After the Parade

by Lori Ostlund

He saved me knowing that there is no stronger way to bind another human being to you than by saving him. This is why I must leave.

nothing could truly get better in this country until people learned to ask the kinds of questions that they had been taught never to ask.

He wondered how it was possible to go away to a place—a place like this Vietnam that nobody in Mortonville wanted to talk about—and come back a man who was angered by eggs.

“He’s a good man, Rudy is, a kind man. It’s probably why he drinks too much. There are some people that the world’s just too much for, you know.”

He used to say such things to his mother, who had been sincere in her reactions, laughing only when she truly found something funny, but it struck him one day that his mother was no longer listening.

He wondered whether she had grown bored with the book or run out of time. It did not occur to him that she might have washed her hands.

walked to a bus stop, got on the next bus, and rode until I liked the look of things.

Aaron had always been most comfortable talking in cars, staring ahead with the knowledge that he did not have to rush through the conversation because there were miles to go.

he was not sure whether what he felt was love or the memory of love.

Sometimes you just need to let yourself be sad, and if you don’t take time, your body takes it anyway.

He had not known until then that just seeing the ocean would make him feel better.