Three signatures in the holy city. A boy with his grandfather’s pistol. Ninety seconds of darkness in a room in Manchester, and the trains are still wrong two days later.

Jobs went missing in July, and the number that fell is the one that should worry you.

A nurse on a Montana mountain, ten miles from the truck, doing arithmetic.

A parcel forty years in the mail.

Ninety thousand ducks, a river, and a young woman from Clarendon Hills who did not need a whole sentence.

A man in Peabody, Massachusetts, who you could hear before you could see.

And for what it’s worth: two words on a receipt, one wastebasket, and six tons of garbage.

Art Sterling. Weekdays.