-0- The grizzly, white-bearded weaver was as silent as the shadow of a ring-tailed civet cat—“reserved,” the folks in Pleasant Grove called the Russian. He did capable work making small throw rugs on a yew…
Shortly after sunrise Otis Wadby was driving to work in Circleville. He stayed nights with his son in Junction, his wife having expelled him from his home in Circleville because he had taken up with…
Max Hansen dipped his brush into the can and reached to the ceiling, spreading paint thickly and smoothly across the plyboard surface. He paused a moment, listening to a faint tapping sound. Rain? No. A…
Marta Pillahuel was very old. She lived in the country with her pigs on one side and her chickens on the other. Her wooden house leaned to the east and let in the weather—a warm…
He waited, but the dog didn’t come. He went back into the house. His wife was strapping on her brassiere, skin spilling over where the strap was tight. “Seen the dog?” he said. “Haen’t my…
The next morning Allison dropped Howard at the Mormon church in Rockwood, which, except for the thin spire, was shaped like a large, sub urban house. Though he had asked, she refused to go inside…
DZEH-NESH-CHEE-AH-NAH-TSIN-TLITI-TSAH-AS-ZIH. Elk-Nut-Eye-Match-Yucca. His grandfather used to say the bilagaanas always come in twos. The first time he was barely five years old, playing on a sand dune near their hogan west of Valley Store. He…
At thirty-eight I’m still single. Actually, let me be perfectly frank: Possibly Steve Young and I are the only people in the Western Hemisphere who have remained celibate until such an advanced age, and he…
It’s been ten weeks since Liz (my mother) came to collect me from the islands and pack me back to Michigan. She wanted me to tally my losses and get on with things. Liz has…
After our two-day honeymoon in West Yellowstone, we move into this one-bedroom place above the Modern Plumbing & Heating building in Rigby. There’s a door right on Main Street that opens up to a barn-red…