Olympic Games
An Exclusive Preview Excerpt
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Important: The novel excerpted here is a work in progress. As such, the text in these pages is still subject to editing and rewriting, and may even be omitted from the finished novel. Please bear this in mind when reading the excerpt, and do not quote any part of it in reviews without first checking against a published copy.
“Take a playboy Zeus with issues; a New-Age Hera; an idiot boy: another who’s half-bug, half-bat; an artist who walks backwards; and a woman who lived inside a door for 2000 years… You’d think, with this melange, no one but Eudora Welty could have made a moving and magical novel. You’d be wrong. Leslie What has.”
—Howard Waldrop
In this scene, Igor, who believes he is the offspring of Hera and Zeus, learns what it is like to be different.
—Leslie What
Igor took Horsie and went outside in the yard to play in the sandbox behind the cabin. He spent some time clearing away damp leaves and garbage before smoothing the sand flat and making a road with plastic blocks. He brought out a box filled with his trucks and put Horsie in one of them to deliver sand to the barn. His clothes were too tight and his wings hurt from being crushed by his shirt. He did not wear shoes because he thought the shiny hard skin of his feet looked just like army boots. His feet never got cold, either, though sometimes he found it difficult to walk. They were sort of small, compared to the rest of him, but his mother told him not to worry because his father had small feet and that hadn’t kept his father from getting a job as king of the gods.
The little girl from next door came out and stood at the side of the yard. She wiggled around and looked at him with bright eyes that made him feel funny. She had very long black hair and a pink dress. She ran toward him and sat on the edge of the sandbox.
“Can I play with you?” she asked.
“Sure,” Igor said, as if he did this all the time. She was pretty and she smelled sweet, like milk. He sat with his legs curled beneath him, so that she could not see his feet.
He had seen her several times from his window, always running to his room the moment she noticed him and waved. Now he didn’t want to run away.
“I go to first grade,” said the little girl. “Where do you go?”
“I’m home-schooled,” Igor said, remembering what his mother had told him to say.
The little girl told a joke. “What has two legs and flies?”
“I don’t know.”
She laughed. “A dead guy.”
At first, he didn’t get it.
“My mom owns your house, you know,” said the little girl.
“So?” Igor replied, but the little girl looked pleased with herself just the same.
