A massive spreading oak at the edge of the gas station's asphalt shaded my car. Across the steaming blacktop, not thirty feet away, a low-built one-story cross between a home and a gas station crouched just beyond the edge of the oak's cooling canopy.
Wilhelmina Guterson scraped the frost off the kitchen window to check for any signs of life outside. The distant nub of sun clearing the horizon offered watery light but no warmth.
The Adventure Inn boasts lots of activities for its residents, even the ones who shuffle with walkers or scoot around in their wheelchairs. In fact, the brochure given to families looking to place their infirm parents lists Shuffle and Scoot along with Knit and Purl as the most popular of its daily activities for a certain set in the A wing, “A” standing for Active.
Mum was walking on the marsh again. Mrs Herbert at The Salting’s spotted her in a cardigan and slippers during one of the first frosts, staring over the kissing gate towards the sluice. The farmer drove her back.
The first time I saw Abbie, she was doing stand-up at a monthly open mic night for folk singers and poets at the Blue Angel. Her hair was blue then, and she wore an electric blue, satin cocktail dress with burgundy Doc Martens.
Fog hangs in the damp morning air when I pull the Mini Cooper into the physician’s parking section of the hospital garage. Grey and thick, it penetrates through the first-row spaces, wafting around the car, just like it did when I left the house a half hour ago.
You agree to go only because your mother wants you to. You don’t understand why she wants you to be there. You’ve never sussed out why she still is. Fear, mostly. Being with him was always a tiny bit less scary than facing the world on her own. It used to make you angry. Now that you’re grown, you understand, a little. But only a little. What did she give up? No one will ever know.
After the War my uncle Rimley disappeared into my closet and we never saw him again. Oddly, whenever I told someone this story, the first question I was asked was: what kind of name is Rimley? His mother probably thought it was pretty for a child born pretty. He was no longer pretty when he returned from the war, more wound than anything.
I've lit the candles and incense, rung the bells at the small shrine in my studio, bowed my head, all as if I'm about to start work. The sticks and the needles stand ready, lined up in their boxes; the ink in its jars, rows of blue and black, yellow, green, aqua, red.
“Marry me.” Perhaps it is the limnetic sound of lush rain that motivates Amanda Crowder to importune her lover, Orville Miller. The sound is an evocation; they stand in the middle of a large, rectangular-shaped field of corn, the rain effect composed by a southwest breeze rustling the slender, brown, heavily leafed stalks, this middle week of October.
He sits cross-legged on a small patch of flattened, hardened ground under the branches of a four-hundred-year-old beech tree. His wife stands before him, her linen bag swinging from her shoulder, ready to leave before he does. He too faces the splintered trunk of the tree and touches each of the small seven markings – scratches its surface with his fingernails, blisters of blood leaving their trace.
It’s dark and raining when you get to your car. The traffic lights next to the office fracture across your windscreen in shining, blood-red droplets, and you’re reluctant to turn on the wipers to clear them away. As you near home, you remember you need milk and pull into the petrol station.
Her eyes move from table to table, person to person. He’d somehow forgotten this in the last six months. He’d forgotten her restless eyes tracking whoever walked by, leaving the impression that he was not quite interesting enough to hold her attention. It’s a facet of her behavior that his mind has conveniently polished away.
The violin lay silent in its silk lined bed. For a moment, I just stood looking. Then I walked over to the dresser and picked up the violin, carefully tuned it and placed it under my chin. My fingers danced over the strings, blending one barely heard note with the next until a gentle sea of music was held within the hollow body of the violin.
I'm driving home after checking out the art museum as a possible wedding venue when I see Papa's Honda outside his office building. It's past seven on Friday evening and the tall street lamp casts a pool of light on his personalized license plate which reads GRANYON―acquired after his third hike down the Grand Canyon. He's obsessed with the wonder. “Most visited tourist site in the US,” he says.
She’s standing with her back to me when I come out of the Folk Café in St James. On her T-shirt, between her shoulder blades in faded lime-green capitals, I read: Unlock the power of clothing.
I was five years old that spring. The clacks and scratches of twigs landing on and then sliding down the roof tiles woke me, as they did every day, and I listened as the pre-dawn winds flew their last sorties. Light gradually appeared in the cracks in the shutters.
I had been to this restaurant once before on a previous date that hadn’t really worked out, but I had enjoyed the food and it was affordable.
Transubstantiation. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it? More than enough for Lancelot Pritchard to choke on, though the coroner won’t be giving the official cause of death until this afternoon.
by Philippa Green Ali pulled her hand through the tangle of her hair and scowled at the bathroom mirror. Sand specks trailed the bathroom floor. The mingled scent of pine and sunscreen hung fresh on the sarong laid out to dry on the balcony. Sea salt clung to her skin, crusting her hair after a day spent half in half out of the water. “More sunscreen tomorrow,” said the mirror. “Factor 50 please.” “Of course.” Ali smiled. A tight weariness creasing her forehead. It had mostly been a day of sandcastles, moats collapsing as the tide pulled in. Squealing, laughing,…
On the top floor, Lily’s rattling away at her sewing machine, hemming the wedding dress her cousin will wear at the weekend. She deftly removes pins as she feeds silk into the machine, swearing under her breath as one drops from her grasp.
I dreamt I was in the dark wood. The trees reached up and blocked out the sky. I was walking beside my father. He was stooped over, holding himself up with a walking pole.
Every week, Nina asks if I want to come to the arts workshop. She noticed the bowl on my windowsill on her first day and picked it up, holding it lightly with brown fingers. She asked how it was made and why. She was curious but couldn’t stay long enough to hear my answers.
By Ron Ennis For as many weeks as he could remember, Gord’s Uncle Chris had seen the dog in the same yard, always bitin hard at sometin in the dirt, rootin like a fuckin pig she was. He told Gord to get the something she wanted. It had never been his inclination to pay attention to stray dogs. A lot of skinny dogs runnin round Galway and it’s better to stay away from em. Most of em, Uncle Chris had said, they have a fuckin attitude, snarlin and sneakin. Still, one day Uncle Chris gave her a piece of black…
I took out a pocket calculator and started estimating. Fifty pounds of brisket at six dollars a pound. One good-sized rack of beef ribs for maybe eighty dollars. Nine pounds of beef heart at eight dollars per pound. Four pounds of liver at five per pound. Four rouladens at maybe fifteen each.
Look. They are dancing, the old man and Ruth. Their feet shuffle on the scuffed parquet, while four, maybe five, other customers nod in time to the music. In the ornate mirrors you can see the reflection of the nodding and the dancing.
As I walked along the quay towards the cottages, I could see the car headlights near the French town of Carteret, fifteen miles away. They moved like fireflies in some overly complex, choreographed dance routine.
Mr Hieronymus Bosch and I were both sworn members of the Confraternity of Our Blessed Lady, a society in which men can surely trust one another. No need for a third party to act as broker; we shook hands on the deal ourselves.
I pull my pack out of my pocket and slide a cigarette out, crisp and white, sharp and bitter. How do you give a deer a square? I hold it out and he bends down, his bifurcated lips curling around the smoke.
Inside the door she is half-standing, dark-skinned with dreadlocks or cornrows. Her chin is pierced with a horizontal bronze-colored pin whose ends stick out below each of the sides of her mouth. Her eyes are black and large and never seem to close.