#828 Fossil Light- Bryn Chancellor

#828 Fossil Light- Bryn Chancellor

Denny and Faith are in a tough spot in their marriage. Denny has just lost his fifth job this year, they live in a dump and the two of them just aren’t getting along. Denny has a confidence problem. He is both baffled by life and stymied by the largeness of the universe. On top of that he is jealous of both his wife and his son. He is needy and can’t stand that there is someone in his family that gets more attention. 

His wife is either unsupportive or unable to find a way to support him adequately. After a drunken incident, Faith takes their son to stay with her mother for a few days while she institutes a no-talking policy at home. She hopes this monastic tradition will help them see what’s important. She doesn’t think it works but it actually may have. They both seem to be good parents and trying hard, but like many, are having a rough go at it. They’ll survive.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28 

#800 All This History At Once- Bryn Chancellor

#800 All This History At Once- Bryn Chancellor

A teacher spends her weekends selling her crafts with her husband. This weekend is the big annual crafts festival in the Tennessee statehouse. She is dressed in a corny but event-appropriate get-up that is giving her a bit of trouble as she hauls her gear up the large staircase.

“But you’re here this weekend, after all, for an arts and crafts festival, where red cowboy boots and short skirts are de rigueur, and with any luck, no children will puke or pee on you or smear you with paste or peanut butter or grape-scented markers.”

As she looks on the historic statues in the plaza she thinks back on her own history and imagines seeing her ex-husband. Everything together causes her to tumble down the staircase. She flails and tumbles in a painful and embarrassing display. Except she is not embarrassed and nobody is laughing. Her worst fears are put to rest and she can move on.

Rating: 7-8-7-6 Total= 28

#744 Any Sign of Light- Bryn Chancellor

#744 Any Sign of Light- Bryn Chancellor 

Co-workers on a first date on their way to the state fair are sitting by the side of the road watching a huge fire that has tied up traffic. Sam is twenty, Ruby ten years older. They are both broken. He has a bad heart and she bad lungs. They sit their, drink beer, listen to her choice of music and watch the smoke. 

In silence there are secrets. He doesn’t talk much, and finds that girls will fill the silence and he can play the part of listener. The tension that silent moments create is filled emotion and desire. She fills her moments with music, he fills his with sex, clearly substituting those for larger needs. This is a little sad, a little meditative. 

Notable Passage: “Sam’s eyes were brown, like dirt, or maybe cooked hamburger meat. He blinked, thinking of his face in the mirror in the morning. Sometimes he would stand there and look at himself, trying to see how others see him, until his face became a stranger’s, someone he might vaguely recognize in the grocery store. In the sky, the smoke was as thick as pavement, impenetrable. He wished his eyes were that color.”

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

#716 Water at Midnight- Bryn Chancellor

#716 Water at Midnight- Bryn Chancellor

Sunny is seventeen, an only child of divorced parents. Because of some undisclosed “trouble” she got into at her mother’s, she is spending this year with her father in Arizona. It is summer, and sweltering. She doesn’t know anybody and the loneliness has gotten to her. She watches a thirty-two year old irrigation man working in her yard at night. On occasion she secretly goes out to met him, and offer him iced-t. Her flirtations are overt and unreturned, although the man does like the attention.

The seduction goes unfulfilled, and this Lolita story ends before it goes anywhere. The tension is broken and Sunny gores back to being a teenager, and William goes back to being the neighborhood waterman.

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

#674 Meet Me Here- Bryn Chancellor

#674 Meet Me Here- Bryn Chancellor

People mourn in different ways. Zoey’s father has died. She and her newly widowed mother are traveling to Europe soon after. She is brooding and upset and her life is in a holding pattern; her mother is carefree and has gotten plastic surgery, it is her second life.

As they travel to see the sights, Zoey ruminates on having a child. She and her husband have been arguing about it. They both wanted one, but now Zoey is not sure. Seeing her mother unattached and happy deepens this feeling, but also deepens her resentment and confusion. She cannot see her mother’s pain through the literal and symbolic façade, she has put up. Family feelings can get complicated, it’s hard to focus on the future when the past is still weighing you down.

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

#646 Wrestling Night- Bryn Chancellor

#646 Wrestling Night- Bryn Chancellor

Kindred spirits find each other. Walt is an outcast at school, bullied for being different, quiet, weak, gay. Like many outcasts, all he wants to do is hide. He finds two ways to hide. One day while being chased by a gang of rock throwers, he is defended by Mrs. T, a teacher. Every day after school he goes to her house and does his homework in a safe comfortable environment while she putters in the garden.

She herself is too trusting. Her husband has been cheating on her with a friend of hers. On the day she finds out, she kicks him out of the house and dyes her hair. She too wants to hide behind something. She wanders the neighborhood and ends up inside the local coliseum where “Wresting Night” is taking place. An amateur match is under way with the crowd favorite The Butcher winning. She is overtaken with anger and she charges into ring looking to beat up on the winner. It turns out that he is just somebody else hiding behind a mask.

In this story, the masks and costumes represent freedom for strength. When we aren’t burdened by the labels others give us, we can find out who we really are, even if for only brief periods of time.

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

#618 When Are You Coming Home?- Bryn Chancellor

#618 When Are You Coming Home?- Bryn Chancellor

This is the title selection from Chancellor’s 2015 collection. The book won the Prairie Schooner Prize. 

Robert Cannon is a retired repair shop owner. He and his wife have moved and now he spends his time as a part-time locksmith. It seems like a normal story until we get hints that he is hiding from a tragedy. His son has suffered from an “accident” perhaps dealing with anger issue. He may have closed his shop due to embarrassment or something akin to that.

“That was how he believed he was known, how he wished to be known, how he knew himself. That life was bountiful beyond what he could have ever imagined. But now. Now. Everyone knew a different version. They all knew what he could not say aloud.”

He seems lonely and introspective. He keeps a copy of the keys he makes and “checks in” on the houses he has serviced. A bit creepy? Probably, especially when he actually goes into the houses. But, he is searching for something. He is looking for “Home,” whatever and wherever that is.

“Sometimes he simply drove by, and sometimes he went in, wandering the dark rooms, listening to the creeks in the silence. Nothing nefarious. He had no intentions. He just had an urge to check on things, these homes that did not belong to him.”

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