Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell

Author:Karen Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-13T16:00:00+00:00

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After my injury, I more or less gave up driving into town. I couldn’t move fast enough to sidestep the staring people. Their cold glances turned me into Bambi on the ice, slipping and sliding all over. Who can price-shop for soup amid that kind of judgment? I bought about a month’s supply of milk and cereal, eggs and canned chili, hamburger meat, buy-one-get-one frozen pizzas. A head of lettuce and some freckly bananas as an afterthought, because the doctor had begged me to eat foods with minerals, rich in whatever.

Wes Jeter netted me on my way out the door. His struggle to smile was almost comical—how upset he looked as he grabbed my free hand, pumped!

“I assume you made out better than the cloud.”

I grinned in his direction. “We both survived. I got her back into the shelter. Tell you what, Wes, it was a goddamn miracle. She’s there now, fattening up on the hoses. Wind speeds of fifty-five this morning.”

“Well, you need to put it down, Robert.”

“Excuse me?”

“Robert, you look…unwell.”

“Unwell?” I laughed. People were mincing words for me now, making me a word puree. As if I didn’t have the teeth to bite into the apple.

“I ran into Lemon Guyron a few weeks back. He told me what you bid—”

To my surprise, his eyes began to water.

“I don’t know what your endgame is here, but, friend—”

“Wes,” I said, “I have not felt so alive in years.”

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