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…

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…

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,…

"`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…