samples from recent short stories

7/30/2019 Samples From Recent Short Stories

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Example from recent short stories.

From: Woman Walking Backwards

Moses Handy saw every day on his way to class a woman who walked backwards.

She seemed to be close to fifty but her black hair, streaked lightly with gray, was still

dense and curly, like a briar patch. She held her arms out before her, and her hands

slightly above her head, and rotated them vigorously as she marched in reverse down

the alley between the student snack shop and one of the dormitory buildings. When

she passed, Moses could see she was smiling giddily. What an odd form of exercise,

Moses thought. Who would believe it if I wrote it down, if I sent it in a postcard to a

friend? Every day I see a woman who walks backwards . . . .

Even so, this exercise was not the most extreme that Moses saw taking place in thecourtyard every morning outside the entrance to the foreign experts building where

he kept his rooms. The possible variations on tai qiwere clearly enormous. One old

fellow seemed to be talking to a tree, even seemed to be barking, though Moses

guessed it was really a kind of breathing exercise. Another, bald man came strutting

by even on the coldest mornings in what Moses would have regarded as underpants,

doing his best to kick his knees into his chest, and pumping his fists furiously. A

contingent of gray-haired women simultaneously brandished swords with bright red

tassels dangling from the handles. They went about their combat against the

neighborhood demons in slow-motion unison, and with an obvious vow of stern

silence. In another context, Moses thought, I could suppose myself walking amongst

the lunatic. But all he felt now was a kind of guilt that he managed his time to sleep aslate as possible to grab a quick breakfast and make it to his class on schedule. His

students might show up late, but never Moses.

And he needed more exercise than he was getting just running up and down the stairs

to his rooms and his class rooms. Yes, he bicycled, but Beijing was a flat city and

bicycling was not aerobic, especially when you cycled in such huge crowds and were

constantly starting and stopping and dodging. His students, he learned, had nicknamedhim Santa Claus, and that was not for the generosity of his grading. He was fat, he

was ruddy, he was white. OK, he told himself, I do look like Santa Claus. He didnt

want to look like Santa Claus, but he did. He looked more like Santa Claus every day.The only thing he could possibly do to make his Santa Claus image more complete

would be to take up smoking a pipe--or possibly riding to class in a sleigh pulled by

reindeer. Or wearing a red suit. His morning conversation class was full of beautiful,

mature Chinese women, and it chagrined him to think he was thought of by them and

the others as some kind of jolly, old clown. Life was going by much much much too

fast. Much too fast. Indeed, so muchly too fastly, he thought as he scurried by the


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courtyard and the lanes where so much early morning energy was being expressed in

these unfamiliar gestures.

Perhaps a month had passed in this routine, when it occurred to Moses one smoggy

morning, that--although he had just caught a glimpse of her on that smoggy morning,

with a hint of snow in the air--that the woman walking backwards past him as usuallooked younger than usual. This impression, like most impressions these days, hit him

belatedly as he pushed along through the crowd of students mobbing into the

classroom building. He thought about it as he ricocheted from shoulder to shoulder in

the crowd hurrying to classes. He thought about it again as he watched in agony as

one after another of his beautiful women students thrust out their chests as they peeled

off their jackets before settling down to their books. Could it actually be possible that

walking backwards, or doing things backwards, could, maybe, just maybe turn back

the clock? Well, Moses thought, that proves I am going completely insane to have

such a preposterous notion. He looked down into the face of Ms. Hong Hai-ou, named

for a seabird, and her serene, innocent smile made him feel his brain might melt right

there and pour out of his ears. That she would call him Santa Claus behind his back

was a dagger in his heart. If time could go backwards, would it go backwards for her,

too? What a double curse that would be!

From: A Midsummer Nights Feast--

Jake and Larry trudged off the beach early one summer Monday with nothing to show

for their night-long labors but a single bluefish apiece. Utterly disconsolate, theydragged themselves single file up the trail to the parking lot where Larrys rustbucket

blue and white pickup was waiting for them. They had only kept the bluefish for

something to eat. What they had been fishing for was striped bass, which they could

sell, and in fact counted on catching to keep themselves supplied with the bare

necessities of life--gasoline, bait, and beer.

They stowed the bluefish none too carefully in the fishbox which had optimistically

been loaded with ice to cool down the bass they had hoped to catch. One of the tests

for freshness at the co-op where they sold their catch was the temperature of the fish

brought in, and Jake and Larry observed the etiquettes and formalities of handling fishto the limits of their abilities. They had been known, however, to borrow the servicesof their friend Solarzs freezer, though Solarz may only have been dimly aware of it,

if at all, to lower the temperature of a bass they had buried in the sand to keep it out of

the gaze of passing fishermen or just to save themselves the hassle of hauling it

around to other fishing spots. Theyd bury the fish close to the dunes in some moon -

shadowed cranny and dig it up on their way off the beach. Sun-warmed summer sand,


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of course, did not exactly cool the fish and so Larry and Jake resorted to other

measures sometimes for the sake of getting top dollar for their catch--or getting it sold

at all.

They were also not above stuffing a fish belly with ice, sand, or even rocks sometimes

to get the weight up a little. If they came in with four or five nice bass, this couldmake an appreciable difference in the quality of their lives for the next few days.

Larry might get a haircut, for example. They might upgrade their brand of beer or

actually have a breakfast in a restaurant. Jake might invest in an eel trap or a sand eel

rake.

Larry was tall and frazzled and had bad dreams ever since he fell off the deck of the

aircraft carrier Wasp on a Mediterranean tour of duty twenty years before. He had

been married once to a woman who was now the owner of a successful local real

estate business and who nevertheless moved in a world far away from Larrys now,

one which he, who lived in a trailer down by The Bight, as local folks called theplace, could not fathom and did not care to fathom.

Jake, who was shorter, was nevertheless heavier than Larry, and although he was

never frazzled as Larry was, was constitutionally solemn. It would take a great mass

of contradictory or contrary experience to move Jake from his habitual dour

demeanor. Once when a propane lantern exploded in the camper he and Larry had

shared for fishing purposes, Larry had badly cut himself thrashing his way out through

the narrow side window. Jake had simply rolled the flaming mess up in a sleeping bag

and carried it over the tailgate down to the water and pitched it in. Other fishermen on

the beach that night said they had witnessed this odd spectacle of the camper suddenly

aglow and then an odd, bouncing incandescence that threw itself into the sea. When

asked how he had come by such courage and self-possession, Jake--whom the

incident, by the way, had made permanently bald when his plastic weave, baseball-

style cap had caught fire and melted onto his head--said only, Well, it was too hot to

sit in there with that lantern blazing and Larry was blocking the window, so it was theonly thing left to do.

From Appendix Seven--

Astonished and confused, Hector Holt sat across from his father in the nursing home.Mark was having one of his rare lucid days and Hector was debating with himself

whether it had all been a mistake to have brought him here, with all that entailed--including the bouts with his fathers hatred of nursing homes, and Hectors bouts with

his own ideals about the need and necessity for a dignified way for the infirm elderly

to be guided to a dignified end. Hector should have been glad, he supposed, for hisfathers relapse into clarity; instead, it was piercing him with guilt.


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If father were still at home, the home would not have been sold to pay for thegeriatric care he was now receiving at Shining Tides. If father were still at home,

Hector continued to muse, trebling his guilt, would this pale smell of urine be present?Would his fathers sparse flock of stark white hair jet out over his ears in mangled

fistsful? That tin chair with the pillow on it--would that be how his father was

enthroned? Would he look, in those blue, pin-striped pajamas, so much like a patient,or a prisoner?

Hector put the tips of his fingers together and shook them slowly up and down until he

achieved the pleasant sensation of there being a pane of glass between his hands. The

illusion was really quite remarkable, sensory magic of a kind. Hector was distracting

himself so because father, in his clarity and after a brief spasm of apparent happiness

with Hectors visit, which was not unusual, had regressed to the old, painful topics ofHectors Big Mistake In Life and the woman who had caused it. Of all the memories

his father might have retained about Hector himself, Hector thought, why does it have

to be this particular loop? We had this argument thirty years ago. But Hector wasnt

wasting any time arguing now when there was absolutely no point to it. He only

wished his father would remember other things, more mercifully conceived things,

about him, and continued intriguing himself with the sensation of a pane of glass

between his fingers.

Mark had fallen into the old loop when, out of the seeming blue, he had asked: That

Vietnamese girl who ruined your life, where is she now? . . .

From: The PC--

When Sharons brother died, her parents called on her to help them deal with hiseffects, which they felt they didnt properly appreciate or know what to do with. His

books, for example, were books mainly with titles they didnt recognize, and whether

or not they had any value or use they also couldnt say. His clothes, of course--there

was nothing to do with them but box them up and have the Goodwill collect them.

What was his piano worth, if anything, without Roger to play it? There were just so

many bewildering things--private papers, food processors, electronic equipment of the

latest kind, sporting gear, shoes--you cant possibly imagine how many pairs of

shoes he had, Sharons mother said over the telephone, a kind of cosmic wonder in

her voice-- baseball shoes, running shoes, dancing shoes, maybe, winter shoes,

loafers, slippers, boots. Not quite on the level of Imelda Marcos, but there must be

three boxes full at least.

Roger had also left behind a personal computer.


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Its not the kind Im used to from work, Sharons father said. The telephone seemedto accentuate the deliberateness with which he spoke. Maybe you need a computer. I

dont. I dont know if its up to date or what. It seems a shame just to throw it out. Its

in the bedroom, I dont know why. Last thing Id think of in a bedroom is acomputer.

Sharon was thinking to herself that it was not going to be any easier for her to deal

with all the things so intimately connected with Rogers private life, but she also

recognized the burden it represented to her parents to have to make so many little

decisions, like the decisions you have to make when you move from one home to

another, but with a layer of grief added, and a layer of shock, and all the rubble ofshattered hopes and regrets. If its all right, Ill meet you early Saturday at his

apartment, she said. Of course Ill do what I can to help.

Which, she thought, might not be as much as her parents would like. Of course shed

loved Roger, like a brother, but she also didnt feel she knew him very well, andespecially in the last five years her communications with him had been pretty

perfunctory. It mystified her that he seemed to have become so conservative and a

little cynical and more than a little angry with women in general, an attitude that

swept Sharon into the same dustbin as those women, whoever they were--Sharon had

brushed against only a few--whom Roger perceived to have dashed his romantic

hopes or somehow to have taken advantage of him. He had become pretty quick to

snap at her regarding anything remotely related to womens issues or PC feminism,

as he had come to state it, with a sneer.

Clearly it had started when hed been passed over for a promotion, or so he felt, and

his new supervisor was the woman hed trained to begin with. Inside of a year, he was

out on the streets--fired! because he couldnt get along with the new boss--and it had

taken him almost two years to find another job. Meanwhile, his personal savings was

totally decimated. Five years later he was still full of bile about it. The new job paid

less than the one hed lost, he said, seemed even more dead end and was even less

interesting, and he blamed, not the men who had promoted her, but the woman who

had been promoted over him, and then women in general.

Sharon understood his outrage at the (possible) unfairness of the womans climbing

upward over his back, but she wasnt convinced that Roger always and forever had

the best perspective on things, including his own life. She had no idea who actually

deserved the promotion more, or what Roger might have done, in his bitterness, to

contribute to his own fate at Hyde Electronics. Or, for that matter, to his fate with the

other women who came into his life, the ones who universally seemed to duck out on

him, or to wound him. Sharon thought it entirely possible that Roger might very well

have tried to bushwhack his new supervisor; and in any case, it was easy to see her


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becoming pretty tired of working with someone who could conduct himself with such

ready sarcasm and smoldering disdain. Maybe the woman had done Roger a favor,

who could say? And how much of his difficulty with women in general was due to

some kind of self-subversion? Roger hadnt seen it that way, Sharon knew, but that

was all she knew for certain.

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