When Mr. Roberts lost his hearing, he didn’t mind Mr. Grigg’s leaf-blower. It was pleasant watching leaves tumble in a steady gust of wind. Then Roberts miraculously recovered his hearing and lost his vision. Griggs and his leaf-blower became Mr. Roberts’ most hated enemies. Roberts kept a rifle in his garage, but he couldn’t find it. He might have asked a neighbor for help, but that would have been incriminating, no? Some say he died from scowling. Some say his liver gave out. But get this, the moment after Mr. Roberts died, his vision came back.

Daniel Coshnear is author of Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2001) winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Award and Occupy & Other Love Stories (Kelly’s Cove Press 2012) and winner of the Novella Prize for Homesick, Redux (Flock 2015), recipient of a Missouri Review Editor’s Prize and a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship. His newest story collection, Separation Anxiety was released in 10/21 by Unsolicited Press.