Gary Porter
The Wilds
by Gary Porter
"I stuck my hat out. I caught the raindrops. I drank the water. I felt my veins pop. I'm nearly sanctified. I'm nearly broken. I'm down the river to where I'm going."
~ NEEDTOBREATHE
Published in Sliver of Stone magazine
https://sliverofstonemagazine.com/the-wilds-by-gary-porter/
Here's an excerpt just for you...
Only his heartbeat kept him awake. Ellis breathed in slow and listened to the crackle of freezing rain against the snow-tipped branches. When he blinked, he heard the sound of his frozen lashes clink together. He adjusted the butt of his model 70 Winchester against his shoulder and felt the ache in his bones. None of it was new. He’d learned lessons up in this tree blind, out here in the wilds – lessons he should be teaching his sons, but it broke his heart to think of them.
He settled back into a prayer-like stillness and squinted through his scope at the blinding snow. He focused on his heartbeat. His knuckles cracked. The sound of a woodpecker echoed off the hills. Ellis shifted his rifle until he found the bird among pines in the twisted branches, tapping. The woodpecker, who Ellis named Flick, shook the bristles of his Mohawk and stretched his tiny feet. Ellis settled the crosshairs over Flick’s blinking blue eye. He breathed out slow and curled his fingers around the curved walnut grip. A branch shook. An icicle dripped, and Ellis followed the drop with his scope until he saw the dimple it made in the snow.
Then, he heard the scratching. His heart clanged like a hammer. And suddenly there was a kind of music to it all – the tap of the woodpecker, the thump of his heart, the crackle in the trees, and the scratch of antlers. Like a Grandfather clock in a creaking, old house. His scope tumbled through the branches and into a blanket of snow. He knew the path the alpha buck liked to take, just like he knew every branch of Sundrasik’s woods, but he’d never laid eyes on the buck. He trained his scope on the hoofprints in the snow and the notches he’d made at the base of a tree with his knife to mark its trail. He followed the hoofprints until he found the beautiful, whitetail buck, his horns tangled in the limbs of a young hemlock, his thick winter fur darkening, his muscles clutching like a sprinter’s. Just 50 yards through the brush. He was beautiful.
Ellis licked a bead of sweat from his lips and slowed his heart. He was a machine. No fear. No guilt. No sadness. He held his breath, so the fog of his exhale wouldn’t give him away. The buck tapped his hoof in the snow and snorted, a cloud of breath twisting among the branches. Ellis swallowed a knot of tension. He settled his cheek against the stock of his Winchester and heard the murmur of a misfit sound echo in the hills, but the buck made no start. A diamond of sweat slipped through his eyelash. He blinked it away. The crackle of trees. The scratch of antlers.
He heard it again, louder this time – the roar of a dirt bike ricocheting through the trees. He blinked. A Kawasaki KX. He knew it like the sound of his own name. The heat of it between his thighs. The wild rumble in his chest. A cloud of dust swirled in the lights. The wind rushed and roared. The strident howl of the engine like a wolf at the full moon, which rose and fell with every knoll. His boot in the gravel around the curve, rocks pinging at the undercarriage...
The Viking Prince
by Gary Porter
Published in Writer's Bone magazine
http://www.writersbone.com/fiction-blog/2016/7/28/the-viking-prince
Here's an excerpt of my story just for you...
As if in prayer, Theo Kahru knelt, sanding his handmade kayak in the light of a single bulb. Flakes of wood whirled like a snowstorm in his father’s woodshed and settled in the thicket of his blond hair. He felt the grit of the dirt floor through the hole in his jeans, and the wind cried against the tin roof as he caressed the gentle curves of cedar like a lover’s skin. Outside, his mother’s wind chimes screeched like the burning pain of a Viking raid on a quiet village.
He lost himself in drifting thoughts, like his toes in the river, feeling the sun and the breeze and letting it all soak through his skin down into his blood. He shivered and coughed. It had to be perfect. He kept sanding and sanding, gritting his teeth to the rhythm of it. A stray tear peeked through his lashes and skied over the ridge of his cheek before he even noticed. Then, he felt it, clinging by its claws to the ledge of his chin, and he slapped it away.
One year earlier, Theo had cleared all of his father’s old stuff out of the shed and lit a bonfire by the river in their backyard. Flames flicked like knives, flinging sparks across the sky, and his father never even noticed. He hadn’t left the basement in almost a decade—couldn’t even make it up the steps anymore he was so fat. Theo’s mother, Lydia, carried all his meals down to him in his dungeon. There he ate night and day with his feet up, watching television, using his own engorged stomach as a dinner table. Lydia actually came to the window that night to watch the fire but never left their little bungalow. Theo watched her sad, distant face glow in the firelight and the blue flicker of the TV.
He sat back in the dirt floor of the shed and let the sandpaper hang between his knees. He coughed. Somehow, he could still hear the sandpaper scratching, spinning like a ghost in the small, bare shed, with just a handful of tools and Theo’s sleek new boat stretched over the dirt like a beautiful woman held hostage.
The cold air bit his bare shoulders. He’d torn the sleeves from his Zao t-shirt to exhibit his ripped muscles. He stood a burly 6’4” and 218 pounds, but in his bones he was frail. He coughed again and opened his fist to expose the only tattoo on his body—a hazy eyeball on the palm of his left hand.
After purging the woodshed last year, Theo began chopping down trees from Sundrasik’s woods and building his new kayak from scratch. It was his very own Viking ship. He even named it “Valkyrie” and etched the word on the hull with his knife. When he finally finishes sanding it, he’ll launch the Viking raid he’d been planning for four years. His target for the raid, the Price Mansion, was a sprawling, ten-gabled, stone mansion carved high among the pines on Fireside Mountain, directly across Main Street from the Viking Prince—the tattoo shop he had owned and operated for the past year and a half. His newly built kayak will be his getaway vehicle. He’ll ransack the house when Price goes to Cabo in the spring, steal all the treasures his hiking pack can carry, and burn the house to the ground. Then, he’ll paddle halfway to Mississippi before anyone would even think to check the river. Nobody had used it in years; it was too shallow...