C. Wade Bentley

From the window of the evening train, I saw a woman stare back at me from a second-story brownstone, and it could not have been clearer that we both wished to trade places, that I would deal with her elderly father who had lost everything else but the words, repeated, wild and sweet, to all five verses of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” and she would feed my cats, and eat the whole roasted chicken in the Foodtown bag I had carried and, before turning in for the night, post an enigmatically hopeful update to my Facebook status.

Wade thinks maybe the highest praise he’s ever received was when his grandson said that coming to Grampy’s house was as good as Play-Doh ice cream.