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Fiction
Fiction
The Gift
He was a gruff, crusty, old-country Italian, with a long memory for past hurts both real and imagined. When he was feeling testy — which was most of the time — he responded with a grunt. He gave me one now that meant no.
June 1994Fiction
A Story
For years I would ask my wife each day at dinner, “Why must we eat this food? It’s terrible — knishes, chicken soup, challah, kreplach,” and my wife would say, “We have to eat this food. We’re Jewish.”
June 1994Fiction
Cabin Pressure
Ted stares blankly at the seat before him, wondering how his travel agent could have construed his standard request for more leg room as a request for this miserable seat. His legs are cramped, his neck tense.
May 1994Fiction
Shame
After fourteen years of yard-walking a life sentence, Broadus Creek wore the mask of a traveler, implacably intent upon his route but thoroughly fortified against destination.
May 1994Fiction
It Starts With M
My grandmother regularly receives letters from my dead father. I’m on my way to see her now with one of them. Uncle Kirby wrote it. He writes them all.
May 1994Fiction
The Rain Maker
When my father was young, he loved his vegetable garden. He had reconstituted the soil from the bedrock up with lime, manure, and peat moss.
April 1994Fiction
The Lurch
He stands naked at the end of his dock. His body isn’t used to the cold anymore, and goose bumps rise on his sagging skin.
April 1994Fiction
Treadmill
Like a warm cloak, the mundane settled onto his shoulders. He pulled the edges of his days close around him, nestling into their routines.
April 1994Fiction
The Flood
There was no irrefutable justification for a sentence of genocide. But that was the verdict.
April 1994Fiction
Jesus
Right now it is eight-fifteen in the morning. I am on my way up to the office, alone in the elevator. It stops at the second floor. The door opens, and who should get on but Jesus.
March 1994
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