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Killing Time

I was in a state of denial, of course, not only about the future, but also about the present. For there were many days I didn’t write in my journal, or even look for ways to better my family’s economic picture. I simply did nothing. Looking back from a distance of decades, I wish I’d been more aware that we are given a certain unknown number of days in our short lives.

Men Who Make Houses

I know the life story of every man who has so much as hammered in a nail at my house. This is not my doing. I’m disinclined to delve too deeply into the depths of anybody else’s dire experience. I’ve got my hands full with my own.

The Narrow Door

After I graduated from college, I worked as a prep aide at a large hospital. The prep aide was the person who went around each night and shaved patients for their surgery in the morning.

My Pink Tombstone

In spring of 1988 I became the caretaker of a twenty-acre plot my sister and her husband had bought as a prospective retirement location in the Black Forest of Colorado: elevation 8,200 feet. It was a great opportunity for me to write and reflect and rest up from the roaring hellfire on earth.

The Irving

In the small Nebraska town where I live, I am known as “the cook.” People I don’t know will often stare at me fuzzily for a moment before a flash of recognition lights their face: “Hey, I know you. You’re the cook.” Which is reasonable enough, I suppose, since I am the cook at the Olde Main Street Inn, the chief dinner house in town. It isn’t exactly what I’ve dreamed of being all my life, however. To be honest, being the cook is an unwanted byproduct of my efforts to be “the writer.”

All The Hours And None Of The Words

My father returned to the table, his lips clamped tightly shut and his brow furrowed. “That was the union rep,” he said. My dad swallowed hard, then continued: “Carl accidentally ran over one of the twins last night with the mower. She’s dead.”

Lessons From Basra

I work in the library of a low-income public school. I can see the kids are interested in war. The boys check out all the books about World War I, World War II, weapons, spies, codes, guns, castles, and knights. Boys without fathers are especially interested in combat.

Sunbeams

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.

Czeslaw Milosz