BURNWALD THE BOLD
Once upon a time there lived a very old dragon. He was so old that his wings were too stiff to fly. And when it came to breathing fire, all he could manage was a puff of smoke…so he was considered pretty much a has-been by the other dragons that lived on Draco Isle....
STEVIE AND THE VERY IMPORTANT NAIL
For his birthday Stevie got what he wanted most—a real, grown-up hammer and a tool apron his mother made him. He hadn’t told anyone about the nail he’d found in a drawer of his father’s toolbox—at least, not the whole story. He’d heard it jingle when he opened the...
OFFICE POLITICS
“Cameron, aging painting instructor and chairman, was debonair and chatty, adept at drawing you unwittingly into his little conspiracies against whomever he happened to be annoyed with. “Miriam, art historian, was diminutive, brittle, and emphatic. She went around...
GOOD JOB
Barbara, a client of my mother’s, was leaving her position as secretary of the Art Department at Tiburon College and put in a good word for me when I applied for the job. I’d been living hand-to-mouth on minimum wage—doing everything from wok demonstrations (slinging...
CAMERON
He was an elderly man with long, protruding ears that looked rather spectacularly pink with the sun shining through them. A few strands of hair were combed across his barren head from far left to far right, and the pale bristly goatee that encircled his mouth reminded...
REVEILLE
“Last night we celebrated Carolyn’s birthday—three ailing females, languishing on the mattress-sofa, swapping flu germs—while Steve, her boyfriend, served us dinner. “’Well, you’ve got three choices,’ he announced. ‘B & M beans, boiled hot dogs, or canned...