“Roadside Stand” • by Pete Wood

Jasmine glared at Tony. “Why’d you piss off Ortiz?”

“Hey, we’re still time agents.”

His wife didn’t smile back. She pointed at their falling-down doublewide. “In godforsaken 1975 Kentucky.” She resumed burning inspirational message into wood keepsakes. Seventy-five cents at their plywood roadside stand. If there’s no wind, row.

Tony grabbed the iron. Let the crime fit the punishment. This’d teach goddamned Ortiz to banish two top agents.

Tourists loved Tony’s signs. Stock tips and future Kentucky Derby winners.

 

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Pete Wood is an attorney from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he lives with his kind and very patient wife. His first appearance in our pages was “Mission Accomplished” in the now out-of-print August 2012 issue. After publishing a lot of stories with us he graduated to becoming a regular contributor to Asimov’s, but he’s still kind enough to send us things we can publish from time to time, and we’re always happy to get them.

For the past two years Pete has been in the process of evolving into a fiction editor, God help him, first with The Pete Wood Challenge, then with Dawn of Time, then with The Odin Chronicles, and now with Tales from the Brahma, a shared world saga that features the creative work of Roxana Arama, Gustavo Bondoni, Carol Scheina, Patricia Miller, Jason Burnham, and of course, Pete Wood. We suspect that Pete’s real love is theater, though, as evidenced by his short movie, Quantum Doughnut — which you can stream, if you follow the foregoing link.

Pete Wood photo by Lee Baker.

▲ Return to Main Post

► “Ivy’s Tower” • by Gretchen Tessmer
► “Sending Love” • by Kimberly Ann Smiley
► “Lunar Ghosts” • by Sylvia Heike
► “Anagram Ed” • by Ron Ferguson
► “Trash-Talking Space Honky Trips Over the Finish Line” • by Brandon Case
► “Roadside Stand” • by Pete Wood

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