Albemarle by Charlie Smith

“I didn’t even know what I was saying. But I could say anything. I knew already that the world was unsure of what it really was, constantly changing itself, disappearing and reappearing in new and stranger garb. It had holes in it and avenues unmentioned by others I knew. I wondered if the deputy sheriff could see down leafy roads that were on no map.”

Two characters, a car, and a dusty road. The eleven year old girl wants to escape the county and she’s looking to hitch a ride to the beach. A fat man with pornographic pictures of little boys picks her up, thinking she is a little boy. After the initial shock, we are assured our narrator is safe from harm because of this preference, and become content (and intrigued) as she amicably gets to know a man that no one else dares come near. She knows that what he has is not right, but she cannot help but feel confronted by her own gross inclinations when confronted with such images.

They crash in a ditch which lands them stranded at a roadstop where they sit over cokes: “I sucked the Coke until it hurt in my cheekbones. I liked  the pain. The man fanned the pictures out, then closed them up, then fanned them out again. He probably did that when he was alone, sitting on a hotel bed, just staring. I probably would too, I thought, and this embarassed me.”

At this point the girl is feeling like she wants  to seduce this man – to feel the weight of him: “I felt hot now, tired, and wanted to rest somewhere, briefly, out of the light of scrutiny. I thought of the fat man pressing his face down upon mine. Would it weigh a lot?”

They get a room to take a nap: “I turned away from the fat man and pressed my back against his, at first gently and then hard. “Am I taking up too much room?” He asked. “No, am I pushing too hard?” “Nah. It feels good. It’s a long time since I had something solid pressed  up against me.””

Inevitably the deputy sheriff and bar owner break into the room to arrest Jimmy. These adults have a clear idea of right and wrong and understand the need to intercede with the hand of justice. The girl knows these rules too, but because of her visions and capacity to feel the loneliness within herself and others she has been capable of a supreme empathy for the fat man Jimmy Porcell.

The deputy buys her ice cream and asks her many questions – “I made answers…didn’t really keep track of what I was saying. I continued to be alert however, to slurs against the man Jimmy. I liked standing up for him. Probably tomorrow, if not in a minute, I’d feel the opposite.”

The style and voice of this story struck me with the same Southern Gothic essence that is inescapable in every Flannery O’Connor short story. It is a child’s expandable truth in a world of adults who would rather look away from something so grotesque. It is a child examining the two sides of every coin and maybe even seeing three sides even though the adults all insist there could only be two.

“I felt a little sick to my stomach, but I liked the feeling, in a way. It was different enough to be something from another world, really, and it took my mind off some things that were beginning to trouble me.”

 

First Marriage by Kevin Moffett

“TODAY’S THE SECOND DAY OF OUR FIRST MARRIAGE, he wrote. WE HAVE NO SPECIAL BEANS, BUT WE’VE TASTED VICTORY AND DEFEAT AND BOTH WERE WONDERFUL. The last part was something he’d read in a book about the Civil War. It used to be his slogan, when he had a slogan. Now he had no slogan. He listened to Amy mashing shampoo into her hair. He felt consigned, content and resigned. He fished one of the condoms out of the tin, undressed, and got under the covers. He felt like a costume waiting to be worn, an odd feeling but not at all disagreeable, not at all.”

This story, featured in New Stories From the South 2008 (edited by zz packer), is full of original metaphors that sum up the pendulum of restlessness and yearning of two newlyweds as they begin life together broken down in a desert town on a ‘borrowed’  road trip. The quirkiness of the American SouthWest is intact, but this story makes all the details distinctly its own; the dialogue surprising: “A man at a nearby table said to the young boy across from him, “Pretty soon, you’ll get to sleep in a bulldozer. How’s that sound?” The boy seemed suspicious but interested.” ; the reactions realistic: “Are we really married?…I mean, I’m still figuring out how I feel about it. I used to think it’d be like getting my ears pierced. Only, I don’t know. More.”

In two lines, the description of a fanny-packed couple at the local shrine is so dead-on I wanted to clap – you know how they both relate to our young couple through the woman’s actions/expressions:”The woman accepted the camera from Amy. She held it to her face and counted, her top lip quivering like a dreaming dog’s, three, two , one. “We got married this morning,” Tad said after she returned the camera. “This is our honeymoon.””How wonderful,” the woman said. She surveyed her husband until his truculent expression softened.”

Moffett has this incredible knack for connecting image and emotion through metaphor. He whisks the reader off their feet, and they land in his story – completely. “Amy smiled from time to time to let Tad know their mutual silence was okay. The smile was a token that stood for something to say. It reminded him of the edge of a curtain being lifted and let go.”

His final line is killer – “By the time they arrived in Florida with Gar Floyd’s car, Bisbee would be no more than a mere layover, a place where – look, here’s a picture, Amy and Tad smiling at the shrine – they were as happy as they’d ever be.”    – We’ve been offered a snapshot – it’s a common one that we all have – here is us enjoying our lives…as much as we’ll ever be. The irony of this “snapshot” is that it is a preserved static moment;  a metaphor for our unrealistic expectations of life and love  stretched out into plastic daydreams. The camera requires you to pose for life as you picture it to be, smiling as though you’ve never been confused, angry or bored to tears. Tad and Amy are as refreshing to the reader as desert rain.