Going short: a dozen lines. “And all day a bootmaker sitting barefoot on a rotting bench near a tumbledown shack, his belt unbuckled and his long shirt hanging loose, the sun beating down on his shaggy head. He sits there killing time with a red dog.” “Shake!” But the dog doesn’t know that command. Eventually the dog “lifts one paw uncertainly, drops it back to the ground”, and gets hit in the face for its pains.
Published in Sunstroke: Selected Stories of Ivan Bunin, Ivan R. Dee Inc., 2002
A Personal Anthology 