“The Tow”
Chicago Tribune June 21st, 2015
The job got just as dangerous after punching out. A fat bankroll in your pocket and two weeks or more with nothing to do can get you ripping through your old vices in no time. That’s what Jay Long found out. He chased a pint of Old Grand-Dad with about 120 mgs of oxy, and a night that began with no plans at all turned into a six-month prison sentence. That’s what pushing barges can do to you, at least to those the work attracts in the first place. Pot, booze, pills, even cigarettes—it’s easy to cut back when you work so hard you can’t remember your name. But that’s the trouble too. Your three week shift ends and there’s little else to keep you distracted. You lie down, and the night settles like cement in your sheets. Nothing moves—not for all the water you’ve traveled—and you study the ceiling for cracks, any way up into the sky where you can breathe.
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"Good Ol' Boy"
The Greensboro Review Issue 93, Spring 2013
Poke stood in the doorway of my closet-turned-office and studied the laces of his work boots as I told him about a marsh I found off the Platte River that was perfect for gigging. He had a strange way of engaging a conversation, as if he kept everything he was about to say behind a series of doors that had to be opened in just the right sequence. He offered me a smoke, and I turned him down, knowing better to take it only at his insistence. He offered again.
“I don’t have any gigs,” he said shyly. I took the cigarette. He had a sharp accent that was quick and hard to pin down if you didn’t pay attention.
“Don’t sweat it,” I said lighting up the Newport he’d floated me. “I’ve got two of them: an eight and six footer. Anything else and we can pop ’em with my .32.”
To read the entire story visit The Greensboro Review to purchase Issue 93.
“Blood by Blood” (Selected by Jim Shepard)
Carolina Quarterly Issue 64.2 Fall-Winter 2014
May called at five a.m., screaming about Jamie-Don, and it took Ritchie a minute to patch together through his hangover what exactly his brother had done. By May’s account, Jamie-Don had broken into her place in Glowmar and had run off with their one year old, Annie, in the middle of the night. May said he’d been threatening to reclaim their daughter since she’d put the restraining order on him back in February. Ritchie had heard Jamie-Don speak of getting Annie back, but he figured his brother’s half-baked schemes were mere fantasies, a way of coping with the fact he was no longer able to see his only daughter.
To read the entire story visit CQ and purchase a copy of issue 64.2.
To read the entire story visit CQ and purchase a copy of issue 64.2.
“The Grant Pill”
Kenyon Review March/April Issue 2015
Even before she said anything, I knew she wasn’t my actual mother. As a boy the contrast between our appearances struck me: my broad cheekbones and straight black bangs seemed to contradict her red hair and wan complexion, like French vanilla ice cream coating a layer of sloe gin. Before the rains came in ’86 and washed our house—crabby yard and all—off the hillside, I can remember hours spent studying the family portraits she kept on the walls of our living room, and how even the mother-son poses seemed imposed from without, as in a movie when the actors clearly aren’t related. Beyond these peculiarities, she had a courteous, almost formal way of disciplining me, so unlike the other children I grew up with in the Harrow County classrooms. Their parents would wrench them close by the arms and swat and pinch, while she, at her angriest, approached my every misdeed like a lesson that required clear, regulated instruction. She loved me, certainly, but that bottom drawer in the heart, the one where every mother can’t help but to fly blindly toward her child’s slightest concern, never fully opened, or rather always required some part of my consent to slide forward.
To read the entire story visit KR and order a copy. Available in both digital and print.
To read the entire story visit KR and order a copy. Available in both digital and print.
"Manglevine"
Forthcoming from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Emaciated and lanky, the longhaired stranger gripped the highest rail of the fence. Judging by the portion of his torso over the posts, Luke could tell he was tall—six-and-half feet at least. Luke’s mutt-hound, Fang, barreled out from behind the shed, barking madly. The second the dog came within striking distance, the man said a single word, and Fang heeled.
“Sheriff Johnston about?” the man asked. Fang slunk forward in the grass, a paw’s length, maybe two.
“Lemuel hasn’t been with the department for years,” Luke’s mother said. “He runs the saw mill now.” Luke’s mother stepped closer to the man. “Who are you?”
The man turned and studied the valley’s treetops that stretched like stepping stones from plateau to plateau. He smelled of rotted wood and moss.
“You don’t remember me, Ellen?”
To read more get a subscription to EQMM. Available in both digital and print.
"Chipped"
storySouth Issue 40
My brother Terry refused to speak about what happened the night I thought Amy Metcalf disappeared, but I would make him admit we were not the same, that his shame was more deserving than mine. It was his idea to have us over to party that Saturday, and he was the one who drove her home—one sure hand on the wheel, the other hand surer on her bare thigh, later denied.
To read more check out Issue 40 of storySouth
