The Fisherman

by John Langan

Two weeks after the accident, a traffic light was hung at that intersection, which I reckon is what four lives is worth these days.

Loss is—it’s like a ladder you don’t know you’re standing at the top of and that reaches down, way down past the loss of your job, your possessions, your home; past the loss of your parents, your spouse, your children; down to the loss of your very life—and, I’ve since come to believe, past even that.

You do so because your soul is a frail thing that can’t stand the blast-furnace heat of revelation, and truth be damned. What else can a body do?

His grief had taken him far into a country whose borders are all most folks ever see,