The short fiction of j hardy carroll
“And how is the life of my camp guard?” Trudi asked, ladling his plate full of spätzel in thick gravy. “Have they seen fit to promote you?” He grimaced, touched the unadorned shoulder tab of his tunic. “Do you see any pips, Mother? Any gold braid? No, you don’t. I am a gefreiter still and always. There is…
“Use this with caution,” the bookseller warned. He did not like this woman, but business was business. “I’ll use it however I like. I bought the damn thing. It’s mine now.” She reached for the door handle. The bookseller shrugged and turned back to his work. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Where are the words?”…
Dear Etta & Family, Well, I got here all right and must agree with Dr. Franks that the climate in Arizona is indeed wonderful. That’s about all I can say for it. Jerome boasts but one hotel, and that seems to be perpetually full up with drummers, speculators and engineers of one sort or another.…
“I assure you, sir. The hotel will do everything in its power to insure that this matter stays private.” “I certainly hope so.” “It’s just that the reporters are already in the lobby. And down in the parking garage. There’s no way we can get you past them unseen.” “Don’t you people have a service…
How do you remove every trace? he thought, carrying another box of her junk to the truck and dumping it in. When they had gotten married, the preacher made a big deal of using the word cleave. He said that married people cleaved to each other, that if they broke apart it was like ripping a piece of wood that…
At first, I didn’t even know about it. I don’t have a TV or listen to the radio. I guess I knew when I saw the first cars going past, roofs piled high with bundles and boxes. Sure, I knew the river was up, but it’s been up before. No need to panic. Sheriff came by…
Last thing I remember it was somebody’s birthday. I woke up at five AM to the sound of church bells somewhere close by, opened my eyes against the familiar pain and was unable to recognize a single thing about the living room in which I lay. I heaved myself up off the couch, grateful that…
The entrance hall hasn’t been used since Doug was killed in Vietnam, the boxes that crowd the narrow space crammed with paper and old clothes and God knows what else. In the kitchen, four refrigerators, two so overstuffed that the doors are bungeed closed, cereal boxes, rotten fruit, stale Walmart muffins in the 30-pack, gallons of milk…
I once found Whitey out in his pop’s garage, just standing there, eyes closed. The garage was kind of a monument to good intentions. Whitey’s pop was a collector of old cars. More than a collector. An enthusiast. When he’d get to talking about them, his eyes would go funny. “Found me a ’02 Wheeler Runabout rotting away in…
The dreams. Always, the dreams. Dreams never remembered save for impressions of hurry, of movement, a sense of familiar place, all gone in the instant of waking. Dreaming became waking life. Beginning in the night as soon as she closed her eyes, seeping like ink spilled on a blotter into the morning, into the day. Things worth remembering– a…