Entering the train Robert didn’t want to talk to anyone. Once seated, the couple across from him bobbing gently with the rhythm of the tracks seemed strange.
He wondered if he could avoid conversation with them for the entire three hour trip. From the way the burly man was trying to make eye contact with him he was pretty sure he wasn’t gonna be able to.
There’s a wrinkle of land in Stone County, an isolated pocket valley so remote you can hardly find the sky. My wife Sarah and I were happy there. A nearly feral cat lived there too, a scruffy calico that hung around to avoid coyotes. Sarah called her Josie. That cat was neurotic, delusional, paranoid and pathologically afraid of me though I never gave her cause. For three years all I ever saw was a flash of motion or the tip of her tail disappearing around a corner. The exception was anytime my wife ventured outside. Josie would glare death at me and sidle by on stiff legs, back arched and tail fluffed, to get to Sarah’s lap. I didn’t resent it. Sarah could talk tadpoles from a puddle, chant clouds from the sky, charm ticks from a mule’s hide. She surely charmed that cat, and the cat was good for Sarah. I’d leave them to practice their healing magics on each other and go find something useful to do.
Continue reading “Chasing Josie’s Ghost by Domenic diCiacca”
Brandt Colson silently watched his frenetic daughter as she flitted from room to room in her usual style, talking about ten different things at once and fussing over details and generally majoring in the minor. Brandt noticed the bored and frowning, mostly grown boy, his grandson, as he stood at the front door leaning against the wall. The boy took no pains to hide his sullen, brooding, teenage impatience.
She stopped flying around the room and paused in front of the chair. Brandt looked up. “Plenty to eat and all laid out. Your list is on the counter. Sure you feel up to it, Dad?”
“Feel fine.” He replied. The stroke was jumbled memory now.
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