Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories (22 page)

Before he went back to the front they went into the Duomo and prayed. It was dim and quiet, and there were other people praying. They wanted to get married, but there was not enough time for the banns, and neither of them had birth certificates. They felt as though they were married, but they wanted every one to know about it, and to make it so they could not lose it.

Luz wrote him many letters that he never got until after the armistice. Fifteen came in a bunch to the front and he sorted them by the dates and read them all straight through. They were all about the hospital, and how much she loved him and how it was impossible to get along without him and how terrible it was missing him at night.

After the armistice they agreed he should go home to get a job so they might be married. Luz would not come home until he had a good job and could come to New York to meet her. It was understood he would not drink, and he did not want to see his friends or any one in the States. Only to get a job and be married. On the train from Padua to Milan they quarrelled about her not being willing to come home at once. When they had to say good-bye, in the station at Milan, they kissed good-bye, but were not finished with the quarrel. He felt sick about saying good-bye like that.

He went to America on a boat from Genoa. Luz went back to Pordenone to open a hospital. It was lonely and rainy there, and there was a battalion of
arditi
quartered in the town. Living in the muddy, rainy town in the winter, the major of the battalion made love to Luz, and she had never known Italians before, and finally wrote to the States that theirs had been only a boy and girl affair. She was sorry, and she knew he would probably not be able to understand, but might some day forgive her, and be grateful to her, and she expected, absolutely unexpectedly, to be married in the spring. She loved him as always, but she realized now it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career, and believed in him absolutely. She knew it was for the best.

The major did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl in a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.

JULIA ALVAREZ
: “Snow” (1984) from
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
(Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill). First appeared in slightly different version in
Warnings: An Anthology of the Nuclear Peril
(Northwest Books, 1984).

KRISTIN ANDRYCHUK
: “Mandy Shupe” (1990) first appeared in
The New Quarterly
.

MARGARET ATWOOD
: “Bread” (1981) first appeared in
Iowa Review
, Vol. 12, No. 2&3.

WILL BAKER
: “Grace Period” (1989) from
Great Stream Review
, Vol. 1, No. 1.

SHEILA BARRY
: “Corners” (1992).

KENNETH BERNARD
: “Vines” (1978) first appeared in
Iowa Review
, Spring.

HEINRICH BÖLL
: “The Cage” (1986) translated by Leila Vennewitz, from
The Casualty
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN
: “Corporal” (1963) from
Revenge of the Lawn
(Simon & Schuster).

WILLIAM BROHAUGH
: “A Moment in the Sun Field” (1989) first appeared in
Negative Capability
, Vol. 9, No. 1.

MARLENE BUONO
: “Offerings” (1991) first appeared in
Story
, Spring.

GREGORY BURNHAM
: “Subtotals” (1988) appeared in
Turnstile
, and subsequently appeared in
Harper’s
, July, 1989.

FRANÇOIS CAMOIN
: “The Sewers of Salt Lake” (1991) first appeared in a different form and under no title in
Sundog, The Southeast Review
, Vol. 11, No. 2.

RAYMOND CARVER
: “The Father” (1978) from
Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
(McGraw-Hill).

KELLY CHERRY
: “The Parents” (1990) from
My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers
. Originally appeared in
The North American Review
.

ADRIENNE CLASKY
: “From the Floodlands” (1989) first appeared in
The Carolina Quarterly
, Vol. 71, No. 2.

BERNARD COOPER
: “The Hurricane Ride” (1986) first appeared in
Shenandoah
, Vol. 36, No. 4.

JULIO CORTÁZAR
: “A Continuity of Parks” (1967) from
End of the Game and Other Stories
(Pantheon).

MICHAEL DELP
: “Draft Horse” (1988) first appeared in
North Dakota Quarterly
, Vol. 5, No. 4.

MARY DILWORTH
: “The Factory” (1986) from
The Mill
, Millennium Books. Originally appeared in
Westerly
.

STUART DYBEK
: “Gold Coast” (1990) from
The Coast of Chicago
.

BRUCE EASON
: “The Appalachian Trail” (1991) from
Black Tulips
(Winnipeg: Turnstone Press). Originally appeared in
The Fiddlehead
.

CAROL EDELSTEIN
: “232-9979” (1992).

RUSSELL EDSON
: “Dinner Time” (1964) from
The Very Thing That Happens
by Russell Edson (New Directions).

LARRY FONDATION
: “Deportation at Breakfast” (1991) from
Unscheduled Departures: The Asylum Anthology of Short Fiction
, edited by Greg Boyd (Asylum Arts).

CAROLYN FORCHÉ
: “The Colonel” (1981) from
The Country Between Us
. Originally appeared in
Women’s International Resource Exchange
.

K. C. FREDERICK
: “Teddy’s Canary” (1989) first appeared in
Other Voices
, Fall.

LARRY FRENCH
: “Mr. Mumsford” (1982) first appeared in
Mississippi Review
.

S. FRIEDMAN
: “Here” (1992).

GARY GILDNER
: “Fingers” (1978) from
The Runner
(University of Pittsburgh Press).

ALLAN GURGANUS
: “A Public Denial” (1985) first appeared in
The Available Press/PEN Short Story Collection
(Ballantine Books).

MARK HALLIDAY
: “108 John Street” (1991) first appeared in
Denver Quarterly
, Winter.

TOM HAWKINS
: “Wedding Night” (1989) from
Paper Crown
(Book Mark Press). Originally appeared in
Ploughshares
.

WILLIAM HEYEN
: “Roseville” (1991) first appeared in
The Ontario Review
, #27.

JIM HEYNEN
: “What Happened during the Ice Storm” (1985) from
You Know What Is Right
(North Point). Originally appeared in
Seattle Review
.

SPENCER HOLST
: “Brilliant Silence” (1983) from
Prose for Dancing
, Station Hill Press.

ELLEN HUNNICUTT
: “Blackberries” (1987) first appeared in
The North American Review
, March.

ROD KESSLER
: “How to Touch a Bleeding Dog” (1985) from
Off in Zimbabwe
(University of Missouri Press). Originally appeared in
Mazagine
.

JAMAICA KINCAID
: “Girl” (1978) from At
the Bottom of the River
(Farrar, Straus, & Giroux).

FRED LEEBRON
: “Water” (1992).

GORDON LISH
: “Fear: Four Examples” (1984) from
What I Know So Far
(Scribner and Son).

PAUL LISICKY
: “Snapshot, Harvey Cedars: 1948” (1989) first appeared in
The Madison Review
, Vol. 11, No. 1.

ROBERT HILL LONG
: “The Restraints” (1991) first appeared in
Quarterly West
, #33.

BRET LOTT
: “Night” (1986) from
A Dream of Old Leaves
by Bret Lott (Penguin Books).

MICHAEL MARTONE
: “Dish Night” (1987) first appeared in
Indiana Review
, Vol. 10, No. 1&2.

KATE MCCORKLE
: “The Last Parakeet” (1989) first appeared in
Alaska Quarterly
.

STEVEN MOLEN
: “Jane” (1992).

MARY MORRIS
: “The Haircut” (1990) first appeared in
Special Report
, Aug-Oct.

JOYCE CAROL OATES
: “August Evening” (1988) From
The Assignation
by Joyce Carol Oates (The Ecco Press).

DAN O’BRIEN
: “Crossing Spider Creek” (1988) first appeared in
Texas Review
, Vol. 9, No. 122.

TIM O’BRIEN
: “Stockings” (1990) from
The Things They Carried
.

MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER
: “The Paring Knife” (1982) first appeared in
Sundog
, Vol. 4, No. 1.

LON OTTO
: “Love Poems” (1978) from
A Nest of Hooks
by Lon Otto.

PAMELA PAINTER
: “I Get Smart” (1991) from
The Company of Cats
, edited by Michael J. Rosen (Doubleday & Company). Originally appeared in
The North American Review
.

PAVAO PAVLICIĆ
: “A Chronicler’s Sin” (1990) translated by Miroslav Beker, first appeared in
Special Report
, Aug.-Oct.

FRANCINE PROSE
: “Pumpkins” (1989) first appeared in
Western Humanities Review
, Autumn.

BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS
: “The Burlington Northern, Southbound” (1989) first appeared in
New Mexico Humanities Review
, 32.

CHUCK ROSENTHAL
: “The Nicest Kid in the Universe” (1985) excerpted from
Experiences with Life and Deaf
( Grove-Weidenfeld). Originally appeared in
Quarterly West
.

SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS
: “The Philosophical Cobbler” (1983) from
Wilderness Plots
(Ohio University Press).

JO SAPP
: “Nadine at 35: A Synopsis” (1981) first appeared in
The North American Review
, September.

DON SHEA
: “True Love” (1990) first appeared in
Kansas Quarterly
, Vol. 22, No. 3.

RICHARD SHELTON
: “The Stones” (1957) from
You Can’t Have Everything
. First appeared in
Montana Review
.

MARK STRAND
: “Space” (1985) from Mr.
and
Mrs.
Baby and Other Stories
by Mark Strand (Alfred A. Knopf).

KENT THOMPSON
: “Ponderosa” (1986) from
Leaping Up Sliding Away
.

ROLAND TOPOR
: “Feeding the Hungry,” translated by Margaret Crosland and David LeVay, from
Stories and Drawings
.

JOHN UPDIKE
: “The Widow” (1983) from
Hugging the Shore
.

LUISA VALENZUELA
: “Vision Out of the Corner of One Eye” (1979), from
Strange Things Happen Here
.

DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
: “Everything Is Green” (1989) appeared originally in
Puerto del Sol
and
Harper’s
.

RONALD WALLACE
: “Yogurt” (1990) first appeared in
Crosscurrents
, Vol. 9, No. 2.

DIANE WILLIAMS
: “Here’s Another Ending” (1989) from
This is about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time & Fate
by Diane Williams.

LEX WILLIFORD
: “Pendergast’s Daughter” (1989) first appeared in
Quarterly West
, #28.

ALLEN WOODMAN
: “The Lampshade Vendor” (1987) from
The Shoebox of Desire and Other Tales
(Swallow’s Tale Press).

JOANNA H. WOŚ
: “The One Sitting There” (1989) first appeared in
Malahat Review
, #86.

   
The Best of the West, 1-4
(with Denise Thomas)
   
Sudden Fiction International
      (with Robert Shapard)
   
Sudden Fiction
(with Robert Shapard)

ALSO BY JAMES THOMAS

   
Pictures, Moving (Stories)