Page 74 - WTP Vol. VI #4

Jedediah (continued from preceding page) liver the cash exactly as intended.
The black had taken full possession of his legs and eaten half his belly. He no longer felt his arms. Goodbye, you two, thought Jedediah. My Daddy’s come. He was five years old and his father had left work early, walked home to their sprawling fam- ily ranch. The man carried a briefcase. He wore a black hat and his judge’s black robe. The sky was black, too, yet the sun was high, and little Jedediah was lurking in the bushes beside the main house. He was dressed in white, in white sandals, white shorts, a white tee shirt and an oversized white hat; he had a stick horse, and he carried a toy gun.
“Bang!” he yelled, running. “Bang! Bang!” The judge was up for it; he played the part, dropped his briefcase, tottered back across the ranch’s front yard, clutched his chest and roared, “Whoa, you’re fast! Are you the hero, boy? You sure
look brave to me! C’mere!” He bent down and he opened his arms out very wide; he was about to hug his son.
“Daddy, I think I’m going away,” said Jedediah.
“You are?” the judge asked. “Then, hey, we’ll leave together! You can bring your little horse, too!” And he was up again, and he ran around his child in ever-widening circles.
The boy laughed as he watched his Daddy. The judge’s polished shoes were grinding in the dirt. His hat fell off and his robe was flowing behind him in the breeze. “Good enough,” the judge was calling, as Jedediah collected his stick horse. “C’mon, brave boy: let’s go!”
Mannings is a writer living in Pacific Grove, California, with his wife, Helene. An excerpt of his contemporary novel, Mary Shelley’s Mary Shelley, has appeared in the journal Writing Disorder.
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