writermag.com • The Writer | 35SECOND-PLACE WINNER
BOUNCING
BY KEITH CARTER
Standing at the kitchen sink, blinking away sleep, he hears his wife’s
scream “Oh God!” followed by a terrible bumping and crashing,
which he knows as sure as he’s standing there in his boxers is his baby
son bouncing down the stairs, just as he has always feared, and he
drops the coffee pot and runs to the foot of the staircase in time to
catch the startled body as it tumbles off the last carpeted stair, a plas-
tic toddler gate crashing behind and hitting – Thock! – the wall, leav-
ing a big hole that could have easily been his son’s perfect head, but
instead he’s holding that head in one hand, cradling the rest of his
tense, Pooh-clad body in his arms, staring at the tiny face, contorted
in a frozen, soundless scream of fear and wonder, smooth skin turn-
ing crimson, breath held for an eternity as he hears his wife’s “Please
God,” echo his own prayers along with his voiced pleading “Breathe,
Lorne,” when the logjam breaks at last, tears flow and cries like some-
one is sticking him with a sewing needle erupt out of the suddenly
heaving body, threatening to rupture his membranes, and then just as
suddenly the cat strolls by, blissfully unconcerned with the drama
before her, and the tortured expression of his son clears as sunny as a
solstice morning, leaving only a mother and father, their lives no lon-
ger their own.
Keith Carter is a graduate of the Emerson MFA Program in Creative Writing. He con-
tinues to work on multiple writing projects at various levels of commitment and, when
not doing so, enjoys playing hockey, coaching hockey and baseball, and spending time
with his four boys. He lives in Lancaster, Massachusetts.