Category flash fiction

Getting Miss Elsa Home

Joe Artz Leave a comment

Eight miles out of Valley Center, on a country road in the middle of nowhere, a tire went flat. I asked Edmund to hold the flashlight for me while I unpacked the spare tire, jack, and lug wrench from the trunk. While I set the jack under the back bumper, he asked me to hand him the lug wrench. “Left rear?” he asked. “Yep,” I said. As I started jacking, I heard the hub cap pop off, and the sound of the wrench being fit over the first nut.

I jacked slowly. It was late, approaching midnight, and I was tired, but more than that, I was distracted by the stars. It was a cold, clear night, miles from any city, and the late December sky blazed with stars. God, there were lots of stars. You ever look at a beach and try to see just one grain of sand? You can’t do it, the grains don’t stand out single, they clump together, and all you see is beach. The sky that night was nothing like that. The stars were too many to count. Each stood out to be seen, crisp and bright, a single point of light.

“Elsa,” I called, “get outta the car and look at these stars!”
Continue reading “Getting Miss Elsa Home” →

The Scrawny Kid on Base

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The scrawny kid usually gets a hit. He’s left handed but bats right. Batting right means his surest and strongest hand is nearest the bottom of the bats, and maybe this helps steady his swing. Batting right also means that as his bat leaves his shoulder, its tip seeking the ball, his left arm leads the way. It’s the arm he habitually uses to reach for things, and maybe that gives him a surer, truer swing. He’s only ten, none of this occurs to him, but he just accepts as fact that if the softball drops anywhere near his strike zone, he will connect. Continue reading “The Scrawny Kid on Base” →

Orchard

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Our orchard has grown through the years from a single tree to over a hundred. They spread down a grassy slope.

Last winter winter weighed heavy on the limbs, and spring iced the flowers. The trees are unlikely to bear fruit this season. Still, we must tend them. A few years back, the wild mulberries failed to produce. By midsummer raccoons, thin, starving, ragged, were raiding the granaries and barns, even breaking into the houses, desperate for food. The cherry trees that year also failed, but the following year, both mulberries and cherries bloomed and the boughs dipped low with fruit. No one had ever seen such abundance. Even people who hated cherries and mulberries ate them anyway, there were just too many, being prepared and served in too many ways, to say no, and when the path before you is partially blocked by a low limb heavy with plump, juicy, sweet-smelling fruit, it is impossible to not sample just one, if not devour dozens.

Our greatest fear is an overabundance of apples. The heavier the crop, the longer it takes to destroy them all, and the greater the chance that someone will yield to temptation and eat one, and the eternal harmony of the world we have built for ourselves, all these centuries, in this garden, will be destroyed, for the apple remains forbidden.

Zandra on the Stairs

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1.

Zandra stayed in shape by running the stairs of her St. Louis high rise five steps at a time. Ten steps separated each landing, and she took each set in two long strides, identical twins of muscle and grace. Twenty measured, airborne lunges to reach the tenth floor. Twenty loping, free-fall leaps to go back down.

Moving to a small town, Zandra bought a house with only two floors. The stairs had two landings. The first landing was just three steps up from the living room floor. A quarter turn left, and seven steps to the second landing, another quarter turn, and seven steps to the second floor hallway. She struggled to learn the new stair case. Her long legs balked at the change from the straight-five cadence of the high rise to the syncopated 3, 4 of her new place.

Frustrated, she tried for all seven at once and found herself stuck on the stairs in a full split, one foot on the bottom landing, the other one step short of the top one.

2.

Each morning, Paul breakfasted on the morning paper. When he was ready for his check, the waitress would come, and he would tell her what he had digested.

“Front page, letters to the editor, box scores,” he usually replied.

“Whole or skim?” she asked.

“Just skimmed,” he said.

“Browsing and skimming,” she said, listing what he’d read, with prices, on her little green pad. “That’s not a healthy breakfast.”

She’d put the check face down on the table. He’d finish his coffee, steal a peak at the comics, and leave a lousy tip.

3.

Zandra’s daughter, Zoey, sat on the bottom landing below her mother, finishing her homework. Luckily her homework was to write a letter of persuasion, and so she had written a plea for someone to come save her mother. She chose a block business style so the person receiving it would take it seriously. She tri-folded the letter and handed it to her mother’s friend, the Roller-Blading Krishna, who wafted gently from the house and floated toward the sky. “Pfut, pfut, pfut, pfut” was the sound his roller blades made, trailing puffs of orange smoke. For several blocks, the Roller Blading Krishna could still sense Zandra’s pain, but then the warm sunshine burnished his cheeks, and the gentle breeze slipstreamed his lips into a smile. He was so glad they had moved to a small town. The brutal crosswinds of the St. Louis high rises made roller-blading difficult.

+4.

Lindsey lost her footing on the waxed floor and embraced the linoleum hard. Computer tapes in round metal cans scattered from her arms. Paul, her boss, came skidding across the floor on his knees, gathering up the tapes.

“Oh, God, Lindsey, this one has a little dent!” said Paul.

“Paul,” said Lindsey, “we’re the only dot.com on the planet that stores its data on a mainframe.”

“Mainframes,” said Paul, straightening, “took America to the moon, and that is so far above the Cloud it has to be better.”

Staring at the pink slip he handed her, Lindsey said, “You’re phf-firing me? What the phfoot?”

Lindsey, raised Amish, never used bad words. She stomped down the hall, turning halfway to the doors. “You know what the phfirst letter in ‘phfired,’ is Paul? It’s phfut. Phfut you, Paul. Phfut this crappy job.”

She hit the crashbar, breaking free into the sunshine, dumb, bummed, but deep down, ecstatic.

The Roller Blading Krishna was waiting, bobbing cross-legged over some dahlias, on a cloud of phfffty orange smog.

“You said the magic word.” He handed her Zoe’s letter. “You said it four times.”

“Who the phfut are you?” said Lindsey.

“Five times,” said the Roller Blading Krishna.

Lindsey’s eyes widened as she read.

“O. M. G.” she said. “The pain in her hip flexors and hamstrings must be excruciating.” She narrowed her eyes. “How do I know this girl’s mama is really trapped in the splits between landings in her house?”

“Here is one of her socks,” said the Roller Blading Krishna. “The other sock is out of reach, at the upstairs extremity of poor Zandra.”

“I can help,” said Lindsey. “I know just what to do.” She leapt into the Roller Blader’s arms. They phfut phfut phfutted away on puffs of orange smoke.

5.

“Momma.”

“Yes, dear?”

“Why didn’t we just call 911?”

“Because momma forgot to charge her cell phone last night. Oh, this hurts.”

“As much as childbirth?”

“Not quite, dear. But if someone offered me an epidural right now, I’d take it.”

“Momma?”

“Yes?”

“If you got me an I-Phone, I would promise to always keep it charged.”

In the yard, they heard the familiar Phfut, phfut, phfut of the Roller-Blading Krishna. “He’s back!” shouted Zoey, “With a lady! My letter worked!

6.

The next morning, for breakfast, Paul devoured three whole columns of newspaper. When he called for the check and the waitress asked what he’d digested, he pointed to the headline. She scribbled it down on her pad.

Pointing to the picture of the story’s hero, Paul said, “Best programmer I ever had.”

“Article says you fired her,” said the waitress, laying his check face down on the table. “It says she didn’t seem to mind.”

“Yea, well,” said Paul, hanging his head. “I know her better now. It says her she’s got an associate’s degree in Physical Therapy and that’s secretly what she’s always wanted to do. I never knew that. And she was raised Amish. I never knew that either.”

“What I’ve been telling you,” said the waitress. “Breakfast’s the most important meal of the day. Pay on your way out, you schmuck.”

Paul read his check.

“Disgruntled Dot.Com Darling Saves Day.

“Mother Fine. Daughter Recuperating in School.

“Amish Carpenters to Add Three Steps between Landings.”

Paul nodded. Everything was in order. He left the waitress a big tip.

Clear Creek Bikepath, 8 A.M.

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The bike path I was riding on ran under a bridge that crossed a creek. Two men sat in folding chairs by the path, fishing.
“What kind of fish do you catch here?” I asked one of them.
“Catfish,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Joe,” I said.
“I’m Dan, and this is my good friend Bob.”
“Hello, Dan and Bob,” I said.
“Do you fish?” asked Dan.
“No.”
“Well, why not?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s because I just can’t sit still that long.”
Dan gave me a look that told me he knew better.
Bob said, “That must be why you ride that bike.”
Dan said, “You ever ridden RAGBRAI?”
“No,” I said. “But this bike has. My daughter rode this bike on RAGBRAI when she was sixteen. She rode clear across Iowa.”
“That’s just sad,” said Dan. “Your daughter rode RAGBRAI when she was sixteen, and you don’t even fish.”
“Worse than sad,” I said. “because I’m on my way to work.”
Dan sucked in a deep breath.
“But I’ll be back with a fishing pole,” I said. They laughed.
“No, I won’t,” I admitted. I mounted up.
“Thanks for stopping,” said Dan. “Good meeting you,” he called as I peddled away.

Birthmark

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Hickey lived in a church steeple. Thinking no one knew, he snuck in at night through the sanctuary doors that the preacher left open for folks and their private prayers. Hickey never said prayers, but he lived one, and so the preacher turned his cheek to all suggestions of eviction.

The prayer Hickey lived was that the moon remain in the sky. He felt a kinship with the moon, because like him, its face was imperfect. He’d heard that some saw a man in the moon, or a rabbit, or a woman with a necklace. He saw in its dark splotches a birthmark, like the one that covered one side of his face, except his was dark red, the color of acne but acne was bumpy, and his birthmark was smooth, like he’d heard that the moon’s was, only people called the moon’s birthmarks mare, which meant sea, but they couldn’t be seas, because the moon, he’d heard, had no water. There was the moon, up in the sky, with no water, and apparently no need for water, completely free of something no one else could live without. Reason enough, Hickey had decided, to make his life a prayer that it remain in the sky.

Hickey didn’t pray to the moon. It didn’t care, it wasn’t listening. He didn’t pray for the moon, because if the moon didn’t even need water, it needed nothing that a prayer could bring. So Hickey decided to just be friends with the moon. When it rose, he was there to say, “Hi, welcome back.” When it set, he told it, “So long, come again.” When the clouds cleared, after a night’s frightful storms, he greeted it with joy, said he was so glad to see it come back, and hoped the storm hadn’t scared it like it had scared him. Once a month, during what people called the “new moon,” it hid itself, and when it returned, he welcomed it back and knew from its slender crescent smile that it was glad to see him.

Hickey didn’t much care for people. They were fragile, always breaking. Everything about people was liable to break at any time, and people knew this, and accepted it with special words. Broken spirits, broken dreams, broken hearts, but not the kind in his chest that beat, another kind of heart that Hickey didn’t understand. People broke up, broke down, broke out in measles, broke out in laughter. Even when happy, people broke. And he’d seen anger break a face, turned it as red and scary as a birthmark.

Hickey had given up on breaking years ago. He’d heard that some people envied him that, envied his tolerance of people making fun of him, saying mean things, knocking him around. Even good people tried to break him, telling him he needed things he didn’t: a home, parents, meals at a table, Sunday school, and something call vocational training. There came a day when he just got tired of people trying to break him. On that day, a night actually, the moon had been there to show him just what to do.

He’d heard people thought he hated people, had got fed up with being broken. But what he’d really got fed up with was no being able to them break back. He wasn’t quick enough, observant enough, caring enough to know what to say or how to say it. He wasn’t witty, wasn’t smart, couldn’t stay mad, couldn’t talk without thinking over what he was going to say. He made his break from people – made his break – the day he said “Fuck you” back to someone who’d said it to him. “You can’t hurt me,” he blurted out to Bobby Burton, that night on main street, blood streaming from his nose. “Fuck you,” Bobby Burton said, balling his fist for the next punch. “Fuck you back,” said Hickey, and it was like his ears stopped working and his eyes stopped seeing and his skin and bones stopped feeling and he was floating above it all, heedless, needless, like the moon.

So he kept saying it. “Fuck you,” to anyone or anything that crossed his path. “Fuck you” for about a whole year, the year he got free of school where “Fuck you” wasn’t allowed. A year of “Fuck you’s” and people left him alone, and once he got as free of them as the moon was free of water, he took charge of his life. He moved into the steeple, discovered the moon, and decided that his job in life was to keep the moon in the sky, and that all it would take was to talk nice to the moon, always give it a smile, never try to break it, like it never tried to break him.

4/30/15

Not Up to Scratch

Joe Artz Leave a comment

The mosquitoes that weekend were horrible.  They ruined both our camping trip and our relationship. Making love while being wounded from all directions at all angles by vicious little cupids, a Valentine’s Day massacre. It didn’t help that the tent’s zipper had given out years ago, and I’d replaced it with Velcro strips every foot or so, leaving large gaps all the way around. It didn’t help that it was my tent, and I had neglected to mention the Velcro when we’d decided that one would do us fine. And it actually had gone fine, quite fine in fact, until the scouts for the mosquitoes found the gaps and tasted first blood. We slapped them away without thinking, until they returned with the rest of the Army.

We tried to escape by getting back into our clothes, but mosquitoes undeterred by a velcroed tent door  laughed off the futile gaps between buttons, between shirt tails and jeans, and collars and throats. We tried to escape by zipping up in our sleeping bags and pulling the drawstrings, but the mosquitoes found us there. Desparate, we bolted for the car, like Redcoats from Concorde, harried in our retreat by murderous, sniping swarms of Minutemen.

In the car, we slapped dead that ones that made it past the slamming doors. We swatted until the dash, the windows and windshield, the backs of the seats were specked with protoplasmic measles of our own blood. We snuggled down to endure the rest of the night. We got as comfortable as two people can get in a Prius, so much so I was thinking she’d forgiven me my Velcroed tent but, for the record, our relationship ended the instant I wiped a smashed mosquito off the dashboard, held it between us on the tip of my finger, and said, “Imagine, our blood commingled.”

“My tent! Our sleeping bags!” I said as she started her Prius.

“Screw your tent,” she said, and drove down that mountain into town, where she dumped me on the curb in front of my house at 3 AM, desolated, burning with red welts.

I tried to sleep, but the itching wouldn’t let me. I tried cortisone cream, and Benadryl, and uncounted shots of rye whiskey.  I lay writhing in bed, part from the itching, and part from shame. After giving me every chance, she’d found me wanting, not up to scratch. Except, after a sleepless hour, I was.

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Vikings in Oklahoma

Joe Artz 1 Comment

Vikings in Oklahoma
(with thanks to the Free Generative Poetry Workshop)

Vikings rowing up the Mississippi.
The Mississippi rolling down to New Orleans.
The Vikings reaching the Arkansas.
The Arkansas rising up in the Rockies.

The Vikings rising one morning in Norway.
The Vikings deciding, “Let’s go to Oklahoma!”
The Mississippi passing the mouth of the Wisconsin.
The Vikings rowing past Greenland.
The Mississippi rounding the nose of Iowa.
The Vikings rounding the Florida Keys.
The delta beckoning: its goosefoot finger.

The Vikings take a hard right from the Gulf.
The mouth of the Arkansas speaks their names.
The Vikings decide, “Ya, you betcha, let’s go up this one.”
The mouth of the Poteau whispers: “Come home.”
The mouth of the Poteau whispers: “You will never die.”

A town in the Ouachita foothills,
Whose name embraces heaven.
A state park whose name is Runestone.
Markings on a boulder said to be runes.
Bear cubs born with blonde hair and blue eyes.
A place on the Arkansas, by the Poteau.
A place of ancient power: Spiro.
An Indian enchantress, changing Vikings into bears