I’m standing fourth in line with the weekend deposit from the beauty shoppe in a zippered bag, lucky he didn’t take that, and the little kid in front of me tugs at his mother’s shirt, saying “Is that Darth Vader?”  His mother says, “Looks like it.”  “What’s he doing here?” the kid asks, and his mom says, “That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?”

I doubt it was a million, maybe a couple thousand, probably red from a dye pack by now.  They haven’t caught him, and I’m kind of glad, you know?  Not much happens in Booneville, especially on a Monday.

The guy was tall, maybe six two.  I’ve been looking around, I mean maybe he’s somebody I know.  I’d date a guy like that, a guy with real imagination.

Not like Scotty, who just sits around watching football, drinking beer, maybe takes me to the Dew Drop Inn for a few beers on a Saturday, maybe Sizzler once a year on my birthday.  It gets old, you know.  I mean, okay, he’s hot—blond hair, tight ass, great abs, just a little belly from the beer.  He lifts weights, and he’s pretty strong.

But where’s the future there?  If we get married, it will be the same old, same old, probably without the Dew Drop Inn, maybe with an added trip to Sizzler on our anniversary each year.  Or hell, maybe to The Captain’s Table.  Just once, I’d like to get more than fourteen miles out of Booneville.

Darth Vader could take me places.  I just know it.

Jacqueline Doyle lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at California State University, East Bay. Her flash fiction and nonfiction, lyric prose, and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in various journals, including Flashquake, Glossolalia, SoMa Literary Review, JuiceBox, Lady Jane’s Miscellany, SN Review, Women’s Studies, blossombones, onepagestories.com and LITnIMAGE.

In dreams and near dreams, she felt time not stop, but skip like a needle on a record.

She had been driving home from work, late. She managed a coffee shop downtown. She’d come out of the tunnel under the airport runway, and it had come from the woods, crossed the road in the dark and turned; she always saw this in dreams, turned and looked directly into her eyes, held them for the moment until it bounced into the ditch and she screeched to a halt.

In the dreams, this was when it changed from a deer to a man; when he caught her eye and stared. She imagined him calm, serene like she imagined deer to be. He was wearing orange, though he hadn’t been, before.

They told her when they found her, still in the car, that he was an escaped convict from the prison south of town. The sheriff shook her hand, days later, and offered to pay to have her car cleaned and fixed. She didn’t tell him that in the dreams, sometimes, it wasn’t orange, the man was wearing. Sometimes, he was a child, a stranger, her son.

CL Bledsoe is the author of two poetry collections, _____(Want/Need) and Anthem and a fiction collection, Naming the Animals. A chapbook, Goodbye to Noise, is available online at www.righthandpointing.com/bledsoe. A minichap, Texas, was recently published by Mud Luscious Press. His story, “Leaving the Garden,” was selected as a Notable Story of 2008 for Story South’s Million Writer’s Award. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 3 times. He blogs at Murder Your Darlings, http://clbledsoe.blogspot.com. Bledsoe has written reviews for The Hollins Critic, The Arkansas Review, American Book Review, The Pedestal Magazine, and elsewhere.

Corners of the property: pile of brick-shaped rocks; nearly branchless weeping willow; collapsed cabin; bog of mealy ground. Land is of a slight grade. Rainwater collects in the northwest section and in the bog; dissipation is swift. A belt of forest splits the property. No longer a working farm. Emersons have always owned the property. A dirt and rock road leads from the farm to the northern stretch of state road. Three babies have been born on the property. Two men have died, the second of which is the subject of the disagreement.

1929

Tom loved the four creeks, especially the McMaster creek, so named because the creek began on the McMaster property. Only one McMaster remained and he was old and did little besides walk along that creek, hands in his pockets, face craned upward. Emerson walked the creek barefoot. The water was always colder than the air. He enjoyed the feeling of bare skin on rocks and dirt and the occasional dead brown trout. Why do we always cover our skin, he wondered. After a shower he would close his bedroom door and stand naked. One night he trolled the creek with a cup, filling and drinking, tasting the cold. That night he vomited for hours, the gurgle of his throat reaching the ceiling. His dry heaves continued through the next morning. Emerson scolded McMaster across the creek. Neither dared cross the water. Emerson said it was his creek so McMaster had no business tainting it. It was alleged that McMaster shit in the creek because he liked the feeling of water running across his bottom. So Emerson scolded until his throat scalded. He coughed and pointed a finger. It’s not your creek to shit in, Emerson said. It’s mine. McMaster disagreed.

1930

He was found in the McMaster creek at dusk. The current swirled across his pale cheeks and drenched his jacket. His crotch rested upon a large rock, as did his knees. His feet suspended in the air. The Emerson’s boy had found him. The oldest one, Tom, the one prone to eating grass and berries, putting fingers down his pants, and sleeping on the hardwood floor. Tom toed the man with his boot before stepping into the creek next to him. One of the man’s arms twisted beneath his stomach; the other stretched to his right, the current pricking his fingers. Tom turned the man over and his back met the water with a splash. His face was odd, like he had died in the middle of a yawn. Stubble pockmarked his cheeks like patchwork. His drenched face glowed. His left eye was shut, almost welded. His right eye was open a pinch, and when Tom bent down he could see the white of the eye between the lids. Tom bunched the collar of McMaster’s jacket in his hands and dragged him from the creek. The current’s speed immediately increased after his departure.

Nicholas Ripatrazone is the author of Oblations (Gold Wake Press 2011), a book of prose poems.  His recent work has appeared in Esquire, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, The Mississippi Review, and Beloit Fiction Journal.