I started following Cindy because I wanted to see what bad things happened to her.… more
CAT 272D coming in hot with a birch for the trim of a dental office. This thing moves like she’s on fire, gets up to a mile an hour, everyone checking out the skid steers. With her blade off, she’s a beauty—bumble-yellow, and me standing in the hatch, pushing the lever as far as she… more
We are Vikings. Tonight we raid. We feast and drink and pillage, of course. Descend upon this city like a scourge of locusts. Vikings! Fearsome! Regard our helms. Yes, we recognize the historical inaccuracy of the horns.… more
I had trouble cutting off the heads so they kicked me out of the program. That’s what you want to know, right? I mean, why else does a grad student in biology end up mopping floors at a mountainside observatory? It certainly isn’t the salary.… more
At best, he reasoned he had maybe seven years before he became what all sharp-witted, outspoken, unsuccessful men became: a divorce, a hairline, and a collection of entertainment electronics growing ever harder to manipulate.… more
He would stand on the porch and curse the trains in the distance and then move to the meadow and sit still, so to watch the deer moving slowly through the long grass, and then he would go to the edge of the pond at night and look at the beautiful moonlight mixing like oil into the pond water and he would think about putting a bullet straight through his brain and sinking to the moss at the bottom of the water.… more
Everyone is nice here. They tell me Olivia might be coming any day to visit me. And they say to just relax and look at the garden outside. So I relax like any ordinary man would. I like it here out in the country. There are flowers of all kinds. Some nights I lean out of the window and urinate on the Sea Holly. It keeps growing. I keep waiting. One day a truck will show up, and Olivia might get out of it. … more