Long, Last, Happy: New and Collected Stories

~ ~ ~

The publisher gratefully acknowledges Brad Watson, Howard M. Lenhoff, and Elizabeth Kaiser for their invaluable contributions in compiling this volume, and Jack Pendarvis and David McLendon for the extra eyes and ears. And Richard Howorth, for all of this and so much more.

Wilkes Bell’s dialogue regarding napalm on page 455 is taken from James Bradley’s Flyboys (New York and Boston: Little, Brown & Co. and Back Bay Books, 2003, p. 215). We gratefully thank Mr. Bradley and his publisher for allowing us to use these words.

The following pieces from this book originally appeared in other publications. “Trek” originally appeared in The Arrowhead (Mississippi College) in 1964. “Water Liars,” “Love Too Long,” “Testimony of Pilot,” “Coming Close to Donna,” “Return to Return,” “Midnight and I’m Not Famous Yet,” and “Two Gone Over” originally appeared in Esquire. “Knowing He Was Not My Kind Yet I Followed” in Black Warrior Review. “Mother Rooney Unscrolls the Hurt” in The Carolina Quarterly. “Fans” in Atlanta Weekly. “Ride, Fly, Penetrate, Loiter” in The Georgia Review. “Even Greenland” was originally published as a chapbook by Barry Hannah in 1983. “Evening of the Yarp: A Report by Roonswent Dover” originally appeared in The Quarterly “Hey, Have You Got a Cig, the Time, the News, My Face?” in Santa Monica Review “Drummer Down” in Southern Review. “Uncle High Lonesome” in Men Without Ties. “A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis” in Sports Afield. “Sick Soldier at Your Door” in Gulf Coast Review and in Harper’s.

Text and titles have in certain cases been altered since the original publication.

From Self-Portrait: Book People Picture Themselves from the Collection of Burt Britton