Her attitude reversed at once. \u201cOh, a resident! Come in. I\u2019m Louisa Oberholter, the colony director.\u201d She stumped into what she called the anteroom, which led into \u201cthe parlor,\u201d an area sectioned off by a folding screen that angled to the left. By the far wall was a jagged hole in the floor where someone had put a foot through the rotten board, which she carefully stepped around. \u201cYou\u2019re a bit early. We\u2019re ready at four o\u2019clock.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry, but I didn\u2019t know how to contact you. Where should I leave my stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust bring it into the bedroom.\u201d She gestured toward another screened-off quarter.<\/p>\n
The bedroom was a rickety cot next to a cardboard box marked \u201cLinens.\u201d A threadbare blanket stretched to the edges of the cot, a duet of damp socks dangling over the rail. A tan knapsack leaned against the far wall, stained underwear spilling out of the front pocket.<\/p>\n
I cleared my throat. \u201cAbout the colony….\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHoward was my husband, a postal worker. He never had the chance to write, just oversaw everyone else\u2019s letters. He passed away behind the counter. I opened this artist colony in his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019d seen the ad in The Writer<\/em> and applied. One of the attractions was the absence of any application fee. Just then I heard the noise of machinery starting up in back, like a giant clearing his throat. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n She gestured toward a tiny window looking out back, where a medium sized crane had started to chug, a wrecking ball hanging motionless like a ponderous exclamation point. \u201cThe Upper Yarn town council says the building\u2019s unsafe, and they want to tear it down, but all they\u2019ve done so far is put that machine there.\u201d<\/p>\n I gestured toward the cot. \u201cIs that where I\u2019m supposed to sleep?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe colony supports two artists per month. The accommodations include room and board. You\u2019ll have to share with Sam Lowell. He\u2019s a poet, and he\u2019s using the studio. His shift ends at four.\u201d She checked her watch. \u201cRight now. Sam!\u201d<\/p>\n From behind the last screen emerged a huge man in faded jeans and an Emily Dickinson T-shirt. Mrs. Oberholter performed an introduction, and we shook hands. He was ink-stained and damp, though I saw no pen and paper anywhere. Behind him extended the studio, a four-foot alcove with a table lit by a humming fluorescent bulb. A rusted beach chair kept the table company. In front of me, Sam began to bed down for a nap. The cot squealed but held\u2014for now.<\/p>\n \u201cSam has the towel. The shower and toilet are out back. Howard mistrusted indoor plumbing.\u201d<\/p>\n Recumbent, Sam farted softly in a series of pffts.<\/em> I nodded at Mrs. Oberholter while fanning the air.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m no cook, but that cupboard has sardine tins. Saltines, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Since she seemed to want me to look over everything, I opened the cabinet and took out a tin with a faded label. The expiration date was ten years ago. I didn\u2019t see any Saltines but took her word for that.<\/p>\n Next came the studio itself. When I entered it, the orange colony cat emerged from the shadow under the table and drew blood when I tried to pet him.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Howie. He can be nasty if you approach him wrong. I think of him as the ghost of Howard. Your shift ends in twelve hours, unless you work out another arrangement with Sam.\u201d She withdrew as Sam started to snore with a hint of a whistle.<\/p>\n I took a closer look at my workspace. The one concession to decoration, an embroidered sampler hanging in the alcove, read \u201cTYME TO WRYTE.\u201d I placed a hand on the plain deal table, which teetered to the left. When I tried to stabilize it, a splinter ran into my thumb. Cursing softly, so as not to wake Sam, I sat down in the low-slung beach chair, which aligned my head with the tabletop. The floorboards creaked ominously.<\/p>\n I thought about art. My novel wasn\u2019t getting any younger. I looked at the cat, who glared back at me but sheathed his claws. Sam\u2019s snoring wasn\u2019t all that loud. The crane seemed to be edging away from the house.<\/p>\n Just then, the wrecking ball began to swing, slowly at first.<\/p>\n I hauled out my laptop, set it up on the table, and began to type as fast as I could. To get to the Howard Oberholter Artist Colony, I took a train to Plunketteville, then a bus to Upper Yarn. I hiked the last mile up a dirt road, humping a knapsack that contained a change of clothing, a battered laptop, and a sheaf of notes beyond dog-eared. I didn\u2019t have money to spare for [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12892,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[434,149],"class_list":["post-12847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prose","tag-art-by-rudolph-rabatin","tag-wikicommons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12847"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12915,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12847\/revisions\/12915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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David Galef has published extremely short fiction in the collections Laugh Track<\/em> and My Date with Neanderthal Woman<\/em> (Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize), extremely long fiction in the novels Flesh, Turning Japanese<\/em>, and How to Cope with Suburban Stress<\/em> (Kirkus Best Books of 2006), and a lot in between. His latest is Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook<\/em>, from Columbia University Press. Day job: professor of English and creative writing program director at Montclair State University. He\u2019s also the editor in chief at Vestal Review.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"