My uncle Ezekiel’s body was discovered in a ditch early on Christmas morning, three years ago. Beside him was an empty bottle of cheap whisky; I still remember the red and green label on it, with the inscription: Christian Brothers. Because...
It is Thanksgiving, the great day of dinner, of Dockers and dress shirts and marshmallow-sweetened squash. This year we are forgoing our standard slow graze on the home front to spend the day with my sister and her boyfriend’s family...
Graves had been sick for three days when, on the long, straight highway between Mazar and Kunduz, a dark blue truck coming toward them shed its rear wheel in a spray of orange-yellow sparks. The wheel, as though excited by its sudden...
In Chicago, while taking the El from Wrigley Field to Evanston, Rudy O’Hara was certain he recognized the woman sitting across the train’s aisle, but he couldn’t place her.
She asked me to go with her to pick out a trunk for her journey. It seemed to me like a strange request as, though neither of us had said it, we both knew that her leaving was the way we were breaking up. Even stranger was that I agreed to...
Special Agent B. W. Molloy, now retired, tells the following story: One morning the body of a child was found in the Rose Garden. The sun had just risen. A concert had been given the night before in celebration of the National Arts and...
Between the clay banks of the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the brackish waters of the Chesapeake Bay there is a beach a thousand miles long. The sand is fine enough, but it is sharp with oyster shells and rough with stones the color of ox...
For six years she had worked in an office where the telephones rang constantly, but in the last week, each time her phone went off, Moira jumped and blanched. She turned the ringer down, but it didn’t help. This reaction to the telephone...
