Authors: Madison Smartt Bell

Barking Man (31 page)

Bell in 1999, teaching his daughter to shoot. Here they are practicing on mistletoe.

Bell teaching a class at Ensworth School, his former elementary school in Nashville.

Bell in a rowboat on a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, in 2005. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had just moved to Paris a few months prior.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The following stories in this collection have previously appeared elsewhere: “Holding Together” and “Dragon’s Seed,”
Boulevard
; “Black and Tan” (formerly “Going to the Dogs”),
The Atlantic monthly
; “Customs of the Country” (revised for this volume),
Harper’s Magazine
,
The Best American Short Stories 1989
(Houghton Mifflin), and
New Stories from the South 1989
(Algonquin Books); “Finding Natasha,”
Antaeus
and
Louder Than Words
(Atlantic Monthly Press); “Barking Man,”
The Northwest Review
; “Witness,”
Harper’s Magazine
; “Mr. Potatohead in Love,” broadcast on National Public Radio (PEN Syndicated Fiction Project).