A Bark That Bites

This next story is a bit of serendipity because I found it while not even searching for a story. I’m excited to rescue it from its obscure source and provide a broader readership to Elizabeth Rollins and her great story “The Boy,” which is one of the very few stories I’ve read recently that kept me locked in, almost holding my breath wondering what was going to happen. After I finished the story I absolutely loved that no explanation was given of what the boy stank of or why he stunk. That’s a fantastic shard of randomness. And realism in the best sense because it captures what so much of life is like; charged fragments floating free that we never find the meaning of.
 
The dog barking at the boy because he stinks is a stunning situation, particularly when we find out why the boy can’t go home:

"So, tell me." I walk over and put the photo albums back in the garbage bag. "Why don’t you go home?"
    "I can’t."
   "Why not?"
   "Can’t you smell me?" I’ve upset him. He shakes the paper with the house drawing at the dog. "I stink! I stink! This dog won’t let me!"
   "Have you tried to wash?"
   "I want to wash," says the boy, his eyes filling with tears, "but I can’t go hoooooome." He lets the paper drift to the floor, drops the bag and stands there, crying. The dog barks.

One measure I use for deciding that a story is great is when I find some surprising but dead-on moment of psychological truth. I’m not talking about author narrated observations, but some moment when a character leaps off the page (screen) because they do or say something that has gut-level truth. Here’s that moment for me in Rollins’ story:

"Are you going home after this?" I ask. I look at him out of the sides of my eyes to see how he feels about it.
   He thinks, still chewing. "I’d better," he says.
   "What about the dog?"
   "He’d better come home too."
   "Won’t that upset your dog?"
   "He is my dog."
   "I thought you said he wasn’t!"
   "Well, not when he’s acting like that, he’s not my dog."

This story has much else to offer. Enjoy!

Rock Me All Night Long

Okay, here’s one that rocked my world, Lisa Gabriele’s “Thirteen One-night Stands” in Nerve. I love the way it works on multiple levels—the mini-stories, the story created by the titles, and the sublime effect of the sidebar of symbols. I won’t spoil it with discussion. Just go read it. And if you’re not already, this story might just be worth the price of subscribing.

Peaking

Ann Scott Knight’s story “Impossible with Nancy”—from The Marlboro Review archives—uses the opening scene to foreshadow a later scene that achieves a rare moment in my short story reading—a peak experience. And believe me, the more of these blogs I write (and stories I read for the literary magazine) the harder these experiences are to come by. Here’s the foreshadow, from the story’s beginning:

It's shimmery hot but I'm afraid to swim Rooster. Sweat drips off my chin and Rooster's coat is matted underneath me. Nancy and Sierra are already deep in the middle of the swimming hole, and I can't see Sierra anymore, except for his face and a few wisps of yellowish-grey tail. I'm certain he and Nancy are both about to drown.
   "Come in!" Nancy turns and shouts, but we are not supposed to be here, with these horses, far from the barn.
   Nancy ducks underwater, hugging Sierra's neck, and I hold my breath, frightened, till she comes up again. I've never swum a horse before. All I can think of is losing hold of the mane, getting sucked down into that boiling water and kicked, knocked out cold, by four thrashing hooves.
   On the other side of the swimming hole, Sierra's feet touch ground. Nancy is flat, stomach down, stretched the length of his back. She pushes up, laughing, looks down at her shirt. She couldn't care less that it's plastered against her chest.
   "Come on, Lucy," she calls. "Miss Priss."

Even if this weren’t a foreshadow, it’s great writing that gets you into the story on all levels, the action is in medias res and tense, its sensual, and the emotional battle is on. That shirt plastered against Nancy’s chest? The one she could care less about? It comes off. Like this:

"Did you sunbathe topless, Lucy?" Frank asks.
   I look over at him. He's got his eye on the road, both hands on the wheel. Nancy is staring hard at me, jutting her jaw, opening her eyes wide, by which she means, Say yes or else.
   "No," I answer.
   "You're a good girl," Frank says and smiles.
   "Lucy is a goody-goody," Nancy says, throwing herself back against the seat.
   "Then why are you friends with me?"
   "Oh, shut up."
   "Girls, girls." Frank's voice is raspy. He reaches behind Nancy and tousles my hair. He laughs, a low smoker's laugh. "Girls, girls," he says softly, shaking his head. Suddenly Nancy pulls off her shirt and there she is, topless, sitting beside Frank.
   "Nancy," I shout.
   Frank does a double take then keeps on driving. He takes out a cigarette and lights it.
   "Don't act as if you haven't seen them before," Nancy says.

The reason I call this moment a peak experience is that it was a complete surprise that is absolutely perfect. And such moments are incredibly difficult to pull off in a story. You certainly can’t get there from a plan. To paraphrase something Flannery O’Connor wrote, the reader won’t be surprised if the writer wasn’t. Of course Nancy is going to take her shirt off in that circumstance. Bet you didn’t see it coming, though. That’s a peak experience.

Arc of Defeat

Here’s another story in non-traditional format, Sarah Manguso’s “Things I Remembered in 2002,” from McSweeney’s. My favorite line in the story?

Why did I never realize until now that college is finishing school for bond traders?

Yeah, churn-em and burn-em. The progression here is subtle, but the emotional arc of these realizations is quite compelling. The power of voice makes this piece work. It’s easy to imagine how dull such a journal excerpt could be. Follow the arc, that’s where the emotional energy is.