by Chris Wiberg

ON THANKSGIVING DAY of 1977, my father took a Greyhound bus from Minneapolis back to Chicago after spending a week in the Twin Cities settling his own father’s affairs. My mother and I had gone along for the funeral, although I was too young to remember, then taken the car back home. At five o’clock that morning he locked up the house where he’d grown up and took a cab downtown to the bus station, where he made breakfast of a Mars bar and a bottle of Coca-Cola.

The station was packed to capacity even in the predawn—holiday travelers who’d booked at the last minute after the more civilized departures had already filled up. My dad had booked the early trip on purpose, hoping to avoid a crowd. Half the terminal was asleep on their bags or each other’s shoulders; most of the rest nibbled on snacks or sat with glazed eyes and magazines open on their laps. A few parents contended noisily with irate kids, and of course there was one bright-eyed, cheery family sharing juice boxes and playing patty-cake. Every bus terminal in America had at least one. A few chairs were occupied by people he assumed were homeless; it was Thanksgiving and the staff couldn’t bring themselves to boot them out in the cold. But when the bus boarded, my dad was surprised to see one of them get up and climb on board.

Dad claimed an aisle seat near the rear. As the bus filled up, the man he’d pegged for a vagrant came and took the seat across the aisle. He was in a green army jacket and my dad realized that was the thing: he’d seen a lot of homeless vets.

by Jerome Charyn

IT HAPPENED LIKE THIS.

Tom would deliver aria after aria at criminal court, while the most seasoned cops stuttered under his cross-examination. Even witnesses who had been coached by the Manhattan DA couldn’t stand up to the pounding. The DA scoffed at Tom, mimicked him, called him “Tonsils,” and that moniker remained. Tom hadn’t served overseas, but landed in the provost marshal general’s office in ’43 and visited prisoner-of-war camps in the South and Southwest. He’d been the boy wonder at Nichols & Bass, fresh out of Columbia. He’d grown up in a hovel on Eleventh Avenue, studied at Horace Mann on a full scholarship, and entered law school at nineteen. He never learned who his benefactor was. Some obscure Fenian society, he’d been told, a society that was just as real as any illusion. He could quote Aristotle and Captain Marvel in the same breath. He was impossible to resist.

by Marc Palmieri

IT WAS 1983. I was eleven. My father, some kind of salesman, wore ties. The company he worked for transferred him from our town in New Jersey to Long Island. I liked where we lived, but that didn’t matter. We packed up and moved right after Christmas.

I met Andrew the first day we stayed in our new house, the same size and shape as our old house. What was different was that there were no sidewalks, no telephone wires, and that I had no friends.

I was outside tossing a Nerf football in the air. Playing catch with myself was no fun but there wasn’t much else I could think of doing except crying, and I’d already done that all morning.

“Hi there,” came a voice behind me.

I turned around and there he was. He had a long smiley face with green eyes and freckles.

“Hi,” I said quietly.

He looked at the house.

“You’re moving in here?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Andrew Hoffman,” he said. “I live two houses down. What’s your name?”

“Peter Pellegrini.”

I wished he would leave. I lofted the Nerf up and ran after it as far away as possible. He followed right behind me.

“I’m in sixth grade,” he said. “What grade are you in?”

“Fifth.”

“Want to play catch?” he said. I didn’t know how to make a new friend and I felt sick. He put his arms up so I threw him one. It bounced off his chest and chin before he caught it and threw it back like a girl.

“Are you Jewish?” he said.

“No.”

“Are you half-Jewish?”

“No.”

“I am,” he said. “I’m completely Jewish.”

He tucked the ball under his arm.

“Come here,” he said. “Do you curse?”

“No,” I said.

He looked around, as if to make sure nobody was listening.

“I curse,” he said. “I say shit, dick, and asshole. But not the F word. If the F word is in a movie, it’s automatically rated R.”

“He threw back the ball underhanded. My mother came out of the house and when she saw us she called for my father to come see. They stood watching us, smiling proud, like we were something glorious they’d painted on a nice big canvas.

“Your mother’s waving to me,” Andrew said. He waved back.

“Don’t curse,” I whispered.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Do you like your parents?”

“Yes. Sure,” I said. I looked back at them. She finished waving and they walked inside.

“Come here again,” he said, and glanced around. The coast was clear. “Where they’re in bed, your father puts it in your mother. Then you know what?”

“What?”

“Then he pees in her.”

I stared at Andrew Hoffman and he stared back, hard but empathetic into my eyes, like he knew this would change things for me, but that someone had to let me in on it.

“I’m serious,” he said. “They do it to have a baby, or just for fun.”

A woman called his name, loud but lovingly from somewhere down the street.

“Well, I gotta go,” he said. “My fuckin’ mother. See ya.”

He threw me the ball one last time and walked off.