This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker.

I'm Debra Treesman, fiction editor at The New Yorker.

On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Rachel Kushner read her story A King Alone

from the July 11th and 18th 2022 issue of the magazine.

Kushner has published three novels, Telex from Cuba, The Flamethrowers

and The Mars Room, which was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize in 2018.

Her most recent book, The Hard Crowd, essays 2000 to 2020, came out last year.

Now here's Rachel Kushner.

A King Alone

He was on a low road next to the French Broad, which divided the town in half.

He'd thought about how, with small cities like this one, that were split in two by a river,

you added the word west, or the word east, to the half that was less desirable,

the half that was not the commercial center.

He had been on this road before, 20 years earlier.

The damp and teeming feel was familiar and unchanged.

There was almost no development here, just tall trees and railroad tracks.

His windows were down, and the river felt close, as if its green water were breathing on his skin.

He arrived at the railroad crossing. He remembered this crossing, as the gates were descending.

He waited. The sound of a train horn blasted into the car.

As the train appeared and rumbled past, industrial, Norfolk Southern, tankers of chemicals connected one to the next, like hot dug links,

a man hobbled up to the driver's side window.

Where had he come from? Who knew? People seemed to pop up on a roadside from out of nowhere.

...