GIFTS
Brian Reynolds

The gift, his absentee act of contrition, arrived by messenger and sat unopened on the counter all day Monday

To her, picking up the hammer was like picking up an ostrich. Once, when she was small her daddy showed her how to hold a hammer at the handle's end to get more power per stroke. She'd bent the nails each time she tried to follow his command and saw her father's tomboy dreams dissolve in condescending winces. Today she held it right beside its head and hit the hammer precisely on the package—over and over until whatever it had been now lay as quiet and alone as she, this act of aggression providing only transitory respite from her anger.

Three days before, he'd sat beside her on the bed cloaked in the smoke of post-coital cigarettes talking about the weather and the soybean futures he had recently acquired.

His happiness impaled her, a straight-driven spike, as if his own future was as certain as the paper crop of beans. She sat enduring his ebullience, almost delighting in his high. Until he turned and looked at her as if he'd suddenly remembered that her tits and cunt had ears and eyes; until he started weaving her into his fantasy. Until he said, I'll fix... and change...You can finally... I'll get you, give you, loan you... Maybe you should... It's such a shame you've had to... His verbal generosity seemed to overwhelm him and his tumescence once more filled the bed.

© Brian Reynolds 2005

Brian is a retired clerk, schoolteacher, and artist. He's the father of a teen and the person who lets the cat in and out and in and out and in. His work has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, edifice WRECKED, and Insolent Rudder.

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