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E r i c k a L u t z
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An
excerpt from my short story, "Mishpocheh": Avram had begun with supplies. Pearl was still alive then, only mildly throwing up her hands at his folly, his spending; they had the money, it couldn't bring back their son, and everybody knew that money meant nothing after the war, unless you didn't have any. Pearl indulged Avram's trips to the stone yard for boulders, flagstones, pavers, ashlar. Wheelbarrows, leather gloves, a mallet. Mortar and a bucket. Cement dust. Hoses, a trowel, muriatic acid and sponges. Nobody touched the garden but Avram. Sunset Western Garden his only Bible now. The bare California slope yielded, inch by hard-packed inch to his back, his arms, thigh muscles. The stones rolled down the slope and dropped on his feet in the steel-toed boots. He howled and rolled them up again, placing them just right. Sweat and dirt. He planted. Things grew, things died. Avram fought citrus mites, Bermuda grass, peach leaf curl, thrips, rust, verticillium wilt, whiteflies, powdery mildew, spotted spurge. He wrote the names, in a hard, illegible hand honed by years of writing prescriptions, in thick number 6B pencil on the wall in the utility room. Wrote them, dated them, crossed them out once he conquered. Hard labor. The good doctor grew shade, grew fruit that wouldn't suicide. The trees grew silently: plums, apricots, apples, cherries, peaches, Meyer lemon. Against the fences, between the flagstones, he planted climbing roses, narcissus, fraise de bois, jasmine. Terraces of fertility. Whenever Sonia visited, Avram toured her through his grief, one hand steady on her shoulder, under the apple bower, beneath the trellis of white wisteria. Terraces of futility. When the garden was firmly established, Pearl died of stroke and Avram began his memoirs. Sonia, David's widow Sonia, was the only one he'd permit to help him in his garden. "Mishpocheh" appears in Green Mountains Review, Spring 2004 and also appeared in Kaleidoscope, Winter/Spring 2004. |
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(c) Ericka Lutz, 2003 |
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