Category: Short Fiction

Bernice sits in her work clothes on the edge of the bed in her small bachelor apartment above Main Street not knowing what to do next. When she woke up that morning it all seemed so simple. Her manager asked her to do a window display in the Bargain Centre to show off the new running shoes that had been shipped in from Grand Forks, and just before she’d gone to sleep she’d had this terrific idea about using her dead husband’s prosthetic leg. Her plan was to hang the leg from the ceiling of the window and put one of the new running shoes on its foot, classy like, as if it was ready to power that leg straight to the Olympics. But to figure out how she needed the leg. And she’s frightened. She can’t bring herself to open the closet door.

Rachel Sievers has been a steady winner with us for the past four years or so. Trailer Parks and Sagebrush is one of her very best. Many writers, who know nothing about trailer parks, attempt to go at the people who live in them as though the residents were alien beings from another solar system.