Children of the New World: Stories by Alexander Weinstein Page A
Authors: Alexander Weinstein
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and, though I ought to pay, I just nod my head and say thanks.
* * *
REALLY, I SHOULDN’T be driving, and for this reason I take the long back road home, up old 37. Out here on the forgotten highway, I’m alone in the darkness watching my high beams cut across the land and the great pits. Twenty years ago it was all cornfields out here—Indiana soil so rich you could put anything in the dirt and it would grow. Then the companies came for the soil, followed by the clay, and finally the bedrock. All that’s left are these pits, abandoned and sinking. They talked for a while of filling the canyons with water, turning the place into a second series of great lakes—private ponds for the rich to float their sailboats on and their children to Jet Ski across. Then the rich moved on—away from this endless stretch of exposed rock and dead earth. Maybe years from now, when we’re all gone, some new creature will step forth on these canyons and gaze out at the abyss, never knowing there were once cornfields here.
The rains have started again. The drops splatter against the windshield and make the roads muddy. At one point the mud gets so bad the wipers can’t cut it, and I have to pull over to the side of the road. I park beside the tall chain-link fence that separates the state road from the pits. I pop the trunk and take the squeegee from the back. The rain feels good against my skin, sobering, and I take my time, running the rubber blade against the glass and flicking the mud onto the road. Across from the pits, all the foreclosed houses are abandoned. The empty sockets of front yards, yanked from the ground like teeth, are filled with rain. It’s kind of beautiful in the darkness, as though the neighborhood is floating. Soon it will be dawn and everything will be ugly, but for now there’s an eerie radiance to the world. Perhaps it will be okay, I think. The earth will recover; the world won’t ever truly end. Perhaps it will be green again someday. I put the squeegee back in the trunk and start on the road toward home.
There’s a story I would like to tell to my children. In this story a boy meets a girl and they fall in love. They both have good jobs and enough money to buy a nice house with acres of land. There are old trees on their land—apples and pears, cherries and plums, blueberry bushes and grapevines. In the late fall, the grass gets sticky with the pulp of fallen fruit, and bees buzz amid the fermenting cores. The family makes pies, and the children’s fingers get stained from the blueberries, a light purple hue that remains even after their baths that night. In this home the parents love each other. Sometimes the children see their parents kiss and they feel embarrassed. They are good children, healthy and happy. They ride bicycles with other kids; they grow up, fall in love, and have children of their own who they bring back to the land. And at night, when the moon rises full above their home, the family goes to sleep to the sound of crickets chirping in the high grass.
In this story there is no car pulling into the driveway at 4 A.M. , there is no father stumbling to the door as he struggles to find his keys. In this story, when the father goes into his son’s room to make sure he’s sleeping, he kisses the small boy on his forehead and tucks the blankets up beneath his son’s chin, never considering, not even for a moment, rolling the blankets down past the boy’s small chest, which rises and falls with every breath, where deep inside there’s a heart that loves his father and trusts he will protect him against the monsters of this world.
EXCERPTS FROM
The New World Authorized Dictionary
brainflea n. Useless data sent via Brain/Web interface, primarily concerned with the dissemination of product information.
2026 Oct 12 Glade Dunning, Cyberspeak [posting on think-the-stream], http://www.thinkthestream.com/blog/2026/10/12: Braintwitters started arriving at Podmarket Promos on
* * *
REALLY, I SHOULDN’T be driving, and for this reason I take the long back road home, up old 37. Out here on the forgotten highway, I’m alone in the darkness watching my high beams cut across the land and the great pits. Twenty years ago it was all cornfields out here—Indiana soil so rich you could put anything in the dirt and it would grow. Then the companies came for the soil, followed by the clay, and finally the bedrock. All that’s left are these pits, abandoned and sinking. They talked for a while of filling the canyons with water, turning the place into a second series of great lakes—private ponds for the rich to float their sailboats on and their children to Jet Ski across. Then the rich moved on—away from this endless stretch of exposed rock and dead earth. Maybe years from now, when we’re all gone, some new creature will step forth on these canyons and gaze out at the abyss, never knowing there were once cornfields here.
The rains have started again. The drops splatter against the windshield and make the roads muddy. At one point the mud gets so bad the wipers can’t cut it, and I have to pull over to the side of the road. I park beside the tall chain-link fence that separates the state road from the pits. I pop the trunk and take the squeegee from the back. The rain feels good against my skin, sobering, and I take my time, running the rubber blade against the glass and flicking the mud onto the road. Across from the pits, all the foreclosed houses are abandoned. The empty sockets of front yards, yanked from the ground like teeth, are filled with rain. It’s kind of beautiful in the darkness, as though the neighborhood is floating. Soon it will be dawn and everything will be ugly, but for now there’s an eerie radiance to the world. Perhaps it will be okay, I think. The earth will recover; the world won’t ever truly end. Perhaps it will be green again someday. I put the squeegee back in the trunk and start on the road toward home.
There’s a story I would like to tell to my children. In this story a boy meets a girl and they fall in love. They both have good jobs and enough money to buy a nice house with acres of land. There are old trees on their land—apples and pears, cherries and plums, blueberry bushes and grapevines. In the late fall, the grass gets sticky with the pulp of fallen fruit, and bees buzz amid the fermenting cores. The family makes pies, and the children’s fingers get stained from the blueberries, a light purple hue that remains even after their baths that night. In this home the parents love each other. Sometimes the children see their parents kiss and they feel embarrassed. They are good children, healthy and happy. They ride bicycles with other kids; they grow up, fall in love, and have children of their own who they bring back to the land. And at night, when the moon rises full above their home, the family goes to sleep to the sound of crickets chirping in the high grass.
In this story there is no car pulling into the driveway at 4 A.M. , there is no father stumbling to the door as he struggles to find his keys. In this story, when the father goes into his son’s room to make sure he’s sleeping, he kisses the small boy on his forehead and tucks the blankets up beneath his son’s chin, never considering, not even for a moment, rolling the blankets down past the boy’s small chest, which rises and falls with every breath, where deep inside there’s a heart that loves his father and trusts he will protect him against the monsters of this world.
EXCERPTS FROM
The New World Authorized Dictionary
brainflea n. Useless data sent via Brain/Web interface, primarily concerned with the dissemination of product information.
2026 Oct 12 Glade Dunning, Cyberspeak [posting on think-the-stream], http://www.thinkthestream.com/blog/2026/10/12: Braintwitters started arriving at Podmarket Promos on
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