Selected Fiction & Excerpts
​​I was scared of Billy at sixteen. Billy, I called him behind his back. Mr. Potter, in person. He’d be laid out, usually, snoring off a twelve pack of Bud in the den, the television’s sound turned up when I brought his only daughter home from weekend dates. There was no other way to her room but past this sleeping Marine. He’d killed Charlie, I was sure. I might be next. I prayed he wouldn’t wake up.
For ten years, I would love Judith. Love her as we graduated from high school. As the Sergeant enlisted me for grunt construction jobs. Love her beyond the puppy love, farther than the sex. Love her as I promised the justice of the peace I would. Love her when she argued against being cut off after the eighth shot. Love her when she backfilled Smirnoff bottles with tap water. Love her when I didn’t want to, when she didn’t care. Through missing savings and crazy mood swings and cheating. In sobriety, and in relapse. Love her through divorce. Love her in hope of being loved again. Love her when hope failed one Saturday morning. There had been an accident.
​​​He arrived in dogwood season, the same afternoon she’d spotted the first returning junco come to feed after a winter in the coves. She was chain smoking Newport menthol kings on the porch, considering should she change out of the Winn Dixie poly blouse and walk to the point for a sunset cocktail or maybe just take it easy, get dinner started, when he halted the old truck right in front of her trailer.
The old man died alone in the house his father built. Alone in the blaze that would officially be attributed to smoking in bed. “A lost cause,” the fire chief muttered, momentarily placing a gloved hand on the teenaged girl’s shoulder before heavily retreating into a night of paperwork.
​I was sober for the funeral, even wore one of the old man’s ties. Drove his F-150 on my suspended license to the local cemetery where Mom had been waiting nearly ten years. Folks were already gathered graveside. They crowded in under the little tent even though it was a mild, sunny afternoon. Sarah handled the details, made the calls I should’ve. I counted twenty attendees, maybe half were strangers.
​​Standing, I steady myself on the bar rail. Sign a room charge I can’t clearly see but don’t bother retrieving my readers for. Guess at a fair tip. The suits are gone, their call-brand cocktails diminished to ice melt. I glance at the TV they’d been eyeing. Women’s tennis. Modern day stars I don't recognize. My brain conjures Chris Evert, white skirt hooping over her muscular thighs, smashing two-handed backhands with a wooden racquet in a late sunny Sunday set three.