Danny always arrived early. By now everyone accepted that he did and they’d stopped ragging him about it. He wasn’t really supposed to but George let him. “You can do it lad. Them at the council, they don’t know you like we do. No problem, you just carry on. You just listen to us.” Danny liked George.
Continue reading “Danny by Diane M Dickson”
They purchased the mountain house in the summer of their 39th years. The husband worked part-time at the brewery in Golden while the wife commuted to Denver to serve as a corporate accountant. A sizable inheritance from the wife’s parents made it unnecessary to work, but neither knew what to do with themselves if they didn’t. They held no artistic ambitions or hobbies they cared to explore. They had no interest in children. Two dogs, one large and one small, ran around the property left to their own devices. There was no cable, so they had a satellite dish installed. When the weather was poor, the television snowed. Animals wandered through the yard. Black bear, elk, mountain goats. Birds flew up from below to reach the house, appearing from under the cliff face that formed their property’s edge. The wife enjoyed witnessing this phenomenon far more than the husband. It had long been rumored gray wolves would be reintroduced in Colorado. Both waited eagerly for that.
Continue reading “Snow by Wilson Koewing “
The first inkling Frank had of the change that would overtake him came on the drive down. He was in the back seat, his hip aching from hours on the Interstate, listening to a radio show about snow geese migrating from the Arctic, big flocks miles high but always along the same route: migration corridors they called them. And all of a sudden Frank was up there flying among them, mile after airy mile in unison. Who knows how long it lasted before Kathy turned and spoke to him, words he didn’t catch but that startled him back down, into his body? He shook his head, a horse throwing off a fly; he was a practical man, not given to daydreaming. ‘How long till lunch?’ he asked Kathy who asked Tom who wanted to get another hundred miles at least.
Ten-year-old Josh walked to school on an already hot May morning. The bulldozers roared and pushed along the river, clearing the bush and the cottonwood trees for new condo development. Josh’s skinny white pony-tailed neighbour, landlord Glaser Neil called out from his yard “hey, take a look at this,” and Josh stopped. Neil often acquired odd things. Odd but interesting. Neil pointed behind his lilac bush. Josh looked over and smelled the lilacs. Glaser motioned for Josh to come in, and the boy opened the gate and peered at the back of a cage. “What’s in there?” he asked. He heard a growl.
Continue reading “Child at the Edge of the Wilderness by Harrison Kim”
The Mooney woman taught him how to do it. She was forbidden to be on the premises, but she called Alfie over one day when he was playing near the fence that bordered the lane. The call was a high fluttering whistle, dancing like a mountain stream. He had been building a den from old branches and bracken when he heard, and though he knew from whence came the sound, he was drawn there as though to a trove of sweets.
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