Portland Monthly features Wordstock Short Fiction 2008 competition winner "Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed"

Kurt Rheinheimer's 2008 Wordstock Short Fiction Competition–winning story, "Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed" appears in the December issue of Portland Monthly.

But it's comma, comma, comma, comma, comma chameleon over there at Portland Monthly, which features three variations on punctuating the title. We have the online version:

Calendar Girl, Arrested. Freed [comma following "Girl"; period after "Arrested"]

Then there is the title as it appears in the print version:

Calendar Girl, Arrested, Freed [comma following "Girl" and another comma after "Arrested"]

Finally, there is the title as it appears on the contents page of the print version:

Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed [comma following "Arrested"]

So which, if any of these, is correct? That would be the punctuation you find on the contents page of the print version: "Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed" (with the online version being, perhaps, the greatest violator of original intent):

But look at me, getting all hung up over some silly commas and a period. This story is so good it doesn't matter how you punctuate the title, and how many stories out there can make that claim? I could actually apply some simplistic literary analysis to justify each of these variations, and thereby reveal some hitherto-unsuspected genius to some carefully crafted editorial decisions, but Kurt would undoubtedly step in and tell me to just stop it, and stop it now.

To which I say, "OK, I, will, stop, it, now."

And the winner(s) is/are . . .

I see that the winners of the Wordstock 10 Short Fiction competition are not posted at the Wordstock page, so I’ll put them here for those you googling “Wordstock 10 winners,” or the like. Let’s run them down in the order they appear in The Wordstock Ten: Finalists from the 2008 Wordstock Short Fiction Competition, which is now available for purchase online (all entrants can look for their complimentary copy in the mail in the coming weeks):

First Prize Winner: Kurt Rheinheimer for “Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed”

An odd and oddly-told tale of a young women, one Bimini Padgett, who inexplicably lives at a shopping mall, where she works at a calendar kiosk. It’s all told as a newspaper report, but the reporter can’t ever get objective enough to stand outside the situation and just tell the story. What is this thing, anyway? Is this a parody of newspaper writing? Is it social commentary on our consumer culture? Is it just a prolonged and carefully construed joke? Or what? Here’s what Ursula Le Guin, the final judge, had to say: “It works marvelously, with ‘this reporter’ becoming an increasingly real presence. A very funny, subtle story, which covers a lot of ground without seeming to, takes big risks and gets away with them, [and] ends brilliantly. . . .” See if you can read this story and resist the temptation to get a copy of Kurt’s 2005 collection, Little Criminals. I couldn’t.

Second Prize Winner: Brendan Kerr for “The Sunbather”

In a competition like this you’re bound to see a lot of great descriptive writing, and so it’s a real feat to get recognition for a story that obtains its gravity from its sensual description. That alone makes “The Sunbather” stand out. But there’s a lot of just-beneath-the-surface stuff going on in this coming-of-age story, too. Here’s Ursula Le Guin again: “[T]he movement of this story is elegant and precise, using the consciousness of the boy to bring a dead dog, a sick mother, and the girl next door all into a precarious and significant balance, while never belaboring the significance.” Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.

Third Prize Winner: Gregory Loselle for “Buried Dinner”

As the narrator digs in his side yard in an attempt to shore up the foundation of his sinking home, he discovers artifacts of a broken relationship that parallel his own recent experiences with his estranged wife, Brenda. Like “Calendar Girl Arrested, Freed,” this is a story without a straightforward narrative; and like that story, it’s richly comic (in spite of the various tragedies that befall the narrator). “The story is a strong, open metaphor, well carried out,” as Ursula Le Guin said.

Ursula Le Guin also extends her congratulations to all the finalists, assuring us that she enjoyed every story and found selecting three prize winners difficult. Here are the other finalists, listed alphabetically by author’s last name, just as they appear in the book:

Linda Barnhart, “Zagharoot”

When a woman gets a phone call from her ex-husband, who has just lost her job at a massage parlor because she has been exposed as a transsexual, she (the ex-wife) takes up the supporting friend role she (the ex-wife) has always played for her (the ex-husband). This is a story that promises to never be boring and always be more than a little offbeat. The final scene is proof that Fellini wasn’t an oddball surrealist; he was just visionary.

Danya Bush: “Looks Like Newsprint”

Two young girls fall in love at ballet school, and from there a tragedy develops. This one is a little like Dead Poets Society transferred to a Degas painting, with the emphasis on Degas and impressionism. In this short piece, there is a simple, poetic language that develops quickly to put you right there at that school and into the narrator’s point of view. Surprisingly effective.

Gregg Cusick: “My Father Moves Through Time Like a Dirigible”

I first came across this amazing piece while screening stories for the competition, and my first response was to go back and read it again when I reached the end. That’s unusual; if you’ve ever been involved in that sort of process, you’ll know that you typically are looking for every reason to move on and just get it over with. But “My Father Moves Through Time Like a Dirigible” screams to be read again and again. Here’s what goes on in this story: An 83-year-old man tells about his efforts to get his local middle school drama department to produce the play he’s written about the crash of the Shenandoah. But as the piece develops, you realize that you are both stuck in and freed of all temporal constraints. If that sounds nutty, so be it. This is a nutty story--it’s hilarious, it’s tragic, it’s completely original. You can forgive yourself for thinking by the end of this story that the narrator is not really the 83-year-old man he insists that he is throughout. He’s really his 43-year-old son or possibly the principal of the middle school himself. Or maybe he’s just another 13-year-old schoolboy attending the middle school and watching the school play as a plywood blimp floats from one side of the stage to the other. If none of this makes sense, you are forgiven. You must read the story for context. It’s brilliant.

Norman Girault: “You Must Remember This”

This one I’d better not give away too much--it’s way too much fun to read through the whole story of the WWII nurse known as “Nurse Beaver”--and yes, the nickname applies just as you may fear it does. Of all the stories in this collection, this is the one with the most epic sweep, covering several sub-plots and many decades, all leading up to a punchline that makes it as memorable as any of your favorite jokes. It’s just pure joy.

James Gish, Jr.: “Voices of the Doomed”

Many years after the fact, the narrator delivers her coming-of-age story, which involves her best friend from childhood, Brendy, and a promise they make to one another. The setting is Bible-belt America, and the details appropriately gothic and ominous. I love the ending, where the narrator finally keeps her promise, in a fashion.

Jendi Reiter: “The Albatross”

Sometimes the order of these stories doesn’t seem so arbitrary. Following “Voices of the Doomed” with this story turns this collection into one that gives a brief glimpse into the dark side of religious fervor. But whereas “Voices of the Doomed” comes more from Flannery O’Connor territory, “The Albatross” features one quite precocious child of New England amid something more like classic American Puritanism, possibly a Salinger character. Funny and poignant.

Lones Seiber: “The Way Home”

This is just a great yarn. A woman gets a call informing her that her Uncle Ray and Aunt Helen have died. As the story develops and we learn about the significance of this aunt and uncle, we (like the narrator) get increasingly less interested in the advice of the other characters who tell the narrator what to do. In the end, she makes the only decision that makes perfect sense, to our great satisfaction.

I’ll second Ursula Le Guin: Congratulations to all the finalists; the fine writing and great imagination poured into each one makes for a great collection the second year running.

Sissy and Cash Behind the Counter: Margaret Malone’s “Minor Theatre”

The final finalist featured in the Wordstock 2007 Short Fiction collection is a great companion piece to the preceding story, “Corinth Behind the Counter.” Margaret Malone’s “Minot Theatre” also deals with an ambiguous relationship, but the two characters—known mainly by the names they put on their work badges in jest, Sissy and Cash—in Malone’s story are young hipster types working together at a movie theater, rather than the frumpy Corinth and her would-be suitor Lloyd. You can throw that distinction aside, though, and spend more time contemplating how two people obviously attracted to one another can get a lot out of their relationship if they don’t pair up.

You also get a lot out of these stories as a reader. Margaret Malone shares with the rest of the writers featured in this collection a real talent for description, with a knack for selecting just the right details at the right time. Here’s how she describes their work:

They are in the dark movie house, theater number two of two. They are supposed to be cleaning up, dumping whatever they find into the thick, black trash bags they drag from row to row, or offering what is left behind to lost and found or each other. What they ditch might be popcorn bags or empty cups, burrito wrappers, wet socks, beer bottles, bike locks, batteries, a flip flop, occasionally a syringe or used condom, and one time a pair of industrial strength black rubber gloves. What they might put in the big cardboard box in the office which is akin to opening their pockets could be glasses, keys, wallets, cash, knit caps, sweatshirts, CDs, scarves, coffee mugs, and once a journal written by a girl that was living in a van with her boyfriend who sold pot outside the supermarket, sometimes he would bite her when they kissed, it said, bite until she bled. They should be sweeping kernels off the floor. But the theater is pretty clean as is and she is tired, out drinking the night before, avoiding going home, avoiding less rumpled sheets and new familiar space that used to be filled with a couch and a boyfriend and his records lining the perimeter of the baseboard, alphabetical and pristine despite a proper shelf, a jagged alphabet trail leading a listener through three walls of living room and one wall of loft. Her boyfriend had liked his own things separate from hers. He did not like to share. An only child until late in life, sharing was just an extension of all the things that eventually went wrong with his family. So she let him.

It’s the eve of Wordstock 2008, so I’ll just give one last congratulations to last year’s batch of finalists before the unveiling of the 2008 finalists tomorrow.

Corinth Stands Behind the Counter, Just Beyond Lloyd's Reach

Jennifer Springsteen’s “Corinth Behind the Counter” opens with a scoop of egg salad transferred on to a piece of toast, then assembled and passed on to Lloyd, your prototypical ’50s lunch counter gourmand.

The bygone era of the drugstore lunch counter is captured perfectly in this story, and that atmosphere in turn is perfect for conveying the frustrated relationship between Lloyd and Corinth, his lunch-counter crush.

Did I say frustrated? But that implies something never stated in the story. It’s testament to Springsteen’s ability to tap into the power of understatement that we can read this story and fully get the psychology of Lloyd, some of which is achieved just by discussing his understanding of the perfectly made egg- or tuna-salad sandwich.

Other things happen in this story. Corinth’s mother dies and she is forced to leave the lunch counter in the hands of her less-than-capable sister, leading to the central drama of the story: Lloyd’s angst.

And if you get nothing else from the story, it should inspire you to appreciate an American classic, as in the case of this reader:

I liked Jennifer Springsteen's "Corinth Behind the Counter" so much, I got right up and made egg salad sandwiches. Enjoy.

Congratulations to Jennifer Springsteen for being awarded third prize in the Wordstock 2007 Short Fiction Competition. Watch this space for the prize winners and finalists for 2008.

Next Up in The Wordstock Ten: Samantha Hudson's "Reprieve"

What's a wife to do? Seek a reprieve, I suppose.

And so the wife, Maura, of "Reprieve" arranges for piano lessons for "the Vanden girl," a 14-year-old neighbor named Catherine, each Sunday afternoon. The husband will give the lessons. The music will assimilate with the afternoon air. Maura will lie by the pool.

"Reprieve" is is thus imbued with tremendous atmosphere and meditative quiet. Just barely under the surface, though, the drama is explosive. Maura will not tolerate her husband, and as the years go by does she become attracted to the Vanden girl? If so, it's a neat trick, as the husband fixates on on another possible lover, Daniel Hammond. Whatever the relationship--Catherine as surrogate daughter? Catherine as lost sibling or resurfaced childhood best friend?--that relationship is loaded with significance.

But as soon as I discuss this story, assertions melt away. To even raise the possibility of a physical attraction between Maura and the Vanden girl is preposterous--there's no evidence for it. This story is all about impressions of events, but where the events described are clear, the impressions are likely to be quite different from one reader to the next.

I suppose a small excerpt should be given by way of demonstration. Here's how it starts, our first taste of these three inscrutable characters:

Sundays were what Maura used to call a reprieve. Then, he wasn’t sure how she meant it.

“Peyton,” she’d say, “isn’t it about time for your reprieve?” and he’d shuffle off to the den, where he had begun giving piano lessons to the Vanden girl from a few streets over. Maura had set it up, when the Vanden girl was around fourteen. That first time, Peyton had waited on the piano bench. He’d worn his suit from work even though it was Sunday, but as soon as Maura had pushed the ratty Vanden girl into the room and shut the stained glass parlor doors behind her, he’d known it was unnecessary. The Vanden girl didn’t require suits. She wore shorts, sandals, and a purple halter top. Where did he get that word, halter top? Teaching at the high school had pushed all sorts of unnecessary things into his head, things he ran across unexpectedly and unhappily.

This story sets up perfectly the final two stories in The Wordstock Ten 2007 edition. I'll be writing up those two stories--"Corinth Behind the Counter" and "Minor Theatre"--just in time for the 2008 edition.

The greatest anti-story ever told: "Thor" by Rachel Sims

One of the greatest movies I know--I guess if I owned movies I’d own it on DVD or something--is My Dinner with Andre. Don’t know it? It’s great! Here’s the story: Two men meet in a restaurant, have dinner, then go home. Now have I got your attention? (I mean, imagine the special features for that one!)

The fact is, though nothing happens in My Dinner with Andre, it’s the one movie I can think of that is closest to being about absolutely everything, such is the conversation that takes place between the two characters. And the writing is so good you sometimes just swim in the dialogue.

And so Rachel Sims’ “Thor” from The Wordstock Ten comes to mind. What happens in “Thor”? A little less than My Dinner with Andre, actually, since Thor invites his friend Nona for dinner, but she ultimately has to cancel. Compared to My Dinner with Andre, we’re short one character and one meal. If it weren’t about all of creation (and all of destruction), “Thor” would be the Seinfeld of short stories, about absolutely nothing.

Thor (Thorbjorn Raimonds, the main character) is obsessed with creation, though he himself only seems capable of destruction. The story begins with Thor surveying the floor of his bedroom upon awakening. The night before, he had taken a pair of shears and cut all his white shirts into strips which now lie in a bedside heap. As we get to know Thor, and his fascination with the making of noodles, the connection seems clear: The long thin strips of shirts are his (ultimately destructive) act in the service of attempting to match his friend Nona’s skill in creating noodles.

It should be mentioned that the prose of “Thor” is refined, restrained even, so that Nona is referred to as Thor’s friend, though Nona as love-interest (the very first sentence tells us Thor is thinking of how “her hair felt too clean when it rustled shinily past her long nose”) is never far beneath the surface. Their level of intimacy is never discussed, however, in favor of other aspects of their relationship. Thor, after all, is the thunder god—a destructive force; while Nona serves as a counterweight goddess of creation. And so the two define one another and are always in one another’s presence. Even when apart from her, we are told Thor holds her in constantly in mind.

And so as the story progresses, focusing primarily on Thor’s thoughts and observations, we begin to realize just how sweeping such thoughts can be. A story that starts with a glimpse of a small act of destruction concludes with the end of everything. The final paragraph of this story is worth reading again and again. Writers will pay attention to the delicate treatment of verb tenses and marvel at the poetry invoked by the subjunctive and the present tense; the general reader experiencing this prose more viscerally will feel something like what we used to call profound back when I was in school. Here it is:

Thor sometimes imagined that the end of the world would be quiet and would come on such soft feet that no one would know it had been and gone. He imagined that the end would be a weakly sunny day with a bracing wind from the west, maybe a Saturday or a Monday. He would stand by a sleek kitchen counter and watch as Nona made her noodles, and the radio would be telling a story about how whales sing to each other, and there might be a small person underfoot, one with rustling hair who liked knees more than hugs. It would be a quiet moment when he thinks perhaps the wind has stopped, and looks outside to watch the trees glittering, and still, and is hopeful that things have changed abruptly and that he can go out. It would be a long moment, within the constraints of momenthood, and the walls would glow like the sky, the clouds still running up high where they run. Then the wind would start again, and Thor imagined that he would turn back to Nona’s hands, and their creation. He would turn away from the rustling trees and there would be Nona, and the noodles. But something would have changed, almost imperceptibly, a change all over the world. A tiny change in being, but so profoundly affecting, and outside the sky would keep blowing by. But as Thor imagined it, that would be the end.

“Thor,” I must admit, is a personal favorite in The Wordstock Ten, a collection that has potential personal favorites all over the place.

This story is a great transition into the final three stories of this collection, all of which deal with more defined, “real” characters, and all of them in ambiguous relationships.

"Dessert" by Tina Ontiveros

The call has gone out for submissions to the next Wordstock Short Fiction competition, but wait! I still haven't finished writing about the last round of finalists. I left off just as I got to "Dessert."

I begin with four questions:

Ever been married?
Ever had a kid?
Ever had sex?
Ever tried all three?

Actually, the fourth one is the only question that really matters in Tina Ontiveros' "Dessert," a story that gets its dramatic juice from its ability to make us married-with-children types squirm.

The set-up for the story seems completely innocent: A couple's daughter is going to attend a friend's birthday party. Watch the tension build, though, as the three of them--mom, dad, and Olive (the child) unwittingly compete to get what they want out of the scenario. You'll have to read the story to see where it goes, but don't be surprised as each scene elevates the drama and builds toward the inevitable, er . . . climax.

Have you heard the one about the farmer's daughter? The farmer's wife? The farmer himself?

[I will return to writing my comments on all the WS10 stories. I believe this is where I had left off after Pamela Rentz's "Social Security."]

MATTHEW KORFHAGE'S "Ours, All of It"
Here's a writing assignment for you: Tell an American story, but not just a story taking place in America, with a display of qualities you perceive to be American. These qualities may include fierce independence, such as a Hammett/Chandler/MacDonald detective; they may include charlatanism, such as a Hawthorne villain; or a twisted spiritualism, such as you might find in an O'Connor story. You may imbue your characters with any number of these or other traits you may consider unique to the American psyche--aspirations to great wealth and fame, ambiguous puritanism, an inclination toward the metaphysical, distrust of large institutions. Any of these characteristics (and many others) would serve your purpose, if you want to populate your story with events and characters that tell an American Story.

But that's not the assignment. The assignment is to, in 5000 words or less, create a story that is not just an exemplary American story, but a story that actually is America. You want to both convey America and include America. You cannot tell this story without presenting America as a character.

What would you write?

I put all this out to suggest a way to think about Matthew Korfhage's "Ours, All of It," because I think that this is the task that Korfhage has set before himself.

The result is difficult, if not impossible, to describe. Here is a farmer with his wife and daughter traveling in their truck, on their way to deliver their harvest. That's really about it, and it all sounds so innocent, so archetypal, until we learn the grain they haul is headed for the trash, essentially, for this is the grain the farmer gets paid not to grow, or to dump should its introduction to the market create a glut.

We all know about this arrangement, how food production is controlled in this country in order to prevent gluts in the market, in order to protect prices. But we also intuit just how painfully un-American this feels to us, having been raised to understand that hard work (and perhaps only hard work) will be rewarded. But the America we live in is nothing if not schizophrenic; I am always intrigued by the rhetoric we hold dearest: We are a free people, Our markets are free, government is not the solution but the problem, we defeated communism. These are our words of comfort, but Korfhage's family farm is real, and the way it flies in the face of something we call the American Dream is all too familiar.

I have to admit that the first time I picked up this story, I saw the title as humorous, grabbing me the way, say, a Moss Hart title might. Then I started reading and was just lit up by the dazzling prose. By the time I got through this mini-masterwork, though, reflecting on the huge gap this country has between its ideals and its realities, knowing that every bit of it belongs to us, I wasn't laughing.

That dazzling prose? Here's the first paragraph:

So suppose the sky that day looked like America, with piled-high clouds wind-mown into furrows of cotton and cropdusting and projected against a luminous, gaping bluescreen firmament, the sparse greens and browns of trees and houses cutting paper-thin relief into the bowed expanse, all of it seeming to scream out the tragic possibilities of wide open spaces even as the sky tucked and buckled down to the land supporting it; and suppose that in the middle of all that America, the one on the ground and not the one above it, there was a mammoth, red, rust-mottled and beveled-edged Ford F-250 going sixty, sixty-five, seventy on a ribbon of blue-black asphalt hugging flush against the low, imperceptible Midwestern lists and sways, and that inside the pick-up there were one father, one mother, and one daughter, each one pale-skinned and sun-freckled under a dull, brown head of hair. So say there were three.

Watching the Knife: Pamela Rentz’s “Social Security”

If you were paying attention in your creative writing class, you learned about the principle of “Chekhov’s gun,” which states, essentially, that if you show a pistol on the mantel in act one, it had better be fired in act three. For a neat variation on that, how about we coin “Rentz’s knife”? That’s the principle that states if a knife is slipped into a pantleg, see to it that a potential revolution is at hand.

Now let’s throw in another maxim, something attributed to Ronald Reagan (and now often quoted by Ron Paul, the Internet’s favorite presidential candidate, though lately apparently usurped by—yikes!—Romney): The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

Pamela Rentz’s story in The Wordstock Ten “Social Security,” then, may be the only short story in the universe inspired by both Anton Chekhov and Ronald Reagan (Hello REAGAN AND CHEKHOV googlers! Thank you for stopping by).

The setting for all this could not be more perfect; here is Lewis Cedar Creek, and American Indian, living in a godforsaken community—presumably a reservation—that offers no hope for the future or anything resembling The American Dream. Instead, hope is represented by the government officials who come through once or twice a month, announcing, I suppose, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” So it is that the natives overrun by the U.S. government are now at the mercy of that same government.

Lewis Cedar Creek’s frustration with trying to cash a social security check becomes the center of the story, but the appearance of a knife shoved into a pantleg creates the dramatic possibility of an on-the-spot uprising. You need to read the story to see how it all turns out.

The story of the American Indian everybody knows, but the real star of the story—in spite of my above ramblings—is Pamela Rentz’s prose and pitch-perfect dialogue. So let’s leave off with the opening of the story as a sampling of her talent:

ON THE FIRST OF EVERY MONTH, Lewis Cedar Creek, a gray-haired Karuk Indian with caterpillar eyebrows and deep creases in his forehead that formed a stern expression even when none was intended, stepped out onto what was left of his front porch. He shucked his sweatshirt and tossed it back inside before the screen door shut behind him. The morning was a sizzler and only going to get worse. The brown grass curled against the dirt in defeat.

He used a wire twist to fasten the screen door, bolted the trailer door, then slid a rusted sheet of metal from Gerry Charles’ smoke house in front of the door. He attached the metal to the door with a heavy chain and a large padlock he’d taken from an abandoned truck right at the time the world tilted and the looters became the fortunate ones. The padlock was busted, but the sight of it discouraged the curious.

Pamela Rentz’s “Social Security” was awarded 2nd prize in the competition. Congratulations to her.

"The Creek" in Porland Monthly Magazine

The December issue of Portland Monthly is on sale everywhere, which means that Joshua Michael Riedel's "The Creek" is getting some much-deserved attention, plus it is now accompanied by a great Jillian Tamaki illustration. Of course, the story is also the first story featured in The Wordstock Ten, where it appears with nine other fine stories. Read more about the first three of those stories here, where more write-ups will appear soon.

A change of pace for The Wordstock Ten: Jacob Aiello’s “Call Me Ishmael”

I’d be tempted to say that the first two stories in The Wordstock Ten are stories of heartbreak. In a way, are not all coming-of-age stories really loss-of-innocence stories? And is loss of innocence not the ultimate heartbreak?

If that’s the case, then a story of return to innocence ought to be a heart-healing one, but in fact the premise is false—there is heartbreak and heart-healing in both rediscovery and in loss of innocence. Jacob Aiello’s “Call Me Ishmael” is exemplary. It’s a story of an incomplete man made whole. I should reach end of this piece in full rejoice, so why is my heart in my throat?

No spoilers ahead, but here are the conditions of “Call Me Ishmael”: The protagonist, a family man in need of a healing experience, solicits a prostitute for (non-sexual) favors that will help him put to rest a demon of his own past with his own mother as he moves forward in his relationship with his own son. I hope that is a both sufficiently vague and enticing synopsis.

There are great touches everywhere: the whale you expect to encounter from the story’s title shows up on the first page of not Melville, but of Rudyard Kipling’s Just-So Stories. The opening scene, a completely seedy street encounter with the prostitute, moves to a surreal, almost-comic, hotel scene with that prostitute, to the final act of supreme innocence. The story moves with ease from scene to scene to wash away any ambivalence you may have felt about the protagonist.

To put it another way, the hero acts out the tenet expressed in Edward Albee’s memorable line, uttered by Jerry in “The Zoo Story”: “Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.” There’s a very short distance the protagonist travels at the end of the story, to simply read to his child a favorite story from his own childhood, but the events preceding that simple act lend all the significance in the world to that final tableau.

In the frenetic spirit of early George Jones, K.Fann's "Little Herons" follows "The Creek"

George Jones excelled at this sort of thing. In 1962 alone, he had eight albums released on three labels. He was a Zen master of country music—just don’t give him time to overthink the process, and he’d bring home the hit records. Later in his career he had too much time, I contend, to drink and bring in a string section. Quality was the victim.

And so it was that The Wordstock Ten attained its je ne sais quoi, since the ordering of stories was determined by the order I received them and plunked them in for page layout. There was no time for the “concept album” treatment. I was too busy reading, re-reading, sending out and retrieving proof pages to and from authors. There wasn’t time to sit down and look at the big picture ordering of things. Themes . . . transitions . . . segues . . . DEADLINE.

So this raises the question—what if the Tom Editorial Brain (TEB) had been introduced in this process? Would the ordering of these pieces be “better”? Hindsight being 20-20, I can say quite definitively: No, I think not. The core material could withstand any ordering, actually, and this extra bit of effort may have yielded simply a different arrangement, no better and no worse than any other. I think it’s safe to say it wouldn’t have mattered to George Jones, anyway.

So the randomly-appointed second story in The Wordstock Ten was not awarded second prize, but it is—as if some hand of genius were actually guiding the process—another coming-of-age story, one that fits very easily as a twin to accompany “The Creek.” K.Fann’s “Little Herons” is also an American Pastoral, but it brings in heavier elements of the three S’s: surrealism, symbolism, and eroticism. Or hold on—that’s two S’s and an E, isn’t it? How about sensuality? Better.

K.Fann adopts the voice of a young girl who, with her sister, follows a mysterious Huck Finn–type character named Audubon out to a remote place to learn about the enigmatic tar fruit tree. Do I need to add that the bitter, sour, inedible tar fruit gets its sweetness from mixing with human flesh? As the three youths learn together, the fruit will not reveal its delectable secret unless it is licked from the skin.

What does this mean? The symbolism of the tar fruit runs deeper than you may think, and any more about it here may just put ideas in your head. Or further reveal the limitations of the TEB.

Wordstock Short Fiction competition comes of age: "The Creek" by Joshua Michael Riedel

In the end, I was lucky; but I wondered from the start what I’d think of the outcome. I signed on to help judge the Wordstock Short Fiction competition in its inaugural year. An unknown fiction competition could very easily, I suppose, have a rough time of it. Submissions may not be first-rate. You may end up announcing finalists and winners, knowing deep down that you are working with—let’s just say it—thin material.

Nope. Not this competition, not this time. We have ended up with a tremendous collection here, with The Wordstock Ten, and it seems therefore quite appropriate that the story selected as the overall “Best in Show” is a coming-of-age piece, Joshua Michael Riedel’s “The Creek.”

As with all great coming-of-age stories, you’ll read this and recognize your own youth in it. No, I didn’t grow up with a creek behind my house, much less a haunted creek. And my parents were not divorced or even separated. The staid ease of my childhood compared against this protagonist’s may seem enviable.

But this is effective story-telling, and the details of the hero’s life don’t bog down the big-picture, big-humanity effect of the events. The invitation to wander beneath the surface comes out early and strong—the first paragraph introduces the creek as an out-the-backdoor, through-the-window feature of the narrator’s home. In your mind’s eye you want to capitalize the main elements right away: Door, Window, Creek, Home. The Creek is a place where the kids in this neighborhood gather to socialize, make rules, create ritual. The events that unfold are a reminder that the surface has a spirit; the soul is the true wanderer in this world, occasionally trapped in its skin.

Congratulations to Josh Riedel as the first overall winner of the first Wordstock Short Fiction competition. “The Creek” will appear in the December issue of Portland Monthly magazine. It appears now as the first story in The Wordstock Ten, leading off a stellar collection.

When the competition was over and the winners selected, I got to put together the book. The finalists’ names were then revealed to me, and I got to go through this collection with each of the writers represented, fixing straggling typos or other last-minute gilding-the-lily activities. I’ll be writing more about these pieces in the days ahead, but for now I encourage you to go read “The Creek,” and read the other nine stories here (Hey, we outdid Salinger by one—not bad). I’d like to know readers’ other favorite stories in the collection—let me know in the comments or at tsumner at fbeedle dot com.