Dick and Jane and Bob and Sally lived in a pretty little town with grass and trees. One day Bob was gone, leaving his body behind. Dick said to Sally, “Where is Bob?” Sally said to Dick, “Bob is gone.” They looked at Bob’s body, poking it with a stick. It did not move. He was not there.
I
Every house has this book tucked away somewhere, father tells me. Some keep it locked in the attic, while others hide it in the depths of bookcases or submerged under dusty bowls in forgotten boxes. My father, however, makes a point of reading it to us. Just as he has read it to my brothers and sisters, so he will read it to me. It’s an old leather bound book and inside is written my whole life.
Jackie Cushing was fighting it all the way, wearing knickers, him, twelve going on thirty it felt some days, dreams about Ginnie Grayson practically every night now, the morning dew being the vague remnants his father spoke about with a smile on his face, new hairs in his crotch, his mother wanting her boy to look neat, his father looking at the horizon almost saying aloud this too will pass. It was his one-shoulder shrug that carried verb and noun in its arsenal. Jackie had early discovered that his father did not need a lot of words.
“Do you want to play guns?” he asked me.
This was a complicated question, and while I stood not knowing what to say, the summer heat beat down through the cloudless Virginia sky. Twenty years has gone by now, and each summer heat wave brings back this vivid memory. It will forever be with me, as clear as it was that day when I was eight.
Estaban deTullis may not have been the most beloved man on the small island of Azure De Ponce De Leon, 57 miles south of Caracas, but that was only because of the sometimes venomous feelings harbored toward him by his often-times put upon wife and busy-body mother-in-law.
Joy’s eyes were stinging from the stench of urine. She was hoping it was from her mother’s three tiny dogs, but suspected the mutts weren’t the only ones who’d been incontinent.
Setsuko was twenty years older than me but she looked my age or younger. When I was first at university my brother came by and started talking to me when Setsuko was giving me a violin lesson in my practice room. He thought I was performing in front of a friend.
“Ahhh.” The palm reader sighed heavily. Such was his power that we all exhaled lightly with him, and then leaned forward to hear what would come next.
One thousand and three green squares from one end to the other. Lime green squares, match the lime green jello, match the lime green curtains, match the lime green creamed peas. You get the picture. I’m sure the nurses wonder why I wheel slowly up and down the corridor. It’s the number. One thousand and three. Where’s the symmetry in that? I demand order, discipline. So I count again. To confirm. You wouldn’t think that such a detail would matter in the grand scheme of things, but these days, that’s about as grand as my days get. I enjoy uniformity. Regimentation. Forty years in the military will do that to you. “Career Army” they used to call me. Married to Uncle Sam. I wonder how Lorna felt about that.
A few months ago I bought a box of My Powdered Friend, dumped the contents into a bathtub of water, sloshed it around, and went to bed. The next morning I woke up, and there was Steve.
literally stories 