Nonfiction

I walk along dusty streets at the base of the Verdugo Mountains just north of Los Angeles, my gaze fixed upon the jagged horizon, where an angry orange line burns, jumping and snapping, devouring brush and charring the landscape.

A ditch-digger pauses from swinging down his pickaxe to notice me and wave. An old lady with a bale of hay balanced on her head wishes me good morning.

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It was a dreadful February of oxygen tanks, life-thieving coughing fits, bedside vigils, and late-night weeping in the darkened room where my grandfather lay dying.

Two weeks into this new life, my Apple TV stopped working. Netflix was the first thing to go, and when it happened, I remember sitting on my couch confounded, pressing the home button over and over again, waiting...

You think of the opening scene in All the King’s Men, the hypnotic effect of the road, and that moment when you come to just as your right front wheel hooks off the pavement and down into the soft, black dirt...

The mouth, seeing he’s alone in the bar, turned pale and tried to sidle around Mickey, who was blocking his way to the door.

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There’s an EMT shortage.  A medic shortage.  A nursing shortage.  A doctor shortage.

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Resurrect the girl getting off the Trailways in Raleigh, a backwater capital. The bus has stopped in every town since the Blue Ridge Mountains and the smell of the coach is steeped in cold tobacco smoke and the guts of meat lunches

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