Sweethearts by Richard Ford, 1986
The magic trick:
Great idea for a story
This story debuted in the Esquire summer reading issue, August 1986. And if you need any evidence that those heady days of the mid-1980s were a Golden Age for the short story, check out this magazine’s table of contents: new stories from Richard Ford, E.L. Doctorow, John Edgar Wideman, Donald Barthelme, Thomas McGuane, Raymond Carver, Louise Erdrich, Tim O’Brien, and Joy Williams.
Are you kidding me?
Oh, and that Tim O’Brien story – a little gem called “The Things They Carried.”
I wish it was still like that. I really do.
So, anyway, “Sweethearts” by Richard Ford more than holds its own among those heavy hitters. It’s one of Ford’s very best, in my opinion.
“Sweethearts” is a story that soars on its premise. In short, this is the story of a man who spends a day with his girlfriend and her ex-husband and then drives that ex-husband to prison where he’s starting his sentence for armed robbery. That’s a situation ripe for story, right?
And so it is. Great idea. Great story.
And that’s quite a trick on Ford’s part.
The selection:
Arlene had said she would drive him to the sheriff’s department this morning, if I would fix him breakfast, so he could surrender on a full stomach and that had seemed all right. Early in the morning Bobby had brought his motorcycle around to the backyard and tied up his dog to the handlebars. I had watched him from the window. He hugged the dog, kissed it on the head and whispered something in its ear, then came inside. The dog was a black Lab, and it sat beside the motorcycle now and stared with blank interest across the river at the buildings of town, where the sky was beginning to turn pinkish and the day was opening up. It was going to be our dog for a while now, I guessed.
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