Bless You
By Kathy Fish
Two boys and two girls moved in a line down to the creek as the sky darkened and the moon rose. Ben, the boy at the front of the line, stopped, alarmed by something high in one of the trees. The line bunched up behind him like a cartoon. Whatever it was (Ben claimed it was a puma) snarled. The girls screamed and they all ran. They reached the bank and bent over, palms on kneecaps, breathing hard.
Emily sat on the flaked top of a tree stump. She let her knees fall away from each other. She wore very short shorts that Jim and Ben tried to see up into.
“Look, minnows,” she said.
Jenny said, “Hear that.” The sound of creek water over flat stones. “Sounds like people talking and laughing in another room. Kind of creepy.”
Jim said the halo around the full moon meant rain. “The moon, the moon, the moon.”
“You’re high, Jim,” the others said.
Jenny touched his forehead, making the Sign of the Cross with her thumb and the two of them got all entangled in the grass.
Ben and Emily watched.
Emily took a hit and talked about her mother, who died the year before by falling down a concrete staircase after getting drunk in a hotel bar. “She traveled for work–that’s why she was in a hotel bar. Her skull cracked opened and stuff fell out. She was on life support until my dad decided it was useless.”
Ben said, “The puma’s long tail enables it to balance in high branches.”
Jenny raised her head from Jim’s chest. “Okay,” she said. “Remember when my little brother, Bob, got hit by the car? The driver had just come from his girlfriend’s house. Said he was so happy he wasn’t paying attention.
“We prayed all night over Bob’s body, even the guy prayed. He whimpered like a little kitten and passed around a picture of the girlfriend. So inappropriate.”
Jim pressed two fingers to her lips.
Emily swatted a mosquito. “I’m hungry,” she said.
They heard a noise. Ben stood up. “It’s the puma.”
Emily said, “That’s the sound of God riding through the clouds in a chariot.” Her words winding down like her batteries were low.
Ben said, “Death.”
Jim shook his head. “Thunder.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kathy Fish’s stories are published or forthcoming in Quick Fiction, Spork, RE:AL, Denver Quarterly and elsewhere. Her collection of short shorts was chosen as a finalist in a contest judged by Ron Carlson and will be published by Rose Metal Press in January, 2008.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, May 29th, 2007.
