Fiction

"Talent," Robert Blaine said in his slow, invalid's voice, "is simply a matter of knowing how to handle yourself." He relaxed on his pillow; eyes gleaming, and shifted his skinny legs under the sheet. "That answer your question?" "Well, now, wait a minute, Bob," Jones said. His wheelchair was drawn up respectfully beside the bed…

Houses. She has a gift for houses, she sees what they might be, and beneath her tanned and capable hands, they become what they might be, their possibilities are realized. When she house-hunts, which she has done too often to suit her, she stalks the right house, want ads circled, realtors in tow like native…

The Puritan, like a memento mori grinning from a mirror, is still among us. Relentlessly, he reminds himself and us of our longings to shatter his image with the possibility of rebirth, of conversion, of utter transformation. But now, after tens of generations of staring stubbornly into himself, as if into the white night of…

`Over there, Bart, on the other side of the street,' Ella said, pointing to a vacant house, its uncurtained windows pasted with placards. It was an evening in early spring and they were strolling back along Rathmines Road in the last of the light, going towards Ella's house, which was just off the main road….

It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. Billy Boy had died of fright, scared to death on the field of battle, and Frenchie Tucker had been shot through the neck. Lieutenants Sidney Martin and Walter Gleason had died in tunnels. Pederson was dead and Bernie Lynn was…

"Hi, honey." "Oh, Daddy," Carolyn said. "It took you so long. Where are you calling from?" "The hospital," he said. "Where else? I haven't stuck my nose out of this cotton-picking place since eight o'clock this morning, and I don't feel like going home." "Well, how is she?" "I think she knew me, but she…

It is an early autumn Sunday evening. Still warm and Michael has not made love to me since August. Each night he sleeps as he sleeps tonight, facing the window with his knees drawn up away from me. This lack of attention is not, he says, because he doesn't want me; it is, he says,…

In his lifetime Virgil became familiar as anyone with the history of dreams, saw in his palms an old man dreaming as he held them before his face and died. As he became one of the aged dead who sing in our sleep. "There was a man one time," Abigail would say, when Virgil was…

The big bus wheeled up to the open gate and stopped. The doors hissed open. Larry looked both ways, took a deep breath, and swung the gleaming monster out into the heavy afternoon traffic. Here goes! he shouted silently. He headed for downtown, thinking, Oh Lord, I can't do it. I'll crash. Within fifteen blocks…