When Chrissy stepped off the subway in downtown Berkeley, she joined the crush of morning commuters, but she was in no hurry. She took her place on the right side of the escalator with the people who wanted to ride, not rush, up the moving staircase and stood with her eyes fixed on the silver-and-glass domed ceiling that framed the sky overhead. The slow rise from deep underground to the street always reminded her of her father, how he used to say "Beam me up, Scotty!" and swing her into his arms when he carried her up to bed. She liked the ride to last as long as possible and looked forward to the day, not far off, she was sure, when people and cars would go everywhere gliding along on moving walks and roadways. continue

Chevy Impalas, huge-finned Buicks and screeching motorcycles spewed exhaust fumes across the sun-blotched pavement. Trekking home at the end of the school day, Art studied the turns carefully because he knew that a single mistake would doom him. Sometimes he counted steps to make sure. He preferred cloudy days when fewer reflections bounced behind his glasses. continue

Breakfast gobbled down, hair combed, and shirt tucked in, I bounded out the front door and zipped across the red, white, and blue center lines in the street to enter the small museum that had been across from my house all my life. Mrs. Winters, the fat lady who ran it, was pleasantly expecting me. continue

Jake only agreed because of the money. When he mentioned he was driving south, Melanie said she needed to visit her mother that same weekend and asked if she could go with him. Normally he would never involve a client in anything outside work, but she offered to pay half the gas and that swayed him--he was trying to save every penny and buy a fixer house. He would have preferred to go by himself on a long drive, a chance to get away from work and nagging homeowners, just to drive, hour after hour, and watch the landscape change, trees and fields race by, an occasional glimpse of the ocean. Listen to his old tapes, let his heart go with Hank Williams, I'm So Lonesome, or Buddy Holly, It's So Easy to Fall in Love. Not that he really had to go all the way to Los Angeles for a change of scenery, but that way he could visit Martha, and now if he only had to pay half the gas it didn't feel like such an indulgence. continue

She lives in a hovel. He didn't believe her when she told him. He thought it was modesty. He didn't think anyone really lived in hovels. Now here it is, shrunken and jaundiced, wearing a sloping, ashen roof and a bushy, overgrown lawn the way an old man might cover himself with a hat and a beard. The metal storm door frame has rusted into the same sallow copper as the brick exterior and the boarded window squares and the twin dirt scars of a driveway, all of it submitting to the North Carolina sun. He goose-steps through the weeds and up the porch to knock. There is no car and no sound, only the honking of a V of birds overhead, thin and lost. continue

My great-grandmother was born in 1874 in Johnson's Bayou, which is a small beach village on the Gulf of Mexico at the Louisiana/Texas divide. Her name was Margaret Bertha Pevoto, and at the time of her birth her parents owned and operated a resort hotel near the beach on the first of a series of ridges that run parallel to the water's edge. Margaret was nicknamed Maggie B. as a child, and that became her name for the rest of her life. However, to me and my cousins, her great-grandchildren, she was Momoo, and she was at the center of our small-town lives. continue

Grandpa isn't what he used to be, not even close. I can remember him as a barrel-chested ice skater cutting graceful lines on Schnabel's Pond, his black boots scuffed but fluid, his gray locks like fighter-jet wings escaping his cap. Back then, as a kid, I would waddle on the ice with my brothers and watch the man go. I wanted all the prissy little figure skaters and hockey punks to know the man in black was my grandpa, master of frozen public waters. I remember thinking he skated in perfect cursive. continue

And what would you give for one more
wet, chilled afternoon continue

I supposed I've prepared for this,
the time I showed my son how
to shoot his gun by demonstrating
without any ammunition, simply
propelling vacant air towards sky,
asked white stars for truth without
ever really believing in an answer,
written line after line after line
without ever saying anything. continue