The Siblings

     My older sister, younger brother and I  get together for a weekend brunch every so often, usually instigated by our baby brother, who is well aware that my sister and I tend to keep our distance.

     Why are we distant?  At this point, it's no more than habit.  We're very different people, who have a mild tendency to trip one another up without meaning to, and why should we risk it?

     But brunch is relatively harmless and the food is good where we meet, though the coffee's lousy.

     I shared a couple of stories I had written, crime stories involving Indiana and our good old sugar cream pie, the state pie.  A local T-shirt shop has mocked up a movie poster or book cover with that as the topic, which they are selling on T-shirts, fridge magnets and stickers, and I'm hoping to get some of my fellow writers to contribute to an anthology on the theme.  Unlike stories and artwork, titles and topics are not copyrightable; so I'll offer the T-shirt shop a piece of the action in exchange for using the art, and if they demur, I can proceed with different artwork and, out of courtesy, a different title.  If I can get two short stories out of it, my peers are sure to do much better.

     Why would I show those stories to my siblings?  Both use incidents and activities from our shared pasts: the big multi-family reunions our father's side used to hold, filling a large private park, and a remarkable, terrifying happening from Dad's youth.  Not the time he fitted one of his younger brothers with a gunny-sack parachute and sent him hurtling down from the haymow doors of the family barn (his brother survived, surprisingly unscathed) but about as bad.