Firefly and Other Short Stories

But because it's there we can experience this kind of parallel existence. It's more an act that sustains that morality. But enough of this morality talk. That's not the point I'm getting at. What I'm trying to say is that the world is filled with these barns. You've got your barns, I've got mine. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. Even stared death in the face a couple of times. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to brag or anything. But why don't we change the subject? I'm usually not this talkative—the grass makes me run off at the mouth.

We sat there, silent and still for a while, waiting, it seemed, for the glow to wear off. I had no clue what I should say next. I felt as if I were looking through a train window watching a weird landscape flash in and out of view. My body was relaxed, yet I couldn't grasp the details of the scenes passing by.

But I could grasp, quite distinctly, the presence of my own body. And with it a trace of parallel existence: And here's another me, watching the first me thinking. Time ticked by in polyrhythmic precision. Don't mind if I do. I brought out tour cans from the kitchen, along with some Camembert cheese. We had two beers each and ate the cheese. I'm not going by some schedule, circling dates on the calendar and holding off till then. I burn a barn when I get the urge to. Frown lines formed between his eyes.

And he breathed in a rush of air through his nose. I've already found it". I didn't say anything, just sipped at what was left of my beer. It's a long time since I've seen one so well worth burning. Actually, I came over here today to check it out". So ended our discussion of barns. He woke up his girlfriend at five, and apologized again for having dropped in on me out of the blue. Even though he'd drunk a huge amount of beer, he was cold sober. He drove the car out from behind the house.

It had one small nick, near the headlight. I returned to the living room and plopped down on the sofa. The tabletop was covered with all kinds of garbage. I picked up my duffel coat from where it lay on the floor, covered myself with it, and fell sound asleep. When I woke up, the room was pitch-dark.

A bluish pall and the pungent smell of the marijuana lay over the room. The darkness was strangely uneven. Still sacked out on the sofa, I tried to conjure up more memories of the school play, but I couldn't get a clear picture in my head. Did the baby fox ever get the gloves? I got up from the sofa, opened the windows for some fresh air, made coffee in the kitchen, and drank it.

The next day, I went to the bookstore and bought a map of the part of town where I live. One of those black-and-white maps on a scale of one to twenty thousand, showing even the smallest lanes and alleys.

1. The Catalyst 33.
2. Catalog Record: Catch me a firefly and other stories | Hathi Trust Digital Library?
3. Catalog Record: Catch me a firefly and other stories | Hathi Trust Digital Library!
4. What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?.
5. ?
6. Trio Haute Nouveau?

Map in hand, I walked the neighborhood, marking with a pencil the location of every barn. Over three days, I explored an area two and a half miles in each direction. My home was on the outskirts of town, with quite a few farms still around, so there were lots of barns. The barn he planned to burn must be one of those. The way he'd said that it was right nearby made me sure it wasn't beyond the area I'd covered. Next, I made a careful check of each of the sixteen barns. First, 1 eliminated the ones too close to people's houses or to those plastic-covered greenhouses farmers use. Next, I crossed off the ones that had farm tools and pesticides inside—that is, ones that looked as though someone was using them every day.

I was sure he wouldn't want to burn one of those.

Follow the Author

That left five barns. Five barns that could be burned. The kind that could burn down in fifteen minutes, and would burn clear to the ground—and wouldn't be any loss. But I couldn't decide which of the five he'd pick. It was a question of personal preference.

Catch Me a Firefly and Other Stories

I was dying to find Out which one it would be. I spread out the map and erased all but five of the "X"s I'd made. Then I got out my T-square, French curve, and divider, and I mapped out the shortest route that would pass all five barns and take me back home. The route curved along the river and over some hills, so the project: The course ended up being four and one-third miles, no matter how many times I measured it.

At six the next morning I put on my jogging outfit and running shoes and ran the length of the course I'd mapped out.

Main Content

Since I usually do three and a half miles every morning, adding an extra mile didn't bother me too much. The scenery wasn't bad, and though there were two railroad crossings along the way, they didn't really slow me down. The course circled the athletic grounds of the college near my house, then ran along the river and nearly two miles up a deserted dirt road.

The first barn was halfway up the road. Then the course cut through a wood and up a slight slope. A little way off, there was a stable for a racetrack The horses might kick up a little ruckus if they saw a fire, but that's all; they wouldn't get hurt or anything. The third and fourth barns looked alike, like two ugly old twins. They were only two hundred or so yards apart.

Both of them were dilapidated and filthy. If you were going to burn down one of them, you might as well burn the pair. The last barn stood beside a railroad crossing, at about the three-and-a-half-mile mark It was clearly abandoned. It faced the road and had a tin Pepsi-Cola sign nailed to it. The building itself—I'm not sure you could even call it a building anymore—had mostly collapsed.

It fit his description—a building just waiting for someone to commit it to the flames. I stopped in front of the last barn, took a few deep breaths, then crossed the railroad tracks and headed home. The run took thirty-one minutes and thirty seconds. I took a shower and had breakfast. Then I lay on the sofa, listening to a record and, when that was finished, started work. I ran the same course every morning for a month.

But none of the barns burned down. Sometimes the thought hit me that maybe he was trying to get me to burn down a barn. As if he'd filled my head with the image of a barn burning and were steadily pumping it up more and more, like putting air in a bicycle tire. There were even times when I thought that, as long as I was waiting for him to do it, I might as well go ahead and strike a match and burn one down. It's just a beat-up old barn, right? But that's going too far.

After all, it's not me who burns barns, it's him. No matter how much the image of burning barns might swell up in my head, I'm just not the barn-burning type. Maybe he decided on some other barn somewhere. Or was too busy to find the time to burn one. I didn't hear from her at all.

December came, and with it the end of fill, and the morning air turned piercingly cold. No change in the barns, just white frost covering their roofs. In frozen woods, winter birds noisily flapped their wings. The world moved on as always. The next time I saw him was that December, a few days before Christmas.

Wherever you went, Christmas carols were playing. I was busy walking around town buying presents for all sorts of people. Over near Nogizaki, I spotted his car in the parking lot of a coffee shop. There was no mistaking that silver sports car, with its Shinagawa plates and the small scratch next to the left headlight.

The car didn't look as bright and shiny as it used to. The silver seemed faded, but that may have just been my imagination. I have a tendency to rework my memories to suit me. Without thinking, I went inside. The interior of the shop was dark, with a strong aroma of coffee. People's voices were muted, and baroque music played softly in the background. I spotted him right away. Seated by the window, he was drinking cafe au lait.

The shop was hot enough to fog up your glasses, but he hadn't removed his cashmere coat. I was a little flustered, but I just said hello. I didn't tell him I'd seen his car parked out front; I happened to come into the shop and happened to run into him. Please go ahead," he said. We chatted for a while. But 6ur conversation went nowhere. We didn't have much to say to each other, and his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

Even so, he didn't appear to mind my sharing his table. He told me about the harbor in Tunisia. And about the shrimp they catch there. It wasn't that he felt obliged to talk; he just wanted to tell me about the shrimp. But the story ran out halfway through, like a trickle of water being sucked up by sand. He raised his hand, called a waiter over, and ordered a second cup of cafe au lait. A trace of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. He took his handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped his mouth, and put the handkerchief back in his pocket.

Burned it right down. Just like I said I would. I told him about marking the locations of the barns on a map and running past them once a day. But you must have overlooked it. A thing's too dose and you miss it. He straightened his tie and glanced at his watch. Why don't we have a nice long talk about it next time? You'll have to excuse me, but someone's waiting for me. There was no reason to keep him any longer.

He stood up and put his cigarettes and lighter in his pocket. I can't get hold of her. She isn't in her apartment, I can't get through by phone, and she hasn't been going to her mime class for a long time. She's done that a number of times. He stood there, hands stuck in his pockets, and stared at the tabletop. She's not the kind who can make it on her own, you know. He snapped his fingers inside his pocket a couple of times. She doesn't have a cent," he continued. Her address book is crammed, but those are just names. There's not a single person she can depend on.

You're the only one she trusted. I'm not saying that to be polite. You were someone special to her. Even made me a bit jealous. And I'm not the kind of person who's ever jealous? He gave a slight sigh and looked at his watch again. Let's get together again sometime. But the right words wouldn't come out It was always that way.

Whenever I was with him the words just wouldn't flow. I tried calling her a couple of times after that; until the phone company shut off her phone. I was a little worried, so I went to her apartment. Her door was locked. A sheaf of junk mail was stuffed in her mailbox. I couldn't locate the building supervisor, so I couldn't even find out if she still lived there.

I tore a page from my appointment book, wrote a note saying, "Get in touch with me, my name, and dropped it in her mailbox. The next time I visited her apartment, there was someone else's nameplate on the door. Just like the last time, the super was nowhere to be found. So I gave up.

I still run past the five barns every morning. No barn in my neighborhood has burned down. And I haven't heard about any barn burning. December's come again, and the winter birds fly overhead. And I keep on getting older. When I closed my eyes, the scent of the wind wafted toward me. A May wind, swelling up like a piece of fruit, with a rough outer skin, slimy flesh, dozens of seeds.

The flesh split open in midair, spraying seeds like gentle buckshot into the bare skin of my arms, leaving behind a faint trace of pain. About eight inches shorter than me, he had to look up when he talked. I glanced at my watch. His slim, smooth fingers were surprisingly strong. My cousin had a confused look on his face. The white teeth between his open lips looked like bones that had regressed. My cousin can't hear well out of his right ear.

Soon after he went into elementary school he was hit by a baseball and his hearing was screwed up. Not that he can't function normally. He goes to a regular school, leads an entirely normal life. In his classroom, he always sits in the front row, on the right, so he can keep his left ear toward his teacher. And his grades aren't so bad.

The thing is, though, he goes through periods when he can hear sounds pretty well, and periods when he can't. It's cyclical, like the tides. And sometimes, maybe twice a year, he can barely hear anything out of either ear. It's like the silence in his right ear deepens to the point where it crushes any sound on the left side. When that happens, ordinary life goes out the window and he has to take some time off from school.

The doctors are basically stumped. They've never seen a case like it, so there's nothing they can do. I got it when I started junior high, but I lost it a year later. After that I've gone without a watch. They wouldn't buy me a new one. If I want to know the time I just ask somebody. We were silent again for a while. I knew I should say something more, try to be kind to him, try to make him relax a little until we arrived at the hospital.

But it had been five years since I saw him last. In the meanwhile he'd grown from nine to fourteen, and I'd gone from twenty to twenty-five. And that span of time had created a translucent barrier between us that was hard to traverse. Even when I had to say something, the right words just wouldn't come out.

And every time I hesitated, every time I swallowed back something I was about to say, my cousin looked up at me with a slightly confused look on his face. His left ear tilted ever so slightly toward me. It was ten thirty-two when the bus finally rolled into view. The bus that came was a new type, not like the one I used to take to high school.

The windshield in front of the driver was much bigger, the whole vehicle like some huge bomber minus the wings. And the bus was more crowded than I had imagined. Nobody was standing in the aisles, but we couldn't sit together. We weren't going very far, so we stood next to the rear door in back.

Why the bus should be so crowded at this time of day was a mystery. The bus route started from a private railway station, continued up into a residential area in the hills, then circled back to the station, and there weren't any tourist spots along the way. A few schools along the route made the buses crowded when kids were going to school, but at this time of day the bus should have been empty. My cousin and I held on to the straps and the poles. The bus was brand-new, straight from the factory, the metal surfaces so shiny you could see your face reflected in them.

The nap of the seats was all fluffy, and even the tiniest of screws had that proud, expectant feeling that only brand-new machinery possesses. The new bus, and the way it was more crowded than expected, threw me off. Maybe the bus route had changed since I last rode it. I looked carefully around the bus and glanced outside. But it was the same old view of a quiet residential district I remembered. Ever since we got aboard I must have had a perplexed look on my face.

Why don't you see them? Right beside me sat a group of old people. Must have been close to fifteen of them. They were the reason the bus was so crowded, I suddenly realized. They were all suntanned, even the backs of their necks dark. And every single one of them was skinny. Most of the men had on thick mountain-climbing types of shirts; the women, simple, unadorned blouses.

All of them had small rucksacks in their laps, the kind you'd use for short hikes into the mountains. It was amazing how much they looked alike. Like a drawer full of samples of something, all lined up neatly by category. The strange thing, though, was that there wasn't any mountain-climbing route along this bus line. So where in the world could they have been going? I thought about this as I stood there, clinging to the strap, but no plausible explanation came to mind. I wonder if it's going to hurt this time-the treatment," my cousin asked me.

I hadn't been to an ear doctor once in my life. Your mom said they're not going to do anything much different from usual. Sometimes the unexpected happens. I glanced at him, but I didn't detect any sarcasm. I wouldn't give up so easily. The pain I imagine is worse than the actual pain. Know what I mean? A lot of things had happened that spring. A situation developed at work and I ended up quitting my job at a little ad company in Tokyo where I'd been working for two years.

Around the same time I broke up with the girlfriend I'd been going out with since college. A month after that my grandmother died of intestinal cancer, and for the first time in five years I came back to this town, small suitcase in hand. My old room was just as I'd left it. The books I'd read were still on the shelf, my bed was there, my desk, and all the old records I used to listen to.

But everything in the room had dried up, had long ago lost its color and smell. Time alone had stood still. I'd planned to go back to Tokyo a couple of days after my grandmother's funeral to run down some leads for a new job. I was planning to move to a new apartment too, for a change of scenery. As the days passed, though, it seemed like too much trouble to get off my butt and get going. To put a finer point on it, even if I'd wanted to get up and moving, I couldn't. I spent my time holed up in my old room, listening to those old records, rereading old books, occasionally doing a little weeding in the garden.

I didn't meet anybody, and the only people I talked to were members of my family. One day my aunt dropped by and asked me to take my cousin to a new hospital. She should take him herself, she said, but something had come up that day so she couldn't. The hospital was near the high school I used to go to, so I knew where it was, and I had nothing else going on, so I couldn't very well refuse.

My aunt handed me an envelope with some cash in it for us to use as lunch money. This switch to a new hospital came about because the treatment he'd been getting at his old hospital hadn't done a thing to help. In fact he was having more problems than ever. When my aunt complained to the doctor in charge, he suggested that the problem had more to do with the boy's home environment than anything medical, and the two of them went at it.

Not that anybody really expected that changing hospitals would lead to a quick improvement in his hearing. Nobody said as much, but they'd pretty much given up hope that his hearing would get any better. My cousin lived nearby, but I was just over a decade older than him and we were never what you'd call close. When the relatives would get together I might take him someplace or play with him, but that was the extent of it.

Still, before long everyone started to look at my cousin and me as a pair, thinking that he was attached to me and that he was my favorite. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why. Now, though, seeing the way he tilted his head, his left ear aimed at me, I found it strangely touching. Like the sound of rain heard long ago, his awkwardness struck a chord in me. And I began to catch a glimpse of why our relatives wanted to bring us together.

The bus had passed by seven or eight bus stops when my cousin looked up at me again anxiously. It's a big hospital, so we won't miss it. Who were these people? And where could they possibly be headed? I looked at him in surprise. His father, my uncle, ran a large printing company in Kobe. I'd never given the idea a thought, and nobody ever dropped a hint. You wouldn't have to leave. And everybody'd be happy.

Nobody was waiting to get on at the bus stop either. My cousin nodded silently. There wasn't a single thing I had to do. But I couldn't very well stay here. The number of houses thinned out as the bus climbed the mountain slope. Thick branches began to throw a heavy shadow across the road. We passed by some foreign-looking houses, painted, with low walls in front. The cold breeze felt good. Each time the bus rounded a curve the sea down below popped into view, then disappeared.

Until the bus pulled up at the hospital my cousin and I just stood there, watching the scenery go by. I'd barely had a bite for breakfast and was starving, but nothing on the menu whetted my appetite. I made do with a cup of coffee. It was a weekday morning and one little family and I had the place to ourselves.

The father was mid-forties, wearing a navy-blue, striped pair of pajamas and plastic slippers. The mother and little twin girls had come to pay a visit. The twins had on identical white dresses and were bent over the table, serious looks on their faces, drinking glasses of orange juice.

The father's injury, or illness, didn't seem too serious, and both parents and kids looked bored. Outside the window was a lawn. A sprinkler ticked as it rotated, misting the grass with a silvery spray. A pair of shrill, long-tailed birds cut right above the sprinkler and disappeared from sight. Past the lawn there were a few deserted tennis courts, the nets gone. Beyond the tennis courts was a line of zelkovas, and between their branches you could see the ocean. The early summer sun glinted here and there off the small waves. The breeze rustled the new leaves of the zelkova, ever so slightly bending the spray from the sprinkler.

I felt like I'd seen this scene, many years before. A broad expanse of lawn, twin girls slurping up orange juice, long-tailed birds flying off who knows where, netless tennis courts, and the sea beyond But it was an illusion. It was vivid enough, an intense sense of reality, but an illusion nonetheless. I'd never been to this hospital before in my life. I stretched my legs out on the seat opposite, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes.

In the darkness I could see a lump of white. Silently it expanded, then contracted, like some microbe under a microscope. Changing form, spreading out, breaking up, reforming. It was eight years ago when I went to that other hospital. A small hospital next to the sea. All you could see out the window were some oleanders. It was an old hospital, and smelled of rain. My friend's girlfriend had her chest operated on there, and the two of us went to see how she was doing.

The summer of our junior year in high school. It wasn't much of an operation, really, just done to correct the position of one of her ribs that curved inward a bit. Not an emergency procedure, just the type of thing that would eventually have to be done, so she figured why not take care of it now. The operation itself was over quickly, but they wanted her to take her time recuperating, so she stayed in the hospital for ten days.

My friend and I rode there together on a cc Yamaha motorcycle. He drove on the way there, me on the way back. He'd asked me to come. My friend stopped at a candy store near the station and bought a box of chocolates. I held on to his belt with one hand, the other hand clutching tightly the box of chocolates. It was a hot day and our shirts kept getting soaked, then drying in the wind. As my friend drove he sang some nothing song in an awful voice.

I can still remember the smell of his sweat. Not too long after that he died. His girlfriend had on blue pajamas and a thin gown sort of thing down to her knees. The three of us sat at a table in the cafeteria, smoked Short Hope cigarettes, drank Cokes, and ate ice cream. It is not Noel Coward at the height of his powers, however, and it will probably not make fans of those who have heard of Noel Coward but do not know any of his work.

Sadly, too, the witty and clever lyrics for which Noel Coward is so famous, and which depend so heavily on word play and the rhythm of precise and elegant speech, may be a completely unfamiliar "language" to younger readers who pick up this book hoping to learn about Coward's work. The novel does not focus on Coward's many theatrical achievements and may be occasionally awkward in its use of dreams and memories to convey his past, but it admirably achieves the author's larger goal of drawing the world's attention, once again, to a genius whose work still inspires awe among devoted theatre-goers.

See all 9 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Learn more about Amazon Prime.

• Product details?
• Editorial Reviews.
• Entre tes mains, Louise. (French Edition).
• 51 Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes – Fabulous Easy Vegetarian Slow cooker Recipes (Vegetarian Cookbook and Vegetarian Recipes Collection 10).
• TOEIC Listening Practice Four.

Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Explore the Home Gift Guide. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs.

www.newyorkethnicfood.com: Firefly (): Janette Jenkins: Books

Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon. Alexa Actionable Analytics for the Web. AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Amazon Rapids Fun stories for kids on the go. Amazon Restaurants Food delivery from local restaurants. ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics.

East Dane Designer Men's Fashion. Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands. Helena Hernandez rated it it was amazing Jul 29, Reana Bacosa rated it really liked it Nov 04, Nin rated it it was amazing Aug 31, Sarah Legaspi rated it it was amazing Nov 01, Barbra Juliane rated it really liked it Sep 02, Giselle Reyes rated it really liked it Jun 26, Adrianne Agustin rated it liked it May 18, Me-An rated it really liked it Oct 11, Elylou rated it it was amazing Apr 02, Nikki Natola rated it liked it May 30, Aris John rated it liked it Mar 17, Mia rated it really liked it May 03, Aluap rated it liked it Oct 06, Joshua rated it really liked it Dec 06,