This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Joy Williams read her story, Chant,

from the December 10th, 2018 issue of the magazine.

Williams is the author of four novels and five-story collections,

including 99 Stories of God and The Visiting Privilege.

She won the Ray Award for the short story in 1999.

Now here's Joy Williams.

Chant.

The building was called the dove, or dove.

She's out there at dove, people might say, if they wanted to bother.

It was 11 stories with a multitude of single rooms, very much like a dove coat, or as everyone

eventually suggested, a columbarium.

It was in a windy desert basin with a wonderful view of distant mountains.

If you felt that the dove was the place for you, you gave them all your money,

and you would be cared for there until the day you died.

Should you choose to leave before then,

they still kept all your money.

Leaving was a poor option, and hardly anyone did it.

When the boys died, and after she had buried the one who was hers,

she moved to Dove.

Many days passed.

...