Travel Journals

That Smile
by Claire Rogers

Key West
by Sandy Summers

Prague: Pivo, Prosm!
by Ellen Kamilakis

Zuppi Santi (Soggy Saints)
by Corrie Cook

Isadora—Street Queen of Yogyakarta
by Barrie Lie-Birchall

From Umbria to Le Marche
by Jackie Goyette

Observations of Those On the Road
by Matt Superfisky

Avoiding Travel Scams
by Julie Vick

A Hunger in Berlin
by Abha Iyengar

Storefronts
by David J. McLaughlin

Flickering Yellow Flame
by Marlo Desjardins

An Italian Library
by Jackie Goyette

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Travel Journals

That Smile
by Claire Rogers

That smile. Showing defeat and defiance at the same time. Eyes squinting out bitterness. Teeth broken, crooked and brown —yet proud. Silence, while questions sputtered in my brain—none of them my business, but then I had already asked the question that brought on his life story. He shrugs off fate. Silence, broken by the boy in the grimy orange shirt and dusty purple sweat pants, too short and made shorter by his long bare dirty feet. His worn out akubra stayed on his head as he jumped off the verandah, hollering excitedly from a long day at school.

"So how did you end up here?" That was all I had asked. Within two minutes, the father had described the family holiday twelve years ago. Bushbashing in the red center, the outback. "The car broke down. Me missus died while we were stuck trying to get it fixed. Me boy was six months old, so I brought him here, to town, to bring 'im up."

Town? We looked up and down the crossroads, checking each of the four corners for signs of a town. On our corner stood the hotel/pub, and on the opposite corner were the spare hotel rooms in a portable unit and a car hood propped up to direct lost drivers—Alice Springs: 650 kilometers. The next corner had a well kept house for sale. The fourth corner had an odd collection of outbuildings and a kombi van that was home to a large family of Aborigines. Whatever we had to say next didn't matter. The now twelve year old boy was anxious to go home and the father looked tired. His face was dark and deeply lined, his stubbly grey beard looked about four days old, but still he smiled.

We thanked the father for his kindness, offering for us to come over later for a visit and a try on his neighbor's ham radio to contact our friends a half a world away. None of that mattered. We watched as they loaded into the solid old sedan, listened to the dry hinge of the heavy doors groaning shut. We held our collective breath as the battery lurched the motor to life for what sounded like the last time. Stones echoed off the low undercarriage and flatulence from the holey muffler faded away down the road.

That smile haunted me. One year has passed and still I recall the eerie quiet calmness of that meeting. The smile reflected on the surrounding landscape. It grew out of some very empty place, at first painted on with dust and ashes and then finally it grew back. The muscles relearned, but still it grew back differently.