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Fiction
Fiction
The Reverend Clearwater Immler Meets The Devil
Evil crouched above him in the eaves, watching, soundless. Infinitely patient evil, colorless, invisible in all lights. If evil has a mouth to smile, it was smiling. Its long waiting had at last been rewarded.
November 1989Fiction
Thin Ice
When we got to the pond, he stopped calling her name. The hole was black, and little black waves splashed against the jagged edges of the broken ice. Father took one step onto the pond, but had to jump back.
November 1989Fiction
Second Thoughts
I had seen the boy many times before, but never really looked. I did not actually know his name until the day he was being escorted to the front office by a smug-looking assistant principal.
November 1989Fiction
Alice’s Hunch
Dickens, I find myself thinking. Not Toulouse-Lautrec drawing in smoky bars, but Dickens; this morning I am Dickens walking around with eyes wide open, seeing a pure beam of humor illuminating human squalor.
November 1989Fiction
Serpent’s Tooth
We lived in a walk-up apartment house. The three of us would anticipate his footsteps, listening for them up the tiled stairs and across the tiled floor. He had a variety of walks: a confident, sober stride; a penitential limp; a self-assured, rocking swagger.
October 1989Fiction
Class Struggles In Sweet Cider
This is the part where Karen Wheeler jumped in and turned the world around, whether because Karen Wheeler is one fine bowler herself and enjoys as much as anybody kicking the butts of the folks over in Greensboro, or whether, as I’ve said, her heart has spots soft for Gus, I don’t know.
September 1989Fiction
Rock Sitting
She never talked to any of them — neither the rocks nor the creek, the roots nor the leaves, nor even the birds perching overhead. Words killed living things, fixed them forever as solid matter. Nothing was solid here, as long as she didn’t breathe a word.
September 1989Fiction
Caleb’s Journal
I live alone. Other men might be lonely. But who can notice what might be absent when other things are present?
August 1989Fiction
Wind
That damned wind! It did whatever it liked. It caressed your hair, your legs, your shoulders, your breasts. I hated it, Kristin! I wanted to kill it.
August 1989Fiction
Sheltr For Sad Ould Men
The old man had walked a long way, from afar, and he was not well. He wiped his forehead and raised his head. Around him were sand, thistles, and strangely — where did it come from? — a house.
August 1989
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