“The Sorry-Ass Truth,” by Tracy Winn (Fiction ’02)

“The Sorry-Ass Truth,” a story by fiction alumna Tracy Winn, was recently featured in the Four Way Review. Read an excerpt below:

The Sorry-Ass Truth

The Blackhawk hunkers in the pasture by the river like a video game beast, spiky and dark. Mikey slogs toward the helicopter, soaked with tiredness, lugging the baby, her ticket out. She’s ready to lie down in the sopping field, sink her banged-up body deep into the mess left by the flood and skip whatever comes next. But she has thirty-seven thousand dollars waiting for her in New York City. 
            A bug-eyed town official and a National Guard trooper with tattoos up to his ears scan a clipboard next to the chopper, which hasn’t started up yet.
            Mikey holds the baby the way she’s seen other new mothers do it, rapt, like she’s in love. She can’t feel bad for being hell-bent. When the streams overflowed they washed out the roads, the power and phone lines drowned, the cell tower collapsed. The storm made an island of the town—cut the place off from even the nearest mountains. This ride is the only way out.

Read the rest of Winn’s story here: http://fourwayreview.com/the-sorry-ass-truth-by-tracy-winn/