Friday, October 17, 2008
Dave Materna
Cutpurse
The cutpurse ran through the streets with a purse in his hand, dodging and bending into the side alleyway as the cops ran past in the drizzle. When they came back he was up over the fence and gone like that.
The full moon came as the rain moved out and he waited by the dumpster and counted as high as he could before he got up to go home. It was bad this time, but it was his birthday. And mother had a cake. He ran as hard as he could in the full-moon night and waited under the window.
The purse had a quarter in it and a cat’s pooper-scooper, and a rock—a piece of cement that maybe he’d keep this time. He put the quarter behind his ear and left the purse outside while he went in to find his cake, candles burning, setting on the big table, all 29 candles lit at once and Grandma Eva started singing “Happy birthday.” Uncle Bill waved a little American flag.
A glass of Clammotto had his name on it. He gave the scooper to Grandma Eva and kept the concrete rock in his back pocket as a reminder.
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About Me
- Bob
- I write short stories and essays. I have published well over one hundred stories, essays, and flash fictions or nonfictions in magazines or anthologies, as well as a novel, Jack's Universe, three collections of stories, Private Acts, Killers & Others, and Not a Jot or a Tittle, and two chapbooks of flash fiction, Shutterbug and Dragon Box. I grew up in a military family, so I'm not from anywhere in particular except probably Akron, where I've lived for forty years. Before I came here, I never lived anywhere longer than three years.
2 comments:
Worth reading just for "he was up over the fence and gone like that." It would take some people a paragraph to get the same point across. Sometimes simpler really is better. Close second: "And mother had a cake." Exquisite timing/pacing, whatever the literary term may be
Good job implying a lot with a little. I was painting my own version of the city scape watching the character run through it.
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