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University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242 Copyright 1988 by Michael Pritchett All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 1988
Typesetting by G&S Typesetters, Austin, Texas Printing and binding by Malloy Lithographing, Ann Arbor, Michigan
No part of this book may be reprodced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The publication of this book is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., a federal agency.
Some of these stories have previously appeared, in a slightly altered form, in Other Voices and Naked Man.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pritchett, Michael, 1961 The Venus tree / Michael Pritchett.1st ed. p. cm. (The John Simmons short fiction award) ISBN 0-87745-220-2 I Title. II Series. PS3566.R583V46 1988 88-21795 813'.54-dc19 CIP
Page v
With gratitude to my family, my wife, Angela, my good friend Donn Irving Blevins, the fine people at the University of Iowa, and also to a few who will always be remembered Thalia Selz, Connie Belcher, and Margaret Jackson
Page vii
Contents
Peach Seed
1
Trinity
15
People
25
Flying Lessons
37
Open Twenty-Four Hours
57
Fashion in the Third World
69
The Principles of Flotation
79
The Venus Tree
89
The Barrel Racer
103
Close Water
119
Page 1
Peach Seed
Page 3
On the first morning after Trent's departure, Jesse watched the sun come up on Sam's soft, clean belly. It shone across it like a searchlight across a field of sprouting wheat. The small, delicate blonde hairs on her stomach were the new stalks. While she still slept, Jesse stared across that small, spare field and saw not only a sign of change, a gentle foreshadowing in the pucker of her navel, but also a new Sam and a new life for himself.
When they first met, while he was driving deliveries back and forth between Fayette and the university several miles east, he never could have imagined Sam with a baby. She was prettythin and freckled with wiry red hair. But she moved quick and firm like a man. She kept her hair cut close to her head. She spoke in short, tight sentences.
But she was different now. A few years had made a difference, and so had Trent. Trent had had a bigger hand in it than Jesse cared to believe.
It began with a delivery of dead baby pigssmall, pale aqua and pink fetuses, frozen in plastic pouches filled with formaldehyde. A scientific supply company in Chicago shipped them to Fayette and Jesse took them the last seventeen miles to the campus. He had to take them in a refrigerated truck. On the drive, he sometimes thought about them floating in that cold chemical sea. He always preferred to think that they probably had a soul and that it was gone to someplace else.
At the college biology building, Sam signed for them. She was the teacher's assistant in the course. That first day, Sam wore jeans and a blue tube-top and handmade Mexican sandals. She had a cigarette pinched between her lips; when she signed the invoice, she squinted and Jesse got a glimpse of her as an old woman. Then with her own handcart she moved the white plastic crates, sloshing heavily with the preserved dead, inside the building.
"Nice to think they're in pig heaven," Jesse said, taking back the clipboard.
Page 4
Sam smiled and shrugged. "I guess."
"I could never touch 'em," he said. "I guess I'd flunk your class."
"Yes, you would," she said.
She had watched him get back in the truck and drive away. After they were married the following spring, he remembered to ask her what she had been thinking watching him drive away.
"I don't recall," she said. "I know it was something, but I can't remember what."
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