Horse and Rider Thrown into the Sea

Excerpt

1.
Near the junction a path crawls back into the bush. Mango, banana, padu, cocoa, cashew and lime trees there. A sweet dark tunnel of fruit bush, the air zooming with flies, mangos scattered out like soft yellow toads. Big birds and mongoose in the canopy. Side bubbles open after a while, pocket clearings in the trees with houses in them. That first one is Miz K’s house. That next one is Elroy’s house. That last one is my house. Then the path ends. The rest is deep bush.

2.
Miz K kept alone there in her great age, baking her goods in the jungle, until she got that golden child, Lester. Who knows where she got him. One afternoon I see her towing this boy up my steps. The most beautiful toffee-skinned child I ever looked at. Big greedy wet lips, mossy black head, two chicken-wing arms. He could of fallen apart, you look at him hard enough. Nonetheless he was smiling some gauzy far-off smile. Most beautiful creature you could imagine. I knew right away it would give him trouble.

James Zwerneman

James Zwerneman was a Roberto Arellano Award winner in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, and a recipient of the Henfield Prize at the M.F.A. program in fiction at the University of California, Irvine. He has lived in Israel, Spain, and the Caribbean, where he spent six years on the island of Grenada. He is currently living in Los Angeles, working on a novel and a collection of stories. This is his first published work of fiction.