Autumn Moon

Autumn Moon is set almost entirely in a farmhouse kitchen and its dooryard on a late-October evening, with the first blue norther of the season somewhere to the north. A woman has baked a lemon pie and watched the moon rise; a man arrives later than he should, eats, and says very little. Over coffee and chicken the conversation turns to a third person who is not coming back, and to the fact that she is the one who wanted it that way.

Reynolds keeps the violence off the page and the moral weight on the woman, who argues her case to a listener who neither agrees nor objects. The moon, the pie and a childhood memory of an apple that was not what it seemed do most of the work. It is a compact, unhurried story about shame, pride and the price of being pitied in a small place.

The story was posted to the journal's site in November 2017 and belongs to the 2018 issue.

Richard Clay Reynolds (1949-2022) was a Texas novelist, essayist and critic, author of more than ten books of fiction and five of nonfiction, and a longtime professor of creative writing at the University of Texas at Dallas. His novels include The Vigil, Franklin's Crossing and Monuments.