And from that sandbar they could see the offshore Seprides, the Roof of Hell, and as his body tilted on its axis and hands steadied him against the cold iron on his back and other hands fumbled with the shackles around his wrists, some part of him wanted to generate an image of retribution, a smiting and a scouring of the earth: the sea at night in front of the island churning as if stirred from beneath, an explosion, and then the wave of Albert’s father’s memory: at first a thin phosphorescent line rising higher and higher in the distant darkness, and then the clear silvery-white crest showing the wall of black water beneath it, the air pressure a rising roar before it, the whole sea piling up behind it, and when it hit the hills themselves would seem to capsize, and the ground roll like choppy waves in a rough sea, the cove itself falling away in concentric ranks to expose the bodies of all the tortured and the dead, all forgotten, all buried sitting up and facing the sea, but as Kehr came closer and the world came back to that room, in the end it was Leda, Leda, always and only Leda.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SPECIAL THANKS TO GERRY HOWARD,
RON HANSEN, K. K. ROEDER, AND EDWARD HIRSCH
About the Author
Jim Shepard (b. 1956) is the author of four short story collections and seven novels, most recently The Book of Aron, which has been shortlisted for both the Kirkus Prize and the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal. Originally from Connecticut, Shepard now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College, where he teaches creative writing and film. He won the Story Prize for his collection Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Shepard’s stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Magazine, and McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, among other publications; five have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, two for the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and one for a Pushcart Prize.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1990 by Jim Shepard
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2669-7
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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