The Moribund Moose

By Barry Rachin

Ruth Ostrowski’s midlife crisis hadn’t arrived in the normally prescribed manner. Rather, it snuck up on her incrementally, one negligible tribulation after another; it bushwhacked her with night sweats, sent her caterwauling toward menopause and the outer rim of her twilight years. Now, compounding her inner blight, the first frost, like a silver-haired, uninvited guest, blanketed the earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Rachin
• Release date: Dec 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466077843

Barry Rachin

About the AuthorBorn in Boston, Massachusetts, Barry Rachin spent several years stationed in Yokuska, Japan as a Navy medic caring for casualties during the Vietnam War. He has studied at the University of Jerusalem, lived on a kibbutz for a year and holds a degree in clinical counseling from Simmons College. A self-taught woodworker, he presently lives in Attleboro, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

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The Moribund Moose

by Barry Rachin

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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The Moribund Moose

Copyright © 2011 by Barry Rachin

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The short stories in this collection represent a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Moribund Moose

At 8 p.m., Ruth Ostrowski cracked the bathroom faucet and began filling the tub at a lazy dribble. Except for a slight limp, the aftermath of hip surgery, the pear-shaped, soft-bellied woman moved about the cramped bathroom with the somnolent ease of a tai chi master. Before the bath was half full, a rust-pocked Subaru with a blown muffler rumbled into the driveway. Her five-year-old grandson, Clyde, trudged up the brick walkway, a bulging pillowcase slung over his shoulder. The dark-haired boy wore a tattered, flannel jacket, too short at the wrists and flimsy for the frigid, late December weather. Noticeably underweight with knobby knees and ankles, the child exuded a feral wariness as he sidled, like an under-aged convict assigned a new cell block, toward the house. The boy’s mother watched from the car. A minute passed before the noisy engine