Fiction
The Bear’s House
The town of Blackwell changed its name in 1786. It had been called Bearsville when first founded, but that name did not encourage new settlers. There were nearly as many black bears in the woods as there were pine trees, but there were also more eel in the river than anyone would have thought possible. …
The Telephone of the Dead
Marnie Gottfried’s husband, Steve, had been dead for two weeks when he called her for the first time. She had just returned from Israel, hadn’t even unpacked, was as unhinged and raw as she would ever be, and the telephone call sent her windmilling to a therapist. When she mentioned the telephone call to the …
The Sea That Leads to All Seas
A month after her boyfriend Mohamed is deported, Larissa agrees to dinner with the dental student. When you are deported from the United States, you are barred from reentry for ten years. In 2013 Larissa will be thirty-five, the age most doctors cite for increased risks in pregnancy. She has decided on one plan for …
Punishment
She told the police she couldn’t remember anything. From out of the pain and the dim apprehension that she was alive, she shook her head no. Even after she’d been stabilized and the swelling had gone down so that she could see—though her vision was blurred and the iv drip made her mind hover just …
Alphabet
“Tomás,” my mother used to tell me, “Tu tienes que hablar por mi.” So I would go with her down to the welfare or some other place, the post office, the bank, the school, and I would be her voice. I could always talk real good, and come to think of it, I could conversate …
The Bird Lady
That morning of the owl, I remember taking my time walking home from my grandmother’s hogan. I didn’t want to go home to my dad, is why. He was laid off from the oil fields again. Next to the phone he kept a list. He’d written “Fucking Drilling Companies” across the top of it, most …
Home Brew
It suddenly seemed like every man in Daisy’s acquaintance was brewing his own beer. At parties thrown by her girlfriends, husbands served the stuff up in jam jars and made a show of raising their full glasses to observe the filter of the light. Daisy almost never drank the stuff. She hated the smell. Home …
The Home Jar
Most of the travelers who come through our doors are not at all like Mr. Smith. They are polite, honest, what my night manager calls decent folk, and as thoughtful of others as they can be in the midst of their purposeful lives. Guests do not come to our hotel simply to vacation. We’re not …
Sitting Ducks
He notices the ducks in the charity shop on his way to the hospital. Closing his eyes, he sees them floating on goat’s milk in a marble vat. Their yellowness, warm as sunshine, benign as an egg yolk. “Do they float?” Carl asks the woman behind the counter. “Rubber ducks are made for baths,” she …