Fiction

           for Richard Bausch   There was some sort of commotion at the end of the checkout line. Words had been exchanged, and now two men, one tall and wide-shouldered, the other squat and beefy, were squaring off against each other and raising their voices. Their shoes squeaked on the linoleum. The short one, who…

1. There was an old man in Germany who thought he was a Nazi. He turned himself in to a small court in a town near Nuremburg, and said, “Restart the trials, I should be punished for what I have done.” He was the right age, and his name was a fairly common German name—…

Looking Sometimes we still see it. Even now. Nights like this, sprawled on the deck of the mothership—stars rioting overhead, waves spanking the hull below—we close our eyes and there it looms, our Infinity, floating serenely across the insides of our lids like some pale winged creature borne of desire, luck, and dreams. Also a…

The notification came on a weekend, and Jake’s, in Iceland, had gotten through first. Sarah was in a desert, her cell phone wasn’t working well, and she had to go back to the base to find out what was wrong. She calls him from the landline, and he tells her as much as he knows….

Vito was lethargic, curled up in his fleece bed with sad eyes. He wasn’t eating. His distended abdomen was sore to the touch. Six times he’d eaten a sock. Five times it had come out the other side, worse for the wear, composted. But not this time. It was the sixth sock that did not…

Charlie Teitlebaum, a forty-two-year-old surgeon born and raised in the same Boston neighborhood in which Howard had grown up, had not been one of Howard’s residents, but while Charlie was doing his internship at The George Washington School of Medicine, where Howard was on the faculty, he and Howard became friends. At the time, Charlie…

Now they were in the car, a half hour late, on the way to lunch with Tina. Mary drove. Mary had said she’d leave him if he lied to her about other women again, and now she was leaving. It had all come out this morning. He felt sick. She seemed calm, determined, cold. It…

Kenya, Africa. Africa! Nine thousand miles from Portland. My wayward son Tim walks toward me with four tall, dark-as-midnight women. He has seen me, I’m quite sure of it, but nothing about his gait changes. He arrives at the tent and doesn’t say a word, or make any motion toward me. The thirty or so…

Here in this little town in Pennsylvania where I spend half the week and the whole long summer, we are urged to buy local. This is a pleasure, not a duty or a difficulty. The rewards are multiple: sticking it to the multinationals, high quality merchandise, real personal exchanges. Becoming known. The place in town…