Fiction

Under the Trees on the Hill

In the first week of the last month of the semester, a new young inmate came into the classroom, took a seat, and watched the teacher with sharp eyes. Soon he was involved with discussions-even wrote essays, original stuff, quick-zipped them off, so smart. Sharp, and charming, good-looking yet warm, yet an edge of violence….

Six Pieces

The Low Road Soon she headed into the wind. Sepulveda Boulevard would lead her to the cornfields and crows of Scripture, a field gullied by rainfall, and parking lots where men sat in cars smoking. Sometimes they got out of their cars and went to the bathroom in a cement barrack. This action scared her…

Five Years Ago

It was Labor Day, September 2, a Monday, five years ago, and I was twenty-seven years old and about to bring my forty-four-year-old mother and my forty-four-year-old father together for the first time in my adult life. All my life I had daydreamed about this moment, wondered if it would ever happen, and now that…

The Night Nurse

Don’t doubt there’s a future. Rushing toward you. It was flat pavement, a busy pedestrian mall between downtown streets where she was walking in the tattered sunshine of a moist April morning when without warning the sidewalk tilted to her left, and a sharp pain like a wasp’s stinging attacked the calf of her left…

Insomnia

He thinks about the water often: sitting in traffic; in a chair in his office; in bed with his wife, Jeanette, who is now asleep. Together they live the life of the city, Phoenix, where the smog blisters the horizon and the swimming pools are treated by experts. Byron, his brother-in-law, runs a pool cleaning…

Other Wars

This is my tale about the Vietnam War; at least I think it qualifies. This story, however, comes no nearer to Phnom Penh than 10,000 miles: blame this lack of action on my year of birth-1954-and blame it on my gender. A muddy river does appear later on in this story, and you’ll see a…

Shining Agate

There was a beautiful young woman named Shining Agate, the oldest of three daughters, and she was very proud. Always, she insisted that her hair flow loose and free of tangles, that her dress be sewn from the most supple skins, that the meat of her soup be tender and cut into very small pieces….