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The snack bar fronts on the quad, which is white with moonlight and frost. Terry can see Mitch's black Labrador retriever, Doctor Sax, silhouetted against the grass. Doctor Sax is a cool name for a dog. Mitch says the dog's named after a Jack Kerouac character, Doctor Sax, who is the embodiment of childhood fear, the hand beneath the bed that grasps ankles, the grotesque face in the nighttime window. Now here he is in the flesh, nothing but a friendly old dog in the moonlight.

"Hey Sax," Terry calls. "Doctor Sax."

The sound of cellophane rustling as it's torn from the donuts gets the dog's attention. "Six Sats," Terry says. "Sit."

Sax squats on his haunches, snaps at a donut. Powdered sugar falls onto his black chest; Terry gently pats his head, spotting it with white fingerprints.

"You're a good dog Sax," Terry says. "Goddamned good dog." He shares the donuts with Sax, three apiece. Sax is liberally sprinkled with sugar. Terry thinks the dog looks like a photographic negative of a Dalmatian, black with white spots. "Sax," he says. "You look like a reverse Dalmatian." He's amused by this thought, decides that he has to share it with Mitch. He'll see Sax home, knock on Mitch's door, make a mock apology for turning his dog into a reverse Dalmatian. It's not usual to go to a faculty member's apartment, but this isn't a usual night. Still, he feels nervous about calling on Mitch. He steels himself with one last gulp from his cup, and carefully sets the cup on the grass.

C'mon Sax," he says; with the promise of food, the dog will go with him anywhere. Together they pad up the stairs, Sax happily leading the way. Terry knocks, shouts, "Hey Mitch, I got your dog."

The door opens. It's Mrs. Mitch, dark hair pulled into a ponytail. "Terry," she says. "Everything all right?"

"Sorry I turned Sax into a reverse Dalmatian," he says. "That dog can eat though. You really ought to feed him more."

"Oh he gets plenty," she says.

"He's got powdered sugar all over him. He looks like a reverse Dalmatian."

Mitch comes into the kitchen. He's also in his stockings. "Terry," he says. "What's up?"

"I was just showing Sax the way home."

"Thank you," Mitch says. "You're a Samaritan and a scholar."

"He's got powdered sugar all over him though. He looks like a reverse Dalmatian."

"Ahh, I see, I see. Why don't you come on in, have a cup of tea?"

Terry follows Mitch into his study. There's a braided oval rug on the floor, a couple of overstuffed chairs, each with a footstool so that neither chair makes a claim for the superiority of its user. They sit side by side like colleagues, facing a fireplace set into the wainscot.

"Terry," Mitch says. "Where are your shoes?"

"I left them over in the dorm."

"I see," Mitch says. "So what's up, tell me: how's life been treating you?"

"Not so good," Terry says. "I found out today my cancer's back, you know?"

"I heard, I heard. So tell me now, no bullshit, how are you feeling about all this? You all right with it?"

"Well, I tell ya—I was hoping that my life would be a novel. Now it looks like it's going to be a short story."

"That's a good way to put it Terry. Very perceptive."

"Thanks. You know, I been thinking about writing a novel about this place. I'd call it Characters All."

"A novel?"

"Yeah."

"Good idea, good idea. Or why not a memoir, Terry. "You know, a day-by-day account of a real-life teenager at a real-life prep school dealing with a real-life problem. Could be good."

Terry thinks it over. He's got the whirlies, feels sick to his stomach. "Then I'd have to name names man."

"This is true Ter, this is true."

Mitch often says that: This is true. People on campus have unconsciously picked up on it to the point where it usually sounds bogus. But when Mitch says it, it sounds as friendly as a pat on the back.

"No," Terry says. "I don't think I can write it that way. At least I'd have to change the names to protect the innocent."

"You could do that," Mitch says. "You can write it any way you like Ter, it's your story."

"Yeah," he says. "I can even make up a happy ending."

"This is true," Mitch says. "This is true." ~

Fiction Contest Winners

The Winner
"Characters All," the winner of UNH Magazine's first fiction contest, is a roman à clef by Gerald M. Carbone '82. National Book award winner Alice McDermott '78G, who served as judge, praises the story for its "complexity of voice, sure narrative control and wonderful sense of place as well as character." Carbone received the first-place prize of $1,000.

An English major at UNH, Carbone left his job as a writer at the Providence Journal-Bulletin in 2007 to write books full time. His books include Nathanael Greene: A Biography of the American Revolution and Washington: Lessons in Leadership. He has also been anthologized in Best Newspaper Writing and How I Wrote the Story. Carbone has won the Distinguished Writing Award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford. He lives in Warwick, R.I.

Second Place Winner
"When the Pears Are Ripe" seeks to say "something profound and complex about life, aging, grief and joy," says McDermott, "and I admire it most of all for being so ambitious." The story, one day in the life of a middle-aged woman, was written by Rosalie Davis '79, a freelance copy editor. A former editor and writer at Horticulture magazine, Davis has also written for The Old Farmer's Almanac Gardener's Companion, the UU World Magazine, Gardens Illustrated and The Wall Street Journal, among others. She and her husband, Scott Payette, and sons Pierre and Jack '09 live in Jamaica Plain, Mass. This is her first short story.

Third Place Winner
In "The Big Light" by Nathan J. Fink '11G, the reader learns what happened to the narrator's shell-shocked medic wife. McDermott liked its "wonderfully assured voice and a fine sense of the visual." She adds that it "succeeds very well in—to paraphrase Conrad—making us see. Conrad also comes to mind in its depiction of this journey into a kind of Heart of Darkness." Fink is earning an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) at UNH. He earned a bachelor's in English from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He has been published in the Wisconsin Review, Eklectica and Black Bird Magazine. He lives in Rye, N.H.

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