The New Yorker: "Tenth of December" by George Saunders

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October 31, 2011: "Tenth of December" by George Saunders
This story is typical Saunders—funny and touching at thesame time—with a Joycean epiphany at the end. And although it's supposed to bebehind the paywall, when I clicked on the link the whole story showed up, soyou might be in luck.
Saunders gives us the odd voices of two odd characters, bothof whom also hear voices. We get young Robin, an overweight kid with away-overactive imagination, on his way to the pond in the park to do battlewith the Nethers, tiny creatures who live in a stone wall and who might havekidnapped the girl he has a crush on who thinks his name is Roger. Also in thepark is Donald Eber, a brain-cancer patient who is considering drowning himselfin order to end the burden that he has become on his wife and kids.
Meanwhile, Robin discovers Eber's abandoned coat—abandonmentis a theme here—and sees the older man by the pond. So he picks up the coat andinstead of going around the pond, he decides to take a shortcut across the ice.Uh oh. Bad idea. It's not hard to guess what happens next, or what happensafter that, or how—given that I've mentioned that epiphany—how the story ends.
So it's not exactly a surprising story, and I'm not a bigfan of the epiphany in modern stories, but the story is still enjoyable becauseof those two whacked-out voices.
Also, check out the Q&A with George Saunders.