Life in the Key of Gee

By Ted Atoka

Life in the Key of Gee is made up of eight short stories about people who may remind you of someone you know or once knew. Discover fortune biscuits. Read and reflect on a story about near-death experience. Learn a nearly foolproof method for keeping skunks off your property. Smile at the shenanigans of two people cavorting on a sandy beach. Find out what happens when a Mynah bird gets stuck on a residential elevator. Accompany a gentleman on a shopping trip for aftershave lotion. Snicker at a “dude” who spends too much time in the saddle. And try not to laugh too hard at the predicament of a man in an outhouse.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Huntington House Press
• Release date: Mar 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507066133

Ted Atoka

Ted Atoka lived the first half of his life in Boston, MA. He made a Christmas visit to friends in Oklahoma in 1981, and fell in love with country life. Five weeks after returning home—to a raging snow storm, he packed up and moved to OK. He and his wife live on a piece of land on the side of a dirt road. They share the fresh air with a peacock named Penelope, two dogs, a small herd of deer, and a feral cat.

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Wen Wu

No matter what the weather or the number of breakdowns we had while negotiating nearly impassable trails, we always had a good meal every evening.

The man in charge of our chuck wagon was a good cook. Wen Wu was his name, and half the boys were afraid of him. The other half thought he was some kind of holy person.

Wen Wu was a rabbit hair shorter than five feet tall, and he used a short ladder to get up into his wagon. The oddest thing about the fella was that he had white eyes. If you bumped into him somewhere and didn’t know him, those cue balls’d scare the piss outta you.

He made the best damn biscuits you’d ever hope to taste. And you know what else? While they was still hot, he’d poke ’em with a narrow stick and shove a tiny rolled-up piece of parchment into each one. He had a bunch of those little papers. He’d stay up late at night writin’ stuff on ’em. They was short sayings like, ‘An empty six-gun will ne’er backfire,’ and, ‘A wise man marries after his purse is heavy with gold.’

Anyway, we always looked forward to gettin’ a biscuit with our beans at night, and sometimes we’d laugh at what ol’ White Eyes wrote.

At Water’s Edge

My brother Jack often challenged me to