Reverie
by Jack Swenson
His dog is walking the preacher down the street. I say good morning and reach down to retrieve the newspaper. The preacher's wife is searching through a neighbor's discards, a bag of old clothes left at the curb for pickup. My wife is standing in the middle of our yard in her nightgown. She is feeding peanuts to jays. They swoop and chase each other off. A red squirrel sits on her head, flipping its tail. The birds screech as they fly away.
A large black cat with yellow eyes balances on a fence that divides our yard from the neighbors'. Our back yard is full of gopher mounds. Some of the mounds are six feet high. We hope that the cat will get rid of the gopher, but he has other fish to fry. He is a lazy cat. When he is in the house, he jumps into my lap. I pet him. He doesn't like it when I try to comb out his mats. I use a brush with metal tines. I rake his glossy black coat into cornrows.
My wife enters and wanders into the kitchen. She polishes the logo on the new stove. It is a Bertazoni. A retired doctor friend just bought a Wolf. My wife smiles knowingly when the doctor tells her this.
I go outside and take the cover off the pond. The jays are at the bird feeder. There is a tall and leafy tree in our backyard. Also a bride, a groom, and a chicken. The preacher's wife is floating overhead now, headed west, her nightdress billowed out like a parachute. I shade my eyes and look up. She waves.
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Author's Note
Inspired, more or less, by a Marc Chagall painting.
I love the surprise of that moment of Magic Realism at the end and the image you create--the preacher's wife in "like a parachute"--is charming. *
It's the details, some small, some no so, that make this story and your writing in general such a joy to read. And the endings you've been giving us lately, amazing! *
lovely and full of delicious details fave
so much imagination in your stories Jack, I love them
This is wonderful Jack, the only misstep for me is mentioning the size of the preacher's wife. But otherwise just fabulous!
oh i love, love, love the images here, they make me grin so hard my face hurts. peace *
Oh - I read it again - now I get it. It's very subtle. What an ending!
Christ on a biscuit! You got me that time.
fave
I read your story and I like it: the dog, the cat, the wife, the preacher's wife, the neighborhood, ending with an imaginative twist, along with an intriguing visual.
Good stuff.
Another winner here. So much local color to your stories Jack!
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A fantasic story, Jack, with such amazing details and insights. A fave.
Hey, I get why you like Chagall! This is really cool.
A wonderful big swoop of concrete detail adding up to the surreal.*
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I've read this a couple times now. It gets weirder and weirder. And that's GREAT.
Jack, I absolutely love everything you do. There's always that quirky voice, the witty line, the bizarre observation.
*
From the squirrel on the wife's head to the bride, groom, and chicken in the backyard, this is great stuff. Suburban Chagall!
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wonderfully light so that, in the end, i'm off with the preacher's wife, flying through the air. love this, jack.
Great imagery in this piece, Jack. Nice work.
"A large black cat with yellow eyes balances on a fence that divides our yard from the neighbors'. Our back yard is full of gopher mounds. Some of the mounds are six feet high. We hope that the cat will get rid of the gopher, but he has other fish to fry. He is a lazy cat."
Great closing. *
Dreaming is nice, isn't it?