Heyyyy, this is a series of shorts I'm going to intersperse between the longer pieces in my collection Your Future Life. They're kind of an antithesis to the idea of a future life as they're more about things you go through growing up, but they're also cyclical in that they are about raising a kid.
While I was going off Raymond Carver snapshots, I feel like these have more of a story to them than the Carver piece we read. There are four pieces here, "The Big Sleep," "Airbags went off," "Sunset at Bandaged Knee," and "Missile-Tow." I'll probably write one to two more. Any input on these would be great.
These shorts are all connected through one character, Jim. Whereas, the rest of the collection will be completely individual pieces. Bon appetit!
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The Big Sleep
Jim rolls around on the carpet with his family’s Black Labrador, Brutus. The two wrestle together and Jim’s mother listens to the converging sounds of the young boy’s giggles and the bounding mutt’s barks of play. Brutus is visibly excited and snaps his jaw playfully at Jim, as if he were goading the boy to take the attack. The dog stays leaning forward with his tail wagging fanatically in the air, ready to pounce. At this moment, Jim’s mother calls him to lunch and he pats Brutus on the head who follows Jim into the kitchen where he lays down under the table while the boy and his mother eat.
The next day Jim is playing in a puddle of mud with his G.I. Joe action figures, pretending they’re in the trenches on the Western Front in World War I. Absorbed in the combat, he doesn’t pay any notice to Brutus, who parades the yard marking and re-marking trees and bushes with his scent, when he tunnels his way under the fence separating their yard from the yard of the neighbors.
Four-year-old Susie is playing in her sandbox with her Barbie Malibu Beach House and matching convertible car. She tries to make an ocean by pouring a glass of water in a pit she dug in the sand but the water is quickly absorbed which greatly frustrates her. As she’s yelling at the beach scene, Brutus makes his way through the fence into Susie’s yard. Brutus barks “hello” to which Susie screams in fear because the dog is more than two times her size. The large animal runs at her and jumps playfully on her as he would with Jim. When Susie tries to fight the mutt off, he loses control and bites her hand making her shrill scream reach three octaves higher than it had when she was merely scared of the dog. This was the shriek of terror and pain.
Jim’s mother comes running out from inside the house and yells, “Oh shit! Jacob! Come quick, Brutus got into the Anderson’s yard.”
Jim’s father comes bolting out of the house and jumps the fence like it’s a hurdle, for Jim, this reaffirms his dad’s superhero status. His father rips Brutus off the girl with a harsh yank on his collar and smacks him square on the snout and asks Jim’s mother to come take the dog back into their yard. He picks Susie up, looks her over and sees a large bite on her right forearm. He tries to console her a bit as he walks around front, carrying her in his arms, and knocks on the door to explain what happened to her parents.
At the veterinarian’s office, Jim asks, “Do we really have to say goodbye to Brutus forever?” His father simply nods and lays a hand of lead on Jim’s shoulder.
The family is crammed in a small examination room and Brutus is laying on the table, Jim scratches the scruff of the dog’s neck while he licks Jim’s free hand. “Why’d you have to bite Susie? Now we can’t wrestle anymore, you big, old dog.” When the vet walks in, Jim hugs his father’s waist and hides his face.
Airbags went off
Jim is dazed in the front seat with a lapful of shattered windshield, he looks up to his father who has a cut on his forehead with a single drop of blood running down the side of his face. “Are you alright, Jim? Did you get hit by the airbag? Do you hurt anywhere? Shit, we need to get out of the car. Hurry!” Jim’s father pushes the button on Jim’s seatbelt to release it and tells him to get out of the car. He is very rushed because he thinks the smoke from the airbags is the sign of a fire. His father gets out on Jim’s side because the car that hit them blocks the driver side.
“Is that called a ‘T-Bone,’ Dad?” Jim asks pointing at the collision. The other man is still getting out of his car and has a lot more blood on his face, Jim’s father reaches into his car and pulls out some sunglasses and puts them on the young boy’s face to hide the other man’s injuries, Jim just likes to pretend he’s some really cool beach guy with them on.
“Hey, are you alright?” Jim’s father asks the man.
“Yeah, yeah. Fuckin’ airbags, man. Fuckin’ airbags.”
“I called the police, they’re on the way.”
“I’ve got a card with my address and everything on it for you, let me just go grab it.”
“I’ll go jot mine down.”
The police come and individually ask Jim’s father, the man with the bloody face, and a third person, a woman who said she saw the accident, a few questions. Then the policeman comes up to Jim and says, “How you doing, little guy? Do you have any cuts or hurt anywhere?” Jim shakes his head with his arms crossed, still trying to play the cool beach guy, then he hears the officer ask his father if either of them need to go to the hospital. Jim wonders if it was ok for the other man and his father to use those bad words because they had been in the accident and thinks it better not to ask his father yet.
Sunset at Bandage Knee
Jim rides his bike down towards the playground where he hopes he’ll see some of his friends from the neighborhood. It’s summer time Saturday and he tries to ride his bike over the curb up onto the pavement where the park stands. But the curb isn’t a curved lip like back on his street, this one is square-cut and his bike stops abruptly and throws Jim over the handlebars, scraping both his knees in the fall. He sits up and looks him self up and down and tries to touch his bloody knee but pulls his finger away immediately when the scrape starts to sting more as if it has the precognition of his plans to poke the wound. After he gets to his feet and picks up his bike, Jim walks back home with little tears running down his tiny face. His mouth contorts open in a sob however, it looks more like a big Cheshire grin. The blood trickles down his legs like the closing curtain at the theater and Jim feels the red water dribbling across his skin.
Upon arriving home, Jim throws his bike in the front lawn and runs into the house forgetting to shut the door behind him, screaming, “Mommy, mommy, come quick,” he adds a few sobs between words to help accentuate the urgency of his need. His father pokes his head through the doorway leading between the kitchen and the living room and says, “What do you need, Jim? Mom went to the grocery. What happened to your knees?”
Jim explains, slightly less teary, “I fell off my bike, I need Mom to put a band-aid on it for me to make it better.”
“Well, you don’t need her for that. I can probably even do it better than Mom.”
Jim’s father takes the boy’s hand and they walk down the hall into the bathroom where his father pulls out the First Aid kit from the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. Warning Jim, “Now this is going to sting, so grab your legs real tight and squeeze,” as he dabs the scrapes with cotton balls soaked in hydrogen peroxide.
“OW!” Jim, shocked by the jolt of pain, “This isn’t how mommy does it, she tells me a happy story when she does it and it doesn’t hurt!”
After finishing cleaning the scrapes and the dried blood from Jim’s legs, his father puts big bandages heralding his favorite cartoon character printed on them. As he stands up he ruffles Jim’s hair and says, “See, I can do it better than Mom. This is number two for your summer scrapes, right? One left!” Jim thought each knee should count towards his summer scrape count individually but figured he can handle one more so he just nodded really big while swinging his dangling legs back and forth.
Jim hops down from the bathroom vanity where his father picked him up and set him to perform the operation. He doesn’t want to admit it out loud but he thinks his father did a better job fixing his scrapes than his mother would have.
Missile-tow
Jim spends the days of December ticking off his advent calendar, every day a gift of a different chocolate or fruity candy. Every day a surprise. A big, dopey cartoon bear adorns each room behind the perforated doors, that silly grin giving the gift of sweets. Jim’s mother takes him to see Santa Claus in the city’s center square where he gets a picture taken after standing in the cold for twenty-five minutes. This is going to be worth it, Jim tells himself as he thumbs the letter in his pocket, the letter he wrote on his own to give to the humbling but slightly frightening bearded fellow.
“Well there, what’s your name?” Holly and jolly and everything Christmas, no wonder he’s called Chris Cringle, he makes his belly jingle. Jim’s grin stretches all the way around his head so that the corners of his mouth meet somewhere at the apex of his skull and spine.
“I’m Jim. I wrote you this letter. It’s about how good I’ve been and the good things I did this year just incase you may have missed something while watching someone else.”
“Ho-ho! Well, such a literate young man, a future Shakespeare, perhaps?”
Perplexed, not knowing what “Shakespeare” means, Jim just says, “The things I want are listed in the note in order of how much I want it, most wanted first.”
“I’ll be sure to study it carefully when I retire to the pole tonight, Merry Christmas!” The flashing and clicking of the camera makes Santa flash back to Vietnam, it reminds him of the sky, flashing with explosions miles away but somehow not far enough away. The picture is immortal.
When Jim returns to his mother he asks her if his father will be home when they get back because he wants to talk to his dad about the trip in to the city. He makes a note in his head to mention that he saw a few kids bigger than him crying when they were set up on Santa’s lap before him. His mother tells Jim that if his father’s not home by the time they’re back, he should be in shortly after that. Jim wonders how many people give Santa letters as good as his.
A few days before Christmas, Jim looks through a pile of new gifts wrapped and tucked way under the tree, hidden in the back. One of them reads “To: Jim; From: Santa.” He pretends to not see it and makes sure to leave milk and cookies out before going to bed the night of the eve.
Hi Ian!
I'm commenting on the first story The Big Sleep because that's all I have time for right now, but I hope to get back to the others. All the stores were very interesting to read, I thought.
TBS built a lot of tension, for me at any rate, because I'm quite scared of dogs and just recently there have been quite few killings or attacks by dogs but no legislation seems to work, indeed ownership of attack dogs seems to be on the increase. So the first point here is that this would differ from the English scene as a dog wouldn't be put down, certainly not voluntarily by its owner, just for biting someone.
The dog's name was well-chosen, as well as its colour, and added to the tension. At the same time, it is clear that its actions are provoked first by the boy and then by th child's scream. I didn't object to the continual present tense, and it occurred to me it imitates the quality of a film or cartoon as each scene is described, so there is a contemporary feel reinforced by the reference to the dad as 'superhero' when he jumps over the fence. I notice a sudden change of tense in 'This was the scream' which may be intentional but seems odd. The story's stengh is reinforced by the simple language used, which again adds to the tension because it contrasts with the violent action. In any case, the action is very clear and well-described.
A minor point of grammar I hope you don't mind me pointing out- It should be 'lie and 'lying' , not 'lay' and 'laying'.
As for the theme, I was a little bit unsure, not necessarily a bad thing. Again, the use of present tense adds mystery which seems to be a feature of the style. To me, if it was a 'coming of age' or learning experience for Jim, about the dangers of rousing aggressive instincts in dogs -and by extension, men - then there's not much sign he has learned the lesson. 'Now we can't wrestle anymore seems to imply his reaction is entirely self-regarding, not even an expression of sorrow for the dog's fate.
Maybe this is one stage in demonstrating 'father as role-model' which seems to be quite a strong element in American fiction- and you state in your intro this is part of a whole series of 'growing up' stories. Whilst we can appreciate his prompt action in being there to rescue the girl ( female as victim is a cliche I hate but I know it is generally acceptable)and to realise the dog must be destroyed, one might wonder why he didn't stop the rough-play with the dog and predict that such a large dog could tunnel under the fence.
Thanks for such an engrossing and thought-provoking read, with a topical theme capable of wide-ranging interpretations.
Oh, I get a better idea now that the stories are about the father's influence as role-model for the growing boy, shown in a series of vignettes.
The best feature of this story, 'Airbags went Off' is the way it's told from the boy's POV,focusing on the the 'name' of the type of crash and the cool image he presents wearing the sunglasses.
I was a bit confused by 'pointing at the collision' because it's already happened. Could it be 'pointing at the damaged cars?' or something like that? I don't think we have the T-Bone expression, and I thought at first it meant the collision site, as we do have T-junctions. Maybe he means the type of impact, where one car goes into the side of the other. We also get to understand from this detail it's not the father's fault, so it's clever to inclde it as part of the child's question.
The father's concern for the child comes across very clearly and we recognise it's the same man as before partly because of this, partly through the same expletive,which is a nice touch. I think the line about the smoke needs something added like ,Dad told me later', because it seems as if the boy is speculating about his father's state of mind.
I like the way the last line shows the child's growing maturity.
A great double-meaning title, too.
I think these pieces are excellent examples of the 'don't tell;show' dictum regarding characters in fiction. I look forward to reading the next one.
Sheila
Hiya Ian,
Nice to see some of your work up.
Look, here's the thing, I am a big fan of your writing style and,as much as I'd like to "help" with making it better, I don't think I can.
I'm not big on digging out underlying moral and meaning, I just like a well told story and these all do that very well.
Much better than the whole Raymond Carver thing.
I hope that you will keep us posted as to where we can acces your longer pieces once you have them all done and dusted.
Chris.....
I love the idea of this series of shorts involving the same character.Enjoyed them all. Kara was right when she said you have a very unique voice; you seem to capture the everydayness of Raymond Carver with much more of an involved story.
Can't think of much that could improve on the stories, although it might help to drop one or two of the explanations you give and concentrate on how well you tell the reader what is happening in other ways( for example, the bit where you explain why Jim's dad wants to exit the car so quickly).However, I'm fairly new to all this so Icould be very wrong!
Annette
Ian..apologies if a simialr mssage comes through twice...it's all still a bit of a mystery to me!
Just wanted to say I love your collection of 'shorts' and you have a unique voice which seems to capture the everydayness in Raymond Carver stories with a more involved storyline.
I Can't think of much that could improve them, although it might be possible to cut some of the explanations you give and allow the story to tell this - for example, the bit about why Jim's dad wants to exit the car so wuickly. Having said that, I'm quite new to writing and my advice might not be that good!Anyway, well done!
Annette
Hi Ian. Commenting on the bandage story, which was still strong but not so good as the others, possibly because of the lack of a real narrative drive, unlike the other two where one was anxious about the dog or intrigued as to the outcome of a road accident. Am I getting a bit too sceptical bout this hero dad? Maybe. Maybe you are building up to something - like feet of clay?
Should it be bandaged knee rather than bandage knee?
Looking forward to the next and wondering if my prediction could be right.
Sheila
This was an intriguing continuance and I wondered for a moment with the Viet-vet Santa's flashbacks whether Jim's dad had gone off to war, too, but I suppose he's much too old. I'm not sure the sudden change of POV to Santa works unless you give us some other clue, such words from Santa. It's a bit like the instance in the car accident when the father thinks of fire - it's something the boy can't possibly know and yet the rest of the narrative is from his POV.
This is a very cosy, well-organised family, a bit too Norman Rockwell , if you know what I mean, so the reminder of an outside world where real conflict is happening is a good thing. I think it should intrude on the family in some way so as to add narrative interest but I'm not sure how you are going to do it.
I hope some of my comments have been useful and thank you for posting these - a most enjoyable read.
Sheila
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