Those Plums and Other Stories

by Harley Crowley

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  I Think About You, Maggie

  I think about you, Maggie, how you stamped your bare feet in the muddy orchard and screamed profanity in front of the hired hands, how you stepped into the irrigation tank naked, how your mother cried as she dragged you back to the house and dialed the doctor from the old black phone on the wall, her voice breaking, and how when the ambulance came the men twisted your arms behind your back so that you couldn’t scratch at their faces, go for their eyeballs. I think about the boy next door, peering from behind a tree, already missing your wild invitations that made him shudder with pleasure. And how your mother said he was not a nice young man, to take advantage of your illness.

  I think about you, after you married the man who thought he could take care of you, how you entertained me in your tiny kitchen with the yellowed window shades and the dishes piled in the sink, the red blot of lipstick on your cup, the overflowing ashtray, as you brazenly blew smoke rings in the air.

  I see you, Maggie, sobbing on the side of the desert road, slamming your fists on the hood of your broken-down car. I see you, unkempt, flailing your arms at the drivers who pass by with their eyes fixed straight ahead. I heard how you said you would have gone in either direction if someone had just stopped.

  And then I see the years wind on, the chain-link-fenced grounds, the electrodes taped to your temples.

  But sometimes, Maggie, sometimes I see you catching a ride with a stranger, a man with suitcases and cash, and your future is classy hotels, and nightclubs, where your lipstick clings to the rim of a highball glass and your smoke rings float to the ceiling.

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  About the author

  Harley Crowley writes mostly fiction, and mostly in the short forms. However, if you visit the author’s web page at https://harleycrowleywrites.wordpress.com you can read the first chapter of her upcoming novel, Lost and Found, which will be available in an electronic edition by early 2012.

  Acknowledgements

  Good Neighbor, Star-Crossed Love, and There When You Need Them first appeared at Everyday Fiction.

  The Inheritance first appeared at Long Story Short.

  Those Plums first appeared at Staccato Fiction.

  Last Trip first appeared at Boston Literary Magazine.

  I Think About You, Maggie first appeared at The Foundling Review

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