Dairy and Beer

by Pete Prokesch

The boy jumped off the boxcar and rolled through the desert dust. The Milky Way lay a white haze over the sky like spilt milk. His gums stuck to his teeth as he stumbled towards a convenient store and drank from a spigot on the concrete wall. A sign flickered on – Joe’s Dairy and Beer – his father’s name. He guzzled the metallic water as it soaked the front of his shirt and then a safety click and cold metal against the back of his head. He thought of his father while the stars shuddered and the Milky Way dribbled down the sky.

6S

Pete Prokesch is a writer from the Boston area. His fiction has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Four Way Review, and Evergreen Review, among others, and he has received support from Mass Cultural Council. A carpenter by trade, he has also worked as a shellfish farmer and on a trail crew in the National Forest. You can read his writing on his website.