Big Bad Love: Stories
Larry Brown
Language: English
Pages: 118
ISBN: 2:00195979
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Larry Brown caught the rapt attention of readers and critics with the 1988 publication of Facing the Music, his prize-winning first collection of stories. The following year, his first novel, Dirty Work, won national acclaim as a work of uncompromising power and honesty. Big Bad Love, his third book, collects ten new stories. Dealing with sex, with drink, with fear, with all kinds of bad luck and obsession, these stories are unflinching and not for the fainthearted. But as is true of all of Brown's fiction, these ten stories are linked in a collective statement of redemption and hope. These stories come as close to the truth as any human expression can.
parking in those places sometimes anyway, but the car door slammed so hard I thought something about it, and the next thing I knew the front door was opening and the light was on in the living room and there we were, with a big maniac with a lug wrench coming toward the couch. I jumped up and threw a pillow in his face, and he knocked the stuffing out of the couch where my leg had been. She screamed while he was calling me 900 motherfuckers, and I saw he was fixing to kill me. My dick was waving
me, he’s harmless. They said, Believe me, there’s a lot worse than that going on that you don’t know nothing about. They said, If you did know what all was going on, you wouldn’t sleep at night. That made me uneasy and I decided to get in my truck and ride around some more. That retirement money was stacked up inside that bank account drawing 6.5 percent interest. I had beer and cigarettes unlimited. Dorothea had gotten that promotion and her boss liked her, took her out to lunch so she wouldn’t
with Honed in his arms, getting ready to take him home, that people would be saying Hi to Ned a lot in his life (which he hoped would run about a hundred wonderful years) and where they were going home to, they wouldn’t necessarily say Hi. They might say Hey. But a bunch of them would probably say Ho. Ho Ned. Whassup, main? And then when Ned came up in his world and put his legs into his britches like men do, he’d be out in it seeing people. If they said Hi they’d say Hined and if they said Ho
siege. I opened a beer, took a swig, put on Johann Pachelbel’s Kanon and listened. My uncle had caused all this. And he was out three cows over it. Later that night I called him and thanked him, and tried to explain the enormity of what he had done for me, how he had given me at least sixty days of freedom and time to write, but all he said was don’t mention it. 18 Couple of days later it was her on the phone. I asked her if she’d gotten her mon. “Yeah, I got it. Where’d you get it?”
trying to get up. The victor was walking away. He was swaggering a little. You could tell he thought he was hot shit on toast. I didn’t know what they’d been fighting over. I didn’t want to know. I just wanted the old guy who’d been pushed down to stop cussing so much. He was slinging one motherfucker after another one to the point where it went past ugly. I knew God was up there hearing it. I put my sunglasses on. After a while the old guy on the ground got up and went inside. I kept sitting