For Out of the Heart Proceed

About

Matt Bell is the author of How They Were Found, forthcoming from Keyhole Press in October 2010, as well as three chapbooks, Wolf Parts (Keyhole Press), The Collectors (Caketrain Press), and How the Broken Lead the Blind (Willows Wept Press). His fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, Hayden's Ferry Review, Willow Springs, Unsaid, and American Short Fiction, and has been selected for inclusion in anthologies such as Best American Mystery Stories 2010 and Best American Fantasy 2. His book reviews and critical essays have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, American Book Review, and The Quarterly Conversation.

He is also the editor of The Collagist and of Dzanc's Best of the Web anthology series.

He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife Jessica, and can be reached via e-mail at mdbell79@gmail.com.

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How They Were Found

Monday

Dec212009

Monday, December 21, 2009 at 05:51PM

Two days before he was supposed to move to Cleveland with his mother and her husband, I took my son to the mall to buy his first winter coat. Gene sat quietly in the passenger seat. I could feel him building to another one of his questions. Lately he’d been coming up with impossibilities like, “What is funny?” or “Why don’t birds have teeth?” We’d spent hours driving around, or sitting in parks if the weather was nice, discussing the answers. Just as the mall came into view a couple blocks ahead, Gene asked if I knew what ninjas were.

“They’re warriors,” I said, “from Japan.”

“Ancient Japan,” he said.

“What’s the difference?”

“It’s the same, only older.”