This is the writer's voice, new fiction from the New Yorker.

I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker.

On this episode of the writer's voice, we'll hear Joy Williams read her story, The Fellow,

from the September 30th, 2019 issue of the magazine.

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

including honored guest and 99 stories of God.

Her most recent book, The Visiting Privilege, New and Collected Stories, was published in 2015.

Now here's Joy Williams.

The fellow.

I had been the assistant to the director for less than a year.

The important qualification for the job was to have no fear of water,

none, and I did not. Only one thing moved to me, the appearance in my head of the river horse. The guests, the fellows,

weren't supposed to have any fear of water either, but often they lied. This hadn't mattered for some time because the crick was dry, the crick was ashen.

Children having collected pretty stones from the wetness in the past, only to see them grow dull on a shelf, thought

that all the stones, everywhere, had died, even the ones they'd left behind. I had ones had always appeared drunk, though perhaps they were only savagely thinking while I filled the water tanks and brought in fresh toilet bowl brushes and briquettes for the grill.

Both on departure had abandoned a remarkable amount of

detritus, plastic parts of things, cords of many sorts, puzzling attachments.

They had both complained of bedbugs and fire ants.

Not bedbugs, I told them.

Cone-nose bugs. The cone nose bugs have eaten the bed bugs. I told them to treat

the fire ant mounds with molasses mixed with dish soap, but they did not. The proof being the empty canisters of

Beggon were everywhere. The residency came with a modest ranch house surrounded

...