Edward Bach

So Long, Charlie Edward Bach

63-year old Dix Blackman is cracking up. His children have abandoned him. His wife conducts Friday night séance sessions down at the local church. His body is showing signs of early decay. And now that retirement is just around the corner, he finds that he can't sleep, that he spends his days day-dreaming and doodling at his desk, that he even follows complete strangers around in their cars. And to make matters worse there is that little matter of what happened 40 years ago, those seven days of madness that he keeps reliving over and over again. Saturn's Rings is the first of ten stories dealing with what it means to be human. From 'Duck' in the story Pigeon Tales, the rambunctious 8-year-old who shocks her sister by doing the unthinkable, to God, the basketball junkie in So Long Charlie who dodges questions about his responsibility in all things bad, to Sokie Dickerman in the story Wacky, the neurotic, henpecked husband who shoves his head in the oven hoping to keep his wife home at night, to Jay in the story Dark Blue, the neglectful father who saves his own skin rather than turn to help a drowning son, the people we meet in these stories run the gamut from psychotic to sane, from heroic to pathetic, the very qualities that make us what we are human.