“The Peach Stone” by Paul Horgan

 

They all knew, the drive would take them about four hours, all the way to Weed, where she came from. They knew the way from traveling it so often, first in the old car, and now in the new one; new to them, that is, for they bought it second hand, last year, when they were down in Roswell to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. They still thought of themselves as a young couple, and he certainly did crazy things now and then, and always laughed her out of it when she was cross at the money going where it did, instead of where it ought to go. But there was so much droll orneriness in him when he did things like that that she couldn't stay mad, hadn't the heart, and the harder up they got, the more she loved him, and the little ranch he'd taken her to in the rolling plains just below the mountains.

This story, one of Mr. Lewis’s 100 Best is a jewel.

It is essentially four characters in an old car making a dusty trip with a box of sadness on the back seat.

Almost dialogue free we spend time inside the heads of each passenger as they see the road and what led them to this journey differently.

I will not tip what is in the box.

The story is magnificently human—Mr. Horgan clearly had an eye that saw humanity in detail and could render it three-dimensions.

Superlative adult fare.