Elizabeth Baum, Joseph Baum, and Samuel Baum were buried in a cemetery south of Caffey’s Inlet near Duck. A migrating dune was threatening to bury the cemetery. In June 1909 Josephus exhumed his brother, Samuel, and his parents, with plans to reinter the coffins in the Baum Family Cemetery on the Whitehall farm near Grandy.…

The rehab program was court ordered, so when they kicked me out, the police brought me to my father’s. Having been a prosecutor, he pulled strings — told them he was giving me one more chance. I hadn’t spoken to him since my mother’s funeral two years before. Better than jail, I thought. Receiving me…

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast. Asseem, thought Helen. She let the word roll around on her tongue, unpronounced, savoring the decision to speak it aloud. But she didn’t. Not yet, she told herself, and concentrated on her…

From the bus stop I walk up the gravel service road. All of the puddles are frozen over with thin windowpane ice and I amuse myself by stomping through the sheets of crystal. They break with a sharp crunch and a whoosh as the air escapes around my boot. No puddles in the potholes beneath…

January 19, 1996 The day was cold, but the starter had not frozen over. Not entirely. A thin skin of ice veiled the ignition, but not so deeply that they couldn’t smash through with a key. It happened like this: Abby swiped the key from her father’s den and took Charlie by the hand. “Be…

He started with the lowest branches. You can see them piled in the mud by the crabapple. He cuts them with a plain handsaw, working with a carpenter’s skill, though we’re guessing from the half-built racing engine in his garage and the tools hanging on the wall that he’s a mechanic, or was. He hasn’t…

The sun bent a-blurry on the Pacific Coast Highway. Charlie and Jim looked into the closest star and tried to blind themselves, but they hadn’t the guts. Charlie pulled to the side of the road. “There goes that idea,” Charlie said. “I see blobs of paint,” Jim said. “We’ll get going in minute. Try to…

for (the late) Sir James George Frazer I Sisyphus He gripped a corner of the sky and peeled it off the walls of the world to go where no man has gone before. Behind the sky was the same sky, same dry/wet, blue/gray variations, the mesmerizing metamorphics of clouds. Being and nothingness as always being…

Kanae hangs up her cell phone. She only wanted to hear Alec’s voice. Just to be sure. She drops the phone on the seat next to her, repositions the car in her own lane and ignores an angry honk from an oncoming driver. What matters is the speed of her car and its position in…

How I started going to meetings is something I never told you, because it happened a few years ago to a person who is less me, less the person I am now, this person who until recently you had strong feelings for. Those are your words: Strong feelings. Now I have decided that I want…

Rurik is teaching me to juggle with a red scarf throw, a blue scarf throw, and his Russian accent, catch catch. He says go with impact as the scarves flutter to his hands and his arms sink as if he’s catching lead balls. Or missiles. Throw throw catch catch. The boss rushes in, copper-shiny heels,…

On the birth of my first grandchild The baby was born early. Eight weeks early to be exact. They now count gestation in weeks not months. I stood in the hall and heard his first cry. Like a kitten, small and mewing. He was small. Four pounds, three ounces. For six weeks the baby will…