By the glow of the headlights, Reney counted again. A calf was gone. A bawling cow trotting ruts into the fence line confirmed Reney’s count.

All the senior partners were having a laugh about a movie they’d seen. Forty-Five Years. Something, something about the movie taking forty-five years to sit through. The woman McGuinness thought he recognized was in it with them at the far end of the long table. Leaning in, as if hearing everything for the second time. “Miss Nail!” they were calling her. “What do you say, Miss Nail? Tell us.” Laughing. He didn’t know what it was about.

In the dark Edgar Haney walked from his truck and turned up the sidewalk to the cafe. It was an hour before light, and he shuddered inside his coat as the cold touched his flesh. And this is the thing that came to him. 

Little Frank came from Unicoi County up in the east end of Tennessee where the Unaka Mountains seemed to drop off under the roadside into valleys that made a man think perhaps he might be happiest if he were a bird and could soar above those green woods and meadows.

He hadn’t been sure if he was supposed to fight back or just take the beating, if he could dodge the blows or cover his face or what, but it wound up not mattering.

Jill arrived at the Royal Sierra every evening around six, took a stool in front of the TV at the open-air bar, and passed the time watching the news and quietly drinking herself stupid while Starkey 

Occasionally, if there was nothing of interest on television, Harry and Louise Overton played “featured actor.” They would call back and forth the names of supporting players from films of the thirties and early forties.

Of late I had gotten less and less talkative and would sit for hours on a park bench, staring. But afterwards, when asked what I had seen, I didn’t know. They took me to the mountains, all in vain, and after a series of disheartening proposals packed me off to the Low Countries.

St. Jude: that prosperous midwestern gerontocracy, that patron saint of the really desperate. The big houses and big cars here filled up only on holidays. Rain pasted yellow leaves to cars parked

Ben enjoys this kind of project—he is a pediatric dentist and likes to be outdoors during his free time. His current enthusiasm is pineapples, which he claims can be grown even in temperate climates.