The Briefcase

Anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2009 and elsewhere.

“With his left hand, he adjusted the loop of steel that cuffed his right hand to the line of doomed men. His hand was starved, his wrist was thin, his body was cold: the cuff slipped off. In one beat of the heart he looked back to the man behind him and forward to the man limping ahead, and knew that neither saw his naked, red wrist; each saw only his own mother weeping in a kitchen, his own love lying on a bed in white sheets and sunlight.

Listen to Isaiah Sheffer’s interview with Rebecca about The Briefcase