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Baffler Archives: Stories

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Heather
The day my father told me he was leaving for China he found me sitting on the back steps digging my toe into the dirt and playing with an errant stick I’d found far from whatever tree had rejected it. Twelve was my age. We were reading Johnny Tremain in school and dominating ...

Handless
I didn’t want to upset him. I wanted to impress him. He opened the car door for me. And I got in. Carefully. Gracefully. He closed the door on my hand. And I left my hand in the door. He got in the car and we drove. Fifteen, twenty miles to dinner. He stopped the car and ...

from In the Country of the Young
January 15, 2013
Hugh found that his mother did not like his pictures. She scolded him for wasting paper and chewing pencils. His twin sisters merely giggled when he brought them views of things familiar or sometimes seized him for a game. They wanted to dress him up and Mrs. Cullom never ...

I’m OK, Eeyore OK
January 15, 2013
It was a beautiful day in the Hundred-Acre Planned Community. The sun was shining on the green grass where all of the houses backed up onto the nine-hole golf course. Christopher Robin had come out at dawn to get in a couple of early rounds, for, as he had often been told by ...

Saturday Night at the Movies
January 14, 2013
Marshmallows. I see the marshmallows. They fling themselves above me, high flyin’. I watch them with a dulled absorption. Patting. Something is patting my face. A gentle rain of gentle pats. On my nose, cheeks and mouth. Then God speaks. God is the atmosphere in which ...

Stormy Love Story
January 14, 2013
I still think about him. You know, my ex-boyfriend, four-star General Norman Paul Schwarzkopf. It’s hard. I was a civilian, he was a general, leading our troops to victory in the Gulf War. To you, to the public, he was sober, fearless, dedicated, loyal. He delivered those ...

One Thing about a Goat
January 13, 2013
Animals don’t have it so good. It’s no secret. One thing’s clothes: you won’t see a goat browsing in Petites on Saturday afternoon. You won’t see a goat exercising her rights as a consumer. I’m not saying they can help it, I’m just saying it bugs me. I mean it just ...

Pills
January 13, 2013
1. How can I get some pills? Getting pills is a breeze. Just select a psychiatrist from the Yellow Pages—and make an appointment! Mental health professionals will hand over a prescription without any fuss or bother. They like pills as much as you do! Have you, at any point in ...

from Aurora
Chicago, 1989. A strike that has been going on for some time has finally collapsed. The union is facing ruination and the company has filed suit for millions in damages. On the eve of the trial, Gil, the union’s lawyer, stumbles into a romantic triangle between his North Side ...

The Skin Sellers
January 12, 2013
Dermali was once a tiny nation in the Balkans. It no longer exists. But its culture lives on among the Dermalian-Americans. In the Twenties, after the Dermalian economy had been smashed by The Great War, six of my eight great-grandparents emigrated to the United States and ...

Give the Millionaire a Drink
January 10, 2013
They come from all over to the town of East Hampton, this celebrated place at the end of the island. Private jets shoot off hourly from Dallas and L.A., the chilled Porsches and Saabs arrive from Montclair and Rye, matron busloads depart the Park Avenue swelter in a huff of ...

Helping Hand
I was never meant for this nocturnal stage, this sickening sabbat spun out of control. I am a creature of the daytime, engineered to delight housewives, to charm the Oprah-fed minions with my engaging deformity. Only through cunning have I insinuated myself here, become part of ...