A salesman who shared his liquor and steered while sleeping... A Cherokee filled with bourbon. A VW no more than a bubble of hashish fumes, captained by a college student. And a family from Marshalltown who head-onned and killed forever a man driving west out of Bethany, Missouri..
..I rose up sopping wet from sleeping under the pouring rain, and something less than conscious, thanks to the first three of the people I've already named- the salesman and the Indian and the student--all of whom had given me drugs. At the head of the entrance ramp I waited without hope of a ride. What was the point, even, of rolling up my sleeping bag when I was too wet to be let into anybody's car? I draped it around me like a cape. The downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts. My thoughts zoomed pitifully. The travelling salesman had fed
me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out. My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it glowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside it I knew we'd have an accident in the storm.
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
Proust Preview
The 39 Steps
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
Dominic by William Steig
Jane Austen's Emma (Redux)
Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger
All the Pretty Horses
Romeo and Juliet
The Green Mile
Bonus: Sherlock Holmes
What happened to Brandon?
Moby Dick
A Tale of Two Cities
A Farewell to Arms/The Stranger
Fathers and Sons
Bridge to Terabithia/The Little Prince
Pride and Prejudice Redux
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It is Free
The Round Table
The World We Made
Sanity at the Movies
A Tale of Two Cities
The Federalist Papers
Then Comes What?
The Ville