#212 King Bee-T.C. Boyle

#212 King Bee-T.C. Boyle

Wow, what a nightmare! A couple has trouble conceiving a child. They look to adopt but do not want to wait the many years it would take to adopt a new-born of their choosing. They get duped into adopting a 9 year-old boy named Anthony. He appears at first to be the Norman Rockwell archetype of the American male child, but things turn quickly.

“The smile was a regular feature of those first few months—He stopped smiling when the trial period was over, as if he’d suddenly lost control of his facial muscles. It was uncanny. Almost to the day the adoption became formal—the day that he was theirs and they were his—Anthony’s smile vanished.”

His calm demeanor turns to erratic behavior, foul language and an obsession with bees. He likes bees because they have no mercy, “You fit in or you die.” Nothing seems to rid him of his psychotic behavior and he goes in and out of institutions and youth prisons until he becomes an adult, scarier and even more bee-like.

There are obvious literary links here, from the Kafka-esque alienation insect references, or a twilight zone story arc. Personally, I see a lot of Stephen King in this story, which is something I wouldn’t have expected from Boyle. This is a fun outlier so far in this collection.

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

#71 The Knife Thrower- Steven Millhauser

#71 The Knife Thrower- Steven Millhauser

The Knife Thrower is a second place prize-winner for the O. Henry award…welcome to O. Henry Friday here at the short story funhouse.  The writing here is in a purposely old fashioned language, very theatrical and a bit over the top. I guess if you’re writing about a character named “Hensch the Knifethrower” things naturally tend towards the dramatic. This is a little bit Kafka, a little bit Poe, and a little bit Twilight Zone. 

A carnival knife man comes to town to thrill and dazzle a worried crowd. They come to see taboo and dangerous deeds. Inside they struggle with their own macabre cravings:  “And so we admired his daring, even as we deplored his method and despised him as a vulgar showman.”

As the show goes on, the stunts become more and more gory, he “makes his mark” upon volunteer members of the audience, cutting deeper and deeper wounds until someone is willing to make the “ultimate sacrifice.”  When that event occurs, the room is stunned and the show is done. The victim’s reaction to being run-through is a paradox shared with the blood-seeking public: “Some said that at the moment the knife struck, the boy’s shocked face shone with an intense, almost painful joy.”

Was it real? Was it show? Was it a commentary on sick human fetishishism?

Notable Passage: “…the touch of the master, who had crossed the line, who had carried us, safely, it appeared, into the realm of forbidden things.”

Rating: 8-7-9-8 Total= 32