Fiction

When Burns arrived in Kotzebue, they were shooting the dogs. He'd never been to Alaska before and it seemed without compromise. Weather had kept him in Nome for two days where he'd seen a saloon fire. He'd been across the street in a shop buying chocolate and bottled water, and the eerie frozen scene mesmerized…

The Bighorns float above the haze to the west of our ranch like marble palaces in a fairy tale. Until the woman came, we'd never been up in those mountains. My father kept us to work day after day, or else there was school, and, until the woman, he'd said he couldn't leave the ranch…

Monday her car wouldn't start and Anita spent all day renting-a-wreck and driving like crazy to the hospital two hours away, and at five she arrived, and at five her father wasn't dead. (It was the carburetor, she found out later.) At five Anita's father was only dying: a man so pumped with fluid he'd…

Their plans were to develop the valley, and my plans were to stop them. I was caretaking this ranch in Montana that the two of them had bought, or were buying. One of them was an alcoholic and the other was a realtor. The alcoholic-the big one-was from New York and did something on the…

The reservoir was low. Waiting in the bushes for Jack Noble's car, I searched the water's skin for the steeple of the church that lay drowned beneath. My father had explained how the village of Neversink had stood here until the late 1940s, when the river was dammed and the valley became a giant cup…

They were in a bar far from home when she realized he was falling to pieces. That's what she'd thought: Why, he's falling to pieces. The place was called Gary's. "Honey," he said. He took the napkin from his lap and dipped it in his gin. He leaned toward her and started wiping her face,…

"Is this Lorraine Hennesey?" the woman wants to know as I lift the phone up to the bed. It's 3 A.M. Hennesey? Hennesey is the name I acquired in my second marriage-still a little strange even after two years. Especially in the middle of the night. "Yes?" "Who is it, Lore?" Sam asks from behind…

Since she's not in a hurry-not ever, anymore-Lydia Zimmer takes time to read the signs. Loose Carrots, Cherry Tomatoes, Pickling Cukes. She nods, stopping her cart by a bin. Purple Top Turnips, Lemon Curd, And she squints, her eyes in the mornings clear but dry. California Seedless. Another cart pushes around her, a young mother…

1 Half awake, pawing at the night table for The Book of Great Conversations, I knock the bottle onto the floor. The sound hangs there: there's a ringing part of it and a shattering part of it and a splashing part of it. I smell the gin. Well, it can stay there until I feel…