Snapshots: Flash Stories from Random Lives

By Howard Schneider and Mizeta Moon

A collection of forty short, flash-style fiction stories from a wide variety of settings, characters, view-points and situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9780692549360

Book preview

Student

Snowbound

Things got real bad after Zebulon died. He just sat down after choppin wood one afternoon and never got back up. Guess his heart gave out after years of hardscrabble livin. By then the snow was nearly knee deep and nights were bitter cold.

Some two weeks before, the guide who brought us this far refused to go any further. Takin his team, he left the wagon and a few supplies after makin a deal with Zebulon to take us the rest of the way when the weather cleared.

We buried Zebulon with little ceremony, then warmed our hands by a roarin fire. Sheila discovered a small bottle of hard cider and we drank a toast to a man we scarcely knew. As the winter unfolded we would lie on the hearth at night, huddled under thin blankets as what was once a good supply of wood steadily dwindled. The fires got smaller and smaller. Thin straw-filled mattresses had to be shared as the cabin was never meant to be lived in by ten of us.

Sadie got bad sick for a while, but recovered somehow. It wasn’t like we had much in the way of medicine or doctorin skills. Most of us had just left home for the first time and come west. While the snow got deeper we were forced to eat smaller portions of Zebulon’s stores to make them last. Our own had run out fast and we’d each had a turn at cussin the outfitter for abandonin us.

Soon there was no flour. Then no beans and very little salt. A nearby stream that hadn’t frozen kept us in water and the occasional cold bath. All too quickly we were down to a few shriveled apples and jerky so dry it turned to dust in your mouth.

Those among us that believed in such things called it a miracle when the bear came to our door. I’d been told they slept all winter and shouldn’t have been in search of food. Guess he woke up hungry, smelled us and tried his darndest to break in.

Zebulon’s repeatin rifle was propped in the corner and all our eyes were drawn to it. We hadn’t used it to go huntin cause we were all too timid to roam snow filled unfamiliar woods in clothes that wouldn’t keep out the cold. We’d expected to be past the mountains by late fall, but floods and other problems delayed us by over a month. Winter wear had been left behind to save weight. I’d watched my brother shoot back home so I was the one who got off a lucky shot when the beast came crashin through the door. If I hadn’t he’d a probly ate us all.

It stank somethin terrible while we butchered and rendered him inside the cabin, but the meat and tallow kept us alive, if barely, till the snow finally melted. When a troop of soldiers found us we were a sorry sight. All knobby knees and elbows with ribs stickin out. A bunch of women who’d come west to be brides now hollow-eyed and sunken-cheeked, dressed in rags. At least we were clean with our hair brushed.

Within months the others were all married. Some to our rescuers. The others to men in Stumptown. During our ordeal I had come to realize I wasn’t the marryin kind. Raisin a passel of kids and fussin with a man no longer appealed to me. After a short stay in Stumptown, I got a job cookin for a crew headin downriver to someplace called Astoria. I wanted to live by the ocean. To fish, dig clams, raise chickens and never want for food again. Over time I became the local seamstress and paid for a nice house to be built on a bluff overlookin the bay.

Sometimes it saddens me that I have no one to leave it to when I pass, but I know there’ll be someone to enjoy it for years to come. It’s built sturdy and big enough to raise a family. There’s room on the porch for a swing and most of the land is my garden. It rarely snows here and when it does, I sit by the fire rememberin how we tenaciously clung to life when all seemed lost.

Late-Night Train To Brooklyn

The number four train to Brooklyn that screeched into the nearly empty City Hall subway station in Lower Manhattan was sparsely occupied; not unusual for that time of night. Angie and I entered the end car. We wanted to be near the stairs at the Atlantic Avenue station that led up to where we would transfer to the R line and home to our cozy third-floor walk-up in Park Slope.

We took seats across from a well-dressed elderly gentleman holding an old leather-bound book up close to his face. His lips silently formed each word. I couldn’t help but notice the title: Letter to Menoeceus, by Epicurus. Two seats to the man’s left a teenage kid appeared to be sleeping. His red Adidas shoes were boldly thrust out into the empty aisle. A hoodie obscured his dark face. To our right an attractive young girl was attached by wire to the little device clutched in her delicate hands. Her head bobbed and her foot bounced to music only she could hear. Two seats beyond her a middle-aged, pony-tailed woman was writing sporadically in a spiral notebook. She alternated between jotting down a few words and staring into the darkened window across from her. At the far end of a row of empty seats a young couple sat entwined in each other’s arms, seemingly oblivious to anyone else in the car.

At Bowling Green, the last stop before entering the tunnel under the East River, a disheveled elderly woman entered and took a seat close to the rear door. She was muttering quietly and held on to a grimy cloth shopping bag.

The train accelerated as it descended deep into the tunnel and quickly reached top speed. But after it had traveled only a short distance it slowed, then came to an abrupt halt. The riders stopped what they had been doing and looked around, then quickly returned to their solitude, no doubt assuming this was just another minor delay, not uncommon on New York’s subway system. A moment later a scratchy overly-loud announcement blasted from the ceiling speaker.

Due to construction debris on the track there will be a 20- to 30-minute delay. Please remain seated.

The elderly man across from us closed and laid the book on his lap, glanced up and down the well-lit car, then shifted his gaze down to his highly polished brown leather shoes. The teenage kid sat up straight and pulled his legs in. He slowly surveyed his fellow travelers. The young girl removed her earpiece and looked around with a questioning expression. The pony-tailed woman closed her book but continued to stare straight ahead. The couple at the far end of the car unwrapped themselves from each other and peered down the aisle. Their dark eyes briefly focused on each face, then turned back to each other. The bag lady continued her muttering.

After about five minutes of eerie silence the pony-tailed woman started to quietly hum, possibly without even realizing it. Gradually her humming grew louder. The words soon followed: I hate to see that evening sun go down… Her voice was pure and mournfully beautiful, as a heart-felt rendition of a blues song can often be. Before the woman might have become embarrassed and stopped singing, the young girl joined in with a pitch-perfect alto harmony line that raised the proverbial hairs on the back of my neck.

A verse later the teenage kid took a harmonica from his pocket and began a soulful accompaniment. Suddenly, the muttering old lady stood and started swaying in a slow dance so graceful and alluring that we all stared in disbelief. As the music continued, and then repeated, the old man rose from his seat, laid aside his precious book, and made his way over to the dancing woman. She accepted his offered hand and joined him in a slow and sensuous blues ballet. The music from the two women and the harmonica dictated the dancers’ every perfectly choreographed move.

Meanwhile, the couple at the far end listened and watched as if they were unsure of what to do. The music must have enthralled them though, for they soon joined the old couple, gracefully dancing alongside them up and down the aisle. Unable to resist, Angie and I rose from our seats and began dancing, humming the tune we knew so well. The tempo changed from adagio to allegro, following the strong beat of the young girl’s tapping foot.

Then, a sudden jolt signified that the train was starting up again. The tracks had been cleared. As the train came to life the music stopped and the dancing ended. Seats were retaken and eyes once again averted.

Back to normal on the late-night train to Brooklyn.

I Wonder

I’d never had a winning horse. Try as I might, something always went wrong. They didn’t have the speed or didn’t have the heart. Came up lame or suffered maladies.

Over the years I’d gone to innumerable sales and bought directly from breeders, but it was to no avail. I paid for years of trainers, muckers, hay and travel and came up empty time after time. Even against what appeared to be inferior competition, something always went wrong.

My wife nagged me constantly to quit. To focus on my business and stop pouring hard-earned money into a bottomless pit.

BUT, I love horses and the ethos of life on the backside. While wagering revelers sally forth out front, a whole other life is happening behind the scenes.

Losing plagued me to be sure. My ego was bruised, but quitting was never an option.

A year ago I bought a four year old with the breeding to go long, but he never lived up to the promise. In training he would dash out of the gate, but within a half mile he rapidly lost interest. Everyone who worked for me started calling him I WONDER.

I wonder why he quits like that?

I wonder if he’ll ever run a lick?

I wonder why we feed that boy? All he ever does is sleep.

The day I WONDER won a race was the happiest day of my life. (Besides marrying my wife, of course.) I’d trailered him to a county fair meet in Tillamook and entered him in a non-winners race against six other runners. His opening odds were forty to one as a local favorite garnered most of the bets from a very small crowd on a rainy blustery day.

Two horses scratched late which pared it down to a five horse field. We drew the inside post and the distance was four and a half furlongs. Nine-sixteenths of a mile. I wondered once again whether anything beyond half a mile was remotely possible.

My jockey, a high school girl who seemed to know her way around horses, was confident she could get the job done. She whispered in I WONDER’s ear and nuzzled his neck with her face. She sat astride him with pride. They seemed to get along and a balloon of hope rose in my chest.

I put a thousand bucks on him that day. In such a small pool it crushed the odds, so in the end he only