Dear Readers and Writers,
We are so pleased to offer you this talented collection of stories, each dealing with life transitions as told in varied styles. Indeed, we move from Nelson’s realism to Greene’s humorous fantasy piece, to two short shorts—a minimalist one by Oyebode and an experimental tale by Duban—to end with Christopher’s more realistic narrative about the possibility of becoming an artist.
Kent Nelson’s ironic yet compassionate story tells of a woman who, because of her father’s illness, must return to her hometown, where she knows almost everyone, and leave her exotic life in Madagascar. We are pleased to bring Kent’s distinguished, distilled writing style to our large online audience.
From “Distances Impossible to Know”: “Queenie had been at her father’s desk at the Massey-Ferguson dealership in Chadron, Nebraska, for almost a month since her return from Madagascar. In that time she’d fired lazy Lefty Gilday and Toot Banks, both of whom drank on the job. Neither had sold a tractor or combine harvester or a baler in more than eight months. She wasn’t cleaning house so much as clearing deadwood.”
Stephanie Greene’s “Acts of God” is a laugh-out-loud short short about a recent bride who visits her in-laws in Florida. Despite her “dippy hostess presents and yawning need for family,” she finds no welcome with them in her new life. In a possible act of God, a sinkhole takes her mother-in-law from the yard. “A tiny, livid widow tanned almost mahogany, she was sunning herself in the back yard when there was a whooshing sound. She looked with irritation up at my window—as if it was something stupid I’d done . . . And then the ground opened up and she disappeared: the whole lawn chair, complete with diet coke, movie mags and her bikinied self.”
Tunde Oyebode’s short short “Immaculate Education” is remarkable for the depth of feeling conveyed in just a few scenes. The narrator recollects a pivotal moment during his school days in Lagos City when a girl runs screaming from class and the children learn what the biology teacher did to cause her such pain. Although he attended one of the best schools, the narrator wonders what he really learned there. “Now in your thirties in London, thoughts of that day surface and you wonder what type of education that was. Because when you think about it—when you dig deep and sort through your thoughts and anxiety with people and authority—you remember seeing the new biology teacher also talking to students in grey pleated skirts, outside the classroom.”
Tara Dugan weaves a coming-of-age story in “Brilliant Boy, Savior Girl” when the narrator’s homeless uncle comes to live with them. The uncle is a broken man who tries to fix what is broken, paying homage by lighting candles to the people who never got a chance in life. The narrator adds another candle in honor of a classmate who chooses as their gender identity “neither/nor.” “For every Chavela Vargas and Michael Dillon and RuPaul there’s a million more people who were told they had to pick this candle or that candle and weren’t allowed any other choice . . . they had to keep choosing, every day. Picking a fight, even.”
Elizabeth Christopher also writes of inner movement but one possibly back to art. From “Blue Hour”: “I’d stop at the sea wall and look through my fingers like a viewfinder at my father leaning against the rusted trunk in his cut-offs taking a drag of his cigarette. I clawed my toes into the sand, can’t we stay? … No, he said and asked why would I want to stay when the best part of the day—the blue hour, when everything was still possible—had already passed.”
Join us in exploring this diversity of choices, of possibility during dark times.
Lee Hope, Fiction Editor & Karen Halil, Associate Fiction Editor
