Another story of Ms. Smith’s -- “Swimmer” -- is available in the print edition of The Shore.

"CRICKET CITY"
by Claudia Smith

The old man who lived two doors down had two pet crickets. Sometimes, he walked with them. He kept them in a pretty wooden bowl with a lid that looked like a giant walnut. The bowl was made out of the same kind of wood as his cane. The wood was the color of a chocolate covered cherry, all brown but you could see the red if you looked at it in the sunlight. The old man's name was Mr. Vandekampt. My sister told me it was German. She said Mr. Vandekampt was the right age to be a Nazi in hiding.

Every day he took a constitutional. He walked for miles, even in the rain. One day we saw him in a thunderstorm on our way home from school. My sister was wearing my yellow slicker; she made me give it to her and said if I told she'd put her boogers on me when I was sleeping at night.

"Lovely day for a stroll isn't it? April Showers bring May flowers, girls," he said, smiling at us. His teeth were long and narrowed at the tips, the color of weak tea. My sister told me that was because they were his original teeth.

He was so old that his skin looked like that kind of paper you can see through, you know? Like paper that has been rained on and will fall apart in your hands if you touch it.

My sister stole his crickets. She said it wasn't like taking a dog or a cat, that they were crickets. She took them off his porch because she wanted to see what was inside the wooden balls. I set one free. I named him Charlie.

"This one's a keeper," she said about the other and she pulled off his cricket legs. "It's just a cricket," she said, "See? Some people eat crickets you know. They dip them in chocolate and eat them all up. Besides, he was probably fighting them."

"I think they were brothers," I said.

When we looked inside the wooden ball there was a whole city. A tiny little city carved just for the crickets. You had to stare at it for a long time to see all the steeples and twisting roads. The roads were not even the width of a fingernail. It made me think of that fairy tale, the one with the little match girl who sees visions in a single flame. Because when I looked at it for a long time, I started to imagine I saw lights in tiny frosted windows, and tiny moving glimmery particles.

"No person is small enough to carve something so complicated on such a smaill scale," I explained to her. "It had to be fairies. They are the crickets' friends. Or maybe it's heaven."

My sister rolled her eyes. Then her smile turned wicked.

"Maybe it's hell," she said.

When I thought about what Mr. Vandekampt looked like, it started to give me the shivers. I thought about what my sister said, about him maybe being a Nazi because he did have an accent. Maybe he was an evil scientist who worked in the death camps. And he shrunk his Holocaust victims and forced them to live in the wooden hell. That was silly, but I thought about it. About his teeth that looked like he'd sharpened them the way you sharpen an old knife. And his hair, how thin it was and how you could see his pink scalp through the thin part down the middle of his head.

But then I thought about his pretty linen suits, and the way he sometimes called me Little Miss. And I thought maybe he was not a Nazi. Maybe he was a hero from some war that happened a long time ago.

The wooden city can't be hell. It's too beautiful.

I don't know who carved that city. But I kept it from her, because she'd probably just use it for her Barbies and then lose it or worse, stomp on it. If you look at it for a long time, you can almost climb inside it and start to feel as if you are smaller than even a cricket. And all those windows and roads and trees are yours. I think maybe it is heaven, and when we look down into it we are looking into the place we'll go when we die. Like maybe we'll shrink instead of going up into the clouds. Sort of like that Dr. Seuss book When Herbert Hears a Who, you know what I mean? Only it's Heaven, so nobody in there really needs our help.

When it's a cold day I put it in my coat pocket and touch it for good luck. I look out of the frost on the windowsill and imagine the frost inside the pane of one of those tiny houses. The windows are smaller than a pinprick, so I can't see them. I remember reading once about space and time not mattering in heaven. About angels balancing on the head of a pin or something like that.

I polished it with Lemon Pledge last night. I never gave the cricket city back to the old man, and he died. I saw him one time after we stole his crickets, and I noticed the top of his cane was carved. But I didn't see what was there. I wonder if it felt like my city when he touched it.

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Claudia Smith’s stories have appeared online and in print, most recently in Ink Pot, The Mississippi Review (online) , Opium, Pindeldyboz (online), Smokelong Quarterly, Moonshinestill, Word Riot, Eleven Bulls and Eyeshot. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband Nathen Hinson and her son William Henry. She’s currently working on a novel entitled The Box.

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PREVIOUS WORK

"CAMELOT #1" by Grant Bailie

"THE DONGYUE TEMPLE IN BEIJING, CHINA" by Roy Kesey

"SHIPPING OUT" by Jordan E. Rosenfeld

"TRAIN ROBBERS (PART 4)" by Michael Internicola

"TRAIN ROBBERS (PART 3)" by Michael Internicola

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