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Siblings
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Tornado Season
I’m scared now because so little of the Darren I’ve always known seems to remain in his weakened body. I can’t remember ever having been more frightened by a change in someone. I understand that we should expect “personality inconsistencies,” as the emergency-room doctor said, but it’s as if an entirely new brother came home with us from the Wabash County Hospital.
September 2014
Readers Write
The Refrigerator
A mustard-colored declaration of love, holy pink boxes of leftover delicacies, long-necked brown beer bottles
September 2014
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Blue Magic
Every Friday night when I was twelve, I’d watch my cousin Derrick, fourteen, get ready to go out with a girl or to a junior-high-school dance. He’d take thick dabs of a hair grease called Blue Magic and rub it between the palms of his hands.
April 2014
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Last Harvest
During the months when my parents’ dream of owning a farm died, I became a sleepwalker, and Dad became ever more diligent about hygiene. He shaved twice a day: once before the sun rose and again just before sleep. He kept his steel-toed work boots dirt-free, the leather mink-oiled, the laces neatly double knotted.
January 2014
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Summit Fever
Impossibly bright stars fill the sky like silver glitter sprayed from a fire hose. And, to our good fortune, we’ve chosen to climb on the night of the summer’s largest meteor shower. Each shooting star is like a Roman candle.
January 2014
Readers Write
In The Dark
Reading Goodnight Moon to a child, cross-country skiing at noon under a full moon, gasping at the sight of the ocean awash in moonlight
September 2013
Fiction
Victory Forge
He is six years younger than you, and, although he’s over six foot now, you think of him still as “the boy.” He takes to the military quickly, memorizing the Soldier’s Creed, believing the army religion that all things can be improved.
August 2013
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Sandy
I remember there was a long pause while Sandy panted and our grand-aunt cried and we tried to calculate how we were going to get this dog out of the house and into the car. And then my tall kid brother bent down and picked Sandy up as if the dog weighed no more than an ounce, and he straightened up, with his arms full of dying dog, and there was this look on his face that I just cannot find the words for. That’s the story I want to tell you.
July 2013Fiction
Time Capsule
My sister Melanie won’t let me help with the time capsule we’re making. Four years older and in junior high now, she likes to boss me around. She’s searching the attic for things to put in the box when I give up and head down the stairs. I take the last three steps in one giant jump, then wish someone had seen me.
June 2013
Fiction
Walter Lee Is Home From Vietnam
We all lurched forward when Mama braked and the car crunched to a sudden stop midway up our gravel drive. Following her gaze, we stared next door at the crisp green lawn of the Lee family. A wooden sign with red and blue letters hung across their side porch. It read, Welcome Home Walter, with small white stars across the bottom.
June 2013
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