I cut the wire, worked it loose, and unwrapped it right there on my knees in the dirt under the boards, and I called up to the homeowner, because it …

A family hired me to tear off their old back deck and build a new one down here in Cape Girardeau — wired up under one of the joists was something no accident put there Read More

I cut the wrapping open there in the daylight, water running off me, and I hollered up at the boys to shut the compressor down, because it was not the …

I am a commercial diver on the big lake near Marquette — checking the pilings under an old pier, my hand found something lashed to one down where no light reaches Read More

I reached in and worked it loose and brought it out into the light, and I sat down on her bed, because it was a stack of letters, tied with …

My sister and I were twins, and for most of our lives you could not get a piece of paper between us — but these last five years she pulled away, and I never knew why Read More

Finally I worked the rusted lid up. Inside was one thing, wrapped in a scrap of cloth. I unwrapped it, and I had to go sit down in the hallway, …

My older brother died alone in the veterans home over in Ottumwa, an hour up the road from me — the home gave me his things, and in the bottom was a tobacco tin Read More

I reached in and picked it up, and I had to lean back against the workbench, because the one thing in that cabinet that did not belong with the varnish …

Mr. Kowalski taught me shop class in high school and made cradles for half of Alpena — at the estate sale of his tools, I opened a little cabinet nobody had bothered with Read More

I lifted the lid, and I had to set my cutters down, because inside that padlocked box was not tools, and not a pistol, and not money. It was a …

The fella across the street passed away and his people all live two states off, so they asked me to help clear his garage — behind the workbench was a padlocked box Read More

I worked the stiff strap loose, flipped the flap back, and looked inside, and I sat right down in the dirt by the barn, because that old saddlebag my father …

My father was a horseman and a cowboy his whole life out here around Cody, tough as an old saddle — going through his things, I opened the saddlebag he carried everywhere Read More

He reached up into that hollow under the machine bed and drew the thing out and set it in my two hands. I unwrapped the rag around it, and I …

I took my mother old sewing machine in to be fixed, the heavy black Singer she sewed on for forty years — the repairman found something hidden in the cabinet Read More

I pulled a chunk of the drywall away and put my flashlight up to the gap and looked into the space behind the wall, and I set that flashlight down, …

An old shelf let go in my garage in the middle of the night — cleaning up the mess, I found a cold draft coming from a hollow walled off behind the garage wall Read More

I stood there in that doorway and could not make my feet move, because in the middle of that bare concrete floor, set square in the light, was a quilt. …

I work nights at a storage place off the highway here in Biloxi — I cut the lock on a unit that had stopped paying, and it was near empty except for one thing Read More