STORIES
If our lives are a book, the cars we drive define the chapters.
These are stories featuring cars, trucks, and even RVs that played a role in the lives of the people who owned or drove them. Many are set in Fort Stockton, Texas and involve a cast of characters in and around the dusty southwest Texas town. A lot of the stories are shared around the table at The Grounds for Divorce, where the ‘regulars’ meet.
Pull up a chair and let Lucinda pour you a hot cuppa joe and enjoy.
-
THIS AIN’T FORT STOCKTON
The Ford was yellow like egg yolk, the kind you get when your chickens are stressed but still trying. And that’s exactly how Dale Sullivan felt as he packed the last of the salami sandwiches into a red Igloo cooler—stressed but trying. The dairy had done right by them. The cows had been generous, the…
-
MAY NEED MIRROR
The Lord might move in mysterious ways, but Pearl Pharr? She moved in a 2008 Mercury Grand Marquis LS with 17,004 miles on the clock and a trunk big enough to hold a lifetime of casseroles, choir robes, and grief. The car was the last thing she and Percival picked out together before his kidneys…
-
GREENER GRASS, Chapter VI
This is the final chapter of a series that has run all week. Keep your fingers crossed. That night, back at the Naughty Pine, Buddy lay awake staring at the ceiling again. Only this time, Nebraska didn’t look so abstract. It looked like guilt. And a question mark. He knew what he had to do.…
-
GREENER GRASS, Chapter V
This is the fifth in a series of six stories running this week. Enjoy. Buddy, meanwhile, walked slowly back to the Challenger. The sun had started its slow descent, turning the sky a bruised orange behind the steeple. The Dodge sat in the lot like a monument to every bad decision he’d made—shiny, loud, overcompensating,…
-
GREENER GRASS, Chapter IV
This is the fourth in a series of six stories running this week. Enjoy. Three weeks later, Buddy was still living out of a suitcase at the Naughty Pine Motel, Room 6—the one with the slow drip in the bathroom sink and the broken lamp that buzzed when it was on too long. The bed…
-
GREENER GRASS, Chapter III
This is the third of a six chapter series that will run all week. Enjoy. As he peels out of the driveway, the tires screeching against the pavement, Buddy wonders if there’s any road long enough to outrun what he’s just seen. He heads west, toward the open highway, past the dry ranches and sunbaked…
-
GREENER GRASS, Chapter II
This is the second of a six chapter series that will run all week. Enjoy. The next morning, Buddy woke up on the couch with a stiff neck and a hangover the size of Texas. Cora had tossed him a blanket sometime in the night, but there was no warm welcome back. Just a cold…
-
GREENER GRASS, Chapter I
This is the first of a six chapter series that will run all week. Enjoy. Buddy Baird had spent twenty-three years married to the same woman, but when he hit fifty, something inside him snapped like a dry mesquite branch. Maybe it was the way his wife, Cora, had started wearing those loose-fitting sweatpants all…
-
SAME OL’ TRIXIE
Beau Sanderson had a throwing arm, a thick skull, and just enough sense to wear cologne behind his ears like Trixie told him. He was eighteen—barely—and a senior at Jim Bowie High, “Home of the Fightin’ Knives”. He had achieved that combination of age and status thanks to a repeat performance in both first and…
-
THE THING ABOUT COWBOYS, CHAPTER 7: The Back of a Cadillac
This is the final chapter of a story that has run all week. Joleen wasn’t sure if the crowd would ever stop singing so she and Sam could actually hear each other. The Dixie Chicks came to the rescue when they came on the jukebox singing Cowboy, Take Me Away. Most of the crowd was American enough to…