Erin Fisher - That Tiny Life

Not Lola, not a hunter, but look at her. Well, look at the gesture. Thirty years, over three thousand falcons, and, best guess, one point eight million feeder chicks. Axel won’t breed her, but she can give it a go. The bird can be her start. Does he know that, giving it to her? She smooths the feathers at the bird’s crop. Does he need to know that?

The night is clear along the western horizon, and the mountain under it looks like a missing patch of sky, black and rough, as if the bottom has been ripped away. The flecked moon hangs half-finished and trails behind it a crush of lavender over the eastern valley.

Cody steps back from the truck. Behind him, the dairy house, the barn, grey and diminutive in the moonlight. They’ll survive — no stopping it. She salutes him, then grips Axel’s hand. Her right hand in his, then her left on top of his again. Knuckles, calluses. She breathes — pulsed, focused — a shot of eagerness at what comes next, what she doesn’t know, can’t see, but what will grow, riled and thirsty, out of the flopped and baleful past, into the now, the What Comes Next.

This book was made possible in part by financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Writers’ Trust of Canada RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.

Thank you to the literary journals who’ve published my stories over the years: The Malahat Review , PRISM International, Little Fiction, Riddle Fence, Granta , and Ambit .

Thank you to Sarah MacLachlan, Janie Yoon, Melanie Little, Maria Golikova, and everyone at House of Anansi Press, and to my agent Rachel Letofsky and the Cooke Agency.

Thank you to the faculty and mentors who encouraged me during my years at the University of Victoria, to my many writer friends who read and helped these stories, and to my non-writer friends and family who gave me places and time to write. Special thanks to Lorna Jackson, Cody Klippenstein, and Bradford Werner.

Erin Frances Fisher’s stories have been published internationally in literary journals such as Granta , Ambit, PRISM International , The Malahat Review , and Little Fiction. She was the winner of the RBC Writers’ Trust of Canada Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review ’s Open Season Award for Fiction, and PRISM International ’s Short Fiction Grand Prize. Erin holds an MFA in Writing from the University of Victoria and teaches piano at the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”

Copyright © 2018 Erin Frances Fisher

Published in Canada in 2018 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

www.houseofanansi.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

All of the events and characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Fisher, Erin Frances

[Short stories. Selections]

That tiny life / Erin Frances Fisher.

Short stories.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4870-0366-1 (softcover). — ISBN 978-1-4870-0367-8 (EPUB). — ISBN 978-1-4870-0368-5 (Kindle)

I. Title.

PS8611.I837A6 2018 C813'.6 C2017-904733-7

C2017-904734-5

Cover design and typsetting: Alysia Shewchuk

Cover images: (space satellite) iStock.com/CSA Images/Color Printstock Collection; (figure in snow) iStock.com/RyersonClark; (desert) iStock.com/CSA Images/Color Printstock Collection; (guillotine) iStock.com/ilbusca; (fossil) Photomontage/Shutterstock.com

We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program

the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.