- Title: Short Stories and Articles
- Author: Robert Decker
- Publisher: Power Plot Publishing
- Form: Hardcover
- Illustrated: ---
- Number of Pages: 249
- ISBN: 978-0-9798808-3-4
- Price: : $14.95 + $0.00 (Shipping) = $14.95
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EXCERPTS
“I have been recuperating from an illness,” he volunteered,” and I like to sit here and breathe the aroma of my roses. Will you put the apple in my hand and sit with me a while?”
As he reached, palm up, and gazed past her, Sal realized that he was blind. He would have to be blind, she thought, to have asked her to remain, ugly creature that she was.
Conversation at first was awkward. Gerald Fontaine introduced himself; and after pausing for her to do likewise and receiving no response, he sensed that she was not at ease. He began to speak freely about himself. He confessed that he had not talked so much in months and revealed that the death of his father a year ago had been quickly followed by that of his mother. As a blind man alone in the world, no one ever visited him.
“Have you ever known what it is like to be lonely?” he asked.
“I have been alone for thirty-five years,” she replied.
***
We sat in the car and watched four boys–barely teenagers–racing up the grassy slope of Tomkins Hill. Each time they returned to level ground, they spun back to the summit for another thrilling descent, and I was sure that only an empty gas tank could interrupt their marathon. When they saw me bounce my new mini out of the camper, the quartet perched at the bottom of the hill and leaned forward like a jury about to view the evidence of some crime. I gave them the same nervous nod as to Honda Giant and received the same blank response. The Vehicle Department was mild compared to this, I thought. Now I was performing for my doting but doubting wife and a group of gawking boys, whose private world I had just invaded.
***
When a little servant girl died, the cacique convinced his wife to bury her as the princess, Malinche, whom they sold during the night to a wandering band of merchants. They, in turn, sold her as a slave girl in Tabasco, where she remained among the Maya Indians until 1519, ultimately presented as a gift to Hemán Cortés, when he first landed in Mexico.
***
When Emiliano was a small child on a farm where his people lived for generations, rich landowners came, protected by the army, and drove his people from their fields. Angrily, the peasant boy shouted that he wanted to fight the soldiers.
"Don't be foolish," his father warned. "A child cannot fight an army."
Emiliano faced his father and replied, "But one day I shall be a man, and then I shall fight."
To the people of Morelos it seemed that the boy had been born solely for the purpose of restoring their land. He kept the vow he had made as a child, and the spirit of that vow still lives in the hearts of thousands of Mexicans who embrace Emiliano Zapata as their personal hero.
***
This book also contains the novella, Christianson Manor.
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