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

I'm Deborah Treasman, 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 Privileged, 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 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 dealt with only two fellows before Philip, which I suspect was not his real name. The previous 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-nosed bugs have eaten the bed

...