Each morning, the fall I turned sixteen, and my father gave me a rattletrap car for my birthday, I took Ariel to school. She teased me gently, unmercifully, tickling me, clapping her hands over my …
Real Life
All the way across town, on the electric trolley, my mother and I had argued – at least, what passed for argument between us. For two years, since we moved to Houston, my mother had given her …
No One’s Trash
Hugh sat in front of the TV, his back to her, rigid as a mannequin, the usual mood he assumed when Jimmy came to get him on Saturdays. Margot had left the back door open to keep an eye on the pecan …
Little Deaths
By morning, another white kitten was dead. That left two white ones, and Lydia, who slept on his chest. As usual when he came back from Houston he hadn't slept but lain sweating on his bare mattress …
Pictures of the Shark
The woman paused, waiting for an answer. Buddy pressed his forehead against his window. Outside, a freight train appeared to move slowly backward. At night, trains moaned past the house where Buddy …
King Elvis
For almost a year, his father had been away, and Buddy had impersonated the King, donning a white vest trimmed with gold brocade and colored beads, singing and gyrating his hips on the front porch for …
Snow, Houston, 1974
The morning was hushed and bright. On the roofs' mismatched shingles, on the stooped pecan trees, even in the steel fences' serried links, lay a thin, white dust Buddy had seen before only on TV. …
Tickle Torture
His mother glided past the TV. One minute, Mary Tyler Moore was there, then a silhouette of his mother's plump body. Her nightgowns were blue and thin; they seemed made not of fabric, but of smell: …
Sheep
Before the sheriff came to get him, Lloyd found the sheep out by the pond. He'd counted head that morning and come up one short. He did the count over because he was still hazy from the night before. …
