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Nobody Else Around
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After the war he worked with Teller. They detonated bombs capable of reducing fairly large parcels of the known world to uninhabitable rubble. Everybody hated Teller and they hated my father. Too bad. I dont know what to tell you about his sleep. I never slept either. And I didnt bomb anybody. Read more
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The First Noel
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A Human Yo-Yo Gets to an Apocheir
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Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black Levi’s, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he’d look in on the Sailor’s Grave, his old tin can’s tavern on East Main Street. He got there by way of the Arcade, at the East Main… Read more
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Worth a Look
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It was the morning of December 21, 1931. Sandusky was sixty miles away, and he slept through most of the ride, not waking until the bus reached the terminal two and a half hours later. He had just over three hundred dollars in his pocket: the two hundred fifty from Meers, another fifty he had… Read more
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Contingent
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That for six thousand years — and no one knows how many millions of ages before — the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and sprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many sprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back, thousands of hunters should… Read more
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Meticulous Preparations
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By noon on the twelfth of December the builders of the fort had completed their last meticulous preparations (and Roger had patted every inch of the ramparts to make sure that he could trust them to parade Parker’s standard along), but they did not actually cross the frontier until the thirty-first of January. Operations were… Read more
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Holiday Overture
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Bound and Stacked
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I lost the romance of this placeand woke up old. One darlingfantasy shattered over the next,folding over a fist drenchedin my hip. The Christmas treesare bound and stacked upoutside, the air can’t decidewhat to make of itself, and weare about to throw a presidentout. You are not your mother,and each of your dead lives onin… Read more
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Life’s Like That