The Easter Egg
by Jay Parr
I seen her reach in for it, but hell, I ain't think much of it, figured it was a egg was
hid in there. We’d got a pack of them plastic eggs and a bag of jellybeans up the dollar
store, wun’t but two three jellybeans to a egg, but when they’s little like that, it don’t take
a whole lot to make it Easter. They was all running ’round, diaper butts all dusty,
tromping in the weeds, grocery bags flying, whooping up a racket, ’cuz they was kids
having fun, y’know? That’s when she stumped over ahind my old truck where my trailer
skirt don’t match up, squatted down, reach in that gap and brung it out. First I thought it
was a stick, maybe a scrap of pipe wrap, way she was looking down in it. Finally hit me
what it was, but…
You know how on TV they’s always real loud? Big ol’ booms, fire coming out the
barrel and shit? Weren’t nothing like that. Just a little wet thump. Like somebody
dropped a watermelon.
Jay Parr (he/they) once lived in a single-wide with aluminum wiring and crank-out windows. He now lives with his partner and daughter in North Carolina, where he's a lecturer in UNCG's online humanities program. He's honored to have work in Roi Fainéant, Bending Genres, Cutbow Quarterly, Identity Theory, Five Minutes, MIDLVLMAG, Reckon Review, Bullshit Lit, SugarSugarSalt, and beyond.
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