The short fiction of j hardy carroll
Two lasts of wheat 448ƒ Four lasts of rye 558ƒ Four fat oxen 480ƒ Eight fat swine 240ƒ “The price of a single bulb was more than a skilled cooper would make in year,” her father said as he passed her the net and trowel. Twelve fat sheep 120ƒ Two hogsheads of wine 70ƒ Four tuns of beer…
Dad told me when he was my age the frogs was so thick that you could fill up three buckets in an hour. These days you’re lucky to gig two frogs a week. Dad says it’s the pesticides, but I wonder if they just didn’t get greedy back in the old days. Every story I hear…
It started as a lark: a single card, pulled from a deck in a New Age store in Camden Town. Seven of Swords. The proprietor, a vision of swishing purple scarves, took it from him, held it up with bejeweled nails. “Betrayal,” she smirked. “Somebody peaching on you, love?” He had thought nothing of it, but…
It started with Chopsticks, except that he played it perfectly the first time he saw the spinet. He was eighteen months old at the time. From there he moved to Für Elise and the Moonlight Sonata. At ten he memorized all of Chopin’s nocturnes and was making a serious go at Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. So…
The old world does not willingly show itself except at night, when it comes into its own. My son and I went for ice cream. Crossing the apartment lot, he pointed at a narrow set of steps just visible between Building B and the equipment shed. “Where do those go, daddy?” What you fear, you…
I didn’t participate in the interrogations. My role was to observe. Under no circumstances was I to interfere. Never a large man, he became smaller. Fragile. And in the end, broken. When I first saw him, some of his former power still clung to him. He made demands, threats. Commanded a certain respect, even there. Of course, all property had…
Carrie realized as she walked in that she was forty-five minutes early, but she knew if she went back out to her car she might not go through with it, might let things continue as they had, avoid the confrontation altogether. Her mother had always said that Carrie took politeness too far. Actually, what she said was that…
“Whenever I came home, she was usually standing right here.” “Almost always.” He sat smoking at the kitchen table. The cartons he had brought were stacked against the wall, still folded up. He had neglected to buy packing tape. “It made it hard to sneak past if I’d been in a fight at school.” “You used to…
Last thing I remember was being angry that Janie was late. I decided to make it a double. After that, nothing. You probably heard the stories about me. Somebody like me. The guy who gets tossed from the bar by a pair of bouncers, the guy who is 2AM drunk at 8:30. Hilarious, legendary. But for me,…
Impressed and unafraid, she walked right to the edge and looked over, returned to me smiling. “How long have you known about this place?” I shrugged. My brother used to take me up here, but I didn’t want to say that because the next thing she’d ask those questions: You have a brother? Are you…