Contents

Introduction: The Art of the Short Story

Another Day at the Office

Money Matters

The Facts of Life

Spring (Heart) Break

Ode to a Game

Higher Education

Justice

For my parents, Jim and Kathy, who only gave me everything they had and more.

And in memory of Shirley Hurford.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that will cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

—Stephen King, The Body (Different Seasons)

When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

—Ursula K. LeGuin, The Farthest Shore

Introduction: The Art of the Short Story

DEFINING THE CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORY is an arduous task, mostly because its meaning has become increasingly comprehensive. Gone are the days when it was viewed as a concentrated literary form used solely to serve didactic purposes and transport an audience back in time to a foreign context. And debating the accuracy of the bare-bones definition of it being a brief, prose narrative that involves one unified episode (a la Edgar Allan Poe) would be almost impossible. However, these primitive descriptions account for only one color on its dazzling spectrum and, simply put, no longer meet what one might call the industry’s dogma.

This twenty-first century of ours is an acceptable a period as any to stake the claim that short stories are pure entertainment often containing, but sometimes not, a moral. Nevertheless, this is not to say that the writers of yesteryear focused strictly on culture or that the goal of the more modern practitioners is plain amusement, because the distinction between the two intents lies within the argument of what separates literary from commercial fiction. And that’s an economy-sized can of worms best kept unopened.

Interestingly, Edith Templeton claims that short stories are outside facts painted with subjective feelings. Along that line, Stephen King, one of history’s bestsellers, maintains that they’re artifacts: not really made things which we create, but preexisting objects which we dig up. The Roman poet Horace contended that they should first delight, then instruct. A type of subliminal learning must then occur when we’re totally immersed in a story. Ernest Hemingway once told an interviewer that we should read literature for sheer pleasure, but anything we discover on the journey is determined by what we bring to it. These collective beliefs would suggest that writers connect with readers on a perceptional level, and therefore, the measure of a particular tale’s accomplishment is tailored to each individual and how true it is to their mentality and emotions, how precisely it reflects their life. Besides, isn’t that what makes reading fiction such an endearing public, yet personal activity—unearthing what you perceive as the truth hidden within the web of lies conjured from an artist’s imagination and, if possible, defending it in classrooms, book clubs, or discussion groups?

Many people (myself included) scoff at the notion of having a universal yardstick in place for grading each story’s degree of achievement. But critics insist on continuing to use a criterion, set in stone decades ago, to ascertain their effectiveness. What if a piece has perfectly drawn characters and an intricate plot, but its content fails to spark your fascination—would you then classify the story as successful just because someone else, whose job it is to read, does? What if a work disregards the standard conventions by lacking in theme and other necessary elements, but features circumstances you can relate to and strikes a responsive chord with a few lines that articulate a feeling or belief you’ve always had but could never put into words? It’s understandable why veritable literary theorists distrust all totalizing notions of greatness…because the idea of it as a pure category is absurd. It’s impractical to have two large bins in which good works and bad works can be placed. One of my favorite scenes in any movie occurs during Dead Poets Society, when Robin Williams—playing the role of a teacher who tries to encourage his students to think freely and for themselves—demands that each pupil rip out the introductory pages of a poetry anthology because they offer a rubric for judging what is good and what is bad.

Storytelling is one of the oldest of human pleasures, and short stories are a compact source to sustain this rich tradition. Because fiction has the potential to contribute to our understanding of one another, it shrinks the world to living size. Deftly woven elements of the craft, that are present for reasons other than to just adhere to rules or meet a quota, can ignite our fancies by allowing us to vicariously experience another life. The aforementioned fabrics—as well as setting, style, and point of view—temporarily impose an augmented state of thought and sensitivity upon us. According to Franz Kafka, books can be axes for breaking up our frozen seas of isolation. Short stories might then be seen as the axes with the sharpest blades. At any rate, while the tale itself may be likened to a fossil, with the author playing the role of archaeologist, the two should have equal renown. After all, regardless of the comparisons, it is the teller who endows them, once they are contrived, with the ever-important subjectivity. Just think, how poignant could classics such as The Story of an Hour, The Yellow Wallpaper, Sonny’s Blues, and A Party Down at the Square be sans any knowledge of Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison? Not very.

My prefatory remarks here aim not to drone on about the idiosyncrasies of the short story, but primarily to celebrate its mere invention. The creation can be credited with specific changes on its route to revolutionizing the art of storytelling, and these have since become the form’s trademarks and perhaps make it more bewitching than its two associates: the novel and poem.

Stories that can be read in one sitting are understandably more attractive during an epoch of transition. Publishing pundits, who reference recent trends in the marketplace that don’t favor the form’s subsistence, may not want to admit it, but attention spans are waning by the minute as our print culture steadily declines in the wake of a society that advances technologically at the same clip. The scramble of our daily routines often prevents us (at least those of us who are willing) from plunging into books of encyclopedic length. By eliminating a surplus of scenes and condensing the action into a single situation, narratives have investigated more deeply the mannerisms and motivations of its protagonists. And greater depth of characterization is a shakedown operation performed to increase realism. In novels, this occurs over hundreds of pages, so my guess is that, as time passes, brevity and coherence will only become critical factors in drawing the largest of audiences.

The relatively newest literary mold borrowed from what I would say are the finite competent, if not clever qualities of poetry. In my opinion (please, don’t judge me by it), most poems are all rhyme and no reason, all style and no substance. By utilizing sound, symbols, images, and tone, short stories use poetic devices prosaically to give the art sharper, not obscure vision.

So without further adieu, here are seven stories—penned by me, your tour guide—about life, death, and whatever happens in between. Quite a continuum, huh? Interpret them, several of which to an extent deal with transformation, as one man’s search for meaning in the mystery we awake to every morning. Sports, work, money, greed, love, lust, loss, faith, and evil are some of the issues that will arise from here on out. Basically, they are topics of mass appeal, so those of you who proceed from here should be able to find something you like.

In concluding, I’m going to make my acknowledgments short (no pun intended) and sweet, then the real fun will begin. I’d like to thank all the people, too numerous to mention names, who helped me along the way: You persons know who you are. I’m gracious toward anyone who cracked the leather of their wallet or purse to buy this book—I appreciate your support, monetary or otherwise, for me doing what I enjoy and comes naturally. I also want to thank anyone who, like me, has used the written word to take them somewhere they’ve never been; to transcend the boundaries of reality by changing spaces, places, and time; and to explore the force of language and its power to communicate and express. Words are beautiful things. The following is my manipulation of a few.

So hold my hand tightly and grab a quilt, cup of tea, lollipop, or whatever and prepare to be swept away by the greatest mode of escapism. If my readers have any comments—good, bad, or ugly—and want to drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you. My email address is guruhoss@yahoo.com.

Keeping the form’s function in mind, it’s only suitable to end with a quote from Chinua Achebe, a native of Nigeria—a land as unfamiliar to me as the lost city of Atlantis—who is widely regarded as the forefather of African literature in English. To be human, one must have a story.

Here are mine.

Another Day at the Office

9:13 A.M.

FURRIES FELL SOFTLY like feathers from heaven on this mid-January morning, but it would be another hour or two before they start accumulating. Joy, on less than an even keel, couldn’t recall if the meteorologist on Action News had warned of the inclement weather.

She stood in a horde of pedestrians at the busy intersection of Eighteenth and JFK in the business district of Philadelphia, anticipating the red light that would halt the voluminous rush hour traffic crawling by and give her permission to cross the street. Showing no visible signs of concern about her tardiness, she threw a despairing look at the thirty-five-floor office building—the top three stories of which were occupied by her employer—on the other side. The façade, bedecked with arches, pillars, and gargoyles, was a marvel of Gothic architecture. Unaffected by its ancient splendor for almost two years now, to her it just grew in ugliness. Her focus was on the weekend that just passed and how each one never seemed long enough. The ten-pound, artificial leather briefcase that strained her shoulder tendons and forced her body to slump uncomfortably to the right only exacerbated the mood.

Yellow light.

Red light.

Blinking walk light.

The determined sound of loafers and high heels smacking the pavement on the crosswalk and then the sidewalk obscured the urban noises radiating from the surrounding metropolis. Joy paid no mind to the revolving glass door—brand-spanking new, courtesy of last month’s renovations—a majority of the workers in the building made it a point to use not only for entrance and exit, but also reassurance. Reassurance that their occupations were of a higher class or importance than most others’. Instead, she stepped inside the lobby via the old-fashioned one on hinges a few paces down, brushing beads of water from the melted snow off her attire.