The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Ramana held the image of the insect in his mind, his full attention on the grasshopper, remembering not only the careful hours of detailed observation but also the many other times he had seen the colorful creatures during his childhood in the mountains. Titighodo, they were called, used as medicine by the village elders. His brother Venka had…
She could see the pottery shop owner was Mexican, but she did not tell him how she had gotten to Arizona. There had been sixty of them who met in Reforma to begin the journey through the desert night. They each carried two gallons of water. Their coyote set an impossible pace to cover maximum distance while it was still dark and…
He had one of them names with Zs and Ys that sound different than it’s spelled. Folks called him Malarky. Mama said he run that store since she was a girl, and probably before that. She never went in there except in greatest emergency. Said his prices was too high. Said he looked at her funny, told…
My father’s hardness ran so deep that anything tender in him was trapped like a bug in amber. Certain angles you might see it, but kindness and compassion were dead relics buried inside him. This no doubt served him in his role as constable, but didn’t make him shucks as a father to three motherless girls.…