Huebner 2
Ed Ricketts
Mr. Huebner
English 9
28 September 2006
SAMPLE SHORT STORY
Mandy Littleson eased the rusty Chevy pickup along California Road, through a desert of barren wheatfields and Pennsylvania cornfields. The landscape looked dormant, a lonely, desolate winter countryside. To the right sat an old farmhouse -- recently restored with new replacement windows -- an oxymoronic phrase that added to the confusion of the hard, outdoor life of the Pennsylvania outdoors. To the left, a lifeless pond relaxed, surrounded by leafless oak trees and whisps of horse hay blown about.
In the grey Northeast, January provided farmers rest and reflection, sometimes too much of both. Back-road respites in beat-up pickups gave pause for nostalgia as well as the pained memories of lost love.
Winter winds seemed to drive about the spirits. Ghosts floated, taunted and tortured the living during the down time.
Mandy down-shifted into third gear as she guided the truck off the pavement and onto the hard clay of the lot at Jim’s Country Service Station. Whithered trees waved in futile response to her trip to town for a loaf of Wonder and some low-fat milk.
“Afternoon, Mandy,” said Jim Stephens, now 50 and flabby in his flannel coat. “Same old, same old I see”
“Nothing too fancy,” she muttered behind a gray scarf. “Just ‘nough to keep us goin’. You know me.”
“Chester ready to plant them seeds?” he questioned. “I know it ain’t easy for ‘em.”
“We doin’ just fine out there,” Mandy offered. “Been running the farm for 40 years.”
“Just offerin’ support after what you’ve been through,” Jim said.
Six years had passed since Mandy’s husband Walter suffered that heart attack in the cultivator. He’s been putting in overtime, planting the winter corn at dusk to beat the coming cold when he slouched over the steering column and began to die. Little Sam, their 9-year-old son, found him around 8 o’clock, already gone.
Sam knew it. He sensed it as he neared the cultivator that night. He thought about it when dad didn’t come back to check his homework in time, as he always had. It was just one of those things: he knew it, somehow. Sam opened the door to the cultivator to find his dad already cold. He touched his father’s arm and even thought about running for help, whatever help you could get for a dead man.
2