"Concerning Craft" Little Patuxent Review May, 2011
The “Concerning Craft” series introduces Little Patuxent Review contributors, showcases their work and draws back the curtain to reveal a little of what went into producing it.
At six-thirty in the morning, Jim's grandchild Andrew was crying in the back bedroom. Jim lay still in the dim morning light, while his wife Betsy got out of bed and padded away. The baby stopped crying. Jim heard Betsy murmur something, and then his daughter-in-law Valerie mumur in reply.
And now that he was truly awake, the realization shifted into his consciousness. Their son Scott was not in the back bedroom, where he had slept every summer of his life while they were in Stone Harbor. Scott was in Iraq.
The air-conditioner was going full blast. Claudette pictured herself catching hold of Father Conroy after Mass and making a little joke about how a young priest like him might look up from the altar once in a while, just to be sure the old folks hadn't frozen to death in the pews.