The Prince of Frogtown

This is so good I have to type it myself. Forgive the mistakes. Bragg's new one, start of chaper two:

I was still a little boy when I saw that first sacrifice, that first empty sleeve. I was rich then. A pocketful of birthday nickles weighed me down as I chased after imaginary Indians from the saddle of my dime-store pony. It was stuck hard in the cement in front of the A&P, but I was gaining on them, one nickel at a time, when the one-armed man walked by. I was barefoot in town on a weekday, so it had to be a payday, and it had to be summer. The linoleum was cold beneath my feet as I followed the man inside, curious and staring. He was thin, his pant billowing from his waist, his face gaunt and grooved and sad, so sad that one of us, surely, had to cry. He had on a long-sleeved, checkered shirt with one sleeve hanging loose and empty, not pinned up and fianl but swinging ever so slightly with every step, as if that missing arm was something he expected to get back anytime now. But his face told me different, told me that lost is lost. It was even beyond the power of the miracles in which my people believed. So one ever prayed an arm back on -- we would have heard about it if they had.

Buy the book at the Shoppes at Gangrey, bottom right.