Brothers

This is a short story in which I weave together various parts of my novel Dominion. It was published in The Story Tellers’ Collection II.

The gray sky pressed down on two men, huddled close in the faint twilight.

Stoop-shouldered, leaning forward, Obadiah Abernathy stared off into empty space. He was ninety-two, son of a sharecropper, grandson of a Mississippi slave. His son Clarence, a 260-pound former college lineman, leaned over and looked into his father’s eyes. They were moist and deep-welled, eyes that had seen more than any man should have to.

Obadiah shuffled toward the front porch ...