Thomas McGuane Reads “Ordinary Wear and Tear”

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

“On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Thomas McGwayne, read his story ordinary”

wear and tear from the April 27th, 2026 issue of the magazine. McGwayne has published more than a dozen books of fiction, including the story collection, skeleton canyon, pro-fair, and the wooded shore which came out in 2025. Now here's Thomas McGwayne. Ordinary wear and tear.

Karl backed the car down the ramp, and with little effort, Jed slid the boat off the trailer and into the river, where it tugged gently on the rope and slapped on the current.

Karl parked the car on trailer and came back to the bank carrying the oars.

He was crisply dressed in khakis, a tetrisol shirt, and a belt that displayed nautical signal flags.

“Jed leaned nearly gone with widespread blue eyes, or a seahawks sweatshirt with the sleeves”

cut off and flip flops. He wondered why Karl thought he needed to be so spiffy. Karl took the oars as the river carried the boat, constrain, it was a cloudless September day with a dusting of snow at the higher elevation. The cottonwoods were just changing color and stirred in the morning breeze.

This was a new river, the ruby. Last month they'd gone down the galt and which had had too many rapids for their limited skills, and they'd barely avoided a wreck. They didn't fish or take their phones, just chatted as they floated along a monthly summary. In the winter, they snowshoed in nearby hills or watch football.

“One's in childhood, they'd had an uninterrupted companionship until Karl went to boarding”

school, a place Jed called a breeding ground for suits. Karl's parents had been separating for the second time and had thought it best to get him out of the house and avoid a custody fight. They reconciled soon after, but let him come home only for holidays. He had fought to stay in town, or Jed and his other friends were, but eventually adjusted

to boarding school and became a starla cross-player, a game he'd never encountered before.

Jed had attended the local Catholic school, or not for religious reasons. He had been adopted from a hospital in North Dakota by a methodist couple who thought the public school was full of drugs, and casual sex, and who referred to Catholic's papers. Had found the catacus of baffling, his parish school staff by nuns was a small island

in a sea of Protestants. From the Bible churches, insert balls to Karl's family's church, St. Andrew's, presided over by Father John Oliver, who had been a missionary in Ecuador, and returned with a souvenir blogon, a modest knowledge of the Chicham languages, and a beautiful sure bride, Nincui. Nincui had gone obese and diabetic on American food, which affected

her reproductive health, and Father Oliver often lamented the fact they had been unable to multiply. Jed asked Karl if he thought Nincui had shrunk Father Oliver's head. You can't possibly know how not funny you are, Karl said, as he watched wild geese along the bank, complaining about their intrusion.

Karl's parents took him on educational vacations during school holidays. One year while they were in Chicham, and said, "Jed and two friends broke into their house and drank up the liquor, favoring the fruit-flavored bottles, quantro, and gram marnie, none of them stayed down for long." The incident was investigated by the police and written up on the paper as a burglary.

Herrer made the culprits conceal their ghastly hangovers, which their parents treated as the flu. Jed wanted to confess, at least to Karl, but lost his nerve. Karl's parents offered a substantial reward, but no one buckled, and the break-in remained unsolved.

Karl's mother said, "They shall live with this crime forever." Jed often ate at their house, and joined in speculating about the culprits. Trying to frame Gary Fields' dead, a bullying upperclassman, but he was nervous.

"uncouth."

“When the eight cells burst, she challenged him to spell it and called him buckwheat when”

he failed.

Karl went to Pomona College to get away from his hometown and his parents, but it only made

him love them more. Jed attended the State University and lived off campus, indulging in a cavalcade of liaisons. He needed ROTC in order to meet his college expenses. By the time Jed got out of the National Guard where he crewed on helicopters, Karl was

already on his way to a comfortable life. Jed found a job at a title company, two eligible bachelors. Early Crain arrived from Albuquerque with her parents, who bought the savings alone building on a self-rage trade, and turned it into luxurious condominiums that were well ahead of local markets.

The family lived in one of the units while making plans for an RV campground.

“Karl's father had died when Karl was in college, but his mother was available to despise”

these new people whom she found shabby. Karl still called her, "Mummy."

Gorgeous Karl said the first time he and Jed saw a Shirley standing on the diving board

at the city pool, "Tonny," Jed said. Karl soon announced that he had fallen for Shirley. Jed considered this preemptive. He said, "I noticed you were sizing her up. I didn't realize it was a thing."

Karl married Shirley Crain after a very long engagement, long enough for Shirley to adapt to his mother, who, believe in Shirley, a danger to her son, effectively monitored their courtship, but failed to survive their honeymoon, filled by a massive stroke in her greenhouse. Karl's mother had snubs Shirley's parents at the wedding, recoiling from the father's loud sports jacket with exaggerated disdain.

“Shirley's mother now made no secret of the fact that they were glad she was gone, which”

left Shirley in awkward position as she tried to support Karl in his bereavement. He couldn't conceal his grief, and it was months before his morning subsided. The newly wedded traveled all the way to the dodeckanese for the honeymoon, but only Shirley went for a swim. Karl struggled with the time change and asked Shirley why the locals were all milling

around. When they got back and moved into Karl's family home, Shirley threw herself into becoming a wife, dogedly working her way through her late mother-in-law's joy of cooking, and transforming herself into an herma as rhombar fangirl. Clearly Karl and Shirley loved each other, but Karl's work ethic and his financial striving

made their marriage other than Shirley had expected. It was as though marriage were something Karl had needed to get out of the way, of you that explained the couple's meager intimacy. Shirley admired Karl's discipline and met the long solitary days with obsessive volunteering, counseling battered women and cleaning cages at the animal's shelter.

Karl worried that her work with mistreated women would place him under suspicion. And channelling mummy, he called her friends at the animal's shelter, empty nesters with rubber gloves. Karl visited the shelter just once, and appeared at the animals while holding a Kleenex to his nose.

Shirley wanted to rescue a dog, in particular, a corgi mixed named Drew. Karl hugged her and said, "No." She asked him to consider two very small dogs, sparkle plenty, and sister hooch. "No," and "No," she pushed him away. He raised his arms, and now what did I do?

To compensate for his position on the dogs, he asked Shirley if he might visit the women's shelter so they could display their own affectionate and violence free marriage.

Otherwise the gals might conclude I'm battering you, something I've never considered as

you know. He said following this with a joke about batter being the basis of pancakes. That's all I need, Shirley thought. The idea was soon forgotten. Shirley had spent years pulling men's hands off my ass, but had found them meek when

we're bugged. She never been abused, but she heard stories of the women's shelter that amazed her. When her disgust subsided, she was angry. If you find the perpetrator Shirley said, "Get a rope, get bombs, get rat poison." The women so like Shirley that they forgave her for not knowing what she was talking about.

Shirley's exuberant nature was a remedy for Karl's placid ways, but the marriage turned out to be too much work, and it didn't last. Karl was sure that his kindly and thoughtful nature, his good manners and solicitors to

had all she could stand.

Was it something I said, Karl acquired?

“Jed was touched by this obtuse response when Karl described it on the river.”

He had long sensed the Shirley was adrift, Karl said, "This whole thing has been a real eye opener, oh well, back to the drawing board." Shirley's father, well-versed in litigation, brought in a real killer, a lawyer from Albuquerque. Shirley got more than enough money to buy a condominium in Kawai, where she'd spent several happy years and her teens while her father fleece his partners.

The condo was discounted as a result of one of her father's bankruptcies. Shirley had her future to consider, but the move surprised Jed anyway. Did you just roll over and play dead, he asked? Don't be snied. I wanted to make sure she'd be okay.

Jed saw it right through this.

The river narrowed and turned to the right. They picked up speed for a pleasant stretch and swept quite close to the rocky shore, so

“close that they spent a moment under branches while the shoreward bore, tapped the stones,”

and flushed a pair of sandpipers. Karl announced, "I married the daughter of unscrupulous developers and paid the price. It didn't sound at all like Karl, and was something his parents might have said. Still, Karl wasn't entirely their product and enjoyed his anomalies. He had a complete set of David Bowie albums and a black cowboy hat.

That teased him with bowie imitations, bladder control to major Tom, and so on. Things could have been worse. There were no children. Jed knew that there were two kind people who were unsuited each other. Hardly a hanging offense.

Karl's ambivalence grief caused him to make all sorts of ugly remarks, which he'd regret once things settled down. She's no dope, she'll land on her feet. Karl, honestly.

“He's in a phase, I'd take her back, but she'd need to crawl on her tongue.”

Karl looks stricken, even a little crazy. He began to question everything. He drank more than usual, at least by his temperate standards. It was constantly in church, grilling father all over. Jed told him he'd be better off going to the gym, but Karl was a believer and accepted

what Jed called the "hole" in Shalada. His own early indoctrination had evaporated, except maybe the fear of a damn nation he hardly believed in. But there it was a tincture. He wouldn't have had even that if Sister Callesta hadn't often referred to the charred

doors of hell, a phrase that resurfaced in Jed's mind at indesquiet moments. Jed was not at all curious about his biological parents, because of his raw-bone frame, crooked teeth and blue eyes, he assumed that they were hillbillies. His remote and quarrel some adoptive parents had left him with an aversion to both marriage and religion.

His belief that getting married was a dim thing to do in the first place was likely

behind his detached view of Karl's "marital failure." Military service to confirm Jed's bachelorhood perhaps as much as the example of his adoptive parents had. He had the dubious standing in town of someone who'd slept with more women who'd gone on to marry and start families with other men than anyone else.

He keenly admired the children of those women as though he'd had a hand in their lives. He even kept track of their birthdays. He chatted these young mothers up hoping to get a reminiscent smile out of them. It was a pleasant way to live and new talent arrived regularly. They passed a corner that poured swallows overhead.

Karl washed them as they spiraled above, but neglected to notice a man fishing from the bag and accidentally rode across his line. Karl raised his hands from the ors and apologized with the angler shook an enraged fist. Karl seemed to find that merely interesting and said, "Wow." Jed said, "Let's go back and whip his ass. I'm old school. Karl chuckled. Jed, Jed, Jed."

They often saw deer come down for a drink and once a wolf stared at them over the body of a fawn. They passed a marshy side channel filled with duckweed and blackbirds. Jed thought Karl was hogging the ors, but he wouldn't give them up. I'm sublimating through exercise. I wish surely well and I'm resigned to her building her

cheese ball with my money. Smart girls prepare for rainy days. She made out like a bandit. Jed didn't know why he would say this.

"I'm fine with it. Why aren't you?

“How else could she afford a condo on Kawai?"”

Jed decided to get saying that the condo might not have been so affordable for father hadn't bankrupted his partners. At the head of a grassy island, a cluster of teal took flight and whistled over the boat. On a day like this, a day of cloudless skies and sparkling foothills, it was not easy to stay on message or relieve tension. Karl was playing his flight for laughs, but his pain

was evident. Jed wanted to leave it at that. He just need time, Jed, y'all. I imagine some residual good will between us, but Kawai makes it clear that she means to move on. I guess they have great weather there, but I don't think our wonders were the problem. She knows she has a lot of years left.

Jed leaned back to watch a hawk overhead, a harrier.

I'm not tracking her if she wants to fuck some polinesian in Kawai, I'll buy him a war canoe. Oh dear me. Jed was finding Karl's agitation disturbing. He seemed wild-eyed. There was little doubt that Karl had provided Shirley with a lifestyle that most would find dull. Shirley had hoped to learn to ski, but Karl had said she'd only break a leg.

As for travel, better to read about it, otherwise it was just sightseeing. He had suggested that she work at his office if she wanted to keep busy, but she had declined. You have a secretary, she said surprising Karl with her indignation. Evidently she wanted more Jed said wondering when this durs would end. "Don't they all, who's side you want?"

It was a relief for both of them to laugh hardly at this. My mother, God-rester soul, would have like Shirley if only she'd had more time. We were arguing about having kids. Shirley didn't want to, and she was getting loud. I raised my hand to stop it and said halt. She accused me of trying to resolve marital disputes with hand signals.

Mummy would have loved that, sarcasm was her favorite. Karl carried the anchor up into the streamside willows and Jed put the cooler on the sand. He opened one of the sandwiches and said, "Find these at toe-main gardens." Next time you get him. It's hard to shop for a fussy eater. Karl opened a sandwich to examine its contents and said, "I don't know why you've had

so many girlfriends. Don't you get sick of it?"

It's never the same, the housewives could be quite timid, but the divorce says buck-like goats.

Karl held his head and moaned.

“Jed had thought Guy talk would cheer him up. You should try it, you squeeze them and it's fun.”

What in the world do you get out of it? You just never know, sometimes it's a thrill, sometimes it's customer golf. I don't understand. I don't understand your checkered quest for monogamy. I have hope. It doesn't sound like you do. Their bandric boat trips would go on forever, unless Karl learned that Jed has slept with

Shirley within days of the divorce being final. Shirley had been sitting on a bench in the park, watching young people sword fighting with lacrosse sticks that Karl had donated. It was as if she were having a last look at her life in this town. Jed spotted her as he took her short cut to his office. Her arms were stretched across the back of the bench. She didn't see him coming.

You look sad. Oh, it's you. I'm just watching the kids trying to figure those things out. Jed's heart was racing. I hope we can stay in touch.

I do too. I'm not proud of how this ended. I assume you love Karl. I still do. He's so good. I just can't live like that. Jed wondered why Karl was such a poor husband, but such a great friend. Maybe the two things would connect it.

Jed gazed at her as if to express that he shared her wish for Karl's well-being. She held his gaze.

“They took separate routes to Jed's house. He would long remember Shirley's slumber's voice saying,”

"Don't rush. I'm enjoying you." But if the occasion was something that Jed liked to reply in his mind, Shirley seemed to want to forget it. She left for Hawaii as soon as she could. The animal sheltered through a nice party with dogs, the women's sheltered a private even covert farewell that brought Shirley to tears. Jed was wondering if he'd fallen in love.

Maybe he had. He was quite light-hearted about the end of Karl's marriage. It seemed to him that his dalliance was Shirley was not unlike the time he broke into Karl's family home with his friends and got sick on Karl's parents' liquor. I get it, he thought,

Even Jed was bothered by it. Karl pretended to shrug it off. I've got a law firm to run.

“He'd hired a young intern from the law school he'd attended, so now it was a firm.”

Jed said, "Surely and I were great friends. I hope to see you again." "Be my guest," Karl said. "I have been Jed replied. Karl assumed that Jed met the sandwiches to avoid misunderstanding Jed pointed to them and cautiously took a bite." Shirley had wanted to take Drew to cowboy with her. The dog had been in the shelter for more than a year and seen ready for adventure. But in order to avoid a long quarantine, she had to leave

the dog with Karl until many requirements were met. She understood Karl's issues with dogs, and warned him that Drew could be very opinionated. Karl accepted clinging to this last connection

to Shirley. Drew was suspicious of Karl, and it first declined to eat, but Karl kept moving

through the process, towing Drew on his leash to be microchipped or to acquire a health certificate from a veterinarian whose face drew licked. Karl wished that Drew felt the same way about him, but wondered if the licking was sanitary. Karl scheduled two rabies vaccines, 30 days apart, arranged for a proof of tick treatment certificate, and it rabies antibody test. He took pains filling out the animal import form, and mailed it to Shirley at Belly High

condos in cowboy. By then Drew and Karl had become quite used to each other. The flight to cowboy over Christmas was no picnic, with gruesome layovers. Jed had told his office he'd be traveling. Karl was out of town, Jed didn't know where. Shirley's condominium was in a neighborhood that was undistinguished, a pleasant, with ocean air. Karl had shown him a picture of it on his phone, one of several brown cottages near the water.

Jed had memorized the details, the palms on either side, the crooked walkway, and the red door was Shirley barely open to him. A pelting tropical rain had begun to fall,

bouncing around the landing. She suggested that he call first next time.

Next time, what about the four hour layover? She broke Karl's heart, he thought, but she's not breaking mine. It wasn't true. He clung to a memory of Shirley flinging herself across the bed to check her phone while he gays roofily at the wet spot. In some way, he enjoyed the unrequited infatuation and kind of a buzz. Women were tyrant. He vowed to keep the mortifying boarding

“passes, better to remember the whole damn thing as a one-off. This brief moment in Shirley's doorway”

was a bruising encounter, and he was soaked. No flights out until the next day. Home seemed

across the planet, filled with gylocidizens, with strong Western values, who had never find themselves

in Kawai for unethical reasons. The stucco motel would have to do. It was out of the rain and he could work on his flight booking. He asked the desk clerk if he could borrow the dryer. No. He'd have to hang his clothes. He thought to try Shirley on the chance she'd kept her old number. Staring out the window at the sheeding rain he'd dialed. She answered, "Why didn't you ask me in?" Karl is here. His face grew hot. He felt the skin on his back prickle.

I see. Where is he now? Some motel in town. You don't know which one jet cried. Hey, Jed, take a hint. He called the front desk and asked if they had a guest under Karl's name. We don't share that information. It's the law. Of course, just like the fucking dryer, why did I ask? The use of the dryer is not protected by law. The names of guests are. Jed wondered how he'd come to this, taking abuse from some jailhouse lawyer at the front desk.

He'd rarely been home sick for his town, but he was now. The old trees, the playgrounds, winter days,

“his office, breakfast at the drugstore with friends. You should just move on and book a flight.”

He looked at options on his phone. He grabbed a motel scratch pad with a picture of a pineapple, but the first thing you wrote was Shirley. He hunted and veamed for nonstop. His thoughts were all over the place and included the prospect of layover in Honolulu with an escort service. He tried that once and bent sent to an attractive surgical nurse named Joan. It was too embarrassing,

Shirley could have said the same thing instead of telling him not to rest when he was already rushing.

“He called her. "Sure, I'm so sorry to bother you again, but this could get awkward."”

"No shit. I'm just going to scoot, but of course it would be best if I didn't bump into Carl. What's he doing here anyway?" "We're in discussion." "Ah, nice. I'm touched by his determination. He's a great guy. Make your reservation. I'll do what I can to arrange a clean getaway,

and never again confuse a slip with a real event." "No, ma'am. By now, don't be ugly."

He had to get out of the room and decide to go once the sun was setting. Walking along the beach and kicking its shells, he met a couple from Indiana, enjoying the last light of the day. "I'm from Indiana too," he told him. It was a pointless fib, but it helped his anxiety. The couple seemed rural, and Jed wanted to talk about agricultural things. His title

“company increasingly managed farmland that was going to other uses, but the Hoosiers were obsessed”

with the new cult quarterback and the drug problems of the team's owner. And besides, they seem to be disturbed by Jed's agitation. They moved along, eyes fixed on the water, as though something might soon happen there. When it was dark, Jed left the beach and walked beside the road, bordering the sea, wondering why the locals needed so many pickup trucks. How did they even get them there? He began to feel as if he was being followed, but didn't look behind him to check.

When he pulled his phone out of his pocket, he saw that he had missed a call. Surely, he listened to his voicemail. "Voicemail" was subdued. He couldn't tell if she was being seltry or just careful not to be overheard. The message was clear. Carl had just left. Jed dismissed the idea that he could visit her with impunity. He knew better. Tomorrow he'd be inching his way home.

No first class, but he had an aisle seat. He'd scan the crowd at the Honolulu Airport in

case Carl had missed his connection and was craning at the display board to find his new

“gate number. For a moment he felt solidarity with Carl, why was surely such a problem for both of them?”

Her blunt decency was hard for guys like them. Why had Jed's little flutter with her managed so much more to Jed than to her? Why did it still trouble him? Old Pal Carl said, "We're restating our vows. At least to hope we are. Surely is a flight risk. Let's assume once was enough. If not, Jed thought I could pop back to Kawaii." In a small town it's hard to get people to the same wedding twice. Jed had hoped to recruit

some showstopper to accompany for the occasion to give surely second thoughts but couldn't find

anyone willing to go along. It was a modest affair of St. Andrews with business friends of Carl's baffled but loyal friends of Shirley's. Shirley's friends from the women's shoulders seemed to trail the ghosts of the thugs in their past. One was a real looker but not keen to enter so charade with Jed. With big smiles seemed to put her up. When he flirted with a school teacher he knew, well, well, well. She gently knuckled him in the ribs and told him to get a life.

The principles were at the altar now. Father Oliver wore a retro surplus and added slide details about the previous wedding to his homely. Jed wondered how the beaming cleric felt about being dragged through this again. No doubt he viewed it as pure spiritual affirmation. Jed watched Shirley's lips as she repeated her oath. "May the force be with you, Father Oliver, concluded." Jed wondered if the wedding gifts considered him less successful in Carl.

Probably they did and if their values were entirely pecuniary, shame on them. For a moment, Jed felt in pitch battle with his oldest friend, his suit still rumpled from the first wedding. While Carl seemed crisp, stylish and formal. Jed was starting to feel that he couldn't live with this, not the erotic memory which had hardly faded but the guilt which was growing. He feared that it would have to be resolved or he'd be on the horn with remax looking for another

town. Carl led the celebrates out as though there were a platoon. Shirley gathered with her friend from the animal shelter in a sampling of battered women. Jed walked toward them in the friend's

tongue does he entone. I truly think this is the best thing for both of you going forward. He was surprised to his own, or if toned phrasing. Shirley looked at him for a long moment. Bemused at this awkward solemnity and told him to fuck off. Jed was taken aback, he said, "Ah, if Shirley joined the rest of the wedding party out front." People were driving away. It was like a drag race. Carl was waving to the departing cars, married again and filled with hope.

Jed admired his gaulis enthusiasm as the guests shot off this bit of drudgery out of the way.

Father Oliver raised a hand-to-wave, his cowboy boots squarely planted. Never before now had

Jed felt his betrayal so powerfully. Carl was loved in the community even by those who considered him a sap for lending money to people who came to him with sketchy sob stories. A real Christian they set out of the side of their mouths. Carl's housekeeper had had him cosine a big note as darkness bank, then left Tom with a handyman, who was not her husband. Carl said he understood her desperation, referred to her as a poor thing, and wrote it off.

Jed told Carl he would have followed her to the gates of hell to get his money back. He hated it when people treated Carl like a sucker and ran up his receivables. People think you're a soft touch, Jed said, "Oh, probably I am. It's open wall of surgery. I know I know, but hey, that's funny."

The second marriage of Carl and Shirley lasted less than 90 days.

It was over before she'd even begun to think about selling the condo. Carl was spared the pain of embarrassment as he seemed incapable of it, but Jed's guilt was eating at him. He could scarcely think what it would take to resolve it. This anguish surprised him. He tried without success to see his betrayal, is merely something he'd gotten away with.

“What's this Carl said leading Jed down the quarter to his office?”

Jed didn't return the wave of Carl's secretary, Jenny, even though she had gone to high school with him, and they had shared each other's company out by the cell phone towers and enclimate weather back them. "You made an appointment to see me? What on earth?" "I'll be quick," Jed said. Carl stopped for a moment, looking at Jed in concern, but then led him into the office, closing the door. A sign in his desk said, "Think or thwim."

Jed sat facing Carl, gazing around at the pictures without seeing them. He was determined to come clean. I have something I want to tell you. This was the hardest thing Jed had ever done, but he had no choice. I have to get this off my chest. Stop right there, we knew you broke into the house. Mommy figured it out in a New York minute.

“We forgot about it long ago. You should, too. Jed sat quietly, unreadly, even when Carl began to laugh.”

He stared into his lap while Carl went on to summarize some personal news. He was trading in his towels for a pig one, and surely already had another companion. I call him Tarzan, but surely seems happy. So, so that's good. Carl, that's not what I came to tell you. Jed told him what he'd done, blunt him without details. I'm sorry. The two sat in silence.

Jed couldn't look up. He let it sink in. Carl spoke his voice level. We never had a chance.

You ruined my marriage. Jed knew that this was not the time to say that the marriage had already ended. I don't understand why you did it. Either do I. Jed had never seen this expression on Carl's face. Carl looked down tapping his thumbnails against each other. I need to think about this.

“I heard you were in Kauai. I thought it was a courtesy call. What did you make of the island?”

Jed's attempt to speak came out wrong. A poor man's Maui. What could that possibly mean? I visited the breadfruit institute. Carl sounded robotic. All about global food security. I'm not a beach guy. What do you actually care about Jed? Not enough, maybe. Jed's done.

discussion. He said that he wanted to put this behind him. His disquieting voice hadn't changed.

“He told Jed to meet him at the Vestry in St Andrew's on Tuesday morning.”

Father Oliver would stand by. Be there. It was a command. Jed's relief was palpable. He hung up the phone and gave a little fist pump. He dared to think that the friendship could be saved. Nothing else at his life had lasted so long or ever would again. It was the last snowy day of the year. Wet's bring snow. Jed started toward the church from his house. A long walk that would allow him to collect his thoughts. He paused at the corner

of Cottonwood to watch a children snowball fight. Only one girl in a wonder woman's snow suit

could really throw. And it was unclear if they chose them sides. A small black dog with a bandana around his neck tried to catch the snowballs. Jed washed as long as he could. But kept an eye on the time. Maybe the children were unable to choose sides. They were five of them in the odd number would make for awkwardness. Jed's doll to consider this but he had to get going and stop spinning scenarios. A deputy sheriff pulled alongside him as he walked, calling Jed one a ride.

Jed said he needed the exercise in resumed avoiding parts of the sidewalk under branches laden with snow. Puffed up birds adorned the overhead wires. In the morning sun the street seemed to sparkle. Father Oliver stopped him on the sidewalk in front of the directory. Coatless with his arms crossed. Jed, it would be best if you just go home. Let me work it out with Carl now. We'll get him some help. Can I just go in? Jed bridled at Father Oliver's turn gaze. You wouldn't be safe. I wouldn't be

safe. What are you talking about? Just please take me at my word. It's a bad idea. Carl told me what happened. And if I may say so, Jed, I pray that one day you will find redemption. As Jed crossed the park, he felt put upon by Father Oliver taking up Carl's grievance. His indignation was a relief. He stopped by the swings to greet a normal girlfriend,

“Kathy Chidham, with her handsome toddlers. He didn't remember her married name. Something”

polished. He wrested his hands on the children's crowns as she pushed her sunglasses back with a finger.

How am I holding up she said? You never looked so good. Oh, funny. I suppose you'd know she said.

Jed was a gasp that in front of these beautiful children she was leering. It had been a hard day, and he was no mood to plunge into her gaze. Kathy wore a light sweater. Jed asked if she was cold as she said, "Oh, Jed, give it up." I've just been told by a man of the cloth that I'm a bad human being. I'm not surprised you've never married, given all the antics. It's lucky that you don't know what you're missing. I like being along with my faults. That was true. Jed knelt to say

“goodbye to the toddlers, who were trying to figure out who he was. You take good care of mommy, okay?”

No reply from them. Jed found them nearly as bland as their mother. Kathy said, "See you around," Jed thought. Yep, says it all. The children continue to peer at him as you walked up the empty street toward home. In the following days, Jed noticed Carl watching him from a distance, and one night he thought he heard him on the porch. He could see a silhouette from the darker front room. He declined to find out more and waited for the figure to depart before returning to a

restless sleep. Carl received a citation from the State Bar Association, noting his tireless advocacy for "Indigent Rights," a baffling heckle, which Carl accepted cheerfully without suspecting that it was the result of an intervention by two lawyer friends who learned that Carl was as one of them put it on his way to the rubber room. Carl saw advice about ordinary life from his secretary, Jenny. It was good to have someone normal at hand. He began to return to the

office in order to talk to her and soon fell in love again. Jenny was forthright about his previous

both of those marriages." Thanks to Jenny's guidance, Carl stopped conferring with Father Oliver,

“whom she described as "media evil." Carl's faith had once been a consolation in his life. His”

secretary Stark remarks made him turn toward instead. Carl asked where the "Indigent's in town" were, and she said, "We don't have any." Then, recalling the award from the Bar Association, she added, "I mean, they're careful to stay out of sight." She visited Carl at his home or stayed over, then moved in. People in town began to notice a renewed spring in his step, and were pleased to see his improvement. Jenny and Carl bumped into each other at the bank,

the gas station, and the grocery store. Jed found Carl's cordial greetings, fishy.

Shirley had never claimed Drew, and now Carl rarely went anywhere without the little dog.

Jed recommitted himself to his work trying to understand trends as the town changed. His relations with his neighbors may have been formal, but they had begun to check the lights of his house to make sure he was okay. Carl accidentally ran over Drew in his driveway, it was not seen in his office or elsewhere for nine days. Knox, on his door, went unanswered. The cold was extreme. The Alberta Express. Jed scraped his windshield and got in his car.

He drove to Carl's office where he found Jenny at her station with her usual crocodile smile

still wearing her hat. Her forehead wrinkled at the sight of Jed. Jed asked,

"What should I know?" he ran over Drew. I heard. The dog was the only reason he forgave you. That's hard to follow, but sure. Carl lost me. Jed thought that this was probably true.

“Still, it landed with a thud. I heard that. It's wonderful, but why doesn't he come to work?”

When he lost the dog, he got mad at you again, and I didn't want to hear about it. For one more minute, the betrayal, the quote shattered friendship, unquote. He said that. Jed, your zipper problems have caused so much heartache in this town. Jed thought to stay silent this time on the subject of the eager volunteers. Even about the steamy hours at the cell phone towers, where opportunity it illuminated the frosty nights,

of course, Jenny's right you thought. I'm an absolute pig. Maybe Carl thought Drew was a stand-in for surely. That hurts Jed. Tears filled her eyes. Perhaps it's true. I hope it's not.

“I didn't mean to upset you. You could buy him a dog. Why sure, or how about a parrot, or a horse?”

Jenny stood a handful of papers crushed in her fist. Jed quietly skews himself in return to the snow. He started home and stopped. It was clear he'd go and see Carl. He had to. He had not gone past Carl's house all winter. He remembered the side window that he and his friends had broken. The replaced glass didn't match the other pains. We're heard those friends gone, moved away most likely. Jed wondered if he should be grateful

that his jury job had kept him here. It wasn't really a question. He smiled painfully at the security camera and knocked. Carl answered the door at his bathroom. I've been expecting you. He said, "Maybe Carl was shoot him. It might be welcome that we imagine it would hurt." "How's biz Carl asked us he placed a pot in the curing machine?" "My secretary earns the only reliable living."

"As it should be," Carl said. He led Jed into the living room with a set before a rock fireplace with a gas log and above a painting of a wagon train, a woman in a bonnet driving the oxen. It hadn't been there when Jed was last in the house. It must have been a reference to Carl's pioneer family. What an eyesore. Jenny and I are getting married Carl announced. We've been close since I don't know when. It's time to act. In a way I'm grateful that you disrupted my life.

It's been a long way around the horn, but I'm with the right girl now. We have no secrets. Carl paused and Jed didn't speak. I'm at last coming out of a very dark place.

and holding Jed's gaze. Jed, I waited all this time to tell you to your face that I hate you.

“I understand. That was it. Carl saw him to the door, clutching his bathrobe as the snow blew in.”

Jed stopped when it shut behind him. Was this finally the end? Still they had the long years of

friendship to overcome this mess up. Jed felt it was inevitable that they would eventually reconcile. Jed read about the wedding and wondered how father Oliver could have performed the ceremony with a straight face. He had lost his indigenous wife to diabetes. It was no longer a social presence in the community. Now rarely beaming from the front of the church with indiscriminate benevolence. Carl and Jenny's sparsely attended wedding was felt to be the end of an era by those

who noticed it. The follies that had been cheerful topics for the town had dried up. The principles

“were starting to look old. Their first people thought Jenny had taken on errors, but she was one of”

them, and in the end they wished she were more pretentious and had a place in Arizona.

Kawai had long since gone from being a subject to gossip, to a travel destination, and several neighbors vacations there returning with anomalous souvenirs from the Pacific Islands, or brochures from the breadfruit institute. Global food security was a new topic in this comfortable town. Carl's practice, a big frog in a small pond, suffered as people know travel to seek services. A modest trauma center was all the town had to offer by way of medical facilities, and Carl's

office really took on cases beyond the town limits. His many friends in the Bar Association recognized that he could again use some help and arrange for him to fill a district court vacancy. They known him since law school, and agreed that he was silent. The court's residency requirements meant that Carl and Jenny would have to move to hell in a orals to climb the position and face a straightened future in a place that seemed to be dissolving. They sold the house, took the furniture,

the wagon train painting, and moved away. As jet eight breakfast at the drugstore counter once summer morning, he remembered that it was Carl's birthday. He thought to make it an occasion and wandered past Carl's old home. A tricycle in a trampoline stood on the lawn, a dog barked behind the window. Jet moved along, hoping to bump into someone he knew. That was Thomas McWayne, reading his story ordinary wear and tear. He's been publishing fiction

in the New Yorkers since 1994. For more New Yorker fiction audio, try the New Yorker fiction podcast, where we invite writers to two stories from the magazine's archives to read and discuss. This month, Philaria Luiselli reads the night face up by Julio Cortazar. You can find that another New Yorker podcast in your podcast app. If you're a New Yorker subscriber, you get access to all episodes of the writer's voice, add free, and to everything else we publish.

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