Ordinary Sins: Stories
By Jim Heynen and Tom Pohrt
()
About this ebook
From a bar hosting its nightly Sad Hour to the moonlit sandbox of a retired army general, Jim Heynen’s new collection of micro fiction presents character sketches of strange yet fascinating men and women.
Modeled after Theophrastus' Characters—brief, verbal snapshots of people created by the Greek philosopher—Heynen captures not just the quirks and eccentricities of his characters, but also their humanity. Guilty of only ordinary and forgivable sins, these sketches reveal universal human idiosyncrasies as much as they do the individual characters.
Paired with the wonderfully evocative illustrations of renowned illustrator Tom Pohrt, Ordinary Sins will appeal to story lovers and collectors of beautifully made books alike.
Jim Heynen
Jim Heynen is a product of both religious, conservative Iowa, and the cutting edge Pacific Northwest. He makes his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, and has been a writer-in-residence at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota and Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. His books include Cosmos Coyote and William the Nice and The One-Room Schoolhouse.
Related to Ordinary Sins
Related ebooks
The Hardy Tree Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMan in a Black Hat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlind Man's Bluff Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHorses Dream of Money: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fort Necessity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBetter Than Starbucks March 2019 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSilence & Song Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTap Out: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDad Says He Saw You at the Mall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Country Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Front Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMother Box and Other Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Bell Zero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Book of Emotions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLight without Heat: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeautiful Circuits: Modernism and the Mediated Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe First Book: Twentieth-Century Poetic Careers in America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJoy of the Worm: Suicide and Pleasure in Early Modern English Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWinter Phoenix: Testimonies in Verse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Blue Absolute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIntimacy: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bumping Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Grand Larcenies: Translations and Imitations of Ten Dutch Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEscape Path Lighting Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNever Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More Anon: Selected Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhite Campion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCalle Florista Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMan Hating Psycho Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVilla Bunker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Short Stories For You
The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sex and Erotic: Hard, hot and sexy Short-Stories for Adults Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Night Side of the River Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Living Girl on Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Ordinary Sins
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Ordinary Sins - Jim Heynen
PART I
Who Jingled His Change
WHO JINGLED HIS CHANGE
This man jingled the change in his pockets.
It was not as if he were generally a fidgeter. He was not running for political office and afraid that his past would be revealed. It was not as if he were being audited by the IRS. He hadn’t just quit smoking. He didn’t have a bleeding ulcer or a bad stock portfolio. He had not forgotten to renew his driver’s license, or homeowners’ insurance, or health insurance, or life insurance, or disability insurance, or car insurance.
Outward appearances said this man had a secure and balanced life. He was ahead in his mortgage payments, just had his teeth cleaned, his lawn fence was in good repair, basement cleaned up, laundry folded, garbage taken out, pets vaccinated, warranties on appliances in order, shingles on his house patched up after the storm, recycling set out on the street the night before the recycling truck would come by, birthdays of his friends and family circled on the calendar, flu shot gotten two weeks before the seasonal outbreak, shoes polished, light bulb in the closet replaced, windshield repaired, oil changed, radiator flushed before winter, crabgrass gotten out of his lawn, tulips planted before the big frost, photographs for the year put safely into an album, workouts at the gym strictly adhered to, thank-you notes sent to the last three dinner hosts, all disagreements with in-laws put to rest, fresh batteries in all the flashlights, toenails clipped and the clippings placed in the wastebasket—and these were just the beginning of what this man had right in his life.
And still he jingled his change, constantly, just jingled and jingled, not even in a comforting rhythm, erratic but constant jingling of change.
THE HOARDER
And for years people thought she was simply a collector!
That was before they started counting: 550 coffee cups, some in cupboards, some on tables, some on bookshelves, and some dangling on hooks. Bathrobes might be a great comfort on a chilly morning, but twenty-three of them? Eighteen ice cream scoops? And two little teddy bears on every step leading upstairs? Collecting knickknacks is not unusual, but a dozen shoeboxes bulging with tiny owls? And what’s in all the bigger boxes stacked along the walls? You can’t even see out the windows.
By the time it was obvious the hoarder was more than a collector, no one knew what to say. The last person who visited found a narrow path from the front door into the other rooms. Then she stopped allowing visitors because there was no place for them to sit if they did manage to find the path from one room to the next.
The hoarder had enclosed herself with stuff. Teetering stacks and mounting mounds. She was practically smothering herself.
Or was she?
She’s sort of like a caterpillar making a cocoon, someone said.
Single-minded in her mission, she went on filling the remaining gaps bit by bit, knitting herself in tighter—eagerly, like one who was preparing for that glorious warm day when the world would burst open around her and she could fly into the unencumbering sky on wings of many colors.
WHO LOVED HER DOG
It was a little wiry dog. A yapper. With big bulging eyes. Not a purebred, just a tiny thing she picked up at the pound when it was the size of a rat. It was the only survivor of a litter of eight, and the mother had died at the pound after delivering. It would have been hard to imagine what the ones that didn’t survive looked like. The woman chose this leftover. She called it Pee-Wee then, and the name stuck.
She took Pee-Wee home from the pound in a shoebox with tissue paper on the bottom. The dog was so small that she wasn’t sure of its sex until Pee-Wee lifted its leg over her two-inch high bronze fireplace cricket.
So you’re my little boy, she said, though gender and size were never factors in this woman’s affection for