Issue 11
Roam
Jean Hanson
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Bucket
Out the window, over the hills, beyond the cottonwood where a house finch clung precariously in the wind ... this is where she roamed while sitting at her desk tapping her fingernails and tracing wood grain with her eyes.
No wonder nothing got done. It was too easy to travel without leaving and love without touch and run without taxing muscle or bone.
So when the flames appeared, she believed she generated them. These flickers must arise from desire and be fueled by attention.
She watched idly. This was a figment, surely. Yet she wondered: could her world be made of more than thought?
It was true. The bush was afire -- ignited, no doubt, by a motorist's tossed cigarette.
She rose from her chair, walked to the kitchen, retrieved a bucket, and filled it with water. Now she moved faster. She exited the house for the first time in days. She strode into the yard. She approached resolutely and swung the bucket, dousing the fire.
Afterwards, there was no warm, flickering flame. There was the charred bush and wafting smoke. Everything was different. She had done this. And her vision simultaneously clouded and cleared, to ashes, rubble, and a doubt of facts.
~Jean Hanson
Jean Hanson has published in North American Review, Zoetrope, Indiana Review, Nimrod, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She received the Hackney Prize in the Short Story, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. Email.
© 2003 by Jean Hanson. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.