Short Stories
Life is stories.
Pebbles
Randy owns and manages The Mineral Springs Motel, a rundown twenty-three-room motel in Webster Springs, West Virginia
We Were Fourteen
There is only one first kiss; the warm, chamois-soft press, the smells of young woman sweat and Herbal Essence shampoo, of seaweed and saltwater and warm sandstone, of bourbon and cigarettes, scents that even still bring back that moment.
Sometimes, Luck is All You Need
I’d joined the Army. I was eighteen and I was hitchhiking from Solana Beach, California to Minneapolis to visit my mother before riding the big dog to Fort Knox for Basic Training.
God’s Tattoo
I went through Basic and AIT at Fort Knox with Cal and God
Legacy
On a Friday afternoon a dozen years ago, Ron Davis was sitting on the curb in front of a Subway sandwich shop; he asked me for money for something to eat.
The Pit
After my driver’s license was suspended, I started hanging out nights at the Pit & Paddock
And Snow, Snow was Dead
There are a lot of ways to die in a peacetime army.
Lovely Rita
Kid ran his car up the ass of a Firebird. The old man couldn’t pay for it.
Lunchtime Lingerie
The job paid $1.60 an hour. My co-workers were mostly on work release from the state priso
The Soft Smell of Citrus
The Lonely Planet Guide warned us that Morocco was dangerous
The Louisville Slugger
As I grabbed my backpack, I saw a baseball bat lying in the bed of the truck; it was in two pieces, split longways starting at the label and running through the barrel, the long, straight grain exposed by the split a pure and shocking white against the stains.
The Robe Shop
I grew up in Del Mar, California, a little beach town just north of San Diego. I was born in 1956 and so was just gaining consciousness in the late sixties, early seventies. The Monkees are on my sound track.
Jimmy Beam
As a young man just out of high school, I rode my thumb across this country. That was 1974.