Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Smalls
    The Smalls
    The Smalls
    Ebook278 pages4 hours

    The Smalls

    By J.S. Frankel

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Greg Allenby, almost seventeen, is in line to inherit his family's cheese-making business. He wants nothing to do with it. Bored with his life in Ames, Iowa, he thinks of nothing else except getting out of his hometown and going somewhere with his girlfriend, Jenny Gillis. Anywhere will do. Everything changes with the arrival of three minute visitors. Artan and his wife, Kelindra, and her brother, Farkas, are from the planet of Chisaka, and they have nowhere else to go. Greg allows them to stay, and they prove to be helpful with a number of skills they possess, but soon the secret is out and everyone wants to meet the little people, including the police and the armed forces. Worse, the alien trio is being pursued by a malevolent individual from their home world, and now Greg and Jenny, along with the various lawmakers they meet, have to do everything they can to protect their new friends. But how you can protect yourself against something that you can't even see?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereXtasy Books Inc
    Release dateOct 4, 2019
    ISBN9781487425104
    The Smalls
    Author

    J.S. Frankel

    J.S. Frankel was born in Toronto, Canada, a good number of years ago and managed to scrape through the University of Toronto with a BA in English Literature. In 1988 he moved to Japan and started teaching ESL to anyone who would listen to him. In 1997, he married the charming Akiko Koike and their union produced two sons, Kai and Ray. J.S. Frankel makes his home in Osaka where he teaches English by day and writes by night until the wee hours of the morning.

    Read more from J.S. Frankel

    Related to The Smalls

    Related ebooks

    YA Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Jun 1, 2019

      Table Talk
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Modern Romance

      May 5, 2022

      A Modern Romance
      11 min read

    • Article

      Can’t Take It With You

      Apr 10, 2022

      Can’t Take It With You
      8 min read

    • Article

      My Sourdough Starter

      Jul 21, 2020

      I LOVE A HOMEMADE loaf of cut-the-roof-of-your-mouth bread. But I don’t bake. To become good at something, you have to tap into your intuition and play like a child. I know how to do this in parenting, writing, teaching, gardening, music, and cooking

      2 min read

    • Article

      Manure Connoisseur

      Apr 21, 2023

      Manure Connoisseur
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Dream Uprooted

      Mar 16, 2020

      A Dream Uprooted
      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jul 19, 2024

      WINTER has descended on Cape Town with a vengeance so I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors, cosy on the couch and engrossed in sports – which has come as something of a shock to my friends who know that sport isn’t usually my thing. But it turns

      5 min read

    • Article

      What’s In A Name?

      Dec 22, 2021

      What’s In A Name?
      9 min read

    • Article

      Going Bush

      May 20, 2020

      Going Bush
      3 min read

    • Article

      Far From The MADDING CROWD

      Aug 19, 2022

      Far From The MADDING CROWD
      10 min read

    • Article

      Home For The Holidays

      Aug 10, 2021

      It’s been a year since I’ve been home. I missed Christmas because of work, so Thanksgiving marks a full lap around the calendar. My mom’s been complaining lately about how difficult things have gotten for her. Everything seemed so out of reach, so im

      7 min read

    • Article

      Letters From The Pandemic

      Apr 27, 2020

      Letters From The Pandemic
      8 min read

    • Article

      Time & Other Poems

      Sep 1, 2024

      Isn’t it annoying, how you can read allyou want about the past, but not go there?Collect whatever you want from back then,whenever, put it on a shelf. You can evendecide you like a time period, hit up eBayor Craigslist, and in no time you can havealm

      7 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Jan 13, 2023

      THIS past holiday was a time for catching up on my favourite reads. I wasn’t able to read for fun that much last year – it was mostly academic papers on my list so it felt like a real indulgence to catch up on the many books that have been waiting fo

      5 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Aug 25, 2023

      I RECENTLY spotted one of our journalists vaping and was surprised. “I didn’t know you smoke,” I told her. “I don’t!” she replied. “It’s just vaping.” I thought about that exchange as I read our story about the dangers of vaping on page 40. The rise

      5 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Aug 19, 2022

      Life on the streets is very hard. Not everyone who is displaced is a drug addict or disobedient. Some of us are faced with difficult situations back in our villages, like unemployment, forcing us to come to the city for a better life. I found myself

      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Aug 2, 2024

      LOOKING out of my office window at the dreary, grey skies and relentless rain, I’m more than ready for the arrival of warmer, sunnier days. The persistent gloom and chill here in Cape Town doesn’t exactly spark joy in me and I’m sick of all the layer

      5 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Aug 26, 2022

      I was privileged to attend the Springboks match against the All Blacks recently. Oh my word! Such excitement, camaraderie and national pride. The highlights were the plane flying over (I nearly fell off my chair), the singing of the national anthem (

      5 min read

    • Article

      Amanda’s Naked Truth

      Oct 26, 2020

      Amanda’s Naked Truth
      6 min read

    • Article

      Class ACT

      Mar 18, 2020

      Class ACT
      6 min read

    • Article

      Where the HEART IS

      Dec 20, 2022

      Where the HEART IS
      4 min read

    • Article

      Childhood Memories

      Aug 26, 2022

      Childhood Memories
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Smalls

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Smalls - J.S. Frankel

      Dedication

      To my wife, Akiko, our sons, Kai and Ray, and to all those who have supported me on my writing journey. Sara Linnertz, Harlowe Rose, Joanne Van Leerdam, Julia Blake, Helen Dunn, Mirren Hogan, Travis Borne, David Padilla, Susan Hawthorne, Eva Pasco, and so many more. Also, a special thanks to my sister, Nancy Frankel, for her unwavering support. I thank you all!

      Chapter One: Curds And Whey, Part One

      June fifth, Ames, Iowa. Late afternoon. Second day of summer vacation.

      People who worked with their hands were supposed to be the salt of the Earth, the common clay, the regular, down to earth human beings—in short, they were people you could trust.

      Those people are farmers, bakers, artists, plasterers, and common laborers. They know what it’s like to break a sweat. They do it day in and day out. They know the value of hard work. That’s what made this a great nation.

      A point in fact, those weren’t my words. That’s what my late father had once said. He was a cheesemaker. His father had been a cheesemaker, and his father had been a cheesemaker—and so on down the line.

      And... where did that lead? It led to me, Gregory Warren Allenby the Fifth. It sounded high-class to others. Maybe so, but in reality, we were barely getting by. Names with titles meant nothing unless a person had the coin to back up that long-winded title.

      What meant even less was that I was the fifth person in line to assume the mantle of taking over Allenby Cheeses, a small but well-respected business that had been operating in Ames, Iowa, for over a hundred and fifty years.

      If I had been a dairy farmer—and we knew a lot of them, for what was cheese made from, anyway—then I would have said moo.

      Since our factory made cheese, the word we should have chosen was squeak. Moo, squeak, did it really matter? I wanted to use a four-letter word, but my late father once said that swearing was the avenue of the ignorant, and maybe he was right.

      Whatever. I had nothing against anyone who worked with their hands.

      I had a lot against the idea of using my hands to fashion cheese. Forget about the machines that processed it. It still had to be made the old-fashioned way my ancestors at their primitive creamery had done it—by hand.

      They did it by stirring vats of milk, by watching the temperatures in processing it, and by holding their noses against the rising stink.

      Judith and Albert were our cheesemakers, and they’d been doing this job since before I was born. It may have been the only thing they knew, but they happened to be better at it than anyone else. I’d learned a lot about the art from them but could never match their expertise.

      Judith came from a cheese-making family in her native Italy. Albert’s father had been a cheesemaker as well. It was a given that they knew their craft, and while neither of them possessed a college degree, hell, making cheese didn’t need one.

      They had something better than a degree. They had wisdom and on-the-job experience. That made them gods, at least in terms of cheese-making.

      It was because of their expertise that made Allenby Cheeses special, or so everyone said. That was what gave it its distinctive taste and otherworldly aroma as one critic from Des Moines once put it.

      Reviews like these brought in some business. If I were a mouse, I would also have been in heaven. All the cheese one could eat and never worry about searching for another meal.

      I was not a mouse.

      Confession time—I’d never cared for the cheese-making side of life. My mother knew, my friends at school knew, and if I’d ever bitched about it on the internet, then the entire city of Ames and then the state and then the world would have known about it.

      They simply wouldn’t have cared, though.

      So, my dilemma was simple and yet complex. I didn’t want to continue the business. I didn’t like working the cash register or delivering cheese to the customers and restaurants on the weekends.

      I also didn’t like it when the customers tried to bargain me down, and I didn’t want to be tied to Gouda or Brie or Jack cheddar for the rest of my life.

      Anyway, what I did was part-time. My mother ran the business, paid Albert and Judith, and paid the suppliers and the repairman when one of the machines inevitably broke down.

      Guess who cleaned up the place, though? Yours truly, most of the time and the smell was enough to make me gag. Wearing a gas mask should have been mandatory, but, apparently, my nose was hyper-sensitive.

      Since my mother had requested me to do it—that was a nice way of saying ordered—I had no choice in the matter. It cuts down on costs, she often said.

      When I’d gone into her store the previous Saturday to deliver some cheese wheels to customers, my mother stopped me just as I was loading up my bicycle’s basket.

      You don’t look very happy, Greg, she said after she called me into her office. A tiny place, it was crammed full of files, documents, a few books, and her desk and computer. It only had enough extra space for a chair. A broom closet would have been bigger.

      I’d just finished cleaning the factory, which lay about thirty minutes away by bike. The smell of Gouda lingered in my nostrils. It was a curse having an extra-sensitive nose. It took no longer than a millisecond to discern the different brands of cheese.

      Still, that couldn’t be classified as having a superpower or even a special ability, and it certainly didn’t make me feel special. What gave it away, Mom?

      A sudden downturn at the sides of her mouth indicated a frown. She looked harried, and even though she was only forty-four, her hair was graying rapidly, and wrinkles had appeared at the corners of her eyes and her mouth.

      Five-five and plump, with a pretty face and quiet, calm gray eyes, she was aging faster than usual, all because of the stress of her job.

      Making the cheese, paying off the workers and the overhead, running hither and yon to various restaurants and businesses to shill her wares—it took a toll. She’d done it alone because my father had always done it alone.

      Forget about being able to afford salespeople. Not possible, so she ran herself ragged making personal calls, and spent hours online late at night advertising and texting customers.

      With a sigh, she tapped a few papers on her desk and then stared me in the eye. The expression on your face told me all that I needed to know.

      And what’s that?

      That you’d rather eat a bucket of Brie instead of coming here or cleaning up the factory.

      That’s not it, Mom.

      It wasn’t that I disliked cheese. I liked it. I simply didn’t care for the business aspect. Before I could formulate a response, she sighed again.

      For now, your job is school, Greg. When your father passed away, I took over the business. That’s how it is. When you graduate, you can think about what to do. I appreciate the help you give me on the weekends, though. That’s enough.

      Was it, though? With no brothers or sisters to take over, it seemed as though the job would fall to me. Her fingers stirred the pile of documents on her desk, and a faint, fleeting smile of encouragement shone out. I hope you’ll make the right choice.

      My only choice was to get out of Ames once I was old enough and see the world. At the age of almost seventeen, I’d had enough of semi-country life. There was a huge world waiting, and I was stuck here.

      Friends? No one at school, really. I got along with almost everyone, so no major fights, but the connection thing had never happened.

      Well, there was Jenny Gillis, the proverbial girl next door. Actually, she and her parents did live next door, so they always got the freshest cheese, as every so often my mother would bring a package or two home from the factory as a gift.

      Jenny, short, red-haired, freckled, and a little chubby, was my first and only real girlfriend. We’d met in the first grade. I’d pushed her off a swing during morning recess, saying I wanted my turn.

      Yeah, call that selfish and then some. I was seven at the time.

      She’d cried. Our teacher, Ms. Rathburn, came over to yell at me, and I stood there, head down, feeling bad. Bad that I’d gotten caught, yes, but also bad that I’d hurt someone.

      Young man, you should apologize!

      That was all Ms. Rathburn said. She led Jenny away, and later on at lunchtime, I’d had apologized to my classmate the only way I could—I offered her some cheese. She took it, and friendship reigned.

      Later on, early teens, in fact, things turned romantic, and I had a girlfriend to share things with—and give cheese to—but that was about it.

      My institute of higher learning didn’t cut it much, either. We were on summer vacation, but the other kids had their own part-time jobs, and me, I had my cheese.

      Lovely.

      I went back to my bicycle, loaded up the packages, popped a couple of mini-cheese-wheels into my backpack, and took off. The streets weren’t overly crowded, and I weaved my way in and out of the pedestrians with ease.

      As I biked along under the warm sun with a slight breeze to take away the heat, I thought about the last three years. My father had passed away when I was fourteen, and at his funeral, a sense of total loss hit and hit hard. I couldn’t stop crying. Forget the man-up crap I’d heard. He was my father, and losing him hurt.

      My mother had cried, and I had, too. But all that took a back seat when the lawyer came over with the news that we either had to sell the company or cut back in our expenses.

      This company has been in my husband’s family for five generations, my mother told him in a firm voice. I... I don’t know what I’d do without it.

      Mr. Collins, the family lawyer, a tall, spindly, Ichabod Crane type, nodded sagely. I understand, Mrs. Allenby, but the taxes might make it impossible for you.

      We’ll make it, she insisted.

      That was that, and he didn’t argue. We’d cut back on the extras, like going out to dinner or me going to the movies or even having a modern contrivance such as a smartphone. All the other kids had them.

      I made do with calling my mother from a payphone, and at home, we had an ancient rotary-dial system. No buttons to push. It was sort of fun, in a way, but it only served to remind me of what we didn’t have.

      Personal relations-wise, at school, after the funeral, the kids offered a few condolences, none of them sincere. It hadn’t happened to them, so it didn’t matter. None of them, save Jenny and her parents, had shown up at the service.

      Screw ‘em. I didn’t need that.

      The shops passed in a slow blur of clothing, second-hand goods, cafés... and an endless reflection of me gliding by. My mother’s words came back to me. You look just like your father, she’d said. He would have said the same thing.

      My father hadn’t been overly tall, maybe five-eight, and he was very lean, around one-sixty. Pale skin, light blond hair, and dark green eyes were his distinguishing features, and I’d inherited the same traits.

      So, once again, what did that make me? Nothing special. But, then again, in school, most of the kids had nothing outstanding about them. Only the truly gifted went on to fame and fortune. The rest of us, we had to exist on a normal plane, with nothing extraordinary to keep us going...

      Hey, Greg, you got my delivery?

      The voice startled me, and I braked sharply. I’d been tooting along and almost rammed into a telephone pole, coming up shy of it by a couple of inches.

      You daydreaming, kid?

      Uh, yeah, maybe. Sorry, Mr. Revello.

      Anthony Revello, short, fat, homely and in his early sixties, owned one of the finest Italian restaurants in the city. His father had done business with my grandfather, and they’d forged a good friendship. After my father passed, Mr. Revello came around to pay his condolences to my mother.

      My grief-stricken mother had simply nodded and whispered her thanks. My father had suffered a heart attack while making a delivery.

      He was only forty-seven, slender, and enjoyed jogging on his days off—when he took them. He also smoked, though—a lot. What with the stress of his job and perhaps family history, it had eventually caught up to him. His father had died at the age of fifty, and his grandfather at the age of forty-seven.

      I was determined not to end up the same way. I’ll always be around, Mr. Revello had said. If you need anything, please tell me.

      I will, my mother had answered.

      Now, my mind came back to reality, and I took out the cheese wheels from my backpack and handed them over.

      Come inside, Mr. Revello said. I need a taste, and then I’ll sign for them there.

      That was his pattern. Always get a taste, and then he’d sign the receipts. He never returned anything. He simply enjoyed a little nibble every now and then.

      Take a seat, he said, and waved me over to a table.

      The restaurant, small and done in wood with red and white tablecloths covering wooden tables, smelled of spices and tomato sauce and cheese, everything I loved about food... and everything I couldn’t afford.

      While I waited, Mr. Revello took a piece of cheese he’d cut out from one of the wheels and popped it in his mouth. He chewed it slowly, moving the morsel around with his tongue and savoring the taste like a cigar connoisseur would savor the smell of a fine Cuban cigar.

      Once done, he nodded. Perfect.

      I dug the receipts out of my pocket, and he signed them. After thanking him, I did the rest of my deliveries and then took off on my bike.

      Along the way, a couple of my classmates waved hello. Doing the neighborly thing, I stopped to ask them how things were going.

      Pete Maxwell, short and stocky, with a plain face and permanent bland expression, blond hair, and a tiny mouth like a doll’s, worked at the local ice-cream shop. He had a dog at the end of a leash, a Cocker Spaniel.

      The dog sat obediently, watching the people pass by. He bent over and patted it, whispering something lovingly in its ear. He really doted on that dog. Daisy... that was the dog’s name. Built it a cute shed for its outside home, took good care of his pet. He always walked his dog, never his parents.

      His buddy, Roger Adams, also short and stocky, worked for a local moving company.

      The only difference between them, outside of the dog, was that Roger was a decent guy. Pete was a jerk, an exception to the other kids I knew. He’d been after Jenny for a long time, and she’d always turned him down. That didn’t exactly endear me to him—and I didn’t care.

      You smell something? Roger asked with a cheeky grin. While he often busted on me at school when I brought cheese for lunch, he’d never done it out of meanness.

      Pete, on the other hand, had a different agenda going. A faintly malicious smile painted his face, as he said, Yeah, it can’t be anything else but cheese. Probably one of the stinky types. I can smell it a mile away. Jenny probably can, too.

      If I had to go on the general tone of his statement, then it came across as not joking—at all. In fact, it pissed me off. I can always shower up, I retorted. You’ll always stink. And leave Jenny out of this.

      His face turned red, and immediately, he got defensive. Hey, Greg, lighten up. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that I know your mom makes cheese and that you work there.

      As if trying to underscore his faux innocence, Daisy woofed and rubbed her head against his calf. Too bad her sympathy was for the wrong person.

      Shaking my head, I started to say something and then stopped. It really wasn’t worth it. As I put my foot on the pedal, Pete added, And limburger is his life.

      Okay, enough. And your life is... what? Ice-cream? Guess what ice-cream is made from, genius?

      So?

      Great comeback. So, it is what it is. Making cheese isn’t my life. I’ll get something going, and then I’m gone.

      And do what?

      That came from Roger, but unlike anything Pete had said, it was asked without any meanness. Something, I answered, and motored off.

      In reality, my reality, my dream, the answer was simple. Work, save my money, graduate, and then go somewhere.

      Anywhere would do. Just not here.

      Chapter One: Curds And Whey, Part Two

      As I pedaled along, my bad mood slowly left. Roger was okay. Pete was... Pete, which meant he was a jerk.

      Still, I’d let him provoke me. Bad move on my part. If I saw Roger again, I’d apologize. Pete, though, no. He’d always been insincere, and why bother when it would mean nothing to him?

      What they’d said, though, hit me foursquare in my dreams. My plan to leave here had always lain at the forefront of my mind. Ames was a nice city, I’d been born here, but I’d always felt it was a place to grow old in, not grow. There was a difference.

      As I entered my neighborhood, my feeling of not growing personally reinforced itself with every passing yard. The houses here were the same style, two-story faux-Georgian style jobs, all of which had been built roughly sixty years ago.

      There was no other word for it except sameness. That sense of sameness permeated the area, and my house was part of that continuity.

      With fading white paint and somewhat rickety boards on our porch, there was really nothing that separated it from the rest of the pack, and that made me feel even more hemmed in.

      Opening the door, the latch squeaked. I dumped my bag in the hallway. It was cool here, a pleasant change from the outside. Wondering what to do, my stomach rumbled.

      Yeah, call that a clue and then some. Inside the kitchen, the fridge called to me, so I popped the cheese inside, and found a piece of bread and smeared a little butter on it. It was five-thirty now, and that would have to do until dinner. Hopefully, my mother would be home soon.

      In my room, I ran my hands along the cracks in the wood. My home was old, the floorboards creaked, the sinks leaked on occasion, and my mother used to say if she could afford it, we’d get the place renovated. I guess it’ll have to wait, were the words she always used.

      It would have to, but until then, I still had a bed to sleep in, a desk that didn’t wobble or tilt, and a second-hand computer that didn’t have any viruses.

      Something inside me said to turn around, and my gaze traveled to a dust-filled shelf that housed some toys my parents had bought for me on birthdays past.

      I picked up the models one by one and blew the dust off them. Superbly made, they looked almost lifelike. All fifteen of them waited to be called into action once more to defend the planet...

      The sound of the door opening and my mother yelling, Greg! brought me back to Earth.

      I’m upstairs, Mom!

      Fine, I’ll get dinner ready.

      Dinner consisted of a few scrambled eggs and some slices of meat she’d grilled. We ate in silence, and then the ring of the doorbell broke the calm.

      I’ll get it, my mother said, and put down her fork.

      At the door, I heard someone say, Good evening, Mrs. Allenby. Is Greg here?

      Jenny. She’d come early, and my mother’s voice wafted over. Greg, Jenny’s here!

      Coming, I said, and shoveled the rest of the food in. After wiping my mouth and hoping I didn’t smell of cheddar, I went to meet her.

      My girlfriend wore a simple blue dress and a white ribbon in her hair. Jenny always wore blue and always tied her hair up with a white ribbon. She rocked that look like no one else, and who cared if

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1