LITERARY FICTION
DECEMBER 2017
CINNAMON
JEFF FLEISCHER
CINNAMON
JEFF FLEISCHER
The very rhythm of the word always resurrected Grandfather’s stories.
“Cinnamon.”
It had been a quest for this spice that first enticed his ancestors to the sea, luring a sextet of Dutch brothers from the quiet toil of village life to a perilous existence aboard a ship circumnavigating Europe.
Only four of the boys had lasted the full junket to Ceylon. They lost one of their brethren to a collapsing mainsail in a storm off Gibraltar, and another counted among the two dozen men felled by dysentery and left to sea off the Horn of Africa. Grandfather always made the disease real in his telling, dropping his voice to detail the excessive blood and the physical anguish. Conveying how the others sailors’ fears of falling ill led them to abandon their comrades in their final hours. How only the toothless priest would handle the bodies as he ferried their souls to heaven and their remains to the sharks.
Grandfather’s favorite parts of the stories were the battles alongside the Kandy kingdom, when the remaining boys and their compatriots conspired against the Portuguese. He remembered Grandfather’s pride in his antecedents’ efforts to take the cinnamon from slavers. The fighting cost the oldest boy both his legs to musket fire, then his life to a merciful opponent. The thread of another brother’s story cut when he no longer saw a difference between slavery and servitude, and joined the indentured cause of the Ceylonese. Half the remaining duo perished on the return voyage, left to rest in the Gulf of Aden under circumstances never known, as his brother doubled his bounty.
The residue of the diminished family built estates with sticks of the spice, passing the money through blood down the years. Grandfather’s own father fled the Germans at a time when most were turned away, able to do so by selling the inherited spoils of the spice trade.
“Cinnamon?”
Twenty years after Grandfather stopped telling stories, the word still brought these associations to his mind. The sacrifices of generations, the loss of life and opportunity that allowed him his choice.
“No, thank you,” he told the barista. “Just nutmeg. Cinnamon burns my throat.”
He really wished it didn’t. He couldn’t help but feel guilty.
JEFF FLEISCHER is a Chicago-based author, journalist and editor. His fiction has appeared in more than two dozen publications including the Chicago Tribune's Printers Row Journal, Shenandoah, the Saturday Evening Post and So It Goes by the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. He is also the author of non-fiction books including "Votes of Confidence: A Young Person's Guide to American Elections" (Zest Books, 2016), "Rockin' the Boat: 50 Iconic Revolutionaries" (Zest Books, 2015), and "The Latest Craze: A Short History of Mass Hysterias" (Fall River Press, 2011). He is a veteran journalist published in Mother Jones, the New Republic, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Mental_Floss, National Geographic Traveler and dozens of other local, national and international publications.
Chila: Did you base this fine story on true events?
Jeff: The story isn't based on any specific event, though it is inspired by real history. As a history nerd, I'm often interested in the disconnect between things we now take for granted and their outsized importance in the past, and thinking about that prompted me to write this one. (It's not autobiographical; I like cinnamon and I don't know of any ancestors in the spice trade.)
Chila: Does your experience in journalism aid your fiction writing? Talk about that a little.
Jeff: I think it does. Quite a few of my favorite fiction writers started out in journalism, from Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell and Charles Dickens to current writers like Neil Gaiman. I think it helps with structure and a certain kind of storytelling, and it requires an intellectual curiosity that also lends itself to coming up with fiction ideas and figuring out the stories through the writing process. It also helps with getting things done and juggling writing with everything else.
Chila: What one nonfiction assignment or piece of fiction do you want to write one day?
Jeff: There's a notebook full of ideas for both nonfiction and fiction, but the main thing I want to finish is a novel I started a couple years ago. I'm really happy with what I have so far, but t got sidelined because of other work (I've written three books since then, and many short stories). I'm planning to put a solid dent in it in 2018, as other book deadlines allow.
Chila: Did you base this fine story on true events?
Jeff: The story isn't based on any specific event, though it is inspired by real history. As a history nerd, I'm often interested in the disconnect between things we now take for granted and their outsized importance in the past, and thinking about that prompted me to write this one. (It's not autobiographical; I like cinnamon and I don't know of any ancestors in the spice trade.)
Chila: Does your experience in journalism aid your fiction writing? Talk about that a little.
Jeff: I think it does. Quite a few of my favorite fiction writers started out in journalism, from Kurt Vonnegut and George Orwell and Charles Dickens to current writers like Neil Gaiman. I think it helps with structure and a certain kind of storytelling, and it requires an intellectual curiosity that also lends itself to coming up with fiction ideas and figuring out the stories through the writing process. It also helps with getting things done and juggling writing with everything else.
Chila: What one nonfiction assignment or piece of fiction do you want to write one day?
Jeff: There's a notebook full of ideas for both nonfiction and fiction, but the main thing I want to finish is a novel I started a couple years ago. I'm really happy with what I have so far, but t got sidelined because of other work (I've written three books since then, and many short stories). I'm planning to put a solid dent in it in 2018, as other book deadlines allow.
