Month: November 2015

This story was originally written as part of NaNoWriMo 2015. To read the complete story, go to the STORIES section of this website for a link to buy the book, or subscribe to my newsletter for a free copy. The new title of the story is “A Heart Made for Bargaining.”

Before long, he heard the soft gurgle of a stream. Running along through the trees was a creek, muddy and shallow. Sitting on the edge of it was a raggedy woman, her hair stringy as ivy vines, her clothes the same color as the brown water. Her back was to Jack. She sat dangling her barefoot feet above the flowing water, humming softly a dark tune. Jack had a good ear for music, and he could hear a minor key as quick as a bird. He tried to step away from the creek and the woman, but twigs snapped and ground betrayed him. She whirled her head in an instant, and cut off her last note like an axe falling on a prisoner’s neck.

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We stayed with my grandparents in the summer of 1992 because Dad had just died and Mom needed some time to “figure things out.” Why she couldn’t figure things out with me and Jay there, I don’t know. But I was kinda glad to be at Grandma and Grandpa’s. They lived in a woods and had a house with ten rooms. And their garage had an upstairs. We didn’t even have a garage in Barstow.

It took a week to drive there, with mom in the front seat crying most of the time. I just read books. Jay had his headphones on the whole time. But we saw the country, I guess. I didn’t care. I just wanted to swim in my grandparents’ pool and see the creek that ran down in the valley behind their house. It was only our second time in Michigan; the first time, I had only been seven. But I remembered it as if it were a movie I’d watched two dozen times. The images from that first trip unspooled in my brain for weeks at a time. It was the best trip I’d ever had. Michigan was so green. It smelled like fresh rain water all the time, even on the sunniest days — the kind of rain smell that meant, “Things are growing here. There is life here.” I loved it.

So after Dad died, when Mom said we were going to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for the summer, I smiled. It was the first smile I’d had in a long time.

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