Toby's first sentences

The man sitting next to me looks like Jesus.

If it weren’t for horses the world would starve.

The forest has never been my friend.

The clowns gathered around the baseball diamond and hosed down the slip and slide.

Every child should have a ghost horse.

If heaven is what I’m aiming for, then I better re-sight my rifle.

My grandma purchased our kitchen table from an estate sale at a home where they worshipped the occult and from that day on we switched from alphabets to cheerios.

There is a man who has been awake since world war II.

If prepositions are a bad way to begin a sentence.

The sun had risen past noon when an altar boy, refreshed from his nap against the cool gravestone of Eli Whitfield, had awoken to see a ghost standing over an open grave and a man who stood beside the ghost who wore a blue corduroy suit coat with khaki pants who was eating boysenberries from a large tree in the center of the cemetery of the Church of Perpetual Adoration in Twentynine Palms, California.

Waking up on the third morning over the fresh grave of his father, Doctor Samuel Malcome picked the dirt out of his ears and listened for the dead.

I see a lot of things through the windows at work.

Unscrewing his right leg, my Uncle Leo lights a bottle rocket and drops it into the hollow shaft where his bones should be.

She had a son.

The last white man in the Americas caused quite a stir, appearing, as did the first white men, quite unexpectantly and the issue of what to do with him being a topic on which there was much disagreement.

Erving Grover did not know why his life was falling in around him, but he suspected that it had to do with bees.

I think we should join a church, she said.

I woke up and noticed that my right sock was missing, and that the car was on fire.

It occurs to me that things should have gone differently, but then, where would the story be in that?

The abalone turned slowly to me and whispered.

It was the summer of 1988, the drought had gone on now for two straight months and lawns were catching on fire all throughout the neighborhood.

She turns and looks at me, then she tells me something about myself.

It’s not enough to write a story, the story has to matter.

If he were a better man, then none of us would have to be here.

“Get to the river before you drown.”

February, 1865 was the last month without a full moon.



Fireflies in a jar are all I ever see in the darkness.

It was a three mile walk to the cemetery and General Williamson was thankful he would have none of that.

I felt like Luther pounding those ninety five thesis’ to the door.

Shakespeare was never in love.

My father’s hands creaked as he tied the knot on my tie.

I struggle with the overtakelessness of people.

Walking inside the freezer room, my mother took her time in choosing, scrutinizing each vial; seven hours later I was conceived.