Barclay Bates

Scavengers: and Other Stories Barclay Bates

The stories in Scavengers are about people fighting to gain or hold onto some good. For the six-year-old heroine of "Dixie Lee" it is innocence, threatened by her kidnapper. Gilda, the young English teacher of "Scavengers," disappointed in love, wants a baby by artificial insemination. Middleton, the bumbling and incorrigible romantic of "Following Keats," seeks love in Italy. In "Fish or Fowl" Isabel Larkin, lost in La-La land, seems uncertain about her identity-but not about doing what is right. Jeff Franklin, in "This Day in Yankee History," tries mightily to convey his respect and liking for a distrustful young black boy he meets at the ballpark. These and others-a handsome alcoholic, a sex-obsessed homeless man, an ambitious cop, a professor drawn toward violence, a guilt-ridden man with a snuff movie-all struggle to possess a small part of what they have lost, thrown away, or never had.