An earnest conversation with a child about San Francisco, ships and seals takes an unexpected turn in the latest instalment of flash fiction curated by Tin House
By Devyn Defoe for Flash Fridays by Tin House, part of the Guardian Books Network
“There didn’t use to be hills,” she says. “That’s what they said at school. It used to all be just water from where the bay is now. That used to go on for more, where the ground is, and you couldn’t walk anywhere because there was nothing to stand on. People didn’t walk here or drive, because there weren’t any cars back then either. Ships would sometimes come though because it was all water, and that’s what started San Francisco, the ships. They’d come sometimes because there were lots of fish, because there was lots of water, and so they’d come for the fish because it was fresh, straight from the water. And they’d clump around where all the best fish were, the ships. Lots and lots of fish out in the water, that’s why there’s so many seals because that’s what seals eat. The seals were around so that’s how the ships knew where the fish were. They’d go to where the seals were or close to where the seals were, where there were still fish that hadn’t been eaten yet. And the ships liked it there near the seals because the weather was better than it was in Alaska. Oh yeah, that’s where the ships came from in the first place, I forgot to mention that. They came from Alaska, and it’s cold there. So they started liking where the fish were because it was hotter, and it was green, and they decided to stay and build ground so they could walk. Ships are so rocky, it’s hard to walk because they’re always moving so much. So the people from the ships put paving on everything so it would be ground, but they didn’t move the ships first, and so they just paved over all of them. That’s why there’s so many hills. They’re the ships stuck under the pavement.”
“Why aren’t we buying groceries,” she asks, and I tell her that the lesson of today is delayed gratification
Continue reading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment