“Yeah, well … it got a little tricky.”
“They’re looking for you about as hard as they’re looking for Henley.” The trooper turns and regards the ragged furrow in the snow leading back up the side of the mountain. “You find anything?”
“Yeah. Rocks and snow.”
“What about the other one?”
“Rifken? We split up about an hour ago. I came over the top; he’s working his way around the ridge.”
“I’d call in if I was you. Anyhow, I’m headed up to the roadblock on 321. You need anything?”
“No,” says Hargadon. “We’re headed in.”
The trooper steps through the just-softening snow to his car and guns the engine before driving away. Hargadon follows with his eyes, noticing how the slush holds the impression of the tires and how the sun has found one or two patches of asphalt. The windows of the patrol car glisten as it recedes, and the engine fades to a soft purr, and then to nothing. There is only a clean, cold rush from the valley. As the car disappears around the last curve, Hargadon takes a long draft of pure mountain air and lets his eyes wander from the road. Up to the stand of hemlocks where he sees white movement, a bent branch, and a cascade of snow. Like a great white owl taking flight.
The Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
David Walton, Evening Out
Leigh Allison Wilson, From the Bottom Up
Sandra Thompson, Close-Ups
Susan Neville, The Invention of Flight
Mary Hood, How Far She Went
François Camoin, Why Men Are Afraid of Women
Molly Giles, Rough Translations
Daniel Curley, Living with Snakes
Peter Meinke, The Piano Tuner
Tony Ardizzone, The Evening News
Salvatore La Puma, The Boys of Bensonhurst
Melissa Pritchard, Spirit Seizures
Philip F. Deaver, Silent Retreats
Gail Galloway Adams, The Purchase of Order
Carole L. Glickfeld, Useful Gifts
Antonya Nelson, The Expendables
Nancy Zafris, The People I Know
Debra Monroe, The Source of Trouble
Robert H. Abel, Ghost Traps
T. M. McNally, Low Flying Aircraft
Alfred DePew, The Melancholy of Departure
Dennis Hathaway, The Consequences of Desire
Rita Ciresi, Mother Rocket
Dianne Nelson, A Brief History of Male Nudes in America
Christopher McIlroy, All My Relations
Alyce Miller, The Nature of Longing
Carol Lee Lorenzo, Nervous Dancer
C. M. Mayo, Sky over El Nido
Wendy Brenner, Large Animals in Everyday Life
Paul Rawlins, No Lie Like Love
Harvey Grossinger, The Quarry
Ha Jin, Under the Red Flag
Andy Plattner, Winter Money
Frank Soos, Unified Field Theory
Mary Clyde, Survival Rates
Hester Kaplan, The Edge of Marriage
Darrell Spencer, CAUTION Men in Trees
Robert Anderson, Ice Age
Bill Roorbach, Big Bend
Dana Johnson, Break Any Woman Down
Gina Ochsner, The Necessary Grace to Fall
Kellie Wells, Compression Scars
Eric Shade, Eyesores
Catherine Brady, Curled in the Bed of Love
Ed Allen, Ate It Anyway
Gary Fincke, Sorry I Worried You
Barbara Sutton, The Send-Away Girl
David Crouse, Copy Cats
Randy F. Nelson, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men
Greg Downs, Spit Baths
The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men Page 21
