A situation that calls for kid gloves requires careful handling. Those who wear fine leather crafted from the skin of kids (goats, not children) protect soft hands and perhaps perform unexpected tasks.
Writers had the option to explore all the possibilities and their creative insight expanded the phrase. Parents, wolves, and more feature in this week’s collection.
The following are based on the October 8, 2020, flash fiction challenge: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story that includes kid gloves.
Those published at Carrot Ranch are The Congress of Rough Writers.
Home On the Range by Liz Husebye Hartmann
Cal coiled up his riata. He had no goals to improve on his already impressive rope skills, but granddaughter Flora required kid glove treatment these days.
Grandson Jeremy had passed him up, carrying on the vaquero tradition through competition and education. Kids today wanted an excuse to put down their cell phones, to raise their faces to the sun. It was an unexpected but welcome blessing from the quarantine.
Flora had kicked him out of the house early, even before his morning coffee. She wanted him out from underfoot while she attempted to wrangle the internet and home schooling.
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Kid Gloves by Pete Fanning
He never takes the gloves off. Ever. And if I try to make him a wrestling match ensues. “Germs are everywhere, Zia,” he warns. My brother, the six year-old scientist. He should have been outside, playing in the dirt. Instead this Covid thing has really messed him up. I mean, it messed everyone up, but for him I fear it’s irreversible. When he’s asleep, Mom peels them off, washes them with our masks. When they’re dry, she carefully works them back onto his stubby little fingers. Says they make him feel safe. Hmm. Maybe I should get a pair.
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Kid Gloves by FloridaBorne
“Handle it with kid gloves,” Mom said.
“What does that mean?” I asked while washing a crystal plate.
“Don’t break my favorite serving dish.”
Unsatisfied with the answer, I consulted the public library’s encyclopedia. Gloves made with baby lambs or goats? Outraged, I ran a half mile home to yell at my mother.
“They kill babies to make kid gloves!!!!” I shouted. “Don’t ever tell me to handle anything with kid gloves again!”
“It’s only a saying, dear. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater is only a saying, too.”
I never ate another bite of meat again.
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Kid Gloves by Joanne Fisher
When my daughter Jill announced she was taking up boxing, I was skeptical. She had already been through horse riding and karate.
Nevertheless we went to the sporting goods store. I tried to imagine her in the boxing ring, but this was still a girl who has soft-toys in every available space in her bedroom…
“Excuse me madam?” the store assistant broke me out of my reverie.
“I’m looking for gloves.”
“Gloves?”
“Kid gloves.”
“Kid gloves?”
“For my daughter.” I replied. “Boxing.”
“Follow me.”
Of course Jill was already there selecting them. I wondered how long this would last.
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The Jokester by Bill Engleson
I remember when it began.
First grade.
They abandoned me to a mocking mob.
“Play nice. Make friends.”
I tried, but what did they know.
The rabble seemed as one.
Bigger.
Stronger.
Maybe even smarter.
One day, faced with aggression, I pulled off a sweet backflip. Landed it. Came up smiling.
“Funny guy,” the bully said.
My life’s river changed course.
Tricks!
Grins!
Bigger tricks!
Fatter grins!
Decades of idiotic hijinks.
Three marriages!
Three divorces!
“Too much,” each said. “Always over the top! Puns! Interminable, heavy-handed humour! Release me.”
Now I get it.
Life.
Love.
Both need kidding gloves.
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Coffee by R. V. Mitchell
Coffee was one tough hombre. Some said he’d more likely shoot you than look at you. Three things set him apart from other gunslingers though. The first was his refined English accent. This feller could really talk pretty, and used the sort of three dollar words most folks weren’t too akin to. The second was that he made one mighty fine cup of coffee, thus his moniker. But oddest trait of all was them there white kid gloves he always sported. Who would have thought that the deadliest fast draw in the Dakota Territory used to be a butler?I remember when it began.
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Kid Gloves by Anita Dawes
A glorious spring morning
I decided to take Morning Glory
For her early run
Racing across the fields as if on wings
I took the low hedge too late
I landed on my backside beside a young man
Leaning there against my hedge
A stranger with a soft smile on his lips
Morning Glory stood waiting for me to remount
Her breath escaping in soft white clouds
He moved with great speed to assist me to my feet
The second thing I noticed, his hands against my skin
As soft as my mothers
When wearing her best kid gloves…
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1863 Revisited Written by Kerry E.B. Black
Henry scoffed, an ugly, guttural dismissal. “Sure, you saw a ghost.”
Clara swiped tears from blazing cheeks and stormed to her car.
“Come back,” he called to the thinning taillights, “maybe Casper would like tea.”
Chill breeze brought wafts of rotting peaches, and he pulled his jacket tight.
“Did you offer tea, Sir?” A translucent woman dressed in antebellum finery, from her lace-edged cap and upswept hair, to the hem of her hoop-defined skirts, tapped a tasseled fan in her kid-gloved hands. “But my name’s Amanda, not Casper.”
Henry beat a hastier retreat than General Lee’s exit from Gettysburg.
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Unused Kid Gloves by Sue Spitulnik
Tessa called Michael’s sister. “I got my divorce papers today and when I put them away in the hutch drawer I noticed a pair of exquisite men’s goat skin gloves I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t want to ask Michael about them just in case…”
Becca’s laugh stopped Tessa’s comment. “I gave those to him thinking he would wear them while learning to wheel his chair. He informed me he didn’t want prissy hands with no calluses and I never saw them again. I am flattered he kept them. If they’re in that drawer, I wouldn’t mention finding them.”
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The Seven Essential Types of Glove by Anne Goodwin
A chair, a couch, the tools of her trade, plus a motley choice of gloves. One pair, snipped at the knuckles, to touch hurt with her fingertips; soft kid gloves to soothe pain. Archaeologist gloves for delving through history; hospital-grade latex to shield her skin and prevent her cuts contaminating theirs. Mismatched heirlooms from her mentors, she traces the left to Rogers, the right to Freud. She reserves the harlequins for those who’ve never learnt laughter, the boxing gloves for those who avoid through jokes. Seven pairs packed, she’s ready to follow her client on a journey into truth.
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Unquenched by D. Avery
More than thirst might make his voice crack. He left them in the dugout without speaking. Carrying the shovel, work gloves feathering out of his back pocket, he hoped he appeared confident to his family.
He arrived at the spring, the once muddy surface now flaked, dried and split like old leather. He methodically pulled his gloves on, grasped the shovel and bent to his work, one scoop at a time. Each thrust of the blade was a prayer, each going unanswered until finally he stopped.
Under a blistering blue sky he held his head in his gloved hands.
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Kid Gloves for Sale by Norah Colvin
Wolf covered his sinister smile with a pleasant facade as he organised a stall between Little Red Hen’s Home-Made Bread and Pig Brothers’ Home Improvements. Dinner could wait. He was hoping for a killing of another kind — monetary — selling his home-made kid gloves.
When an unlikely pair of cowpokes enquired about the origins of his leather, he was evasive. When asked his whereabout the previous week, he attempted to flee; but the recently deputised Pal and Kid were too fast and snapped on the hand cuffs. “We arrest you for the disappearance and suspected murder of seven little kids.”
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Hot News by Simon
She stared at the pic of Kid and Pal duo.
It’s been 18 years since she lost the kids. She shed a drop of a tear and walked out her bedroom. She startled when she saw a man wearing kids costume with a kid’s glove. She remembered the Kid and Pal duo.
Before she reacted there was a tap on her left shoulder, she turns to feel the pain of a long knife shoved in her ribs and the axe from behind chops her head off.
News headlines ‘Murder stories continues in town, people are warned to stay alert!”
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A Dark and Stormy Man by Chel Owens
Mabel knew she’d found a winner when she met Shane -tall, dark, handsome. He came into her life on a dark and stormy night. Unfortunately, she’d mistaken his kid glove-approach as a gentleness that didn’t exist.
No, Mabel sighed as she looked out into the storm, there was no more Shane. Her tears matched those streaming down the windowpane.
“‘Scuse me, ma’am,” a deep voice said. Mabel glanced up through wet eyelashes to see a burly man in a plaid shirt. “I couldn’t help but notice you weren’t too happy.”
The man sat. “Could I buy you a coffee?”
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Inside Out by Geoff Le Pard
‘Morgan! Where are you?’
‘Hang on, I’m… what’s got into you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So why do you sound like you’re being mugged and why are you standing on a table?’
‘It’s… there… oh god! It’s coming…’
‘A spider? You’re an agoraphobe?’
‘Arachnophobe. Can you…?’
‘Squish it? Sure. I…’
‘Nooo. Just get it outside.’
‘What is an agoraphobe?’
‘Can we do this later? Please take it outside but don’t hurt it.’
‘You want me to use kid gloves?’
‘You can use lead-lined gauntlets if you’ll just take it outside.’
‘First tell me. Agoraphobe? Or I’m not going outside.’
‘Exactly.’
‘?’
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Eagle Point by Saifun Hassam
Last night another tremor shook the ranchlands. The snowcapped serrated peaks of Stoney Mountain Range glinted in the sunlight.
Carly and Carmen climbed up Pine Ridge Trail to Eagle Point. They dismounted several times to push sharp and jagged small rocks from the trail. Both women were experienced rangers and ranchers. Their kid gloves were as essential as their horses for the trek.
A new jagged crack ran from west to east on Eagle Point’s plateau. This summer, wildfires turned the forests into ashes.
Kid gloves or not, the two women would do everything to protect this rugged wilderness.
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Kid Gloves by Frank Hubeny
“You see how those trees hug the shore. They didn’t wear kid gloves to do that. They grabbed on with everything they had. You’re going to have to deal with Bernard the same way.”
“How many times do I have to tell him to stop drinking? He’s like a misshapen piece of fired pottery that can no longer change.”
“Those trees look unchangeably misshapen to me as well. The problem is not every tree that grabbed the shore was able to hold on long enough for strong roots to develop.
“If Bernard doesn’t change he’ll fall off the shore.”
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No Kidding? by JulesPaige
The old woman kept her kid gloves on the table under the arc that divided the entryway of her apartment to the living space. It was not her intent to illude anyone. Unable to elude her own aging waiting for her own imagined ark to sail her permanently away into the heavens. She wore the kid gloves when she had company she wanted to allude to the perfect hands she once had, her fingers now knobby and bent from arthritis.
When the young Cub Scout came to interview her, she smiled. He politely did not ask about her gloves.
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Mushroom Man by Anonymole – Apocryphal Abecedarian
With a tarp held over my head, I made my way to the Mushroom Man. Noon and the sun would cook my skin without it. The city’s ruins, baked white, provided pockets of shade. I scrambled from shadow to shadow.
Down the subway stairs, rubble clacking away, the smell of loam filled my senses. Darkness gave me pause, my eyes adjusted slowly. The ancient forest smell consumed me.
“They’re not ready,” said the man who grew the mycelium leather.
I picked my way deeper into the gloom. “My kid needs those gloves.”
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Misfits (Part I) by D. Avery
While others tended to rodeo events or cracked their WIPs, Pal took a vacation, time away from Kid. Just for a while. Pal even left Carrot Ranch.
Just for a while, for it had been such a long while since Pal had seen Cousins Ash and Dusty Trales.
Dismounting at their Turnip Farm Pal was greeted warmly. “Hey there, Cuz. It’s been a while.”
“Yep.”
“We gotta git these turnips harvested.”
“I’ll hep.”
“You’ll want gloves.”
“Yep. Dang! These are Kid’s gloves! Ugh! I musta in’vert’ly took Kid’s saddlebag.”
Even on vacation, Pal would be burdened with Kid’s baggage.
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Misfits (Part II) by D. Avery
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Kid was skedaddling to the Saloon, for as you may recall Kid has some goats out back of the saloon. Bursting through the swinging doors, Kid saw— “Shorty!”
“Kid. Shouldn’t you be vacationin’?”
“Worried ‘bout my kids, what with that prompt an’ all.”
“The kids are alright, Kid, the Ranch and the saloon are safe places for all.”
“Okay.” Kid then took in the quiet saloon. Shorty was so busy writing she hadn’t noticed the goat feeding from a stack of papers. Despite assurances, Kid did not feel safe and vacated, goat in hand.
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Congrats to all, especially Pete, RV, Anita, Anne, Geoff, Jules and Dave Wry (Misfits 2). There was also this one.
The Flying Son
Lucas had already reached the top of the tree, almost faster than his Dad’s eyes could follow. Now he gripped with only one hand as he waved in triumph. ‘I’m the king of …’ but his words faded on the wind as a freak gust hit at the same time. He sailed to the ground with his arms outstretched like puny wings until he landed with a dull thud in his father’s arms. When he found his breath again Lucas whispered to his Dad ‘How’d you do that?’ His Dad smilingly whispered back ‘With kid gloves, my flying son.’
It’s Kid’s dang goats. They et it.
🙂 Makes a change from dogs.
I recall you had trouble another time when Frankie’s horse, Burt, ate something of yours….
Yes
Another good, good morning read. Thank you all, for brightening the beginnings of a crisp Autumn day.
[…] columns and Monday’s Saddle Up Saloon feature. It sure is worth a visit to Carrot Ranch to read, write, and appreciate literary […]
Quite a variety of kid gloves to choose from there. Well done, everyone – an enjoyable read.