We are excited to share Nolan Natasha’s short story, “Ambrosia.” This piece was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction.
Judge Jackie Ess had this to say about the short story:
The winning story, Ambrosia, by Nolan Natasha, situates us in our own time. It’s a story of the pandemic, but just as much a story of rurality, and of queerness, a real attempt to live autonomously and differently. But we get out there, back to the land, or to ourselves, and find for the most part language, these characters sit under a heavy weight of typified references and internal cliches. One has finally the books and dolls of childhood without the culture or even world that had given them meaning. We see these characters trying and failing to invest these objects (Hatchet, the Princess Bride, a strain of apple), and recognizing just in time that they are the carriers of that meaning and can choose how much they’ve got to carry, how much to pass on. This is a story about people who are trying.
Ambrosia
Nolan Natasha
Swinging that long axe down on each log and hearing the split was a kind of prayer. Most of the time Ryan didn’t think much about his body. He never hated it the way the world had expected him to. It simply wasn’t there most of the time. Throughout his life a few things had made the edges and scaffolding of his body come into focus. Many, though not all, involved sex, and there wasn’t much of that these days. Push-ups helped lately, though for most of his life he hasn’t had the strength for those. A good sweater on a fall day, getting the wood stove going hot enough to walk around in nothing but boxer shorts, and swinging this axe. These things brought his body into focus.
The axe was his father’s. Religiously, whenever Ryan’s dad pulled it from its leather sheath, he would say, “I’ve had this very axe since I was a boy. I’ve been through three handles and four heads.”
Whether there was any truth to the joke, Ryan didn’t know, but ever since he was a scrawny tomboy, the axe looked just like this. The handle said A.J. in tiny carved letters—his father’s initials.
He missed his dad a lot when building his house. He was surprised at how well he had managed on his own, but he knew the whole thing would have been easier and more joyful with his father’s help. They had talked about it when he was alive, but back then they intended to build a small cabin as a place to get away. It was hard to imagine a time where you’d live in the city and head out to a cottage on weekends as a luxury.
Now the idea of being in the city, of cramming into a bar, running into friends, and embracing—that was something worth dreaming about, wishing for.
The house he had built himself was modest. It was heated with wood and diesel, though he tried to avoid the latter. The gas station nearest his place managed to keep a pretty good supply of fuel rations most of the year, but still he preferred to reserve diesel for his truck, which he parked on the other side of the thick trees that surrounded the cabin. The wood stove did pretty well, and on really cold nights he would sleep in front of it instead of in the bedroom extension he had built a couple years before. The cabin had started as just one room, but he added a bedroom and bathroom with a compost toilet a few years in. He had built it in a rush when things took a turn and being in the city wasn’t safe anymore. He was lucky to have a friend with land who offered him and some other friends pieces of the acreage. He’d left Toronto and headed to Nova Scotia, to this piece of land with thirteen queers spread out across twenty acres. It was enough space that you could feel like you were all alone.
They shared resources but didn’t gather much. Everyone was scared to get sick. That fear had crept in and now it was just there like the trees. You never knew how careful someone was when they left the property. That meant it was scary to invite them in. Every now and then they would have a big fire by the river. The last time Ryan had thought that it felt strange.
“It feels like we are forgetting how to be together,” he said to himself as he knocked the snow off his boots before walking through his front door, the smell of the bonfire still thick on his coat. It was the young ones he really felt for. The queers who had never been wasted and sweaty in a sea of bodies. Never had hasty and raunchy sex in a bathroom stall. He didn’t miss everything he thought he would, but he missed gay bars. He had already been missing them before things took a turn. Already they had started to die out in the general acceptance of gay and trans people. But that was not the same as an acceptance of queerness. Queerness wasn’t acceptable. That was the point. He missed being other than something. Having something to be other than. Now there was just the cabin and the wood stove and the axe. It was him and the trees. At least that was how it felt most days.
By the world’s standards, he had never been such a man—building his house with his hands, chopping trees for heat, and dragging them through the woods, making his own beer.
He had stopped masturbating years ago. He couldn’t be bothered. It mostly just made him feel sad. When he did it, he thought of all the times he could have had sex, but let something get in the way—fatigue, dysphoria, the overhang of trauma. These were all decent reasons not to have sex, but now he wished he’d pushed past them more often, particularly with the partners who made him feel at home in himself.
He took the cast iron kettle off the wood stove and poured boiling water over the soggy tea leaves in his cup. He wasn’t sure how many times he had used these same leaves, but it didn’t matter. It was the heat he was after. He looked out the window and wondered how long it had been since someone walked across the field to his cabin. The only tracks in the snow were his and Thelma’s—his dog.
At the beginning of all this he’d had lost a friend. Not to the virus. To cancer. He hadn’t even known she was sick, and he hadn’t seen her in over a decade, but it did something to him. They had been so close when they were young, but had a falling out when he transitioned. She’d been a real asshole and he was young and had been an asshole, too, in his own way. But it wasn’t healthy to have her in his life with the shit she was saying, so he walked away. He walked away from this friend who had known him all his life. A friend who he’d driven all over Ontario with, jumped in rivers with. They had been girls together in the only way that felt right.
When he found out she died there was nothing to be done. It was too late to say that he was sorry they hadn’t spoken. That he was sorry she was sick. That he loved her. Even if she hated him. Even if it was the last thing she wanted to hear. He wished he had said it. Maybe that was selfish.
“Am I selfish, Thelma?”
Thelma looked up but didn’t offer much. He chose to read this as a loyal gesture. He had been selfish. Often.
“The trouble with the end times is there’s entirely too much to think about.” Thelma walked over to him and leaned against his leg, the way she often did when he was talking and she didn’t know what about. He looked at her.
“All of this, what you and me are doing right now, day after day, this was my ultimate fantasy as a child.” It was true. He had imagined his parents’ suburban basement to be a forest a million times. He had imagined a loyal dog by his side in intense survival scenarios. He had been happiest playing by himself in these imaginary worlds. That had bled into adulthood, too—a restlessness. He was a romantic. Hopeless even, but he was always drawn to the idea of being alone, always imagined that he would be doing incredible things if only he had the time, if only he had the space. He had fancied himself a writer but had barely so much as filled a notebook cover to cover. Here he was with all the time in the world, even lucky enough to have a working typewriter, and still he made nothing except this home, which was mostly empty.
Every day he walked Thelma on the same beach. He’d park at the far end and walk along the sand three kilometres until he reached a big rock, which was balanced on the shore. On the rock, someone had spray painted the words Nova Scotia Girlfriend. He loved that rock. Everything about it. First of all, he loved big rocks generally, always had. When he was a kid, there was a rock out front of his aunt’s house the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. As a child, he would climb that rock, sit on it, imagine it to take on shapes and significances he could no longer recall—how the rock became a house, a bunker, a place of worship. The rock on the edge of the beach made him homesick for the best parts of childhood—scraped knees, whittling sticks with a Swiss army knife, and filling a baseball cap with water and pouring it over your head in the summer.
The rock reminded him of his favourite things about the end times as well. Like his friend Frances. She was the only person who still came to visit with any regularity. Frances lived just past the nearest town in a community that didn’t allow visitors. Every couple of months she brought him apples. She grew apples, always had. Before things turned, she used to go down to the states for a big apple farmer competition. They’d blindfold the farmers and then they’d have to taste 35 different varieties of apples and identify them without looking. In the first round, they didn’t even taste them, they’d go only by smell. She won every year and the last time she went, she identified 32 by smell alone. She’d bring him Ambrosias, because he found all other apples too sour. She loved to give him shit about this. Frances wasn’t from Nova Scotia; she was from Sackville, New Brunswick. Before Ryan came out here, like a typical city boy from Toronto, he barely knew the difference between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and he certainly didn’t know where the hell Sackville was, so he would always talk like she was a Nova Scotian and it drove her crazy.
“I’m from New Brunswick, fuck face!” She would say, punching him squarely on the arm.
At first, he was doing it by accident, but eventually it became a running joke. When she would visit and they would walk Thelma together, he’d point to the rock and say,
“Who painted that for you?”
“Why, you jealous?”
The truth is he would be jealous, but he didn’t let himself think about Frances like that. She didn’t seem to feel the same way about him and he didn’t want to jeopardize what they did have, which was lovely enough. Still, every time she came through his door, the flutter in his chest would catch him off guard. He assumed it would stop happening after all these years, but it never did. When he looked at her, he always felt like he was seeing a woman in a dress for the first time, like she invented skirts, and calves, and their effect on him. But Frances hadn’t come in a while. He had tried calling her a few times from the phone at the town store, but she was never there when he called and there was no way for her to call him back. There were no phone lines as far back from the road as he was. Of course, he was worried that she had gotten sick, but he tried not to let himself think about it.
Spring came and turned into summer and still no Frances. Ryan’s garden was in full bloom. He was standing in the sun admiring his promising crop and occasionally throwing Thelma’s
ball.
“Incoming!” He knew right away it was her. Frances always yelled as she was approaching, so she wouldn’t startle him. There hadn’t been any trouble in the last few years, but most people still felt leery seeing someone appear out of nowhere. He spun around and looked for her and sure enough she emerged from the tree line on the other end of the field. Ten steps behind her was a young girl in overalls, who looked about ten years old. He waved at them and then started walking to meet them in the middle of the field.
“Thank god you’re okay.” He threw his arms around her, and she dropped the basket of apples she was carrying.
“Easy there, tiger. I’m fine. Sorry it’s been so long.”
Thelma had already introduced herself to the girl, who was patting her politely.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
“This is Thelma.”
“This is the guy I was telling you about, the big baby who can’t eat sour apples even though the world is ending.”
“Otherwise known as Ryan, nice to meet you. What’s your name?”
“Louise.”
Frances and Ryan chuckled.
“Well, you two make a good pair then.” Pointing at the dog.
“Huh?”
“Never mind him, it’s from a movie for old people.”
“Hey now, that’s a timeless classic. God, I’d give anything to watch that movie.”
“Okay, old man.” Frances was younger than him, but only by a couple years. She was a thousand percent more useful at living in these times. She could hunt and fish and had fixed his truck twice. She had even delivered her friend’s baby because the doctor couldn’t get there in time.
They walked up to the house. When all three of them were inside, he noticed how strange it felt having company after all those months. Louise immediately started looking at his things, unconcerned with propriety. Admittedly, he had very good things. A record player and a shelf full of books and old VHS tapes and a wall full of framed photographs of people who were older than her, but younger than Ryan and Frances.
He walked over and took a book off the shelf and handed it to her. Hatchet by Gary
Paulsen.
“You ever read this?”
“No.”
“It’s about a boy who gets suck in the woods with nothing but an axe and has to survive.” “Cool.”
“It was my favourite when I was your age. You can have it if you want.” She started reading the back immediately. He smiled at Frances.
“Hey kiddo, why don’t take Thelma outside and play fetch with her.”
“She would love it,” added Ryan.
Louise sighed, but by the time she had crossed the room to where Thelma was flopped on her mat, she seemed excited to have a dog to play with and headed outside, with a battered tennis ball in hand.
“You think Hatchet is going to hit the same way for a hit kid who has been living her whole life in a survival scenario?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Fuck, Ryan.” Frances shook her head and sat back in the big chair that he sat in every night by the fire.
“What’s going on? What’s with the kid?”
She exhaled.
“Okay. So, she lives next to me, right? And picks my apples.”
“You’re hiring children to pick your apples now?”
“No. She just picks them. Like, she wants to. So, she’s in my trees picking apples all the time and leaving baskets of them in the barn. She’s good at it too, gets the ones way up high.
Anyway, her mom got it.”
“Shit.”
“The kid’s fine. She got into quarantine fast. But her mom died.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, so she has just been moving around the community. Sort of bouncing around everyone taking turns having her. And then one of the ladies at the market, you know without thinking about what it means to do it, asks her where she’d want to live. You know, like, permanently. And she said, the apple lady.”
It was one of those things that was funny while at the same time being not funny at all. He laughed before he could stop himself.
“Don’t laugh!” she said, laughing herself.
“I know it’s not funny, it’s awful.”
“And you know how I feel about the word lady!”
Frances hated the word lady.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I never wanted kids.”
“I know, me neither.”
“And then it was too late to have them, and I sort of thought, oh shit, maybe I should have had one. “
“I know, me too.”
“And then the world ended and I thought, fuck, thank god I don’t have one.”
“I know, me too.”
“Stop saying that!” She was laughing so hard she was almost crying.
“Do you want a beer?’
“Is it the shit you make?”
“What else would it be?”
“I’d love one.” He opened the trap door on the floor that led to the cold storage under the house. Grabbed two beers and poured them into tall glasses. She was looking out the window at
Louise throwing the ball for Thelma. He stood beside her and handed her the glass.
“Do you like kids?”
He thought about it.
“Not all of them. Not most of them. But I like ones like that,” pointing out the window.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Girls with messy ponytails who like to climb trees and pick apples.”
She nodded.
“Could be worse,” he said. “She could be a boy.”
Frances laughed.
“Well look at her, she might be yet.”
They were quiet a while, taking sips and looking out the window.
“I’ll help you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I just, I’ll help. You can bring her here. She can stay over and hang out with the dog if you need a break.”
She stared at him. She looked scared and tired. He wondered what he looked like.
“I was worried about you. I thought—I don’t know, I tried not to think.”
“Ryan?”
He swore his name was a brand new word when she said it.
Louise came back inside, Thelma bursting in after her and running circles around the room.
“Did you give him his present yet?”
“Present?!” he said somewhat exaggeratedly for the benefit of the kid. “Why do I get a present?”
“Are you kidding me?” Frances put down her beer. “You’re joking?”
“What?”
“It’s your birthday today. You’re fifty!”
“You don’t look fifty,” Louise said. Ryan had always looked younger than he was, and it seemed he still did. He took the compliment.
“Thank you.” He couldn’t believe he had forgotten.
“When was the last time you looked at a calendar?”
“I don’t know.” He thought about it. “Like seven years ago.” Louise found this hysterical for some reason.
“Can I give it to him?” She asked and Ryan remembered the lovely way children take to you so fast with no information.
“Sure.” Louise walked over to Frances’s pack and pulled out a large flat square wrapped in old newspaper. It was very obviously a record.
“This must be a bowling ball.” It was a joke his dad had made every time he had received a record. The joke was as unfunny as it ever was and Louise and Frances rolled their eyes at him.
Records, good ones anyways, were hard to come by. So were tapes and CDs. He had a collection of records, a couple dozen maybe, but it was hard not to grow tired of them. “Open it!”
He opened it slowly. It was the first present he had unwrapped in a very long time. Inside was Tracy Chapman’s self-titled album. “Oh, wow.”
He trembled just a little as he held it. It had been a favourite. He looked up at Frances.
“Thank you.”
Louise had lost interest already and was sitting on the floor with Thelma. He walked to the record player. He loved the whole album, knew it back to front. But there was one song he had to play right way, before the others. He put the needle down one track into the first side. He almost felt scared to start the motor. He smiled at Frances and pressed play. The simple repeating guitar riff that opens the song “Fast Car” came out of the speakers. They weren’t prepared for it. The comfort, like seeing a long-lost friend. But when her voice rang over the repeating notes, they realized they also weren’t prepared for the way they had changed since they had last heard these lines. Silently, tears poured down Ryan’s face and dripped off his chin. Frances’ eyes watered. The song played through the bones of the cabin, and when it finished it felt like a year had passed. When it ended, Louise, who was still patting the dog and hadn’t noticed they were crying said,
“That was a pretty good song!” as earnestly as anyone has ever said anything.
“Well, Happy Birthday,” Frances said, trying to make light of the fact that she hadn’t realized what hearing the record would do to them both.
“I love it, thank you.”
Frances and Louise stayed the night. They watched the The Princess Bride on his VCR.
Louise didn’t want to watch it, until Ryan explained that despite the name, it was actually mostly about sword fighting. In the end, she loved it. Frances and Louise slept side by side in his bed and he fell asleep in his chair reading Hatchet.
He started cooking breakfast before they woke up and by the time they came to the table there was already a stack of pancakes waiting.
“Oooh la la!” Frances slid into her chair, and he handed her a cup of coffee.
“I have some oranges under the house, I’ll make us juice.”
“Can I just eat mine?” yelled Louise like she was going to miss her chance.
“Of course.”
They ate pancakes and discussed the best parts of the Princess Bride.
While eating her fifth pancake, Louise said, “You know what goes good with pancakes?
Bacon.”
“Ryan doesn’t eat meat.”
Ryan loved the fact that no matter what Frances said, it sounded like she was taking the piss out of him.
“Why not?”
“I used to. But once I realized I was going to have to kill the pig myself, I sort of wished I hadn’t been eating it all along. And then I just stopped.”
“I love it.” Louise took another bite of pancake that was bigger than her mouth.
“Yeah, it’s pretty delicious if I remember correctly.” “Though to be honest, I wouldn’t want to kill a pig either.”
“You’re both big wimps,” said Frances.
After they left, the house felt empty. He was tired from having spent the night in the chair, and he couldn’t get comfortable no matter where he sat or lay down. He looked out the window, past the garden beds to where Louise and Frances had disappeared into the trees. “50,” he said to no one, not even Thelma, but she came over and put her head on his leg all the same. He grabbed her leash and headed to the ocean. They walked the same three kilometres along the sand. On the rock at the end of the beach, Nova Scotia had been crossed out. In fresh spray paint it now said, New Brunswick Girlfriend. Sitting on top of the rock was an apple. It was an Ambrosia.
Nolan Natasha is a queer and trans writer and artist. He has been a finalist for the CBC poetry prize, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry prize, the Geist postcard contest, and the Thomas Morton fiction prize. Nolan’s debut poetry collection, I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? was released with Invisible publishing in 2019. He is currently working on a collection of short stories.