"Where the Vultures Feed"

This story was originally published in Southern Comfort: A Charitable Anthology for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. My original ending was very different and rather bleak. In light of the physical and emotional devastation of Katrina, the editors wanted a more hopeful ending, which I agreed to and rewrote.

Looking back on this, my first published story, I see a lot of things I would now change. Except for changing a couple of awkward-sounding sentences, this is pretty much how it appeared nearly five years ago. The title comes from a line in the Bob Dylan song “Dignity.”

**************

Where the Vultures Feed

I wait outside the barn, leaning against the gray wooden door that gets harder to close every year. My chores are done for the day, except for fixing supper. He’ll have to come tell me what he wants, so I just wait. Such a simple thing, a son waiting for his father. Simple, but not easy. It’s much easier to look out beyond the fields, to dream of someplace---anyplace away from him. Maybe tonight. Maybe.

His faded red tractor rumbles in the distance. I smell the heat of the late afternoon sun burning into the ground. The Mississippi Delta could pass for hell on a day like this. I know he’s getting closer, but it seems he’ll never arrive. I’m not patient anymore, not since Mom died. How can I be patient knowing that he’s the one responsible?

The sun moves quicker than he does, casting a red glow across row after row of our corn. When he gets close, I see that ridiculous straw hat he always wears while driving the tractor. His hair is now completely gray and longer than it should be for someone his age. He is a foolish king sitting on a throne of nuts and bolts from a place nobody cares about. His overalls are stained dark blue where the sweat flows from his neck to his chest. Dust and dirt mix with the sweat, forming a sheen of filth on his arms. Everything about him disgusts me.

He stops the machine and lets it idle. The air is filled with the metallic bitterness of tractor oil and I know I’ll taste it in everything I eat tonight. He removes his hat long enough to wipe his brow with a dusty handkerchief from a set Mom gave him ages ago. The the machine sputters and jerks, shaking him around in the seat. With an exhausting effort, he reaches for the ignition and the tractor dies a slow, ragged death.

He eases himself down from the tractor, favoring his right leg, the one he broke years ago falling down in the rain after drinking too much. The next day, all my friends at school knew only that he had slipped. The looks of concern on their faces told me they didn’t know the whole story. Looks of pity from their parents told me they knew.

He takes an unsteady step and holds onto the steering wheel for balance. My stomach tightens. He clears his throat the same way he used to do when he’d been drinking and wanted to say something he thought was important, and me and Mom had “damn well better listen, I’ve got this belt here.” When it was over, Mom would pray for hours to be delivered from him.

He clears his throat again, but the sound is hollow, the rage gone.

He sits there, panting in a slow rhythm. “Roy,” he says, “how ‘bout getting me a glass of cold water. Please.”

I stand there looking at his dirty sweat, his filthy overalls, the pockets that are worn out from where the flask has been. The stench of sweat and dirt and heat slap me in the face and I hate even the thought of getting him anything. I want to let him stand out here, I want to tell him he can get his own water, I want to watch the mosquitoes swoop down and suck out every drop of his blood.

Birds circling the sky catch my attention. They’re so far off they look like specks of black pepper. I wonder why they don’t fly away to a better place. If I were a bird, I’d fly to another part of the world. If I were the Silver Surfer, I’d fly across the universe until I found the place I wanted to be.

My father clears his throat again, reminding me that I’m down here and not up there. I look up again anyway. The birds are closer. And larger. I think maybe they’re vultures.

Then I look down to the parched ground and walk to the kitchen to get his damn water.

*****

“You still readin’ them funny books?” Fay Waggoner says from behind the drug store counter. She looks beyond me to the two other customers in the store; only two, but enough of an audience for her. Old Mrs. Simmons turns her head from reading a bottle of Milk of Magnesia. Jeb Turner, waiting for his prescription, stops reading the newspaper.

“They’re comics,” I tell her.

“How old’re you now? Fourteen?” Fay says. She cocks her head to the left like she’s trying to figure something out. The black-rimmed glasses sway from the chain around her neck.

“Seventeen.” She knows damn well how old I am.

Fay smirks at the four comics I’ve placed on the counter. “The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Silver Surfer. Oh, listen to this one,” she announces, “Fantastic Four - The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine! Huh! Crazy stuff!”

She stacks and folds the comics, her chipped thumbnail making a hard crease down the middle of the books, and drops them into a paper bag that’s too small. “Seventeen and still readin’ funny books...” She shakes her head then gives me a stern look. “You payin’ for this or you want me to put in on your daddy’s charge?”

I slap the money on the counter and grab my comics. Not much longer, I think. Maybe tonight. Maybe they’ll come back tonight and take me away. That’s what I think about as I push open the front door of the drug store and walk down Main Street toward the truck.

*****

It’s a clear sky and I’m thinking this would be a perfect night for the aliens to return. I stand behind the barn, looking to the east, toward the place I last saw their ship. It was a little trail of light, just like the Silver Surfer riding across the sky. I thought the light was a shooting star, but it changed direction. Shooting stars don’t do that.

I prayed that the light might be Mom and as soon as I did, it came closer. Against the blackness of the sky, it would have been impossible to tell if it was a ship, but the full moon reflected off it. I prayed harder and felt Mom was very close.

After several seconds, the ship flew out of sight. I prayed again but it didn’t return.

The sky is so clear. This would be the perfect night.

Mom must be responsible. I think she wants to bring me to her, wherever she is. She wants us to be together and so do I. I think about her most in the mornings, just before breakfast. I’ll walk downstairs, thinking that she’ll be standing there with fresh fruit cut, milk and cereal ready. But she never is.

It was all too sudden and it was too damn stupid the way she died and it was his fault anyway. If she hadn’t been riding with him, if he hadn’t been driving drunk. But he was. He’ll always be a drunk.

The stars look good tonight. Like they’re waiting for something to happen.

*****

“I need you to bring in the beans and tomatoes. Sam Kaskie’s gonna be stoppin’ by this evenin’.” He doesn’t even say Good morning or What the hell were you doing outside all night? Just Sam Kaskie and his damn beans and tomatoes.

“Yes sir,” I say. I salute him with a spoonful of Corn Flakes, but his back is turned. “I’ll get it done.”

He stands by the coffee pot and pours half a cup. “I need you to take a look at the tractor too. You hear how it just ‘bout died yesterdy?”

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it. I’m not a mechanic.”

He downs his coffee and wipes his face with a handkerchief and I wonder if it’s the same one he used yesterday. “It won’t hurt you to take a look at it,” he says.

Then he’s at the kitchen sink, turning on the cold water and splashing his face. Water drips off his leathery skin. His mouth hangs open like he’s just awakened and doesn’t know where he is. He glances up at the corners of the ceiling like he’s looking for something he’s lost. “You got the air on. Seven-thirty in the mornin’ and you got the air on.” He shakes his head and walks over to the thermostat. The whoosh of cool air coming into the kitchen ends in a whisper. He walks back outside through the kitchen door. I finish my cereal and decide to take a look at the weather on TV before I start on the tomatoes. Maybe we’ll have another clear sky tonight.

*****

It doesn’t take long before I’m working up a sweat from picking tomatoes. The sun feels like it’s right on top of me, sucking out what’s left of my life.

I thought the aliens would come last night. They must have heard her prayers. Did they hear mine?

I suppose they can make her happy, wherever she is. I’m sure they can do that. They can probably do just about anything, maybe even reconstruct her face from the accident. Do they know when I’m thinking about her?

Sometimes I can almost feel Mom standing next to me and sometimes I swear she’s right inside my head, trying to tell me something. I can’t make out her words, or else they’re words I’ve never heard before. Maybe she’s learned a new language where she is now and it’s the only way she can communicate. But I know she’s there. They’ll come. I just have to be patient.

I pick a few more tomatoes from the vine and reach down to place them in the bushel. The sweet smell overwhelms me for a moment and I get lost in an image of Mom slicing tomatoes for an afternoon snack. When I straighten up, the alien is there.

His eyes are two tiny black dots. The nose is just two little slits, like ones you’d make with a knife to vent a baked potato. His mouth opens no larger than a dime. The skin is colorless, transparent. Except for the black eyes, I can only see a vague outline of him as he moves in front of the vines and stalks. I can’t tell anything else about him.

“She will send for you,” the alien says with a calm, lilting voice, “when you are ready.” His eyes seem to grow larger as he looks me over. For a few seconds he shuts his eyes like he’s praying and when he opens them, they’re even bigger.

“She will send for you,” he repeats. The black eyes stare into mine, then shrink to their previous size. “But you are not ready. You are not finished.”

“I just finished,” I say. Then I realize he’s not talking about the tomatoes. I look at him and pull my head back. “What do you mean I’m not finished?”

He turns away. “You are not finished.” He walks into the cornfield and is gone.

*****

My father’s doing it again; the lies, the stories.

We’re sitting at the kitchen table. “Why are you going to Greenville tonight?” I ask him. I look at him sitting across from me and know what’s up.

“I told you, I have a meeting with Mr. Jennings.” He bends over the table eating salmon out of a can, which looks so primitive.

“Who’s Mr. Jennings?”

“I told you, Roy. Mr. Jennings works for the Department of Agriculture. He was supposed to make the rounds and come out here this afternoon. He called and said he couldn’t come and asked for me to meet him.”

I looked at the kitchen clock. “After seven o’clock?”

“That’s right. Said he’s having a right busy day.”

I look at him and wait for that twitch that he sometimes has in the corner of his eye when he’s lying. But he doesn’t do it. He’s gotten good.

“You’re going drinking,” I say.

He drops his head and stares at the gash in the kitchen table. Maybe he remembers making it that night years ago when he was so drunk he threw an iron skillet of Mom’s cooking at her. “No, son. I ain’t going drinking.”

“You’re lying. I’ve never heard of this Mr. Jennings. We’ve had ag men come out here before and none of them were ever named Jennings.”

“He’s new.”

“He’s new,” I say, nodding. “He’s the new bartender at some dive in Greenville, that’s who he is.”

“Son---”

“Go ahead, go on to Greenville, drink it up with Mr. Jennings!” I stand up and don’t even realize I’ve knocked over my chair until I hear it hit the floor. “I’m glad Mom isn’t here to see any more of this. I wish to God I wasn’t.”

I storm out of the kitchen into the night air. I run into the cornfield to lose myself in its high stalks, trying to think about her and forget about him. But the more I think about her, the more I remember all the times she hugged me hard after he’d exhausted himself from yelling and passed out on the floor. And all the times the bastard said he’d change. He swore he’d change.

I hear him start up the truck and head down the dirt road leading to the highway. Go ahead and soak it up with your buddy Mr. Jennings.

I look up into the blackness of the sky. I am so ready. Please. Tonight.

*****

The next morning I walk into the kitchen and notice he hasn’t made coffee. Probably hung over in his bed. I didn’t hear him come in. God knows what time it was.

The truck isn’t outside. The kitchen clock reads 6:35.

The phone rings and just about jerks me out of my skin. He’s probably calling from the county jail.

“Hello.”

“Roy Pearce?”

“Yeah.”

“Sheriff Watson. Roy, did someone bring your dad home last night?”

I knew it. Somebody had to drive him.

“I don’t know. I figured he--- Wait a minute. I’ll check his room.”

Empty. His bed hadn’t been slept in.

I walk back to the phone. “No sir, he didn’t come home.”

Sheriff Watson sighs so loud I have to pull the phone away for a second. “Son, I think you’d better come meet me. I’m on Highway 61 south, about a half mile past the Mt. Olive exit.”

I get dressed and ride my bike out to meet the sheriff. It should have taken fifteen minutes to make it, but I do it in eight. Sheriff Watson and two other policemen stand hovering around our truck parked on the side of the road. I pull up and notice two more policemen looking through the tall grass just beyond the truck.

I move off my bike and Sheriff Watson walks up to me. “Roy,” he says, “I’m sorry to have to call you out here.”

“Is he dead?” I ask.

Sheriff Watson’s eyes narrow. “When’s the last time you saw your father?”

“He left to meet someone in Greenville last night. At least that’s what he said.”

“About what time was that?”

“I dunno. Seven, seven-fifteen. Where is he, in the hospital?”

The sheriff shakes his head. “We don’t know. One of my deputies saw his truck here early this morning.” He points to a small strip of dirt between the truck and the road. “A couple of footprints right here, but that’s all. If he started walking on the shoulder, who knows where he went?”

Especially if he’s drunk.

“Roy, I want you tom come down to the station with me. This is no place to talk.”

“He was going to Greenville to get drunk, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Watson grimaces and looks down at his boots. “Roy, I know what your dad used to do, but he ain’t had a drink since your mother---”

“Sheriff, I live with him. I know what he does. He hasn’t changed. Maybe he’s fooled you into thinking he’s different now. But he hasn’t changed.”

*****

“Your dad knew a lot about farming, Roy. Pulled everything he could out of this little farm.” My Uncle Larry moves his empty lemonade glass in little circles on the kitchen table.

It’s been six weeks and they still haven’t found my father’s body. The memorial service is tomorrow. I don’t know what I’d have done without Larry and his two sons these last several weeks.

I get up to pour Larry another glass. My arm and leg muscles are so stretched they feel like worn out rubber bands. I think back to everything my father used to do on this farm and I realize there’s some truth in what Larry says.

“Roy, your dad’s drinking was a terrible thing. After your mom died, he changed. I know you can’t see it because you haven’t forgiven him, but after the accident, he put all his energy into making this farm work.”

I fill his glass and hand it to him. I feel like having another glass myself, so I finish the pitcher and sit back down. “I’m going to have to sell it, Uncle Larry. I can’t do it by myself. And I can’t ask you to keep helping me; you’ve got your own farm.”

Larry stops moving his glass and gazes at it. “What if I bought it, Roy? Kept it in the family? You could stay here, finish high school.”

I guess the look on my face shows how surprised I am. I never figured Larry would be interested, our farm is so much smaller than his. Maybe he’d give it to one of his sons.

“Just think about it, Roy. Okay?”

*****

I’m sitting on the front porch, watching the evening sun fade away like a sigh. Cricket music begins and I’m thinking about the offer Larry made yesterday, mostly because it keeps me from thinking about the memorial service we held this afternoon.

Larry’s right, the farm should stay in the family. Only I don’t want to work it anymore. I don’t even care about finishing high school. There’s nothing left for me here.

A breeze rushes in and stalks sway lazily in the cornfield. I used to think the field was so small, but it looks bigger now and I see something of the hard work it took to keep it going day after day, year after year.

Something stirs in the cornfield, but the sun is gone and I can’t make out what it is. The sound stops. I can’t hear the crickets anymore either. But I know that the alien is here.

“They send for you,” the alien says. I can’t see him, but I hear his voice.

“They?”

“Yes. They send for you. You are nearly ready.”

“She does?”

“Yes,” the alien says.

“And him? He’s there?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s with him? He’s with her?”

“Yes. Will you come?”

I stand up, madder than I’ve been in a long time. “You tell him,” I yell. And then I look to the stars and they stop me cold. I think that things must be a lot different out there, so different I can’t even imagine it. Maybe the aliens have different rules. Maybe they don’t have any rules at all. I stand there looking at all those stars and it makes me quiet.

But how could they take him? Don’t they know the suffering he’s caused?

“He did change,” the alien says, like he’s reading my mind.

“It was her wish,” the alien continues. “He did change, or we would not have accepted him. It is now their wish that you come. Can you accept this?”

I’ve got so many questions bottled up I don’t know how to let them out. But the alien seems to know my questions, my thoughts. His words come through the corn stalks softly, like a tender rush of wind.

“So many things in this place are not as they should be. When people are ready---willing to change---we are there.”

The thought that somebody - aliens, angels, I don’t know - can mend something so broken, the possibility that any good can come out of everything that’s happened, just the idea of what they’re offering, I----

It’s all too much and the sky is too big and the stars are too many and the world starts spinning so fast. And I realize I’m just a speck in it.

“I need a minute,” I say to the ground, trying to calm my breathing.

I leave the alien and step inside the house. I go to my room and reach underneath the bed for the framed picture that I took down from the living room after the memorial service.

We’re at Six Flags. I am seven. I’ve just gotten off the roller coaster and I’m smiling. Mom is standing to my left, also smiling. She looks so pretty. And there’s Dad on my right. He’s got brown hair and he’s standing straight and tall and proud.

For several minutes I just sit on my bed, staring at the picture.

I slide it back under the bed.

I walk through the kitchen on my way outside where the alien waits. The first thing I notice is the kitchen table and I stop and stare at that gash my father made. I feel the anger rising and I know what I want to do with it, but I think about the picture and realize it’s not about what I want anymore.

I close my eyes and try to breathe slowly.

I got back in my room and get the picture. Gently I lay it on the kitchen table. Over the gash. My breathing slows.

It’s what she wants. What they want.

What we want.

I look out the front door. The stars fill the sky, brighter than I’ve seen then in a long, long time. I close my eyes and step out into them.

Books Read June

Books Read June


Pretty Monsters (YA 2008) - Kelly Link

A superb collection, not just for YA readers. Several of these stories have been previously published and a few were new to me. Nobody else writes weird like Kelly Link does. If you’ve never read her, pick this one up.


Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) - (NF 2008) - Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

The Emergent Movement and its writers (Rob Bell, Donald Miller, Brian McLaren, etc.) are making Christianity very approachable to those who are seeking answers to this crazy world. That’s a good thing. But their theology is sometimes questionable. DeYoung (a pastor) and Kluck (a writer for ESPN Magazine!) take a serious look at the Emergent Church.



No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech (NF 2009) - Lucinda Roy

A few thoughts on this book here.


Hostage (2001) - Robert Crais

Suspense thriller about three small-time crooks in way over their heads. These losers rob a convenience store and kill the clerk. Looking for a place to hide out, they break into a Southern California home and hold the family hostage. The only problem? The father being held hostage does the Mob’s taxes. A good page-turner for most of the way.


Wait Till Helen Comes (J-Fic 1986) - Mary Dowling Hahn

Kids’ ghost story that didn’t do much for me mainly due to some really whiny characters. A few creepy moments, though.


The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (NF 2008) - Tim Keller

Some thoughts here.


From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (J-Fic 1968) - E.L. Konigsburg

Why do Claudia and her brother Jamie want to secretly live inside The Metropolitan Museum of Art? I had a great time with this book. But of course kids have been having a great time with it for over 40 years.


The Impossible Bird (2002) - Patrick O’Leary

A strange and wonderful story of two brothers, life, death, aliens, reincarnation, hummingbirds and more. O’Leary is a writer you should check out.


Ignore Everybody and 39 Others Keys to Creativity (NF 2009) - Hugh MacLeod

Short book with some real pearls of wisdom from Hugh MacLeod, who draws cartoons on the backs of business cards.


Tooth and Nail (1992) - Ian Rankin

Disappointing third book in the Inspector Rebus series. I never bought into the premise that the Scottish detective would be “invited” to help the London police catch a serial killer. Rankin is a good writer, but this story just seemed forced.

That's it for June. Go read something.

Books Bought June

Just a handful. The economy, ya know....


Secret Lives - Jeff VanderMeer

I noticed awhile back on VanderMeer’s site Ecstatic Days that this signed, illustrated edition from Prime Books was being offered at $20 (normally $35), so I jumped at it. If you’ve never read VanderMeer, you should. Soon. Now would be a good time.

Signed hardcover; Price = $20.00


This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind - Ivan Doig

I’d seen this book around without ever giving it much thought until it came up in a Readers’ Advisory workshop a few weeks back. In that workshop, each participant partnered up with someone else and shared a book they liked. Based on the qualities of that book, the other person had to come up with three or four other books they thought the reader would enjoy. This House of Sky was one of the books I recommended to my partner (Her book of choice was the YA classic Hattie Big Sky.). I thought this non-fiction memoir of Doig growing up on a Montana ranch in the 1940s/50s sounded compelling. My good friends at Daedalus Books were more than happy to connect me with the book.

Trade Paperback; Price = $3.98


Poppy and Dingan - Ben Rice

One of the most useful aspects of the Clarion workshop is the one-on-one time with each instructor. I highly value my time with each of them, but I think my time with Kelly Link was the most useful. She not only talked about my writing, but also discussed what I read. She recommended, based on my writing and interests, several books she thought I should read. There are 28 books on that list. Poppy and Dingan is one of them.

Trade Paperback; Price = $3.98

Total expenditures = $27.96

Next time: What I actually read in June. And I haven't forgotten about the short story collection purge. Really.

"Uncle Snuffy on Doomsday"

This weekend I was going through my list of stories I've written over the past several years, looking at where I'd sent them and at their rejections. I generally send a story to at least five or six markets before deciding whether or not to give up on it. Then I thought, why not put some of them on my blog? I'm not sending them out anymore, so why not post them? I'm not doing this hoping someone will see them and want to publish them. That's extremely unlikely. So why am I doing it? Maybe because I hope you'll enjoy them. They're not doing me much good sitting on my hard drive.

So here's a story I wrote at Clarion in 2004. I sent it out to six different markets, got six different rejections. Several editors liked it, just not enough to buy it. Some of the editors didn't like the name Uncle Snuffy, saying that it reminded them (and would remind readers) of the comic strip Snuffy Smith. Does anyone under the age of 40 even remember Snuffy Smith? Didn't think so. But I still like Uncle Snuffy and the other characters. Who knows - I might even use them again.



Uncle Snuffy on Doomsday

“Don’t tell your Aunt Mabel ‘cause she’ll blab it all over town, but the world’s gonna end pretty soon, couple of months, tops. I seen it on the TV a few weeks back. Took my money out of the bank this mornin’. You should too.”

Uncle Snuffy winked at his nephew, leaned over the right side of his worn black La-Z-Boy and spat. A stream of Beech Nut tobacco juice the length of a shoelace spurted into an unlabeled silver coffee can.

Mark took another drink of his Budweiser and wondered if Uncle Snuffy had gone to the bank looking like he did at that moment, with uncombed puffs of white hair sticking out in every direction, a three-day growth on his leathery face, and wearing a one-piece khaki work outfit. Wouldn’t you want your last time at the bank to look a little more dignified?

“End of the world?” Mark said. “You can’t mean it!”

No matter how old he got, Mark’s voice always regressed to childish incredulity when Uncle Snuffy started in on his predictions. It was bad enough that, at thirty, Mark still looked like a kid with a baby face and wispy blond hair. He hated that he sounded so young, as well.

“Come on, Uncle Snuffy. You don’t really think the world’s going to end soon. That’s just silly.”

Mark turned from his seat on the floral-patterned couch and glanced out the living room window. His six-year-old son Jonathan was playing with his toy dump truck in Uncle Snuffy’s front yard.

“Damn right it’s gonna be soon,” Uncle Snuffy said. He leaned forward in his chair and a small cloud of acrylic stuffing burst out from one of the chair’s many cracks. Uncle Snuffy’s toes pointed in on each other as if magnetized. Mark realized he’d never seen his uncle in shoes, only a pair of yellow cotton socks.

“Them guys on the TV, they ain’t hardly ever wrong about that stuff. Oh, they screw up the weather damn near every day, but they hit this one right on. Gonna rain today, by the way. My joints is actin’ up.”

Mark looked out the window again. It was getting a little cloudy. Maybe he’d better---no, he’d let Jonathan stay out for a few more minutes.

He thought about the company picnic next weekend and wondered if Jonathan would have anyone his age to play with. That would be nice. It would also be nice to get that promotion, the one they announced every year at the picnic. Mark had spent eighteen months of overtime to earn it, far more than anyone else.

Aunt Mabel’s shrill voice shot out from the adjoining kitchen. “Norton! What are you talking about in there? Are you telling those lewd stories again?” Mark smelled turnip greens and sweet potatoes. He always tried to think of a way to avoid Mabel’s greens when he visited, but could never figure out how.

“I ain’t tellin’ nothin’ dirty, Mabel!” Uncle Snuffy bellowed. The old man still had a strong lung capacity at age seventy-seven. Practice, maybe.

“Lookit,” Uncle Snuffy said in a low voice, pulling out a tattered book from the bookcase behind the chair. He showed Mark a brittle page with an intricate diagram of triangles and circles drawn in tiny handwriting. The old man pointed to a series of overlapping circles that looked no different from any of the others on the page.

“See this?” Uncle Snuffy said.

Mark leaned over. He thought it was the oldest book he’d ever seen. “Yeah.”

“I read this and didn’t give it no mind until I saw that show. Now they said on the TV that an incident at a major public event would take place, followed by a flood, followed by the collapse of a major source of transportation.” Uncle Snuffy leaned back and held his chin up, like he’d just won the lottery. “Wanna know what them things were?”

Mark was about to say no, but got distracted by the shattering sound of a pan hitting the kitchen floor. “Aw, shuckins!” Aunt Mabel said.

Uncle Snuffy ignored the distraction, leaning forward in his chair as if Mark had just given his full approval to continue.

“First,” the old man said, “we had that incident at the Tater Festival last weekend. Remember? Dub Nelson’s runner-up pig got loose and ate every last bit of Sarah Mitchell’s chili. Folks thought Sarah might win the chili cook-off this year, ‘course now we’ll never know.”

“Uncle Snuffy,” Mark said, “outside of the county, the Tater Festival doesn’t count as a major public event.”

“Second!” Uncle Snuffy said, holding up an index finger, “With all the rain we had over the weekend, Kelsey’s Creek flooded on Monday.”

“Just how bad was this ‘flood’?”

“Ruined Kelsey’s basement! Damn near destroyed his Tulsa Drillers baseball card collection.” Uncle Snuffy grimaced and spat into the coffee can. Mark thought the memory must be painful for his uncle, to say nothing of Kelsey, so he remained respectfully silent.

“And third!” Uncle Snuffy said, raising two fingers, “The bus to the nursing home broke down on Tuesday.”

“You can’t really call that a collapse of a major source of transportation.”

“I heard Annabelle Fitzhugh started smashing plates and stompin’ on Alka Seltzer tablets ‘cause she couldn’t get to Tuesday Night Bingo. I’d call that a collapse, yessir!”

Mark shook his head and drank his beer. The old man was reaching new heights of lunacy, no doubt about it. But Uncle Snuffy had been right about some pretty unbelievable events before: the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the 2000 Presidential election, and Julia Roberts winning the Oscar for Erin Brockovich.

“Okay, Uncle Snuffy, I’ll admit you’ve gotten a few things right in the past, but you’ve really blown some, too. Texas never formed their own country, Nixon never landed on Jupiter, and Elvis never came back to coach the New Orleans Saints. So when you say the end of the world is just around the corner, I just can’t buy it.”

Mark shook his head and noticed movement near the window. He glanced back and saw that eight-year-old Sammy Justus had just walked across the street to play with Jonathan. Mark wasn’t wild about Sammy or his parents. For one thing, they allowed their dogs to run around the neighborhood unleashed. And Mr. and Mrs. Justus were both pet psychologists.

“I can see you might be a touch skeptical,” Uncle Snuffy said. “But here’s the kicker: it’s all here in the book!” He thumped the page with the drawings. Dust particles flew from the book to the floor. Some drifted into the coffee can.

“Just what book is that?” Mark asked, leaning forward for a closer look.

Uncle Snuffy looked at Mark and pointed a thumb toward the kitchen. He mouthed the words “Is she looking?” The old man shaped his hands like binoculars and brought them up to his eyes.

Mark glanced over to the kitchen and shook his head, hoping Aunt Mabel wouldn’t see the motion.

Uncle Snuffy waved Mark closer. Mark sat on the edge of the couch and perched his elbows on his knees. In the kitchen, Mabel was humming “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

“This here book,” Uncle Snuffy whispered, “is the official personal journal of Nathan Bedford Smoot!” He smiled and nodded with obvious pride.

“Who’s Nathan Bedford Smoot?”

Uncle Snuffy frowned and closed the book to his chest. “Boy, they didn’t teach you nothin’ at that school you went to. What was that place called?”

“Chapel Hill,” Mark said.

Uncle Snuffy’s eyes grew wide. “Well, they didn’t teach you spit about American History! Nathan Bedford Smoot was a private in the Confederate Army in the War of Northern Aggression. Now as a soldier, he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if you put the instructions on the heel. But he was an envisionary!” Uncle Snuffy waved the book in his left hand, then leaned over and spat another stream of Beech Nut into the coffee can. “He predicted all kinds of stuff in this book. I found it at an American Legion book sale last month.”

“What’s he say in the book?” Mark asked. He glanced outside and saw Jonathan sitting on the ground, watching Sammy Justus. Sammy was trying to get his black Lab Dixon to do some type of trick.

“This page is a series of math’matical formulas that tell you what could happen during certain times of the year,” Uncle Snuffy said.

“And you understand the math?” Mark said.

“Hell no, but I can read his chart. Smoot explains it all in the back of the book. Any idiot can figure it out. It’s got to do with the stars and full moons and animal behavior and all that stuff. Well, he predicted the incident, the flood, and the transportation breakdown!”

“Come on, how’d he do that?”

Uncle Snuffy looked at his nephew with half-closed sleepy eyes. “What do I look like, boy, Alex Tree-beck? I don’t know how he did it! I just know he’s right! Two, three more months and this’ll all be over!”

“So what are you going to do?” Mark asked. The boys were still outside with the dog.

“Thought I’d run off to one of them casinos down on the coast. Always wanted to go, but Mabel would never let me. Pretty soon money ain’t gonna do anybody any good. Might as well have some fun!” Uncle Snuffy laughed with his tongue hanging out. Mark backed up on the couch. His uncle hadn’t brushed.

“But what about Aunt Mabel?” Mark said.

“Hell, I’m leavin’ her half the money I took out. She can do what she wants with it. I just don’t want her to know about it ‘til after I’m gone. Might try and stop me. Fewer people that know, the better. I’m just following my dream. Everybody should have a dream, Mark. You should take Jonathan and do something fun while you still got the time.”

Mark didn’t believe one word about the end of the world prediction, but Uncle Snuffy was right about one thing: he should spend more time with Jonathan, especially since Mark was the boy’s only parent. Jonathan kept growing so fast; he wouldn’t stay a little boy forever. For the first time, Mark thought about skipping the company picnic and taking an early vacation. Jonathan might like Universal Studios or maybe Sea World. Someplace big and fun.

Mark looked out the window. Jonathan wasn’t there. Neither was Sammy Justus or Dixon.

The screen door to the kitchen slammed and Mark bolted up. He saw Jonathan from the living room and sat back down, relieved.

“Hey Aunt Mabel!” Jonathan announced. “Guess what?”

“What, sweetheart?” Mabel said. She set the greens on the kitchen table and gave Jonathan her full attention.

Jonathan stuck his head out the kitchen door. “Come on in, Sammy!”

Jonathan held the door open. Sammy and his dog Dixon walked into the kitchen. “Go ahead, Sammy, put the glasses on him!”

Sammy reached into his jeans pocket, took out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and placed them on Dixon’s nose.

“Okay, boy,” Sammy said, petting the dog.

The dog sniffed in the direction of the greens, cleared his throat, and spoke. “The end, ladies and gentlemen, is coming soon.”

Jonathan tugged at his aunt’s apron and grinned. “Ain’t that somethin’, Aunt Mabel?”

Aunt Mabel smiled like that was the sweetest thing she’d ever seen. Mark stared at the dog in astonishment.

Uncle Snuffy slumped in his chair and shook his head. “Hell, now everybody knows.”

Ah, the Weekend!

Finally finished a new story yesterday, a 2000 word one. Sometimes, at least for me, the shortest stories are the hardest to finish. As usual, it's a hard story to accurately market out. There's humor, sadness and just barely a speculative element. So we'll see. Looking forward to this weekend, celebrating Cindy's birthday and relaxing. Maybe even taking in a movie.

Summertime Reads

It's summertime and I'm looking for both fiction and non-fiction titles to read this week. On the fiction side, I've had my eye on these three for awhile:

The Long Goodbye - Raymond Chandler

Garnethill - Denise Mina

The Winter King - Bernard Cornwell



I know my friend John will lobby heavily for Cornwell and he may be right. I'm in something of a King Arthur mood (not personally, mind you; just for reading purposes) at the moment.

The Mina novel is a detective/mystery tale set in Scotland, which is not a strike against it, but I've recently read three of Ian Rankin's John Rebus (also a Scottish detective) novels and may need a wee break from the Scots.

And any season is a good time for Chandler.

On the non-fiction side, I've got a couple of intriguing titles on the shelf:

This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind - Ivan Doig, recommended during a recent Readers' Advisory workshop.

Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town - Warren St. John, about refugee children from the Congo to Kabul playing on a soccer team in Clarkston, Georgia.



Perhaps the most interesting NF book I've run across lately is one I do not own: Strange Telescopes: Following the Apocalypse from Moscow to Siberia by Daniel Kalder. I ran across this a couple of weeks ago while checking in new books at the library. I read the jacket information and thought it was a sf novel. Here's the description from our library database:

A mind-bending voyage into the underground realms of Russia and beyond by the author of "Lost Cosmonaut," When Daniel Kalder descended into the sewers of Moscow in pursuit of the mythical lost city of tramps, he didn't realize that he was embarking on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that would lead him thousands of miles across Russia to the Arctic Circle via the heart of Asia. After exploring the depths of Moscow's "Underground Planet," Kalder journeyed to the Ukraine to chase down demons and exorcists in the dubious afterglow of the Orange Revolution, before meeting a man called Vissarion Christ-a one-time traffic cop, he is now messiah to thousands of followers in Siberia. Salvation and damnation collide as Daniel Kalder expertly guides us through this unique account of a modern day quest that reveals the astonishing lengths people will go to when they view the world through a "strange telescope."

Can you say wacked-out? It's going to be hard not to read this one first.

So whaddya think? What to read first?

The Great Short-Story Collection Purge, Part 11

Werewolves in Their Youth: Stories (1999) - Michael Chabon

I bought this collection from a Salvation Army store about a year ago, just a few months after I'd finished Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, one of my favorite reads from 2007. Of course this collection sat on the shelf for an entire year before I picked it up a couple of days ago as part of The Great Short-Story Collection Purge, which, as John correctly points out, hasn't purged quite as many books as I (or Cindy) would like.

But I digress.

The collection opens with the title story which shows a boy named Paul creating an ant empire in a ravine at the edge of a schoolyard during recess. Paul is content to stay there while fifth-grade bully Timothy Stokes terrorizes his classmates. Timothy is on thin ice, just one incident away from being placed on a "little bus of unknown boys" to be taken to a "special" school. The adults in the story believe that Paul can actually help control Timothy's behavior. It matters not to any of the adults that Paul despises Timothy.

Of course there's far more going on here than an excitable fifth-grader and a sheepish, overweight loner. The problems in the adult world soon make themselves known to us and Paul. I enjoyed "Werewolves in Their Youth," but didn't really think about again until this post. Hmmm.....

"In the Black Mill" is a creepy little story of a student archaeologist working on a dig in a small Pennsylvania mill town. He discovers that many of the locals have lost an assortment of body parts while working in the mill and decides to investigate. "In the Black Mill" seems something of an homage to the early days of magazines like Weird Tales and as such, works well. But Chabon is such a gifted writer (It would take me months to construct sentences he probably puts down without a second thought.), reading him is sometimes frustrating. He writes beautiful sentences, gorgeous sentences, but I found his immense vocabulary getting in the way. Perhaps it's my lack of an immense vocabulary getting in the way.

Although both of these are satisfying stories, I doubt if I'll revisit them, leading me to wonder if Chabon's best work is in the long form. Or maybe I'm just a chowder-head.

The Verdict = Finish it, then pass it on.

Next: Fancies and Goodnights - John Collier