Read Online Short People by Joshua Furst - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joshua Furst
Tags: Fiction
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him. His voice floats to Earth across light-years. “That boy’s going to make a great preacher one day.”
The congregation sighs. Shawn’s father bows his head. His mother scruffs up his hair.
Jesus, is that You? Does this mean I’m saved?
The heat graces Shawn’s skin.
McNeil, Layla u32.3691341
She’ll be ten years old the first time. She won’t even notice it’s happened—or she’ll almost not notice. She’ll know something’s not right the way she knows smog’s diseased sky: by the sick feeling she has about it later. But she won’t comprehend what has changed in her life. Because they’ll be an intimate family, prone to backrubs and cuddles and nibbles on the ear, because personal space will be something they share and this sharing will symbolize love and filial devotion, because she’ll be taught to trust in her father, that nothing can hurt her, there’s nothing to fear if her father is within arm’s reach, and his adoring eyes will assure her it’s true and she will believe him and wrap her arms tighter around his neck and burrow her face deeper into his shoulder, for all these reasons, she’ll let him kiss her belly and blow foghorn farts that will rumble throughout her whole body; he’ll get her to laugh and squeal, to quiver in her skin like waiting for Christmas with all its surprise and presents and change. When he lets his finger slip into her, she won’t know it’s wrong: a thin little membrane is all that exists between Daddy protect me and Daddy don’t hurt me and she’ll be too young to have known it was there to be broken. No, the way she will learn is through absence: the pulling away and the public slights and the rigid spike in his muscles when she wraps her arms tighter around his neck. His fear, like an index of what’s in the air, will clue her in to what she’s become. A sunset through smog is more vibrant, smeared with a far broader range of colors, than sunsets naturally are. She’ll dwell in her smog-imbued sunset for forty-odd years before she follows it finally into the dark.
MERIT BADGE
I don’t know who started the lie that Boy Scouts is a club for fags and puds, but whoever it was’ll be sorry if he’s ever lost in the woods without one of us around. A Boy Scout would be able to tell him what berries are poisonous and what ones you can eat and he’d know how to build a rabbit trap out of twigs laying on the ground, and even if nobody had any matches, he’d still be able to get a fire lit to cook that rabbit. A Scout would have all kinds of nature know-how so everybody could find their way back to town without getting killed by a bear and stuff. If he didn’t have a Scout around, that guy who thinks he’s too-cool wouldn’t even be able to figure out which way is north and he’d probably starve or die of frostbite or something and nobody would ever find him until all his muscles had gotten eaten by wolves and the rest of him was all disintegrated.
So I could learn stuff like that and go camping and stuff is why I joined Boy Scouts. I didn’t join so I could run around naked in the woods with other boys. That would be like going out for football so you could take showers with the football players, and nobody would do that. If you even thought about getting a woody in the shower with everybody there and everything, you’d get beat up.
That’s why it’s not fair I’m getting kicked out now . . .
One of the other cool things Scouts do is me and Jake and the rest of the troop built a lookout tower in the high school gym up in Oshkosh at the Boy Scout Expo. And yesterday we got to build one again at the Jamboree. We didn’t kill any trees or anything cause we were careful and found a whole bunch of really long dead ones that we could make into these great big poles and we scraped the bark off so they were all white and shiny and stuff. Then we took other trees and cut them up to tie up in squares that sort of got smaller and smaller the higher you
The congregation sighs. Shawn’s father bows his head. His mother scruffs up his hair.
Jesus, is that You? Does this mean I’m saved?
The heat graces Shawn’s skin.
McNeil, Layla u32.3691341
She’ll be ten years old the first time. She won’t even notice it’s happened—or she’ll almost not notice. She’ll know something’s not right the way she knows smog’s diseased sky: by the sick feeling she has about it later. But she won’t comprehend what has changed in her life. Because they’ll be an intimate family, prone to backrubs and cuddles and nibbles on the ear, because personal space will be something they share and this sharing will symbolize love and filial devotion, because she’ll be taught to trust in her father, that nothing can hurt her, there’s nothing to fear if her father is within arm’s reach, and his adoring eyes will assure her it’s true and she will believe him and wrap her arms tighter around his neck and burrow her face deeper into his shoulder, for all these reasons, she’ll let him kiss her belly and blow foghorn farts that will rumble throughout her whole body; he’ll get her to laugh and squeal, to quiver in her skin like waiting for Christmas with all its surprise and presents and change. When he lets his finger slip into her, she won’t know it’s wrong: a thin little membrane is all that exists between Daddy protect me and Daddy don’t hurt me and she’ll be too young to have known it was there to be broken. No, the way she will learn is through absence: the pulling away and the public slights and the rigid spike in his muscles when she wraps her arms tighter around his neck. His fear, like an index of what’s in the air, will clue her in to what she’s become. A sunset through smog is more vibrant, smeared with a far broader range of colors, than sunsets naturally are. She’ll dwell in her smog-imbued sunset for forty-odd years before she follows it finally into the dark.
MERIT BADGE
I don’t know who started the lie that Boy Scouts is a club for fags and puds, but whoever it was’ll be sorry if he’s ever lost in the woods without one of us around. A Boy Scout would be able to tell him what berries are poisonous and what ones you can eat and he’d know how to build a rabbit trap out of twigs laying on the ground, and even if nobody had any matches, he’d still be able to get a fire lit to cook that rabbit. A Scout would have all kinds of nature know-how so everybody could find their way back to town without getting killed by a bear and stuff. If he didn’t have a Scout around, that guy who thinks he’s too-cool wouldn’t even be able to figure out which way is north and he’d probably starve or die of frostbite or something and nobody would ever find him until all his muscles had gotten eaten by wolves and the rest of him was all disintegrated.
So I could learn stuff like that and go camping and stuff is why I joined Boy Scouts. I didn’t join so I could run around naked in the woods with other boys. That would be like going out for football so you could take showers with the football players, and nobody would do that. If you even thought about getting a woody in the shower with everybody there and everything, you’d get beat up.
That’s why it’s not fair I’m getting kicked out now . . .
One of the other cool things Scouts do is me and Jake and the rest of the troop built a lookout tower in the high school gym up in Oshkosh at the Boy Scout Expo. And yesterday we got to build one again at the Jamboree. We didn’t kill any trees or anything cause we were careful and found a whole bunch of really long dead ones that we could make into these great big poles and we scraped the bark off so they were all white and shiny and stuff. Then we took other trees and cut them up to tie up in squares that sort of got smaller and smaller the higher you
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