I got a flash for a short tale. About a goddess drinking at a dive bar. In Payette, Idaho. The protagonist writes travel books. She’s collecting stories for a a book about rodeos.
It’s in strictly rough draft, prolly needs a rewrite or the scrap heap, early stages yet.
Here’s the opening shot across the indifferent bows of the world:
A sign, made of tin, nailed to the outside, announced that the Spotted Horse had been established in 1956. A vague horse-like shape had been painted onto the tin, and this, one had to assume, was the horse the bar had been named for. I also saw a no minors allowed warning and we shoot, then we card cutesy plaque. Peaked metal roof, wooden structure. Otherwise, this place looked just like any other dive bar anywhere in the United States of America. Dirty, full of low-life rabble-rousers and shady sorts a step ahead of Johnny Law. Bikers to underage whores to out of work locals waiting for that switch to flick. That switch that kept them from murder sprees and desperate crimes of passion. A few beers at the Spotted Horse or the Pit or the Longbranch or the Sailor’s Bees, as one place was called, in the wilds of South Dakota. Then, a life-changing decision to take up a gun or an axe. And go kill people, whether you knew them or not. He was a quiet man that never caused any trouble. Those quiet men started off their day of mayhem usually with a few shots of rotgut crystallizing their thoughts and silencing their doubts.
ANN WUEHLER 