The Last Ten Yards

By Christian Shoroplov

An old man befriends a tree. He tells the tree what went wrong during the three hundred years of its aggressive growth.
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A man who has lost his way is arguing with God and is willing to bet his last ten cents to prove he is right.
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A young man and a young woman meet. In their desire to go deeper in learning about each other, they step carefully on a canvas woven with the thoughts of famous architects and great artists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Shoroplov
• Release date: Mar 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777120337

Christian Shoroplov

As a young man, Christian Shoroplov began writing poetry in his native Bulgaria. Now living in Canada, he is creating fictional characters whose conversations could lead them into enduring relationships. This is his first book of short stories.

Book preview

The Last Ten Yards

Three Short Stories

Christian Shoroplov

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Copyright (c) February 2020 Christian Shoroplov

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, audio recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher or a licence from Access Copyright, Toronto, Canada.

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Cataloguing information available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN: 978-0-9953129-7-5 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-9953129-8-2 (ebook on Amazon)

ISBN: 978-1-7771203-3-7 (ebook on Smashwords)

Edited by Nina Shoroplova

Dedication to Nina Shoroplova

I would like to dedicate this short story to my wife.

Regardless of whether these short stories have any redeeming qualities or not, I have spent time and effort on them. And who in the whole world knows better than my wife what I was going through?

She is great, a published author with a bestseller to back her up, a professionally involved editor, singer, actress. There is no one else whose advice I will take freely and without any reservation.

And here I stand raising a glass of wine and shouting in a clear voice, More power to you, girl, and thank you!

Contents

Talking to a Tree

Joey

The Last Ten Yards

Talking to a Tree

It is a warm day in August. I am sitting down on the grass beside the trunk of a Douglas-fir tree. Not an ordinary tree by any means, but the tallest one, the tallest in Stanley Park, the park map says. In order to see its full size I have to lie straight on my back and look up. Its green crown is far above and, from where I sit, it looks as if it is reaching for the sky or aiming for it.

I think about its early days, actually the early days of its ancestors, its great, great, great, grandmother.

Douglas-fir trees started a long time ago. I don’t know what the terrible event was that obliterated all trees, shrubs, and flowers in one big corner of the park—well, it wasn’t a park then—but it left the whole place completely bare.

Anyway, it was a catastrophic event. But, there was a seed of unknown origin at the edge of our planet, just waiting for this to happen. It called on its friend the wind. The wind picked up the seed in one of its currents and took off across the oceans and the mountains. It reached its destination one clear night. The stars were shining, the birds were sleeping, the moonlight was covering the bare ground with silver. The wind reduced its speed down to a breeze and flew quietly over the blank field.

It dropped the seed.

The seed, going down, tried to turn around and say, Thank you and have a safe journey, but it was too late. The wind was done. One of the wind’s specialties is to move constantly, because it knows that if it stops even for a second, it will die.

So the seed went down, hit the ground, and felt at home. The soil was fertile and the seed sank into it with a sigh of relief.

Of course, I doubt the tree remembers when, two months later, the soil moved and opened, like a rose, and the seed jumped out of the ground, but this time with a wicked grin on its face and holding high in the air one tiny, small, almost transparent leaf. The leaf was cold and scared but somehow defiant. It looked around suspiciously, trying