Open Stories — Short Fiction by Hank Redding

Set deep in the Louisiana bayou, Legend of Armand LeRoux is a comic Southern tall tale about a one-armed alligator hunter, a rule-bound sheriff, and a swamp with its own ideas about authority. Told with rich sensory detail and dry humor, the story explores what happens when order wanders into a place that never agreed to it—and why some places are better understood than governed.

Set on a remote Montana ranch in the 1970s, this story follows a man whose days are shaped by fences, water, and weather. As distant urgency presses in from elsewhere, the land continues to ask only what it always has.

In the fading years of the frontier, two men ride together as reputation begins to outpace reality. When one becomes a legend and the other survives, The Long Mercy examines loyalty under pressure, the quiet mechanics of betrayal, and the enduring cost of choosing to live when silence is the only refuge. The story leaves judgment to the reader—and lets time carry the rest.

Spanning a quiet lifetime, The Long Way Home follows a man shaped by movement rather than destination—by the ordinary ritual of shared drives that once felt like wasted time and later revealed themselves as inheritance. Told with restraint and clarity, the story traces family, aging, and the unnoticed transfer of care, examining how love persists not through declaration, but through repetition, attention, and the simple act of going nowhere together.