We’d barely gotten through the cottage door before I felt Grandma’s claws digging into both shoulders. I hadn’t minded her grabbing me from behind like that when I was a kid. Her towering over me, hands on my shoulders, had …
Some of the guys feigned party animal personalities: shirts carefully disheveled, pretending to love beer, chest-bumping high fives when someone said something about a woman, any woman (likely not present, they’d be too afraid to say anything that might actually …
Ahuuuga! Pause. Ahuuuga!
Abbie released the horn lever of the Model-T Roadster and swept her eyes over the small settlement. It was a little before noon and across the road and uphill a ways, a team and wagon stood …
Winter arrived late. It was held up by an extraordinarily long and mild autumn, and now it enters with an almighty blizzard that paints this month of March white. The snow slows everything down and it gives me time to …
Isaac Vanderoot received two phone calls that morning. Both triggered some anxiety. The first call came as he examined the guide wrappings on a fly rod. It was from the Senior Center, informing him that his application for an apartment …
The basement was neat and tidy, everything had a place and there was a place for everything. The only natural light streamed in through slit windows set just below the ceiling and opened onto the grass of the lawn outside, …
It was Spink’s idea. It was always Spink’s idea when it meant getting into deep shit. So why’d we go along with it? Why’d we do anything Spink suggested?
For one thing, we were bored, doing what we always do. …
Oscar pulled the branches to his side of the fence and snipped them with the secateurs. A sharp, resounding clipping sound that was oh so satisfying. The cheek of that woman, letting her hedge grow so tall and wide, impinging …
Anna Smolek is on Dakota Street now, working toward Ninth. Leaves swirl at her ankles, children streak by, shouting—a cloud is coming. The sauerkraut air is being sent east, into Tenth.
The old woman progresses in slippers, pause following step. …
“Here in my hands, I hold a 32-inch tool of destruction.” Coach Arnie peeled the last stubborn piece of cellophane from the Tennessee Thumper and flicked it into the swirling infield breeze. Taking a slow, metered pace, he gripped opposite …