Fiction

"`The loss of clothing,'" Grent reads, "`implies free fall.'" I write this down. He pauses, scanning the page. "`In this general area a thumb was found hanging on a twig.'" I write this down. "`Whom we felt conclusively to be a member of the crew because the tissue was intimately associated with the control panel.'"…

Gracie turned on her side to look at the clock. She could tell by the way the sun struck the window and glowed through the frozen gauze around the bottom of the pane that a hard frost had come at last, that fall was beginning to be what it should be. All night the wind…

Every day did not start with Vince awake that early, dressing in the dark, moving with whispery sounds down the stairs and through the kitchen, out into the autumn morning while ground-fog lay on the milkweed burst open and the stumps of harvested corn. But enough of them did. I went to the bedroom window…

The things it never does any good to protest. With our only son, Billy Frank, Jr., in a Mexican jail for having been intercepted with something illegal strapped to his leg. With daughter Mary Jo making daily visits to the shot-doctor for “vitamins,” leaving her probably autistic child in a playpen fitted with baubles and…

There was such a strain on the silence between them after he'd eaten that it had to be broken. `Maybe we should never have given up the farm and come here. Even though we had no one to pass it on to,' Michael said, his head of coarse white hair leaning away from his wife…

A white thing floated near the wharf, like a tangle of intestines with a single wrinkled eye in the middle and a mouth. Three couples in weekend clothes stood in a row and frowned at its undulations with intense silent interest, then dislike. "What is it?" said one of the wives. The boat cast off…

Once she had been a photographer. Now as she hears the shutter click across the room, too loud, Helen wonders why it should be her husband who takes these family pictures when she is the one with the skills. She knows what the finished pictures will show: a stylishly thin woman, her four handsome sons…

I was old enough to know I wouldn't want to hear. But I didn't know what I would find out. So, I went along for the ride. The first colored person I knew was my maid, Marion. She had baggy eyes, baggy breasts, and a bad complexion. My mother made Marion tunafish sandwiches every day…

Poor Bernie, Ted thought, as rain thudded against the car like rotten fruit. Watching it stream and bubble on the windshield he promised himself not to complain about it lest Bernie's feelings be hurt. He was anxious to impress this on his wife. Poor Bernie, he said aloud. Things never work out the way he…