Short Stories

Eyes

Remembering the Loved

Remembering the Loved

[University of Michigan, 2006]

Writing Assignment:  The Do-It-Yourself D’J Pancake Imitation

After reading the three short stores by Breece D’J Pancake, I noticed that all three works have certain things in common:

·         Nostalgic

·         Death of animal

·         Struggles to deal with death (of human)

·         Descriptive of nature, especially weather

·         Appropriate dialects in dialogue

·         Traditional family profession

·         Struggle with relationship

·         Resolves with hope for the future/change

In addition, each story also has characteristics that make it unique from the other stories.  I chose the story The Honored Dead to examine more closely, and modeled my story after it.

Trilobites:

·         Shows transition of natureà manmade

·         1^st person present tense

·         Deals with sexual relationship

Hollow:

·         Involves drug/alcohol abuse

·         3^rd person past tense

·         Eccentric characters

·         Struggle with relationship

The Honored Dead:

·         Repetitive sentence scattered throughout (Sometimes I wonder if Ellen saw Eddie on his last leave.)

·         1^st person present/past

·         Detailed action: series of actions unconnected with conjunctions (I turn off the Pike onto the oxbow of Front Street, walk past some dark store windows, watch myself moving by their gloss, rippling through one pane and another.)

·         Childhood memory (digging up things)

·         Includes scenes with family (father, grandfather)

·         Struggles with the memory of a past relationship (Eddie)

·         Emphasis on actions done while alone (counting the pass-at your-own-risk marks, watching reflection in window, counting lightning bugs)

·         Points out important moment of realization (…I knew she would be my wife)

·         Recognition of passing of time, change (But it’s not so simple now as then…)

o   Darts back and forth between present and past

How my story accomplishes the imitation:

• Darts back and forth between the present and the past
• 1^st person
• Detailed action: series of action unconnected with conjunctions
• I walk to the sidewalk in front of the house, put out my smoke, think about Andrew’s red truck flying down the street
• I zip up my jacket, continue down the sidewalk.
• I walk toward the park, sing the words to a song out loud.
• Nostalgic
• Death of animal: dog
• Descriptive of nature and weather:
• The moon reflects on the river
• The wind picks up a little
• The sky is dark
• The wind is still chilly
• Struggle with the memory of a past relationship: Andrew
• Includes scene with family: mom
• Resolves with hope for future/change
• Repetitive sentence scattered throughout:  Two years is a long time when you’re just a couple of kids.
• Childhood memory: flashlight tag
• Points out moment of realization: I knew that we would pick up exactly where we had left off two months earlier.  I knew that we would go to homecomings and proms together, and that he would be my first time
• Recognition of passing of time, change: But now it’s not as easy as it was back then.
• Emphasis on actions done while alone: avoiding stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, singing aloud, walking in tempo to song in head

Remembering the Loved

            The moon reflects on the river, and smoking my last cigarette from my parents’ front porch, I listen to the quiet of the 1 a.m. hour.  The wind picks up a little, and I’m glad that I grabbed my jacket.  A cigarette never tasted so good—I’d waited until they were asleep to light it up.  They’re the strict kind of parents, always worrying too much about everything.  I always heard from Grandma that Mama did crazy things in grammar school, and maybe that’s how come she always came down so hard on me.   I used to catch her smoking cigarettes sometimes; after she and Dad got in a fight she’d take the trash out to the alley and be out there a good ten minutes.  It was winter when I first saw it, but I don’t remember why she needed one.  Maybe she’d had a bad day at work.  I was setting the table for dinner, and without a word she came in the house, set her teaching box down, picked up the half-full trash, and walked out the back door.  A few minutes later I went out to the garage and saw smoke rising from the other side of the fence in the alley.  When my mother came back inside, she cheerfully asked how my day was and started making dinner.  Her mood always improved after she had a smoke. 

            I walk to the sidewalk in front of the house, put out my smoke, think about Andrew’s red truck flying down the street.  I wonder what he’s doing at this moment, think about how close he is to me, only a five minute drive away.  I haven’t seen him since May, when we both were home for Mrs. Richard’s funeral.  He must know that I’m home for Thanksgiving break.  Does he think about calling me?  Who knows, maybe he’s got a girl now, up at his fancy flying school.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll give him a call, see what he’s up to these days.  It sure has been a while. I wonder if he ever thinks about me, about the time we had together.  Two years is a long time when you’re just a couple of kids.

            I zip up my jacket, continue down the sidewalk.  It’s still early for a college student, and I can never fall asleep before two.  Usually I’d be up studying, and it’s nice to do nothing for once.  The street is vacant, but I walk on the sidewalk in the darkness of the trees, untouched by street lights.  I look at the dark windows of the houses on my street, remembering the days of flashlight tag and the neighborhood crew.  I was the only girl on the block, but in the game I was treated no differently.  As soon as the street lights came on, Evan or Blake would come knocking on my door, ask me to play with them, to bring along a flashlight.  Together we marched down to Alex and Nick’s door, entreating them to play with us, too.  We made the rounds, collected the crew, and soon we were gathered in one of our front yards, Alex always establishing the boundaries for the night.

            “Johnson’s yard to Akon’s parking lot,” he’d say.  “Papp’s off limits, they’ve gone and put a sensor in their backyard, old cracks.  If you run through their yard, a light goes on.  I say tonight we’re allowed in the alley.  There’s more of us and we need more ground.  Streets off limits, Marco.  You can’t hide behind cars anymore…that’s cheap.”

            “Fine. Not it.”

            “Not it!”

            “Not it.”

            “NOT IT!”

            “Blake, you’re it.  Here’s the flashlight. Give us a thirty count start. Ready, GO!”

            And off we’d go, darting in different directions, our carefully chosen black attire blending us in with the night.  I always went to my spot, and it was a good spot, too, until Brendan found me one night when I sneezed.  Behind the cherry tomatoes I’d crouch, in Mom’s garden along the side of the house.  I was a small little thing, and squeezed between the house and the rows of plants.  Beams of light sometimes flashed around me, as the designated “it” searched the garden for hiders.  But I always managed to stay concealed somehow, and when someone was found and it was time to regroup and recount, the boys would ask me where I had hidden.

            “I’ll never tell,” I said. “I’ll never tell.”

            So I walk down the sidewalk, thinking about flashlight tag and wondering what Andrew is doing.  Two years is a long time when you’re just a couple of kids.  The wind blows my hair away from my face, exposing my ears to the cold, and I put my hood over my head, aware of the hoodlum look I now have.  As I walk I avoid stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk, my strides becomes irregular.  I play this game with myself all down Riverside Drive, until Walnut where I turn right.  I think about my parents sleeping at home.  They would tell me not to walk around this late at night, a young woman all by myself.  It isn’t proper. 

            I walk toward the park, sing the words to a song out loud.  “Girl can’t help it, she needs more…”  My steps are in the same tempo as the song, and the wind carries my voice away almost before it reaches my ears.  I see the café to my left, and suddenly Andrew’s hand is in mine, and we’re walking in the darkness, in love for the first time and high off of each other’s presence. 

I gaze up at the sky like we gazed years ago, but this time there are no stars.  I hold my hand in front of me, see it unattached and alone in the darkness.  I remember the warmth of Andrew’s hand, and the way he always squeezed it when we were around our friends, his little way of reminding me he cared. 

We walked hand in hand down Walnut Street years ago, and gazed up at the star-filled sky.  The power was out in the whole city, in a lot of cities, and without the street lights, the porch lights or the late night businesses, the stars provided the city’s only illuminations.  It was late, maybe three a.m., and there wasn’t a car in sight.  We walked down the middle of the street and stopped in front of the café.  It was summer and the air was sticky; I wore a cool sundress.  We laid down on the yellow stripes dividing the road and looked up at the stars.  The whole city was sleeping, and all we could hear was the sound of our breathing and the crickets somewhere beyond the trees.  He turned his head to look at me, and I looked back. 

“I love you, you know,” he said, and it wasn’t the first time. 

“I know,” I said, and it felt like the first all over again.  He turned his head back toward the stars.  My head followed, and we watched them, thinking.  I suppose we thought it would last forever then.  It was the happiest I’d ever been.

I crave another cigarette, throw a piece of gum in my mouth, and think about my parents sleeping at home.  I wonder what they would think if they knew how I lived.  If they knew that nicotine was in control, and that sometimes I wasn’t afraid to try new drugs up at school.  One time in high school Mom and I sat on the couch, watching the evening news.  A boy was in handcuffs, the police leading him from his house to the patrol car.  The camera showed a bag of cocaine on an examination table, and then a woman, sobbing. 

“I just didn’t know my Bobby could ever mess up like this,” she said.  “He’s such a good boy, my Bobby.  He’s such a good boy.  I don’t know how this happened.”

Mom shook her head, tsked at the boy on the screen, looked at me.  “Don’t ever break my heart like that,” she said.

“I would never,” I said, knowing that she was clueless of the weed stash in my room. 

“Drugs ruin lives,” she said.  “Good Christian girls don’t do drugs.  My girls don’t do drugs.”

“I know, Mom,” I said.  “I know.”

            When I went away for camp one summer, Andrew and I wrote letters.  I wrote to him of the people I met, and of the boats I sailed and the music I learned to play.  He wrote to me of football practice, and of going to the pool with our friends.  It was a polite correspondence, but it was a correspondence nonetheless.  We weren’t together, we had decided, because eight weeks is a long time for a couple of kids to be apart.  We both missed each other, but never said so in our letters.  “Last night there was a dance,” I wrote.  “They played that song of ours, and I thought of you.  Music camp doesn’t make for great dances; the boys are either gay or taken, and the ones leftover after that aren’t easy on the eyes.  Only three weeks until I come home.”

            A few weeks passed, and I’d get a letter back:  “Mike and I went to the quarry today.  We jumped from the cliffs into the water and I pulled off a front-flip.  Football sucks; it’s hot out and Coach is working us hard so we make States.  It’s ok if you slow dance, as long as your partner is gay!!”

            Andrew came over the day I got back from camp.  We walked to the park and spread a blanket underneath a tree.  His arms felt bigger and my hair was longer.  He kissed me like he meant it.  “I missed you,” he said, and I knew that we would pick up exactly where we had left off two months earlier.  I knew that we would go to homecomings and proms together, and that he would be my first time.  Because that’s just how it was, me and Andrew, together.

            But now it’s not as easy as it was back then.  We can’t just pick up where we left off in high school, Andrew at one school and I at another.  I can’t just call him and tell him I’ve missed him, that nobody has ever compared to him.  It’s easy to love someone when you can be with them; the hard part is loving them and knowing, remembering, what could but will never again be.

            Dad said it was the right thing to do, because all dogs go to heaven.  I didn’t want to see him go, but Sam was limping around the house and wouldn’t fetch anymore.  I knew he was in pain.  It happened on a Friday, and I didn’t want to go to the movies with everyone else.  Andrew stayed with me, and we watched movies in my basement.

            “Don’t cry,” he said, holding me.  “We’ll have our own dog soon enough.”

            Andrew’s older brother goes to school with me, and sometimes I’ll run into him around campus.  I always ask about Andrew, and the response is always enthusiastic.  He’s flying planes now, his dad’s real proud.  He even comes up to see his brother sometimes, but I won’t let myself see him.  Two years is a long time when you’re just a couple of kids.

            The sky is dark, and the town quiet.  The wind is still chilly, and I head back home, this time stepping on every crack possible.  I turn down Riverside Drive, and walking through flashlight tag territory, tell myself that I’ll quit smoking, and maybe take an astrology class next semester. 

Eyes

[2005]

          She felt their eyes upon her, pouring into her like laser beams.  Tiny pins shot all over her body, and electric eels swam around in her stomach, overpowering any butterflies fluttering about.  She began to sweat.

          She felt like the eyes numbered hundreds.  Blue, brown, and hazel, some were even magnified to further daunt her.  Those magnified she could see better, and she knew that they could see her better as well.  Eyes that were big and round, gazing and unblinking, and eyes that were small and slitty, glaring and glowering.  They all had a single focus, and the focus was on her.

          Her hands were now slippery with perspiration, and she almost dropped her guitar as she placed it into position, her fingers shaking as she carefully fingered the proper frets.  She cleared her throat, and her nervousness blared through the microphone into the silent room, loud and uncomfortable.  It was time.

          Her hands were in place, the microphone obviously worked, and everyone was watching her, waiting.  She wanted to take a deep breath, but didn’t, knowing that it would emanate throughout the room.  Instead, she began to play.

          Right away, her shaking fingers produced buzzing, wrong notes, and more nervousness.  The more wrong notes she heard, the more wrong notes she played, and the more wrong notes she played, the more nervous she became.  The nervousness piled on top of her like an avalanche, disaster and failure tumbling upon her heavily, swiftly, and interminable.  It was burying her alive, and she didn’t know how to dig herself out.

          Suddenly the words to her song escaped her, and she had no idea what she was playing.  Notes became elusive. She desperately tried to catch them, but she couldn’t seem to grab onto anything long enough to hold on. Each time she caught up with a phrase, it slipped away, always just out of reach.  The words to a song she had played millions of times, millions of ways, with millions of changes, had disappeared.  She knew her song inside and out, in multiple keys, at multiple tempos.  Until now.  This was not her living room, she thought to herself.  Or her bedroom.  She wasn’t just playing for stuffed animals, or photographs on the wall.  There were eyes.

          She lingered on a chord for a few measures, hoping that the words would come to her. They didn’t.

          She was really sweating now.  Her fingers were visibly trembling, and the chords came out of the soundboard painfully and unnaturally.

          Finally, she muffled the strings and stood up.  The silence filled the room, and it was deafening.  Grasping her guitar and stifling a sob, she ran out of the room. She felt the eyes boring into the back of her head. She wished blindness upon everyone.

          “Lacey, you’re up.”

          Lacey snapped to her senses and opened her eyes, putting the memory aside.  The guitarist was packing up, and people were getting up to refill their cappuccinos.  She didn’t want to leave the comfort of the coffeehouse couch, so well-blended with the small crowd of people.

          “Well, this is it,” she said to Mark, finishing her coffee and setting it down resolutely on the table in front of her.

          “Don’t even think about it,” he told her.  “We’re in a new place, with new people, and a new start.  It’s just you and me, and you’re playing me your song.  It’s just you and me.”

          She looked at him doubtfully.  “Just you and me,” he repeated, pushing her short brown hair behind her ears.

          Lacey walked across the room and sat on the bench.  She looked around at the small crowd of people who had returned to their seats with fresh cups and fresh anticipation.  For a moment she felt their eyes begin to beam lazars on her, and a wave of heat rushed over her.

          Now, as she looked firmly back into the eyes of her audience, the lazar beams disappeared, retracting themselves back into the pupils of their owners.

          She turned around, away from the faces, and placed her fingers on the keys.  This time she felt at home. As she listened to the clinging of the cash register and the murmuring of small conversations, the silence wasn’t so silent anymore.  She felt eyes on the back of her head, but she pushed them away, determined, and closed her eyes.

          She was suddenly in her living room, and Mark was lying on the couch.  All the lights were off and she could barely make out the keys.  She didn’t need to.  She began to play, and her fingers took off, transporting her into another world.  She left the coffeehouse and the people behind, and entered her zone.  She was untouchable, and she loved it.  Her voice joined her fingers, and no microphone was needed.  Together, they were the ultimate pair, and they told a story through melodies and motion, voice and verse, rhythm and rhyme.  For the time being there were no eyes on the back of her head, and there were no people behind her.  Her voice sang clearly and her fingers remained steady.  The world was hers.

          Lacey opened her eyes to the sound of clapping and cheering.  She was singing her last note, and it resonated in perfect harmony with the piano.

          “Another one!” someone shouted, and Lacey blushed.  She turned around to find faces of encouragement, smiles of warmth, and clapping of approval.  Her eyes met Mark’s, and he winked an “I told you so” while whistling through his teeth.

          She whirled around and started up again, upbeat and cheerful.  But this time she stayed in the room, with all the people, and all the eyes.  She simply sat on the bench and played for them, singing her song and embarking on another journey, this time taking everyone with her.