Short People Read Online Free
scatter. The rock sinks unnoticed below the surface.
“You didn’t say the magic words.”
“Did I hurt—is the baby duck okay?”
It fluffs its feathers, swimming in a wobbly line toward its mother. The duck is okay, shaken up but okay. Children need ten hugs a day. A kiss will make it feel better.
The boys are both silent. What do they know?
The mother duck is preening over her young. She smoothes down its feathers. She pecks at its shoulders, pecks and pecks. No kisses. She clamps her beak over its neck. No hugs. It bobs and struggles. A frenzy of batting wings, of splashing water. She’s jerking her head. She’s breaking its neck. A piercing, full-throated moan, and then the mother duck gathers her ducklings into formation, swims away with them, leaving the limp one behind; its soft belly and webbed feet glisten in the sun.
“Jason, we killed it.”
“No, the mean witch killed it.”
Summer is waning, the days growing shorter, not even magic can stop it from ending.
Jason tells Billy he’s moving soon. School looms ahead, dark and ominous. Billy is scared of all he doesn’t know. He’s scared of what will happen after Jason’s gone. The neighborhood reeks of bad science.
Jason rides off toward his father’s new job. He twists in his seat belt and waves out the window. If you run at supersonic speed you can keep up with the car as it drives away, and you won’t get tired even if you have to run for two and a half days without stopping except to get gas and go to the bathroom. Run, Billy, run. Come on, Billy, keep up. But Billy, the smart one, the older one, can’t keep up. He veers off, sputters out on the side of the road. He huffs and he hunches. He waves.
Jason crosses the highway into the who-knows-where.
When he looks at his fossils, Billy sees Jason. He knows Jason’s gone, though. You can’t hold your friends forever in limestone. That would be magic. The fossils are boring now. The traces of life he finds in them are much too constrained, dull, dead.
Goodbye, Jason.
Billy is far away, like the park and the pool, the ducks and the pile of gravel, the big kids who can use the diving board, Evergreen Plaza and its parking lot, the asphalt, the concrete, the crab apples, the teeter-totter, the Big Wheels and bike trails, monkey bars, training wheels, dandelions, ants, east and west, north and south where he never went. The map in Jason’s mind is useless now, but soon he will draw a new one. Who knows what will be on it. Buried treasure.
’Bye, Billy.
Delgado, BB u32.3691465
There will be so much noise. As his parents walk him through the neighborhood—each holding one hand, sometimes they will swing him up off of the ground and he’ll bicycle-kick in the air between them—boom boxes, car alarms, shouts,
hey, hey chulo, ou-u-u-e mamacita,
even the wind belting around tight corners, the hundreds and hundreds of sounds, will disorient him. The sounds will knock him off balance. They will surround him and he will shrink into himself to escape them. His parents’ hands will be all he can rely on to guide him toward his home. Even once he’s there in the shotgun where each piece of furniture is reliably fixed in place, where every sound is attached to a known source of emission, he will duck and cover and attempt to evade the barrage of noise. He will be forever trapped in an echo chamber where the sound gets louder the longer it bounces. The chatter, the bicker, the shout and gasp, the thud and the wince, all the ways that his parents communicate just how much they truly care about each other will ricochet unendingly, will box out so much space, that simply to stay out of the cross fire he will lie on the floor, under the kitchen table, his chin and his belly sweeping the linoleum. He’ll wonder if it’s true that because he can’t see them, they can’t see him.
THIS LITTLE LIGHT
Shawn Casper dons his new gray suit, clips on his one tie and rides in the back seat of the family
“You didn’t say the magic words.”
“Did I hurt—is the baby duck okay?”
It fluffs its feathers, swimming in a wobbly line toward its mother. The duck is okay, shaken up but okay. Children need ten hugs a day. A kiss will make it feel better.
The boys are both silent. What do they know?
The mother duck is preening over her young. She smoothes down its feathers. She pecks at its shoulders, pecks and pecks. No kisses. She clamps her beak over its neck. No hugs. It bobs and struggles. A frenzy of batting wings, of splashing water. She’s jerking her head. She’s breaking its neck. A piercing, full-throated moan, and then the mother duck gathers her ducklings into formation, swims away with them, leaving the limp one behind; its soft belly and webbed feet glisten in the sun.
“Jason, we killed it.”
“No, the mean witch killed it.”
Summer is waning, the days growing shorter, not even magic can stop it from ending.
Jason tells Billy he’s moving soon. School looms ahead, dark and ominous. Billy is scared of all he doesn’t know. He’s scared of what will happen after Jason’s gone. The neighborhood reeks of bad science.
Jason rides off toward his father’s new job. He twists in his seat belt and waves out the window. If you run at supersonic speed you can keep up with the car as it drives away, and you won’t get tired even if you have to run for two and a half days without stopping except to get gas and go to the bathroom. Run, Billy, run. Come on, Billy, keep up. But Billy, the smart one, the older one, can’t keep up. He veers off, sputters out on the side of the road. He huffs and he hunches. He waves.
Jason crosses the highway into the who-knows-where.
When he looks at his fossils, Billy sees Jason. He knows Jason’s gone, though. You can’t hold your friends forever in limestone. That would be magic. The fossils are boring now. The traces of life he finds in them are much too constrained, dull, dead.
Goodbye, Jason.
Billy is far away, like the park and the pool, the ducks and the pile of gravel, the big kids who can use the diving board, Evergreen Plaza and its parking lot, the asphalt, the concrete, the crab apples, the teeter-totter, the Big Wheels and bike trails, monkey bars, training wheels, dandelions, ants, east and west, north and south where he never went. The map in Jason’s mind is useless now, but soon he will draw a new one. Who knows what will be on it. Buried treasure.
’Bye, Billy.
Delgado, BB u32.3691465
There will be so much noise. As his parents walk him through the neighborhood—each holding one hand, sometimes they will swing him up off of the ground and he’ll bicycle-kick in the air between them—boom boxes, car alarms, shouts,
hey, hey chulo, ou-u-u-e mamacita,
even the wind belting around tight corners, the hundreds and hundreds of sounds, will disorient him. The sounds will knock him off balance. They will surround him and he will shrink into himself to escape them. His parents’ hands will be all he can rely on to guide him toward his home. Even once he’s there in the shotgun where each piece of furniture is reliably fixed in place, where every sound is attached to a known source of emission, he will duck and cover and attempt to evade the barrage of noise. He will be forever trapped in an echo chamber where the sound gets louder the longer it bounces. The chatter, the bicker, the shout and gasp, the thud and the wince, all the ways that his parents communicate just how much they truly care about each other will ricochet unendingly, will box out so much space, that simply to stay out of the cross fire he will lie on the floor, under the kitchen table, his chin and his belly sweeping the linoleum. He’ll wonder if it’s true that because he can’t see them, they can’t see him.
THIS LITTLE LIGHT
Shawn Casper dons his new gray suit, clips on his one tie and rides in the back seat of the family
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