Fiction

           J. O. BEALE J. O. Beale is a horse's ass which anyone can see he smells like something in the grass I couldn't finish the thought because I couldn't find the rhyme, though I wrote seven or eight rhyming words in the margin: free, sea, be, tree, me. Even Don key. None of them…

I want to tell you about the undoing of a man. I did not know him very well. It is only the conditions that led directly to his collapse that I know well enough, the handful of episodes that seem to me pertinent. I in fact was present at the critical moment – when matters…

Sweeping the decks. That was the start of it all for me. That was when I said to myself, It's really begun; we're launched now; no turning back. I was very nearly sick to my stomach. There were other times, of course. Earlier signals. Moments when I could feel something had happened, could feel the…

So far, I thought while snipping hairs from my nostril, the visit was going fine. I hadn't been expected, first of all, and so the initial surprise pleased my parents so much that any mention of our past difficulties dissolved in the affectionate air. Rather than asking – either pained or demandingly – why I…

The two boys stood mute with the anticipation of commerce. Talmidge was giving them last-minute instructions. "Now, your business is to sell. Stay out from in front of the spectators. And don't ever just stand still watching the matches. Keep moving." "When do we get our nuts?" Nick asked. Talmidge ignored the question. He was…

When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, and during the years when I was first falling in love with books and girls, I used to imagine that my Uncle Nathan was twins. Even back then, I guess, his life was a great sadness to me. What I couldn't figure out was how a…

Butch, determined to wait out the cold, took a stool near the end of the bar, away from the cluster of regulars gathered where they could see the Motorola TV. His back was only two feet from the front window. He could feel the cold seeping through the glass, hear the mean wind off Lake…

DUDE See I'd met this old dirt farmer in a bar the night before. Said he was selling his truck cheap and I could come down to La Rosa and pick it up. Said $300 and it didn't run too bad but I'd better buy it now. So I hitched down Sunday morning, mud churches…

I got over to the side of the road as far as I could, into the grass and the weeds, but my father steered the car over that way, too. Through the windshield I could see his work hat, the shadow of his face and shoulders, the specks of light that were his glasses. I…