This day could stand some improvement. With such a start under her own roof—the accident on the downstairs carpet, out of milk halfway through breakfast—Natalie Brinkman would need to summon her best resolve to fend off all the bothers likely waiting outside the house. This being one...

I’ve never been a great sleeper, even after taking the doc’s advice and cutting out the naps and the booze and the late-night TV. The truth is, I’ve come to enjoy being awake late. Alone in the dark at 2 in the morning, safe in a warm bed, I can think about things. Last night I...

The doc finally let me go back to work. The guys at the shop don’t know whether to slap me on the back or steer clear. Like I might be cursed. I’m just glad to get some grease under my fingernails again. My sleep got more thrown off in the hospital. Now I nap after dinner and stay up...

  Furthermore, it is my emphatic and unequivocal position that I have no recollection of putting Bob Stiner’s dachshund in a carpenter’s vise Saturday, November 5, 2016, on or around 11:48 p.m. at a party at the Stiner residence, where excess alcoholic beverages were served and...

  I am 8 years old, sprawled under the cherry tree in our back yard. This is more than a memory. The bed of October leaves around me, which moments ago I kicked into place and fancy a fortress, crunch between my fingertips. Mourning doves coo in the branches above me, and in the distance I...

  J.R. felt certain he could go back to sleep if he kept his eyes closed, but for some reason he was all in a twist. And why was it so hot and clammy, like he was trapped under those lights that keep the popcorn warm at the movie theater? He grudgingly sat up and discovered the back seat of...