White Fist & Two Dogs
This was the beginning. It will be again.
A couple-three presidents ago, I self-published "White Fist & Two Dogs".
It was awful—a good story compromised by too many words and not enough confidence in my reader.
This episodic restoration remains true to my original vision with as many novice blunders filtered out as I can realistically hope to recognize.
White Fist
Knocking On Helmouth’s Door
I am standing upon the edge of a sheer promontory overlooking Helmouth, waiting for the black sun to lift above the edge of the world. I am waiting for a sign. I have been waiting …
Into Helmouth
I have the sensation of falling. My descent is roughly the width of my outstretched hand, but I plop with a graceless, reflexive jolt into a resilient surface. It was a moving target, after all. …
The Oldest Enemy
Two large spheres are laying on a worktable as I pass beneath another glowb, this one dark. Three smaller orbs rest on a nearby surface. They brace a squat thing bristling with tubular appendages, each …
Tu’chah-j’toc
Perhaps for the last time, I breathe wholesome air and remove my Face. I am answered with a silence so profound I can hear my own heartbeat and the grating of the Blue’s rough hide …
Two Dogs
In The Middle of Nowhere
Cast your gaze down here, if you will, and see the lone rider whose trail leads him through this long, winding, wooded canyon. You can well believe this is no route he would’ve chosen for himself, but the crows showed him the way, you see, and they’ve never steered him wrong before. …
Reveries ———
There’s a place in your head where memories are packed away, like old photographs. Some of them are grown fuzzy with neglect, near lost in the haze that comes before forgetting. …
Reveries ——
One cool morning as summer is turning the corner to autumn before Jonas’s eleventh winter, Standing Elk has a dream. When he wakes from it, he calls Ghost Horse and Burns …
Reveries —
Say now, this card here’s face down. Ain’t that interesting and borderline mysterious? Reckon it to be the hole card, and don’tcha wonder what it is? Well, let’s go ahead and …
Nowhere Man
The blackness takes on shape and definition. It hops in front of his eyes, picking at something on the ground near a boot someone has left lying about. The boot has a leather cord wrapped around it at the graft, braided back upon itself as if it was intended to …