Ryan E. Felton

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 9)

    III. Weep Bitterly for Her Who Goes Away Six days after Gideon Dodd’s sermon about Truth — and about his wife Tamera’s infamous interview with Maria Gutierrez (not yet Stenson) — he returned home late from an elders’ meeting. He was hungry. He was thinking about playing catch with his boy, maybe, after dinner. (Not…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 7)

    III. …But with Many Advisers They Succeed “What was that horseshit? ‘Bad muchacho?’ Did you hear yourself out there?” Inside the Doddville bus, Kratz leaned against a crafting table, shaking in his mauve Adidas windbreaker. With the back of a hand he knocked a squeeze-tube of adhesive paste into an unreachable crevasse under the console.…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 6)

    SELAH: II             “Get down from there, Boogie.” Somewhere in Utah a budgie perches upon a shower curtain rod, shrouded in the vapor clouds swirling above a bathtub full of water, lavender, and sixty-eight year-old, white male flesh.             The man in the tub repeats himself, stern and authoritative:             “C’mon down, Boogie-Man. Sit on…

  • A Routine (audio)

    I’m taking a week away from “The Man Who Ran for God” to work ahead and allow readers to catch up. In lieu of a new installment of that, please enjoy this audio version of my short story “A Routine,” from last year’s The Good-Bye Garden & Other Stories — which, incidentally, is for sale here.…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 5)

    VIII. A Vain Man through Pride Causeth Debate It was small, this little playhouse stage. Big enough to put on Our Town but certainly not The King and I. Two podiums were on either side, flanked by the drawn and roped curtains. Dodd looked around, heart pounding, forehead damp and chilly. But no one else…