Short Shorts Fiction

Dancing in the Rain

My granddad and I . . . we went places together. Not places like the city, or the mall, or Dollar General; no, we went to places like the grey rock underneath the oak tree in Mr. Freeman’s field, the cliffs where his and grandma’s names were carved, the tombstone with just her name on it, and every time we went, it was like going someplace extraordinarily special, even if we’d already been there hundreds of times before. The day would start with the cooing of the morning doves outside my bedroom window. Grandpa raised doves, fawned over them more than he did me, but that was to be expected.

            “You’re a girl,” he’d said. “You ought to know better than to go messing around with dogs, or cats, or cars. These birds here? They’ve got no sense at all. They’re as like to fly into a tree instead of the air. Do you run into trees?”

            Besides the doves, Grandpa harbored an immense devotion to Ford pickup trucks. There was always at least one somewhere around the property, in varying stages of resuscitation. His own truck, simply known as “Red,” had been around for as long as I could remember. Its red velvet interior was a little orange, the paint a little faded, but it ran like a dream. We still have it, but the rest of everything, along with the house and the natty old recliner Grandpa refused to have replaced, was sold. 

            During those summer days, the sun shining down on us through the dappled shade of Mr. Freeman’s oak tree, life was slow and it never rained when we didn’t want it to. Grandpa loved the rain. When he was young, younger than I was during the hours beneath the oak, he danced in it. We danced together once, there in the field, with the gentle patter of rain on the leaves and the silken brush of foxtails against my legs.

I danced for him while they lowered his casket into the ground and all the others ran for their cars. The rain smelled like him, like bird musk, Ford grease, and fresh cut hay.

After our family barbecue the other day, I was looking out the window at my daughter, and she was twirling, long, lazy figure eights. She kept twirling until the sun started to sink past the horizon and the doves began their evening calls and a hush had fallen over our part of the world.  I went out, twirled with her, and when we were done, both of us dizzy, and a little out of breath, she hugged me. 

“I think Great Grandpa Joe would have liked to twirl,” she said.

There underneath the darkening sky, I agreed with her. “I think so too,” I said.

She nodded, dark eyes smiling as she stood and spun around again, one full loop that spun her hair out in a bright streak. “But it’d be better if it was raining,” she said.

The old red ford’s windshield glinted in the light of the setting sun and I nodded. “You bet it would.”

Forgotten

There was a time when the doll had red hair like wet candy. Now the doll's hair is a faded, steely grey. She sits in the window where the rain sheets over the glass and paints wriggles of shadow on the yellowed surface of her face. The rain makes it look like she is struggling to smile, to speak, to twitch, to come alive under the fusty layer of dust, but the times when she could speak and dance are over. She's been put away on a shelf to be admired simply for her ability not to fall apart, as if by keeping her arms and legs and eyes attached she's accomplished some miraculous feat. As if that is not just the nature of life. Other dolls sit around her, some in chairs, some slumped against the wall. Their clothes are stained, the embroidered flowers on their blouses like a wasteland meadow in winter. No one comes to brush their hair or wash their faces. No one comes to shove their limp arms through new dresses, or struggle with their pliant, too-soft bodies. The room sits empty and still, the only movement the imperceptible slow, slow sweep of the hour hand on the clock and the spastic twitch of the broken minute hand.

Memories

Two girls stand waiting by a swing for a car to go by on the highway. Cars are fishes. Trucks are sharks. Semis are whales. A shark comes and without any shoving or pushing, both leap for the swing and hang in safety until it goes by. Their bodies are hot and dry beneath dirt-smudged t-shirts and shorts, and they take comfort from the closeness of the other.

****

Two girls sit at a table and argue about a memory. “My shirt was blue and yours was red,” one says.
            “No, I had the blue one,” the other responds. “They were my shirts.”

They argue for hours, until they convince each other, and then begin to argue the opposite.

****

Two girls wrestle in the thick, summer grass beside a gravel driveway. A yellow lab watches them, chocolate eyes jumping from one to the other. The girls grasp each other’s arms, and pin each other’s legs. They are sweating, faces flushed with effort. When the dog starts to growl and bark, they break apart and pretend that play did not turn in to violence.

****

Two girls sit at a table in a coffee shop. The heat steams the windows and the room smells of burnt wood and singed earth. A man sits next to each. The girls laugh and talk, and both realize that the memory of friendship is stronger than what they have now. They pay for their coffee and go. There is nothing to say.