Still Life With Crows
Chapter One
Medicine Creek, Kansas. Early August. Sunset.
The great sea of yellow corn stretches from horizon to horizon under an angry sky.
When the wind rises the corn stirs and rustles as if alive, and when the wind dies
down again the corn falls silent. The heat wave is now in its third week, and dead air
hovers over the corn in shimmering curtains.
One road cuts through the corn from north to south; another from east to west.
Where the two roads cross lies the town. Sad gray buildings huddle together at the
intersection, gradually thinning along both roads into separate houses, then
scattered farms, and then nothing. A creek, edged by scraggly trees, wanders in
from the northwest, loops lazily around the town, and disappears in the southeast. It
is the only curved thing in this landscape of ... read full excerpt from Still Life with Crows ebook
