April Fool
BY WILLIAM DEVERELL
Nick the Owl Faloon is sitting beside a stone fox by the name of Eve Winters, who is apparently some kind of shrink. They're scoffing up fresh-caught sockeye, sharing a long table with four couples from Topeka, Kansas, who are up here on a wet spring holiday. In spite of all the happy talk, the Owl picks up there is an edge to this dinner, the men regretting they brought their wives along. A fishing extravaganza that put them back a few yards each, and they bring their wives when they'd rather get plotzed and bond.
The Wreckage
BY MICHAEL CRUMMEY
He was never dry. Every day they abandoned field guns mired in mud. The tires and axles of ammunition carts disappeared in sludge and the shells for the guns still with them were carried by hand. Half a dozen men at the front of the column slashed a trail with machetes, the rainforest so densely organic, so humid and rank, it felt as if they were forcing their way through the tissue of a living creature.
The Wave Theory of Angels
BY ALISON MacLEOD
The world yearns. This is its sure gravity: the attraction of bodies. Earth for molten star. Moon for earth. A hand for the orb of a breast. This is its movement too: the motion of desire, of a longing toward.
I am a Red Dress
BY ANNA CAMILLIERI
My mother often said, "When your grandfather dies, I'm going to the funeral in a red dress." Sometimes this declaration was preceded by a long string of curses, sometimes it emerged as a single thought bubble that evaporated as quickly as it came.
Let There be Rock
BY DAVID BIDINI
I'm forty years old as I write this. I hope that sounds old. If it doesn't sound old to you, then you're my peer, my equal, my generational brother or sister. If that's the case, you have no right reading this book. It isn't for you. It's for those who wouldn't be caught dead sitting next to you on the bus. So, if you don't mind? There. Now go busy yourself with some shuffleboard or something
Shack: The Cutland Junction Stories
BY KENNETH J. HARVY
A man from the government stood in the doorway of Ace Winslow's one-room shack. He had arrived on a silver snowmobile and wore a silver helmet and silver zip-up snowsuit that was peculiar to the area. After introducing himself, he stood silent for a few moments, awaiting conversation that was not forthcoming, then said: "We'll be building you a new house in the spring." He explained that Ace need not live in "this place" any longer, that the government had initiated programs to ensure that the people in Cutland Junction lived better lives. Ace had never seen the man before. He nodded regardless and grinned and asked the man in for a mug of tea, but the man said he was busy and had better get going. Many more stops to make before the day was out.
Shades of Black
BY RICHARD SIKLOS
For a man with Conrad Black's sense of place and history, an AT&T teleconference may not have been his choice of venue for his own corporate beheading. Black was at his Park Avenue apartment at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, January 20, 2004, when he phoned into a board meeting of Hollinger International, the Chicago-based newspaper company he had founded, which owned the Telegraph news-paper group in London, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Jerusalem Post.
Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw
BY WILL FERGUSON
It's rare to remember exactly where you were when an idea first occurred to you—or at least, it's rare for me. I usually wander through life gathering notions and hunches the way trouser pockets gather bits of lint; I'm not really sure how they got there, but there they are. In this case, though, I can recall vividly where I was when it dawned on me that Canada is not a country but a collection of outposts: it was while I drove through a night of heavy rain, into the realm of a legendary republic, a sleeping child and drowsy spouse beside me.
There is a Season
BY PATRICK LANE
I stood alone among yellow glacier lilies and the windflowers of spring, the western anemone, their petals frail disks of trembling clotted cream.
Life Mask
BY EMMA DONOGHUE
The Thames was loosening, its thin skin of ice cracked open by thousands of small boats, as if spring were on its way. The carriage with the Derby arms gilded on the side forced its way down Whitehall through a tangle of vehicles and pedestrians. 'The traffic, these days.' The Earl of Derby sighed.
Segue
BY CAROL SHIELDS
Something is always saying to me: Be plain. Be clear. But then something else interferes and unjoints my good intentions.
