#535 On Sleepless Roads- Craig Davidson

#535 On Sleepless Roads- Craig Davidson

Graham is a repo-man. He gets up in the pre-dawn hours to repossess vehicles from those missing payments. 95 % of the time, he manages to complete his job without incident; other times, things can get violent. He has been doing this work, on sleepless roads, for twenty-five years.

His wife, Nell is suffering from a degenerative disease called Bradykinesia. It has caused her to lose control over the movement of her body. She shakes uncontrollably and her walk, once a thing of amazement and beauty to Graham, is no longer what it once was.

We see graham go through a few repo stops, and we see some of the tactics people use to beg for their stuff back. In a rare scene, we actually see graham take pity on a man and lets his temporarily keep his trailer.

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

#280 Mojave Rats- Kirsten Valdez Quade

#280 Mojave Rats- Kirsten Valdez Quade

In a trailer near the salt flats of the Mojave, Monica and her two daughters, Cordelia and Beatrice are freezing cold. The heater of their trailer has broke and Eliot, who can fix it, is gone until nightfall. They live in the trailer while Elliot gathers rock samples to finish his PhD in geology. Monica does not like living in a trailer park:

“Monica couldn’t help imagining sordid stories for them: mental illness, violent crime, shattering personal tragedy. The place caught people like trash in a wire fence, damaged, discarded people…Mojave rats…denizens of the dust.”

Despite knowing that they are educated people, with value and worth, she can’t help judging the rest of the park’s denizens harshly. “He could have been anything: a child molester, gambling addict, harmless kook. Why not a NASA engineer?”

“Monica wasn’t proud of her pretensions. But it was so easy to feel disdain for these people, so vital she not be mistaken for one of them.”

In the cold, Monica struggles with her past marriage and the daughter she had with her previous husband. She resents her presence, and then hates herself for feeling anything but love for Cordelia…then blames Cordelia for feeling guilty.

“Cordelia would forever feel on the outside, Monica saw, and Monica herself had put her there, because a person couldn’t live with that kind of reproach. It would only get harder between them…Cordelia’s judgments would become more pointed.”

Jeez, that’s a lot to put on a kid that’s been through a divorce and dragged out to live in the salt flats to live in a cold temporary trailer.

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

#276 Mnemonics- Kurt Vonnegut

#276 Mnemonics- Kurt Vonnegut

This is just a small story about Alfred Moorehead, a new man. He has learned to unlock a gift for memory. His career has taken off and his life is almost perfect, but there is always one thing that stops us from being happy.

“Now since he has attended the company’s two-day Memory Clinic, names, facts, and numbers clung to his memory like burdocks to an Airdale. The clinic had, in fact, indirectly cleared up just about every major problem in his uncomplicated life, save one—his inability to break the ice with his secretary, Ellen, whom he had silently adored for two years.”

His mnemonic prowess was due to his ability to attach a fact or a figure in his head to the image of a beautiful movie star. This talent was put to the test one day by a long list of things to remember, and when he had to use the image of Ellen as well as the famous starlets, his fondness for her finally slips.

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

#268 Mines- Susan Straight

#268 Mines- Susan Straight

Clarette works at the juvenile prison. She sees her community locked up in there, she sees her family locked up in there. But she works there anyway, because somebody has to and she needs a job. She needs a job so she can keep her own son out of prison. She’s there so he won't be.

She resents the people outside with opinions about here working there. She resents her family telling her to look out for her nephew who’s inside. They had 17 years to look out for him, and now it’s her responsibility?

For some, the issue of prisons and the racial realities of the prison system is an abstract talking point, for some it’s more personal, and Clarette doesn’t care about the concepts, she cares about keeping her son safe. She does what she has to. As her nephew points out, “I’ve got to get mines.”

Notable Passage: “The old days, the men go off to the army. Hard time, let me tell you. They go off to die, or they come back. But if they die, we get some money from the army. If they come back, they get a job on the base. Now them little boys, they go off to the prison just like the army. Like they have to. To be a man. They go off to die, or to come back. But they aint got nothing. Nothing either way.”

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