Linnaean Street
Bob Thurber

3   S M A L L   F I C T I O N S

S h e r b e t

The boy said: Sirs! My mother, she weeps always. My sisters, they run. All but one. My father is years gone. I am oldest, not smart, not strong, not brave. But I am the man. Always the man must do something, yes? You will please tell me what to do, please, sirs. 
     So Wilson and I drove him the eighty miles back to the hotel. Our research was done and there was no more work for us in the fields and no more errands for the boy who spoke almost perfect English. We still had fourteen hours to kill before our flight. We fed him a meal of steak and boiled potatoes. We watched him eat. He didn't touch the salad or drink the water which was bottled water. Wilson tried to force dessert on him as well. "Pie ala mode?" he said, and smacked his lips. "A square of carrot cake, perhaps?"
     The boy seemed interested, but indecisive.
     Wilson said, "Surely, a small dish of orange sherbet to clean the palate, yes?"
     "There is always room for sherbet," I said, and got up from the table.
     "Please and thank you," said the boy. "I am very full."
     "Good god, son," said Wilson. "Sherbet makes room for itself."
     But the boy would have none of it.
     "Mi madre tiene hambre," the boy said.
     "Let the kid take food home. Send him on his way," I said.
     "Some bread would be very good," he pleaded. "Some fruit, and perhaps some meat for the women. Yes, sirs? My mother has bad teeth but I could cut it."
     "First things, first," Wilson said.
     He handed the boy the dress we had picked out together.
     We flipped a coin and I lost. Which was just as well, really. I waited in the hall on a chair tilted against the door and Wilson took him first. The boy screamed but once, and it was not a very loud scream. Nothing that would attract attention in that hotel, because number one we were American businessmen with mucho peso, and number two the screams sounded like a woman's. And no one much cared what happened to them.
 

M i n i m a l i s m   a t   t h e   B e a c h

Carol turned her back to the ocean. She huddled against the wind and lit a cigarette with the burning filter of Anna's cigarette.
     Breeze bumped past and hooked her sunglasses on Ginger's bikini top. 
     "Don't lose those. They're my dads'. I'm going in."
     "You're going swimming?" Anna said.
     "What's wrong with swimming," Ginger said.
     Carol streamed smoke at the three girls.
     Breeze said, "I'm going to paddle out and try to not get my hair wet. How's it look?"
     "It's too short," Ginger said.
     "Watch for the undertow." Anna said.
     "Stop saying that to me, you guys! Tell me really."
     "I hate it," Carol said. "I'm being totally honest. It makes you look wicked fat."
     Breeze said, "Liar, liar. All liars go to hell. Okay. Bye Bye."
     "It's gorgeous gorgeous darling." Ginger called through funneled hands.
     The three girls watched Breeze run, hop, spin, wave.
     "She only can't swim a stroke," Anna said.
     "What do you think?" Ginger said.
     "That hair suffered a severe chemical burn," said Anna. "This sun isn't going to help."
     "Who could blame her if she filled her belly with stones," Carol said.
     Anna said, "On the way to get you guys she told me he's still bothering her like almost every night and doing you know what every chance he gets, and she wants to seriously hurt herself."
     "Good," said Carol. "We'll all watch."
 

M y   C h r i s t m a s   S t o r y

This is the Christmas story my grandmother said I would write long after she passed, after I had grown up and had children of my own. She said when the time came I would know just what to write. How would I know? Because I was the best story teller in the family, she said. And when you are the best at something it is so important that you do that thing always. "We all have our jobs," she explained, "our own special tasks assigned to us by God." My grandmother didn't care too much for religion but she believed that God pretty much always knows what he's doing. "He selects the right man or woman for the job," she told me. "No matter what your day job might be, remember -- You moonlight for God." 

She said these things to me the year I turned fifteen, the same year she died of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was in an institution at the time, admitted there by her two daughters, my mother and my aunt. The doctor later informed us that the cause of death had nothing to do with the nervous breakdown and that there was absolutely no pain, no suffering. Death occurred within seconds. He snapped his fingers to demonstrate how fast. The way I understood it a blood clot traveled up from my grandmothers leg, scooted past her heart, and lodged in her brain. Then poof! she was gone.
     The event took place in her sleep and I often wondered if she was dreaming at the time, and what kind of dream she might have been having. I imagined God coming to her and asking if she was tired and when she nodded God smiled and said, well, you've certainly done a fine job. A splendid job, all things considered. And then he invited her to come home. 
     All of this happened more than twenty years ago which seems like a long time if one is talking about people-business but really is no more than a heartbeat if one is referring to the business of God. Anyway here is the story, my Christmas story, that my grandmother said I should write.
     Once upon a time, a very long time ago, before shopping malls and special Christmas hours, on the night before Christmas, all the stores and shops closed their doors early and sent their employees home for the holiday. Restaurants closed. Drug stores closed. There was no such thing as a convenience store. When darkness set on Christmas Eve almost no one could be found on the streets except carolers going door to door singing Christmas hymns and bringing good cheer, or travelers delivering gifts to relatives, friends, neighbors. It was a quiet time, a time when people mattered more than things, a time when almost everyone, not just skiers, prayed for snow.
     On this particular snowy Christmas Eve a man named Adam was walking through the quiet streets, admiring the Christmas lights, the tinsel and the bright red bows. As he walked he found himself humming to himself. He was a man neither coming nor going from anywhere worth mentioning. And on this Christmas, due to circumstances beyond his control, he had no family with whom to share the holiday. His residence was a small room in a boarding house on the East Side of Providence. It was a room that with very little alteration could have passed for a closet. A steep slanted ceiling prevented him from standing except in a tiny portion of the room that trapped the hot air blowing up from the vent . Even with the single tiny window propped open by a length of broom stick the heat was too much for him; so to stretch his legs, to grab a breath of clean air, Adam had decided to take a walk. 
     He was a young man not without friends, but those closest and dearest to him were miles away celebrating with families of their own. Though he had hoped for a last minute invitation from one of them he was not saddened by their neglect toward him. He understood about Christmas and as he walked the brightly lit streets he thought of each of them, wishing them happiness and peace for the holiday and the coming new year. 
     As he turned a corner he thought about the woman who, technically, was still his lawfully wedded wife, and of the little girl, his daughter, to whom he had sent a present via U.S. Mail. The child, who was two, did not know that Adam was her father and so he had signed the card, From Santa. He pictured her sitting in front of a Christmas tree in the living room that he had painted and wallpapered earlier in the year. He took a deep breath and wished her a merry Christmas, saying it once to himself, then trying it out loud. "Merry Merry Christmas sweetheart" he said, walking one foot in front of the other, stomping footprints into the snow.
     At the next corner he stopped, considered turning around, then continued on in the same direction. The snowflakes were larger, falling more rapidly. They masked the curbs of the sidewalks and as he trudged onward he paid more attention to where he placed his feet. After a while a cold stiffness in his toes made him stop. He looked around, trying to calculate where he was. It seemed he had been walking for hours. He watched the snow slanting across a street light. He read the sign post. He recognized the name, but couldn't imagine that he had come this far, back to his old neighborhood. He was two streets away from the home where he had lived as a child. He chuckled to himself, thinking how ridiculous he was for walking so far. What an idiot, he thought. What a fool. 
     He was standing -- all alone, half frozen in the snow -- a mere block away from the street he knew better than any other. He thought about turning back.. But he had come this far. Why not walk that last few hundred yards and turn the corner? Why not go on and see the house he'd lived in as a little boy, when Christmas was about nothing but the toys?  He watched the sky until the snowfall lightened. He found the North star. It wouldn't be much further now.

Over the last five years Bob Thurber's short fiction has won more than twenty literary awards and appeared in a dozen anthologies. Though he is a no talent bum and full-time freeloader he has sometimes been referred to as The Sam Peckinpah of Flash Fiction and had his work compared to many successful dead authors; in addition, although he has no degrees, no qualifications whatsoever, his work has been recognized and distinguished by many accomplished authors including Robert Boswell, Anthony Doerr, Christopher Castellani, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winner Elizabeth Graver, National Book Award winner Julia Glass, and the legendary Amy Hempel. Mr. Thurber resides in Massachusetts, and though you should most certainly avoid him at all costs, you might do well to track his whereabouts and learn more of his transgressions at:

BobThurber.Net.

Linnaean Street