For five days running now, ever since I gave Tanner a 30-30 Winchester for his eighth birthday, my wife, Fleur, has been acting furious with me. I explained to her that all the Derochers got their first rifle when they turned eight, going back to when we lived in Perrier, France. Lately, because of the […]
Fiction 82
Peter E. S. Nichols: America’s Oldest Living Published Poet
He had a reputation to uphold. There were two books of his poetry and a play, the latter still occasionally studied at a college or two. He’d survived to the age of ninety-four, so far. On the Maine island to which he and Eleasa relocated twenty years ago, they’d bought the defunct town library, and […]
Todd Jackson: The Story of Eugene, from the Nickel Gospels
A great number of attempts exist to capture the story of Nickel and the days of William St. I hold a bead on this also, but will for the first time, properly compile the story of these events, as they occurred correctly, from the start. During the days of the William St. Strip there was […]
Emily Fridlund: Lake Arcturus Lodge
It wasn’t my husband that wanted the bear, it was me. Erich has always been so generous, so optimistic about people. When we opened for business, the lodge was empty as a lost castle, but he just said, “People will come when they do.” He talked like this sometimes, which is one of the reasons […]
Christine Flanagan: The Woods
I have always been afraid. In my childhood bedroom, streetlight against sycamore trees created frightening shadows on my walls: men, I imagined, breaking into our home, creeping soundlessly. Huddled under heavy blankets and bedspread, I waited for the creak of a loose floorboard, sounds of shattering glass, gunshots. These were not reasonable fears. We lived […]