Travis Klunick

Tigie's Horses. Feb 2009 Marfa, Texas © Allison V. Smith

I decided the Travis Klunick short story from the last post deserved its own post. The story is titled "Yegus Y Caballos". It's a sad story, but then many of the saddest stories also impart the most truth. I think it's worth your time. Klunick is a West Texan currently residing in Alpine, Texas, not far from where I was in Big Bend a few weeks ago. I've added my favorite paragraph from the story below. Go here to read it.

- Joel

He went outside and drank half a bottle of cheap whiskey, letting the brown liquid burn his throat and flutter his eyelids. The charred oak taste of it and the alcohol fumes floating into his lungs when he breathed. He stood out there on the plains looking up at the stars. God, the great welder. His torch spattering the sky with the blazing bodies of the heavens illumined. He wondered at the strangeness that man should be the metal that the Lord chose to be his craft. How the divine torch must never stop working and repairing what the world does to people. How the heat of His gun is set to the limit of what men might bear and must be so and that that limit is a thing far beyond where most men believe it could be. He thought maybe the Lord needed to learn to work faster, though, that too many spirits became unbonded to the bodies they were meant to inhabit. End up with too much cold metal and not enough fire. A train’s whistle blew far distant and the darkness parted for the sound of it and then closed again as it passed. He went inside and stripped off his pants and his shirt and he got into his bed. Sarah Beth’s ring was on her bedside table with her pearl earrings and there was a note that said to give the ring to Isabelle and the earrings to Abby. He slept though he didn’t think he could.