Even before they arrive, we know they are coming and are ready for them. The phone has been ringing off the hook and customers who have come in have alerted us, too: “The Gypsies are in town.”
My uncle John, in his blood-stained butcher’s apron, is watching the front door of the little meat market he owns and runs. The store is in an excellent location, across from town hall, and with a full view of the village common and our major intersection. My oldest cousin, Dan, whacking chicken carcasses at a table behind the meat counter, has a sharp eye on the back entrance.
Robert H. Abel is the author of three collections of stories, and three novels. He won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction in 1989 for Ghost Traps (published 1991, U. Georgia Press). His most recent novel is Riding a Tiger (Asia 2000, 1998). A graduate of the U. Mass MFA Program in 1974, he lives and fishes and agitates against the Bush regime in nearby Hadley, MA.