Goose Moon 1833 2 Homecoming “What goes? What stays?” Food entered Mud Paw’s pack first--enough dried meat, nuts, and tubers to sink the straps of his pack painfully into his shoulders. Next were arrows, bow, and tomahawk. He collected eight hawk feathers worthy of a ceremonial headdress. The pouches that he made from animal skins carried some of his possessions, but most of his accumulated tapestries and hides proved too heavy for his one-man caravan. He hid his excess wealth in a grove of t...

April Modern Day 2 Domino Effect From the back seat, Jill McCallum wondered how the new car smell could linger in the five-year-old, green Taurus driven by her best friend, Shashi Raj. Her other best friend, Trish Pilsner, sat shotgun and seemed oblivious to any sensory input beyond the sound of her own chirping banter. “Did you see that tight body on Bobby Robinson?” Trish tipped her head back over the passenger seat so that her long blond hair dangled freely behind her; then she reached out...

“How glorious,” Beatrice Kramer crooned as her stiletto heels ticked over the grey marble floors of the courthouse lobby. “Such wonderfully good fortune that the new law went into effect at midnight, only an hour before my rape.” Her eye socket twitched and a tear rolled over a fading scar on her high cheekbone. She swiped the salty drop away with a clean, white handkerchief that remained a fixture to her palm. Her left eye watered without emotion as a consequence of damage that the doctor sa...

April Modern Day 1 An Offer Refused “Sweet Jesus, $130,000 on stupid basketball games.” Lloyd McCallum raked his fingers through his hair. “That ends my gambling. My online trading is finished too. I nurtured my stock portfolio to eighty grand. Marilyn didn’t know. It’s gone now. “I have to find a job. Any job. If I find something for, say, fifty grand, I can hold off the mortgage and utilities while I search for an upgrade. I don’t have to tell Marilyn, not right away, not while her doc stil...

Goose Moon 1833 1 Prairie Life Mud Paw’s hardships lifted as his days warmed. Running Fox’s strong medicine surged in Mud Paw’s blood while he waited for a sign that he should return to his people. Loneliness replaced starvation, leaving his innards no less vacant. A longing to return to the Little Woods pushed aside his craving for whiskey. In the morning hours, before sunrise, Mud Paw cooked his day’s food and ate his first meal. When the sun rose, He prayed—his arms extended eastward—to th...

“How glorious,” Beatrice Kramer crooned as her stiletto heels ticked over the grey marble floors of the courthouse lobby. “Such wonderfully good fortune that new law went into effect at midnight, only an hour before my rape.” Her eye socket twitched and a tear rolled over a fading scar on her high cheekbone. She swiped the salty drop away with a clean, white handkerchief that remained a fixture to her palm. Her left eye watered without emotion as a consequence of damage that the doctor said w...