Good Day Mockingbird № 6

Issue № 6 The Off-Season

A quiet winter still life: on a worn wooden table beside a window full of snow, bare trees and a far village, a blue-and-white bowl holds a lemon and an orange, a grey-and-white mockingbird perched on its rim; a blue-and-white jug and a striped cloth sit beside it, a ladder-back chair and a copper pot behind, in cool window light against warm shadow.

A square that winters nine stallholders and puts the whole market up for one hour, for a wedding; a covered market on the Catalan coast let out in the dead months to a photo shoot, with rented lemons on a real counter; a boardwalk auction house in February 1986, and a green wing chair nobody will take for free. The shutters are down. Everybody who matters stayed.

From the Editor’s Desk

I walked a boardwalk once in the first week of March, which is the worst week to walk a boardwalk. Everything was shut. The shutters had the kind of rust that only grows in wind. The only open door for a mile was a shed behind the carousel, and in it a man was repainting a horse. He had the horse up on sawhorses and he was doing the bridle in red, one strap at a time, with a brush about the size of a pencil. I asked him who it was for, since nobody would ride it until June. He said it was for the horse. Then he said that wasn’t true, it was for him, because in June he’d be selling tickets and wouldn’t get to look at it.

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In this issue

Snow-covered trees in golden winter light beside a stone building with lit windows; under a snowy tent and white umbrellas a small market stall is strung with glowing bulbs, its counters bare and its crates empty; behind them wait a grey-haired woman holding a clipboard, a broad bearded man in a navy jacket and knit cap, and a very old woman in a headscarf on the arm of her young granddaughter; three gulls on the tent roof, one standing, one young and hunched against the cold, one landing with its wings open, and empty tables and chairs dusted with snow and blank chalkboards stand out front.

Nothing for Sale

Nine stallholders winter on the square, and two of them, thirty-one years at adjacent pitches, want to be married in the market, in February, with the whole thing up and nothing in it. The vote goes eight to one. The one gets the clipboard.

by Claire Jacobs

Read the story → 9 min

In a shut market hall lit by photographers' lamps, a grey-haired stallholder in an apron sets four lemons on a steel scale reading 0,160 at a marble counter heaped with crates of lemons, with cherries and vine tomatoes beyond; behind her a crew member arranges the fruit, a photographer shoots a bride and groom in front of shuttered stalls, and an old poultryman with a knife laughs at the left.

Out of the Set

A covered market on the Catalan coast, shut since November and let out in the dead months to a wedding-photo crew from Seoul. Sixty euros for the morning, rented resin lemons on a marble counter that has weighed thirty-two years of real ones, and a crate of cherries that won’t last till noon.

by Paul Titangos

Read the story → 11 min

On a winter boardwalk lined with shuttered stands, an old man in a brown overcoat and knit cap wheels a green wing chair strapped to a hand truck while a smiling woman in a navy coat and red scarf walks beside him with her hand on the chair's top rail, a small mockingbird perched on the chair's wing, the grey sea beyond the railing.

III

Off the Wall

A boardwalk auction house in February 1986, shut since Columbus Day. The lunch counter next door has been dark nine days, there is a hospital bed in Rita’s front room, and Walt has a green wing chair he can’t get her to take for free.

by Pete Kaminski

Read the story → 8 min