grab and go
I felt bad for Jake's family. Not only were they trying to bury a loved one, but they also had to listen to me annihilate Knocking on Heaven's Door. I plunked along, off key and frazzled, missing chords and verses and at times strings all together. But come on, I'd been playing for what, four... Continue Reading →
I'm cleaning up the kitchen, trying to get between that hard to reach spot where the stove meets the cabinets, thinking how I might find an old roach when again I notice something funny going on with the wall paper. Just the other night I’d tried to tell Julia how it looked like it was spinning when... Continue Reading →
“Come in Blitzen.” I mule-kicked the door shut behind me, sleigh bells crashing to the floor on the other side. Flaring my nostrils, I was still steaming from the news. Retirement my ass. I knew exactly who was behind all this. The freak. Before I could get a grunt out that red-faced plumper held up... Continue Reading →
I met Ruth Randolph while her husband spoke terms with Adam. We were so full of hope, gushing at our good fortune at having secured a room so close to the shipyards. A job and a room! I could hardly hear a word the tenement manager's wife said. “The bath houses open on Tuesdays and... Continue Reading →
They tortured that boy. Every day they came in, smacking his head and hurling insults that should've gotten their mama's arrested. And every day he just took his beating and then found a place against the wall to eat. He never said much, but that numb look on his face said it all. His clothes were a mess,... Continue Reading →
On the night before Thanksgiving, Jim Bob stopped in at JD’s to meet up with Ricky and Gizzard Thomas. Nothing unusual, the three men gathered at the bar on most nights after fishing or working or doing much of nothing. But just like their town, and their country for that matter, the old watering hole was... Continue Reading →
My work places me inside people's homes. They invite me in with haste, flustered and babbling and talking with their hands. And once I'm in--after the pooch huffs and puffs, sticks a snout to my crotch--it's back back to the routine. Forget all about the quiet guy fixing the leak or putting in that vessel sink in the half bath. I observe the way people... Continue Reading →
I sat at the stoplight in a daze, ignoring the urgency of chilled air prattling through the vents. It was 7:34 on a sticky summer evening. I yanked at my tie, but my worry refused to be distracted by the yammer of sports talk. My head pulsed with the bits and pieces of four workday meetings, my short breaths... Continue Reading →
They called it a Derecho. And the sucker came out of nowhere on a hellish hot day in August. No rain. No thunder. Just wind. Tree-bending gusts that roared like a train pulling into the station. I’d just finished up my route and was dreaming of Canada when it hit, stealing my hat right off my... Continue Reading →
The gig with at the Appomattox Courthouse was the perfect way to spend the summer. History. Outdoors. Acting. As far as becoming a Civil War reenactor went, getting paid was just a perk. I caught on quick as Private Edwin Francis Henny, Second Corps of Northern Virginia. And I can honestly say, I learned more in a... Continue Reading →
Lunch Break Fiction 