In the doctor’s office, they learned the child was a girl. Over breakfast they started to talk about a name. He suggested, “Destiny.” She said, “I think we should call her Careen.” The only way to careen is out-of-control. He came home to an empty house that afternoon. She drove from Maryland to the Mid-Atlantic. She stopped at a saloon. Her eyes lingered on the bottles stacked in rows against the wall. Then she ordered a club soda. A ring of men surrounded a pool table. She wanted all of them. At a bar on the Outer Banks, she sat and worried to herself. She wondered if hungers stay until they are fed.

Chad Hanson serves as Chairman of the Department of Sociology
& Social Work at Casper College. His creative nonfiction titles include
Swimming with Trout and Trout Streams of the Heart. His manuscript 
of poems, Patches of Light, recently won the David Martinson—Meadowhawk
Prize, and is forthcoming from Red Dragonfly Press.