I finished shaving. A $10 coffee shop gift card was in the car, and although I knew I should hit the weights and take my usual morning walk, I also felt like a lazy day was not a bad idea.
Janice nudged me aside on her way to the ensuite.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Dunno,’ I said while pawing through the underwear drawer for just the right pair—supportive but not too bossy.
Continue reading “The Margin of the River by Mitchell Toews”
The other week I encountered a most unusual sport. You may know him. Wilson Mizner is a Broadway playwright, fine art forger, fixer of boxing matches, California hotel manager, and above all a professional gambler in all games concerning chance. His God-given talent of seduction enticed me into one game of cards I will never forget. The evening prior, the quick-witted 47-year-old traded a pistol fired by Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral for a mint condition 1922 ‘green pea’ Aston Martin, which he swapped for a remote ice-fishing shack on Devil’s Lake. He bet the icehouse on a game of war.
Continue reading “An Overnight Train to Minnesota by A.R. Carrasco”
Wattle’s life had a rough start. His mother died during childbirth, and his father was in Louisiana State Penitentiary. His first home was a run-down orphanage in New Orleans. At age fifteen, the institution closed, and he was thrust out to fend for himself. Wattle had learned many skills in survival, but he had never gone to school. So he enrolled in a state college on a paupers grant. After several years, he earned a bachelor’s degree and found work with a non-profit serving the homeless in Baton Rouge.
Continue reading “Wattle & Daub by Tim Hildebrandt”
On the night Frank Pearls died, he gathered his little congregation around his chair and gave each of them a little snack like a priest giving Holy Communion. They received their snacks gleefully and smacked their lips to show their appreciation. Then he settled back in his chair, swallowed another glass of whiskey, filled the glass again, and in his calm, pleasant voice, proceeded – sometimes he would read to them from Joyce, or Kierkegaard, or Al Capp, or sometimes he would just talk to them about philosophy, but he would never tell them it was philosophy. Tonight he would talk.
Continue reading “What Follows (The Chair) by R. Harlan Smith”
literally stories 