The day the shortstop died, Katie Mays was in the kitchen, arranging a sprig of baby's breath, fresh from the garden, onto her father's breakfast tray. Merely glancing at the front-page headlines, she opened the Daily Oklahoman to page five-sports scores and standings-and placed it neatly next to the cut-glass pitcher of orange juice. More…
MORNING Alvin Bishop rises at dawn and faces east, framed in his bedroom window, a thin, naked man, skin the white of flour, hair wild from sleep and as dark as the earth. The sun's light, but not the sun, is visible to him, as if the thing itself were buried nightly beneath the rows…
When finishing graduate school at Harvard, Manny Chokra met with instant and astonishing success. At the age of twenty-six, quite by chance, he made two new discoveries in the field of neurological physiology, and though his dissertation was barely complete, universities all over the country were offering him jobs. Manny accepted a tenure-track position at…
After the protests began, I started running on the beach. I went up every day after work, took off my long sleeves and concealing skirts, slid into nylon shorts and a tanktop. Then I ran. Two kilometers north along the curve of the beach, followed by a swim in the warm, enervating sea. The run…
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…
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…
Lavalle Freeman is coming home from Africa with a parasite. Every morning for the last three weeks at the base he woke up listless and could hardly drag himself out of his bunk for drills in the humid mist. Then he began to urinate blood. The Army doctor outside Kalingani talked with him for half…
My wife and I, we have this game we play called "Confusing the Dog." My wife, she plays the game, knows all the rules, but she doesn't know I named it. I named it about the time I realized we were hooked-us and the dog. The game goes like this: I go to bed or…
Dan had fallen asleep waiting for Nick and this Patty Keith, fallen deep into the lapping rhythm of a muggy Chesapeake evening, and when he heard the slam of car doors the sound came first from a dream. In the hushed amber light of the foyer Dan offered Nick a dazed and disoriented father's hug….
No products in the cart.