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Fiction
Crimson Tide
We’re standing in the drizzle — me and Uncle Oscar and Daddy and the chaplain and two soldiers who look like they’ve marched right out of the toy box. I half expect their feet to be welded to plastic platforms wedged into piles of sand.
December 1995Perry
Perry was just another scrubby desert town tucked behind a minor highway — to us it was a highway; to the state it was a tired dirt road that had been paved in an election year and forgotten.
December 1995So Familiar And Yet So Strange
First, there was the customer ahead of Simon in line disputing the price of a jumbo jar of sliced jalapeños. Then the senior who was low on cash and tried to pay on a credit card, invalidated three times.
December 1995Memory’s Tailor
“My name is Alexandr Davidowich Berman,” he wrote in the space above Lenin’s vest. “My mother’s name was Sophie. She knew Hebrew and gave me my first needle; we made a suit for a doll.
December 1995The Blessing
“It’s part of the aging process. Like sun-dried tomatoes. They taste more and more tomato-like the more shriveled they get. I’m just becoming more and more myself. You call it a caricature; I prefer to think of it as a distillation.”
November 1995Thirteen
I ’m kneeling in the foyer lacing my sister’s boot when I hear my mom muttering in the hallway. This time it’s not about the shoes in the living room or my father’s late child support. She’s talking about me. “Thirteen,” she says, “and you think you’re all grown up.”
November 1995Beside The Tracks
There are only two decorations in Tommy’s room, unless you count the beer cans, which you don’t. You simply trash them every morning like clockwork, after you’ve cleaned up the breakfast dishes, put away the sticky cereal boxes, swept the sandy kitchen floor.
October 1995His Master’s Voice
Whenever Dad came up to Nooksack from Seattle, he took my brother and me to the movies, or to a sandwich place on the waterfront where we shot pool. He booked a motel room in town where we’d watch color TV before he returned us to Mom’s.
October 1995Just Wind, And A Creek
Thanks to prison, he settled for sitting, munching applesauce doughnuts, and watching his candle burn. No bleeding-heart bullshit, no prayerlike mutterings, no beseechings or lamentations from Everett. He’d come a long way, after a long wait, to do a simple thing, so he shut up, sat down, and did it.
September 1995Poor Mortals
Larry couldn’t stop thinking of Mrs. Foster. He thought he must be in love with her. He never raised his hand in any class except hers. The other teachers didn’t seem to care whether he answered questions or not.
September 1995
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