Dave Wright Writes

  Play Ball! by Dave Wright The two pickup trucks met head-to-head on a side street in Caboose, Kentucky, a town nestled in the backwaters of the Ohio River. The chrome-filled Ford F-250 roared in reverse, its Confederate flag waving from one side of the bed and an obsolete political flag saluting from the other. An older model Dodge sped forward in synch with the Ford, intimidating it with its rusty bumper. A stop sign, usually ignored by the driver of the flashy Ford appeared in its rear-view window. The busy traffic required a snap decision—to abide by the law or to hope for mercy from a throng of impatient commuters. The driver of the Ford chose poorly.  When the Ford braked to a halt at the intersection, the driver of the dilapidated Dodge opened his door, pulled an aluminum softball bat from behind the seat, and began to beat the shit out of the headlights, the rear-view mirrors, and for good measure, the passenger-side front windshield; then he calmly returned to h...

  Perceptions at a Country Club by Dave Wright The three of us lingered in the parking lot of the country club—all with our hands stuffed in our pockets, all bored, all eager for school to start, and all feeling poor—having spent the last of our allowances on Bazooka Joe bubblegum, baseball cards, and popsicles. There was Ricky, the neighborhood ginger, whose freckles splattered down his arms and legs like a poor stucco job, and whose dad worked in the pro shop. He was a juvenile expert at golf. There was my younger brother, Jim who was smaller than either of us, but tougher than both of us together. And then there was me, a scrawny specimen of delayed adolescence who wore a plaid short-sleeve shirt buttoned to the neck and whose black spectacles carried a perpetual wad of adhesive tape on a broken bow. Ricky told us that there was a golf tournament scheduled for that Saturday, and that we might be able to make a few bucks by offering to caddy for the golfers. Jim and I knew...

  Saving Elmer by Dave Wright “Phil, was that the portage we were looking for?” shouted Jenny from the front of our canoe. I looked over my shoulder. We drifted past a narrow clearing in the woods with a pebbled beach. “Damn. That could have been it,” I said, and looked at the map between my legs. “There is supposed to be a small river next to the portage. You’d think they’d have a sign.” “It’s the wilderness,” said Jenny. “Maybe it’s still up ahead.” I took another couple of strokes from my seat in the back of the canoe. I admired Jenny’s muscular shoulders and trim physique. We had met at the gym about a year ago. The workouts had been far more effective for Jenny than they had been for me. My rear end fills the entire seat of the canoe while hers has space to spare. I looked beyond Jenny’s spandex-clad figure and felt the current pick up speed. Both banks narrowed to a gap between the trees. “That’s the river,” I shouted. “Paddle hard backward!” she yelled. “We need...

The Facts of Life by Dave Wright The cow grunted and pushed. A clear bubble of fluid appeared from her vagina as if it were wrapped in cellophane. “What’s that?” asked a six-year-old girl who had been standing next to me among the crowd at the Minnesota State Fair. I looked behind me from my crouched position to see if the girl’s parents were nearby. Not seeing anyone particularly interested in her question, I proceeded to answer it. “That’s the cow’s vagina,” I said. “We are expecting the cow to have a baby calf soon.” I am a veterinarian who was volunteering at the Miracle of Birth exhibit, and I was monitoring the progress of the delivery. “Where is the baby calf now?” inquired the girl. “It’s still in the cow’s tummy,” I replied. “It’s in a big sack called a uterus. The uterus is made up of muscles that will push the calf though the birth canal when the time is right.” “Where is the daddy?” she asked, apparently understanding my explanation so far. “That’s a good que...

  Dilapidated Home by Dave Wright [Fall 1975] A bold-faced NO TRESPASSING sign hung from an aluminum gate that barricaded the driveway to the farmstead. A tangled mass of barbed wire fell away from each side of the gate. To the right, crooked fence posts wandered into an overgrown wood. Prickly ash, buckthorn and ironwood poked through an assortment of rusting machinery—a dismantled manure spreader with two flat tires, a rusting combine buried to its axel, and a faded Minneapolis Moline tractor with a torn seat. To the left of the gate, the jagged fence line fell into a road ditch, its woven wire obscured by thistle and cocklebur. The setting sun cast long shadows across the lot from the barn, once regal red—now a weathered grey skeleton. A gust of wind caught the lower half of a barn door. Its single hinge screeched as it closed halfway. A roofless silo, overgrown with Virginia creeper stood vacant next to the barn. The porous slats of a corn crib rose above the far side of t...