Fiction

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…

The air at the bottom of the garden was damp, but when Cecilia Lofton opened the gate, a gust of the chergui, loaded with needles of hot sand, struck her in the face. Raising her hand defensively, she squinted down the dusty road that meandered among scrubby palms and shacks of tin and cardboard until…

She is sitting in the car and I do my number. Looking down the sight I see an auriole fly to the right and left, all around in haloed flutters. Then it wavers like underwater noons, I have to split, my Uncle doesn’t wait. He says be back, be quick, be reverant. We pray for…

It is late afternoon, the Sunday before Labor Day. Paul looks over the classroom assigned to him and then goes outside, down the steps into summer heat and sun. In the middle of the dusty street, a girl with long legs leans into a car, talking with the driver. She balances on tiptoe and her…

for S.H. Not once in forty years have I gone without a meal or slept without a roof over my head. I’ve known less deprivation than anyone I know. My father died two months before I was born, it is true, and my daughter passed away before she ever spoke a word. But it’s hard…

In April when she drove away he looked at his hands. They were oily from the boat’s engine, from the garage. But what a thing to notice. He turned and saw the children, who were watching from the steps, and wondered what she had given him now. The day before she left they discovered something…

Running my five miles a day, I frequently encounter some smart-mouthed motorist who will pull alongside me and ask (from the safety of the driver's seat): "What are you in training for?" Deep and regular breathing is the secret; I am rarely out of breath; I never pant or gasp when I respond. "I am…

(a section from a novel-in-progress, The School Book) Eleanor Franklin went home and told. Eleanor is in the seventh grade, and is a little over thirteen years old. She is precocious (which doesn't mean much around the Tigris School because everyone there is precocious) and somewhat hung up on herself, as only children often are….

( from Part One of Chekov Was A Doctor) It began as liberation. Thursday afternoon we were released early from public school for religious instruction. My mother who could scream without raising her voice screamed, "Abe he disappears, ten years old and I can't keep track, Abe the street! Abe the element!" My father said,…