we have a story for you

here is a striking piece taking place in the vastness of the desert. we’re delighted to have another platform for our contributors’ work - incredible wide-ranging stories from everywhere that need to be heard. we genuinely love these pieces and can’t wait for you to read them too! here is the eighth of the series, from mnemotope issue 007.

The Smiling Folk by Skyler Joy

In the north, there is the dry red rock where one’s footprints are unable to take root for longer than a minute. Time enough for the wind to shift and the few grains disturbed to be disturbed again. In the south, there is the white expanse and Saguaro cactus. The latter bearing witness to history’s unfolding one century at a time; the former, to the hurried pace of geological epochs. Between these two sisters, north and south, lies the territory of the desert jackals and American coyotes. Smiling folk, my grand-uncle called them. He had a long unfinished steel ship rotting in his yard. Once plans to sail the world. He lived in Arizona.

At dusk, after the rattle of cicadas had quieted and the desert willows sweated the last of their tears, we sat safe on the balcony and watched the smiling folk begin their morning rituals. Slinking from their sunken hovels, they would rise to a skulking crouch holding pickaxes, shovels, and rope in their front paws. Drawing pleasure from their own furtiveness, they scoured the earth for silver and grub. Yips repeated across the stillness of the dark when some interest was found and the smiling folk would gather, a property dispute invariably breaking out. Short-lived violence. In the midnight, I could rarely tell what critter victims the smiling folk captured or how the final blow was dealt. Instead, I would watch the moonlight dance in their eager, flashing eyes and bleed off their small, sharp teeth. I could hear whimpers from the victim. A squelching noise. Yips. Whimpers no more.

The grin that hangs about the smiling folk adorns the walls of my grand-uncle’s parched home. His wife was a painter and she died either before I was born or when I was very young. I don’t remember and there is no one left to ask. She was also an excellent gardener. I am told the backyard once looked like it belonged to an English manor, but after her passing, the sun scorched the flowers brittle and the garden took on the beauty of eerie elegy. Skeletons of rose bushes, peonies, and foxgloves were all I ever saw of it.

The red rock ages imperceptibly and my grand-uncle expresses his desire to visit the opera. The sky contracts and he passes and his house is put on the market but a buyer is not found. There is a large steel ship rotting in its yard. The sky grows smaller still and there is less life in the desert for the smiling folk to scavenge now. Less land for them to scrounge upon. The clouds, like curtains, roll over the horizon and blanket what little blue remains. The smiling folk do not quit their sunken, sinking hovels anymore and instead dig deeper, returning to the reclusive, warren manner of their ancestors. Delvers of silver and grub.

At dusk, I sit alone on the balcony and watch the last stars grow evermore distant. There is nothing to spy down upon. No smiling folk. No critter victims. No Saguaro. There is nothing but the memory of what the desert once possessed.

House, ship, garden. An eerie elegy.

see you soon!

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