Spud Gun

Originally published in Exile Quarterly, Volume 35.3

The gravel drive mumbles under her tires as she pulls up to his beat-up old ranch house eight hours North of Toronto. She kills the ignition, and the old hatchback sighs with exhaustion. A thick rural quiet of crickets and frogs, engine heat, baking cornfields and the July afternoon sun, roll in through the open window like heavy gas, fill her grief-strained lungs with dread.

Kate climbs stiffly out of her car. The highway severs vast fields on the East side from endless woods on the West. Mike’s house sits at the woods’ edge like a forgotten outpost, the windows filthy and dark. But Kate knows he’s home; she knows he never leaves.