The Short Story Collection

By Charles Ynfante

A collection of short stories ranging ffom literary fiction to pulp fiction. From the silly and humorous to the serious. They are different genres. Three may not be suitable for young adults. However, the variety here cannot be denied. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Ynfante
• Release date: Apr 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215214558

Charles Ynfante

Charles Ynfante acquired a Ph.D. in history from Northern University Arizona in Flagstaff, Arizona.  He was a Fellow at the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. He has authored numerous books of fiction. He was a participant in Hollywood motion pictures, television, and theater.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

This short story collection contains stories that range from the frivolous and outright silly to the serious.

However, be forewarned that one is a horror story of domestic violence (Checks). You are forewarned about entering there.

You will find stories that range from Literate Fiction to pulp fiction. These stories are a variety of genre. I hop you enjoy them.

Thank you.

Charles Ynfante.

Spring 2023. Spain.

THE VILLAGE

The old man walked the road he had walked may times before. He was in no hurry. The wide plain below him was a golden yellow, stretching out farther than he could see to the east. An occasional tree stood out here and there, firmly rooted. 

They are older than I. He mused. 

Other than the scruffy savanna, there was nothing. Not even birds were seen on this clear day, a bright blue day near the Village. 

The old man came to his favorite spot and sat onto the hard-baked earth. The wiry shadow from the naked tree was little consolation against the warmth of the sun. And although his body came to rest, his mind and heart were restless, alive with thought and feeling.

The old man was too old to be concerned about himself. He was fortunate, after all, to have lived the long life he had lived. He had seen many changes, had done many things. He had been the Chief of the Village. But what had remained the same was the vulnerability of his people to the whims of Nature: the droughts, the locusts, the disease. He loved his people; he cared for them; he wanted to see them survive and achieve. But he and his people had no strength against that ultimate power by which the order of things must be. 

High above him, higher than any cloud, he saw the glimmer of metal, shining in the sky. This glittering speck moved steadily, slowly in a predetermined arc. From where it had come or to where it would go, the old man did not know. This was not the first time he had seen an aircraft. During the years when the drought had come and there was no food, the planes came, flying low, dropping boxes that were meant to help his people. But help from the planes was never enough. And there were no roads. Trucks were rare.

When the drought ended and his people managed to grow food, and the trees once again sprouted their leaves, these back-breaking efforts at tillage had been in vain, for the voracious locusts arrived, eating everything that had been nurtured. With the land stripped bare, many hungry people were left behind, and with starvation came disease.

And once again memories of the old ways came to the old man.

What my people had been. 

He reached for the string around his neck, a string which held a small bone smooth and worn with age. He held this in his open hand and, as he had done many times before, studied it. This memento had been handed down from father to son, for generations, as a stark reminder:

To quell the evil spirit. 

This malevolence had served his people well in the ancient times when there been no food. The old man had never partaken of this behavior which had been explained and described to him many times by his great grandfather. 

He looked at the bone in his hand, a bone which, according to legend, belonged to the chieftain of a rival village. 

"There had been misunderstanding, hate. The ignorance that made murder and killing acceptable." 

When the rival village had been conquered and subdued, and when it became clear there would not be enough food for both the victor and the vanquished, the rival chieftain and all of his people were eaten. 

So, this practice went on for years. But by the time of his great grandfather, this habit was subdued, looked upon with disgust and eventually discarded. The old man agreed with the unwritten, unspoken judgement. 

Several hours later, the old man resumed his walk back to the Village.

>>>  >>>

Ila Kontaba had by luck and good fortune reached the age of nine. Unlike his more unfortunate peers who never lived to see the end of their first year, Ila had managed to survive the assaults of viruses, bacteria, and germs; he outlasted the lean years when lack of nourishment decimated most other children -—even some of the men, women, and old -—in the Village. 

It was in his fifth year that Ila had seen the locusts for the first time flying by the thousands, the millions.

Like a huge angry beast!

He cried to his mother. 

All of the food that had been planted and cared for was gone in minutes. In the wake of the attack, the year following and the one after that were the driest his people had ever known. Ila and his mother and father and friends were forced to devour insects and even the leaves from the trees until the trees were sad skeletons of their former selves.

And soon one village after another made war upon the next, fighting, clawing, clamoring for what little sustenance their homeland provided. Those whom drought and disease did not kill were killed by their fellow neighbor and enemy.

Fate, however, had singled out Ila Kontaba. He had surmounted ravages. Because of his potential, his people believed he might be chief one day.

So, it was on the night the old man was dying, he asked to be alone with the child. It was a warm evening; the summer moon was bright and full. The hyenas, ever elusive scavengers, haunted the mountains with derisive laughter. The small fire cackled. There was much that Ila did not understand about his great grandfather. There was at least a ten-fold difference in their age. What was instinct in one was ritual in the other.

The old man did not speak right away. Ila sat cross-legged upon the ground net to the fire, waiting deferentially. The boy stared into the fire, occasionally stealing nervous glances at his mentor. The old man smoked, as he had done almost every day of his life, and he seemed lost in thought. Moments like these frightened and enthralled the boy, but he never questioned or disrespected the ways of his elders. Finally, after what seemed like a long time to the boy, the old man spoke. 

You must leave us to learn the new ways life. You will learn and return to help our people. 

The old man slowly and with difficulty removed a string from around his neck, a string with a small bone smooth and worn. He handed this to Ila. 

Keep this always to remember the old ways. 

Questions rose to the boy’s lips. Instinctively, he placed the string around his own neck, and remained silent.

I give you that, the old man said wisely, so that you remember in order to forget. The old ways are bad.  

The boy understood what the old man meant by the bad ways; he had heard the stories of the past. There was other talk by the old man that was not clear to Ila at the time; but he listened, heard, and memorized.

The old man laughed. I am dying. It is the way of life! 

The fire cackled. The air was heavy with the fragrance of beasts and animals near and far. And strange sounds drifted across the dark flat plains. 

The old man patted Ila on the arm. Before dawn, I shall be gone. Ila Kontaba, carry on. Improve our people. Forget what our past has been.  

And the conversation ended. The old man lapsed into a silence, and Ila, instinctively, got up, kissed his elder on the cheek, and went off to sleep.

>>>  >>>

Twenty-five years later, Ila Kontaba was thirty-four years old. He was on an airplane. 

Returning home. 

For ten years, he had been in an advanced country learning all he could about agricultural engineering and microbial disease. Now, he was returning like a victorious conqueror, but without pomp and circumstance. He was returning with knowledge gained for the sake of his Village, of his ancestors, and eventually all his descendants.

The view from his jet-liner window was wide and expansive. He could almost sense the curvature of the earth. He looked down upon the highest clouds; and below them farther still was the glittering, glistening sea. 

The advanced country had been a surprise, he mused. He looked at the scars on his arms. 

"From the knives of those people."  

They had called him names because he was from a rural small Village in an impoverished country. There were cruel remarks from strangers and laughter behind his back. There was the night he had returned to his modest one-room apartment from a long hard day studying only to find it thrown to pieces, with his personal items broken or gone. On another night, a rock had been flung through his window, his eyes almost sharded from the glass. Attached to the rock was a note expressing hatred. 

Ila’s attempts at arousing the authorities to do something were a useless aggravation. And even worse was the isolation, the loneliness. 

Of being ostracized, ignored. 

He maintained. Many times, he held the ancient human bone that the old man had bequeathed. He silently prayed for strength. 

To quell the evil spirit within me. To fight the urge to kill. 

He kept above the trouble and turmoil, keeping his sights on the future and on the achievements he and his people would accomplish, at what science and technology would bring. He wanted to change the destiny of his people forever. 

Away from ignorance and hate. 

He looked again at the knife scars on his arms. 

From those crazy people who tried to harm me. 

>>>  >>> 

The next several hours was a blur of routine and mechanics: the landing, baggage claim, transportation to the crossroads hundreds of miles away, and then the long road to his Village.

Ila had been careful not to dress in the style of the advanced country from which he had come. He wore no coat or tie, no boots or jeans. Instead, he wore simple sandals and colorful tunic of the local fashion. And perched on his head was a finely beaded hand-made cap that his mother had made years before. Yet, oddly, he still felt out of place. 

I’ve never had this kind of home-coming before.  

Mile after mile, the wide flat plain was as he had always remembered it. Nothing had changed. When the worn out car he had hired left him at the crossroads, he patiently waited for the local transportation he knew would eventually arrive.

Patience was a desirable attribute that had been nurtured within him since his earliest childhood. It was also a necessary requisite for living on the primitive plain. When Nature felt feisty and withheld its bounty, for whatever reason, one had to wait for it to turn a better face. Also, communication and transportation were slow and one had to adopt a favorable attitude in order to cope. 

So, wen Ila waited for over three hours in the warm day for the wagon, he was neither ill-tempered nor upset. Instead, he had lapsed into a state which was not uncommon among his people, a state not lazy, but meditative. It was a state which was beyond the marking of time, allowing one’s consciousness to simply exist. Ila liked this feeling, the wholeness of life.

Finally, the wagon came pulled by a tired looking beast of burden. The wagon creaked and rattled, and the driver, a boy no older than ten sat sullenly on the board.

He reminds me of me when I was young. 

Ila greeted him with a smile and climbed aboard. As they rode, Ila’s efforts to engage the boy into simple talk -—even trying to make him smile -—was useless. The boy seemed tired and oppressed. 

Are you ill? 

No. The boy answered quietly. Ila said nothing thereafter. 

Although this road was still familiar to him many times over, there was something nonetheless different. It had not been Ila’s absence that betrayed this difference by way of contrast to what he knew before and what he experienced now. It was some other quality altogether. 

... a feeling ... in the air ... something heavy ... and ... sad ... 

>>>  >>> 

When he arrived in the Village, he felt neither elation nor contempt. He felt complacent, comfortable, almost taking for granted what had always been. 

And always will be.  

Home. 

He looked for familiar faces, but there were none to be seen. In fact, there was no one. 

Where is everyone? 

But the boy did not answer. His face held a peculiar mix of irritation and non-concern. He continued his uncharted journey, down the old dirt road without a word or look back over shoulder.

Ila wondered where his mother and father were; his friends, and the others he had waited years to see once again. He thought perhaps the letter he had sent months before announcing his return had never arrived.

... maybe my family and friends are elsewhere ... 

Still, uncertainty did not leave him. The Village was empty but disorganized; lonely but cluttered. Personal belongs were scattered everywhere. Ila Kontaba could not fathom this flagrant lack of discipline.

Then he saw Zhangee, a man his age, a friend since birth. His face was muted, his eyes red with worry. But Ila did not immediately pay attention to that, being glad just to see him. And as old friends usually do, after not having seen each other for years, they started casually into the middle of conversation as if they had never been apart. 

Where is everyone? Ila asked. 

They’re gone, Zhanzee said with quiet resignation. It’s been several days now. 

"What do you mean gone?" 

You haven’t heard? I thought for sure the news would have reached you. 

I have heard nothing. Ila felt embarrassed that he had allowed his circumstances the previous few weeks to eclipse whatever events had occurred in the Village.

Everyone here, except for those who refused, were rounded up and sent away. Families were separated and almost everyone sent to temporary camps before separated further. 

"But why? Ila was afraid and angry. Disturbing thoughts streaked through his mind. Was there a plague that required evacuation? A local war that forced a retreat from the Village?" 

Zhangee stared into the distance with blank eyes. Because the government deemed it so.  

Government? 

It passed a law. None of us will be allowed to leave the centers or get jobs unless we have permission and government-issued identification cards. We have been barred from attending schools, and we are not allowed to vote. 

Ila asked gently, You mentioned that there were those who refused to leave. What happened to them?  

Zhangee with an off-hand manner that disturbed Ila, answered matter-of-factly. Those who refused either escaped or were killed by soldiers. 

Ila tried to imagine the fear and chaos that had gripped his people during their last days. At the same time, he wanted not to face these images which imagination made more hideous than reality. His anticipation at the answer to the question he asked next was keen. 

And my mother and father? 

I’m sorry, Ila. I don’t know what happened to them. Zhangee rubbed his face with his hands. I advise you to leave here while you can. Go back to the country where you were studying. His eyes implored. Go back. There is nothing for you here.  

Why is it that you are still here? 

Because I was one of the few who escaped. Now I live in the back country. In the bush. 

Zhangee walked away, destination unknow, half-looking over his should as he went, saying,

It’s good to see you again, Ila! It’s good to see and old friend!

With that, Zhangee sullenly left the deserted Village. 

Not knowing what else to do, Ila remained behind. What had once been the hut of his father and mother was now his. In fact, all of the huts, now empty, were his to do as he pleased. For days thereafter, Ila Kontaba lived in the Village.

>>>  >>> 

The Village was thousands of miles from any coast, hundreds from copper wires, magnets, internal combustion engines, and phones. His world was a world to itself, and his little Village and all the small concerns of his family and friends had been his total love. This plain, as he had always remembered, was always alone. Many times, they had battled Nature and man. 

The urge to find his parents did not come to him. Rather he reasoned: 

... I shall wait here for whatever power swept away my hone. I shall wait for its return. For it must surely return for me ... 

So, the days passed. 

The string with its human memento in a pouch he took off and hid. 

Without his people -—their laughter, gossip, storytelling -—home was quieter than he had ever known it. Or, rather, better to say that this new silence opened his ears to the Natural silence, for no one or no thing is truly alone or isolated in this life. The Natural silence, however, had its whispers of the plain came from the wind as it howled by his ears; from the drying grass as it cracked in the heat; from the far away cries, shrieks, and howls of distant animals -—their anguish, victory, and sexual heat.

The weather was hot, such that Ila went about almost naked. Occasionally, a day was made cooler by huge white clouds that were not, really, even to his assiduous gaze, completely white. Rather, the tall, stacked clouds were a brilliant and eye blinding white where the sunlight reflected to an almost pale lavender. 

... or is it light gray? ... 

When a patch of blue came into contrast to the swiftly moving clouds, the hues were made even more subtle. Between this modulation and their everchanging shape, the clouds arrested his attention hour after hour. At time, the clouds thickened and darkened, hanging heavy and close to the ground. 

... like a pregnant woman’s belly ...  

When the first drops of rain fell onto the dry ground, small puffs of dust swirled about; but these disappeared as the soil became saturated. Moisture beat upon the thirsty ground in the wet and heavy way that was always pleasing to Ila. Small pools formed. A blade of grass here and there bowed repeatedly from the round drops of falling water. Ila turned his face skyward, smiling as the warm shower massaged his face.

One morning, a clear blue day after a night of heavy rain, Ila awoke to the singing of birds. They were so lyrical and melodious he was forced to run out of his hut to see them. Armfuls of birds with exquisite balance were perched upon the spare limbs of a leafless tree, their feathery chests round with air, their beaks open. The morning was softened by the choir-like prettiness of their chirping. Then as if pulled an unseen