Welding with Children by Tim Gautreaux

Told in the voice of an old man who has four unmarried daughters who each have children, Welding with Children, is a great story about loss, hope and wishing the best for ones children and grandchildren. The grandfather is inundated with babysitting chores while his daughters and wife have other things to do. But this grandfather has a real concern for his grandchildren. He is hounded in his small town by others who refer to his car as the "bastardmobile". He takes it all in stride but is still hurt by how he is treated. The grandfather is perplexed by what his grandchildren take for granted. So he decides to tell them Bible stories so they get some important knowledge. The following is a brief excerpt from the story:

"I tore into how Abraham almost stabbed Isaac, and the kids' eyes got big when they saw the knife. I hoped they got a sense of obedience to God out of it, but when I asked Freddie what the point of the story was, he just shrugged and looked glum. Tammynette, however, had an opinion. 'He's just like O.J. Simpson!' Freddie shook his head. 'Naw, God told Abraham to do it as a test.'

'Maybe God told O.J. to do what he did,' Tammynette sang.

'Naw, O.J. did it on his own,' Freddie told her, 'He didn't like his wife no more.'

'Well, maybe Abraham didn't like his son no more neither, so he was gonna kill him dead, and God stopped him.' Tammynette's voice was starting to rise the way her mother's did when she'd been drinking.

'Daddies don't kill their sons when they don't like them,' Freddie told her. 'They just pack up and leave them.'

The story is full of sarcasm and wit that brings out the voice of the narrator.

My Father on the Verge of Discrace by John Updike

This is a great story. The narrator is the son or daughter of a prominent man who is active in his community and who is a high school teacher. He is put in charge of the money for the football games. Each night after the game he takes the money home with him. Unfortunately, he steals this money in order to sustain his family. The era is during and after the great depression and so he feels justified in what he is doing. He has other secrets that are revealed to those in his town. (Crying out on the steps of a building at the University of Pennsylvania "Heil Hitler!"; (This before the US was involved in the war); Passing notes from a boy to a girl in one of his classes...) As I read this story last night I thought of the houses burning in California. One sentence struck out at me "Burning," went another of his chemical slogans, "destroys nothing. It just shuffles the molecules." John Updike delivers again in this story of disgrace (or what is perceived as disgrace)

Appetites by Kathryn Chetkovich

Appetites is written about hungers of the flesh. Its plot is similar to that of Meg Mullins' short story The Rug.

This is about a girl who is trying to find a place to live. She tells of her next door neighbors: "Next door were three children who all seemed to be at the loudest possible age, and their voices alive with the sound of killing each other." She discovers an ad in the paper one day and everyone agrees that she can move in. The tone of the narrator takes on an almost gay tone as she meets "the most attractive woman [she] had ever seen."

Some of the lines of this story are just good: "She looked like someone whose job, once you're dead, is to introduce you to God." ... "The only piece of furniture in the whole place that could not be moved by a couple of women with a hatchback was a baby grand piano, gleaming like a casket." The narrator, speaking of herself and her boyfriend says "We didn't really look alike, but you'd describe us with the same words on a driver's license: brown, brown, corrective lenses."

Faith seems to have it all which the narrator wishes she could have too. Faith's boyfriend brings over some rat poison to get rid of their infestation. They set a trap as well. Later in the week, a boy named Clark, who the narrator has a crush on visits for dinner. They all share their talents wanting to impress the others. The narrator shares hers and they exclaim "You never told us that!" She replies: "'Oh, the things I haven't told you.' And then it occurred to me that I might be able to pass the truth, like a painful kidney stone, through this stream of inconsequential lies."