The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake by Breece D'J Pancake

Author:Breece D'J Pancake
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: CS, Fiction, Short Stories, ST
Published: 2013-06-07T18:10:12+00:00

THE MARK

ON the morning of the fair the smell came to Reva in the

kitchen, slicing through the thick odors of coffee and fish

roe. She left the dishes and carried her coffee through the tunneling light of the hallway, past her brother's neatly framed arrowheads, past the charcoal portrait of her grandfather, beyond

the cool darkness, onto the porch. The land and river were hidden

under a thick brown fog that the sun was peeling away. The fog

smelled of ore and earth, and Reva sat to breathe it in, rubbing

weariness from the bones in her hands. She felt thick with worry

for her brother; working the same river that had killed their parents only eight years ago. The worry was making one of her spells come, and she promised herself to forget.

In the yard, chuckleheaded Jackie, the tenant, curried Tyler's

prize bull, singing some idiot's tune quietly. The bull shifted his

huge weight from side to side, shuddering against the unnatural

ripples Jackie's brush had put into his black fur. As "the Pride

and Promise of Cutter's Landing" whipped his ropish tail against

early flies, Reva mocked, "Peeepeee," before sipping her coffee.

The bull shifted again.

"Holt still, damn ya," Jackie grunted, losing his song.

Peepee, Reva grinned to herself. Pea-brained Peepee pees on

his heifers. Peeepeee.

89

THE STORIES OF BREECE D'J PANCAKE

Tyler, her husband, came to the porch wearing his green plaid

shirt and blue trousers.

"This okay?" he asked, modeling in a pivot.

"For a sideshow, yeah," she laughed.

"I can't help it," he said, embarrassed for his color blindness.

"Find the light-colored slacks, Big T. ," she said, knowing they

were tan, and watched him shuffle down the hall like a little boy,

and not her husband of two winters.

She felt the spct where the baby should be, closed her eyes, and

tried to imagine her blood in the rabbit's veins. It would pump

into the ovaries, making them swell, the doctor had said, if she was

pregnant. They were going to kill the rabbit and look for her secret

in its organs, but the sinkings in her belly came on too hard and

frightening, too much like her worst month. She told herself they

would find no confessions in the rabbit ovaries.

She remembered her brother Clinton holding a litter of baby

rabbits close to his naked chest while the mowing machine droned

behind him in a dead hum. Was that the summer she began to want

him?

She looked to where the fog had lifted away from the road and

was crossing the acres of tobacco in the river bottom, leaving a

glistening coat of dew. Clinton had helped them top and wonn the

crop before shipping out, and she squinted to think of a whore

holding her brother's strong body, smelling the smoky scent of

their grandfather. By next week there would be only dry stubble

for snakes to shed in, and a dusty smell from the crackling curingbam.

Tyler came back in light-blue jeans, a pair Reva had forgotten.

She took a deep breath of the August heat.

"What the hell's Jackie up to?" he asked, watching the tenant.

Reva did not answer. A grasshopper landed on the banister,

and Reva watched its annored jaws bubble juice.

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