Fiction

We're mining a vein of blue clay under the red dusty Texas topsoil, squaring up a ditch the backhoe left too rough and can't get back to. We slice at the walls with the sides of our shovels and peel up from the bottom long curls of clay that twist away like orange rind. "The…

Five-five and one-twelve, thirteen years old, out of an obscure elementary school, a complete unknown. Dale Wheeler walked into the boys' locker room to spin the dial of his combination lock. It was Emerson Junior High, a school with a double gym with a floor the color of whiskey upon which street shoes were never…

On a deceptively mild evening in the fall of 1964, a bomb exploded in Hayes-Bick. It had wobbled in like a rugby ball tossed into a scrum and lay there innocently for a few seconds, as if waiting to be kicked. Then it blew up. Dense, acrid smoke instantly filled the cafeteria. There was no…

I’ve been an off-season traveler since my divorce, and this winter I’m in Spain. A man is following me. On the train from Madrid he was a businessman with an eager mustache and samples of his product: copper wires, copper disks, copper beaten into thin, pliable sheets. I took everything he gave me and stuffed…

Cally was sitting Indian-style on the hood of their banged-up Impala, her jeans unbuttoned halfway down to ease the strain of morning sickness. Earlier in the day it had been foggy and cold, and she was still wrapped in one of Jack's blue flannel shirts, her blond hair falling down over her shoulders. She was…

In those days-I mean the Forties and Fifties, of course-people were so extremely reticent and modest that the hard questions might not even come to mind, let alone to words. Perhaps if I had discovered all at one blow that Oliver was in truth an Olive. I might have reacted more strongly. But it didn't…

The sky was still black when Joe Hennessy came out to stand in his driveway, and the moon was nothing more than a shadow. It wasn't unusual for Hennessy to be out at odd hours; he hadn't been able to sleep for two weeks, not since he was promoted to detective. He could feel his…

This was the year the summer would not end in Europe. Even the terrorists went about their work in short-sleeved shirts and sandals, hurtling from target to target in air-conditioned BMWs. It was the Chernobyl summer also, and a Polish emigré she knew linked the hazy sunny days and humid nights to the Soviet rads…

Since we arrived in Banaras, I've become very sick. David is not sick, not yet; but he's also in danger of dying. We don't know yet. Many Indians believe they will go directly to Nirvana if they die in Banaras. They want to get out of this world and never come back. We're Americans, and…