Story Excerpts

Speed Trap Camera
by James D.F. Hannah

It’s the sheriff who comes by, asking Joey McKay about his uncle Dale.

“He busted up the camera on County Road Twenty-Three,” Sheriff Landing says. Her name’s Charlotte, but Joey’s never heard someone call her anything but “Crash” since they were in high school. She’s small and boyish, and the rolled-up sleeves of her sheriff’s uniform reveal tattoos twisting up her left arm like vines on a lattice.

She stands on the walkway to Joey’s doublewide, more in the shadows than not, barely catching any of the illumination coming off the front porch lights. Most of that falls on Joey up on the creaky wooden porch, still in his red Speedy Mart vest, name tag pinned to the chest. The late evening air’s heavy as soaked cotton, thick with summer humidity. Joey’s sweated through his shirt until the vest is patchy and wet, each blot as dark red as a gunshot wound. READ MORE

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More than a B-Lister
by Robert Greer

I have never liked Chicago—city of big shoulders, Carl Sandburg’s “hog butcher for the world”—and I take issue with the myriad of self-serving songs, poems, ballads, and jingles that trumpet that city’s supposed virtues. Why? Because twenty years ago, at the age of seventeen and against my father’s advice, I made the thirty mile trip to Chi-Town from my home in Gary, Indiana, in search of a glass-packed muffler at JC Whitney Auto Parts. I was hoping to score a part that would beef up the throaty sound of the Ford Mustang I’d coughed up $900 for weeks earlier. READ MORE