Fiction
Fiction
Melville’s Pale Ravener
A sophomore in high school, I got my first job at a second-hand bookstore a few blocks west of the Northwestern University campus. I mainly dusted and straightened the innumerable old books of all sorts, took in money and made change, and cleaned up the place on Saturday mornings. That last task was the vital
A Lion in the Woods
I It was nearly dark when 10-year-old Tommy Tucker zipped around the corner of the old train station on his bike to witness the cougar atop its prey. Startled by the squeaking brakes and the bike’s headlight, the huge cat retracted its claws and fled across the tracks, disappearing behind an abandoned warehouse. There on
The Sureness of Horses–Chapters 29, 30, and 31
Click to see: Summary of Preceding Chapters 29 I was dreaming of Marita when the phone rang. Could it be her? She had said she’d call as soon as she could. But the images I’d been conjuring up faded when the caller identified himself as Sergeant Ames from the Palo Alto Police Department. Police? “Mr.
Body Found in Monument Creek
The body lay in the creek amid the swirling and sloshing of broken sticks and plastic bottles that had accumulated between two large rocks. There was no blood, no sign of foul play – just the body of an older white or Hispanic male in a brown jacket, underdressed for the mid-March weather. He lay
Cole
It’s an old railroad style house fronting a thin street, not far from the train tracks and stockyards. Cole comes out the front door for a moment to check on his motorcycle. He won’t be staying long, but it’s dusk and he knows the neighborhood. The icy wind stings his face like bees. He’s visiting
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Novels and Collected Works
An Easter Story
Nothing had broken Leo’s way that year. In January, he lost a battle with his mortgage company that cost him his home. His wife left him in February, taking their two children and the family dog with her. She said she was tired of being ignored. He told her he didn’t want to hear about
A Bunch of Felonies
You know, that’s what my sockeyetrist told me. “Catherine,” he said, “you’ve got a person in you, another person besides you, and that person is all the time telling you, ‘Catherine, you’re no good, Catherine, you can’t do thus and that.’ And you are trying to become yourself, but that
Raymond Carver, Remembered
For those who weren’t writing back in the nineteen eighties, it’s hard to imagine what a broad shadow Raymond Carver cast across the writing world. His work, and articles about him, seemed to appear everywhere, including The Paris Review, Atlantic, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In his final year, 1988, he was inducted into the
Uncle Bill
Alice Randall drove along a desolate road amid the soaked barren wheat fields of northern Kansas. Stands of bare trees separated neighboring properties. Every so often, she would spot hunters in orange vests wandering over the dark wet soil. When she reached Masonville, she took a brief tour of the town to see what had
A Quiet Christmas
Scott woke up at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning, threw on some warm clothes, and took his dog Jasper for a long walk in the darkness. Jasper plunged into a few snow drifts along the way, his tail wagging and his breath creating a fine mist in the chill morning air. They played fetch in