It takes time to learn how the ink bleeds. He would think of a theme—his grandfather’s oxen returning from the granary in a summer rain—and take out the inkstick. Once as long as the blade of his pocketknife, the stick was now just a nub, not much bigger than his knuckle. It was actually a…
Margaretta was sitting on the topmost step of her front porch, in a faded pastel-colored sundress, barefoot, elbows on her knees, chin in her hands—lost in thought, I surmised—when I first went to see her. Her husband was in the front yard, his hands on his hips, surveying the sky, where dark rain clouds were…
Sitting in his favorite chair on the screened porch on the ledge overlooking McHeard’s cove—what they could now see of it through the trees—Freddy Willems was reading his daughter-in-law Annie’s essay, yet another one, planning to tease her about how she did “go on at length,” when one line stopped him: “After her sister died,…
Harry and Greta were twins. He was—or so their parents told them—older by nine minutes, and therefore when they argued, he claimed to be older and wiser, the one whose opinions took precedence and to whom she should defer. She laughed at him, of course; she had spent her young life laughing, and when he…
1. Unless Henry was losing his mind, the laser printer at work had apparently attained some level of self-awareness. It must have happened during lunch Friday, because when he left his desk to grab a sandwich at the place downstairs, it was just a regular printer. 2. Specifically, it was an HP LaserJet Pro…
We left earlier than usual. The sun was barely peeking over the mountains. I was tired, but I didn’t make the schedule; SeaWorld made it, and the orcas made SeaWorld’s schedule. A couple months before, a buddy had told me SeaWorld was looking for orca hunters. It sounded cooler than it turned out to be,…
He lies clenched on his hard cot. The acrid smell of smoke bites. It’s been like this for weeks, covering everything. Fires starting all spring kicked up by the high winds. He tosses the sheet off. He’s got the suntan of a worker—pale torso, brown arms and legs. As he ages he gets furrier, his…
Snow Yu was not a bad mother; she was an overwhelmed mother. How could she not be overwhelmed by the size of her love for her daughter? It was a fierce and awesome thing. Unprecedented, as far as her own life was concerned. It seemed impossible that her heart had expanded as it had without…
On the day she will receive the terrible news, no one offers Ludmila and Antosha seats on the rush-hour train. “Hold on to the pole with both hands,” she instructs her grandson, but he’s distracted, opening his sweaty palm again to check that the tooth hasn’t disappeared. The previous night, Ludmila tied the loose tooth…
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