Activity

Time stops when someone dies. Of course it stops for them, maybe, but for the mourners time runs amok. Death comes too soon. It forgets the tides, the days growing longer and shorter, the moon. It rips up the calendar. You aren’t at your desk or on the subway or fixing dinner for the children. You’…

I just realized that I’m doing that last assignment again. And I’m still doing it wrong, mentioning the body, telling you that they killed CD the day he got out of County.

CD wrote about his brother. Most of CD’s stories had been about him when they were little. The years they were lost to each other in different foster homes. How they found each other by chance, in Reno. This story took place in the Sunnyvale district. He read it in a quiet voice. None of us moved. …

“Okay, so what I want is two or three pages leading up to a dead body. Don’t show us the actual body. Don’t tell us there’s going to be a body. End the story with us knowing there is going to be a dead body. Got it?”

“True,” Mrs. Bevins said. “People are always saying ‘tell the truth’ when you write. Actually it is hard to lie. The assignment seems silly … a stump. But this is deeply felt. I see an alcoholic who is sick and tired. This stump is how I would have described myself before I stopped drinking.”

“H…