Life, Orange to Pear

By John Brantingham

Life, Orange to Pear follows a man and his daughter Cyndi as they deal with life, the occult, Santa Claus, boys, and death. This universe is a strange and rich place, and sometimes it takes booze and a surreal understanding of sex and The Rockford Files to get through life. Mostly though what it takes is a deep and abiding love for the richness of oranges and pears, how their scent can take you over and make everything in the moment all right.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bamboo Dart Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781947240087

Book preview

Life, Orange to Pear

by

John Brantingham

Bamboo Dart Press

www.bamboodartpress.com

LOS ANGELES   †   NEW YORK   †   LONDON   †   SYDNEY

Life, Orange to Pear by John Brantingham

ISBN: 978-1-947240-07-0

eISBN: 978-1-947240-08-7

Copyright © 2020 John Brantingham. All rights reserved.

First Printing 2020

Some of these stories have been published in the following magazines, collections, and museums: The Sasse Museum, Shark Reef Magazine, (mac)ro(mic), and Ad Hoc Fiction’s Flash Fiction Anthology

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For Annie

Orange

You’re sitting on the back porch, peeling an orange, getting down to the deeply spiritual part of the orange down where you can taste the bitter rind just from smelling it because you’re pulling off the skin, high, close to your nose.

This is the way you did it when you were a kid and you needed a minute away from life because you were dealing with the deep and existential questions of childhood, questions that dealt with monsters and homework and your dad and whether or not you were going to be able to make it through to adulthood.

On the angry days when your mind spun all the worst possibilities, you’d take an orange from the tree in the backyard, and you could lose yourself inside it, and on this day when you have found out that your presence will not be required at work tomorrow or any time after that, despite the fact that you have a four year old and a wife who is underpaid, you find yourself trying to lose yourself into this childhood orange and not making it, you suppose because your face is streaming with the tears of terror and incompetence.

That’s when you notice Cyndi, standing at the back door in her little overalls. She’s watching you and sucking on the first three fingers of her right hand, trying to understand