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Fiction
Fiction
Selected Stories
A Zen monk and a Catholic priest were walking along a road. They came to a baby crying by the side of the road. The monk did nothing. The priest picked up the baby and held it in his arms. The baby stopped crying, and soon the mother came and took it from the priest.
August 1984Fiction
Cold Steel
She could have been cast as a nun in an old Bing Crosby movie, the one who trailed the heroine and only came in on the chorus. Charlotte was a person who seemed to have no childhood, whom you could not imagine as younger than she was at the moment you met her.
August 1984Fiction
A Clouded Visit With Rolling Thunder
well, rolling thunder wasn’t named that for nothing. he let me know for a good several minutes that he was displeased with my presence and my approach. he said i had no respect, and that was the trouble with white people.
July 1984Fiction
Descent Into Brotherland
Now I’ve visited okie in the brig before, I’ve visited okie in the psychiatric wards, and I’ve visited okie in the oklahoma jail, and I’ve talked to the lawyers and jail wardens and policemen and psychiatric boards and judges. So I’m only a little bit nervous about talking to this va psychiatrist about okie’s va check which hasn’t been coming for the right amount of disability since he got out of jail.
June 1984Fiction
Landing Light, Carrying Nothing
He struggled heavily between acceptance and terror, until at last the terror went, little by little, like the receding cry of a startled bird.
June 1984Fiction
Mexico
He turned and saw the snow in her hair and smiled at her, and she saw that the last trace of paralysis that had lingered in his facial muscles after the stroke was gone. His face glowed as if in sunshine. Joyful wonder began deep in his eyes.
May 1984Fiction
Spring Training
The package is wrapped in brown paper and it is soft, like somebody’s laundry coming back. It was delivered to the Admin building by the UPS, with Turley’s name on the address label. Sometimes Turley used to get a new pair of handle grips through the UPS, with his name on the label, but this is the first package he has gotten since the middle of the winter, when Mr. Parker died.
April 1984Fiction
Teachers
It was the intensity of the stare that made Sherab aware of the man. With a start he looked up from the orange basin of half-washed cups and saucers on the floor. The man’s pale, long-jawed face under its raft of red hair, a furious question in the blue eyes, sent a shock through him.
March 1984Fiction
The Very Last Supper
“Unique” is not the word to describe the messiah who came to stay with us. “Awesome” does better and “eerie” gets closer to home. . . . What I call eerie was his expression. His lips were always poised as if he were about to speak. But he never did, not a word. It got on my nerves.
February 1984Fiction
The Green Woman
A hush fell between us now that almost had a thickness to it. It was like the moment when you drop a stone down a well and wait for the sound of its striking.
December 1983
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