Congratulations to the winners of the first Jerboa Lit 250!
February 2026 prompt:
Genre: Western
Character: (An) Eccentric
First Place
How the West was Spun
By Dean Koorey
Folks think tumbleweeds grow themselves.
Truth is, I’ve been a tumble farmer for fifty-two years, like my father before me.
During the railroad boom, we nearly starved while the hotels lit up nightly. Pa was called loony, hare-brained. Nobody wanted tumbleweeds cluttering prosperity.
Then came the gunfights.
Daily at ‘High Noon’. The sheriff demanded authenticity, and we secured the exclusive contract. Two medium weeds per showdown, timed just right to brush past the victim. Business boomed.
Now it’s 1958 and a new trail rolls west. A man with shiny shoes steps out of a government Buick.
“Already told you folks, this ranch ain’t for sale,” I warn, rake at the ready.
He smiles, papers in hand. “Interstate 40 is happening, Mister Grassley,” he says, tapping the map’s red line. “You can’t stop progress – but you can benefit from it!”
I know his meaning. Most mornings, I open the gate, letting my prize weeds tumble along Main Street past shuttered shopfronts. This town's been dying for years.
“We’re prepared to offer—"
“I know the number.” I spit into the dust.
In the distance, a locomotive blasts its mournful tune. I think of my pa’s tough beginnings. The boom years. The decades of decline.
“It’s a generous sum,” he says, pen hovering.
I think of the oath I took as a tumble farmer, and how a ghost town, more than anything, demanded authenticity.
A gust kicks up. Two medium specimens break loose, brushing against his trouser leg.
I reach for my rake.
Dean Koorey is a freelance writer who grew up in New Zealand and now calls small-town coastal Australia home. He is a previous winner of NYCMidnight and Writing Battle, as well as runner-up in Not Quite Write and Twisted Tournament flash fiction competitions. He also won bronze in the tug-of-war at the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympics. Dean is co-creator of Furious Fiction (now in its 8th year) and three humans (now in their 20th, 22nd and 24th years). He likes coffee and crosswords, preferably in that order.
Second Place
Lost in Translation
By Thom Brodkin
It was almost dusk when the posse finally caught the fleeing thief and brought him to Sheriff McGillicuddy. The lawman was nothing like Juan expected; his belly hung over his gun belt like overrisen bread and he wheezed with every breath. When he did speak, the sheriff spit tobacco juice like an angry camel and he repeated himself incessantly.
“Where’s the gold, the gold, the gold?” Sheriff McGillicuddy asked.
“No hablo inglés,” Juan replied.
“Does anyone here speak Spanish? Anybody, anybody, anybody?”
The newest deputy, an unusually thin man, stepped forward. “I do, sheriff.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Miguel, sir.”
“Miguel, Miguel, Miguel, ask him where the gold is.”
“Dónde está el oro?" Miguel asked, his voice shaking.
“No sé de qué estás hablando.”
“What did he say? What did he say? What, what, what?”
“He says he doesn’t know what you're talking about.”
“Ask him again!” the sheriff yelled, spewing loose tobacco over himself, Miguel and Juan.
“Dónde está el oro?!!" Miguel asked again, more forcefully.
“No sé de qué estás hablando,” Juan replied, a second time.
“He still doesn’t know what you’re talking about.
Frustrated with the charade, Sheriff McGillicuddy pulled out his six-shooter, aimed it at Juan’s head and cocked the hammer.
“He tells me or he dies.”
Juan screamed in Spanish, “I dropped it in a well two miles back!”
“What did he say?” the sheriff asked the deputy.
Miguel pointed at Juan “He said, go ahead and shoot, fat man. I’m not afraid to die.”
Thom Brodkin’s short stories have circled the globe. From being featured in a Swedish textbook to a Moroccan anthology, to a Japanese Zine, readers worldwide enjoy his relatable characters and transcendent themes that warm the soul. One of his works has been recently adapted to the screen, featured in recent short film competitions. A regular on the international competition circuit, Thom’s stories often are recognized from as far away as Australia. He resides in Central Virginia with his family and beloved miniature schnauzers, Sugar and Milo.
Third Place
Three Moons Ago
By Cathy Borders
Penny Slinger had only cut the boy’s hair once, as a favor to the mother because her arm had been tied up in strips of potato sack. The boy thrashed and kicked like a mule. He left the stool minutes later looking dreadful. Dirt and hair clung to his sweaty, ruddy face. His mother apologized, “He don’t talk much.” Penny knew the boy had been frightened into silence by his brute father, Brock Gatlin. They called the boy Junior. He’s dead now. Died three moons ago.
Last night Penny dug up the jar she had planted with the onions. The one she had filled with stones and rusty nails, a fistful of dirt and hair, and the shards of glass she had pocketed from the Dusty Spur. The missus had done as she asked and brought Penny the piss from his pot. As she poured the putrid liquid into the jar she spat on the muck then buried it all upside down in the onion patch that was on “his property.” His gizzards should’ve boiled until he choked.
That didn’t happen.
He had killed his boy and nothing happened.
Brock was a homely looking man, sulking around the Dusty Spur, losing his cards, his temper, his wits. It had been easy for a woman to fool him, easy for Penny to lure him out back, way back. She slit his throat while he slept. A tumbleweed rolled by.
But they found the jar and hanged Penny until she was dead.
Cathy Borders is the author of Robin Williams Is My Uncle: And Other Stories We Possess, The Tarot For Writing Project, and A Suburb of Monogamy. She works as an editor and is the founder of The Republic of Letters and Water Street Writers. She currently lives in the middle of a forest with her husband and two daughters.
Honorable Mentions
The Dance
By Claire Kapitan
I was repairing a tear in our fence when the man appeared suddenly behind me—although when I told my mother this story she said that nothing appears suddenly on the plain: you can see flecks of people on the horizon and can hear their feet on the tight drum of the earth days before they reach you—yet he appeared suddenly, followed by three wild horses in a line, two red and one black without saddles or rope, and he called out to me and asked if I would like to see his horses dance, “yes, dance,” he repeated because I was speechless, unsure of how to answer this man who wore a blanket with crescent moons around his shoulders despite the heat, and before I could answer, he turned to his horses and began whispering to them, calling them by name and running his hands down their noses and jaws, and then he stepped back and began tapping his boot in a rhythm that told them to start, the three of them rearing up in a single wave of motion, then prancing in place with knees high to their chests, then running in circles, then rearing again, again, all while I clapped, in awe of their wildness, their dance, and then as quickly as it began, it was over, they bowed and turned back, shrunk into flecks on the horizon, and although my mother has her doubts, I began naming my horses, began whispering to them, urging them to dance.
Claire Kapitan is a writer and artist from Cleveland, Ohio. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at Boston University, where she also teaches creative writing as a Graduate Fellow. She is a coordinator for the Black Box Reading Series and volunteers as a Fiction Screener for Ploughshares Journal.
Wagons
By Tyler Heath
The Oregon Trail is all I have. The perpetual march from Independence to Willamette Valley, though I rarely make it, the game often restarted or abandoned. What players don’t know is it’s always the same five of us, just renamed, given different professions, but it’s the same five in every wagon of every journey. Henry dies of typhoid fever, and the next game he’s Alden lost in Wyoming fog. Tonight, I am Wendy. I button my prairie dress to my neck, tie my bonnet tight around my face as the Missouri River spreads around me like torment and thieves steal our ox. This is how it always goes. The Oregon Trail hates us; it wants to break our arms, then break our axels. At Fort Kearney, the merchant won’t trade ammo for berries. "Why would I need those when I can just eat these," he says, placing silver bullets in his mouth and grinding them down like tobacco, then swallowing. "What do you think’ll grow inside me, a Mississippi rifle?" He laughs and blows out all the lanterns. I stand alone in the dark with my basket.
The players never see what really happens to us. All they see is a tiny wagon moving across a screen. But we’re so tired of beginning again with new hope, of the dust storms swirling around us. When we die, we know it’s not for the last time.
Tyler Heath's writing has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Permafrost Literary Magazine, Angel Rust, and elsewhere. He is currently at work on a collection of short pieces, writing at a pace to ensure its completion in the next few decades. He lives in North Richland Hills, TX, where he recently got pulled over for running a stop sign.
The Dust Collector
By Sam James
“I collect dust.”
The old cowboy sits beside you on the bus out into the Mojave. In his lap is a small ceramic pot.
You ask him what he means.
“My wife said I was sitting round collectin’ dust,”—the cowboy coughs—“so I started actually doin’ it. Pretty fascinatin’ stuff.”
You ask about his collection.
“Some’s kept in jars—stratified clumps o’ interestin’. Other dust I display natural-like: a blanket o’ gray on a bookshelf. Beautiful.”
The road worsens, and the bus bumps violently. The cowboy clutches his pot. You suppose he’s here looking for specimens, and you tell him so.
“Nossir! Got plenty of Mojave already.”
He’s been here before then, you ask.
“You bet—my wife loved the desert. Always wanted to lose herself in these big skies.”
Bang!
A nasty jolt; someone shrieks. The bus lurches to a halt and the driver goes to investigate.
You check on your new acquaintance—he’s covered in dust. There are pot-shards at his feet and tears in his eyes. You offer to help him brush off, but he resists.
“She can’t end up on the floor of this damn bus!”
Understanding. Pretty big skies right here, you point out.
Enlisting another passenger, you lift the cowboy and carry him down the aisle, careful not to tilt him. With difficulty, you maneuver him down the steps and set him on his feet.
Some ashes fall to the ground, but the dust collector catches most.
A sudden eddy swirls.
He throws her skywards.