July 1878 Even sage hens were panting. Belle Bishop and I dangled our feet in a cooling bucket of well water while sewing clothes for our corn husk dolls. On the horizon, particles like a fine snow blew across washboard sand and platinum wheat grass. Sheep stampede, I said. And Belle said, Corn silk does…
The Andersons’ house perched on the corner of our block like a dinosaur, with wings and a tail that spread into the lot behind it, growing in sections as the family increased. Mrs. Anderson had five children by her first husband, who died in bed of a heart attack the morning of their tenth anniversary….
It’s not a nice thing. Not a nice idea. Or it might be a nice idea. Who knows? King Kong. Mighty Joe Young. Cheetah. But it’s not nice, not really. Living with monkeys is not pretty. Beside the quart of chocolate milk (which had to be divided equally, my brothers and sister slowly measuring), live…
stood across the dusty street from Sam’s Shade Tree Saloon. Once, during a holdup, bullets whizzed through the door past the trimmer’s chair where Mama sat not five minutes before. That was the year of the flood, when we had to pile hat trimmings on high shelves and escape with our lives and Mama’s wool…
‘Yde’s the name. Edward ‘yde . . . or Hyde, as educated folk like yourself would have it. That’s my real name, although for the past fifty years, Hyde has stayed hidden under the moniker of Edward Layman. To the good people here in the West Midlands, I’m just Layman or Ed, no different from…
the Old Country where the children we were walk around in black and white movies, long nights with bugs flying in my window, dreams slippery as wet fish, moans in the air from our parents’ room? Horses kicked at their stalls, heat shivered in the summer skies. Sleepless we held our breath, saw shadows come…
The old woman drowsed beneath an overhang of Orphan Annie hair. The blast of orange swirls and curlicues was blinding in the sun. Monsoon wondered how the old lady could sleep with all that brightness in her face. His backside was going numb against the pavement. Blinking, he scooched sideways for an up-close look at…
The summer I was fourteen, I went to stay in a small house in Connecticut with my grandmother and grandfather. My mother sent me there, she told me years later, because I was driving her crazy, coming home late, shirking my chores, smoking my father’s cigarettes. She wanted me out of the house, she said,…
After he left, even the topography shifted. Overnight our seaside resort became winter dusk in Detroit. Tall buildings stared me down, and like rush hour denizens pressed their gray bodies against mine. Their shadows quivered in my windows and coffee cups and tasted of secondhand smoke. Like me, they were all insomniacs. One corporate center…
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