The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Every year the prize-winning hog just gets bigger. At last year’s State Fair, he weighed over 1900 pounds. It is always the same hog, Junior. Lying next to him is Queenie, younger and a few hundred pounds smaller. Waiting in the wings, you might say, since one day Junior will die and it will be Queenie’s turn. I squeeze…
It was a different city than the one I left in September, when the desperate final heat blanketed the roofs and buildings and filled the town with odors of diesel fuel and rotting trash. This was a crisp city, the wind cold on my cheek and wafting scents of wood smoke, coffee, baking bread.The trees along the streets and in the parks had reached…
” “No, I don’t feel like it. You guys go on without me.” She picked up the remote and accidentally unmuted the TV. The sound was sudden, deafening. “HEMORRHOID REMEDIES, THEN YOU …” She fumbled the phone while she thumbed the remote. “Sorry. No, just the TV. Hotel TVs are always so loud.” She nodded…
“You brung her the ice tea like she ask?” “Yes’m.” “Then go on out there and sit. You know she likes to talk about the cars goin’ by.” “Do I have to?” We went through this every Sunday. Gemmie would make Aunt Ethel an ice tea and tell me to go sit with the old lady on…
Most disagreements boil down to simple differences of opinion or taste. Perhaps manners. When it’s over, you will remain friends. With Ky, arguments always went too far. It was life-and-death with him, everything a struggle. Being his friend was a trying experience. As is so often the case, this weakness was also his greatest strength. Unquestioning loyalty to friends, tenacity…
“What do you want?” His eyes crinkled above the grizzled beard. “Another of them beers, for starters.” I pulled a can from the six-pack and handed it to him. He sipped, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, set the beer on the tarp. He peered into the sky. “Looks like we’re just…
” “I thought you guys wasn’t supposed to pick up no hitchhikers.” Now that they were in the diner, he looked older than he had in the parking lot. “No, them days is past. Rigs now, well you just gotta see it. It’s like an apartment. Got a microwave, satellite TV. Even a bed.” He…
“This was it?” “Yes. The fourth floor. You cannot count the times your grandmother would carry the bags up those stairs. Hundreds. Thousands.” The girl looked up the block. A group of Puerto Rican teenagers sat on a stoop, boys and girls both wearing the same white t-shirts and baggy khaki pants. A boom box thundered…
We went down the steel stairs, down and down. “With these levers, you can control the whole hospital.” He burst out with a braying laugh. “I’m kidding. I have no idea what they do. In here, now.” He opened a door leading off the corridor. The room was dark and clean-smelling. “Can we turn on the…
I could tell from the look on his face that he couldn’t fix it. He held it between his blackened fingers, turning it this way and that. “This,” he said, “is junk. Not worth repairing.” I swallowed. “But my father gave this to me. He said it had been his father’s. It’s an heirloom.” “Nonsense,”…