Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories (3 page)

T
HE
S
TONES

I
love to go out on summer nights and watch the stones grow. I think they grow better here in the desert, where it is warm and dry, than almost anywhere else. Or perhaps it is only that the young ones are more active here.

Young stones tend to move about more than their elders consider good for them. Most young stones have a secret desire which their parents had before them but have forgotten ages ago. And because this desire involves water, it is never mentioned. The older stones disapprove of water and say, “Water is a gadfly who never stays in one place long enough to learn anything.” But the young stones try to work themselves into a position, slowly and without their elders noticing it, in which a sizable stream of water during a summer storm might catch them broadside and unknowing, so to speak, and push them along over a slope or down an arroyo. In spite of the danger this involves, they want to travel and see something of the world and settle in a new place, far from home, where they can raise their own dynasties away from the domination of their parents.

And although family ties are very strong among stones, many of the more daring young ones have succeeded, and they carry scars to prove to their children that they once went on a journey, helter-skelter and high water, and traveled perhaps fifteen feet, an incredible distance. As they grow older, they cease to brag about such clandestine adventures.

It is true that old stones get to be very conservative. They consider all movement either dangerous or downright sinful. They remain comfortable where they are and often get fat. Fatness, as a matter of fact, is a mark of distinction.

And on summer nights, after the young stones are asleep, the elders turn to a serious and frightening subject—the moon, which is always spoken of in whispers. “See how it glows and whips across the sky, always changing its shape,” one says. And another says, “Feel how it pulls at us, urging us to follow.” And a third whispers, “It is a stone gone mad.”

T
HE
O
NE
S
ITTING
T
HERE

I
threw away the meat. The dollar ninety-eight a pound ground beef, the boneless chicken, the spareribs, the hamsteak. I threw the soggy vegetables into the trashcan: the carrots, broccoli, peas, the Brussels sprouts. I poured the milk down the drain of the stainless steel sink. The cheddar cheese I ground up in the disposal. The ice cream, now liquid, followed. All the groceries in the refrigerator had to be thrown away. The voice on the radio hinted of germs thriving on the food after the hours without power. Throwing the food away was rational and reasonable.

In our house, growing up, you were never allowed to throw food away. There was a reason. My mother saved peelings and spoiled things to put on the compost heap. That would go back into the garden to grow more vegetables. You could leave meat or potatoes to be used again in soup. But you were never allowed to throw food away.

I threw the bread away. The bread had gotten wet. I once saw my father pick up a piece of Wonder Bread he had dropped on the ground. He brushed his hand over the slice to remove the dirt and then kissed the bread. Even at six I knew why he did that. My sister was the reason. I was born after the war. She lived in a time before. I do not know much about her. My mother never talked about her. There are no pictures. The only time my father talked about her was when he described how she clutched the bread so tightly in her baby fist that the bread squeezed out between her fingers. She sucked at the bread that way.

So I threw the bread away last. I threw the bread away for all the times I sat crying over a bowl of cabbage soup my father said I had to eat. Because eating would not bring her back. Because I would still be the one sitting there. Now I had the bread. I had gotten it. I had bought it. I had put it in the refrigerator. I had earned it. It was mine to throw away.

So I threw the bread away for my sister. I threw the bread away and brought her back. She was twenty-one and had just come home from Christmas shopping. She had bought me a doll. She put the package on my dining room table and hung her coat smelling of perfume and the late fall air on the back of one of the chairs. I welcomed her as an honored guest. As if she were a Polish bride returning to her home, I greeted her with a plate of bread and salt. The bread, for prosperity, was wrapped in a white linen cloth. The salt, for tears, was in a small blue bowl. We sat down together and shared a piece of bread.

In a kitchen, where such an act was an ordinary thing, I threw away the bread. Because I could.

C
ROSSING
S
PIDER
C
REEK

H
ere is a seriously injured man on a frightened horse.

They are high in the Rocky Mountains at the junction of the Roosevelt Trail and Spider Creek. Tom has tried to coax the horse into the freezing water twice before. Both times the horse started to cross then lost its nerve, swung around violently, and lunged back up the bank. The pivot and surge of power had been nearly too much for Tom. Both times he almost lost his grip on the saddlehorn and fell into the boulders of the creek bank. Both times, when it seemed his hold would fail, he had thought of his wife, Carol. He will try the crossing once more. It will take all the strength he has left.

This is not the Old West. It is nineteen eighty-seven, autumn, a nice day near the beginning of elk season. Two days ago Tom had led the horse, his camp packed in panniers hung over the saddle, up this same trail. He had some trouble getting the horse to cross the creek but it hadn’t been bad. This was a colt, Carol’s colt and well broke to lead. It had come across without much fuss. But that was before the nice weather had swelled Spider Creek with runoff, and of course the colt had not had the smell of blood in his nostrils.

Tom’s injury is a compound fracture of the right femur. He has wrapped it tightly with an extra cotton shirt but he cannot stop the bleeding. The blood covers the right shoulder of the horse, the rifle scabbard, and the saddle from the seat to the stirrup. Tom knows that it is the loss of blood that is making him so weak. He wonders if that is why his thoughts keep wandering from what he is trying to do here, with the horse, to Carol. She has never understood his desire to be alone. From time to time, over the years, she has complained that he cares less for her than for solitude. He has always known that is not true. But still it seems vaguely funny to him that now she is all he wants to think about. He wishes she could know that, hopes he will have a chance to tell her.

Perhaps it is being on this particular horse, he thinks, the one Carol likes better than any of the others. Maybe Carol has spent enough time with this horse to have become part of it.

The horse moves nervously under him as he reins it around to face the water again. Tom wishes there were a way to ease the animal through this. But there is not, and there is clearly little time. There is just this one last chance.

They begin to move slowly down the bank again. It will be all or nothing. If the horse makes it across Spider Creek they will simply ride down the trail, be at a campground in twenty minutes. There are other hunters there. They will get him to a hospital. If the horse refuses and spins in fear, Tom will fall. The horse will clamber up the bank and stand aloof, quaking with terror and forever out of reach. Tom sees himself bleeding to death, alone, by the cascading icy water.

As the horse stretches out its nose to sniff at the water, Tom thinks that there might be time, if he falls, to grab at the rifle and drag it from the scabbard as he goes down. He clucks to the horse and it moves forward. Though he would hate to, it might be possible to shoot the horse from where he would fall. With luck he would have the strength to crawl to it and hold its warm head for a few moments before they died. It would be best for Carol if they were found like that.

Here is a seriously injured man on a frightened horse. They are standing at the edge of Spider Creek, the horse’s trembling front feet in the water and the man’s spurs held an inch from the horse’s flanks.

T
HE
L
AMPSHADE
V
ENDOR

I
t was typical. The door was open. It was summer. The TV was on.

A white-haired man dressed in a black and frayed tuxedo came to the door selling lampshades. He was a dignified man transformed by the loss of his hands. He picked up a shade with one of his metal claws. “Sell you a new lampshade?”

I didn’t like the shade. I had never even given much thought to the lampshades I already had. I wondered how he lost his hands. I tried to make conversation. “A man knocked on the door yesterday selling mops and brooms. Do you know him?”

He put the lampshade back on his cart. “No relation. I sell shades. You want one?”

I’ve always loved human activities that are on the way out. I asked him how long he had sold lampshades.

“Fifteen years ago, I had a sideshow at all the big fairs, a flea circus. But I was hit hard by hygiene and taste.”

“I saw a flea circus once, but no one believes me,” I said. “I keep it to myself. But I’d swear I remember a tiny flea wedding and a flea riding on a bicycle.”

“I had a little table for the stage, and I would only allow a few chairs for the audience. I had a ballet sequence, a tightrope walk, and a wagon train race. The secret was all in the human flea. They are the only ones with the necessary power to tug and push with their back legs. My fleas were incredible. What stamina. They could perform hundreds of shows a day, and continue for weeks. And at the end of my show, I would roll back my sleeve and invite the performers to dine.” The man raised his chrome hooks in the air.

“I read that in Mexico, the Church supported flea art,” I said. “Nuns made and sold miniature models of the Stations of the Cross fashioned out of flea corpses and scrap materials. The fleas kept them from having to carve human figures.”

“I had a flea,” he said in a quiet voice. “I kept it as a pet. It was the only one I let suck the palm of my hand. I fastened it to a chain of gold no longer than your finger. I attached a perfectly shaped coach of gold to the chain for the flea to pull.”

I thought I’d seen everything. But the way he talked about this pet flea and the perfect gold coach got me to thinking. “Yes,” I said, my voice rising, “do you think you could tell me about it again?”

He stared at me. “No,” he said, cautiously. “It’s hard on me to remember.”

I tried to think of a proper response. “I understand,” I said, finally.

The man rubbed one of his metal claws against the skin under his chin. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Get me something to write with.”

He picked up one of the plain white lampshades. I placed a pen in his left claw. It was a felt tip that I had forgotten to return to the clerk when I wrote a check at the A&P.

He drew the whole flea circus on the shade, the wedding, the tightrope walker, and a flea ballet. He drew scenes we hadn’t even talked about. Finally he drew what I knew had to be the flea on the golden chain, for it rested on the palm of a hand. The hand was perfect.