#494 The Hammer Man- Toni Cade Bambara

#494 The Hammer Man- Toni Cade Bambara

It is a violent world. The narrator, a school girl, says something mean and unwise to Manny, a big oaf that carries a hammer in his bag and likely is mentally unstable.

“Manny was supposed to be crazy. That was his story. To say you were bad put some people off. But to say you were crazy, you were officially not to be messed with.”

Manny doesn’t care that she’s just a girl, so now, he’s holding vigil outside her house for days ready to kill her when she comes back out. In a predictable but still crazy escalation, the mothers get in a fight because Manny’s mom is almost as crazy as he is; the girls father smashes Manny’s brother’s head into a mail box, Manny’s uncle threatens her father—and somehow Manny falls off the roof, ending the affair.

I guess you could chalk all that up to “it is a violent world”, but later on the girl imagines a world—not far from this one—that is much more violent and much more senseless.

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

#221 Planning the Perfect Evening- Jabari Asim

#221 Planning the Perfect Evening- Jabari Asim

We learned from previous stories that Paul Whittier is a drunken abusive husband. We learn here that part of his anger stems from his money problems. He owes the wrong people, the wrong amount of money. That is not excuse his behavior at all, abusing people is abusing people and no amount of excuses will make up for the pain they cause. Here is one abusive husband’s sorry reasoning behind his disgusting behavior:

“She hardly moved when he came in, her relaxed, splendidly indifferent posture practically begging him to slap some sense into her, as if that was possible. He rolled up his sleeves and stepped towards her without so much as a ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Time was, a woman hopped up and made herself busy when her man came through the door. Time was, insolence didn’t go steaming out of a woman like sewer gas. Where was she getting this new, foul attitude?”

Pretty hard to look inside such anger and violence, but luckily there may be relief on the horizon. The heavy lifting men he owes money to are on there way to pay him a visit. In extreme irony, these violent men, killers and knee-cap crackers are very nice to their woman, and nice to his as well.

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

#99 Me and My Enemy- Karen Heuler

#99 Me and My Enemy- Karen Heuler

For O.Henry Friday I read Karen Heuler’s prize story Me and My Enemy. Heuler herself says the story can be read on two levels “…on the literal level the story illustrates the triumph of good over evil, while on the symbolic level it cunningly confirms the victory of evil over good.” Well, now that she’s covered all her basis, lets judge for ourselves.

The narrator is a woman who has an easy welcoming demeanor and a look that makes people want to confess to. She is constantly listening to strangers most intimate problems, mostly she doesn’t mind:

“[people are] treated unkindly and that’s where the cycle must be broken: by those who can be kind. That’s all I intended—to be kind.”

When her Boss becomes overwhelming with his attachment to her it gets serious:

 “Within two weeks of our first conversation he had taken over my life.”

Then in a typical aggressive stalker cycle of jealousy and rational and abuse, she realized she has a problem:

“Where had I gone wrong? I believed, I truly believed, that I had a gift for listening—and yet it had gone wrong, terribly wrong.”

In the end a bad, delusional, confused man dies, but I don’t believe, like Heuler says, that good triumphs over evil. One evil dies, but her innocence dies with it, and all those other evils still follow her around.

“Well damn their sins.

And Damn their sorrows.

Damn them all.”

Notable Passage: “It’s amazing how misfortune sometimes chooses one special person, so the burdens pile on top of burdens, until a last small scrap brings it all crashing to a halt.”

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

#95 I’d Rather Go Blind- Jabari Asim

#95 I’d Rather Go Blind- Jabari Asim

A Taste of Honey is Jabari Asim’s collection of stories about the tumultuous cultural swings of 1968. I’d Rather Go Blind is the first of these tales, and takes place in the hot summer of 1967.

Crispus Jones is the middle child of three boys and watches as the world changes around him. His thoughts start out innocent and normal for a child, thinking only of the battle back and forth of brotherly co-existence:

“I was never allowed to even handle his brush, and using it was out of the question. After all, science had yet to prove that nappy hair was not contagious.”

Things change as innocent waves turn to black power fists, and chippy nicknames turn to Brother Charles and Brother Vaughn. A police stop turns into another local death as local blind man, and friend/mentor intervenes when cops harass a few teenagers. Crispus' brother Ed is involved and gets cut by glass in the ensuing unrest.

“To my eyes, Ed looked changed, battle-scared somehow. I wonder if a piece of glass could make so much difference.”

The whole collection is connecting stories and this piece seems to set the scene and mood for what comes next. Summer of Love? Maybe not.

Notable Passage: “Curly had once told me that I was sure to get my heart broken some day. When that day came, he said, it was best to have some Etta James on hand.” The story title comes from the Etta James song.

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#92 Two Brothers- Brian Evenson

#92 Two Brothers- Brian Evenson

Daddy Norton has fallen and broken his leg. He refuses to let his sons leave the house for help. He believes: “God has foreseen how we must proceed.” That’s the jumping off premise of this O Henry Award Prize Story. Can faith alone heal all?

While Aurel, Theron, and Mama look on in worry and doubt, “…before Daddy Norton’s pure spiritual eye, celestial messengers [cleansed] the wound with God’s Holy love.” It appears Theron is fed-up with the self-proclaimed prophet and his martyr act. He makes a series of callous remarks:  “Tell daddy to ask God what time lunch is served.”

Daddy Norton’s delirium causes him to attempt to cut his own leg off before falling back into darkness. Theron puts his father out of his misery while his mother also dies of starvation and neglect. It appears that God did not provide.

The children, scarred from this experience as well, it is assumed by the crazy upbringing being sons of a living prophet. They go feral in their empty house, naked, demented and occasionally fall into metaphysical hallucinations. They eschew outside influence, hunt their own food but hold the locked room of their dead father as something sacred.

This is pure parable and extremely well done. I wish I had a better grasp of the religious symbolism here to fully understand the references.

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