The Dredgeman’s Revelation
Karen Russell's story about life on a Florida dredge barge at the height of the Depression.
"Well, goddammit, Louis, you don't need to brag about it," Gid the engine man said. "Born dead—shit, son, everybody is!" Karen Russell's Louis Thanksgiving had very nearly been a nobody—his skull cinched and silent at birth, refusing to wiggle, resolute and blue in the doc's blood-soaked arms.