6/27/10

At The Vineyard
W.J. Nunnery


As they stomped the grapes, feet warm in would-to-be-wine, their laughter refused to stop.

Hers is a trainset, he thinks, snapped together the day after Christmas.

On their legs, the liquid is stained purple and it extends to just below her knees and right above his and the sun is a canary faded from the afternoon’s one colored sky.

Slowly, she steps closer to him.

“Look,” she says.

He follows her finger.

“Make a wish.”

He remembers Mr. Conti, her grandfather, a rich old man, frail looking with age and hunched over in stature and his boss—although he really didn’t consider him such—saying when they were back at the house, “one bucket will be enough.”

Mr. Conti was friends with his grandfather because when his grandfather was a boy he had worked for Mr. Conti’s father; they were the same age and during his grandfathers breaks they would sit together laughing at same things.

But grandpa don’t even smile anymore and grandpa don’t sing along about feeling good and birds flying high and new dawns when the lady with the loud soul-voice do, and like Mr. Conti do, like he don’t got a care. I would sing too if I knew the words.

Through the side of his left eye he takes a quick glance at the splintering wooden bucket. It’s less than a drop from overflowing; feels lifetimes ago since they first brought it down. Then, he takes what he hopes will seem like an inadvertent step forward, like a clumsy slip, maybe, or something.

“Hurry.”

He feels her breath glance against the inside of his ear; it expands in the darkening wind all over the side of his neck, sweeping. It sort of tingles through his entire body. Like goosebumps.

“Make a wish,” she says. “Before the next one comes.”


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I'm a student at Concordia in St. Paul Minnesota. However, where my passion resides is in my hometown Madison Wisconsin. Recently, my work has appeared in Xenith Online, Powder Burn Flash and North College Central Review.