'How it is in Vico' - Jellyfish Review

In Vico there’s one bar and a herd of stray dogs that everybody knows. The old men play chess in the square and feed the dogs. The kids, they mostly grow up to take jobs with computers in towns that have more than one bar. On a hilltop there’s a restaurant that shares my name but is no relation; it’s open only in the summer.

From our apartment, you can jog twenty minutes past a field with two donkeys — perhaps brothers, perhaps mother and son — and beyond the field you reach a view of the sea, but you cannot reach the water. By the sea, beyond a stretch of swaying grass that might be wheat and is just as gold, there’s a tower that town kids sneak to in the evening. Drunk on salt and double dares, they seek edges.

One day, my brothers buy a jug of wine that is pink in a way that looks accidental.

We are not trying to drink this whole jug of wine, one of them says.

But we aren’t not trying to drink this whole jug of wine, says the other, and they fill each other’s glasses.

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