This is what I consider to be my first real publication, in a proper 'zine. This story was published in the now-defunct "Morphic Tales" in 2000, and was illustrated by Beerhorse.

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Oh, sure. This used to be a nice neighborhood until the hoofers moved in. My great uncle opened this store. It was a busy place back then. The soda fountain was always packed with teenagers, and the older folks would sit in the back waiting for their prescriptions to get filled. I remember getting candy from my father after my Cub Scout meetings, and then working the fountains when I was older. It was my idea to put tables outside on the sidewalk for folks to sit at during the summer.

Yup, this neighborhood used to be a great place to live. Then they started the projects.

I went down to city hall with the rest of my neighbors to protest, of course, but it was already a done deal. They built a huge brick tower on the empty lots a block over, and the hoofers started moving in even before it was done. “Low rent housing” the city called it. I called it trouble.

Folks started moving away not long after that. Can’t say that I blame them. But this store’s been in the family too long for me to just give it up like that. So I put bars on the windows and keep a gun behind the counter. Haven’t been robbed yet, but I’m not about to let my hackles down.

Oh, there’s some folks from the old neighborhood left. Mostly older folks like me, who haven’t the heart or the money to move. And some of the hoofers who pay me business aren’t bad, not like they make out in the movies. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let any of them run up credit on me! Who knows when they’ll be able to pay up.

Last year some hoofers started a riot with the police over some damn thing. When that horse threw himself down to protect that officer... Well, things changed. A little. The hoofers seemed to walk a little taller – and that made them more dangerous, if you ask me. “Give a hoofer a pat on the back and he’ll kick you in the chest,” my dad used to say.

City hall, of course, wanted to make some kind of grand gesture to the hoofers. They got a grant together and hired some hoofers to paint murals at different places. One of the spots they picked was on the building across from my store.

That old building had been a lot of things – a department store, an apartment building, and now it was a warehouse for some out-of-state paper company. It had gotten a little boring, looking out the window at the bare concrete side of that place. But I didn’t know if I wanted some “hoofer pride” picture thrown in my face every morning.

Well, next thing I know there’s a whole blasted zoo of hoofer kids across the street, all armed with paint and brushes. I didn’t even know how they were gonna use those damn things, what with the clips and harnesses they need to handle little stuff like that. That’s why those hoofer folks just do the rough jobs, you know. Can’t handle the little things they need to in order to do real work.

They got the wall all whitewashed just fine. And they started painting, sure enough, a little bit at a time. I finally figured out why they needed so many kids to do the job. They painted with their mouths! Can you imagine? It was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen. They stuck the brush in their mouth like it was a carrot, and painted! At the end of the day their faces would be all covered from nose to ears in paint, but they would come back the next morning, day after day.

Mid-days they would break for lunch, and some of them would scrape together some change for candy. Now you see, I’ve got nice linoleum floors in here that my grand uncle paid good money for. The adult hoofers always wear those rubber shoes when they come into respectable places, but these kids were tramping around bare-hoofed. And I wasn’t about to let them run wild on my floor, chipping it all up and probably getting paint everywhere in the process. I made ‘em stand at the door and give me their orders.

Of course, though, I had to let them inside that one day when it started storming. They might’ve drowned if I hadn’t. There was lightening, sheets of rain, and wind. It kicked up something fierce, all out of nowhere. The kids were pretty well behaved – I think the storm gave them more of a fright than they wanted to let on.

I’ll admit it was interesting, opening the store each morning and seeing how far the little trotters had gotten. Some of their scaffolding blocked the wall, so at first it was hard to make out what they were getting at. But everyday you could see more and more of the picture. It wasn’t anything that you’d see in one of those fancy museums uptown, but for hoofer kids it was damn nice. They painted some flowers, and some trees, and a bunch of hoofer kids of all sorts… Horses and donkeys and pigs and such. All of them had big painted smiles, like they were dammed happy to be painted on that wall.

One afternoon, while the hoofer kids were packing up for the day, I heard some whooping and hollering. I looked out my window and saw some bigger kids bothering the hoofers. I’d seen these kids before – a big pack of wolves, always bent on causing trouble. They were the ones, I think, who kept stealing the tables and chairs from out front of my store.

Anyway, I saw these kids picking up the cans of paint and throwing them all over the nice picture the hoofer kids had done. They were taking the brushes, too, and scrawling all sorts of foul things on the wall. Those poor hoofers… They just stood and watched those wolves, like they didn’t believe what was happening.

What could I do? I grabbed the gun from under my counter and ran out into the street, hollering at that pack to leave the poor trotters alone. Those wolves took one look at me and my gun, hopped right back into their car, and drove off. Damn cowards.

But those poor trotters – all their hard work was ruined. It was a real mess, with streaks of paint and nasty things all over their flowers and smiles. A damn shame. Damn shame.

I went back into my store and got all those poor kids a licorice stick so’s they would stop their crying. Polite little kids, full of thank-you’s. They finally all went home. I figured I wouldn’t see them again.

But what do you know… The next day they were back at it, fixing the damage that pack had caused. And they changed the picture, too. Look across the street there, on the right side of that big tree. That’s my store. See it? And that fox wearing the apron, standing in the door? That’s me.

I still think I look dammed silly with that big painted grin on my face. But at least they didn’t paint my muzzle all gray.