The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

In a pew to the left of the coffin sat Dauphin Savage, the corpse’s surviving son.

“the happiest day of my life was the day you called up and said you were getting a divorce. I said to Lawton, ‘Lawton,’ I said, ‘I—’”

The bereaved son detailed the minutiae of Marian Savage’s physical deterioration, but told nothing of his own feelings.

this is also how my parents processed the deaths of their mothers

A barking dog of ignoble breed was tied to a sagging porch support.

isn’t this writing good?

“Fat women make terrible burglars, India.

India had never been an obvious child, and to speak of what was uppermost in her mind seemed a crass superficiality.

Sister Mary-Scot had never made a pretense of affection for Marian Savage, and had at thirteen made a vow to God that if she were not married by the time she finished college, she would go into a convent. She refused two proposals in her junior year, and took her final vows on her twenty-third birthday.

People say that a gun’s no good against spirits, but you cain’t never tell what’s gone stop a spirit and what’s not.