Category: A Trilogy.
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SIN WITH BUCKET SEATS, Part Three: The Backfire
THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF A THREE PART SERIES The first vehicle to leave Second Baptist was Maybelle Watkins’s pale green Buick, although Maybelle would later insist she had gone directly home and had no idea why three separate people remembered seeing her arrive at the Cattle Baron Hotel before the benediction had finished echoing. Behind…
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SIN WITH BUCKET SEATS, Part Two: The Sermon
PART TWO OF A THREE PART STORY By nine-thirty Sunday morning, Second Baptist had more cars in its parking lot than it had members who could remember the last time Brother Bob had preached from Revelation without frightening himself. The church bulletin still listed the sermon as Walking With God in an Age of Distraction,…
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SIN WITH BUCKET SEATS, Part One: The Arrival
PART ONE OF A THREE PART STORY There are automobiles that arrive in Fort Stockton quietly, perform whatever modest duty brought them there, and leave without disturbing anything more consequential than the dust behind the Dairy Twin. A Plymouth carrying vacuum-cleaner salesmen might spend the night at the Cattle Baron Hotel and be forgotten before…
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THREE NIGHTS AT THE LUCKY LADY, Part III
THIS IS THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF A THREE PART STORY The silver Chrysler didn’t arrive so much as it announced itself.It slid into the gravel lot of the Lucky Lady Lounge like a polished argument nobody in Fort Stockton had asked to hear but everybody turned to listen to anyway. A Chrysler 300 SRT. Low…
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THREE NIGHTS AT THE LUCKY LADY, Part II
PART II OF A THREE PART STORY The Buick announced itself before it ever came to a stop. It wasn’t loud in the way of cheap noise. No rattling pipes or desperate aftermarket nonsense. This was something deeper. A low, controlled thunder that rolled across the gravel lot of the Lucky Lady Lounge like it…
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THREE NIGHTS AT THE LUCKY LADY, Part I
THIS IS PART I OF A THREE PART STORY By the time Lyle Darnell turned the Ember Red Chevrolet into Fort Stockton, he had already proposed to Evelyn March three different ways in his head and ruined every one of them before the words ever had a chance to land. In the first version, he…
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THE COOL UNCLE, PART III: Looking Forward
THE FINAL INSTALLMENT By the time I was sent north for the summer, the basement curiosities of childhood had matured into a more disciplined obsession. The nurse who once bent slightly too far forward under a bare bulb had been replaced by a fuller syllabus. Above my bed sat a lineup of Revell model cars,…
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THE COOL UNCLE, PART II: The Bird of Paradise
PART II OF III I don’t know if finishing medical school gives a man better taste, or just the means to finally indulge the taste he’s been quietly carrying around like contraband. Maybe it’s both. All I know is this: when the Nash disappeared and the 1957 Ford Thunderbird appeared in our driveway, the neighborhood…
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THE COOL UNCLE, PART I: The Ambassador of Esoterica
PART I OF III I had a cool uncle. That phrase gets tossed around pretty loosely, but this wasn’t the kind of cool measured in motorcycles or bar fights or how many beers he could drink without blinking. This was a deeper, more disorienting cool—an existential cool. The kind that makes a kid quietly realize,…
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THE MOTEL ON THE ROOF — Part III: The Feast
“Ghosts in the woodgrain, wine on the table, and gratitude found in the mess.” By the time the Hollisters wheezed into Aunt Sissy’s driveway in Greensboro, the Ford Country Sedan sounded like a man gargling gravel. The Tote Motel Camper leaned sideways, bolts creaking, the whole contraption sagging like it wanted to quit before the…