The short fiction of j hardy carroll
“Another one.” “You didn’t bring it in for me?” “Why bother? There’s more coming.” She purses her lips, knowing that there is indeed another package on its way. At first, it was eBay, justified as a money-making opportunity. Many things arrived, but nothing was ever shipped. When the basement filled, he’d rented a storage container…
“Get Tall Charles up here. He’s a good reader.” The boy was fetched. He puzzled over the parchment. “From what I can make out of this, they gonna take all our land for what they call the greater good of New York.” Owens was indignant. “They can’t do that. We own this land. We own…
He knows the old man is waiting for him downstairs, on this, the first shameful day of his retreat. It’s not hard to guess what he will say. The recriminations, the guilt. You dreamed about Harvard since you were in third grade. And the worst of all, What the hell happened? He thinks about this as…
He walks through the oh-so-familiar entryway, taking his usual pleasure in seeing the name on the side of the building. His name, his father’s name. He imagines how this will go, his last day. The slideshow of company history, anecdotes. There will be smiles and maybe tears. Above all, respect. Of course it isn’t like…
The palm trunk against the boy’s back, the fronds above rattling in the wind as he watches the surf hiss across the sand, retreat, return. He thinks again of the legend. A bench in Bagdad, two men sitting side by side, one old, one as young as himself. The boy is a porter, dressed in…
The night before D-Day, Ilya says a prayer
There’s one in every Jersey town. More than one, probably. Named the same. Fat Tony’s. Greasy Joe’s. Vince’s. They all look the same, with the grease-slick linoleum floor that was never new, faded posters of barely-remembered movies, maybe a Pong or Pac-Man machine, maybe out of order. The smell of cheese, of vinegar, of frying…
Theodore Roosevelt manufactured a political revolution to make the US Navy a global power.
Ex-Cia nod and wink when they meet again years later.
“So you’ve come home, then.” He’s not changed in the slightest as he stands behind the bar in the selfsame dimness common to all my memories of this place, this very place, my home. But a shaft of pale sunlight catches the side of his face and I can see that yes, he has changed,…