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…
Flo knew the best way to kill a chicken and it was this. Hang it head downwards, hold on to it, and go in with your knife. Slit the roof of the mouth and the upper part of the beak. Go for the veins that cross each other at the back of the throat. If…
Ray, old buddy, one of the things I'll never be able to forget is the look on your face when you strolled into your bedroom and discovered me there with your wife. You were supposed to be away for the whole weekend with the Debate Team. Only they called it off, and so you got…
The story my father tells me is like the music one wants to make himself, or hears inside himself and nowhere else, elusive, as anything which is always present. He is here, seated on a rattan chair over which he has spread a sheet so that the rough, woven reeds won't snag his suit, a…
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