Category: Editor’s Pick

Jessica stopped short of telling Eckhart what she thought of the costume. "The horns need work," is all she said.

Birds were nesting inside the two ‘O’s of COOPER’S HARDWARE. I could see the mother bird fly in and out, she fluttered from one ‘O’ to the other—sticks and feathers and leaves occasionally spilling out with her back-and-forth movements. I couldn’t see details from the ground, but I envisioned her spitting worms and slugs—and whatever else birds eat—into the squeaking, pink beaks of her young.

I looked up. The vultures were circling. Chris would've pointed to the mangroves and said, "There must be something dead in there.” The dead thing of the moment was lobster. Summers were dead here. Then, at the end of July, the place filled up with lobster divers. That’s what they called them, divers, but the water was so shallow it was less like diving and more like reaching your hand out of your boat and grabbing a lobster.

Yes, Walt was proud of how informed he had become in his late life, how much he’d grown and changed in his six and half decades of existence. After a few too many Scotches one night, he told Vicki about being a kid and playing cowboys and Indians with his brothers and the other boys in the neighborhood. The boys on the Indian team wore bands of leather around their heads onto which they taped and pinned synthetic feathers, the kind one might get in a plastic bag at a craft store.