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    Gnarled Bones and Other Stories
    Gnarled Bones and Other Stories
    Gnarled Bones and Other Stories
    Ebook59 pages49 minutes

    Gnarled Bones and Other Stories

    By Tam May

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    About this ebook

    NOMINATED FOR A 2017 SUMMER INDIE BOOK AWARD.

    Gnarled Bones and Other Stories explores five tales of loss, fear, and guilt where strange and spooky events impact people’s lives in ways that are profound and unchangeable.

    In “Mother of Mischief”, a newly divorced woman goes back to school to begin a new chapter in her life only to find herself circling back to where she started. In “Bracelets”, childhood nostalgia mingles with brutal fear during a circus outing for a mailroom secretary and her friends. In “A First Saturday Outing”*, a lonely woman ventures out of her isolated apartment one quiet Saturday afternoon to an art exhibit that leaves an eerie impression on her psyche*. In “Broken Bows”, a middle-aged violinist reveals the mystery behind his declining artistic powers to a lonely woman on a train. And the title story, “Gnarled Bones”, paints a portrait of the complex bond between an orphaned sister and brother through journal entries and first-person narrative. For these characters, the past leaves its shadow on the present and future.

    * This story was featured on Whimsy Gardener’s Storytime With Whimsey and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW9mgw4qhuA.
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreambook Press
    Release dateJan 19, 2017
    ISBN9780998197913
    Gnarled Bones and Other Stories
    Author

    Tam May

    Writing has been Tam May’s voice since the age of fourteen. She writes stories set in the past that feature sassy and sensitive women characters. Her fiction gives readers a sense of justice for women, both the living and the dead. Tam's stories are set mostly around the Bay Area because she adores sourdough bread, Ghirardelli chocolate, and San Francisco history. Tam is the author of the Adele Gossling Mysteries which take place in the early 20th century and features suffragist and epistolary expert Adele Gossling whose talent for solving crimes doesn’t sit well with the town’s more conventional ideas about women’s place. Tam has also written historical fiction about women breaking loose from the social and psychological expectations of their era. She has a 4-book historical coming-of-age series set in the 1890s titled the Waxwood Series and a post-World War II short story collection available. Although Tam left her heart in San Francisco, she lives in the Midwest because it’s cheaper. When she’s not writing, she’s devouring everything classic (books, films, art, music) and concocting yummy vegan dishes. For more information about Tam May and her books, check out her website at www.tammayauthor.com.

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      Book preview

      Gnarled Bones and Other Stories - Tam May

      Mother of Mischief

      Her younger brothers used to call her Mother of Mischief. In the smoky town of Rawlins where their father had owned a jewelry repair shop and their mother cooked franks and beans over an iron stove, Marie was left to tend to her brothers after school. They were five and ten years younger than she and she watched over them with a maternal eye, her ankle thrust forward and her hands close to her hips. More times than not, they escaped into the rascality of spirited little boys. They ran across the grain-colored carpet in winter boots caked with mud, shot spitballs at unsteady dishes sitting on the rack, and rolled marbles at the feet of people passing on the street from the safe shield of the fur tree. As they grew older they learned to watch for the beginnings of the pose like the hand reaching towards the hip and the stone ankle. As men, they appreciated Marie's worrisome eye, comparing it to the glassy looks their ex-wives gave them. They still felt that she was pacing the ground as she had when they were boys, watching at the window for their pale blue bicycles to emerge from over the hill. They were grateful that in the midst of their father's failing eyesight, their mother's crooked back, and the silent dinners with their exhausted parents, there had been one person who tried to curtail their mischief with a loving conscience.

      At nineteen, Marie married a man who, like her father, was in the jewelry business. They lived modestly in a small apartment house on Rawlins' main street. Walter's shop was a short distance away and in the late afternoon, when the sun sent sparks flying off the jewelry in the front window, Marie peered out, her anxious hand against her hip and her bent knee pressed on the parapet.

      At first he thought her concern was sweet and his lethargic mind was content. Then her alert eye began to disturb him. Its perpetual gaze down into the shop window agonized him and he fought with her, demanding to know just what she thought he was doing in the shop in the late afternoon shadow that she should be scrutinizing him. Marie had no answer. All she could say was, I'm Mother of Mischief and that's what I do.

      One afternoon, after she had just placed a hot pie to cool, she looked out the window, wiping her hands on a towel. She saw her husband on his stool, kneeling over a teenage girl who was finishing her final year at Rawlins High School. A few months later, during a dinner of pot roast and poached pears, he announced he had been having an affair with the girl for months and now that she turned eighteen he intended to divorce Marie so he could marry her.

      Marie took the advice of her brothers. She left Rawlins and moved to the West Coast, settling in the largest and most oblivious city she could find. Los Angeles stood sprawled glossy streets that spilled into the ocean. The monstrosity of the city took strange hold of her. As she stood above it her first night, the soft wind cutting through the scent of citrus blossoms and the lights a maze of glitter and hope, she let go of her anxious eye, her stiff hip and her protruding ankle. She saw clearly. Men had liquid eyes and liquid morals, trapped in their lies and fallacies. She became angry for the first time in her life. She was not angry at the men like her mother when back pain led her into spiraling bitterness before she died, but angry at herself for willingly becoming the woman responsible for those who transformed life into mischief instead of going out and transforming life herself.

      She vowed she would never be Mother of Mischief again.

      *

      She entered the university in the Women's Studies program. Because of the prudent alimony she received from Walter, she had no choice but to apply to the student organization for a shared apartment.

      They sent her

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