The List in the Drawer
The forecast said nineteen degrees at four in the morning, with a wind out of the northwest at fifteen miles an hour, and by the time Marcus Bell got to …
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The Drawer of Things I Did Not Say
On the third Sunday in October, Vivian Corliss set two places at the long oak table in her dining room, and then she set a third. I watched her do …
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The Windbreak Auction
The machines came up Route 14 at a quarter past seven on the second Monday of October, two yellow dozers on flatbed trailers and a county pickup with a light …
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The Dipstick That Measures the Rain
The clipboard hung on a nail beside the side door of the Vukovich garage, just above a row of rusted coffee cans full of bolts, and it had hung there, …
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The Robe That Holds the Line
The robe closet at First Congregational in Marrow Creek, Illinois, smelled of cedar and old wool and the faint sweetness of hymnal paper. It was a narrow room off the …
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The Four Words in the Kitchen
The potatoes were the test, though nobody told me that until later. It was the Sunday of the christening, in the cramped yellow kitchen of the Oblak house on Delaware …
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The Sealed Promises in the Pantry
The dining room table in Frances Calloway’s house on Quarry Road seats eight if nobody minds elbows. On the first Thursday of September, it seated nine, and the ninth chair …
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The Volvo That Never Lied
The sign on the door of Brakebush Garage said CLOSED — PRIVATE SERVICE in hand-lettered red paint, and it had said the same thing on the first Tuesday of every …
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The Confession Board at Hollis Technical
The break room at Hollis Technical smelled of burnt coffee and the cherry air freshener that the night crew sprayed on the vending machines every Monday, as if the machines …
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The Blue Envelopes at the Hartwell Post Office
The Hartwell post office had one counter, two brass-framed windows, and a wall of brown post office boxes that Ellis Dunbar had polished every Friday for twenty-two years. The lobby …
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