Essie and Helen were two old sisters who lived together in their childhood home. And Arthur was a man with only one hand, who'd been in love with Essie for as long as anyone could remember. `You know that one hand can do almost anything,' he said to...
There's nothing hotter than the parking lot of a North Florida Wal-Mart Superstore in mid-August, but that's where they had been living for over a week when Alice found them and took them home with her, the man, the woman, and the snaggle-toothed Chi...
It all started in the bathroom in the back of the bookstore in Florinna, Alabama, the store owner Mrs. Horne gesturing magnificently at the blank wall and talking about Arabian stallions, and the mural painter, Lucy, backed up against the toilet, nod...
I was sleeping with my brothers, Tanglefoot and PeeWee. We were warm and cozy, snuggling under the snow. Mama was sleeping nearby, and Aunt Fang and our older brother Robert, all covered by mounds of snow. Papa was somewhere nearby, watching over us....
On an island so far north that it snowed from September to April, a boy named Frederik kept himself warm by keeping a secret. Some mornings, the top of the water in the kitchen jug had frozen into a disc of ice. Frederik had to smash it with a wooden...
DAVID SEDARIS: I wear green velvet knickers, a forest green velvet smock and a perky little hat decorated with spangles. This is my work uniform. I've spent the last several days sitting in a crowded, windowless Macy's classroom, undergoing the first...
One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimon...
She must have had a bad fright. I didnt take such a severe view of her conduct as Mrs Low. She was very young; she was not more than thirty-five now. Who could tell by what accident she had become J.s mistress? I suspect that love had caught her unaw...
I am telling this story in the first person, though I am in no way connected with it, because I do not want to pretend to the reader that I know more about it than I really do. The facts are as I state them, but the reasons for them I can only guess,...
The Long Rain THE rain continued. It was a hard rain, a perpetual rain, a sweating and steaming rain; it was a mizzle, a downpour, a fountain, a whipping at the eyes, an undertow at the ankles; it was a rain to drown all rains and the memory of rains...
Kongoni, the old gun-bearer, in the lead watching the blood spoor, Wilson watching the grass for any movement, his big gun ready, the second gun-bearer looking ahead and listening, Macomber close to Wilson, his rifle cocked, they had just moved into...
It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened. 'Will you have lime juice or lemon squash?' Macomber asked. 'I'll have a gimlet,' Robert Wilson told him. 'I'll have a...
Kurt Vonnegut The Summer had died peacefully in its sleep, and Autumn, as soft-spoken executrix, was locking life up safely until Spring came to claim it. At one with this sad, sweet allegory outside the kitchen window of her small home was Ellen Bow...
As the days passed it occurred to her that she had never met anyone, male or female, that seemed to understand her moods and needs so completely or so wordlessly. Their tastes coincided. While Tony had enjoyed violent movies of the Godfather type, Ed...
'I know what you need.' Elizabeth looked up from her sociology text, startled, and saw a rather nondescript young man in a green fatigue jacket. For a moment she thought he looked familiar, as if she had known him before; the feeling was close to dej...
