Search Results for: fiction
Come, Japanese!
[Fiction] [Not single-page] Mail-order brides on a journey across the ocean:
“On the boat we were mostly virgins. We had long black hair and flat wide feet and we were not very tall. Some of us had eaten nothing but rice gruel as young girls and had slightly bowed legs, and some of us were only fourteen years old and were still young girls ourselves. Some of us came from the city, and wore stylish city clothes, but many more of us came from the country and on the boat we wore the same old kimonos we’d been wearing for years – faded hand-me-downs from our sisters that had been patched and re-dyed many times. Some of us came from the mountains and had never before seen the sea, except for in pictures, and some of us were the daughters of fishermen who had been around the sea all our lives. Perhaps we had lost a brother or father to the sea, or a fiancé, or perhaps someone we loved had jumped into the water one unhappy morning and simply swum away, and now it was time for us, too, to move on.”
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[Fiction] A born-again adolescent takes a joyride with his wandering uncle:
My parents and I had been waiting for Uncle Skillet to show up for five hours, wasting an entire Saturday as far as I was concerned, and not just any old Saturday but a glorious early summer one of God’s pure sunshine and chirping birds, a day so perfect that kids who were allowed to wear next to no clothes would be at the swimming pool all day long, and I’d have the perfect excuse to push the lawnmower by and get a look at Sage Ekhart in a bikini laying on a towel by the Coke machines. I was not allowed to wear next to no clothes, was not allowed to go to the pool. I was spending this Saturday in church pants with suspenders, my shirt tucked in, wearing loafers, pretending to watch television while we waited on Uncle Skillet.
“Uncle Skillet Rides Again.” — Baker Lawley, Atticus Review
(Thanks, Instafiction)
Uncle Skillet Rides Again
[Fiction] A born-again adolescent takes a joyride with his wandering uncle:
“My parents and I had been waiting for Uncle Skillet to show up for five hours, wasting an entire Saturday as far as I was concerned, and not just any old Saturday but a glorious early summer one of God’s pure sunshine and chirping birds, a day so perfect that kids who were allowed to wear next to no clothes would be at the swimming pool all day long, and I’d have the perfect excuse to push the lawnmower by and get a look at Sage Ekhart in a bikini laying on a towel by the Coke machines. I was not allowed to wear next to no clothes, was not allowed to go to the pool. I was spending this Saturday in church pants with suspenders, my shirt tucked in, wearing loafers, pretending to watch television while we waited on Uncle Skillet.”
(Thanks, Instafiction)
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1953)
[Fiction] A grandmother’s ruminations on a Southern road trip:
The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. ‘Now look here, Bailey,’ she said, ‘see here, read this,’ and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. ‘Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.’
A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1953)
[Fiction] A grandmother’s ruminations on a Southern road trip:
“The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. ‘Now look here, Bailey,’ she said, ‘see here, read this,’ and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. ‘Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.'”
Miss Lora
[Fiction] A teenager’s grief and its aftermath:
“Years later, you would wonder if it hadn’t been for your brother would you have done it? You’d remember how all the other guys had hated on her—how skinny she was, no culo, no titties, como un palito, but your brother didn’t care. I’d fuck her.
“You’d fuck anything, someone jeered.
“And he had given that someone the eye. You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.”
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[Fiction] A teenager’s grief and its aftermath:
Years later, you would wonder if it hadn’t been for your brother would you have done it? You’d remember how all the other guys had hated on her—how skinny she was, no culo, no titties, como un palito, but your brother didn’t care. I’d fuck her.
You’d fuck anything, someone jeered.
And he had given that someone the eye. You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.
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The untold story of George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard. Hagan revisits the mystery that led to the downfall of CBS’s Dan Rather—with new details on what may have really happened when Bush suddenly stopped flying in the spring of 1972:
The CBS documents that seem destined to haunt Rather are, and have always been, a red herring. The real story, assembled here for the first time in a single narrative, featuring new witnesses and never-reported details, is far more complex than what Rather and Mapes rushed onto the air in 2004. At the time, so much rancorous political gamesmanship surrounded Bush’s military history that it was impossible to report clearly (and Rather’s flawed report effectively ended further investigations). But with Bush out of office, this is no longer a problem. I’ve been reporting this story since it first broke, and today there is more cooperation and willingness to speak on the record than ever before. The picture that emerges is remarkable. Beyond the haze of elaborately revised fictions from both the political left and the political right is a bizarre account that has remained, until now, the great untold story of modern Texas politics. For 36 years, it made its way through the swamps of state government as it led up to the collision between two powerful Texans on the national stage.
“Truth or Consequences.” — Joe Hagan, Texas Monthly
See also: “Dear President Bush,” — Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic, Oct. 1, 2009
Truth or Consequences
The untold story of George W. Bush’s service in the Air National Guard. Hagan revisits the mystery that led to the downfall of CBS’s Dan Rather—with new details on what may have really happened when Bush suddenly stopped flying in the spring of 1972:
“The CBS documents that seem destined to haunt Rather are, and have always been, a red herring. The real story, assembled here for the first time in a single narrative, featuring new witnesses and never-reported details, is far more complex than what Rather and Mapes rushed onto the air in 2004. At the time, so much rancorous political gamesmanship surrounded Bush’s military history that it was impossible to report clearly (and Rather’s flawed report effectively ended further investigations). But with Bush out of office, this is no longer a problem. I’ve been reporting this story since it first broke, and today there is more cooperation and willingness to speak on the record than ever before. The picture that emerges is remarkable. Beyond the haze of elaborately revised fictions from both the political left and the political right is a bizarre account that has remained, until now, the great untold story of modern Texas politics. For 36 years, it made its way through the swamps of state government as it led up to the collision between two powerful Texans on the national stage.”

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