The Fountain

The stand sat on a bend of the highway, where asphalt gave way to gravel and cotton fields breathed dust into the air. It was nothing more than a lean-to of rough-hewn boards and flapping canvas, but the fruit glowed in the Georgia sun—peaches soft as breath, tomatoes red as old barn doors, melons heavy as promise. The kind of place folks slowed for, even if they didn’t mean to. The man ran it, same as his father before him, and his father before that. Three generations in the same patch of dirt, hands calloused in the same way, hearts tethered to the rise and fall of seasons. He could tell the week of summer by the scent of the cantaloupe, the angle of the sun by the gloss on a pepper’s skin. College had been an option, once. He’d even driven up to Athens, looked around, but the roads pulled him back—dusty, familiar, humming with cicadas and memory. Each morning, he’d unload from the flatbed, arrange the produce in soft pyramids, and nod at the passing cars. Sometimes a child would pi...

He woke with the sun creeping in across the tile floor, a beam slicing the dust like it was holy light. The cats were already at the door, weaving between his legs, wordless and wise. Coffee bubbled on the stovetop, and he sat shirtless in the kitchen, a red bandanna tied loose around his neck, sketching spirals on the back of a gas bill envelope. By mid-morning, the air had thickened. He stepped barefoot across the yard, past walls dressed in color—turquoise, saffron, flame. Every inch of the place pulsed with rhythm. His paintbrush moved like a prayer. He talked to the faces he’d carved in stucco, whispered things no one else could hear. Spirits. Ancients. Futures. “We’re not gone,” they seemed to say. “We’re just painted into the walls now.” Lunch was boiled peanuts and a warm Coke, eaten in the shade beside the mandala tower. He rolled a cigarette, watched clouds pass like slow thoughts. Later, he’d tell a visitor that he wasn’t crazy, just connected. “You don’t see what I see,” he...

The festival was already breathing when she arrived—lanterns swaying like sleepy fireflies above small tent tops, wind chimes laughing from porches. The park had dressed itself in its finest wonder, colors dripping from canvases like melted dreams. A jazz band played loud and clean. People clapped. Some danced. It was good. The smell of roasted peanuts curled around her like memory. She walked slowly, as if afraid to disturb the magic. There had been too many days before this one—days of fluorescent lights and talking too quietly and waiting on joy like waiting for a bus that never came. But here, children with painted cheeks galloped like colts, and old men in straw hats carved animals from peach wood while humming half-remembered lullabies. The world felt stitched together with music and sun and things made by hand. And then she saw it—a small painting of a window thrown open to a sunrise, sky ablaze with orange and violet, a bird mid-flight. Something in her chest, long sea...

In t he soft hours of the afternoon, when the trees whispered secrets and the grass shimmered like a green sea, I saw him — a dog, bright-eyed and sure, racing across the earth on three good legs and a heart too big to notice the missing one. He was a wonder stitched from sunlight and stubbornness, the kind of creature that makes children forget their games and old men lower their newspapers, grinning behind the rims of their glasses. He bounded, he leapt, he flew, as if some unseen hand had plucked away the extra weight so he could move faster toward the joy waiting just beyond the trees. No sadness clung to him. No heavy questions. No thoughts of what was lost. Only the day, only the breathless chase, only the warm, unseen music that lifted him up and carried him along. And watching him, I thought: if only we all could be so wise — to lose something and not feel less, but somehow, impossibly, to feel more.

The rain stitched the morning into gray cloth, soft and constant. The boy sat next to his father in the front seat of the station wagon, windows fogged from their breath, a stack of newspapers piled beside him. His father drove slow, careful over the wet streets, the wipers shoving water aside with a steady, tired rhythm. At every mailbox or porch, the boy rolled down the window and flung a paper out, the rain biting his arm each time. His father kept one hand on the wheel and the other resting easy across the top of the seat, a quiet anchor. Sometimes he pointed —  There’s a house,  or  Watch the puddle.  They didn’t talk much, except for the necessary words that made the work smooth. Once, when a paper missed its mark and landed in a ditch, his father laughed low in his throat, reached over, and tousled the boy’s damp hair. By the time they finished, the sun was trying its best behind the clouds, turning the wet streets into rivers of silver. They sat in the car fo...

The girl lay on her side with one hand curled beneath her cheek, the other fidgeting with the hem of the blanket. The room was dark except for the hallway light slipping in like a ribbon under the door. She wasn’t sure how prayer worked, only that Mama once said it didn’t need to be out loud. So she closed her eyes and quietly thought:  please let tomorrow come gently. Outside, wind moved through the trees like a sigh, and the house creaked as if settling its bones for sleep. She thought of her brother’s laugh, Daddy’s coat hanging by the door, and the sound of pots in the kitchen when Mama made morning buttered toast. She didn’t ask for ponies or toys or to be grown up. Just for the people she loved to still be there. Still laughing. Still warm. The prayer didn’t end, not really. It just drifted, like a paper boat down a stream. Her breath slowed, her fingers uncurled. She imagined the morning sunlight coming through the curtains, slow and gold. Maybe that was enough. Maybe that w...

He had ten crumpled dollars in his back pocket and dreams too big for his sneakers. The old ones were flapping at the soles, worn thin from last summer's mischief—tree climbing, fence hopping, running full tilt from imaginary bandits. He walked the cracked sidewalk to the hardware store downtown, where they kept the PF Flyers in a glass case behind the counter, next to the baseball gloves and pocketknives. The man behind the counter—smelled like pipe smoke and motor oil—slid the box toward the boy like it was something sacred. Black canvas, white rubber toe, red stripe—a pair of shoes that promised speed, flight, freedom. The boy unlaced them with reverence, slipped them on, and felt taller. Faster. Braver. Like summer itself had come early and settled into his feet. Outside, the world stretched wide and full of daring. The sidewalk shimmered in the heat, the trees bent low with secrets, and the boy—new shoes squeaking with each step—ran. Not toward anything. Just because he could....

The boy stood in the shade of the pecan tree, toes curled in the summer dirt, when his father handed him the knife. It was wrapped in an old handkerchief, the fabric frayed, soft as breath. The blade had a bone handle, smoothed by years in a man's pocket, worn by callused fingers and quiet days. "It was mine," his father said. No ceremony. Just the weight of the thing passing from one generation to the next. He practiced with it by the creek, away from the house, trying to whittle a point into a dry stick. His hands were clumsy, too eager. The blade slipped, and he hissed in pain as a thin line of red welled across the pad of his thumb. It wasn’t much—a shallow sting—but it was enough to make the world slow. He sat still then, watching a dragonfly hover like it was waiting for him to grow up. Later, his father didn’t scold him. Just took his hand and looked, nodding as if this too was part of the lesson. He cleaned the cut with a splash of whiskey and said, “Now you’ll re...

He kept the boots by the door, even now. The leather had gone soft with years, cracked in places where the foot bends from climbing, from kneeling, from standing too long in rain. Dried mud clung to the soles like old memories—each caked ridge a trail, a moment, a place once wild and living beneath his steps. One lace had snapped clean through years ago; he’d tied the ends in a knot that never came undone. He remembered the first time he wore them. The store smelled of rubber and wax, and the man behind the counter had told him they’d last a lifetime if he was lucky. Turns out, the boots outlived the man, and maybe the luck did too. Mountains, forests, even pavement—they had carried him through all of it. He could still feel the ache in his knees from the long descent into that canyon in Utah. Still feel the heat rising through the rocks, the sweat along his spine, and her hand in his before she let go to race ahead. He never wore them anymore, but he couldn’t throw them out. That woul...

The sun was high, and the pavement warm underfoot. Valerie laughed—a bright, easy sound that made the flowers along the fence seem to lean in just to hear it better. In her arms, a small beagle pup squirmed and panted, ears too big for her head, tail too eager to stay still. They named her Willow, because something about her spirit bent and danced like the trees when the wind was gentle. They walked the shaded path up the driveway, and everything felt new. Valerie held the leash like a promise, and Willow not yet knowing she had found her forever. There would be parks and porch naps, overturned water bowls and a hundred chewed things—but also love, in the deepest, simplest way. The kind that never asks for anything but time and presence. Years would pass, but this day would stay tucked inside them. In a photo. In a memory. In a soft sigh on a warm spring afternoon.

Over coffee and sausage patties, she said it plain: “My mother-in-law thinks aliens don’t know about Jesus.” He looked up from the toast, blinking once. The morning light came through the window, soft and gold. She stirred her creamer slowly, like the world might tilt if she rushed it. “She said, if there’s life out there, they might not’ve heard the story. No cross. No Bethlehem. No second chances.” He thought about that—about stars burning in silence for billions of years, whole galaxies spinning with strangers who’d never tasted bread or wine or knelt in fear and wonder. It made him feel small, but not in a bad way. Like a child in a cathedral, whispering under vaulted heavens. What would salvation look like to someone with green skin, or six arms, or no concept of sin? They finished breakfast with fewer words. The syrup bottle was sticky. The dog snored beneath the table. And all he could think was—maybe the real miracle wasn’t that Jesus came here, but that love might find a way e...

He woke to the sound of church bells and sunlight slanting through curtains like gold ribbons. His name was Michael, but the old women at church called him “angel boy,” especially on Easter when he wore his white robe and held the brass cross high, his small hands steady, his heart thudding like a drum inside his chest. The world felt different on Easter. The sky was bluer, the grass greener, the air full of something old and new at once. He could smell lilies before he opened the church doors. Inside, the candles flickered like stars and the choir swelled like thunder wrapped in silk. He stood at the altar, the wax of the candles softening in the heat, and felt as if he were floating, halfway between heaven and this place called home. After Mass, the egg hunt was a flurry of laughter and small hands grasping at color. Eggs hid in flower beds, behind tombstones in the churchyard, tucked beneath azaleas that hummed with bees. Michael found a green one with a dime inside and thought it m...

They had a stack of books between them, some with cracked spines, others soft with age, all carrying the scent of memory. It was late morning, the kind that wandered in slow, golden steps. The windows were open. A breeze moved the curtains just enough to remind them the world was still turning, but not fast—not today. He read aloud from a dog-eared page she’d long forgotten. Her voice followed with a line from another book, one that had made her cry when she was young and idealistic and still believed every story should end in joy. They took turns like that. Not to impress or teach, but just to share. The words made them laugh sometimes, sometimes quiet. And the silence after a good passage felt holy. At noon, she tucked her feet beneath his leg. He poured more coffee. They didn’t speak for a while—not out of boredom, but reverence. Two people, grown and scarred, sitting with the stories that had shaped them and the one they were shaping now. A book of their own, written not in ink, bu...

He had always feared the end would be dark, full of silence and forgetting. But when it came, it was neither. It was a door, slightly ajar, with golden light spilling from the other side. No thunder, no final breath caught in the throat. Just the sense of being gently untethered—like a boat slipping from its moorings at dawn. He walked into a place that didn’t ask for names or reasons. The air carried the scent of lilacs and old paper. He heard music—not from instruments, but from the voices of those he had loved. A woman’s soft laugh. The jingle of a dog’s collar. The creak of the porch swing from a house that had long since faded from the map. All of it, still here. Still his. And in the world he left behind, a man woke early to tend the garden. A child reread a bedtime story she didn’t know he had once read aloud. A friend paused mid-sentence, not knowing why he smiled. That’s how the echo moves: quiet, but steady. It lingers in coffee cups, in birdsong, in the hands we hold and the...

The lights buzzed on just before dusk, humming like bees waking in an early spring garden. The outfield grass glowed a rich green, trimmed tight as if expecting royalty. It smelled like cut clover and clay and the start of something. The players stretched their arms along the foul lines, tossing balls back and forth like promises made to the coming season. Fathers and sons, grandmothers with popcorn, kids waving foam fingers. The crowd rose when the anthem played, hats over hearts, eyes glinting with the reflection of flags and memories. There was always someone who remembered a player long gone, a game that slipped away, or the way their father’s voice sounded when he said, “Watch this.” The first pitch cracked into the catcher’s mitt like a firework. Summer, not yet here, whispered that it was on its way. In the press box, an old man scribbled notes with hands that had written box scores before color television. He glanced up and saw the crowd lean forward. He smiled. It was always l...

The man in the moon told me he’s been watching a long time. Before cities rose, before machines flew, before men thought to name the stars. He spoke in a hush, like someone remembering stories that no longer belong to him. He’d seen lovers meet in fields, soldiers sleep in trenches, children reach for him through windowpanes. He did not judge. He only watched. He said he used to shine brighter when people looked up more often. Now they rarely do. Their heads are bent toward tiny screens, their nights washed in the glow of a different kind of moon. But he’s still there, old and silver and patient. He remembers how wolves used to howl and how women once sang lullabies under his glow. He misses the songs. Before I left, I asked him what he thought of us. He smiled—a quiet cratered curve. “You forget too quickly,” he said. “But you always remember again when the sky is clear.” And then he was quiet, letting the silence stretch between us like moonlight on water.

The red bird came in the early morning when the mist still clung to the garden. He sat on the iron hook where the feeder used to hang, watching with a stillness that made him part of the morning. The man stood by the kitchen window, coffee in hand, and watched too. He didn’t call it anything special. It was just a bird. But it had come again. Sometimes, in the half-light of spring, things shimmered in ways they didn’t the rest of the year. The wind moved slow through the snapdragons. A petal fell and spun once before touching soil. The bird hopped down to the garden bed, blinking its black eyes like it remembered something. The man felt it in his chest—the pull of a name, a face, the way someone had once laughed under that same tree. Long ago, and not so long. He never spoke when it came. Just stood still and let it be. There was no need to chase meaning. Some things were only ever meant to be felt. When the cardinal flew off, the man turned back to the sink, rinsed his cup, and smiled...

The clouds moved like great caravans across a cobalt sea, trailing veils of light and shadow across the tiled rooftops below. The sun played hide-and-seek behind them, casting the world in moments of brilliance and quiet hush. From the emerald crowns of the trees, everything seemed paused, listening, as if the sky had a story it was about to tell. He stood in the yard, face turned up, heart turning slowly in his chest like a clock winding backwards. The air smelled of cut grass and sun-warmed clay roof tiles, and the breeze whispered things he hadn’t heard since he was a boy—things like summer is almost here, and today is a good day to remember the names of clouds. He didn’t know the words, but he felt them, and that was enough. Somewhere deep in the soft thunder of the sky, he imagined voices—perhaps his own from long ago, or ones not yet spoken. They told him not to rush. That the best days often arrived like this: unscheduled, quiet, watched from the garden while the heavens passed ...

The fire was low now, burning down to a soft red core. He stirred it with a stick, spreading the coals, watching the last flames flicker and sigh. Around him, the forest had gone quiet, the kind of quiet that sinks deep, into bones and memory. He cleaned the skillet with a handful of pine needles and sand, then rinsed it with river water gone silver in the moonlight. Each motion was slow, deliberate. Like a ritual. Like closing a book you’ve read too many times to forget. The tent was small, canvas, and smelled of old smoke and dry grass. He laid out the bedroll, creased from years of folding. Pulled the wool blanket over it, tested the zipper on the flap. The stars were brighter now, sharp and cold. He poured the last of the whiskey into his cup, sipped it while the air wrapped around him like a second coat. Owls called somewhere out in the trees, distant and low, like voices in a dream. When he was ready, he banked the fire to keep it warm through the night. Then he slipped into the ...

The fire came alive with a whisper and a snap. He built it with care, like a man arranging memories. The pine needles smoked first, then flared. He laid the fish in the skillet and watched the skin curl, the butter bubble and hiss. The scent rose into the trees. He didn’t speak. The fire did all the talking. The coffee boiled. He poured it black into a battered mug. From his coat, the flask—always the same flask, old as a promise. A splash of whiskey, a stir with the back of his knife. He drank. The night folded in around him, velvet and full of stars. Somewhere beyond the firelight, the trees whispered stories older than roads, older than fire itself. He ate the fish while the wind moved gently through the pines. Each bite tasted like the river, like the quiet ache of things gone and never missed until they’re remembered. When the mug was empty and the fire low, he leaned back against the log. The sky stretched wide above him, stitched with starlight. And for a long while, he simply b...

In the attic where the dust danced like ghosts in the sunbeams, he found the box again. It was always there, tucked behind old coats and a cracked globe, and every few months he’d open it like a door to the past. The photographs inside didn’t speak, but whispered—soft, familiar things. Picnics in summer, his mother’s laughter floating out of the kitchen window, his brother’s muddy sneakers lined up like soldiers on the porch. The past never stayed quiet for long. It crept in like warm wind, wrapping around him with scents of cut grass and screen doors. He’d told his wife once that memories were like books you loved too much to keep on the shelf. She smiled the way you smile when someone says something true. Every time he opened the box, he wasn’t just remembering—he was returning. Returning to the old red bicycle with the loose chain, to fireflies bottled in glass jars, to the crackle of vinyl records spinning in the living room while the world outside got quieter. Each photograph had ...

He dropped the pack by the stump and stood for a moment, listening. The wind moved through the pines like a whisper you couldn’t quite hear. He squinted at the sky—gray with the promise of rain but not the kind that mattered. He’d made it in time. The light was still good. He unrolled the canvas and laid it flat. The earth was soft, not wet. That was luck. The fire pit was ringed with stones someone else had placed long ago. He built a fire the way his father had taught him. Bark peeled thin, twigs dry and cracked, the match struck once and caught. The flame was real and small and beautiful. It warmed the knuckles of his left hand as he watched it grow. He set the tin pot on the flat rock near the flame and poured in water from the canteen. He didn’t feel hungry yet, but he would. The sun dipped lower through the trees, and the air began to shift. He sat with his back against a tree, boots off, wool socks tight around his ankles. This was good. The silence, the fire, the weight of the ...

 The pack was old canvas, sun-faded and rubbed thin in places, but strong. He had patched the straps himself with fishing line. Inside, everything was folded tight and in order. There was a rolled canvas tent, oiled and heavy. A wool blanket. A small hatchet wrapped in a cloth. Tin pot, tin cup, metal spoon. Coffee. Hard bread wrapped in waxed paper. Dried meat, salt-packed. A match tin sealed with wax. Coil of rope. Small hunting knife. A whetstone in a sock. A flask half full. A notebook with a pencil tucked in the spine. He carried a map, but he didn’t need it. He carried a compass, though he hadn’t looked at it in days. What mattered was how the sun moved. What mattered was how the land told him where to go.

The train pulled out just after midnight, heading west through the dark fields. He had only the coat on his back and the envelope in his pocket, sealed with a name that didn’t belong to him anymore. The stars were clear above the prairie, hard and cold like bits of broken mirror. He thought about the letter she’d written, the one he hadn’t opened yet, and tried not to think about the weight of it. "Sleep well when you get there," she had said. He didn’t know if she meant the place or the end. The towns blinked past like thoughts he couldn’t hold onto—tiny clusters of light swallowed by night. Somewhere out there, children were playing with fireflies, old men were whittling stories into the porch rails, and the smell of cut grass clung to the skin of the earth. He remembered a summer once, a porch swing and lemonade, her hair like wild dandelions. That was a long time ago, or maybe just yesterday, the way memory bends. He looked at the mountains coming into view, tall like sle...

He left early in the morning, before the sun had climbed up over the ridge. The pack was heavy but he didn’t mind it. Weight meant he had what he needed—canvas, rope, tin, coffee. He walked the trail slow, steady, with the sound of his boots pressing into the dirt and nothing else. The trees were still. The cold hadn’t lifted yet. He didn’t think much while he walked. The body moved and the mind went quiet. It was good that way. He knew the trail and the turns. Knew where the stones would slip and where the old pine had fallen last spring. There was a clearing past the stream, just wide enough for one man’s tent and a fire. He figured he’d get there before noon if he kept the pace. When he stopped to drink, he sat on a rock and looked out over the valley. It was green and hushed, with the light coming down in soft slants. He chewed a strip of jerky, drank from his canteen, and didn’t look at the time. There was no need. The trail would carry him as far as he needed to go. The woods wer...

The garage, a sarcophagus of steel and dust, waits each evening with a breathless hush, the air just shy of warm motor oil and last summer’s grass clippings. It is built from crushed marble shaped into oversized blocks, pale and rough like the bones of some ancient creature, stacked with quiet permanence. When the car slides in like a sleek beast returning from the hunt, the concrete floor murmurs beneath its tires, a quiet recognition. The walls, wooden and weighty, hold not only the tools—rakes, trimmers, rust-blushed spades—but also the ghost of every chore not yet done. In the corner, the toolboxes rest like loyal hounds, heavy with secrets, each drawer a chapter in some greasy gospel of repairs and ambitions. They smell of iron, of sweat, of minor victories—a leaky faucet conquered, a wobbly chair set straight. I sometimes open one just to hear the sigh of the hinges, a lullaby for the mechanically inclined. Light filters through a window set deep in the marble, glancing off socke...

The sun came up clean and bright over the hills. He made coffee and fried eggs in a pan that still had the memory of old breakfasts. There had been dark mornings before—long ones, gray and quiet—but this one had light in it. He opened the window and the air smelled of grass and warm earth. There was a knock at the door. It was her. She smiled like she meant it. She brought bread and jam and two cups for coffee. He liked that she didn’t try too hard. She just showed up. They walked after breakfast. Down the path past the birch trees, where the wind moved through the leaves and the birds called like they knew something good was coming. She asked about his dog, not his past. He liked that, too. Her hand brushed his and she let it stay there. He hadn’t known how much he missed that. The simple warmth of another person. Not the old kind of fire, but something different. Something steady and new. It did not feel like a betrayal. That surprised him most. He still carried the love he lost, lik...

The storm had come in the night. It rattled the windows and swept across the roof like something searching. Rain fell hard and straight like nails. But by morning, the wind was gone and the sun broke through, clean and white. The ground was slick with puddles, and the trees dripped slow and steady. A bird called out, sharp and alive. He stepped outside and breathed the new air. It smelled of wet earth and pine. Everything felt closer and quieter, as if the storm had taken away the noise of the world. The dog ran ahead, chasing nothing, happy for no reason at all. He smiled and did not think much, only felt the warmth of the sun on his face and the soft squish of mud beneath his boots. There was coffee on the stove and eggs in the pan. He looked out the window as he ate. The road was still wet but the sky was clear. He would fix the fence later. For now, he sat and drank and listened. The house creaked, the trees whispered, and something inside him eased. It was good to be after the sto...

Valerie died at 3:30 A.M. Eastern Time, June 5th, 2022. The clock ticked gently, politely, as if trying not to wake the world. I was there. I saw. I felt. I heard her breathing through the deep, star-thick night—soft, slow breaths that faded like the end of a lullaby sung by the moon. She was beside me. And then she wasn’t. She left without fanfare, like a candle that knows the dark is waiting and doesn’t mind the return. She left me. Left everyone. Left everything. There was a hush then, not just in the room, but in my soul—a hush shaped like absence. And fear arrived on quiet shoes. Fear of mornings and noons and long purple twilights that would unfold without her. Fear of clocks that didn’t care she was gone. Of years, calendars, birthdays, old photos with her frozen in time, smiling as if she hadn’t left at all. She had said she was ready. Told others she’d found peace, as if it were some warm place in the sky or tucked between the stars. I tried to understand—how does one become r...

The rain came lightly in the morning. It touched the tops of the oaks and slipped down through the dogwoods without sound. On the sidewalks, the drops made small dark spots on the concrete, and the brick homes stood still, unbothered, with their broad porches and narrow windows. A man with a hat walked his dog down Cherokee Avenue, and the dog sniffed the grass wet with rain and looked up once, then went back to sniffing. There were azaleas blooming in front of the old houses, and the pansies were bent slightly under the weight of the water. The roses were not blooming yet. A child’s red bicycle leaned against a wrought iron fence. In the park, the swings moved slightly, not from the wind, but from the water collecting and sliding down the chains. A woman in a yellow coat jogged along the path, her shoes making a steady rhythm on the wet pavement. She did not look up. The rain would not last. It never did in the spring. It came like this—light, soft, passing through the trees like ...