Before dawn Bill stoops under crimson leaves of the low-hanging Japanese Maple

The call comes in to the police station. It’s a small town and the voice at the library says “He’s at it again.”

I met a proper woman in a proper p… on a Monday in Peoria. I was take… she looked like Jackie after Dall… but without the pillbox hat. She was from New York and I was…

Because he works in an office and… and because she who tans anyway ha… returned from a week at the Beach, the commuters are certain she’s no… yet they rustle in their seats.

The stench came first, the young man remembers. It was as if someone had grabbed him by the ankles, turned him upside down

Sometimes it helps to learn a relative has died a close relative you haven’t seen in years and didn’t plan to see again because

In my all-boys school sixty years ago there were two boys who were different. All four years they walked to classes together, books

Granny watches nature in the city from her window after the nurse takes her tray away. She likes to watch the bird feeder grandson Ahmad hung for cardinals,

Being poor on our patch of land was better than being poor all the years I’ve lived in the ci… We had a couple of cows, a rooster and seven hens.

Sometimes a person can go too far, Mickey said, two stools over downing another beer,

Long article in the paper this morning stops Tim from gobbling his bacon and eggs. Bears are starving in the woods. Too many cubs, too little food.

They’re getting older, five brothers and sisters, all with degrees, jobs, families, nice homes, good lives, happier than most except when they must