Archive: Fiction

Diss and Ace

“What does diss mean?” Ben asked Joanne. “Disrespect, or a put down. Kids say it a lot.” “That clears things up,” Ben said. He had just got off the phone with Fred Carter, a bird…

Opening Day

By long tradition, Ben opened his bream fishing season with Billy Lee, his friend since boyhood. Billy was Ben’s age, but like Ben he still worked, in Billy’s case as a utility hand on Mossy…

The Last Shot

George Graves knew this year would be his last shot at winning the National. He had been trying since 1980, the first year he’d qualified an entry. In the thirty five years since he’d had…

A Cure

Ben Reach made a study of how fellow humans shaped their lives, for better and for worse. His fellow curmudgeon Sam Nixon MD shared in the study. Over breakfast at Millie’s Diner in Albany, Georgia…

The Almost Refusal

Ben had again agreed to be a field trial judge as a substitute for a last minute withdrawer. He hated to judge, but he always ended up enjoying the last minute assignments. But this time…

Cats by Tom Word

Wallace Simpson called Ben on a mid-September Monday morning. “Ben, I have a problem and I need your advice.” “Glad to see you,” Ben said. “When can you come in?” “I can be there in…

The Breakup

For Frank Hill and Roger Kirby, it had been a magical season. In it they had both moved from marginal to main stream, from barely known to well known, in their obscure world. That world…

The Biscuit Eater

For those not fortunate enough to own this book or those who have not read James Street’s The Biscuit Eater, we have added a PDF version of the short story published in The Saturday Evening…

John Marsh liked his work, mostly. At age sixty-three, he worked as assistant dog trainer and hunt manager on Hopscotch Plantation, a Southwest Georgia spread owned by Mark Mason, the great grandson of its assembler.…

The Newcomer

He arrived at Columbus, North Dakota, unknown and driving a battered twelve-year-old pickup, pulling a two-horse trailer twice as old. He unloaded two hard-worked horses into a portable pipe corral and chained five nearly identical…