FICTION & ESSAYS
I imagined Daddy laying there beside me, both of us with fire in our chests. With-
out a word, we share secrets, the whiskey bottle tipping to Daddy’s lips and to mine. There on the dandelion bed, the smutgrass poking up all around, understanding takes root. That a bad thing can be good. That salvation is the tricky color of butterscotch. That rapture is pain.
Etta Mae started singing, her angel voice and the whiskey casting a spell upon me,
nudging big shimmery tears to swell and spill from the corners of my eyes. Above us, the sun turned lazy, slouching in the sky. Three shadows fade into the weeds deep down beneath the earthworms, to dark, cool places. Far from the caw and burn and scratch of that Old garden Crow.
Robert Gwaltney, a graduate of Florida State University, resides in Atlanta Georgia where he is active in the local literary community, and an associate member of the Southern Collective Experience. His short story, “The Deep Down”, was recently published in The Signal Mountain Review. A recipient of an Atlanta Writers Club award for flash fiction, he was also selected as a top ten finalist for publication by First Page, an international literary magazine. Robert just completed writing his first novel THE CICADA TREE. An excerpt from this novel will be published in the December 2019 issue of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Alongside his writing, Robert also serves as Vice President with Easterseals North Georgia, Children Services Inc., a non-profit supporting children and families during the most critical time in a child’s development.
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