Little Frogs in a Ditch by Tim Gautreaux

Old man Fontenot has a grandson who has been deserted by his parents. He (the grandson) schemes up a way to make money off of people selling homing pigeons to them. Old man Fontenot is embarrassed that his grandson would stoop so low as to sell stupid birds to innocent people. He wants his grandson to go and make a confession. '"Remember what Sister Florita told you one time in catechism class? If you close your eyes before you go to confession, your sins will make a noise."

Lenny closed his eyes. "A noise."

"They'll cry out like little frogs in a ditch at sundown."

"Sure," Lenny said with a laugh, his eyeballs shifting under the closed lids. "Well, I don't hear nothing." He opened his eyes and looked at the old man. "What's the point of me confessing if I don't hear nothing?"

His grandfather stood up with a groan. "Keep listening," he said.

This is another one of Tim Gautreaux's great stories.

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.

The Piano Tuner by Tim Gautreaux

Michelle Placervent lives alone in an ancient house in the deep South on an old plantation. "He knew that all she did was sit in a 150-year-old house and practice pop tunes on a moth-eaten George Steck upright." Claude is the local piano tuner whom she calls to tune up her piano again.

"'What problems you having, Michelle?' He put a tuning hammer onto a pin and struck a fork for A. His electronic tuner was being repaired a the factory, so he'd gone back to listening, setting temperament by ear."

"Why, none at all, she said, too brightly and breathlessly."

'He then tuned by octaves from the reference notes, and this took over an hour. Michelle sat there with her pale hands in her lap as though she had bought a ticket to watch.'

'The piano tuner was the kind of person who hated for anything to go to waste and thought the saddest thing in the world was a fine instrument that nobody ever touched, so it made him uneasy that someone who could play like this lived alone and depressed in an antique nightmare of a house ten miles from the nearest ear that knew what the hell her fingers were doing.'

Michelle feels obligated to stay put while Claude thinks that she ought to move and be closer to others and to be able to show off her talent. A couple of weeks later Claude gets another call from Michelle:

'Giving a good musician a fine tuning is always a risk, because when the first string starts to vibrate, he gets dissatisfied and calls up, as if one little note that's just a bit off ruins the whole song.'

The ending of this story is great.

Good for the Soul by Tim Gautreax

Father Ledet has good intentions. It's just that his things don't work out exactly as he would want them to. One day he goes to give last rites to Clyde Arceneax. Father Ledet gets drunk beforehand and wrecks his car into a woman's car on the way to the hospital. The cop who comes along suspects that Father is drunk. Meanwhile, Clyde confesses to Father Ledet that he stole a friend's car years ago and has kept it in storage. Clyde's wife asks Father to keep it to himself so that Clyde doesn't die with a cloud over his head. Father Ledet has problems of his own. His license is revoked and some in his Parrish find out. Clyde's wife asks Father Ledet to take the truck back to the friend. Father agrees to. But he runs into deeper trouble trying to explain to the police why he is returning a dusty old truck while intoxicated. In the end this story is all about being completely honest with yourself and others.