The History of the Baker's Dozen by Gary Fincke

Author:Gary Fincke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Flash Fiction
Publisher: Pelekinesis
Published: 2024-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Pentecostal

McCartney becomes a nuisance for unwelcome sounds. Car door slams. Voices passing on the street below. The wind driving a deck chair against the sliding, glass door. But he is security for the threats she does not hear. She reinforces McCartney with a motion sensor. Though coyotes, some nights, rouse the dog to barking before frightening her floodlight to brilliance. Renee and Darcy mostly seem to sleep through her double alarm. After a while, the coyotes, as if they have memorized where light begins, pace at the edge of darkness while McCartney does his extended solo.

One night, long after the coyotes have retreated, McCartney is so dissatisfied, she leashes him and steps outside. Across the highway and from beyond the hillside houses that end in wilderness, the glow of the latest wildfire has lengthened the radio’s menu of languages. Fuego salvaje. Chay rung. Incendios. Smoke has drifted into the neighborhood. Evacuation is unlikely, but possible.

The vacant lot next door has been cleared of brush and damaged trees to lessen the chance of attracting embers. As if emptied, every nearby house is darkened, the ordinary and the reasonable already elsewhere or at rest. Although she sees that it’s him at the edge of the light, McCartney is a lunge of howls.

The spotlight scorches them. He has something in his hands that looks like an axe handle or baseball bat. “I’ll kill that dog if you let him go,” he says. The girls, holding hands, appear behind her but do not speak. He crouches like a gargoyle, four steps, then three, close enough that she sees what he is carrying is the bottom half of his cue stick, what he hefts slowly from left to right and back again. “McCartney will hurt you first,” she says. Renee begins to scream. He backs away and disappears.

Darcy says, “Why did McCartney bark at Dad this time?”

“McCartney’s not stupid,” Renee says. “He knows Dad is dangerous now.”

From somewhere close, a car alarm begins to moan inside a garage like a steady pulse. From house to house, barking has erupted. Each flaring light translates their speeches, not into salvation, but, for now, reprieve.

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