#458 The Rifleman- Craig Davidson

#458 The Rifleman- Craig Davidson

There’s a certain type of father that gets banned from attending his son’s little league athletics. Usually it’s one of two things: an over-bearing loud attitude that puts too much pressure on the kid, or public intoxication. Hank Mikan was guilty of both. He wanted his son Jason to be the next great basketball shooter, a rifleman. He would drill him until late at night when the neighbors began complaining about the noise.

Now as Jason is about to get college offers, Hank is barely a part of his life, and not by choice. He is one step away from being a homeless drunk. He is an embarrassment for Jason who wants nothing to do with him. He has made him hate the thing he is best at. The only thing his son has in common with him is basketball. When you get rid of that, what happens?

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#457 I Dream of Zenia With the Bright Red Teeth - Margaret Atwood

#457 I Dream of Zenia With the Bright Red Teeth - Margaret Atwood

I read the title and immediately thought of the Stephen Foster song: I Dream of Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, but the title is where the similarities end. Charise, Roz, and Tony are three friends battling their coming middle-age. Each has had mid-life crises symptoms, some of them as innocuous as regressing to watch vampire movies.

“Why are the three of them indulging in these adolescent pursuits…They seem to have thrown away all the maturity and experience and wisdom they’ve collected like Air Miles over their middle years; just tossed them out, in favor of irresponsible buttery and salty munching and cheesy, adrenaline-soaked time wasting.”

Charise however, is having a more serious reaction to aging. She has been having vivid dreams about their deceased friend Zenia. Zenia was the wild-card of their group and one-by-one stole a boyfriend from each of them. Just as the dreams begin, Charise has re-kindled a relationship with Billy, the boyfriend taken by Zenia.

Her new dog, doesn’t like Billy at all, and like an old friend that knows some secrets, does what it can to ward off the dangerous bad decision Charise is about to make.

Notable Passage: “In dreams the time is always now.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total= 31

#456 Briley Boy- Robert Mailer Anderson

#456 Briley Boy- Robert Mailer Anderson

Briley could dodge a punch. That’s what he was good at. Which was pretty convenient because he had a knack for making people take swings at him.

“He had learned to become elusive, especially from himself. He didn’t stand in front of a mirror long enough to see his own reflection. It helped when he was stealing cars, scouting houses for a B & E, scoring drugs.”

So when his new stripper wife clocked him in the head, breaking his nose, he laughed. He stood there and took all her blows, until something would give, something had to give.

This is a classic noir story, and with every good noir story you get some pretty choice lines. Here were some of my favorites:

-Her eyes were like tunnels. No train coming.

-You can’t kiss a shadow or a memory, he had been told. It was hard enough to stare at someone in the eyes and wish them dead.

-He wanted to say something. Not and apology, maybe an epitaph.

-Waiting. He heard sirens in the distance racing toward him as if there was something left to save.

Rating: 7-7-9-7 Total= 30

#455 Zaabalawi- Naguib Mahfouz

#455 Zaabalawi- Naguib Mahfouz

A man is afflicted and in need of help. He remembers his recently deceased father speaking glowingly about the great Sheikh, Zaabalawi. He saved his father and now he strikes out to find him, so he too can be saved. But where to look?

“He was once upon a time. A real man of mystery: he’d visit you so often that people would imagine he was your nearest and dearest, then would disappear as though he’d never existed. Yet saints are not to be blamed.”

He visits any place he has heard rumors of Zaabalawi’s presence, but he is greeted with the same answers each place he goes. They say that Zaabalawi was here, but he has left, and they don’t know where. Zaabalawi has touched the lives of so many people, talked of in mostly hallowed terms, and even when he was thought a charlatan, they still remembered him. But he still cannot find him

Zaabalawi is a metaphor for faith. He is elusive and hard to describe. Those that have experienced it talk glowingly about it, but they cannot show you where to find it, it must be found by each person in their own way. In searching, one might find many other valuable things.

Rating: 8-8-9-9 Total= 34

#454 Cavalcade of the Old West- Lucia Perillo

#454 Cavalcade of the Old West- Lucia Perillo

Two sister’s have a yearly tradition: they go to the pier for the carnival. It’s cheap, dirty and not aging well, but they go anyway. When they were younger, their was a revue called the Cavalcade of the Old West. They were fascinated by this show, but because of the insensitive and racist portrayals of several of the characters, the show has long since been cancelled.

Ginny is the younger, more responsible of the two and Stella is definitely on the wild side. This has been a sore point between them over the years. Stella drinking too young and too much, being loose with the carnival workers and having now divorced several husbands, Ginny resents having to be the adult for her older sister.

But, Stella lives her life without regret. “Here’s the difference between you and me…you’d be embarrassed if you were me, but I’m not.” Just like the old show, they hang on to their memories but it’s not like it used to be.

Rating: 7-6-6-6 Total= 25

#453 Sister Hills- Nathan Englander

#453 Sister Hills- Nathan Englander

This is an allegorical tale about the re-claiming of a settlement in the West Bank. Started by two families in 1973 during a time of war, the Sister Hills were “settled” soon after by seven boys, turned quickly into seventy, then in a span of fourteen years, emerged as a metropolis. The story begins with a fight over a tree. As complicated as this topic is, the following dialogue is a pretty brilliant break-down of the fight over this land:

-If it was your tree, I’d have seen you at my side last year during harvest. I’d have seen you the year before that, and ten years before that, and a hundred.

-You weren’t here yourself a hundred years ago. And anyway…you don’t look back far enough. The contract on this land is very old.

-A mythical claim, as meaningless as the one you make today

-It looks like [a war] not a judge [will decide].

Sadly in real life, that’s exactly how this has played out, but of course war hasn’t settled anything. And unfortunately, extremism and stubbornness has stopped the progress of any lasting peace:

-We’d prefer to avoid that kind of extremism.

-Then you do not have my trust.

I have no stirring or lucid insight into the politics of the Israel/Palestine question, but I think Englander does a great job shining a light on the issues.

Notable Passage: “For a judge can know how his heart would decide, but his obligation is always to the law. And they had sworn, these three. Sworn on their lives. A terrible promise to make.”

Rating: 8-9-9-9 Total= 35

#452 Gorilla, My Love- Toni Cade Bambara

#452 Gorilla, My Love- Toni Cade Bambara

Hazel is a tough young girl. She’s stubborn and very serious. She took her brothers to the movies to see Gorilla, My Love, but when she found out that it wasn’t about Gorilla’s she stormed into the managers office and demanded her money back. Not getting it she set fire to the concession stand, because when a movie title says ‘gorilla’ it better have gorillas in it.

She feels betrayed by everything that isn’t what it seems. Her uncle, Hunca Bubba, is the latest to “lie” to her, because when she was a baby, he told her she was so cute, he was going to marry her one day. Adults are untrustworthy, the kids better stick together.

“And baby Jason cryin too. Cause he is my blood brother and understands that we must stick together or be forever lost, what with grownups playin change-up and turnin you round every which way so bad. And don’t even say they sorry.”

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total= 27

#451 Car Crash While Hitchhiking- Denis Johnson

#451 Car Crash While Hitchhiking- Denis Johnson

“The traveling salesman had fed me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out. My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name. I sensed everything before it happened. I knew a certain Oldsmobile would stop for me even before it slowed, and by the sweet voices of the family inside it I knew we’d have an accident in the storm.”

And yes, all that happened; the horror of the accident and the realities of the lives of the victims, all untouched by this hitchhiker. He is a mere spectator, unattached to life and unharmed by this car crash. He is a ghost, an angel, a demon? Or is he merely the manifest meaninglessness we all pick up along the road.

“I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.”

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31

#450 Brownies- ZZ Packer

#450 Brownies- ZZ Packer

This is the first story in Packer’s collection, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.  A troupe of Brownies (younger girl scouts if there is someone who doesn’t know what that is) attend a camping weekend. They are from a predominantly black south Atlantic Suburb and they fixate on an all white Troupe 909.  The “leader” of the girls says she heard a racial slur being thrown in their direction, and she rouses the others into action.

What follows is a pretty great description of child group/peer/tribal behavior. Social archetypes play their rolls: the leader, the peacemaker, the troublemaker, the follower, the goody-two-shoes, quiet moral one, etc. Although race is at the heart of the conflict, it does not seem to be the heart of the meaning of this story (although the race dynamics shouldn’t be overlooked). Group activity and peer pressure are a huge part of growing up, especially at a Girl Scout camp.

Notable Passages: “The word ‘secret’ had a built-in importance, the modifier form of the word carried more clout than the noun. A secret meant nothing; it was like gossip: just a bit of unpleasant knowledge about someone who happened to be someone other than yourself. A secret meeting, or a secret club was entirely different.”

“Even though I didn’t want to fight, was afraid of fighting, I felt like I was a part of the rest of the troop; like I was defending something.”

 “When you’ve been made to feel bad for so long, you jump at the chance to do it to others.”

Rating: 9-9-10-9 Total= 37

#449 Kid's Last Fight- Eddie Muller

#449 Kid's Last Fight- Eddie Muller

Three paths converge one day. Danh, a lowlife thief with a fantasy about cutting a woman’s ring finger off and tossing it on a bar to pay for a round of drinks—Hannah, the woman he tries this gruesome attack on—and Bud Callum, a washed-up boxer that saves the day.

“My lucky day…at precisely the right moment, this guy came into my life.”

Bud is addled from years of head trauma, so when Hannah offers him a ride and a conversation, there is a lot of confusion. But he did save her life and she is more than happy to hear his rambling tales of his boxing hey-day. But no good deed goes unpunished. Somehow the thief that got a beating comes out of this the best. At least he knew where the beating came from.

Rating: 7-6-7-7 Total=27

#448 Looking For Something- Frank Herbert

#448 Looking For Something- Frank Herbert

The Chief Indoctrinator for Sol III (earth) has come back from a vacation to find that his replacement has inadvertently allowed a human a glimpse of reality. Paul Marcus is a hypnotist, and while performing his mind tricks one night he came across a dangerous thought:

“What if this—our whole lives, our world, everything we see, feel, hear, smell, or sense in anyway is more of the same. A Hypnotic delusion!”

Both he and his subject had the same thought, boring into their consciousness, a thought that was dead on the money. Humans have been put under strong hypnosis by an alien Denebian race, and now it was being threatened by this lapse in “indoctrination.”

Those two were put straight, given stronger hypnotic commands, and the threat is gone. But alas, just as that problem was fixed, another threat pops up:

“A Hindu creature has seen itself as it really is…The creature went insane as per indoctrination command, but most unfortunately it is a member of a sect which worships insanity. Others are beginning to listen to its babblings.”

Frank Herbert, ladies and gentlemen!

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#447 October Brown- Maxine Clair

#447 October Brown- Maxine Clair

Rattlebone is a fictional black community just north of Kansans City created by Maxine Clair for this collection. Written to represent the Midwest black lives of the 1950’s, it’ll be interesting to compare it to the Toure’s The Portable Promised Land I started yesterday that represents a fictional black community in the big city. 

October Brown was a teacher in Rattlebone. Her story starts with a fit she had in public as a child when her father attacked her mother. The fit was so crazed that it left her with a mark on her cheek, a devil’s kiss, and a reputation that frightened and intrigued her new students.

“We imagined that a woman surrounded by such lore would have to have a bad temper, a flash fire that could drive her from her desk to yours in a single movement, dislodge you by your measly shoulders, plant you hard on the hardwood floor, tell you in growling underbreaths of wrath to stand up straight…”

It was a big year for Irene, not only because her new teacher wasn’t anywhere nearly as bad as she thought, but because she was about to become a big sister to a new baby brother. Things change quickly though, and change can turn quickly to chaos.

Notable Passage: “Intuition is the guardian of childhood.”

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total=30

#446 The Steviewondermobile- Toure

#446 The Steviewondermobile- Toure

We are in Toure’s invented municipality, Soul City. “Soul City was a place where God entered through the speakers and love was measured in decibles.” There were at least twenty-five verified religions in Soul City, all based on Soul music of course.

Huggy Bear Jackson was a Stevie-ite (as were his buddies Mojo, Boozoo, and Groovy Lou) and built a mobile shrine to his idol. The vehicle that cruised Freedom Street or Funky Boulevard would break down all the time, couldn’t go more than twenty five and guzzled gas, but it had a kickin’ sound system that would only play Stevie Wonder. It was rigged so that any other music was put in, it would be immediately spit out. Now, That’s musical devotion!

This collection is going to be a blast!

“But it was Huggy Bear’s world and in Huggy Bear’s world the music could never die. So he sat in the Steveiewondermobile, stuck at the corner of Freedom and Rhythm, chilling with Groovy Lou and Boozoo to the soaring sounds of Stevie’s seamless soul stew and the world he saw with his so wonderfully clear inner vision.”

Rating: 7-8-7-7 Total= 29

#445 Eating Fish Alone- Lydia Davis

#445 Eating Fish Alone- Lydia Davis

A woman eats fish, but not that often and only when she eats alone. She has a list of fish that is acceptable to consume socially, healthily, and environmentally. She puts a lot of thought into the fish she eats, and is very delicate in the manner in which she goes about her meals.

Usually, when she eats out the wait staff and the kitchen staff is too busy to give full answers to her questions about the fish. She does her best to manage anyway. One particular night, a restaurant was serving marlin. She didn’t remember how marlin tasted, and although it wasn’t on her list, she decided to try to anyway. The waitress asked on behalf of the chef if she enjoyed her meal. Even though she thought it a bit chewy she gave a pleasant if vague reply.

“I thought of the waste, and the care with which the chef prepared, over and over again, the vegetables that no one ate. At least I had eaten his vegetables, and he would know that I had liked them. But I was sorry I had not eaten all of his marlin. I could have done that.”

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#444 That Dance You Do- Katherine Heiny

#444 That Dance You Do- Katherine Heiny

Mom is throwing a birthday party for her eight-year old son. It is a long day filled with frustration, exasperation, and an uncomfortable third-rate magician who demands a good-bye hug as part of his payment.

“In fact, now that you think about it, children’s birthday parties are pretty similar to your wedding day: you pay too mcu attention to meaningless detail, you overinvest in certain decisions, you see your friends but don’t really get to interact with them, you end up incredibly stressed, and in retrospect you would certainly do it all much more simply.”

All this is worth it for the joy of your children.

Notable Passage: “The road to manners is a long one…and possibly you can’t get there from here.”

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#443 Acolyte (Second Legend)- Rebecca Makkai

#443 Acolyte (Second Legend)- Rebecca Makkai

How much can you hide? Using grease paint and old clothes to make the young look old, to avoid the advances of the foreign soldiers; wearing a star of David to get into he ghetto, then using the papers to get out. Changing names and identities for mere survival. If you do it long enough, who are you?

“But to claim one ancestor would be to claim them all, even those on the wrong sides of humanity’s decisive moral battles. The slave owners, the anti-Semites, the Huns, the cowards.”

They sneak an anti communist novel out of Hungary. Trying to write about these things can be tricky. How much truth to put down, when half of what you are writing was about hiding the truth?

“There are stranger things true. There are simpler things not.”

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 34

#442 Genesis to Revelation- Peter Plate

#442 Genesis to Revelation- Peter Plate

This is another short story from the San Francisco Noir collection. It’s Christmas Eve and a surprisingly sweltering ninety-six degrees on Market Street. Slatts Calhoun, three days released from San Quentin Prison in on the streets looking for trouble. He’s dressed as Santa Clause, and he’s packing a .357.

He forces his way into a medical marijuana shop, and robs the register.  It was almost a clean getaway but the police got there faster than he thought. So much for Santa.

“The Gods of crime were not smiling on Market that afternoon.”

Rating: 6-6-5-6 Total= 23

#441 The Girl Who Raised Pigeons- Edward P. Jones

#441 The Girl Who Raised Pigeons- Edward P. Jones

It’s the late 1950’s and on Myrtle ave. in Washington D.C. the neighborhood is falling apart. In a few years, it will be razed and taken over by the city. Besty Ann is a little girl being raised by her father. Her mother died of cancer late in her pregnancy and they were able to save her.

She is a survivor, but she is lonely. She is frightened by a neighboring barber who raises pigeons. The pigeons scare her the first time, but intrigue her enough that she wants to raise some herself. She is insistent, so her father builds a coup and for three years, Betsy raised her pigeons. Every morning before dawn, her father visits the pigeons and makes sure they alive. He wants to protect her from seeing one of her pigeons dead.

Of course there is only so long he can protect her; there is only so long they can stay there before the neighborhood is lost; and there is only so long she can keep the pigeons.

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total= 30

#440 Debarking- Lorrie Moore

#440 Debarking- Lorrie Moore

Ira was divorced and was having a hard time coping with his new reality. He claimed his wedding ring was stuck on his finger and he couldn’t get it off. He had an eight-year old daughter and a host of good friends.

He started dating a woman, also divorced with a son, that he met at a friend’s party. It was an awkward start, being so unpracticed at dating:

“This elusive mix—the geometric halfway point between stalker and Rip van Winkle—was important to get right in the world of middle-aged dating.”

As the reader, I was rooting for him, feeling bad at the uncomfortable moments, nodding at the I’ve-been-there moments. But after a while, I got the feeling that this woman was either taking advantage of him, unable to have a relationship post-divorce, or she was a little bit crazy. Either way, the whole second half of the story—which ran on for a bit too long—was filled with this tense frustration where you just wished it (the frustration, not the story) would end.

Quality writing.

Notable Passage: “When affection fell on its ass, politeness could step up.”

Rating: 9-7-8-7 Total= 31

#439 A Real Durwan- Jhumpa Lahiri

#439 A Real Durwan- Jhumpa Lahiri

Boori Ma is a woman worn down by a life of labor and loss. She was a refugee forced to Calcutta under Indian Partition. Working as a sort of house-maid, gate-keeper for the inn, a real Durwan, she never lets anyone forget the troubles she’s had. Although her tellings may get a bit exaggerated.

“So she garbled facts. She contradicted herself. She embellished almost everything. But her rants were so persuasive, her fretting so vivid, that it was not so easy to dismiss her.”

“Aside from her hardships, the other thing Boori Ma liked to chronicle was easier times.” She did this in a way to get back around to how hard she had it now. No matter what somebody had, she had had it better…and now look at her.  Believe her or don’t believe her.

Rating: 9-8-8-8 Total= 33

#438 Jerusalem- Neil Gaiman

#438 Jerusalem- Neil Gaiman

Morrison wanted to go to Greece for vacation, but his wife convinced him to go instead to Jerusalem to see the biblical sites. It had a big effect on them.

“Jerusalem…was like a deep pool, where time had settled too thickly. It had engulfed him, engulfed both of them, and he could feel the pressure of time pushing him up and out. Like swimming down too deep.”

Their guide told them about Jerusalem Fever, a light affliction that hits tourists at a pretty alarming rate. The weight of the city’s history hits them so strong they wish to exist in the city as it was thousands of years ago. They strip themselves of their modern clothes and don bed sheets as togas and walk the city in a trance. This happened to Morrison’s wife.

“Perhaps, he thought, it isn’t madness. Perhaps the cracks are just deeper there, or the sky is thin enough that you can hear, when God talks to his prophets. But nobody stops to listen any longer.”

The fever always subsides when taken out of the city, but the memory has stuck with Morrison, and he wonders what it is like to feel that strong an emotion to be struck with a faith so absolute.

“Sometimes he wondered what it had felt like inside her head, that day, hearing the voice of God through the golden-colored stones, but truly, he did not want to know. It was better not to.”

Maybe he should stop and listen.

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total= 38