I've been working on a group of related stories set in the West, most of them inspired in some way by my experiences traveling as a journalist in the mid- to-late-1980s.

A number of these stories have been published in quarterlies and literary magazines such as The Ontario Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, High Plains Quarterly and Cimarron Review.

I've also recently written and published a number of stand-lone short stories, of which "Percy Atkins" is one.

"News from the Rodeo," Cimarron Review, Winter 2008

Excerpt:

"On the dirt path that led up to the Applewhite house from the front gate, trucks and old cars were lined up on either side. The smoke from the barbeque pits rose up white from behind the house, which was also white. This was not what I thought of as sociable country, so the spectacle of more than a hundred people nervously shuffling about with their bottles of beer or their paper plates was another strange sight.
I don't know why people seemed so thoroughly uncomfortable with life in those parts, but they were undeniably so. The women all seemed to be waiting for someone to say the wrong thing, or for someone to do something that fell outside what seemed to be their rigid rules of existence: No shows of poverty or wealth were tolerated, no bursts of emotion, no concession to the frustrations of life. Only an upright stoicism about everything from rough weather to stillborn children. I think they were all Pentacostals.
Kim seemed as we stepped forward to be especially clenched. She had a birdlike nervousness that perfectly matched her wiry, taut constitution. Her lipstick was of a redness darker than what I was used to, almost suggesting a hardness that her pink cowboy hat could not possibly alleviate.
The men looked at me from under their Resistol brims. Narrow sidewise looks with furrowed lines crinkling up around their blue Protestant eyes. Mumbles and grunts. A spit of tobacco onto the ground. Most of them were from the outlands, hard-lifers, and I was foreign stock to them, a face they hadn't known for twenty or thirty years.
Applewhite was wandering around backslapping and joshing. He spotted Kim and me and made a wide arcing approach.
"Kim and Hal," he said. "Good to see y'all." He expressed no surprise and asked no questions, but then again, he was getting into politics.
"And you," Kim said with her usual air of suspicion.
"You got your ribs there, and your burgers there, and you beer and whatnots over there," Applewhite said. "Help yourself and enjoy." And then he moved on, shuffling through the group as people seemed nervously attentive to one another.
"Okay, here we are," I said. "What now?"
"Just hold steady, doll, and we'll see what we're worth around here."

"My Name is Percy Atkins," West Branch, Fall 2007

Excerpt:

"The smell of the dank wool is the most curious connection to home. His whole life, that wet musky scent that is walking in the Sheffield rain, on muddy roads; the smell of horse and ale and hay; the smell of sodden childhood. He sinks to the ankles of his boots and slogs on, shivering, the skin taut beneath the wool underwear and wool uniform and rucksack. This is the farthest end of the world for a boy from Britain: France. The deep oozing roads, the fulsome language he cannot disentangle. The puzzle of the terrain on which his column marches, heading for the front alongside a convoy of lorries.
He has volunteered for this, as it has been with all the boys of his neighborhood, the 'Pals' who have been called upon by Lord Kitchener to serve. His unit, the 2nd Barnsley Pals, have fallen in behind the Accrington Pals, with the Fusiliers ahead of them. There is a sense of giddiness in them all, the kind of laughing and sarcasm that is easy to men who know each other well, the long tedium of the march being broken up by the transmuting cliques and rivalries, the idle boasts and challenges to same. Much seems to revolve around arm wrestling or drinking contests. They’ve carried many of the old grudges all the way to the front --- the competed-for girls, the lost football games, the schoolyard fights. Percy can't get comfortable. He is not one to be chatty in any event. Around, familiar faces, many to which he can't attach a name but by which he can recall its context, a place or a moment.
It is June and the rains are unceasing and they march with long woolen coats on, making the day all the more stifling. They will make camp in late afternoon, and they will sit as the smell of the stew begins to waft across the cheerless fields. They will play cards and write letters and Percy is not as taut when he is doing that, crammed in among so many boys from home.
The lice embed in the skull, the skin is unwashed for days’ time, the stubble of the beard itching under the helmet strap, and the stomach aching for more than what is given after a day’s march with a four-stone pack. But who is he to complain? Everybody is putting up with it. At least he’s not alone."