Orion’s Belt

The children of Open Plains Mobile Home Park get their first taste of tragedy. But for their parents, it’s only the latest.

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Dana Formby’s “Orion’s Belt” was a runner-up in the 2025 Great American Fiction Contest. Are you a writer with a great short story? You can enter our annual short story contest online!

They

were

three.

They had the same-shaped rooms with the same bunk beds, found at different yard sales, with the same but separate little brothers, and lived in the same but separate trailers, parked in different lots at Open Plains Mobile Home Park in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Open Plains Mobile Home Park had one skill. It wasn’t protecting resident’s cars from break-ins, nor was it granting access to luxury amenities. Its claim to fame — bang for its buck — fire in a crowd was it touted the highest birth rate among underage girls in the United States of America. The label underage stuck because statutory raped sounded too complicated and highfalutin for a man in love.

The three were born in the fall of 2015 to all the fanfare given to a single cockroach added to a harborage. The three did all their firsts together: first steps, first tooth, first words. Words bound them together and protected them like the three sparkles on Orion’s belt.

One.

Two.

Three.

The three invented their own language, own culture, own world. In the open prairie behind their single-wides, they staged battles and tales of epic proportions. Their commitment to characters and plots propelled their stories to outer space, where distant stars flickered an encore. The same but separate brothers learned young they weren’t part of their sisters’ scenarios. It wasn’t personal. Even other children couldn’t jump their sisters’ Double Dutch or impose rainbows on their sisters’ sidewalk-chalk-space-unicorn-fairy-carpark-miracle-mural.

No.

Not because the three were mean.

No.

Not because the three were exclusive.

No, it was because adding an ingredient to something perfect makes the something hunger for the simplicity it was before:

Mandy.

Mindy.

Melanie.

The three M’s. Their moms created a pyramid of strength for each other, propping up their small world against the insanity of $7.25 an hour. Minimum wage was created by maximum wealth. Mandy’s Mom, Mindy’s Mom, and Melanie’s Mom worked two jobs each to make the maximum out of the minimum.

Most single moms at Open Plains Mobile Home Park created these makeshift families. The collective lack of money bound these impromptu relationships together with the strength of blood. Living paycheck to paycheck was impossible, but living paycheck to someone else’s paycheck made cash liquid, so money could flow where and when it was needed most. The I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today style of economics kept the lot rent paid, lights on, and bellies full.

However, there were two women in the trailer park not bound by money. They were bound by something dark, something different. Something undefined. A glimpse of them walking to get their mail or taking out their trash transformed silence into a verb. Even the Wyoming wind, which never shut up, covered its mouth when it caught sight of them. Everybody in the park knew them as the “not moms,” and when children asked why, adults hushed them into that undefined silence and told them to go play. Babies learned before walking to steer clear of the “not moms.” Their black hole of doom had a gravity so strong that if anyone stepped toward them, the entire trailer park would be stretched into spaghetti, leaving only the unanswered question, “Why are they called “not moms?” Mandy, Mindy, and Melanie had as many unanswered questions as there were stars in the sky.

The three, their three brothers, and their three mothers made the most out of their makeshift family life by bouncing from trailer to trailer, depending on whose mother unit didn’t shift that night. They played together, homeworked together, and dinnered together. After the Melmac dishes were tucked away, the mom unit studied for her particular brand of vocation school, the boys played with their dump trucks or whatever little boys do, and the girls conjured tiny threads of stories into giant tapestries they rode into the shrieking Wyoming Wind.

They

were

three.

Then, one day, they were two. Mindy was gone. Not on a trip or an adventure or a place that WhatsApp could reach when the T-Mobile couldn’t or a letter that could be mailed to, or a song could be sung to. There was no could; there was only the unanswered question of two voices instead of three:

Why?

Why?

 

Mindy was gone like “that.” A snap. Gone like the flat, dried worms discarded on the concrete after the sun drank up the rain. Gone like the time the three used a magnifying glass to burst red ants into crawling bits of flame. Gone like Lester’s dog after Lester’s dad shot it in the head. “To put it out of its misery,” all the moms in all the same-size living rooms on all of the second-hand couches responded to the loud echo from the shotgun that rang out that August night when the crickets curled up in the quiet.

Why?

Why?

 

Silence filled the gap. Mandy and Melanie watched without Mindy as a stretcher bounced on the same gravel road that took the three to get suckers at the Key Bank on 22nd Avenue, the same road where little Johnny Kessler shot a bottle rocket at his eye, but it turned out okay because he could still see out of his left, the same road where Melanie’s first drops of blood fell from her twinkie-part onto the dirt from under her skirt. Mandy’s period hadn’t come yet, and Mindy’s never would.

Why?

Why?

 

A tall man in a tattered gray suit pushed the gurney. The cart conjured dust into the air as it jostled down the dirt road. The Mandalorian sheets Mindy got for her ninth birthday bounced around her lifeless body. The men from the truck that read “Coroner” must have decided to keep Mindy in her sheets. They must have been out of body bags. The sheets covered Mindy’s face. She was no more. The dust didn’t settle. It clung to the dry air and stuck to their two’s eyes — four, not six — and gathered in the back of their throats, which threatened to choke.

The two sat on the side of the road, watching a third of themselves be hauled away. The pebbles and stones screamed out in pain as the man wheeled one of Open Plains’ own down its dirt road. Man and cart moved like a snail without leaving slime. The crunch of rocks under the gurney’s giant swivel wheels seemed to never stop. A snail without the slime. Death was not new to the three. The wheels never seemed to stop. A snail. Their stories covered conquests of sword, steel, and stone. No slime. The wheels never seemed to stop. Each of the three knew the sounds it took to tell tales of the dead. The wheels never seemed to stop. A snail. The two just couldn’t imagine the sound of death was the sound of wheels that never ever seemed to stop. No. The jostle moved baby Yoda, holding his cup of soup, from Mindy’s face. Slime. Her eyes laid open wide to the wide open sky. When it got dark, could Mindy still see the stars?

The man stopped the gurney but couldn’t stop the sound of wheels that continued to churn the dust as he loaded Mindy’s body head first in the hearse.

“Headfirst is no way to go when you’re dead.” Mandy tossed a pebble in the street.

“Says who?”

“Says my Uncle Dale.”

“What’s your Uncle Dale know.”

“Duh, he works at the hospital.”

“He doesn’t work at the hospital.”

“The hospital’s on his route! That counts.”

“Does not.”

“So.”

“Not.”

“So.”

They never argued before.

“Not.”

“So.”

With Mindy missing, words failed their purpose.

The

two

 

sat in silence, waiting for the other to talk. It felt like a growing balloon was about to pop. The wind screamed and ripped the skin off their lips. The sun begged the moon to come out early to share the sky. Slime. Stars? Wheels. Kids lined the street like characters from a high-dollar TV show when they said goodbye to a longtime TV pro. The in-between light licked 123 blinking prepubescent eyes; it would have been an even number of peepers if that bottle rocket had claimed the prize of Johnny Kessler’s life. The tall man shut the metal doors. The dust ate the echo.

“Does not!”

“Does so!”

Kids’ noses flared as the hearse took several novice turns to leave Mindy’s hopscotch-covered driveway. Mindy’s Mom stepped down her worn barn red wooden stairs with an arm stretched out to her baby, her dead baby, her dead baby behind the metal doors. Mindy’s Mom staggered behind the hearse as if she were tethered. The two-float somber parade made its way to the end of the road and halted. The left turn blinker flicked on. The red flash from the signal cast a red glow on and off Mindy’s Mom’s face.

On. 7 lbs. 6 oz.

Off. Breath stopped.

On. It’s a girl.

Off. Lips blued.

On. Umbilical cord cut.

Off. She stopped.

The tether severed.

“Not.”

The hearse turned left off Open Plains Road onto Highway 32G.

“So.”

Mothers ambled down their own worn barn-red stairs like the chorus of a twisted musical as Mindy’s now “not mom” turned to make her sick promenade back to her lot. Screen doors opened. Hands and arms pulled their children from the road. Screen doors shut, articulating the climax of the group number. The snail. The stars? The wheels.

Click. Click. Click. The porch lights flickered on with an electronic buzz. Without slime. The light filtered through the dust-blown air and settled behind two women. The wind shut its mouth. The “not moms” stepped onto the dirt road. Stars? The undefined silence filled the air. The wheels seemed to never stop.

The “not moms’” silhouettes moved toward the two who should be three. The twang of an opening screen door politely excused itself to the magnitude of the silence it broke. “You girls need to come inside now.” Melanie’s Mom tugged on the shirt of her very much alive daughter.

The two didn’t answer. Wouldn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Words won’t work without Mindy. The girls couldn’t move without Mindy. They couldn’t live without Mindy. They sat and stared at the “not moms,” and something terrible clicked; the stars would never look the same if Mindy couldn’t see them.

Mandy’s Mom put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. It was warm. Alive. Safe. “Let’s go, girls, homework, dinner, bedtime.” The

not

moms’

 

silence was no longer undefined. A snail without the slime. Wheels. Stars. “Not moms.” The two silhouettes moving toward them knew what it was to hear wheels that never seemed to stop. Slime. Wheels. Stars. The “not moms” lost a “Mindy” to the universe and did not have the answer to “why.”

Mandy and Melanie stared at the “not moms.” They were not here to scare them; they were here to help, not the two, but the one, Mindy’s “not mom.” Mandy and Melanie stood in unison but felt off-balance without the Bubbles to their Blossom and Buttercup. The worn red wood of the porch groaned as the two girls made their way up the steps to their two mothers holding the screen door open. The sun followed them in, leaving the moon to welcome the night. Their screen door ached shut. Click. One more porch light added to the buzz of the cool night air. The two M’s crawled up on the back of the couch and pushed the sheer dollar store curtains aside.

Mindy’s “not mom” collapsed on the ground. She rubbed the yellow chalk on the hopscotch that Mindy made not two hours ago, now a precious artifact. The two “not moms” stepped onto the “start” square chalked out in pink. They knelt beside Mindy’s “not mom” and put their hands on her, knowing that they didn’t have answers to the one question she had. The wheels would never stop.

Mindy’s “not mom” abandoned normalcy to the women’s gravity as they held her, and she wailed a question to Orion in the night sky and the

two

became

three.

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Comments

  1. Excellent story Professor!! I love how you build the scene with your descriptions. What a harsh tragedy made beautiful with your words. I hope to read more work from you.

  2. My goodness, completely brought to life this childhood in this community. What a shock, this loss. Perfect repetition and imagery in this dramatic story.

  3. Very unique, well-written story, Ms. Formby. I do agree with the comments here prior to mine. I’d simply advise any other mothers with daughters (or sons for that matter) to get the hell out of that mobile home park as quickly as possible. It’s been targeted by an extremely sick killer or killers that won’t stop. Whatever law enforcement is doing obviously isn’t enough. Really terrifying.

  4. Such a powerful piece. So much pain, humanity and even hope conveyed in a few paragraphs.

  5. This is such beautiful work. Such elegant descriptions, even through a gut-wrenching read. Thank you for this powerful story.

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