The Tally Book Part One: The Sandhills If you’ve never seen the Sandhills of Nebraska, it’s hard to explain them. Twenty thousand square miles of grass-covered dunes, rolling like a […]
What He Sewed Inside Part One: The Couch For twenty years, I begged my husband to get rid of that couch. It was brown corduroy, the color of wet tree […]
Ninety-One Thousand Five Hundred Pennies Part One: The Buckets Dale Heckert tipped the last bucket at four o’clock on a Friday. I heard it before I saw it. A sound […]
The deadbolt clicked shut while my four-year-old son was still crying. For one frozen second, I stared at the oak door. Warm yellow light glowed around its edges. On the […]
The thermostat on the living room wall said 58. I stood in the doorway of my mother’s farmhouse in my red parka, car keys still in my hand, snow melting […]
Cindy’s hands landed flat between my father’s shoulder blades. I saw it happen from six feet away. I was holding a paper plate of potato salad. Dad was standing at […]
The Keys by Her Plate Part One: Nineteen Years My name is Mark Lindgren. I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’ve been farming the same six hundred acres in O’Brien County, […]
The Bills by the Sugar Bowl My stepmother told me at her kitchen table in April. The bills were stacked by the sugar bowl. A neat pile, squared at the […]
The Porch on Third Street Part One: 3:40 The school bus squeals to a stop at the corner of Third Street every afternoon at 3:40. I can hear it coming […]
Eleven days after I closed on my new house, I was four hours away when my security system sent me a notification. Person detected in driveway. It was 10:14 on […]