Timbuktu

Timbuktu

Mr. Bones knew that Willy wasn’t long for this world. The cough had been inside him for over six months, and by now there wasn’t a chance in hell that he would ever get rid of it. Slowly and inexorably, without once taking a turn for the better, the thing had assumed...
The Time of Our Singing

The Time of Our Singing

By the time the train reaches his destination, the child owns it. Charmed strangers wish him well when he gets off at a tiny Delta town called Money. He steps off the platform into a crowd of boys, his instant friends. He appears to them as another species, a creature...
In The Heart of the Heart of the Country

In The Heart of the Heart of the Country

Mrs Mean My house has porches fore and aft and holds a corner. I spy with care and patience on my neighbors but I seldom speak. They watch me too, of course, and so I count our evils even, though I guard my conscience with a claim to scientific coldness they cannot...
Invisible Man

Invisible Man

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible,...
Homegoing

Homegoing

The men continued sipping the wine in silence for a while. In the trees, the birds were calling each other to sleep. A spider crawled over James’s bare foot, and he thought of the Anansi stories his mother used to tell him, and still told his younger brothers and...