September 17, 2011
Gary Lutz and Lindsay Hunter
From a review in praise of Gary Lutz’s Divorcer I found an excerpt from Lindsay Hunter’s short story collection Daddy’s:
Sibby had the Ziploc out, the one she filled with the spider’s eggs she’d find in the backyard. These are gifts from the Lord, she told me once. He sprinkled them around for me to find. Now she worked the Ziploc under her shoe, slowly mashing the eggs and baby spiders spilling out, like there was great pleasure in it. That what God told you to do with the eggs, I asked her. God told me plenty of times to smash your face under Daddy’s mallet, Sibby said, but sometimes I don’t exactly obey God. She finished her mashing, took off her one shoe and left it over the Ziploc. Let her sock get black with dirt. Why’d you do that, I asked her. Because, she said. She peeled off her sock, laid it out on the back step beside me. They were fixin to hatch, and without no mother it was dumb for me to let them be born. She disappeared into the house behind me.
(thanks, Derek)
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