This story takes place in the end of
the summer, “when even the heat feels cool because it’s tired of itself.” It’s
set in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a town that “had the stillness of
a rattlesnake before the strike.”
The descriptions in this story are
spot-on. The narrator hears a fight start “slowly, like a lawn-mower far away.”
Sadness is “the tainted maudlin kind you feel in a playground empty of
children.” Desire is “a terrifying, beautiful muscle that moved like a fish.”
Read "Alfie and Joe" here.
