One Shot

He is an idealistic, small town American boy, a Christian willing to make the world a better place. What he does not yet understand is that the Golden Rule isn’t just a rule, but, much like Newton’s laws of gravity, a universal law that can be resisted but never broken. You will do to others as you would have them do to you.
When the shot cuts the night in that Central American alley, the volunteers run outside clothed in their innocent ignorance. Two doors slam; no one else responds. The man lies face up in the street.
One of the volunteers has a cell phone, but, realizing that 911 holds no significance here, races back to the house to locate the number scrawled on the wall. The boy, curious and helpful, approaches the man. A neat red hole in the center of the man’s forehead has ended his life. Blood puddles under his head. The boy turns away, steps back against the alley’s cement wall, draws an insulating curtain around himself.

The Hunt

After months of pleading and derision calculated to incite Horace’s ire, Ephrom convinced him to join him for a hunt. They brought their rifles to school, leaning them against the outhouse when the master rang the morning bell. When their lessons ended, they stashed their books under a pile of dead leaves and wandered into the underbrush. Side by side, step by step, skirting brambles and bushes, wading through glades of shady ferns, they proceeded as noiselessly as possible toward Snake Pond. Ephrom was anxious to impress; the master had reprimanded him for his penmanship, his recitation, and his lack of geography knowledge. After his upbraiding, the spectacled tyrant rapped Ephrom’s knuckles with a wooden ruler. Worse, Horace had recited the Preamble and earned an admiring glance from the master.
A gray squirrel scrambled up a tree trunk. Both boys lifted their fire pieces and aimed. Ephrom’s bullet struck the creature just above its waving tail. Horace held his fire; a rustling movement beside them caught the corner of his eye. When Ephrom’s rifle had exploded, it woke a deer and two of its young from their afternoon nap. Startled, the animals leapt and fled, crashing in breaking waves through the undergrowth. Seconds after Ephrom, Horace swiveled and fired. Ephrom, assuming Horace had missed the squirrel, retrieved his prey, turned, and held it high with a crooked grin. Horace had moved away. Frowning, Ephrom followed him to the place where the deer lay dying. Another cursed, curious squirrel ventured into view from behind a tree trunk. Always ready, Ephrom raised his rifle for the second time. Horace ignored him and stepped closer to the prone deer just as Ephrom squeezed the trigger. The bullet ripped through Horace’s calf, behind and below his knee. The deer cushioned his fall.

Between the Sheets (or How I Became Myself)

I have distrusted hairdressers since the age of three when that black, waterproof cape was tied around my neck for the first time, and the revolving chair on which I sat, its seat cushioned with several telephone books, was twirled away from the mirror to face my mother. As the ladies gossiped, I sat petrified. My mother, I felt, was not paying enough attention to what was happening to me; as scissors snipped and clipped my natural tresses and the humming electric razor scraped the back of my cool neck, she continued to laugh and gossip, never seeming to glance my way.
I watched my angelic, wispy blonde curls, darker at the roots, descend to the linoleum floor, and when the chair revolved to face the mirror again, I discovered to my horror that I had disappeared; an older child with straight, black hair had taken my place.
My mother extracted a few bills from her wallet, paid the woman who had stolen me from myself, and led me by the hand, speechless, along the path that crossed the manicured lawn to the car in the immaculately paved driveway.
I sat alone in the back seat as my mother drove, the breeze from the open window brushing newly exposed skin. I was surprised that my mother hadn’t yet noticed that I was gone. Would anyone recognize me inside this stranger?
Early the next morning, my mother announced that my grandmother, Mimee, was coming to visit. Dad would drive to Brockton to pick her up. I waited for her in the backyard all morning, barefoot and anxious.
“Grandma’s here!” Mom shouted through the kitchen window, and my older sister ran to greet her.
Panicking, I hid between the white sheets drying on the clothesline in the warm, sunny space outside the bedroom windows. Clothespins, rows of miniature wooden soldiers, guarded my new haircut and me from prying eyes.
I waited, aware that I couldn’t stand there forever, wondering if I should run into the neighbor’s yard and pretend that I was someone else’s little girl.
“Where’s Ann?” I heard my grandmother ask, and a few minutes later, “Where’s Ann?” I could tell that she was moving through the house, searching. Perhaps she had been looking under beds for me, but somehow she happened to glance out of my parents’ bedroom window. Suddenly I heard a shriek that made me jump. “Why, who is that hiding between the sheets?” she asked.
“It’s Ann!” my mother explained. “She’s had a haircut.”
All was well. I was still me.

Haunted

With the money her parents left, she purchased an antique domicile, rumored to be haunted, and converted the adjoining two-story barn into a bookshop, filling it over the years with the necessities of her trade, both old and new. True to the house's reputation, at night the tomes whispered to each other, occasionally sharing ideas in lackadaisical tones that could be mistaken for scuttling mice or dry leaves disturbed by the wind. More often their conversations led to debates so fevered in pitch that by the early hours before dawn their whispers rose to shrieks of angry derision. Such is the passion of ideas permanently inked. Exhausted, she took to roaming the shelves before bedtime, checking the stacks to be sure that all were snuggly tucked in for the night, mouths shut.

North Pole Times

MELVILLE ISLAND, ARCTIC CIRCLE An adult male polar bear attacked one of Santa’s herdsmen yesterday, workshop supervisor Mica announced at an emergency press conference early this morning. According to Mica, White Elf Jasper reported in his daily text that the polar bear, which had been hunting from a melting iceberg (in vain) for seals, suddenly swam for shore. The famished carnivore clambered over a glacial ledge during the herd's training session. All of the reindeer leapt safely into flight, but the enraged bear pursued Jasper, knocking him to the ground and gouging his face with one lethal claw before he could utter the invisibility spell.
(continued at http://occupynorthpole.blogspot.com)

Between Meadow and Sea

I brave the path choked by whipping thorns, emerging on the hillside meadow’s storm-trampled grasses, long, parallel blades curving in humps. The improbable bench, a lonely silhouette at the hill’s peak, contemplates treetops raking the ocean’s far blue horizon, and, to my right, sheep and cattle stomp restlessly between the white fence and the open door of the red barn. I sit, and as my thoughts wander, winter's cardinals, ink spots on the icy sky, gather in flocks in the topmost branches of a distant elm. Breaking away from the flock, a dozen rise in a cloud and fly like a prayer above my head, drops of blood winging on the spirit of the wind.