Eric Luthi

Deux Contes

 

 

Dumb as a Rock

 

The rock lay on the black asphalt surface in the middle of the road on a hot July afternoon.  The sun beat down on the black road so much that the asphalt began to soften.  The rock lay still.

 

A car approached at high speed.  The driver did not see the rock until too late and struck it with his left front tire.  The impact caused the rock to bounce up and it struck the oil pan on the underside of the car.  The rock bounced and rolled forward and to the right and stopped ten feet from the shoulder of the road.  The car drove off leaving a trail of oil drops on the asphalt.

 

A bicyclist came along.  He watched the trees and listened to the water that ran below the road and didn’t see the rock until his front tire hit it.  The rock skidded further to the right.  The impact bruised the tire enough to cause it to go flat and the rider had to push his bicycle after that.

 

A hiker came along carrying a bamboo walking stick and a rucksack.  He saw the rock and kicked at it.  The impact broke his toe.  He hopped around and cursed the rock.  Then he picked it up and hurled it far off the road.

 

The rock bounced and rolled down the steep embankment until it splashed into the cool water of the creek.

 

And there the rock rested.

 

 

 

The Palabra Jar

 

Santiago did not speak much.  He lived in a border town where many people spoke both English and Spanish, but many more spoke only one language and had done so their whole lives.  His father learned Spanish first and then English.  His mother had gone the other way.

 

“He must not know English,” said those who spoke only that tongue.

 

“El no habla Español,” said the Spanish speakers as they shook their heads in turn.

 

Santiago would just listen and save his words.

 

When he went home at the end of the day, Santiago wrote down the words he had saved on scraps of paper and dropped them into a quart-size Mason jar his father had given him.  Soon the jar filled up and Santiago got another jar his mother saved from her fruit preserves.  Later, he transferred the scraps of paper into a larger jar, this one half-gallon sized.  Later still, that became a two-gallon pickle jar.  Without the pickles, of course, and cleaned and dried so as not to smudge the words that now filled it.

 

When he walked across the stage at his high school graduation, he saw his father and mother stand for him.

 

“Bravo,” shouted his father.  His mother smiled, clapped her hands and wiped away a tear.

 

When he got home that night, Santiago pulled words out of the jar and wrote them down in a journal.  He did this until the jar was empty and the journal was full.  

 

Santiago sent the journal to a publisher in New York.  Three months later, Simon & Schuster published his novel entitled The Palabra Jar.

 

 

 

Eric Luthi writes plays, short stories and narrative fiction and, on occasion, poetry. He published his first novel, Black Works last October and is working on his second novel.