“Another?” I belched, tossed my empty Marble Whiteout can toward the pile where the honeysuckle once threatened to cover the shed. Hundreds of Abuelo Goyo’s eyes glared from the aluminum pile. I pulled two beers from the melting ice in the cooler. Tossed Georgia one, grinned when the warm beer foamed up and soaked her tailored, pressed pants.
“Want to borrow some shorts?,” I offered.
“You shouldn’t have pulled that honeysuckle to make room for the empties,” she countered.
“Canyon winds last June pulled it. Sailed it north. Took my nephew hiking up to Bisti Badlands? Saw it wrapped around one of those alien hoodoos up there”.
Georgia chugged. “That might be the biggest damn lie you ever told me.”
“Bullshit. Wind made New Mexico. Wind, water and gods carved the Bisti. We’ll hike it next week. Full moon. It’s a cathedral, Georgia. You’d swear it was empty but it’s full of time and aliens, spirits of all the creatures that left their skeletons when the sea dried.”
“Give me another beer. Maybe I can drink enough to see what you’re seeing.”
“For somebody who painted souls back into cow skulls, you can be a real asshole.” I handed her a beer.
Her empty rattled onto the pile. “You know,” she said, “that ice would last a lot longer if you’d shut the cooler lid.”
“Fuck off,” I said. The abuelo’s eyes on the Whiteout cans blinked, once, twice. I didn’t tell Georgia. She’d have to look out for herself.
EDITOR’S NOTE
This is a new, semi-regular series for our site, “Lit Bits” to publish work from Plumesters derived from our writing prompts.
Email me at jennifer@plumeforwriters.org if you want to share something– even if it’s just one awesome sentence–I can add it to a post collecting bits of literature from around the Plumeverse.
WRITING PROMPTS USED:
The biggest lie he ever told, write about an empty cathedral, write about the wind, honeysuckle, and Sandra added: Bisti Badlands