ISSUES | summer 1985

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8.3 (Summer 1985)

Featuring work by Sandra Scofield, Bharati Mukherjee, Susan Land, Bret Lott, Charles Kuschinski, Margaret Hermes, Ron Carlson, Ninotchka Rosca, Wing Tek Lum, Vern Rutsala, James Camp, Gary Brozio, Greg Pape, Colleen J. McElroy, Mark Jarman, Edward Hirsch, Jeffrey Greene, Michael Pettit, Brenda Hillman, Andrew Hudgins, William Trowbridge, Walter McDonald, Pattiann Rogers, Len Roberts, Patricia Phillippy and John Drury. Also, an interview with Jim Harrison.

CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE

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Nonfiction

Jun 01 1985

The Beautician and the One-Legged Man

Weekends the sawmill shut down, and only chuffed an occasional white plume into the blue air to show the boiler was still alive. So Saturday morning, when I got up early to drive Aunt Lucille to the post office, the town was quiet, only a few farm pickups and dogs hanging around the corner store. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but as she got out to the car and stepped onto the board sidewalk, she said quickly over her shoulder, “I want to see if there’s a letter from my honey.”

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Fiction

Jun 01 1985

Epidemic

It occurred to Lazaro Reyes, M.D., that if he could kill one child, just one child, everything would be all right again. The problem was to find the child. Having found him, Lazaro would know what to do:a quick glide of the scalpel across the throat, the body hung by its feet over the garden faucet drain. He was sure his hands wouldn’t tremble; he would not hesitate. Such was his rage against that face of innocence: black mop of hair, brown-gold eyes, snub nose and full lips, atop a lanky body within filthy, loose clothes.