The short fiction of j hardy carroll
When my family came to the river country there were almost no whites, and damned few Abbos. First it was the smallpox, killing eight out of ten, then the long dry which turned the Murray into a road of of puddles with grain skiffs sunk to the scuppers in the deep red mud. My great-granddad…
Ndugu studies his watch, the first he has ever owned. Real gold, the man told him, holding up a magnifier so Ndugu could verify the truth of his statement. A Rolex, no less, and only thirty dollars. A day’s wages, but Ndugu’s room and meals were provided by his cousin, so he reached into his…
Trosher was rat-arsed, all right. Four pints in five minutes, as the saying goes. He reeled out of the pub looking right queer, his face all bishy. “Oi!” he yelled, walloping me on the back. “Hold yer hard, bor!” “Gettin’ on me wick, Trosh,” I said, moving away. He stopped and held up a finger,…
I smoke a cigarette as I walk along the Quai Saint-André, cupping it in my hand. I have always smoked this way. Done everything this way, really. Concealment. I watch a grain barge chugging up the St. Lawrence churning brown froth as it passes. I flick the butt into the river and turn back toward…
Two seamen carried Lord Nelson down through the smoke to the cockpit with infinite care, Captain Hardy following close behind. The buckle of Hardy’s shoe clattered against the deck as he walked, severed by a splinter blasted from the taffrail by the Redoutable’s broadside. In the muffled din of the cockpit, Nelson offered a thin smile.…
Dominick pushed himself back from the table, sighing like a leaky tire. Eating was no longer the comfort it once was, the solace gone. He’d grown up lean and hungry, fifth of seven children, hand-me-downs and half-empty bowls. He had gone to war and shot at the enemy and maybe even killed them, seen friends…
Rosita picked up the smooth stick from outside the door and carefully pared the black mud from her feet before she stepped inside, the mended nets drying on the scaffold Ronaldo made for them before the sickness had left him an invalid. She set the bucket of cleaned shrimps on the stone hearth, then poked…
Stella considered herself an incurable romantic, albeit a secret one. Her wide circle of acquaintances and few close friends were equally ignorant of her inner yearnings and wild flights of fancy. This was deliberate. “Webster’s second definition of romantic,” Stella would often say, “is imaginary.” Yet every time she boarded an airplane, her eye would rove…
Gibbs stepped out of the Zenith onto the cracked cement of El Ronco airfield. A slender man in black BDUs and sunglasses climbed out of the Humvee idling a hundred feet away, his sidearm bumping as he walked over with arms outstretched. “El Bergón!” he cried and he threw his arms around Gibbs. “Mi compañero.…
New York is the “city that never sleeps,” but for genuine insomnia you can’t top Las Vegas. I stroll though the airport at 3AM after eighteen hours of hell in O’Hare. The place is sprawling, with garish islands of slot machines strategically placed to shake out the nickels of passersby. It’s there I see her,…