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would never hear her, he had woken with the light caught him.
and now fished the river. Eric would have to tell Both introductions had been while he had
his father, the taxi and the kiss for the taxi driver
(odd he thought) and watched as his father turned been in town, the second one on the heels of a form
towards the door. He placed his hand on the chair letter rejection ("...fishing stories belong in sports
beside him and his knuckles turned white and he magazines ..."). Eric sat on the back of his truck in
never mentioned his wife again. the street and watched his mother bring Maria to-
wards him, her head down her mouth moving
Eric looked at the corner where the paper
now lay crumpled up, and wondered what his fa- quickly.
ther had believed in; very much, he assumed in Maria said she had heard quite a bit about
the manner that it appeared that he was faithless.
him; Eric visualized his mother's stories of a way-
But that was the exact opposite, in fact; lack of ward man-child in need of civilization. Writers
doubt creating the perfection that was his father's
faith in life. His father believed in the river and were a cursed lot, in his mother's eyes; they painted
the seasons and the wealth of the world and real- beautiful pictures of the world and were pandered
ity. to, unrecognized (few writers talk in the language
oftheir works). And now the son needed to "come
Eric believed in the fake rise of the land home" to his family; Eric thought "My father is
(now not fake). When you are deceived by nature
and the myth of eternity, the deception is small, dead."
and hardly anything is faked. She was a tool, an automaton for his
mother'S desires for him (care or shame, Eric of-
ten wondered), but that night, in the dark, the moon-
*** light played off her long neck as she leaned back
and looked at the stars. Eric smiled at that. She
Eric had met Maria twice, both times in- was graceful without demonstration, a Venus de
troduced by his mother. It shamed him that his Milo in tan skin with an animated face.
mother couldn't remember the first conversation,
he had come close to canceling the date, but there "Would you like to come back out to the
was something in her eyes, a lost glimpse of the ranch?" he had asked. They had danced close and
bay through a dressmaker's shop window that held hands for a while (time was relative), stared
