The Ride

One more music themed story, A. C. Koch’s “Some Kind of Blue”, which is another example of form and function fit, at least concerning the story’s theme, as the narrator emerges from his funk via improv with an assist from a Miles Davis cassette he finds serendipitously.

On instinct, I edged into the jazz section. Miles Davis was the only name I recognized, although I couldn’t have told you what he played. On the cover of a cassette he was wearing a tie and pressing his lips to the mouthpiece of a horn with his eyes closed and dark skin gleaming. The album was called "Kind of Blue."

Now there was something I could relate to: not all the way blue, not completely depressed or brooding, but only kind of. Bummed. Hum-drummy. Beer-drunk at noon. I pictured a stretch of road, dead straight to the horizon, silvery in moonlight and sliding under me in a blur of speed while reedy horns purred and drums whispered and shushed. Instead of balls-out speed burning up the road, I’d slide across the desert like a bead of mercury along a razor’s edge. The music would even sound like the word: jazzzz! I paid the metalhead clerk my three dollars and seven cents, pocketed the tape, and stepped back into the burning world.

So this cassette find turns out lucky as it grabs the attention of Auto, which in turn leads the narrator to live in the spirit of the music:

She directed me through the residential streets, past one convenience store after another until we turned onto a vast commercial boulevard awash in street lights. "Keep going," she said. I didn’t know where she was taking us, but I didn’t give a damn. I was expected nowhere, and could have wandered off naked into the desert to live in a sandstone cave for six months before anybody would start to wonder what might have happened to me. She turned to me with lights shifting across her face. "Do you have enough gas?"

"For what?"

"To keep going."

"Sure."

Off they go on an improvisational road trip, ending up in Santa Fe, where the narrator realizes that he “was Mr. Right when it came to getting you from Point A to Point B” when Auto (now Matilda) waves goodbye. I won’t begrudge Koch the epiphanaic ending:

I must have fallen asleep because the sun was high over the hills when I came to my senses. I didn’t know what day it was, or why I was here, or how far I had to get home, and whether or not home was really where I was headed. None of that seemed to matter a bit. My kind-of blues were gone. The next move would depend on only one thing: whatever felt fresh, right and dangerous. I turned off the music and let the silence speak. Wind in the trees. Then I keyed the engine and drove.

because not only does this story need one, it fits with the improvisation theme: the ending is a good riff that fades out, a riff sustaining into the silence.

Don’t Pawn the Opening

Sticking with the Mississippi Review’s music themed issue, here’s the opening of Steven Carter’s “Mr. Good:”

I could’ve kicked myself for chasing a woman bass player all the way to Cincinnati: a month after I got there, I left her for a twenty-three-year-old grocery clerk. A few weeks later that was over, too, and I didn’t even have money for a bus ticket back to Dallas. I hadn’t been able to find a gig since I’d moved. I tried finding work in a music store, and then started applying anywhere and everywhere—fast food, motels, convenience stores—and finally to stay out of a homeless shelter I had to pawn the only one of my guitars worth much, a 1965 Gibson Hummingbird. I stayed drunk for two days. Then I started working day labor so I could get it back. I was mixing mortar and carrying bricks, which I hated because it messed with my hands. The second week I smashed a thumbnail.

which hooked me because it is a story in itself. It has voice, a mistake, followed by more mistakes, a desperate search for work, a capitulation, a drowning of sorrows, and a struggle off the bottom. Fleshed out, that could have been the story. Instead it’s a deep first paragraph that nicely establishes character. This opening is not coy about the situation, doesn’t try to drag in the reader with suspense, just says here’s what’s going down—keep reading if you’re interested. I think as writers we have to be willing to alienate some readers so that we can grab our real readers, the ones seeking the story.

Narrative Drive

Scott Southwick's story "#1" makes great use of summary as a means to create narrative drive. Southwick does away with dramatically rendered scenes, and instead, summarizes them like so:

His father said, hush. Here's a guitar. This is D minor. Hush.

And then he's on to the next summary. Over and over. Until the device is mimicking theme:

Sue put him to bed, and then played the same scale for seven hours, until dawn.

Although the story uses a limited repertoire of techniques, I nevertheless found myself reading it rapidly from start to finish without stopping, basically hooked on it's narrative drive. That's one great form and function riff.