Everybody always says that I left Meagan at the altar, but that’s simply not true. I left her on the living room couch.

She was staying at her mother’s house that weekend – she thought it would make the wedding night more special – but she was, incredibly enough, the only one home when I went by the morning after the rehearsal dinner. I wasn’t prepared for how blonde she would look when she opened the door. (read on…)

Call Me When You Land

Chapter 1

He’s found dead in Nevada.

“Your information was in his Camelbak,” the deputy says.

Katie holds the line. Last she heard Craig was in Montana. A few months ago he’d sent them a sunny postcard from Bridger Bowl. He usually sends one or two a year. She’s always sorry as she pushes those cards under C.J.’s door, but she doesn’t want to be one of those mothers who hides the father from the child.

The deputy clears his throat.

“Where?” she finally asks, removing her smock. She stands up and rinses her dirty paint brushes. (read on…)

My thermostat is set a 68 degrees and the cold taps my nose, making it run. The Wisconsin wind of winter snaps my neighbor’s flag at the dark sky, am and pm indistinguishable in January. I drag my little girl from bed every morning and bundle her in turtle neck sweaters, hugs, and wool.

I think of this as I watch the morning news and gulp my steaming coffee. (read on…)

Three boys walk up 47th Street, as if they own one side and consider buying the other. They wear jean vests with, “AXEMEN,” embroidered in gold across the shoulders. Below “AXEMEN,” one of the boys has the name “Farmer” and the other “Easy” written in smaller letters. The boy between them wears a vest with the name “Prospect.”

Farmer extends an arm to halt Easy and Prospect and points to another young man. “Boys, we got us an Outlaw,” he says. He signals the others to follow. The Axemen quicken their pace. Outlaw runs. The Axemen smell fear, pursue their prey. Farmer strikes first, pulls Outlaw to the street. Outlaw jumps up, raising fists to fight. (read on…)

Deep Breathing Under Big Sky

Cowboys on horseback still manage to just about stop my heart. It’s always been this way, and I’ve never been free of it. It started early: when I was growing up in South Carolina, my sister and I used to watch old westerns with our father: movies like McClintock, Shane, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Hang ‘Em High. I was captivated with dusty ranges, rocky spires and plummeting waterfalls, and the desperate things some of those men would do—guns usually blazing—to get there. And while there was an age I certainly reached where I started to pay most attention to the flop of blonde hair over Redford’s heartbreaking face, or the rakish, lusty glint in Newman’s gorgeous baby blues, I always watched the horses. I watched the actors who rode them: from the extras in the wide-open range scenes—cowboys gripping saddle horns with one hand and waving hats with the other, Indians riding bareback and full-throttle, infinitely cool—to the easy way leading men like Eastwood and the Duke sat the saddle, how they leaned back in it, heels down, as if they were more centaur than man: the horse merely an appendage. (read on…)