The next Weekly Rumpus features flash fiction from Valerie Geary. Here’s an excerpt:
We left our mark in a square of wet cement outside your garage. Your parents were putting in a new step after the old one cracked during last winter’s big freeze. They were worried someone was going to trip and fall and break something important—a wrist, an arm, a carton of eggs.
From our hiding spot in the tangled branches of a chestnut tree, we watched your stepdad dump gray powder into an orange bucket and stir in water, and more water, quickening the mixture to the consistency of mud. We watched him pour and smooth and stand back with his hands on his hips, satisfied. We watched him walk away.
Valerie Geary’s stories have appeared in Day One, Menda City Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Foundling Review, Litro, and others. Her first novel, Crooked River, is due out this fall from William Morrow Books. Visit her new website at www.valeriegeary.com for more information.
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