Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories Read online

  “I wasn’t kidding,” she said.

  “I know,” he said, “I’m only laughing because that’s exactly what I was thinking about meeting you.”

  “See. Maybe that’s what happens when it’s fate. One always feels what the other is feeling, at the same time, together.” She laughed too.

  “Kind of emotional telepathy, eh?”

  “That makes it sound too glandular,” she said in the teasing way she had that made for private jokes between them. “I’m not talking about something in the glands; I’m talking about something in the stars.”

  Now, beside him in bed, she whispers, “Why did we have to see this together?” It’s not said cruelly. He understands what she means. She means they’ve seen this sky only because of one another, that it’s something more between them to remember. And he knows that he doesn’t need to answer, that it’s as if he’s merely overheard her speaking to herself, almost as if he isn’t there any longer, as if she’s awakened alone, at an unknown hour, along a gold coast.

  MR. MUMSFORD

  Bibs, the janitor, had never killed a man before. He’d raised rabbits as a boy and killed one now and then for supper. A quick blow to the back of the neck, and it was done. He was not a particularly intelligent man and was not suffering from guilt or any philosophical questions about what he was going to do. He had come to the small southern school as a janitor twenty-seven years ago. On his first day at school, he had worn a pair of old bib overalls and thus earned the nickname of Bibs. This was the reason he had come to kill the principal who was working late in his office down the hall. Earlier in the evening, Bibs had gone into the equipment room and picked out the largest baseball bat he could find. He then went and hid in a space between the green metal lockers that lined the hallways. At a little past ten the principal walked out of his office, locked it, and started down the hall. Bibs stepped out in front of him.

  “Say, Bibs,” asked the principal. “What are you doing here this time of night?”

  Beads of sweat stood out on Bibs’s forehead, and he clenched the bat with both hands. He was six feet tall, very black, and towered over the principal.

  “I come to kill you,” said Bibs.

  “But why? What have I ever done to you?”

  “Just what you called me is why!” said Bibs. “Nobody in this school, including you, has ever bothered to learn my real name. Onliest person knows my real name is that woman signs my check, and even she puts it in an envelope marked BIBS. The kids should learn my name in four years. Hell, I know moren half of their names and where they live. This morning I stopped a couple of ’em and asked ’em did they know my real name, and they looked at me like I was crazy. That’s why I come to kill you!”

  The principal was a short man anyway, but now his shoulders slumped even further, and he looked sad and confused.

  “Well,” he said. “Well, what is your name?”

  “Ralph Mumsford,” said Bibs.

  “Mumsford’s a strange name for a black man to have,” said the principal. “It’s English, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should look it up,” said the principal. “You should go over to the school library and look it up. Say, lookee here, if I promise me and all my teachers call you by your real name from now on, will you not kill me?”

  Bibs thought for a moment, seemed to waver, and then said, “Well, that seems fair. You do that, and I won’t have to kill you.”

  The principal looked tired.

  “You been working too many hours,” said Bibs. “A Christian man ought to always eat the supper meal with his wife.”

  The principal sighed and said, “I do believe you’re right, Mr. Mumsford. I do believe you have a point there.” Then he turned and walked down the dark corridor toward the green exit sign leading out to the playground.

  FROM THE FLOOD LANDS

  Here at the bottom of the country our windows drip with summer. The air is far too thick to breathe: This weekend seven people went for afternoon walks and drowned on the air. A boat crashed into a plane. The boat captain had slipped up above the horizon line by mistake, and is quoted in local papers as saying: “I didn’t notice till I saw that 747 coming straight at me and I looked down to read the wind’s direction on the waves and found them a whole lot lower down than I’d expected.”

  And we have had other problems with that horizon line. It wobbles, for one thing. Some say the sky leaned so heavy with water against it that it stretched out of shape. Others say it is just a reaction to modern times, which all times are to it, and that it is having a harder and harder time keeping separate what should not be blended. It must have sagged up across the sky again last night because this morning it had pieces of clouds like tufts of cat hair stuck down the length of it. Later birds will come and pick it clean. Then they will open their immense wings in a crescendo of wind song against slick feathers. Their shadows will move like sharks through the water. Eventually they will land on a tangle of seaweed, thinking it is land. And they will land harder, thinking to find some solidity, but will only tangle their ankles, ankles so thin and fragile it breaks your heart to look at them, tangled in those green, slimy chains, and they will open their beaks to the sky, to call to it, beg for its dry white rush, but find only mud’s cousin, and their beaks will be wide with wonder and supplication as they go down, and down . . .

  The birds are not talked about in church here on Sunday. What is talked about is the drought. What could the rest of the country have been doing to bring this down on themselves? After services, two more pews are moved out. Water has begun seeping under the walls and the wooden pews expand. They are softer though, and your behind leaves an impression when you wade up to kiss the preacher’s knees and send through him a message to Jesus: Please forgive them, Lord. They meant no harm. They were only thirsty. Of course, thirst is no excuse, is, in fact, the great sin. Even Jesus committed it, so I hear tell, those last hours on the Cross.

  After church one day, we all met in the town hall for a town meeting. A Yankee had come to speak to us, a corn farmer from Illinois. His lips were caked with cracking skin. Most of the blue had evaporated from his eyes—they were slices of a cloudless sky white with heat, blowing this way and that around the room. He had to do that to keep track of his audience, since the folding chairs on which we sat bobbed and rocked and whirled in the current of the tea-colored water across the floor.

  “We have done nothing up there, I swear it,” he said, and held up his great hands. Shoals of skin fell from his arms, melted into the water. “Nothing different, anyway, nothing no one else doesn’t do.” His voice broke apart then, and his face, and I suppose he was crying, but who can tell for sure? There were no tears . . . And in his scraping, parching voice he said, “Just a few drops, a bucketful, maybe . . .” And the sound turned to powder in his throat. “Well,” a neighbor lady said later, “you can just listen to that for so long.”

  Needless to say, our town refused his request. It is never a good idea to offer the hand of help to one who needs it too badly. It is like landing on seaweed.

  The whole day depressed me, so I climbed onto my air mattress and floated down Lake Street to the place where the shore used to be and I watched the sunken sun throb with peach and apricot and raspberry and every wet, fresh color any human has ever named, and I saw how that line of division, that “horizon” line, was not wobbling erratically as our town believed, but moved in quavers as regular and predictable as the pulse of a heart’s string.

  A PUBLIC DENIAL

  Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, my grandfather did not die driving a Toyota across his pond. As I will demonstrate, this is a bald mistruth. Admittedly, he had become somewhat senile or eccentric in recent years. In view of the attempted firing of the courthouse cannon last July, it would be foolish to state otherwise. But certain exaggerations now in circulation are unfair to his family’s memory of him and must be corrected.

  While bizarre, man
y of the stories about his attempts to secure the local Toyota dealership are true. Just after Corona wagons were introduced in this country, he bought one for use on his farms. For reasons none of us will ever know, he began to take an interest, a very active interest, in the well-being of the Toyota company. He decided at age seventy-one to become the local dealer for the car, but because of his advanced years and idiosyncrasies, the franchise was withheld. He bought three more Toyotas, either to endear himself to the home office or maybe out of pure enthusiasm. These, Corona convertibles, he gave to grandchildren. (One is still in the author’s possession and running like a top.) But not even his extra purchases brought so much as a discount from the mother office.

  At this point in Grandfather’s quest for the franchise, he staged the much-discussed “pond-drive.” Having read in the owner’s manual that the Toyota is more perfectly watertight than almost any other car, he decided to personally demonstrate and document this fact, thus winning the long-sought-after approval of Toyota International. To his farm near Little Easonburg, he summoned six tenant farmers and one twelve-year-old grandson. They were stationed at five-feet intervals along the pond bank, each man equipped with a loaded camera borrowed or bought for the occasion. The pond itself is a small one dug for irrigation purposes in 1959. My grandfather, a conservationist long before it was fashionable, had at one time stocked the pond with bass which shiftless tenant farmers are said to have fished out and eaten before any achieved maturity.

  His theory was that the rotating rear tires would propel the car through the water. He evidently drove it slowly down the east bank, honking the horn: a prearranged signal to “Aim all cameras.” Eased into the water, the car actually floated, moving slowly to the center of the pond. Once there, it veered toward shore, the speedometer registering 110 mph while the vehicle advanced at only about 3 mph through the water. Some moisture did seep in, but hardly enough to sink the car, as many have falsely reported. The experiment, in short, was an overwhelming success. When the Toyota containing my grandfather finally scrambled up the opposite bank, the six tenant farmers and one grandson, the writer’s first cousin, are said to have let out a spontaneous cheer.

  It was immediately afterwards, while taking the car for a quick land drive—toward the nearest public telephone some two miles away—that the fatal accident occurred. Maneuvering the curve along Bank Road, he evidently lost control of the car. It crashed over a low bridge and into a farm pond much deeper than his own. He had lowered the car’s windows, to dry what little water had originally seeped in. With all the windows open, his Corona did not float long this time. He went down with it.

  I have given all these specifics to point out that the pond in which he drowned was more than a mile and a half from the original site of his successful experiment. This, I hope, will put an end to rumors that his death was somehow foolhardy. Though the “pond-drive” photographs proved inconclusive (exhaust fumes, of the sky, etc.), we still have the witnesses’ spoken accounts. In short, the man died having proved something which is more than most of us can say. Toyota International, hearing of his death, sent our family a letter signed by a vice-president of that company. It expressed gratitude for Grandfather’s “pioneering consumer spirit,” and went on to say, “We could certainly use more customers with his brand of courage and devotion.” This, I hope, will finally quiet local cynics and permit his widow, bereaved children, and grandchildren to live normal lives again.

  232-9979

  Maybe calling you was a mistake. I could hear the kids. I do not know how I will begin to admit to what I have done.

  I suppose I will start by parking next to your house. But immediately I begin to imagine road construction that will make this impossible. I will find a place, though, even if it means the Quick Stop parking lot. This won’t be any quick stop, though, if you are home, and answer my knock. I have nothing to say, but I think I’m going to need a lot of time to say it.

  I don’t know how far back I should go. There have been recent volcanic eruptions on Venus. The newspaper said “recent,” as defined by scientists, is “300,000 to several million” years ago. But I guess I’ll start with three winters ago, December 19 to be exact, when your husband and I got into our first accident. Car accident. Nobody hurt, but addresses were exchanged, license plate numbers, insurance information—and I’ll admit, I couldn’t help it, I noted your husband’s eye color. Hazel.

  Nothing else would have happened between us if three weeks later I had not returned the box of farina with flour-beetles to Bonno’s Food Warehouse where I don’t usually shop because of incidents like the above and also my ex-sister-in-law works there and we have never seen eye-to-eye. How could I have intended for your husband to be right ahead of me in the checkout, buying formula and plastic diapers? The first thing I noticed was his neck brace, but then, when I saw who he was, I had to inquire. If I was going to get smacked with a lawsuit I wanted to know about it. Wouldn’t you?

  But even then nothing else might have happened if, on January 16, my downstairs neighbor Matty had not smoked in bed. I remember the date clearly because I had taken off work that morning to bring my mother in for a root canal. She turned out to be allergic to the ether or whatever it is they made her suck and she practically died in the chair.

  I’ve lectured Matty about smoking safely in bed but she doesn’t learn. She practically burned down the hallway, which needed it, but if it weren’t for your husband and his men it could have gone further.

  I was unintentionally in my yellow robe, kind of shivering, and I said, “Hank Henkins!” because by then I knew him by name.

  “Hank Henkins! That can’t be you!” Of course, I was pleased to see him under those circumstances—you would’ve been, too. And I’ll admit it even if he doesn’t—that’s when I think he first noticed my eye color. Just for the record, they’re blue.

  This is the silly speech I am driving around with, although I have not yet made the call. I have Elly Henkins’ number and I have driven by her house frequently enough to know she is home. The garage door is open, and the twins’ stroller, in the middle of the sidewalk, is in a suggestive position. It is time to make a speech of some kind. I am over-my-head in love with Hank Henkins, and it won’t wait until Kathy and Pam are grown up. It won’t even wait until they are at least prom age, which Hank and me were both trying for. I thought we could have the longest flirt in history with no dire consequences, but now a thing has happened and I can’t wait.

  THE FATHER

  The baby lay in a basket beside the bed, dressed in a white bonnet and sleeper. The basket had been newly painted and tied with ice-blue ribbons and padded with blue quilts. The three little sisters and the mother, who had just gotten out of bed and was still not herself, and the grandmother all stood around the baby, watching it stare and sometimes raise its fist to its mouth. He did not smile or laugh, but now and then he blinked his eyes and flicked his tongue back and forth through his lips when one of the girls rubbed his chin.

  The father was in the kitchen and could hear them playing with the baby.

  “Who do you love, baby?” Phyllis said and tickled his chin.

  “He loves us all,” Phyllis said, “but he really loves Daddy because Daddy’s a boy too!”

  The grandmother sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “Look at its little arm! So fat. And those little fingers! Just like its mother.”

  “Isn’t he sweet?” the mother said. “So healthy, my little baby.” And bending over, she kissed the baby on its forehead and touched the cover over its arm. “We love him too.”

  “But who does he look like, who does he look like?” Alice cried, and they all moved up closer around the basket to see who the baby looked like.

  “He has pretty eyes,” Carol said.

  “All babies have pretty eyes,” Phyllis said.

  “He has his grandfather’s lips,” the grandmother said. “Look at those lips.”

  “I don’t know . . .” the mother
said. “I wouldn’t say.”

  “The nose! The nose!” Alice cried.

  “What about his nose?” the mother asked.

  “It looks like somebody’s nose,” the girl answered.

  “No, I don’t know,” the mother said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Those lips . . .” the grandmother murmured. “Those little fingers . . .” she said, uncovering the baby’s hand and spreading out its fingers.

  “Who does the baby look like?”

  “He doesn’t look like anybody,” Phyllis said. And they moved even closer.

  “I know! I know!” Carol said. “He looks like Daddy!” Then they looked closer at the baby.

  “But who does Daddy look like?” Phyllis asked.

  “Who does Daddy look like?” Alice repeated, and they all at once looked through to the kitchen where the father was sitting at the table with his back to them.

  “Why, nobody!” Phyllis said and began to cry a little.

  “Hush,” the grandmother said and looked away and then back at the baby.

  “Daddy doesn’t look like anybody!” Alice said.

  “But he has to look like somebody,” Phyllis said, wiping her eyes with one of the ribbons. And all of them except the grandmother looked at the father, sitting at the table.

  He had turned around in his chair and his face was white and without expression.

  LOVE POEMS

  He has written her a St. Valentine’s Day love poem. It is very beautiful; it expresses, embodies a passionate, genuine emotion, emotion of a sort he hardly realized himself capable of, tenderness that is like the tenderness of a better man. At the same time, the imagery is hard, diamond clear, the form intricate yet unobtrusive. He says the poem out loud to himself over and over. He cannot believe it, it is so good. It is the best poem he has ever written.

  He will mail it to her tonight. She will open it as soon as it arrives, cleverly timed, on St. Valentine’s Day. She will be floored, she will be blown away by its beauty and passion. She will put it away with his other letters, loving him for it, as she loves him for his other letters. She will not show it to anyone, for she is a private person, which is one of the qualities he loves in her.