Ordinary Sins by Jim Heynen

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
    Â© 2014, Text by Jim Heynen
    Â© 2014, Cover and interior art by Tom Pohrt
    All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher: Milkweed Editions, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Suite 300, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55415.
    (800) 520-6455
    www.milkweed.org
    Published 2014 by Milkweed Editions
    Cover design by Gretchen Achilles/Wavetrap Design
    Cover illustration by Tom Pohrt
    Author photo by Anne Lennox
    14 15 16 17 18 5 4 3 2 1
    First Edition
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    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Heynen, Jim, 1940–
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  [Short stories. Selections]
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Ordinary sins : after Theophrastus : stories / Jim Heynen ; illustrated by Tom Pohrt. — First edition.
    pages ; cm
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  ISBN 978-1-57131-880-0
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  I. Pohrt, Tom. II. Title.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  PS3558.E87A6 2014
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  813’.54—dc23
    2014018350
    Milkweed Editions is committed to ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book production practices with this principle, and to reduce the impact of our operations in the environment. We are a member of the Green Press Initiative, a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the world’s endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Ordinary Sins was printed on acid-free 100% postconsumer-waste paper by Edwards Brothers Malloy.

AFTER THEOPHRASTUS?
    Theophrastus (circa 371 BC to circa 287 BC) may not be the earliest short-short story writer, but he caught my attention in high school where our literature text carried a sampling of his Characters . These brief verbal snapshots of people suited my adolescent attention span, and their appeal stuck with me.
    Before Theophrastus, there was nothing quite like his character sketches. We can find some precedent in Homer, Plato, and especially Aristotle. But even in Aristotle’s analysis of moral virtues and vices, the human qualities remain quite abstract. In Theophrastus we see lively, flesh-and-blood people like “The Toady,” who “is the sort of man who says to a person walking with him, ‘Are you aware of the admiring looks you are getting?’” or “The Man of Petty Ambition,” who “is apt to buy a little ladder for his domestic jackdaw and make a little bronze shield for it to carry when it hops onto the ladder” or my favorite, “The Late Learner,” who “is the kind of man who at the age of sixty memorises passages for recitation and while performing at a party forgets the words.”
    Most of the biographical information available about Theophrastus was written several centuries after his death by Diogenes Laertius in Lives of the Philosophers . We do know that he studied with Plato and later began to associate with Aristotle in Athens. After Aristotle’s death he became the head of the Lyceum and remained its head