The Quarry

Cover

The Quarry Winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction Stories by Harvey Grossinger The Quarry The University of Georgia Press ATHENS AND L O N D O N Paperback edition published in 2012 by The University of Georgia Press Athens, Georgia 30602 www.ugapress.org© 1997 by Harvey Grossinger All rights reserved Designed by Erin Kirk New Set in 10 on 13Aldus by G & S Typesetters, Inc. Printed digitally in the United States of America The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this book as follows: Grossinger, Harvey. The quarry : stories by Harvey Grossinger / Harvey Grossinger. x, 263 p. ; 23 cm. ISBN 0-8203-1896-5 (alk. paper) I. Title. PS3557.R655Q37 1997 813'.54—dc20 96-30803 Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-8203-4442-3 ISBN-10: 0-8203-4442-7 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-4482-9 For Sue, who never wavered, and for my daughters, Ruth and Rachel This page intentionally left blank The living and the dead glide hand in hand Under cool waters where the days are gone. Out of the dark into a dark I stand. —James Wright, "All the Beautiful Are Blameless" This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Some of the stories in this book first appeared in the following publications: "Dinosaurs," The Chicago Tribune', "Hearts & Minds," Western Humanities Review; "Home Burial," New England Review (a much earlier version was published in the Antietam Review); "Leisure World," Cimarron Review (a much earlier version was published in Ascent); and "Promised Land," MidAmerican Review. For their generosity and wisdom, I would like to thank the following people for their help with this collection: Ellyn Bache, Charles East, Richard McCann, Kermit Moyer, and, especially, Bill Loizeaux, my close friend of twenty-five years and first reader. All of them, in their own way, enriched these stories. And I want to acknowledge my lasting debt to Bob Geller, the best and most important teacher I've ever had. I also wish to express my appreciation to the Maryland State Arts Council for a Literary Work-in-Progress Grant. This page intentionally left blank ...