Dave's Fiction Warehouse

T his morning we rode our bikes up to watch the UM homecoming parade. It was the second one I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. The first was in 1968 when I accompanied my then-girlfriend and her mom – a UM alumna – on the drive from Eureka down to Missoula for just that occasion.   I don’t know about parades. I know you’re supposed to applaud and whoop at certain intervals. I know that, past a certain age, one should not actively collect the candy tossed from floats. I know that one should be discreet about ogling the pretty cheerleaders. I know that the first 30 minutes of any parade is really all one needs to see. Especially if it’s raining.  My girlfriend at that first parade became my wife a couple of years later. She became my former wife 24 years after that – one of the reasons I left Missoula. I thought of that today, standing in the drizzling rain, watching the makeshift floats and marching bands drift by. It all seemed a little forced, a little lackluster, but that s...

  If it ain't covid, it's something else L ast week I felt the tiniest scratch of an imminent sore throat, a few unfamiliar aches, a bit of leakage around the nostrils. I thought, here we go. My wife had caught Covid for a second time not even three weeks earlier, and pretty much everybody else I know has had it at least once. I’d made it three and a half years without testing positive. It was a good run, but I knew it was just a matter of time.  We still had a couple of tests lying around. Being a responsible adult, I took one. Waited the required time. Negative.  Well, people often test negative before the disease fully takes hold. I waited a couple more  days, until I was dry-coughing and blowing my nose every three seconds, and even a small bite of oatmeal felt like a big bite of sandpaper. I also had a fair amount of pain elsewhere, as though  I’d been dropped from a great height onto a field of farm implements.  The next day I was slightly better. I t...

T his is the Fiction Warehouse, so I suppose I should occasionally discuss works of fiction.  Last night I finished Charles Frazier’s latest book, “The Trackers.” I liked it quite a bit. Let’s say four stars out of five. Five is an amount I reserve for works I find profoundly moving or revelatory or funny, to the extent that I keep thinking about them long after turning the last page. “The Trackers” isn’t quite any of those. But it’s a pretty good read, kind of a Western and kind of a noir, both of which were pretty popular during the era in which it’s set: 1937, late in the Great Depression. A young artist is commissioned to do a historical mural in a Colorado post office, part of the Roosevelt administration’s effort to uplift the rural masses. A wealthy rancher and his beautiful young wife take an interest in the artist and offer him a place to live. So: Beautiful young wife and lonely young artist: You know where this is going. But Frazier, to his credit, has a better story in ...

J ust when I thought my desultory writing career was nearly done, I sold another short story. It’s called “Five Hat Minimum” and it appears in the current issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (which we literary lions refer to as EQMM). You should buy several copies and hand them out as gifts. Or, use them as fun coasters for your next soiree!  This yarn features a character I introduced in another EQMM story some years back. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. I won’t say it’s the best story ever written, but maybe the best I’ve written. Which, admittedly, is not a real high bar. EQMM has published quite a bit of my work over the years. It’s funny: my first published fiction, “Nobody’s Business,” appeared in the same issue as a story by Joyce Carol Oates, back in 2003. I was quite proud of that. Now this one, which may be my last, also appears alongside one of her stories (“The Siren: 1999”). I mention it because she’s not a frequent contributor to the magazine. I’ll definitely use that as...