The short fiction of j hardy carroll
The woman smiled up from the table, her mouth a wonder of dentistry. “Welcome,” she said. “Remember, cash only.” The house was modest, yet overfull. Every item bore a small yellow tag with its price. I stood in the living room in front of an empty china cabinet, its contents arrayed on the table behind…
“You’ve had an accident.” The voice was soft, with an accent Lloyds couln’t place. He tried to open his eyes and saw nothing. “We bandaged your head,” the voice said. “I’m afraid it leaves your eyes covered. It’s temporary.” Lloyds opened his mouth to speak, but this too proved impossible. “Oh, so sorry,” said the…
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…
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,…
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.…
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…
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.…
Fort Canby was constructed during the Civil War. God knows why. By 1863, all the hostile Indians had been deported to Shitsville, Oklahoma and the looming threat of the Confederate Navy was confined to Mobile Bay and its environs. I was stationed there in 1941, a regular Army sergeant on my third and (I thought)…
It was Royger’s fourth attempt at The Knowledge. He knew he might come a cropper when he saw that his examiner was Stoneface Cavendish, the dean of London cabbies. “Streatham A-2 to Stour Road, if you please,” said Cavendish. Royger took a deep breath and fixed his eyes to a spot on the table. “I…
There is a stone on Air Manis Beach in Sumatra, not far from where I was born. My mother made a practice of showing me this stone (which has more than a passing resemblance to a prostrate man) because it is attached to a legend of an ungrateful son who forgets his mother. “Malin Kundang…