CZM Book Club: The Clover Still Grows Wild in Wawanosh, by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

0:01 Cool Zone Media book Club, book Club, book Club, book Club, Hello and welcome Nichol's on Media book Club, the only book club where you don't have to do the reading because I do it for you. I'm Druse Margaret Giljoy, and today I have a story for you. I suppose I have a story for you every week, but this week I have a story for you. It is luscious, it is delicate, it is complicated, and it doesn't quite have a plot. But Hazel and I both agree that it's honestly better for it in this particular story. Do you trust us? Do you trust us for a story like that? Please trust us on this one. This story is from a longtime collaborator of mine, someone who I've worked with on projects here and there throughout the years

0:54 because she's such an incredible writer, Kelly Rose Flugback, who is a writer an editor living in so called Canada. This story is also set in Canada, in and around a community near Wawanosh, which I looked up trying to find out how to pronounce and listen to approximately eight different pronunciations, and all of them were produced by a machine.

1:17 And I don't trust that pronunciation, so Woahwanosh it is. It's about three hours west of Toronto on Lake Huran. It appeared originally in Strange Horizons magazine in twenty thirteen. It's a real quote unquote classic book club story in that it is a story about climate and governance and sadness. But it's so much more subtle and haunting than just saying it like that. It's a really good story. Do you trust us? Please trust us on this one. It is a great story for the false Spring. Probably about half of you are experiencing what I'm experiencing, which is the false spring after the coldest winter in five to twenty years, depending on where you are. If you spend all your time looking at charts of weather like I do. Anyway,

2:04 I can't really explain the story any better because you should just listen to it. Maybe you'll listen to it while you take a pleasant but unseasonably warm walk, or you live out west and it's been unseasonably warm for a long time, or you live somewhere else in the world where I don't look at the maps of weather, including the country where this is set, because I tend to only look at the maps of weather in the United states. I don't feel proud of that, but now you all know about my weather watching habits, and I feel like that's important. Please join me in reading. Well, you all are going to listen. I'm going to do the reading. The clover still grows wild in Wawanoshe by Kelly Rose Flugback. Doctor Hanson presses the cold bell of

2:52 her stethoscope against my chest, and I watch the lines in her face deepen. It's dark in the room, and the watermarks in the ceilings cracked plaster, look like continents, like places I've never been marked on a map I've seen once and forgotten. It's daytime outside, and the cold light of early spring filters in pale and weak through the newsprint she keeps taped over the windows. Most people don't know this, but doctor Hanson is the kind of doctor that helps people too. She used to work in a hospital like other doctors, and wear a white coat and frown over her patients like she frowns over me now, in a broken down old house outside the city's walls.

3:37 When I talk to her out loud, I call her Josepha, But in my head I still think of her as doctor Hanson, the way I first heard it on the radio five years ago. Her face is different now than it was in the photographs. Her nose is different, and so is the line of her jaw. She says the pains in my chest might be from little growths called polypes.

4:00 She says that it isn't uncommon for kids born in the year of the worst chemical spills like me, when the poison gases left the forests outside of Wawanosh dead and leafless. Since it happened, she says, some of the biodegradable components of those chemicals have broken down and become harmless. Others circulate through the water cycle, coursing through rivers and clouds of condensation in the stratosphere, gradually making their way to the North and South Pole, concentrated by the cold there.

4:33 She tells me, it's the same as what happens when you leave a bottle of beer outside in the snow in the winter and forget it's there, and when you go out to get it, all the pure alcohol has separated and risen to the top. She gives me analgesic pills and inhaler full of generic bronchodilator. Doctor Hansen has people inside the hospitals who give her things even though they aren't supposed to. She sits beside me on the edge of the narrow cot and lays her dry, cracked hand against my cheek. The pads of her fingers are hard and smooth, silvery white with scar tissue. I touch my own fingers sometimes and wonder how much it must have hurt. Doctor Hansen's eyes are blue, their edges creased with fine lines. She tries to smile when she looks

5:20 at me, but instead her lips just pressed together. I'm going to try to get you some better drugs, she says, and she wraps her hand around mine and squeezes. Jean Marc accosts me before I'm even back to the compound, walking up behind me on Paul's silent feet so that I startle when he puts his hand on my shoulder.

5:42 I was in the city today, he tells me, and his smile is wolfish. The day is bright and cold, and his breath makes clouds of steam in the air, his chest heaving like he's been running. His hair has come loose from where he keeps it tied at the nape of his neck. The short piece is hanging down in his face and greasy hanks. I always tell him that next time one of the kids gets lce, he's going to have to shave his head like everybody else.

6:08 Teasing him with the woolen, shears, saying, I'll chop it off while he's sleeping, like that story I read in one of the bibles we found in a crate at the dump site. We'll see, he tells me, like he has any choice in it. I robbed a man, he grins, and I notice how he's hiding his hands behind his back. I try to lean around him to see what he's got, but he darts and turns away from me, taking another step backward. What is it something you'll want? He laughs, and he shows me a little package wrapped in brown paper coffee. I try to grab it out of his hand, but he jumps out of my reach again and his hands go behind his back. Share, I tell him, taking another step forward, and he laughs and tells me that

6:50 sharing is conditional on what. I ask, still advancing as he retreats, and he raises one of his eyebrows and his face becomes smug. Does this condition apply to everybody who wants some? I ask? And he shakes his head and says, no, just me. I try to tackle him around the waist, but he seems somehow heavier more solid than last time we fought, until it occurs to me that it's just me who's gotten weaker. He tries to pin my arms behind my back, but I get myself free and run down the potholed road until he catches up.

7:27 Once he would have pulled me to the ground, and we would have rolled around, slinging dirt into each other's faces, laughing and choking on the dust until one of us admitted reluctant to feet. But this time he lets his hands fall from my shoulders and then puts them back a gesture of consolation this time, rather than a challenge. Mina, he says, And he puts the package in my hand and closes my fingers around it. We're still standing close to each other, and he smells like stale sweat and stale tobacco and unwashed hair laced with some other smell I don't recognize, alien city smell, chemical and sharp. We walk down the road together. It's packed dirt, flanked with ratty shrubs and Queen Anne's lace new green buds. You

8:13 are with the doctor, Yes, I say, and I show him the painkillers and their little plastic bottle. He nods and doesn't say anything else. And do you know what else besides painkillers in a little plastic bottle numbs the pain of the collapse of late capitalism, the sweet sweet deals that our advertisers are offering of these products and services, and Rebecca. When Jean Mark first showed up in Eleitheria, he was all lean muscle and bruised colored eyes, a feral city thing. He had a kind of violent sadness coming off of him, toxicity of constant fear. His face looks softer now, even though he's older. From certain angles, you can almost see what he would have looked like as a child, if a place like the city would

9:17 even allow a childhood or someone like him. We walk all the way to the place where illutharious compound used to be, the wrecked carcass of the old prison, with its big, ragged hole opening into what used to be the north wing, all jagged with twisted pieces of rebar and steel, eyebeams sticking out everywhere like teeth in a mean, hungry mouth. I came to the prison alone last week.

9:43 The day. It rained all morning, and the ruins smelled like wet concrete and wet ashes. I'm not sure what I was doing there. I found a dead sparrow right in the bomb blast, steel toothed mouth, lying with its wings spread on the ground, its neck lull limp in my cupped hands, and I thought to myself, there is softness in everything. There is softness in the sunless world inside the old prison, in the smell of old, old ashes that comes back up out of the ground after it rains. Some of those ashes are the burnt up bones of the men and women and little kids who were trapped inside after the bombs and back when the compound was still at the ruins. Sometimes I would find little pieces of bone in the buckets of ash I

10:29 brought out for the gardens. Whenever that happened, I would keep them in my pocket and bring them up to the third hill after I was done, the highest one, where you can see into the junkyard and what used to be the highway. I would dig little pits deep enough that the rain wouldn't wash them up, and say a few words to the bone pieces as I scraped the dirt back over them and packed it down. Sometimes I would pull out some of my hair or make little cuts on my fingers and squeeze drops of blood out so they would know I hadn't forgotten why they died, why the prison and all the places around it were empty for us to build our home in the first place.

11:09 For days, I would feel the little pin pricks on my hands where I'd cut myself whenever I was washing the dishes, or cutting potatoes or chopping wood. The pain would remind me of the bone pieces and the fire I was too young to remember, and there was softness in that as well. Jean Mark and I stand beside each other in the prison's jagged mouth, our hands not quite touching. Looking into the dark, my eyes scanned the ground for the sparrow's little body, but it's gone, now, carried off by some animal. The flat field behind us is still surrounded by a high, high fence, although there have been torn up bits for as long as I remember.

11:52 Some of the older people, like Sarah and James and Yehudah tell me that it was a yard where they would let the prisoners exercise, way back when, when the place was a normal prison. After everything changed, they never let anybody outside. There are people in the city who want to help us, Jean Mark says, still looking into the dark. My face tenses up when he says it, and he notices they're not rats, not this time. I don't say anything. My hand leaves my side and traverses the space between us, meaning to touch him, although it stops short of contact and falls again, numb and heavy.

12:34 At the compound, there's an old mirror nailed to the door of the building that used to be a barn, and I catch my own eyes reflected in it as I'm closing the door behind us. I look worse. I look the same. Everyone can tell. No one can tell. I'm imagining it. I'm imagining everything. Jean Mark wrote a sign that says you're ugly and nailed it above the mirror because he was of people looking at themselves. I see it and smile as I latch the door's back shut again. The children assail us before we've taken our boots off, and my smile widens at the small hand searching my pockets, the laughing voices. I close my hand around my bottle of pain killers, and Flora's tiny hot fingers try to pry it open again, wanting to know

13:23 what I have. After the sun goes down, everyone goes outside, where scrap wood from the dump site is already piled for the fire. It will be summer soon and there will be music and fire and laughing voices every night. I leave without speaking and go up to the top floor of the third building, where I sleep in a room which is really just one of the hall closets from back when the compound was a farm with a house made for three or four people, not thirty. In the dark, I think about doctor Hanson, her soft, crackly voice telling me I should be more careful, her scarred up fingertips brushing the hair out of my face, pinning it behind my ears. I dream she lets me lay my head on her stomach while she combs my hair.

14:08 My mind drifts, pacified by the fantasy. When I open my eyes, she is not her anymore. She is dead, like the people on the propaganda leaflets that Jean Marc showed me, lurid photos showing the atrocities of the regime. Bloated faces, a woman's pregnant belly slid open like it's been unzipped. Her intestines are laid in a slick membrane knot on her chest, and you can see the baby inside, no longer protected by the cradle of her pelvic bones, layers of dissected tissue, pinned and rooshed like paper, roses, flesh, petals, curved bone. I startle awake when Jean Mark kicks open the door. He shuts it again as quietly as his panic will allow, and darts into the corner beside where I'm lying. Sh he says, and I can hear things

14:58 banging downstairs, angry words being exchanged. There's an edge of laughter in his voice, and I know he's done something really stupid, but part of him is proud of it. The stairs creak with heavy footsteps, but I can tell from the sound of the hard soul's shoes that it's Mason. He's infuriated this time. He's got a knife, says Jean Mark, close to my ear. I can tell by the way he's walking, he's walking with confidence. The footsteps thud past us.

15:28 Mason has been drinking. He yells Jean Mark's name twice, and then there's just silence, then a noise of frustration, and he hurls something solid and heavy against the wall near where we're hiding. Jean Mark's hand wraps around mine in the darkness, But once Mason goes back downstairs again, he breaks out into laughter. He's been holding back the whole time. His wine smelling lips press against my cheek, and then he disappears again, probably leaving through one of the upstairs windows that leads on to the roofof. In the morning, Yehudah looks exhausted, awake before everyone else, peeling a mound of potatoes into one of the big plastic washtubs.

16:10 A pile of broken tinder that used to be one of the chairs lies gathered into a neat pile by the wood stove. He smiles when he sees me, and I sit down beside him and take the knife off my belt and start peeling, thinking that's the best way I can tell him I'm sorry, not for anything I've done wrong, just for the way things are in general.

16:31 He doesn't say anything, but I know he understands. Sometimes I think Yhudah is my father. Everyone takes care of the kids together at Ilithuria, feeds them and sews their clothes, and teaches them how to mix bread. Dough and plant tomato seedlings and feed the chickens. But sometimes Hudah looks at me in a special way, kind of sad and searching, And I think he's trying to find pieces of my mother in my face. Did you see the helicopter yesterday?

17:00 Eventually and fear jabs its sharp beak into my chest, No, I say, And I know what he's thinking, That we that we have to leave soon, that we have to go north to where there's still places to hide, dragged mountains where helicopters can't land, brooms of dried nettles, and motherwarts sway from the ceiling rafters, newly risen suns spilling in through the crack, and the door that's been open to let the spring air in home the illusion of permanence.

17:30 James comes down the stairs with two of the kids, sad, dark eyed, Mattias asleep in his arms, while Aretha straggles behind them, thin and rangy, her small face serious. He eases himself onto the bench besides Yehudah, and they sit with their knees touching. Ehuda puts his arms around James and Mattias, and they stay like that for a while, with their eyes closed makes me sad for some reason, and I try not to look. Mina, what do you think we can do for Jean Mark? James asks me.

18:02 I look at the potato I'm peeling and shrug my shoulders at him. Four don't you mean a bout? They both laugh, although they try not to. He's not here and nobody knows where he's gone. Please, Mina, you seem to know him better than anyone else. Does. I do know Jean Mark better than anyone else. I want to tell him, and that's the reason I really don't care what happens to him. He'll be back, I tell them instead.

18:29 He doesn't know how to take care of himself out here where there aren't any rich people to rob. Maretha pulls at my sleeve and frowns. She wants us to stop talking about it. I'm sorry, Ritha. We won't fight, I say, and I wrap my arm around her narrow shoulders and pull her onto the bench beside me. And do you know what else is always beside you on the bench, just right there, ready to put a supportive arm around your shoulders like an old friend. That's right, the ads, and we're back. I know, I shouldn't do it, But I go to doctor Hanson anyway after the sun's gone down and my work for the day is done.

19:23 The way there is mostly through the forest, so I tell myself the helicopters wouldn't be able to see me anyhow. If they knew how to see into the forest, they wouldn't have to drop the bombs filled with poison gas that strips every tree to its bare white skeleton. If they knew how to see into the forest, they wouldn't have to chop it all down and burn the stumps.

19:44 The way there is long, but I push my aching body. When I get to her house, there isn't any light, but she's lying awake inside with her eyes open, just looking out into the dark. You have to leave soon, she says. When I crawl into bed beside her, I have to leave two. She puts her arm around my shoulders, and I tell her the same thing I've told her so many times, that I love her, that I'm in love with her, that I want to kiss her on her mouth and on the scarred over tips of each of her fingers, that I wish, more than anything I could take the pain out of her memories, and out of her tired, broken body. I love you as well, Mina, she says, and kisses the side of my head. I know she doesn't mean it the way that I mean it,

20:30 and I tell myself that's almost better. That's the way it should be between us. We don't say anything for a while, and I wonder for a moment if she's gone to sleep. I curl myself around her thin body and lay my head on her shoulder. In my pocket, I can feel the packet of coffee that Jean Mark gave me. A heavy wind shakes the house, making its wooden rafters sigh, and it's then that I know I will never see Jean Mark again. He has been killed or else crossed some other boundary just as unbroachable as death, lost again in the bowels of the city where he came from. Do you think any of the forests have grown back, I ask her, the forests all around wawanosh.

21:14 It won't ever be like it was before, she says after a minute, her voice ruffling my hair as it drifts into sleep. But some things are hardy and don't die. Like the rest clover, I think, I think the clover still grows wild and wawanosh, the clover still grows wild. I repeat to myself, and I close my eyes, listening to the sound of our breath and the rattling in my chest, and the noises of the first birds waking up outside as the gray morning light weeps in through the windows, through all the small spaces where the tape has peeled away. The end and yeah, I don't know, welcome back. What a lush, delectable story. Thank you, Kelly.

22:00 And I can just feel the fog through the prose. Kelly just is a real serious way with words. Hazel, who helps us pick the stories, has this to say about this story quote, I am just so taken with the imagery and the emotions that Kelly evokes. This story makes me feel very similarly to when I read Parable the Sewer for the first time, which listener if you haven't read yet, is a must read, being presented with different coping strategies for catastrophe and impending doom, Mina seeking out, doomed romance, Jean Mark starting shit, Yehudah losing himself in work is a classic setup for this kind of story, but the texture and vibrance and subtlety that Kelly brings this true craft, and she writes with this prose that

22:45 you can really chew on and keep finding depth, turning over a new layer. At the beginning we called out that this piece wasn't going to have too much plot, and it doesn't, but it frankly doesn't need one. Plot is often the engine driving a story, but for Clover, the images dripping in emotional resonance are so strong that they power the story all on their own. The final image of looking at the sunlight coming in through the holes in the window where the tape is peeling away, sums up so perfectly the tensions of this story. Eleithuria, the utopian community, which is also the Greek word for freedom, is the sunlight coming in through the holes, carving out autonomy outside where the state can project its power, and

23:24 Illthuria is also the tape trying to keep everyone together to survive collectively. This is the endless tension of finding autonomy. But beyond that, what does it even mean to be free if you know that your world will be ending slash ended by force by the empire? What does freedom mean to a doomed revolutionary? That's what Hazel has to say about it, and I agree with that. And one of the things that really struck me about this story.

23:50 Usually if you have your little community called freedom at the edge of an empire and its dystopian and you can't quite tell the age of the characters, but you get the impression they're like older teens. Maybe you know, you're expecting a certain kind of why a niceness to that community. If people disagree with each other, it's like goofy or bullying, you know. Like but in this story, you have a drunken bad kid who's made someone so mad that he's stalking around the house with a knife.

24:26 You know, there's like a realness, a rawness to this utopian community that I'm really impressed with. And it really shows that Kelly has experienced the less gentle sides of life and society at various points in her life, and it really comes across And I really like that paired with this like you know, cool anarchyish community outside of society, having it be like nahshit's like rough and real, but they're also like care about the kids and take care of each other and all that shit. I would read a whole novel just said in this, but I agree that it works like this. It works as this vignette with a lot of things that it leaves us to think about. It just it asks more questions than it answers.

25:20 And while I both appreciate that, I'm also like I could read more anyway. Kelly's bio Kelly Rose Flugback is a writer, editor, and weightlifting coach living in Toronto. They recently edited the anthology Uprising, which is up colon Rising, and have otherwise been busy opening an accessible queer gym space, which you can find at Spectrum Collective dot c. You can also follow her at Kelly Rose Creates and at Less Pain, Underscore, More Gains. Yeah, And I'm Margaret Kiljoy and you can find me on Instagram and Blue Sky and Hazel helps with researching the scripts and Eva does the audio editing. And I hope you too get to chop amountain of potatoes this week and that it's cathartic for you as well. Until next week, See you soon,

26:13 Fuck ice bye everyone. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources where it could happen. Here, updated monthly at coolzonmedia dot com slash sources.

26:35 Thanks for listening.