Over twenty years ago I began to write a collection of short stories called Bleeding Hearts. I took my inspiration from the short fiction I was reading at the time, in particular the brilliant stories by Raymond Carver (pictured) and Richard Ford. Written in a spare style, these narratives were about failure and loss, about life and lives falling apart, about dead-ends and dead-beat jobs, and in the case of Carver, hopeless addictions. They were human stories on a par with the best of Chekov and they dealt with the tragedies of everyday life which are every bit as profound as those of Sophocles or Shakespeare, God rest his soul.

I completed thirteen of my own stories, all set in the USA in places like Montana or Oregon. I knew nothing about these states other than what I’d picked up from the stories I was reading, but in a sense it didn’t matter: it was all theatre and the dramas could be staged anywhere, not excluding the moon, anywhere that human dreams and aspirations could come tumbling down, anywhere that love could slip through your fingers like a cool mountain stream, anywhere that heartache could burn through the soul like the royal waters of aqua regia.

I took the stories with me when I went to live in Central America for a couple of years in the early nineties, and I translated all thirteen into Spanish. A number of them were published in the Saturday supplement of the Sandinista newspaper, El Nuevo Diario. Shortly after, I ceased writing prose and concentrated on my poetry, which at the time I was writing and publishing in Spanish.

A dear old friend of mine read a handful of the stories a few months ago and when she’d finished she said: “Yes, all right, but when I get to the end of them I always want to know what happened next.” “Don’t we all,” I replied. She’s going to be even more frustrated if she reads today’s post.

Below is a fragment from a story which I never completed but which will convey some idea of how I was writing in those days. At some point in the future I will post a complete story, but for now this is it. Life is full of fresh beginnings and false starts and wrong trails, and it takes courage to press on to the end, and sometimes we just have to accept that we may never get there. So best sit back and enjoy the journey, one day at a time. . . .

Good Fortune

I wake at dawn. Gayle is still fast asleep. My throat is dry. I reach for the glass of water on the bedside cabinet and drain it. My hands are shaking. I put down the glass. Gayle turns over and for a moment her eyes open. She looks at me and smiles. I lean across and kiss her on the forehead. She mutters something in a sleepy drawl which I cannot understand. I pull the covers up around her shoulders. You go back to sleep, I say. She smiles again and closes her eyes. I run my fingers through her grey hair. The hair is dry and brittle. Her soft skin is marked now with fine deep lines like a spider web of pain.

Years ago I used to think that we would never grow old, that somehow time would pass us by, we were so happy. Time did pass us by, but not in the way I imagined! This much I have learned: that nothing goes the way you think it will. When we were young, just starting out, we both believed that we would make it, that loving each other the way we did would be enough to get us through. We were both wrong. Gayle would say to me: I’ve got you, Luke, what more do I want? And I would say the same thing. We were that happy, and that naive. This is Montana, the Treasure State, and we haven’t a dollar to our name. We still have each other, still love each other. That’s something.

I slide out of bed and walk across to the window. I open the curtains a fraction and peer out. The sky is already a soft cerise. The world outside is silent but for the chorus of birds in the trees across the way. I know what I have to do. There is a sick feeling in my stomach, as though I have swallowed a great quantity of lead in the night. I let the curtain fall back. It’s going to be a fine day, a fine summer’s day, and for me, for me and Gayle, a make or break day. I skirt around the bed but before I leave the room I stop and stare at Gayle once more. In two months’ time she will be sixty. On the cabinet her side of the bed, her reading glasses are lying on top of a open copy of Fortune Magazine. Last night we read the story of a retired plumber in Milwaukee who made a million bucks in one year. After a lifetime attending to burst pipes during the winter months, he hit upon the idea of electrified lagging which would switch on automatically once the temperature dropped.

In the corner by the wardrobe is Gayle’s walking frame. Her hips are getting worse. . .