Dennis woke up lying face-first in a field at noon. His car sat twenty feet away with the driver’s door open, engine running, and headlights on. A half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels stood upright on the ground directly between him and the car, and the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” was playing on the […]
The ’67 Cadillac shot down a desolate prairie road and skidded into the parking lot of a diner, kicking up a wall of dust. Zeke threw the car in park, left it running, and ran inside. Whitney was placing a chicken fried steak in front of a lone customer from across the counter. Zeke grabbed
I held back my breath for a time, but you didn’t. You had been to the very edge of the world. You knew the sound of the wind, low and constant, thrumming against the land, the ice, the sea. You’d seen how the pale gray-green earth disappeared beneath ice and snow, and then how that
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In the middle of a long, hot summer, Malcolm Watkins attended the funeral of his friend Guillermo Rivas, who had overdosed on OxyContin. Malcolm didn’t know the Rivas family. Other than the priest, Guillermo’s father was the only one who spoke. He kept begging his dead son for forgiveness. He wept so much throughout the funeral
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Charlie approached the steam table, held his steel tray out above the sneeze guard, and waited to be served. Sylvia, the blue-aproned lunch attendant, held her spoon poised and waited for his order. Charlie, though, was silent. “Meatloaf?” she offered at last. Charlie shook his head. “Soy burger?” Sylvia asked. Charlie shook his head. Behind
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Karen was down to 100 pounds. She wore long sleeve shirts to work to hide the marks on her arms. It had gotten so bad that one day, her boss pulled her aside and said, “Karen, do we need to talk?” ”Don’t, Ben. Life just sucks right now, you know? I’ll handle it.” And life did