 in a collection called Old Crimes and Other Stories. In the first story, there's a young woman who's in a writing class. Her assignment is to think of an everyday object that can be used in different ways in different stories. I spoke to Jill McCorkle in March about that object, the one the woman chose, and its ordinary and sometimes eerie uses. So she chose a belt, and she describes it as a belt could be a song or a drink or a slap,