Her mother was humming in the kitchen. On her street, boys kicked a ball to each other, their shouts mixed with the sounds of her father and her neighbor's chatter.
“Ah, here she is,” William said, when he turned to...
I take a sip of instant coffee from a paper cup, look up, and scan the clearstory, the seven rectangular windows that run the length of the great room just below the eighteen-foot ceiling. In a perfect world I’d...
I am a home health nurse for Williamsburg County. My present occupation has not caused me to be shot at, molested, or otherwise screwed with because I am six feet, four inches tall and weigh two hundred and sixty-five...
FALSE STARTS
Writing this year was all False Starts and Premature Finishes. I could not find a character to tell a story. I could not find the story. Forget setting. Well, maybe not. So, I resort to the age-old plot:...
The real estate agent texted me to say the sofa wouldn’t fit through the front door, so the clean-out crew just left it. One of its legs gouged the doorframe, then gave one of the auction guys a splinter...
Phinn took a sip of rye. He wasn’t inclined toward hard spirits but he hoped it would quiet his thoughts, blunt his worries. He wanted to go out but the snow would make it difficult, if not impossible. Still,...
“Oh, and one more thing, Rabbi. One of my sons wants some of the cremains.”
The rabbi eyed Lillian Diamond’s two sons. Which one wanted them? No need to ask. It would be the younger one. The older ones were...
Where I worked was a B & B, trying to be European, but hopelessly American, surrounded by rangy sunflowers which looked like weeds that were pretty. Behind them was the small two-story lonely-white B & B, with its old...
Bocas Del Toro, Panama 1931
In the house where Mama got sick, we five children, all under the age of twelve, waited for our fathers. Mama was a troupe singer and dancer. Dancer headwrap and dancer feet. Dancer fingers and...
Dad never liked Mum's dog, but he only killed it by accident. He hit it with the car in our driveway, just as we got back home from football practice. He was telling me about the Dutch team in...
April 15th, 1832
On the second day of our anchorage at the mouth of the Rio Santa Cruz, I led a party of sailors up to the summit of the hill where I’d stumbled upon an Indian grave. Two large...
Gifted Sister
My oldest sister is gifted. When things break, she fixes them. Though often they still don’t work, our parents beam with pride. Sometimes our gifted sister breaks things just to fix them. And our parents beam with pride...