abandoned, next, summer-2013, ecuador
Read in August, 2013

fiction> ecuador

dedication: For Rory Gauthier. . . thanks for the ride

Opening:

Hacienda Atalaya,
Southern Ecuador
MAY 20, 1970
As flames rose into the night, an immense column
of smoke and hot air suddenly burst upward and
the Southern Cross rippled eerily in the crystalline
Andean sky. Until Hacienda Atalaya’s second storey—
packed with dried corn and firewood—caught fire and
transformed into a raging inferno, I thought the guttering
fire we’d surreptitiously started under one end
of its columned gallery was doomed to fail.

Anthropological expertise does not necessarily make for good writing. ( )