The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories by Manuel Gonzales Read Free Book Online Page B

craft. While these men’s movements paled in comparison to those of the original Klouns, and could not compete even with the inestimable power and abilities of Corbin himself, they continued to practice his craft nonetheless, and passed on his knowledge to others, and their descendants continue to perform even today, having, over time, outnumbered and then replaced the race of Klouns, which disappeared some few years after Corbin’s death and whose storied past has long since been forgotten.

The Sounds of Early Morning
     
    S he sat up in bed but couldn’t find her husband, then found him lying (“Poor exhausted bunny”) on the floor at the foot of the bed, the surgical mask still wrapped around his head, twisting around to cup not his mouth but his ear. If she squinted at him, he looked scrubbed and fresh and like a boy playing doctor, but she had to squint.
    How funny,
she thought.
How absolutely wonderful.
    Moving through the house to the kitchen, she noticed the cracks in the wall were bigger today than they had been the day before. They would have to move soon, or else repaint.
    In the living room, the dog was barking, and though she couldn’t hear him, the force of his barks made her chest feel rubbery and beat upon, and so she moved quickly through the room, crouching behind the couch so that its cushions, already torn beyond repair, would absorb the brunt of the animal’s timbral and violent voice.
    There were still dangers, she decided. And if her husband continued to refuse to send the dog away, something else might have to be done. For their own protection.
    Once she had made it through the living room and into the kitchen, forgetting for the moment that her ears were protected, she moved gingerly among the items on the counter and the appliances in the cabinets, lifting pots and pans by two fingers instead of four, cracking the breakfast eggs the old way, wrapped in nonreactive plastic towels, rolling them under a heavy, padded, cast-iron pin so that the shells were crushed fine, would not be as noticeable when eaten. She had become so adept at her routine, so careful, so quiet, that it wasn’t until she dropped a dish that she remembered being protected, remembered her husband’s tiny knife, the sharp pains, and now the blessed, blessed silence.
    She smiled.

     
    The first task, she decided, was to take care of the dog. She was reluctant, but she couldn’t rightly avoid the dog forever.
    She wrapped herself in her afghan. She tightened her hood. She wore her mittens. The dog had chewed the goggles into a useless mess, so she approached him with her eyes closed, rapidly blinking at intervals to check her progress, his movements. Grabbing him, she covered his snout and threw him outside, and then beat him back with her voice until, with what she imagined was a whimper, he scuttled off. Better, she would explain to her husband, than cutting its vocal cords. No need to be cruel, she would explain. Can’t leave the poor thing defenseless.
    Then she made the bed.
    She did so stepping carefully over and around her husband.
    She hoped her screams hadn’t caused him serious harm. His skull had always been soft, delicate. Normally he wore hats, hats she had knit for him out of a fibrous copper material he’d brought home for her after the last time he had gone scavenging. He should have worn one of his hats before he performed the operation. She should have reminded him, but in her excitement, she’d forgotten all about it. All about him.
    She finished the bed and then looked at her husband, still on the floor, still breathing, but only barely, and she worried.
    In an hour,
she thought.
If he is not awake in an hour, I will wake him.
    She fixed herself a cup of coffee, and moved to the back porch. So much time had passed since either of them had dared step outside that the vines had brambled—perhaps a defense mechanism—across the patio furniture, so that it took her not a few snips with her shears to cut