“The Ten Commandments,” by Debra Spark

Fiction faculty member Debra Spark was recently featured in the LEON Literary Review. Read an excerpt of “The Ten Commandments” below:

The Ten Commandments

  This was his city, but DP had only so many ways through it.  He’d taken one path this morning—from his apartment building to Preble Street.  That was a route.  Back was another.  To the supermarket yet another.  And the AA meeting at St. Angelo’s.  That was mostly it, though it wasn’t like he never strayed.  DP liked to stray.
            He liked to think about straying.
            Tomorrow, the first day of the month, he’d have to walk, but for now he still had his bus voucher.  He could go anywhere on public transportation.  He could visit the beach, just to see the waves.  Hello and how you doing water?  Only today it was too cold for any activity that wasn’t absolutely necessary.  They were fixing to take away his SNAP and his Mainecare, so he had come to Preble Street to figure out what to do.  Last week, he’d seen Nancy, but she said he’d missed an appointment the previous month when he was supposed to fill out paperwork and that was the problem.  But how was he supposed to show up for an appointment that he didn’t even know he had?  And how was he supposed to get to an appointment without money for the bus?  A lady at the supermarket had given him a voucher for this month, but last month he hadn’t had one.  He lived four miles outside of town.  First apartment in … he didn’t know how many years. 
             Sometimes he hoofed it in.  He didn’t mind going for a walk.  Kind of liked a stroll actually.  It took exactly two hours to get to Preble Street, but that was when it was a good day, not when it was five degrees, not when he had a bum leg.  It had always been a little off, but now it was red and swollen.  “Ham hock,” he thought, when he looked at it, which wasn’t something you wanted to think about your own body.  He must have fallen down, but he didn’t remember falling down.  There was a lot of black ice out there, this time of year.  You had to be careful.

Read the rest of “The Ten Commandments” here: http://leonliteraryreview.com/issue-9-debra-spark/