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Short stories - what are they? I’ll admit that’s a question I still do not fully know the answer to, but I hope to have a much better perspective after this year. As I’m taking a bit of a break from working on my third novel I have decided to work on a batch of stories, some of which I hope will find publication in literary journals. As it stands right now, I should have about ten in good enough shape to send out in the next few months. But I thought a really interesting way of showing this process would be to workshop at least one of the stories through the blog on my website.
And as promised, here is part 2 of “Allison.” Allison moved in next door to me a decade ago. Her parents had the largest moving van I had ever seen in my young life. Her father poured sweat down his lanky back as he attempted to haul her great armoire up to her second-floor room. It was the same piece of furniture I would snoop through years later, looking futilely for her diary and any mention of me it might contain. My childhood had reached a dismal point by the time I watched the ancient house beside ours become populated once more. My after-school experiences involved playing football by myself in our backyard every day or remaining inside to watch Full House. This all changed after the Chalmers moved next door. The days of playing video games by myself in the basement wearing torn up old sweat pants were replaced by those of Allison rushing into the living room with a basketball, bouncing it off my stomach and screaming to come out to this great new court she had found at the back of the Danielson Woods. We did a lot of that kind of stuff together the first year, and I am eternally grateful. If not for this girl I would never have known that a bullfrog will piss in your hand if you hold it too long, if not for her I would never have gotten my stupid groove on at any high school dance I ever attended. “You looked so goofy playing a team sport back there by yourself,” Allison said, leaning on her palms and looking about ten percent guilty for what she just said. Our conversation had relapsed into reminiscence. “There weren’t many other kids in our neighborhood,” I parried. “And most of them played tackle football, which was ‘strictly prohibited.’ Remember?” I wagged my finger up and down in the air, recalling my mother’s set of rules. Allison burst out laughing again, and for a brief moment we did connect. But, it was probably more me watching her. “I have to get back,” she said, jumping up and almost pushing me off the dock playfully in the process. Perhaps something had crossed her plane of thought that she didn’t want to deal with right then. The next time I saw her she would be in the loving embrace of Jeremy. They were inseparable, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. Jeremy Shepherds was a basketball stud who won the final game last year with a three-pointer at the buzzer. I didn’t like him. Walking the halls of Winterset High I would shake my head in disbelief, meandering to the other side when his clique and their letter jackets wandered through, talking about how bitchin’ last night’s party was our how fuckin’ fast they sped down that gravel road. On night out on the lake during our junior year, Allison told me she thought his whole group would be lucky to even graduate with the rest of our class. Each time I thought about that night and then saw them together, it hurt so much more. I hated the fact that I couldn’t talk to her anymore. We still hung out a few times that summer, but it was overshadowed by the “other” man lingering in the background. The ominous six-foot presence that had to call her whenever just the two of us wanted to hang out. He wasn’t right for her. I believed this to be true, and by the time August rolled around I decided to finally tell her how I felt. It’s funny how things work sometimes. Each day I found torment thinking of how she might react. On the last week before we both were to leave for college, I took her out to the lake on the hottest day of the summer. Her reaction was one of laughter: the kind she used to bark at those stupid jokes I told. Before Jeremy took her away. “Josh,” she said, pulling a strand of auburn hair from her shutting eye. “You’re kidding, right?” I felt like a sharpened spike had been pre-selected for me and shoved right through my heart. I didn’t know what to say. There she was, sitting there, the smile that once took up that gorgeous face leaving as the realization that I wasn’t kidding slowly dawned. “Josh...I...you and I...we can’t…” she was stammering now, just like she did when it cost her a speech medal six years ago in the regional final. She turned, her lengthy hair shining amid her stunning eyes. The shock of my admission had left its mark on her face. Suddenly I felt guilty for putting such a burden on my best friend. Now it was my turn to falter through the words. “I...I’m sorry, Allison. I just thought it would be better to tell you now than to regret it for the rest of my life. We’re going to be away from each other for four years, at least. I didn’t have a choice.” It was the wrong thing to say, but it sure as hell was true. I could see the sadness in her eyes. “Who says you didn’t have a choice? I could have gone our entire friendship without you saying that, you know. Jeremy and I...we’re together. You know that. And I really like him, Josh. You should respect that.” She took my hand in hers. Her beautiful face was downcast, as if she couldn’t face up to what she had to say to her best friend. “Besides, you’re better at being my friend,” she whispered through choked tears. I saw a vision of my room, Allison running and tackling me, shouting to get moving and play some dang football. The first pinpricks of tears clouded behind my brown eyes. For an awkward moment we sat there and watched the sunset, as we always had. Then I managed to say my final words to Allison Chalmers: “I understand. I’ll see ya…” I have been to college for almost a year, but I still cannot get that fucking conversation out of my head. It plagues me all the time, but mostly in my dreams. I know she was right, but part of me can’t deny the feelings I had for her. The hell was I didn’t want those feelings to go away. I did meet someone: a tiny bombshell with goldenrod hair named Jamie. We met at a frat party a few months ago and hit it off. Maybe it was her thin glasses frames or my stupid jokes made more moronic with alcohol, but we got along pretty well. I kissed her two weeks after that, alone in my dorm room, and the only thing I could think about as her chapstick covered lips graced mine was how much I wished I had kissed Allison on that dock. After that it was all over. I still woke up to the fleeting images of the girl I was in love with, but I didn’t want to look in the mirror each day and realize I was someone who couldn’t get over a simple rejection. So I decided to call her. My fingers developed a nervous twitch as I pulled up her contact information on my cell phone that night. I held my breath, leaning against the cheap wooden dresser our benevolent college decided was good enough for all incoming freshmen. Jeremy Shepherds answered Allison’s phone. I let out all the air I had collected in my lungs like a steam engine. “Ward! What the hell is up, man?” I had forgotten the high school tradition of jocks addressing everyone by their last names. I managed some type of weak reply that must have sounded ridiculous, because Jeremy was laughing on the other end. “Ward, she’s not here right now. She’s getting ready for our big date, considering how far I had to drive up here to see her. Want to leave a message, or something?” I declined, saying that maybe I would get in touch with her some other time, and hung up the phone. Our big date. I slowly wafted my body down into the leather chair my roommate must have traveled back in time to pick up from 1977. I stared at the wall, thinking about Jeremey Shepherds and that stupid red Chevrolet he used to drive. I haven’t thought much about Allison since that evening. My life has begun to rescind into the kind of childhood days I had before I met her. I play a lot of video games and smoke a lot of reefer, and have more or less forgotten about class. I guess I never got over the fact that she saw less in me than I saw in her. In my dreams I still see things like the old swing set her folks bought when she was ten, how she would dare me to jump off when I reached a high enough altitude, and how I always chickened out at the last second. There is one dream I have a lot more often now. I’m sitting on the dock. Except this time Allison is not there. This time it’s only me staring across the briny deep. I can only sit there in desperation, waiting for someone to arrive whose only aspiration is a simple conversation. Then I realize she will never be there with me. I will always be alone, watching the waves.
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Short stories - what are they? I’ll admit that’s a question I still do not fully know the answer to, but I hope to have a much better perspective after this year. As I’m taking a bit of a break from working on my third novel I have decided to work on a batch of stories, some of which I hope will find publication in literary journals. As it stands right now, I should have about ten in good enough shape to send out in the next few months. But I thought a really interesting way of showing this process would be to workshop at least one of the stories through the blog on my website.
The story I chose for this workshop is one I crafted way back in my college days. Back when I was an aimless youth I took a class specifically on Creative Writing (those really into my work will recognize this as one of the classroom settings in Last Man on Campus). While to this day I feel I never put enough into the class, I did wind up with one story that I think could eventually stand on its own for publication. I now present part of that story to my audience, with some slight editing from its previous incarnation, in the hopes of kick-starting an interactive workshop. Without further ado, here is the first part of the short story “Allison:” I told Allison Chalmers I loved her the summer after our senior year. I told her I had loved her since the third grade, when our entire class was forced to distribute little pink paper valentines to everyone but I had saved one for her that stated: “Will you be mine?” I told her I loved her when I saw her scorching down the Winterset High asphalt track, piercing April rays of sunshine floating over her back and her competition from the surrounding schools left in the dust. I told her I had loved her since we held each other at our last prom, blue streamers hanging askew around us in the gymnasium. I told her I loved her even after Jeremy Shepherd had entered the fray. I told Allison these things the afternoon of a desperate, hot August day one week before I was to leave for the state university. My voice sounded freshman-year shaky and my body trembled as if some hidden brute within wanted to leave my presence to avoid this conversation forever. I told Allison I had loved her the entire ten years we had known each other, and that even though she had found another, I knew she belonged to me. And how did she react to this confession? This statement of trust that I conveyed to her on that scorching day at the end of summer? It wasn’t what I expected. * * * The real reason these feelings began to make their way into my heart, levelling any thoughts of friendship I ever kindled for my best friend, came the summer before we both went to college. Allison and I had a special place in Winterset that was just for us: Lake Clarmont. This summer was different because it contained the final few months we would get to spend laying out on the dock watching the boats sail over the foamy waves, birds scattering everywhere and fish fighting for their lives within the briny deep. Allison always called it the “briny deep” like she was floating on a pirate ship in the middle of the Atlantic, not sitting on the rough rocky shores of a reservoir. One night stands out in my mind, playing on repeat like a film projector gone mad. It was a week after the big graduation jamboree, and I was very glad to have the final futile exercise of high school finished. The two of us were sitting on the cement dock where the amateur fishermen of Winterset attempted to catch the big one and make the others jealous. This was how we released the pressure of having to attend school for twelve years. What amazed me that summer was how Allison and I kept each other so close even while our thoughts of college in the fall loomed overhead like a booming thunderclap. Most nights I was sure Allison would be tearing down the main drag of town instead, seeking a real man unlike my skinny-ass self, but she never did. This was why she was my best friend in that entire God forsaken town: she never wanted more of a friend than me. This was the last real night both of us had stayed out there for such a long period of time. It wasn’t long after this that Allison hooked up with Jeremy at our senior keg in the Danielson Woods. He swept her off her feet, offering more for her brilliant life than I could ever hope to give. I’ve never had a girlfriend for my entire 18 years on this planet, and no matter what anyone else tells me, it still sucks. If the subject is broached in conversation I’ll shrug my shoulders, crack my knuckles and say something nonchalant. But the truth is that I can’t get over it. Like a specter that I can only see in the mirror at night, it haunts my soul, voicing my inferiorities and how I could never hope to attain her. The same spirit was creeping around my brain’s storage area the night Allison and I sat there on the concrete, the small waves lapping up against the flat gray wall. “Why do they make little bubble caps like that?” Allison asked, the sun’s reflection in her glasses impeding any sense of what her eyes were trying to say. “Because they get so mad at each other they begin to foam up. Like rabid water.” For some reason my lame jokes always got her to laugh, and she couldn’t stop. The sound was symphonic to my ears that evening as the sun began losing its battle with the stars for the horizon. Allison was stunning there before the setting sun, now a dark red blot on the far side of the lake. Her glasses reflected light in the most peculiar ways, and were now emanating the moody spasms of lake water. At this moment some kind of starter’s gun went off in my head and I decided I had to tell her before summer’s end. It was either that or risk the ghost coming in the night and chopping off my head, ending it for all eternity. So that’s it - part 1 of the short story “Allison.” I will be posting the second half in the coming days. Until then, feel free to take a stand in the comments (or email me) regarding what you liked or did not like about the first half of this short story. I will take all comments into consideration as I revise this story and try to make it presentable for publication. Thanks for reading! It’s time once again for another update in my Year of Living (Actually Reading) Fictionally. To kick off the second-half of this experiment I began with Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer-winning 1991 novel A Thousand Acres, a rich narrative of life on the Iowa plains that takes place around the time I was born. This book hit me personally in a few ways that I will discuss later, but first I wanted to draw out the two major writing lessons I gained from this amazing novel.
I would highly recommend this novel for anyone who is looking for examples of how to write intricate descriptions and tell an amazing tale at the same time. But what really hit home for me with this book was the story. Essentially a modernization of Shakespeare’s King Lear, Smiley tells the story of a father with three daughters who decides to leave his farm to two of them, and the consequences of that weighty decision over the course of a farming season. Needless to say this does not go down easily, and causes the daughters to each remember and respond to their awful histories in various ways. This reminds me of what I also face in the future: the passing down of a stake in my own family’s farm in Iowa. Many were the months I spent working hard in the hog fields or in tractors during the harvest, and yet I must admit feeling ambivalent about the prospect of taking on that land when my parents’ generation passes. Another character named Jess returns to his family after spending years away in Canada to avoid fighting in Vietnam. When he gets back, he irritates the farmers that have been there for generation by speaking about organic farming and how much the chemicals used to kill weeds probably affected his friends’ abilities to have children. This character really resonated with me as I have struggled with these same issues. Things I took for granted as part of the family business (using Monsanto’s GMO seeds, spraying copious amounts of chemicals, etc) I now see as a principle reason for many of the food-related problems in the world. Coming to terms with this was no easier for Jess, who (*spoiler*) also does not stay to run his family’s farm. All of this being said, this book was a great start to the second-half of my fiction year. Next up I will be reading Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club. And stay tuned to this space for more updates on my third novel and for some discussions on short stories and other topics. Thanks for reading! |
AuthorJohn Abraham is a published author and freelance journalist who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Mary and their cat. He is writing a speculative dystopian novel and is seeking representation and a publisher. Archives
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