You were the tomboy next door. We played children’s games: raced, wrestled, bickered. One day, suddenly, you were grown up. Poised, complicated, spellbinding.
You left for the city. Texted me that you were in love.
I suppose we’d known each other too long and too well ever to be lovers.
Alex’s story is what it is.
The newspapers and newscasts mostly report faceless statistics. But after the war, a letter came. Her brother had survived the blast, but their parents were dead.
“I’m staying with friends now,” he wrote. “And I still get tears in my eyes when I walk by what was once our home.”
Alex dedicates this story to his mother, who received such a letter many years ago.
He always played tough guy roles, flawed but sympathetic, and he was my idol when I was a teenager. So I’m out one day, wearing a dark turtleneck and tweed sports jacket just like Garfield’s.
This kid approaches, looks me up and down, and snarls, “Murderer!”
He made my day.
Alex Markovich has a good memory. He’s 80.
The rain beaded on the windshield and scattered the light from the full moon, mottling her face with dabs of gray like an impressionist painting.
I wanted to make love to her, but how could I? She is a work of art, a masterpiece to be venerated from a distance.
Alex Markovich gets his best story ideas in the middle of the night.
He revels in his mystic communion with wildlife.
Birds perch on his wrist and peck birdseed from his palm. A skunk visits his porch nightly to be petted. He hand-feeds squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, even deer.
Their trust in him is a blessing. He’s having rabbit stew tonight and venison tomorrow.
Alex Markovich lives in a suburb of New York with Jackie, his wife of 57 years and his toughest literary critic. His stories have appeared in 50-Word Stories, Blue Lake Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Still Crazy, and other lit mags.
He had learned the sacred ritual from his great-great-grandfather.
After leaving the reservation, he hired a skywriter to advertise his services. He wasn’t greedy: he asked farmers for a dollar an acre, but no one believed in him.
That was the summer that a statewide drought devastated the wheat crop.
Alex Markovich is a past contributor to Fifty-Word Stories. He was an editor at Consumer Reports before he retired.
“Why so glum?” my old buddy asked.
“I’m getting married tomorrow,” I said.
“You don’t seem too happy about it,” he said.
I just shrugged.
“C’mon,” he said, “pack a bag. We’ll hop a Greyhound and spend a few days in Vegas.”
Now I have to live with the consequences.
Alex Markovich started writing fiction late in life. He’s 76. He also wrote You Promised.