The Best American Short Stories 2022 by Andrew Sean Greer

Author:Andrew Sean Greer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Of Jaska’s love for the boy there is no limit: this is the enchantment of children. They reveal a capaciousness we didn’t know we had. With the utmost care, he mixed flour and glue to make a mold of the boy’s feet. For hours he boiled leather to render it soft and supple. With infinite patience, he sewed strips of leather to fashion shoes with a long, firm tongue running from the heel to the calf. That the boy shows no interest in these proceedings bothered him not a bit. It is a kind of love to do for someone what they don’t know or care needs doing: washing him, speaking gently, showing him the mesh and how to work the wooden tongue and mesh board. He loved to surprise the boy with gifts. He brought him floats from Soviet Russia and Japan and sweets of all sorts from Gundersen’s, like double salted black licorice, ribbon candy, sticks of striped horehound. “Who you buying this all for? You got a girlfriend?” Gundersen liked to joke and Jaska, not a smiler by nature, could not help laughing. Yes, laughing.

One night, Jaska dreamed the town shook loose from its moorings. The hills turned liquid. The canneries, houses, docks—all heavy as granite—slid into the muddy water. The walnut-size stone between his shoulder blades grew. Small scales of flint wrapped his ribs, crept over hip bones and along his groin. For a few glorious seconds he lay flat on the water, marvelously buoyant in his flint skin. And then his body, which was not a boat, but a coffin, sank. Save me! Jaska gasped, bolting upright. The boy, sitting on Jaska’s legs, stared calmly at him. A puddle of rank seawater pooled beneath the bed.

“Where do you get to at night, Boy?” Jaska whispered.

And the child, turned alabaster in the moonlight, merely smiled.

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