“Communist” by Richard Ford is about the fleeting love the narrator’s mother has for Glen Baxter. This becomes very clear near the end of the story starting with Glen and the narrator’s mother’s conversation shown below.
“nobody’s going” he said “this is over with now” and my mother gave Glen a cold look then “you don’t have a heart, Glen,” she said “There is nothing to love in you. your just a son of a bitch, that’s all.” And then Glen Baxter nodded at my mother, then, as if he understood something that he had not understood before, but something that he was willing to know. (231)
What was recognized was the mother’s feelings towards him, a sign that there love life was no more. Promptly after this scene Glen responds to the message the mother gave by handing the narrator a pistol, so that he would be killed with it. This only further proves the emotions that have come to pass between the two and the heart brake caused by it. Putting a more physical expression into Glen’s understanding of how the narrator’s mother feels. ending with their once youthful love being left behind like the one goose left in the lake, the exact argument that finished there relationship .