Summer reading issue: fiction
This story took second place in the Hook's short story contest earlier this year, judged by John Grisham. "I laughed with the first sentence and almost cried with the last," said Grisham of "20 Minutes of Clarity."
In their first conjugal visit, Ray couldn't get it up, so they talked, uneasily at first, for most of the hour granted them. The privacy unnerved him, and he said so. He hadn't been alone or unobserved for three months, since the day of his sentencing. The trailer had no windows and just the one door from which the lock mechanism had been removed, the hole stuffed with a soft rust-colored rag. On the dresser beside the bed was a clock radio that clicked the next minute into being, and across from it, a sink with a mirror. Beside the sink sat the smallest toilet either of them had ever seen.
This story took third place in the Hook's short story contest, judged by John Grisham. "I must confess," said Grisham of Walter's story, "I have actually fired a potato cannon. So I was naturally drawn to this hilarious story."
Aunt Betsy told everyone who would listen: Hedgepeth boys weren't good for anything but mischief. Of course, Betsy wasn't a real Hedgepeth. She was a fourth-grade teacher who had married into our clan only to find her husband, Jackie Coogan Hedgepeth, dead of a shotgun wound one morning after a high-stakes card game in the back of Mooney's Billiards. He had left at five in the morning with piles of ill-gotten green and made it to the end of his driveway before someone shot him and stole every last dollar. This "shotgun wound"– as the papers called it– was the top part of Jack's head, gone.
4Better Or Worse
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Essays
You played: Why can't your kids shoot 'em up?
I was playing a round of Gears of War, trying to redo a level on "insane" mode, and the walls were painted with guts. I slaughtered my way to the boss, revved up my chainsa...
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NEWS- Flushed: Historic bathrooms don't make landmarks register
NEWS- Kelly's plight: Incarcerated 'soccer mom' talks at last
On Architecture
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Strange But True
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Full Stories List for June 21st, 2007 issue #0625
SPECIAL- Living (in) history: What's it like being TJ's tenants?
THE TOUGH CUSTOMER- Station stew: Getting network channels tugs technicalities
4Better Or Worse
Art Features
Cartoons
Corrections
Cover Stories
Essays
Facetime
Fridays after Five
Gimme Shelter
Hotseat
Movie Reviews
My Ride
News
NEWS- Flushed: Historic bathrooms don't make landmarks register
NEWS- Kelly's plight: Incarcerated 'soccer mom' talks at last
On Architecture
Photophile
Question of the Week
Real Estate
Strange But True
The Brazen Careerist
The Dish
