What a story. What a writer. Where’d he go? Richard had another story I wanted to put on this list. But I only allowed one. It went head-to-head with this one. I’ll cheat and mention the other. ‘Her Favorite Story’ is that other one. I guess it depends on my mood. Right now I’ve been thinking about ‘Gentleman’s Agreement.’ One day a little boy is throwing rocks and he breaks a windshield. The father, a forest firefighter, gets mad. All his hard dangerous work and he’s not making a ton of money. The most of his recent check will have to go to fixing this windshield. He tells his boy that if he, the boy, throws another rock he, the father, will nail the boy’s hand to the toolshed. Well, the boy can’t help himself. Another accident happens and this time the boy gets injured. The boy has to get stitched up. It’ll cost more money. The boy, at the end of the story, is taken out to the toolshed. I’ll leave it at that. Richard’s voice, language, style are always on another level. He said somewhere, for this story, he took influence from the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac—a strategy he’s done elsewhere. (‘Happiness of the Garden Variety’ is another one.) I love what this story does with the idea of contract/contractual obligations with the reader and the characters in the story, with a child’s innocence and expectations of consequences. The sentence boil, the pressure builds up—akin to the pressure the boy feels from his firefighter father. It’s uncomplicated, beautiful, and to me, a lesson in storytelling.

First published in Esquire in 1994. Collected in Charity, Anchor Books, 1998)