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Jimmy won 2nd place in the 2003 Glimmer Train Press Fiction Contest for his short story, "Wormwood." See the announcement in Poets & Writers Magazine, Jan/Feb 2004. Check out Glimmer Train Magazine for Jimmy's short story "Closing Dohr's" in the November, 2004 issue. Contact Glimmer Train directly at www.glimmertrain.com or purchase copies at your local bookstore. Here's a snippet of a short story, "Snoose" which appears in North Dakota Quarterly. This 200-page magazine also contains a variety of other stories, articles, and poems. "Snoose" is the story of what happens to a faithful old dog when his master is suddenly felled by a severe stroke. Based on a true incident. Signed copies of NDQ can be ordered directly from the author while supplies last. Click here for purchasing information. Snoose The heavy gray sedan lumbered along the narrow road raising a thin cloud of dust to settle on its back in the windless summer heat. Lulled by air conditioning, the three occupants sat and stared. Two fat women bringing as old man home. The fields they passed were his, though he no longer worked them. Propped against the door, he rested a useless left arm and curled hand on his lap."Snoose," said the old man. He spoke seldom and with great effort, the richness of his rural speech flattened to monosyllables like an imbecile's. "Better slow down," cautioned the sister-in-law from the back seat. "I'm only going fifteen," said the old man's wife. "Then go five. He'll tip over again." "He can't fall very far in a seat belt." The sister-in-law saw how the corn held dust in narrow green bowls. "We shouldn't even be here," she insisted, shifting her weight. Even a large car cramped her. "This wasn't my idea." "Mine neither," the wife replied, catching sight of her sibling in the mirror. They'd grown from pigtailed girls to short-haired pinheads atop green sweet suits of flesh. "Bud's first cousin thought seeing the old place might effect a cure. Spark a memory at least." "His cousin a doctor?" "Auctioneer." "What's he know?" "Can't hurt to drive in and out again." The old man listened to the meadowlarks and heard the corn ripening in the sun and he was saddened by the harping voice of this woman he'd married so late. A union he contrived for old age maintenance, she for the farm. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift back across the years, cresting waves of memory that reflected the eyes of another. A woman whose memory outshined even the desperation that gripped him each morning when he awakened to the bitterness of living. Her name was Judy and she was one reason every dog was named Snoose. They arrived on the same scorching afternoon. The dog on foot, loping in from Third Island. Judy, barefoot and in the back of Gary Allyn's pickup. She was dangling bare legs over the end gate and laughing with the rest of the Allyn crowd when they stopped by to return the wagon they'd borrowed for haying. There were dozens of Allyns scattered across the country then but he'd never seen Judy before. He limped over to where she sat by the wagon tongue and bent to pull the pin. Bud had polio as a boy, missing a year of school, coming back skinny and pale with a thin leg and a limp. He got teased for it until his brother Larry lifted Carl Tungseth by the ears and shook him bloody. "Where'd you get that limp," she asked, sounding neither nosy or callous. "Before all this," he said gesturing at the farm. "I was a Navy Frogman. Shark took me in the Solomons before I slit its throat." She laughed in a way that warmed him. "Gary said you had polio." He strained against the heavy tongue of the wagon and drew the hitch pin. "So why'd you ask?" "Because he said if people ask you'll tell them a fantastic lie." She hopped from the end gate and helped him swing the tongue clear. "I liked it." He took her fishing. She'd come from Chicago where she worked as an assistant copy editor for the Chicago Tribune because she was good with language and bragged she could spell any word. She touched her worm but didn't like it and rinsed her fingers in the lake after each time. He removed her fish from her hook. She caught nine bluegills before he moved to the seat beside her and kissed her on the mouth. They dated three years off and on. He traveled twice to Chicago. She stayed almost a month once with him on the farm and in the cool of the evenings Snoose would come and rest his head on her lap and gaze up at her with doleful brown eyes and the man and the dog shared the same feelings of contentment and trust. But it wasn't enough. Judy's friends were newspaper people. Bud's were men who complimented women on their cooking. They parted peacefully, though Bud's gruffness deepened. When he and Snoose were alone sometimes in the barn during chores or bumping along a corn row on the John Deere, Bud told him everything. All that was in his heart. Deep things you can tell only to a dog. Read the rest in North Dakota Quarterly available directly from the author for $9.95 plus $2.00 shipping and handling. Buy the NDQ now.
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