The Schoolmaster

by Curtis Smith

 

The girl and her brother paused before the hanged man. The rope slung in the courtyard’s tree, and just above their heads, the schoolmaster’s blue feet. The tree’s leaves gone, and the children’s breath climbed the naked branches. Above, the constellations the schoolmaster had taught them. Gemini. Canis Major. Orion. A gunshot in the distance, a pause, then two more. The breeze picked up, and on it, smoke. The girl tugged her brother’s arm. “Come on.”

They stepped over a smashed birdfeeder, the spill of seeds. The schoolmaster’s door hung from its hinges, and the girl, being older, was the first to cross the threshold. The shadows deeper, and the curtains snared on the windows’ broken glass. The mob gone, still the girl felt them near. She turned on her flashlight, and its beam rippled over broken chairs and smashed dishes. They paused before the toppled bookcases. The girl knelt, the flashlight held to spines and covers. She placed the books she wanted in her brother’s hands. She thought of the times she’d seen the schoolmaster in the library. His corner table. The afternoon sun upon him as he turned another page.

\When her brother could carry no more, she made her own pile. Myths. Philosophy. Poetry. The world. She lifted the pile. The stack’s weight shifted, and she secured the top book with her chin. A helicopter passed, and the room, with its smashed door and hollowed innards, trembled.

Outside, a book slipped from her brother’s pile. “Leave it,” she said. High above, the helicopter, its body lost to the dark, its searchlight sweeping over the rooftops. The breeze stiffened, and the schoolmaster’s body twisted. The boy looked up. “Leave that, too,” she whispered.

Yet at the gate, she was the one who looked back. The rope lost amid the branches, an illusion that made it appear as if the schoolmaster belonged to neither the earth nor the sky. A gust, and the tree’s branches creaked. Around the girl’s feet, the wind-blown papers that had escaped the house. She stepped on one as it tumbled past. A child’s writing. The schoolmaster’s notes in the margin. She lifted her foot and hurried after her brother. The helicopter closer, its echo racing up the narrow street. Its light brighter than any star.

 

Curtis Smith’s most recent book, The Magpie’s Return, was named a Kirkus 2020 Indie Pick of the year. His next novel, The Lost and the Blind, will be released in early 2023.

 

Suzy Isn’t Afraid—1962

by Curtis Smith

 

Suzy’s flying.

Or so she thinks.

Above, a spine of lights, and no, she’s not flying—she’s being swallowed whole, and with each heartbeat, she sinks deeper. She closes her eyes, hoping there’s courage in the dark. She hears doctors, nurses. Her mother. Hears the gurney’s rolling wheels. She tries to speak, but her words die beneath the mask pressed over her face. The gurney crashes through swinging doors, and Suzy is a child again, her mother’s helper, her little hands clapped, and in the kitchen’s slanting sun, a cloud of flour. Then the same kitchen, the same hands, only bigger. A plate smashed after her mother asks if Suzy really wants to be that kind of girl. The kitchen fades. The sway of her body in Danny’s arms. The smoky bar. The jukebox’s shine, and Bobby Darin crooning “Dream Lover.” She doesn’t want to be that kind of girl—she just wants to be the girl she is right now—the world so still and Danny’s heart thumping against hers. But between their hearts, a folded letter in his shirt pocket. A notice to report. Suzy’s head on his shoulder, and she whispers another kind of news. He holds her tighter, and she closes her eyes, wanting to lose the understanding of where she ends and he begins. He says they can do this. They just can’t be afraid. She writes every night, her pen wagging as she searches for the truest words. On her fingers—a simple wedding band, nicks and scars from the factory’s sewing machines. His letters arrive every other day. She reads them alone, still in her work clothes, her bedroom door shut. His longings. Their lovers’ shorthand. His boredom punctuated by jumps from the clouds. She clasps the letters to her chest, her gut twisted as she imagines him falling, falling. An August Sunday. A drive to Fort Dix. His training done, and his unit set to deploy. Flat New Jersey, pastures and cranberry bogs and wooden roadside stands. Ahead, a purple sky. Veins of lightning. She undoes her waist’s button and lays a hand on her bulge. She talks to the baby, an assurance all is well, that they’ll get through this together. Gusts buffet the car. Leaves tumble. She sees Danny in the sky, the Earth rushing to meet him. The first drops, then more, and the echoes crowd her thoughts. She grips the wheel. A breath to calm her heart. Her foot steady on the gas. Then this morning. Water on the bathroom floor, a pain three months early. Her fist at her mouth, her knuckle bit as her mother speeds to the hospital. On the radio, updates from Washington and Moscow. The car’s speed blurs October’s beautiful leaves. A red light and a man on the corner hawks the morning paper. On the front page, a map. Circles as neat as a pond’s ripples. Their city just inside the widest ring—and much closer, Danny’s base on the coast, and for all she knows, he might be in the air right now. They’re together, in a way. Bound by the rings on their fingers and the rings on a map. Their fates surrendered. The tides she tried to keep at bay with a slow, jukebox dance hurtling them to lives unimagined. A final set of doors, and the gurney comes to a rest. The doctors lean over her, eclipsing the light. Her face wet with tears she hadn’t realized she was crying. She speaks, her voice muffled beneath the mask. “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid.”

 

Curtis Smith’s stories and essays have appeared in or been cited by The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual Writing, The Best Microfictions, The Best Small Fictions, and the WW Norton anthology New Micro. He has worked with independent presses to publish novels, story collections, essay collections, and a work of creative nonfiction. His next novel, The Magpie’s Return, will be released in the summer of 2020.

 

See what happens when you click below.

Creative Nonfiction: River of Ghosts

by Curtis Smith

A department colleague retires, and when she cleans out her desk, she brings me a shoebox. For twenty-plus years we’ve taught special learning in a public high school. We share a history. We have, in the reticent vernacular of rural Pennsylvania, seen some things. In the box, hundreds of snapshots. Clowning boys. Girlfriends with arms draped over each other’s shoulders. The stiff poses of school-picture day. A few in their graduation gowns. The photos are ten, fifteen, twenty years old. There’s Joey and his mullet. There’s Sammy in her Frankie Says Relax T-shirt. As we sift, we exchange the fragments we know of their lives—the ones who’ve learned trades. The ones who have children of their own. The ones who’ve gone to jail. The ones who’ve died. (more…)

The Dogs

by Curtis Smith

Anne pauses outside her mother’s bedroom door. The darkness ripples with the sheriff’s beefy moans and the box spring’s twang. Anne tiptoes downstairs and steps onto the porch. The alfalfa-scented breeze strikes her face. Above, a smothering of clouds, a vista of blue and black. Lightning in the distance, a crooked vein of white, then thunder. Anne walks beneath a maple’s bobbing limbs. Before his wasting, her father had strung his gutted deer from the maple. Later, beneath the tree’s October-red leaves, her mother married the sheriff, a man everything her father was not. The lane’s gravel brushes Anne’s bare feet. Raindrops strike cool upon her neck. (more…)

Check out the write-up of the journal in The Writer.

Matter Press recently released titles from Meg Boscov, Abby Frucht, Robert McBrearty, Tori Bond, Kathy Fish, and Christopher Allen. Click here.

Matter Press is now offering private flash fiction workshops and critiques of flash fiction collections here.

Submissions

Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction/prose poetry submissions are now closed. The reading period for standard submissions opens again September 15, 2025. Submit here.

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