Paul Scott Malone - In an arid land: thirteen stories of Texas
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Short stories, American, Texas--Social life and customs--Fiction.
publication date
:
1995
lcc
:
PS3563.A432I5 1995eb
ddc
:
813/.54
subject
:
Short stories, American, Texas--Social life and customs--Fiction.
Page iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
"Bringing Joboy Back" first appeared in American Fiction 88; "Prize Rope" in New Growth 2: Contemporary Short Stories by Texas Writers; "The Lost Earring" in New Virginia Review; ''The Sulfur-Colored Stone" in Writers' Forum; "Floundering" in Descant; "The Unyielding Silence" in Southern Humanities Review; "Mother's Thimbles" in Writers' Forum; "A Minor Disturbance" in Other Voices; "The Pier, The Porch, The Pearly Gates" in Pembroke Magazine; "The Wondrous Nature of Repentance" in Concho River Review; and "In an Arid Land" in Black Warrior Review.
I wish to thank the editors of these publications, Alexander Blackburn in particular, for their faith and encouragement. I also wish to thank the National Endowment for the Arts, the Society of Southwestern Authors and the University of Arizona's Program in Creative Writing for their generous support.
Copyright 1995, Paul Scott Malone
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Malone, Paul Scott In an arid land : thirteen stories of Texas / by Paul Scott Malone. p. cm. ISBN 0-87565-140-2 1. TexasFiction. I. Title PS3563.A43246415 1995 813'.54dc20 94-16972 CIP
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Cover and text designed by Barbara Whitehead
Page v
For Cheryl
Page vii
CONTENTS
Prize Rope
1
The Lost Earring
17
The Sulfur-Colored Stone
35
Bringing Joboy Back
57
Floundering
79
The Unyielding Silence
95
Mother's Thimbles
113
A Minor Disturbance
131
The Pier, The Porch, The Pearly Gates
145
Furniture
165
Eveline's Lizard
179
The Wondrous Nature of Repentance
195
In an Arid Land
211
Page 1
PRIZE ROPE
We're fixing up a majestic breakfast for our first morning. In my old black skillet, on my green Coleman stove, sitting on green metal legs above a little sand dune, nine patties of Jimmy Dean's HOT sausage are sizzling. The sausage is my job. I study it closely, turn each patty with the long blade on my Swiss Army knife, sniff the wonderful greasy odor, take a sip of my screwdriver in a plastic cup. Then I glance up looking for Eddie.
I find him out in the surf, still in its morning calm. He's fishing again, his big head and his long black rod silhouetted against that monster sunrise. He casts, turns his body to battle a low wave, reels in his bait like some machine. Eddie doesn't much care for fishing; he's doing it because that's what men do when they go to the beach, and because he's heartbroken.
"What's on his mind?" Ed Senior wants to know, com-
Page 2
ing up behind me. "I don't think he slept at all and he hasn't spoken a word since we got up, just a grunt now and then, like an animal."
"Squaw problems," I say.
"That's what I figured," he says.
"So what's new, huh?"
"Dern women," says Ed Senior and he snorts a laugh to show he's joking; he doesn't know the facts of the matter. I know the facts and I know it's not Marcia's fault that Eddie's heartbroken; this is No-Fault Heartbreak, you might say. She changed, he changed, they changed, an old American story; and I happen to know she's in Albuquerque this week looking for a place to live.
We stand there worrying, wearing nothing but swim trunks, wriggling our toes in the sand, me with my knife, him with his Dutch oven full of biscuits, staring out to sea like wives of old. Eddie's my best friend, has been most of my life, and he's Ed Senior's only son. We've come here, to this lonely stretch of beach, because Eddie wanted us to. An empty house is a mean companion. So here we are, three white guys loose upon the earth.
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