June '05

He Liked Fighting Nazis
  by Jonathan Shipley

Injured Wolf Howls at Moon
  by Lincoln Michel

How to Have Your Portrait Painted
  by K. B. Dixon

Harvey's Mouth
  by Caroline Kepnes

What it Means When the Sky Turns Pink and the Rain Starts to Fall
  by Kevin Kalinowski

He stopped fighting Nazis for the weekend so he could attend his cousin's wedding. He liked fighting Nazis. His career had, for the most part, been fighting Nazis. Not with just brawn but with brains, too. He'd be in Egypt and there'd be Nazis. He'd be in Rio and there'd be Nazis. He'd be in Berlin and there'd be Nazis (which wasn't all that surprising in that it was 1940 and Nazis liked Berlin). He liked being the good guy -- fighting Nazis -- in his brown rimmed hat, and felt honored that Clarice, his cousin, thought him good enough to attend her wedding to a linguistics professor, as a groomsman.

"Me?" Indy asked.

"Absolutely," Clarice said to him over chop suey in a restaurant in Hong Kong. "Jeremiah thinks the world of you."

"That's great," he said. "I'd be honored." They finished eating and Indy left to find the fabled tables of Xiou Do before the Nazis did.

The wedding was a glorious affair, rich in custom (Jeremiah, the groom, was a devout Turkish-born Jew), laden with pomp and ceremony, and think with loving friends and family. Indiana, in his tuxedo, was happy to be a part of it all, his whip and leather coat sitting atop his dresser back at his flat.

There was a jazz band at the reception. The band leader said, "The bride will now throw out the bouquet!" All the women rushed onto the dance floor to catch it. Indiana stood nearby with Roger, a pal from college and fellow Nazi fighter, drinking bourbon and rubbing his arm that ached from a particularly harrowing Nazi fight he had aboard a rickshaw the day before in a busy Hong Kong thoroughfare.

"Wonderful wedding," he commented.

"Tops," Roger said.

After the flowers were caught by a gangly buck-toothed woman (and, of note, the curator for a museum of antiquities in Budapest), the band leader returned to the microphone. "And now, eligible men, it's your turn. Jeremiah get up here!" There was laughter. There was clapping. There was no fighting Nazis when Jeremiah stepped to the stage, a sheepish look on his face.

Roger pushed Indy to the dance floor. They were all out there, the unattached men, the bachelors, the fighters of Nazis. "On three, fine gentleman," the band leader bellowed. "One! Two! Three!"

That's when Indy shrieked.