The manuscripts

From the paddock of the barn, I stood watching the snowstorm furl and unfurl over the windward slopes of the Elk Mountains like the coarse cotton of a shroud.  Not yet seven in the morning, I’d already mucked out the barn and combed the hair on the half-dozen horses Kate and I kept.  Footed in the foul, fecal soil of the paddock, I drank my last cup of coffee that Kate had brewed and poured in the Stanley steel thermos I took with me as I began every morning.  Gathered at my feet was Clancy, the border collie that never left my side.  Restless already, he was pawing at my pant leg.  I gazed at the enfilade of clouds advancing towards the homestead my great-grandfather built by hand, south, by south-west, and roughly eighteen miles out of Carbondale.  The cirrus clouds were just started to skate over the summit of Mount Sopris, and soon after the blizzard blossomed over the slopes above timberline, they would descend scattering the herd to the lowest swales of the fence line of the ranch at the edge of the White River National Forest.  Before finishing the entire cup, though, I upturned the steel and dark grey, plastic cup and sprayed what little was left among the dirt and clumps of horse dung.  Having finished my coffee, I screwed the cup back on the Stanley steel thermos, setting it on one of the fence posts.  I strode into the barn to collect Pancho, my favorite horse, to ride the fence lines, to check on any strays or any other head that was in distress.  It was the rite of a rancher I’d performed ever since I finished high school in Carbondale. Continue reading “The slopes of Mount Sopris”

“Sylvie, where are you going?” My mother’s voice is impatient from the living room. I ignore her and leave. After Dad died, she became one of those earnestly sad people, and in our grief counseling group, I didn’t have the heart to tell everyone how her sorrow was fake, playacting for all of them. She got her comfort out of it. She never loved him the way spouses ought to—he was convenient. I didn’t want to leave him under wraps. I wanted Oliver Vaulter to be more than a pitiful epitaph over a grave that contained not a coffin, but an ocean blue urn, slightly cracked. I told our group who he was, of his burgundy winter coat, his brown eyes (a dominant trait, he would always tell me), his summery cookies and how he would say “Cripes!” at all inconveniences, something he learned from his grandmother.

I am going to the grave of said Oliver Vaulter because if I don’t, no one will. It has been nearly two years now since he lost control of his car and slammed into a tree. Did you know that you’re more likely to hydroplane if you go over thirty-five miles per hour? The policeman said he was going forty. The speed limit was fifty.

I bike out of our driveway, ignoring the bite of the winter air. The people at the BQuik know me well. I come in, once a week, on a nearly-broken blue two-speed. I buy two Toblerones and then bike to Preston Memorial Cemetery. Though the theory is that one is for my dad, I always eat both of them. Continue reading “Tombstones and Toblerones”

(This is an excerpt from a longer work titled “Ithaca”)

So it began, their affair. An affair born out of a certain indolence on her part. He had been there, he had insisted, she had let him. He was otherwise not at all her type. The shape and texture of his nose and his unkempt hair annoyed her. He was seldom sober. He snored like a truck engine all night. But he would have been a good friend had they not slept together. He was the kind of boy she befriended easily, unpretentious, funny, politically engaged, open, and good-natured. She visited his art studio on Saturday nights. They would get drunk on table wine, smoke pot, and listen to his favourite jazz CDs. The liaison indulged her poetic and romanesque senses. She was a mythical sex goddess in a French film. She was complicated. She was free. She belonged to herself. She was a real adult at last! He could not hurt her.

Vincent was separated from the mother of his young sons.

— She’s a cold woman. I’ve been frustrated and bored for so long. Here you are, so invigorating, so exotic…

— Careful with that word… Remember how you found your wife exotic once.

— What went wrong with your marriage? Continue reading “The Mistress”