Rural mail carrier, Tammy, bumps heads in a nightmare during a rare spring snow storm. Twenty years before, she was kidnapped and shot by a drug addict she met along her route. Now she picks up another stranger along her route and the memories come flooding back. Is she about to be kidnapped and shot again? No, she tells herself, because the odds against it are so great.

Outside the church it is freezing, raining, but inside Lavonia is doing just fine. She is seated on the first pew in her widow's weeds facing the casket of her x-husband and his common-law wife in the choir. Young Betty will have her day in the seat of honor for another dead man. Then the two women face off against each other in the white limo on the way to the cemetery and all hell breaks loose.

Known only as "Sister," the girl watches her wicked step-daddy sack up her cats to toss in the river. As Sister says though, "This isn't the worst thing William B. Blaine ever did." She hopes this pet sacrifice proves enough to cause her mother to make him go. Sister is obcessed with her mother's dedication to mean men; her trying to make of them who she wants them to be rather than who they are.

What would you do if you were suddenly blessed with a piebald deer mount in your small living room? No problem if it was placed as a centerpiece by an enemy, but a husband of many years is a different story. Add to that, this husband really thinks "Piebald" is a masterpiece.

Celebs in those slick mags look perfect--airbrushed! That plump, golden chicken looks delicious--airbrushed and worse. Eat at your own risk!

A little girl learns from her grandmother about the natural cycles of life and death. They watch the moon waxing and waning; they watch the tomatoes in the garden grow from tiny yellow flowers to red, ripe orbs. The little girl sees herself in comparison to her grandmother--one new and the other old. They watch as the moon returns to new again and the starting-over.

Recorded for NPR by Janice DaughartyI was at first shocked by the sheer mass of scurrying humanity at Hartsfield International Airport, in Atlanta, Georgia. All alone under one roof, yet not a foot apart from each other. Nobody spoke to me. Then I wondered what would happen if I actually tried to strike up a conversation with somebody...

The aborted boy is only a scrap of flesh but has a heartbeat like the fluttering of butterfly wings. Kate, nurse on duty, doesn't know what to do. This sixteen-week old baby was supposed to be delivered dead! It was a given. She's been trained under such unlikely circumstances to discretely place the fetus in a basin and set it on a shelf in the lab till its--his--heart quits beating. She can't.

General Norton receives a visit from a thief, and he is in for the time of his life. An invalid with nothing to do, General has advertised a goat on a radio exchange program, which "the Hippie" picks up on. The odd pair go out to see the goat and get into a fight about religion, among other things. Despite their differences, the General decides that bad company is better than no company.

"Grannie has bad skin cancers but not bad enough to take her out of this world" where nobody wants her except one granddaughter. Luzanne drives her from house to house belonging to Grannie's three daughters, but each refuses to take her. It is while "visiting" Imo that the old lady finds a final rest while trailing a yellow cat out to a sunny porch.

Following a family reunion, Gransallie learns that her favorite niece, Ophelia, ia a not only a school teacher but a nudist. Hating to be proved wrong, Gransallie tries to defend Ophelia to her granddaughters, who "don't care where they are going or what shape they arrive in as long as they are going." Gransallie is their driver and chapperone on trips to Florida, or just anywhere.

Just out of prison after serving time on a drug charge, Roper Rackard comes across a woman's body while mowing the tall grass at the far end of his new boss's property, and although he is innocent of her death, Roper panics. Terrified that he will be charged with murdering a white woman and sent back to jail, he decides to hide the body where it won't be found. As days and then weeks pass, and the search for the missing woman continues, Roper begins to doubt himself. Did he do the right th...