The Journey Prize Stories 27 by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7710-5062-6
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2015-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

I bend down and see the top of Daisy’s head in the door, mouth slightly open in surprise, a mound of frost on the visible yellow eye. I blow gently on the crystals and they dissolve into a line of liquid, coursing past her tear duct. I can see her distended sides, pushing the body up so that the legs barely touch the ground. If I try to pull her out I’ll have to break all four of her legs. I bring the axe down as hard as I can on top of the dog house, wood splintering outwards, everything caving inwards, frost and dirt and wood chips drifting onto the body like dust motes. Every last thing from my childhood has crossed the town limits and moved on. The awful, the wonderful, the people who loved me and are dead, the people who never loved me and are living, the people who I love who are alive but unreachable: sealed in carbonite, on the moon, in a different dimension. How to reconcile the smell of phlegm and fungus in a foyer with a small boy crowing hopefully in a superhero shirt. What is behind doors leading to Joanna. What are the best and worst moments. The removal of a goat corpse from the rubble with the departure of your only friend.

Somewhere, something or someone is crowing wildly.

There, in the wreckage of the paint and the boards is a single gleaming bone, too big for a chicken leg, too small for a dog. Unchewed, unmarked, stripped clean and hopeful, even though it will never turn into anything else or rejoin with a larger body. I put it in my pocket and take a shovel in my hand, Daisy in my arms, and move out to the pasture where the rest of the bodies are buried.

As I break ground, it strikes me that nothing looks so bad if we take the skin off cleanly. Even me out here surrounded by twenty-four corpses of varying sizes. If we take the meat off the skeleton I look happy enough as I bend up and down, digging a hole for Daisy, also smiling contentedly on her side.

My mother at the kitchen table, smiling into her hands as a small pool of salt water collects without explanation below her on the tabletop.

Mrs. Estey, smiling into Percy’s crib, Percy grinning back, immobile.

Joanna on the bus, smiling at the road.

Paul on the bus, smiling westward.

Joanna and Paul in the house on the hill that day, nothing strange or deadening, nothing traumatic or bad, because they are not people at all, but two skeletons of relatively the same size balancing against one another. And I can smile as I see them touch because they are both bent and smiling as their jaws and joints work. They smile steadily, one into the back of the other’s head, and they really mean it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.