High waters rock the boat Platt and Bebe Faye sail in. A day and a night and a day before the rains stop and it takes another day for Bebe Faye’s pens and paper to dry. She tells Platt she has a plan of her own but the plan requires no real action, it is a real-pretend plan: a book of apples.
She begins and he breaks worms with his fingers while she writes. The sharks he feared dive below like Bebe Faye insisted they would. Absence flees for another ferocity.
~ ~ ~
Bebe Faye sees from inside the underdeck of Beatrice Looking Forward a school of fish. One globe fish she points to and Platt looks where it swims at the end of her finger. She wears a pink, chipped polish that reaches back to the bottom of the nail. Platt wraps his hand around this paint-chipped nail.
Together they watch the puffer’s blade-sharp teeth chomp a mollusk.
Heather Palmer has written the online-serialized novella Charlie's Train (the2ndhand), the chapbook Mere Tragedies (Girls With Insurance) and the novella Complements: of Us (Spork Press), and a host of magazine publications. Her work explores absurdity-inspired adventures and biographical curiosities. She has blogged for FEARLESS chocolate and teaches grammar at Harold Washington College of Chicago. Read Fine Salt on Goodreads.