Fiction
Recommended
From Three Jacks
Sunrise, Friday, November, 22,1963, not yet but about to be one ugly day in U.S. history, and standing over there about to climb into the family Nova was my dad, Jack, the man suffering—in words…
Havesu
He watches Elain’s buttocks, the tan shorts browned at the seat, as she walks briskly ahead of him on the narrow trail. Her dirty orange day pack bounces on her back, the leaky canteen a…
Now and at the Hour of Our Death
Luis strained his ears, watching bare jacaranda branches twitch in silhouette against the bedroom wall. The bedroom window was sliding up. It was not a dream. A human shadow was nearly indivisible from the web…
Brothers
About a year and a half after Mitch fell, he decided on a comeback climb. Understandably, his wife was less than enthusiastic about it. Everyone agreed the fall should have killed Mitch or, worse, made…
Saturday Evening, Sunday Afternoon
At thirty-eight I’m still single. Actually, let me be perfectly frank: Possibly Steve Young and I are the only people in the Western Hemisphere who have remained celibate until such an advanced age, and he…
Driven
For my father-in-law, who knew the conflict Alvin Hawking awoke two hours after dusk. He slipped out of his cot and dressed in the dim yellow light that washed through the screen door at the…
Sally Didn’t Sleep Here
“Sally snores,” says Ed, and I sink into my shoulders and smile uncomfortably at Gemma and Frank on the couch. “I don’t snore,” I say defensively. “I don’t even sleep.” “Ho,” answers Ed. He leans…
Coyote Laughter
The flask lay under a loose plank on the back porch. To someone lifting the board there was only an empty space, but when Wayne knelt and reached to his elbow beneath the adjacent board,…
Another Death
One Saturday morning Jimmy wondered about himself as he lay in bed instead of watching cartoons on TV or shooting baskets through the hoop under the eaves. They didn’t have a garage, but they didn’t…
Flight
Out of the corner of her eye, Leila watched a woman and her husband climb into the Peugeot taxi that Leila was taking from Oran to Algiers. The woman wrapped her black haik close against…