Lee Smith is the author of four short story collections, a memoir, and numerous novels, including Silver Alert (Algonquin, 2023), Guests on Earth, and The Last Girls, a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. A retired professor of English at North Carolina State University, Lee received the Arts and Letters Award for Literature in 1999.

The Cutter

A Story

by Lee Smith

Whatever happened to stoves? That’s what I want to know. Just plain old electric stoves with four burners on the top, maybe five if it’s fancy, and then the oven is underneath the stove, not up on the wall or some other damn place entirely, like it is here. But Raymond was so proud when he bought this house out at the lake, “for you, Judy,” he always said, but it was not for me. I can’t even swim. It was for him, the biggest and the best, even now at his age, still showing off, still competing. With his brother Norton and his buddies Ralph and Hoyt and the guys at the Lodge and who knows who else. The best of everything for Raymond. And for me, God forbid.

People on couch
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