Mary opens the maintenance garage at the golf course before sunrise. A bird is waiting inside to greet her. A belted kingfisher, rare for Missouri in late December. In a flash of slate blue, the bird soars out through the garage opening. Three hours of tree trimming later, she sees the bird again––for two seconds, maybe three––near the sixteenth hole, under the bare oak behind the green. She cuts back limbs on trees that surround the putting surface, then works through the seventeenth hole, the eighteenth. She returns to the garage. In the break room, she heats up what’s left of the coffee she brewed for herself hours earlier—this time of year, she’s the only person on the course. As the club owner, she gives her staff two weeks off for the holidays.…
...continue reading
Father Pepe swept the volcanic ash off the sidewalk leading to his church. The narrow shoulders on his slight frame moved back and forth in rhythm as he worked his way down the walkway. A young man approaching middle age, Father Pepe appeared delicate but wiry.
The volcano had never erupted in an explosion of lava. Instead, it constantly belched out the ash that covered the town of Santa Clara and the fields of coffee plants nearby, like God emptied his ashtray over the land. Everyone in the village cleaned away volcanic ash from windowsills, cars, and walkways daily.
The coffee fields were the lynchpins of Santa Clara’s economy, and despite efforts to prevent it, the ash choked the plants. If the volcano did not cease its grey discharge soon, the coffee shrubs would all be dead, and so would Santa Clara.…
...continue reading
I was inside the bathroom, balancing blood on the back of my hand when there was a knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I asked.
He mumbled something. I balled up a tissue and placed it on the cuts and it drank like a vampire bat.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
Another mumble.
“I can’t hear you, buddy. Speak up.”
The tissue clung to my skin, so I used my free hand to slide the razor blade from the counter, open the drawer and slip it into the slit of the small tin box meant to house such things. It clanked inside, landing on top of the others.
“Can I have some milk?” he asked.
“I turned your show on,” I said. “Why don’t you watch that?”
I plopped the blood-soaked tissue into the toilet.…
...continue reading
“Do you remember the couple we met at the Lalonde wedding,” Ellen asked, picking up a four-jar gift pack – Tandoori, Balti, two other labels Jack couldn’t read from where he stood – and examining it. She had convinced him to celebrate Diwali this year in support of their daughter Megan’s betrothal to Aarush, a med student from Jaipur. The thought of it gave him heartburn, the food, the possibility of meeting Aarush’s parents and celebrating a Hindu religious festival, penance Ellen exacted for his attitude toward their nuptials. Not that he cared about their religion, or any religion really. But Megan was only twenty-one and finishing her bachelor’s in music therapy. Aarush still had to complete two years of interning.
Now here he was following her around the aisles at Penzey’s Spices.…
...continue reading
Ch. 4: The Miraculous Theft of Identity
God-With-Us was walking through a Birmingham suburb, followed by a large crowd. Many who lived in that neighborhood came out on their front porches, angered that the crowd was trampling their lawns and setting off their car alarms. Assuming it was another peaceful protest, they shouted obscenities and waved their firearms in the air.
But one woman ran out to God-With-Us, saying, “I saw you healing people on the news! Please come inside and help my mother. She is terribly sick with the flu.”
So, God-With-Us went in and healed the woman. She got out of bed and, seeing the crowd, began making iced tea and brownies for everyone. God-With-Us rose to leave, but could not even make it to the front door because the crowd kept shoving another sick or injured or disabled person in front of him.…
...continue reading
It was the dead of winter, 1875. Pitch black as coal it was, and foggy. You couldna see your hand in front of your own face. That’s how we’d gotten off course, you see. We’d just left a small school of cod outside Lewisporte and was bringing The Deluge ‘round north by St. Anthony’s Tip, hoping for better luck. We was further out than we had any right to be ‘cause we got turned around in that fog. We was all standing on the deck, peering through that thick blanket, trying to see any kind of thing to show us where we was going, or how to get back to where we’d been. Then, I swear to you Tristan, somewhere out there we heard a screeching unlike anything we’d ever heard.…
...continue reading
Once upon a time, there was an artist who hated to paint. In the house to the left of the artist was a writer who hated to write, and next to his house was a musician who hated playing instruments. These three lived on Avenue Street in a city called Grouping of Buildings. Every weekday the three would arise in the morning and do what they hated most. The artist would begin by laboriously cleaning her brushes from yesterday, the writer would sharpen his pencils, and the musician would tune their instruments. By 8:00 o’clock each day they would begin their work. By 12:00 o’clock they would gather for sandwiches and tea, and grumble about what each of them had completed in the morning. They spent their days as such, and by the time the weekend came, they were glad not to do their tasks and instead enjoyed each other’s company and going to the farmer’s market on Sundays.…
...continue reading