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Fiction
Fiction
Liberating Horses
She had her favorite already. He was the one who had implored her most beseechingly to get him out where he could run and play, and he was the one who was happiest to be out, munching the tender green grass, running this way and that, jumping and kicking.
February 1987Fiction
Two Stories
I spend a lot of time thinking up improvements on God. When Frank thinks I’m busy typing letters, I’m actually preparing my list. Frank is my boss, the pastor of a large church. He is rotund, and endlessly talkative.
January 1987Fiction
Heritage Clay
Her fingers caressed her statue. She pressed her thumbs into the woman’s forehead. Her beloved clay was soft and cool and oily. Her mother had willed her the clay. Heritage clay. Ninety years old. “It will mold your life,” her mother had said. Now Dorothy’s life threatened the clay. Her hand was too heavy.
January 1987Fiction
Backlighting
Alice’s husband was a man constantly in motion, and now that he has returned as a blue jay he is not much different. If anything, he is more nervously energetic than ever.
December 1986Fiction
You’re Weird, Irene
The woman sits there a while and then we can see her face changing. It looks like she’s got all the troubles in the whole world. Her face crinkles up and she starts to cry. She wipes away her tears but they keep coming down and flowing into her toothless mouth.
December 1986Fiction
The Pure In Heart
The voice is unmistakable. At the first intonation, the first rolling syllable, Swain wakes, feeling the murmuring life of each of a million cells. Each of them all at once. He feels the line where his two lips touch, the fingers of his left hand pressed against his leg, the spears of wet grass against the flat soles of his feet, the gleaming half-circles of tears that stand in his eyes. His own bone marrow hums inside him like colonies of bees. He feels the breath pouring in and out of him, through the damp, red passages of his skull. Then in the slow way that fireworks die, the knowledge fades. He is left again with his surfaces and the usual vague darkness within. He turns back around to see if Julie has heard.
November 1986Fiction
Fire Moving In The Sky
It was the first time events made a difference, the first time I recognized an involvement in what happened beyond the few back yards and playmates that were my universe, the first time anyone said, “You will remember this day forever,” and I believed it.
October 1986Fiction
Gold And Black
Then he turns to me, and direct as an arrow says, “You gonna be there?” (This, I thought, is what they refer to in books as “the moment of truth.”) My heart was creeping up my esophagus like an inchworm; but my tongue would not unwind.
October 1986Fiction
Life And Death
A cold rain beat on the canopy over the grave site. John pulled down the brim of the walking hat she’d gotten him on their ramblings through Ireland. Just before he stepped under the canopy, he glanced up at the sky and recalled when his father had died.
September 1986Fiction
The Love Story
We swore to do it till death do us part and neither of us crossed our fingers. That, in itself, was rather a miracle. We were hardly speaking at the time. “I will” was a long conversation.
August 1986
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