How does an aging logger who loses his wife and daughters in a horrific car crash spend his first holiday long weekend without them?"Because it’s the Thanksgiving weekend, he hangs around with the others at the end of the shift. They are a new crew, young, earnest, eager to provide for their families. He doesn’t trust them, their big talk and brazen work, sloppy and sometimes haphazard. By the third beer, he’s heard all he can take. He crushes the empties in his fist, tosses them in the slash, flexes his hand, the knuckles gnarled like lug nuts, strands of jagged scars across the top, and shakes out the numbness. He slings the rest of his six-pack, drops it in the cooler behind his seat, slams the tailgate shut and starts the truck. In his side-mirror, through the dust, one of the guys throws a can at his rear. Another raises a rifle."
To read more of my short story, "Gas Bar," pick up a copy of the Dalhousie Review, Spring 2009, 89.1.
