WE
We were walking the backyard. Pacing it out. One, we said. Two. And on and on. It’s true, we told our brothers, this backyard’s a grave. In the window our mother’s face fell. She waved a hand at the ax. We took turns and soon the tree slumped against the fence. Our brothers carried it on their backs and offered its heart to our mother. We’re hungry, they said. We’re starved. Our mother’s eyes didn’t meet ours and our brothers put the tree back on its stump. We watched it fall again. Again, our brothers said, and we said, One. Two. Our brothers axed a hole in the ground and jumped in. We pushed the dirt over them. The neighbor’s swingset creaked and moaned next door and we heard a child’s voice say Never ever. We planted the ax in the mound over our brothers. The ax blade was bloody with dirt. We tried to see ourselves in it. In the window our mother forked stars into a piecrust, said See, this is also a grave.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Sam Axelrod, Megan Baker, Allison Burque, Landry Miller, Audrey Niffenegger, and Brandon Will.
Further thanks to the editors of the following journals in which some of the stories in Daddy’s appeared, including: “The Fence” appeared in Nerve.
“Unpreparing” appeared in Hobart.
“Scales” appeared in Night Train.
“Tuesday” appeared in Smokelong Quarterly.
“It All Go By” appeared in Thieves Jargon.
“We” appeared in elimae.
“Peggy’s Brother” appeared in Knee-Jerk.
“Finding There” appeared in Cricket Online Review.
“We Was” appeared in Somnambulist Quarterly.
“Loofah” appeared in Fiction at Work.
“Food Luck” appeared in ACM.
“Marie Noe Talks to You about Her Kids” appeared in Proximity and was performed at the Encyclopedia Show on serial killers.
“That Baby” appeared in Everyday Genius. Special thanks to guest editor and bloodeater Blake Butler.
“My Brother” appeared as a featherproof mini-book, which maybe started this whole book thing. Billowing thanks and love to Zach Dodson and Jonathan Messinger.
Lindsay Hunter lives in Chicago, where she runs the flash fiction reading series, Quickies! Her short fiction has been published widely online. This is her first book.
Copyright © 2010 by Lindsay Hunter
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of short passages quoted in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Where the names of actual celebrities or corporate entities appear, they are used for fictional purposes and do not constitute assertions of fact. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Published by
featherproof books
Chicago, Illinois
featherproof.com
Library of Congress
Control Number: 2009944042
eISBN : 978-0-982-58088-2
Design: bleachedwhale.com
Set in Serif Beta by Betatype
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