Pilgrim
By Short Story Issue 66
ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Ray Martin ran into a crowd at an early season indoor track meet, hundreds of kids in a dozen colorful uniforms lounging all over, if they weren’t high-stepping in some warm-up ritual dance or actually lining up for a sprint. Everywhere you looked there were perfectly formed bodies, as if there’d been…
Read MoreThe Kind that Heals
By Short Story Issue 68
ON MY BROTHER DECLAN’S third day on life support—the morning he becomes newsworthy—strangers begin to leave messages on the home phone. A funeral director leaves his number. An alarm-system salesman warns of the characters who scour the Globe and the Herald for stories like Declan’s, for tragedies that strike families from well-off towns, leaving their…
Read MoreEnds of the Earth
By Short Story Issue 68
JONQUIL EVANS TURNED off of the blacktop and drove toward the pines in the distance. Gravel sounded against her LeSabre. She drove gingerly, but on this afternoon in late November the makings of a holiday wreath meant more to her than her LeSabre’s fine finish. Her husband the judge was good to her. Sometimes it almost…
Read MoreDispatches from the Prayer Tower
By Short Story Issue 67
THE ETERNAL FLAME was out when I got to work this morning. I was in the middle of smearing on a little lipstick, and I nearly ran it right across my face as I stared up at the empty patch above the spire at the top of the Prayer Tower. This, of course, made me…
Read MoreSafari Supper
By Short Story Issue 69
hors d’oeuvres THE HASTILY ASSEMBLED spread on the dining-room table—Pringles, Wheat Thins, a bottle and a half of Merlot, four cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, a bowl of leftover Halloween candy—might be worse than no spread at all. This is one reason the hosts, Wendy and Drew Pike-Stuyvesant, are ashamed of and angry with each…
Read MoreZero Gains
By Short Story Issue 69
YOU SAY YOU’D LIKE a story for the ages, but you should know we live a little outside of time out here. Out here is the Nebraska panhandle, leveled as immaculately by wind and the spin of the planet as if it’d been planed by a master carpenter. As if the raw materials of the…
Read MoreRunning the Whale’s Back
By Short Story Issue 72
The following excerpt is from the novel A Blessed Snarl, forthcoming from Breakwater Books in 2012. THE WEATHERMAN’S HAND sweeps from Labrador down Newfoundland’s fanged north coast to Saint John’s, his finger squiggling from there down to Renews: the sea white against green land. He’s talking about winds rifling in from the north. The…
Read MoreGlorybound
By Short Story Issue 72
The following excerpts are from the novel Glorybound, forthcoming from WordFarm Press in 2012. Aimee THE LEMLEY SISTERS had decided they would drive to the prison on the first Monday in August, but on that morning, Aimee woke with bad pain. It was still dark, not yet five. She peeled off her blanket and…
Read MoreInterference
By Short Story Issue 70
BABE O’LEARY IS GIONG up to the ballpark and it’s probably going to kill her. Well, there are worse ways to die. Getting downstairs is slow torment, one step at a time so the kneecaps won’t scream. She shifts her weight as if it’s a sack of laundry. Before she deals with the subway steps…
Read MorePadre Nuestro
By Short Story Issue 70
En el Nombre del Padre ON THE NIGHT of our grandfather Papa Tavo’s death, Tío Gonzalo was watching the midnight replay of that week’s Lucha Libre, the only kind of wrestling he would watch. Like she did on so many other Saturday nights, our Tía Victoria had gone to bed early because even though…
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