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Recent reading…

Wes has mentioned several time that he enjoys the short stories written by Tim Gautreaux. So, the other day Heather and I were down at the library, and I picked up a couple of the collections that had some of his short stories in them. I’ve only read one of the short stories so far, but it had some great quotes. The story is called “Good for the Soul” and it’s about an alcoholic priest. Here are a couple quotes:

Father Ledet locked the rectory door and went into the garage to start the parish car, a venerable black Lincoln. He backed out onto the street, and when the car stopped, he still floated along in a drifting crescent, and he realized that he’d had maybe an ounce too much of brandy.

and this:

Around midnight his legs began to ache terribly, and the next thing he knew they were carrying him downstairs to the kitchen where the aspirin was kept, and as his hand floated toward the cabinet door to his right, it remembered its accustomed movement to the door on the left where a quart of brandy waited like an airy promise. The mind and the spirit pulled his hand to the right, while his earthly body drew it to the left. He heard somewhere in the air above, the drone of an airplane, and he suddenly thought of an old homily he’d heard, how people were like twin-engine planes, one engine the logical spirit, the other the sensual body, and that when they were not running in concert, the craft ran off course to disaster. The priest supposed he could rev his spirit in some way, but when he thought of driving the stolen car, he opted to throttle up the body. One jigger, he thought, would calm him and give him courage to do this important and good deed. As he took a drink, he tried to picture how glad Nelson Lodrigue would be to have his old car back. As he took another, he thought of how Mr. Arceneaux could gasp off into the next world with a clear conscience. After several minutes, the starboard engine sputtered and locked up as Father Ledet lurched sideways through the dark house looking for his car keys.