly dump. No, he wasn’t any of those. He squinted at the mirror and saw the young, handsome Flint who could fix anything, build things with his hand and do whatever needed done. A guy who did right by people. Yeah, I see the real me now: I’m 24 years old, and just back from the Army. I’m the guy that saved a man’s life in Grenada.
As he gazed at his reflection, he was distracted by the sight of a beautiful girl entering the bar. He rubbed his eyes, and spun around on his stool. Pretty girls weren’t seen here often. Big Daddy’s was a low-rent old bar in downtown Iron Glen, and the town was ratty, too ugly for pretty girls. He watched as this sexy gal walked into the bar, and made her way to the empty barstool next to Flint. She leaned her petite frame over the high, dully-polished bar, ordered a gin and coke, and turned to Flint. Grinning, she said, 'So why’d God give girls legs?' Just like that she said it.
Flint still kind of believed he had dreamed her, and he couldn’t answer. He just stared at her, admiring her long blonde hair, her oval face and her eye-popping cleavage."

Read the rest of "Flint" in THE LONDON MAGAZINE, October/November 2007

"I Repair Cars"

Nobody believes me, Bud, but almost every day I saw Porky Pig hopping and giggling and running on that conveyer belt. At first I thought I was crazy, but we were all nuts there in that beat up old factory on the far side of Sandusky. I mean, really, the tubes of glue and cement came down that rusty-colored belt at me, seems like hundreds of them, and I could tell by the smell which kind was coming. We had caulk for bathrooms, rubber caulk, painted caulk, caulk with silicone, we had glue, we had cement. You name it, I ran them all through the cap machine.
That’s where it started. One day I closed my eyes and thought the next run’s gonna be rubber cement. When I opened them to take a look, Porky Pig came bouncing over the belt and said, in his funny little voice, “No, no, it’s kitchen caulk, stupid, Ace Hardware brand.”
No, Bud, there were no horses in Ferguson Glue.
And yes, Porky was real.
For a long time, I liked having him there. He talked to me a lot, well, he didn’t really talk to me, but he made funny little snippy comments, kind of like Aunt Doris used to. Remember how she would whisper funny things to us behind Mom’s back, and make us all giggle? I guess there’s something familiar about Porky is what I’m thinking, if that isn’t too strange to say.
Did you ever notice that Porky Pig has a mean side? I never had, but during my days at Ferguson, I started watching old cartoons at night and I began to see it. Why did I care? Because he started to get kinda punk on me at work, and caused a whole lot of trouble between me and my boss, Travis Schroeder. For some reason, Porky took a dislike to Trav, who’s just your run-of-the-mill Morgan County kind of fellow.
Actually, Trav’s not a bad guy, but he can be an asshole, like any boss. It all started when Porky pointed out to me that Trav walks like a girl. Well, to me, he walks like all those pigeon-toed Schroeders we have here, and I never thought anything of it. But once Porky said it, it made me laugh. When Trav would come around, Porky would make this little wheedling sound, like hmph hmph hmph, and Bud, try as I might, I couldn’t help but fall on my ass laughing.

Story continues in THE MACGUFFIN, Summer 2004

"Ruthie's Diary"

“Why don’t she just die.” There, I said the words out loud, to nobody at all. Just spoke them to the cool, bright Ohio sky on an ordinary Wednesday, as I waited for Tom, my carpet-laying buddy, to come out of the Party Shop with our donuts and coffee. My damn mother-in-law was always causing trouble, and here she was, about dead even, still doing it.
Yesterday when she asked my wife Sue Ann again, for the billionth time, about my stupid high school class ring, I swear I could see pure evil in those little brown eyes. Some kind of power, I saw, over me. Made me nervous.
Fact is, I was sweating like a whore in church.
Jesus Christ, this has been going on for more than ten years, ever since me and her daughter Sue Ann got married. I ain’t a bad deal: good-looking, they tell me, and I keep a steady job. But Gladys was always on me like she was royalty and I wasn’t.
That damn ring. Why did she care so much, and why did this have to be solved before she croaked? I mean, passed on, as the nuns at the hospital say. Course they wear wedding rings and think they’re married to Jesus—should we be listening to them?
I lost that ring in my junior year of high school. Yeah, okay, by rights I had promised it to Sue Ann, but so what?
“Honey, I just want to make sure you get what you deserve before I die,” she’d whine, her eyes all watery.
What am I saying? That ring is gone, it’s history, it’s kaput, it’s nada, it’s, it’s well, it’s probably in the bottom of Ruthie Burnmeister’s jewelry box is where it’s at. “Mrs. Hoover,” we called her, beautiful Ruthie with the big round boobs and the red hair. She was something. Still is.
“Hacker, you dreamin’ or what?” Tom slammed the door of the Party Shop behind him, his rough hands clutching a stiff coffee carrier. He was a tall man in his mid-30s, with a slow smile that showed teeth laying every which way.
“Hunhh?” I said back, shaking my head hard.
“Yeah, I seen ya sittin’ there, playin’ with that damned ponytail a yours and lookin’ all glassy-eyed out the window.”
“I was? Nah, I was just thinkin’ about the job waitin’ us at Mrs. Hoyt’s.”
“Uh hunh, right.” He handed me a maple-frosted filled stick and a coffee. “You’re so fulla shit.”

To read on, see THE LONDON MAGAZINE, April 2003

"One Dog's Life"

Driving his pickup truck down the long gravel lane towards his house, Amos Unterbrink gazed out across the frozen corn and bean fields and past the wooden snow fences that ringed his property. He narrowed his lids over eyes the color of the mid-winter sky.
He slowed as he passed his neighbor’s newly-renovated brick farmhouse on the right. For years, it had imposed its girth and importance over the surrounding fields, and Amos had seen it go from a thriving family farm to a place long abandoned by folks who craved one-story ranch houses. He remembered how he and his friends had gone in there as boys to watch the birds flying from room to room, and to chase the raccoons that shit all over the floors.
Peering at the farmhouse’s side window, he honked the horn twice in greeting as he did each time he drove by. People who live on the same lane are just about family, he’d often said. Plus he’d known Marnie Ann and Jim since they were just little tykes in town, and here they were all grown up with kids of their own. For Amos, a handsome, rugged man, with light brown hair and a quick smile, the simple wave between neighbors felt like an affirmation of life. He was always teasing people he’d run in to in the post office or the Legion, or waving and beeping his horn as they passed each other in town.
Sadie, his eight-year old daughter from his first marriage, sat with him in the truck cab, her face also turned towards the farmhouse. Looking at the back of her head, at the mass of white-blonde curls, Amos felt the hole that had bored into his heart from the day he and her mother had decided to divorce. It wasn’t enough that he had been the bad guy in leaving them, but the steady anger and disapproval he felt from them burned like a six-year long bee sting. With Sadie, his only kid, he constantly felt as if he were on a first date as he worked to please and impress her.
Marnie Ann came into view in the dusky window and waved, holding her youngest son Benji in her arms. Amos shook his head and spoke quietly to Sadie, who sat idly writing her name in the condensation on the truck window.
“There’s that boy that drowned, Sadie,” he said quietly, nodding with his head towards the house.
“Where?” She peered out through her wet scribblings.
“Right there. Marnie’s got ‘im.”
“He looks okay, Dad.”
“Well, he ain’t okay. Them doctors over at St. Luke’s didn’t do him no good by savin’ him. He’s a vegetable now.” He shifted the truck to a higher gear. “He was under water for a long time, honey.”

Story continues in AMERICAN WRITING, March 2002

"Hairdo to Hell"

Opal Terhune sat at the kitchen table poking her stiff black hair with a pink rat-tail comb.
“60 years old, the proud owner of Opal’s Beauty Center in Princeton, New Jersey, and my son wants to tell me what to wear when I meet his fancy new girlfriend,” she said to her indifferent cat, Muff, who snoozed on the chair next to her.
My beautiful boy, I should have known when he changed his name from Charles, Jr. to Chas in the first grade, she thought.
Oh, me.
And now he tells me that this girl, Heatherly I guess her name is, what kind of name is Heatherly, anyway? Oh, right, they’re from Atlanta, he said. Anyway, this Heatherly says to him that he has a cute accent.
Accent! That’s English we speak here in New Jersey, isn’t it?
I don’t want to meet this Heatherly, or anybody else, for that matter. What was wrong with that pretty Maria from over on Jefferson Road? Nice parents, active at the Dorothea House. I often see her mother’s picture in the paper when she offers her Italian cooking lessons there.
Oh, I feel a long sigh coming on. Just the kind that my son always disliked, and said I did on purpose.
“Hey, you, wake up,” I said, giving my old cat a gentle nudge. “Can you imagine the shame, Muff?” I asked, when I finally got his attention. “He asks his dear old momma to meet this Miss Heatherly Walt in a coffee house in town instead of at her house. And to dress up.”
I placed my tea cup into the sink and brushed off my pants. Time to go to work. Before leaving, I examined my hair. You have no right to call yourself a hairdresser if your hair looks bad, that’s what I always said.
“Hair looks great!” I said aloud to the mirror. I always could do a mean French twist. Thank God it was freshly dyed. I’d hate to show up at the fancy coffee shop with gray hairs showing.

Rest of the story found in US #1 WORKSHEETS, July 28, 1999