Assistant Editor Maggie Su: Evan James Sheldon’s microfiction begins with a gunshot—the young narrator’s mother is shooting at animals escaping a burning field. Here Sheldon upturns the gentle mother cliché and shows instead a mother whose decision to set fire and kill is an act of compassion. Through the “white and black wisps” of smoke and the porcupine quill that pricks the lip, this piece carefully renders the relationship between provider and destroyer, pain and empathy.
To hear Evan read his story, click below:
How close the fire, how hot the oven
I crept downstairs and outside at the crack of the gunshot. It wasn’t the first shot I’d heard. Some people run toward danger, and some patiently wait for it to arrive, licking its lips.
My mother was shooting a rifle across the field that led into the woods behind our house. I had no doubt she was hitting whatever she was aiming at. She rarely missed when she had something in her sights. Grab a gun, she yelled, then exhaled and pulled the trigger. I covered my ears as unknowable shapes morphed in and out of shadow just beyond the tree line. A couple of rabbits ran out and into the neighborhood. Small reddish-brown blurs revealed themselves to be foxes, and they too sprinted into the streets. My mother swore and reloaded. Just get behind me, she said.
It was then that I noticed the smoke in the distance. White and black wisps curled into the sky like a message I couldn’t understand. The smoke was beginning to draw near, but it was difficult to tell how far away the fire was. I’d never been able to gauge the approach of something inevitable, how soon it would envelop me, until it was too late.
A huge porcupine, its spines reaching several feet high, lumbered out from the foliage, and my mother took it down. I could taste the smoke on the air. Get inside, my mother said and let the rifle drop into its sling over her shoulder. She ran out toward the fallen animal.
* * *
Later, at the dining-room table, we were sitting across from one another and eating the porcupine while the fire raged in the trees outside. You set the fire, didn’t you? I asked my mother. The question must’ve startled her, and she pricked her lip on a quill she had forgotten to pluck when preparing the meal. She spat a globule of blood onto her plate next to the slab of meat. Come sit next to me and finish your food, she said.
I didn’t move to sit next to her, but I did grab the porcupine quill that had pricked her, and I stuck it in the back of my hand, the one I ate with, so she could see I understood.
Evan James Sheldon‘s work has appeared most recently in Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, and Queen Mob’s Tea House. He is a senior editor for F(r)iction and the editorial director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at evanjamessheldon.com.
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