Stories and Paintings
After Rory’s prison escape, we drove to his uncle’s house, where we caught a few hours’ sleep. Uncle Des woke us at six, and we dined on toasted cheese sandwiches. (Rory ate six of them and kept raving about how good they were. They were okay; Rory had barely eaten in five weeks, so anything... Continue Reading →
In the timid glow of my rental car’s stereo display I watched the night outside. It was dark—too hopeless even for stars. A sliver of moon now and then appeared through the drifting sea of clouds, painting a pale silver outline on the treetops. Behind the giant relic projector screen, the forest grew unchecked, as... Continue Reading →
“Man’s most striking shortcoming is his eagerness to convince himself of nonsense. This is also his greatest strength.” —Elroy “Bubba” Fowpend From diverse eyewitness accounts, unsteady video footage, police reports, second-hand gossip and my own hazy recollections, I have painstakingly reassembled the events of Rory’s fortieth-birthday weekend. It is what it is. I got... Continue Reading →
The sky is blue today. Leafy trees, just taller than myself, line the path. Eight months of the year they are bare, arching over like claws. Now they are lush and green. One month a year they flower. Now they are in full bloom. Wide, open stars of deep red. Around me, men are either... Continue Reading →
His footsteps swish-swish over the concrete in an odd rhythm. A broken hip that never fully healed. He can barely lift his feet, yet we keep the shackles on his ankles. We have to. Those are the rules. We can’t allow any chance of escape. Or any morsel of dignity. His lame shuffle slows us.... Continue Reading →
It seems communism is much like Samson from the bible—it killed a lot of people and left those it spared with a deep distrust and resentment toward it. My friend Neil is also like Samson, in that he has long hair and lives with his parents. But no one has written a book about Neil... Continue Reading →
Six years in prison had changed Ray Stencil. For one thing, he had grown a moustache. (One does what one must to survive in jail.) Now, released back into society, he felt like a fish out of water, or a small fish in a big pond, or a lonely grouper swimming among sharks. Perhaps the... Continue Reading →
