Chapter 5 Dianne Her name was Eliza. Eliza Darquisse Dumont. But everyone called her Dianne, and nobody knew why. Nobody, including Dianne, could remember why. She was a pretty young woman, Dianne. And, while she had many suiters, she had no intention of becoming anyone’s wife or anyone’s mother. Not if she could help it. Olive coloured skin dabbed here and there with soft freckles and high cheekbones and shimmering black hair with copper streaks that reflected the sunlight on clear days. Her eyes were ever so slightly almond shaped and the colour of almonds too, which led some to speculate that she might have Oriental blood in her. Oriental. That’s what they called it then. It was an obliquely musical and distant word for something that the people in that place could only understand within a very uncertain frame. There was only one Chinese family and their take out food place, some half remembered thoughts of Marco Polo or Genghis Khan or Bruce Lee. It raised he
faller: the whole thing so far…. faller Chapter 1 Ohkwá:ri - The Bear by Jules F. Delorme There was this bear. This ohkwá:ri A long time ago. Way back. Before there was too much of everything. This bear. Not a good bear or a bad bear. Just a bear. For most of her life this ohkwá:ri had it alright. She was the only bear around. I don’t know if she was the only bear in the whole world or anything, but she was the only one around in those parts. Nothing messed with her. She just went around doing her thing. Being a bear. But then one day people started to show up. Everybody knows how that goes. Just a few many at first. Then a few more. And then more and more until there are so many you can’t even keep count. The way it always goes with people. At first the people just did their own thing. Hunted and fished. Planted some corn. Stayed away from the bear. But then, when there was enough of them to do something they started to talk about the bear. She was dangerous they s
There’s a sucker born every minute. Every single fucking minute. The wife doesn’t like it when I swear. She keeps a swear jar at home. I put money in every day even though we’re never going to have kids to give the money to. She’s a good woman. She’s entitled to her delusions, after all I put her through. I never mention that the jar doesn’t really have a point. Every day I put money in and it just stays there. It just sits there. We go to church every Sunday and she holds my hand, and I’m just glad that she stayed with me all these years. She knows who I am. She knows the kinds of things that I do. She knows all about me. I never lie to her. I don’t talk about the things that I do and she never asks, but I never lie to her. She knows. And still she stays. Still she loves me. So let her have her swear jar that gets so full of money that neither one of us will ever touch, that gets so full of money that I keep having to buy bigger and bigger swear jars, and
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