New Stories From the South 2010: The Year's Best

by Amy Hempel

  Your mother knelt to pick up the strewn napkins. You were just on the other side of the door now, trying not to giggle and preparing your ambush. Maybe you knew we were onto you, maybe not. I joined your mother on the floor. I felt like we were praying or giving thanks or mourning. The kitchen tile was cool, hard. We were listening to you breathe, waiting for you to strike. We were on our hands and knees, our bodies low to the ground like strange and ancient creatures.

  Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of Corpus Christi: Stories and the editor of Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. His stories have previously appeared in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2008. Currently, he teaches in the Bennington College Writing Seminars and is the director of creative writing at Harvard University. More information can be found at www.bretanthonyjohnston.com.

  Originally, this story had a very funky and metafictional ending, a long and dense and syntactically snazzy final paragraph that commented on the uniquely human act of writing stories. It would have blurred the line between fiction and autobiography; it would have pitted the slipperiness of memory against the traditional reader’s desire for a reliable narrator and a satisfyingly consequential narrative arc; it would have, I felt not one doubt, made you think, “That BAJ, he’s one smart puppy!” It was just awful.

  So I went back through the story, taking inventory, retracing not my steps but the characters’. I paid attention to where they were in their hearts and fears and desires (and where they were in their house), and only then did I realize the son had been listening in on his parents. I was surprised and relieved to find him there, as I knew his parents would be, as I hoped the reader would be.

  Thanks go to Julie Barer and Daniel Menaker, and to Sven Birkerts and Bill Pierce at AGNI, and to the woman in a pet store who said Pets aren’t deadly as I was buying a thirty-pound bag of Eukanuba low residue dry dog food. I remember being struck by the woman’s assertion, remember walking to my truck thinking, Really? Really? I didn’t rush home to write the story, I never do that, but as I drove away I knew a story was out there, knew I was heading in its general direction.

  Ben Stroud

  ERASER

  (from One Story)

  Two Deadly Fish

  I lift up the lid of the livewell and look inside. A couple fish—bass, largemouth—sit in place, not really swimming.

  “What’s up, fish?” I say.

  The fish open their mouths and close them, which is about all they do. You can’t tell by looking at them, but they’re poisoned—like, if you eat too many, you go blind, or crazy, or you become sterile or someshit. They’ve got signs at the pier and boat ramp, no more than two fish a week. It’s the fish’s revenge, I guess, even though it’s really the big power plant that sits on the side of the lake that does it.

  “Fish don’t need hassling,” my stepfather says to no one, meaning me.

  I close the lid.

  Usually, whenever my stepfather wants to tell me something, he’ll make some general comment or filter what he’s got to say through my mom instead of just talk to me. Not that I’m complaining.

  I go sit behind the steering wheel and look at the screen mounted there. It shows how deep the lake is below the boat, and the size of any fish passing below. I wonder if it would show a dead body, if there’s a picture programmed in it for that. See, son, a dad’ll say, tapping on the screen, that’s a child. We only need the small net.

  “Monster off the port bow!” I shout when a large fish swims on screen, to be helpful.

  My stepfather ignores me.

  My mom reads her book.

  The fish swims away.

  A Choice of Ends

  I don’t like to fish. I just don’t. Maybe it’s genetic. My dad never fished, and we were never big on any of the typical father-son stuff. Like the one time I dragged him outside to play catch, the ball missed my glove on the first throw and bounced off my skull and over the fence.

  Instead, my dad used to take me to Civil War battlefields, reenactments, history talks where minié balls and pottery shards were passed around the audience of old people and us. He left three years ago, when I was nine. He got a new job in Shreveport and told my mom he needed to start over in the city. Which is pretty funny. I mean, have you seen Shreveport?

  Once, before I discovered I don’t like to fish, I was baiting my hook with a cricket. A live cricket. I, who was never one of those boys that likes torturing insects or cats or anything, could not get around the central fact of this action: the sticking of the hook through the cricket’s (live!) abdomen. The cricket jumped in my fingers, twitching its legs. I brought the hook to its side, pushed a little, then my fingers loosened and the cricket got away. Chasing it, I knocked over the carton of crickets, a dozen more got out, and the one I was chasing jumped into the lake. So there you go. Drowning versus impaling.

  If given the choice, I think I’d do the same.

  Exhibit A

  A while back my stepfather was cooking dinner when he told me to drop a piece of chicken into the Fry Daddy.

  “Gotta learn how to cook,” he said, and so like an idiot I went over and took a drumstick and dropped it in. When the oil popped I jerked my hand back and he said, “Scared?”

  Right then I knew I’d screwed up, that I should have just kept walking out of the kitchen. He hummed something menacing—a hash-up of Jaws—and grabbed my wrist, forcing my hand to the hot oil until it was just an inch from the fizzing surface. When I finally pulled my hand loose, he said, “Lighten up.”

  I didn’t say anything, just laughed like I’d been in on the joke from the beginning.

  There’s still a round brown scar on the back of my hand from where the oil spattered.

  The Water’s Return

  My stepfather moves the boat over to the bridge to fish for perch. From here you can see the dam. Little orange buoys mark out where you’re not supposed to cross. I imagine a boat accidentally drifting in there, its outboard burning against the strain, a whole family with their rods and lunchmeat sandwiches being pulled in, under and through the turbines.

  “Kids, I’m so, so sorry,” the father says, on his knees. “I’m sorry, too,” the mother says. “We are full of regret,” they both say as they weep.

  My mom says, “Why don’t you fish a little?” She puts down her book and picks up her rod.

  I tell her there’s no way I’m putting another cricket on a hook.

  My stepfather casts his line out. He and my mom married two years ago. When he came into the family, it’s like he saw us as a bunch of softies he needed to toughen up. “Y’all need to get outside more,” he’d say, “see the sun.” But where he tanned, we burned, and even though he took us camping and fishing and paid for us to go on horse rides, none of it stuck. My stepfather must have been surprised when he got me. All along he must have wanted a son to teach all this crap to, and there I was—a chubby kid who’d rather watch The Price Is Right while downing a bag of Cheetos than gut an animal. I can’t say I blame him for being disappointed.

  “Put a worm on it then,” my mom says.

  I say OK and get one of the rubber worms from the tackle box. I pick a green one with sparkles. Then I cast and the line actually goes out a respectable distance. I take my time reeling it in, stopping and starting the line in erratic jiggles to make my worm more life-like. It probably makes my worm look like it’s got epilepsy. All part of the plan, I say half aloud. What fish could resist the easy prey of an epileptic worm?

  While I’m reeling in, I watch the lake. It’s pretty new, only about ten or fifteen years old. There aren’t any real lakes in Texas—they’re all built with dams. People used to live on the bottom when the lakes were still farms and ranches. It must be awkward for their ghosts, I think. To find fish swimming in and out of where they used to sleep.

  My science teacher, Mr. Homeniuk, says Texas was covered by a sea in prehistoric times. So maybe all these new lakes do belong he
re. Maybe we’re the ones in the wrong place.

  A Bad Habit

  At school, I get good grades. Like, really good grades. I mean, I’ve still got five years to screw up, but my grades are good enough that some of my teachers are already talking college.

  In math class I don’t have to listen too much because the work comes easy. One day I was bored and playing around with my textbook and accidentally marked one of the pages with my pen. So I took my pencil and—careful, hiding what I was doing from Mrs. Pickett so I wouldn’t get into any trouble—erased the pen mark. It came off, but so did the lower half of a fraction. Where the ink and denominator had been, there was just blank page. I erased the other numbers. They disappeared. Without a trace.

  At first I was scared. This was tampering with school property, the thing our principals are always getting angry about. But then it was like, hey, they’ll never catch me. They still don’t know who set the practice field on fire.

  During class I erase more numbers. Not too many—not enough to tip off the next poor kid who gets the book, whose little world won’t add up. And you have to do it right. Like if the number’s 14, you don’t erase the 4. That’s just stupid. You erase the 1. Sometimes I turn to the answers and erase a couple numbers there, too.

  Exhibit B

  A month ago we were at a barbecue at one of my stepfather’s friends’ houses. These people breed Rottweilers in their backyard, and while we were there the barking never stopped. “You get used to it,” my stepfather’s friend said. He was a short man without a neck, like a movie gangster, and he called all of the dogs Beauty. He was showing them off when one of the dogs, Beauty #4, bit at me through the cage, her teeth snagging my shirt.

  I could already hear my stepfather’s comment. Guess she don’t care for lean. So I acted like I didn’t even notice and picked up a stick and poked at the dog through the cage’s wires, just to mess with it, to show I knew which side of the cage I was on. It was the kind of thing my stepfather would do, I thought, but before I could even touch Beauty’s side he came and grabbed the stick out of my hand and asked what the hell I was thinking. Then he shook his head like I was stupid and walked away.

  Later, when no one was looking, I grabbed a hotdog and set it outside the cage where Beauty couldn’t reach it. I watched as she pressed her nose against the wires and whined, like that would make the hotdog roll closer. She strained and strained and I didn’t do anything to help her.

  The Train to Nowhere

  My line catches and for half a second I think I’ve got a fish. But then there’s no pull and I reel the line in, dragging up a beard of hydrilla. I tug it off the hook and throw it back into the lake. Hydrilla’s like seaweed, except it grows in the lake. So lakeweed, I guess. It’s not supposed to be here. It accidentally came in on someone’s boat, or someone brought it here to kill off something else, and now it fills the lake, wrapping itself around outboards, fishing lures, your legs and arms if you actually go for a swim in this toxic dump. It’s green and slimy and looks almost sentient.

  “OK. I fished,” I say.

  “You see that,” my stepfather says to my mom. And through her to me, of course. At first I think he’s talking about my defeatism, as he calls it, and going to say something about how kids today (meaning me) need more discipline, but then I see he’s pointing at the shore. He does this a lot, wherever we go. Spots wildlife like he’s our hunting guide. Part of that whole toughening us up scheme, I guess. So if me and my mom ever have to survive on our own in the woods or something, we can spot animals. Which will comfort us, I suppose, as we die of starvation.

  “I don’t see it. What?” my mom says. She’s got this stupid pink hat on—like a baseball cap but with an oversized bill—that ties in the back with a bow, and the bow jiggles as she jerks her head looking up and down the shore.

  “A nutria,” my stepfather says. “By that log. Now it’s gone into the water.”

  I don’t even know what a nutria is.

  “Oh, shoot,” my mom says. She’s always disappointed when she doesn’t see something my stepfather points out, like it’s this big deal. And for half a second I think, hey, maybe she’s right. Maybe I’m the idiot for not paying attention. Maybe I should be staring at nutrias after all.

  Not long after my dad moved to Shreveport, he quit his job and started selling belt buckles and canteens at reenactments. He said it was his dream. He grew a beard, started dressing up like he was in a tintype and working on a book about some guy named Corporal Edwards who fought in the Civil War. He told me all this in a letter, said he was going to Xerox the book himself and sell it for five dollars. But I haven’t seen it yet.

  Behind me I hear a whistle and I turn to look at the power plant. A little train runs from the plant to somewhere else—I don’t know where—and brings back coal. Maybe there’s a coal mine nearby, though in school when they gave us maps with little pictures showing Texas’s natural resources, I didn’t see a coal nugget. An oil derrick, yes. A cow, yes. A cotton boll, yes. But no coal nugget. So maybe it’s just a stockpile of coal this train goes to. Anyway, the train only runs back and forth from the plant to wherever the coal comes from. It does this all day and all night too, I guess. Right now it’s headed to the power plant, its cars filled to the top with coal.

  I point to the train. “You see that?”

  No one looks.

  The Wind in My Hair

  My favorite part of a fishing trip—yes, I do have a favorite part—is when we speed across the lake to find a spot to fish or speed back to the boat ramp. I sit up front and let the wind hit me. I like going places fast, even if it’s not really any place I want to go.

  Sometimes I imagine rolling off the boat when we’re speeding across the lake. Balling up my legs and wrapping my arms around them, then tumbling off. It would hurt, I know. I’ve gone tubing before, and every time I fell off the tube it was like someone slapping me in the gut, hard, before I sank into the water.

  But my fear isn’t how it’ll hurt when I land on the water. It’s the propeller. What if I somehow roll the wrong way, get sucked under the boat and shredded by the propeller? It’s a small propeller, sure, but it scares me enough.

  Still, it would be nice to hear my mom scream in worry. It would be nice for my stepfather to stop the boat to save me.

  Exhibit C

  Just last week we were at a different lake, camping, when my stepfather said, “Heads up!” and pushed me underwater. I flailed, the murk flooding my nostrils and my mouth as I tried to scream.

  “Don’t be such a pantywaist,” he said when he let me up. “I was just horsing around.”

  I told him I wasn’t scared, that he was too quick, I didn’t have enough time. Which was a big lie, of course. I went after him to grab him, to pull him under. This was a rare sight: me trying. But he just looked at me and said it was too late. And it’s like I finally knew. Of course I could never win. So I said I didn’t give a shit. His back was turned, and I muttered it, but I meant it. I swam some more, my feet catching at tree roots, and didn’t give a shit.

  A Narrow Escape

  In math class, I was erasing more numbers when Mrs. Pickett called my name. I’d been taking too many chances. Like, I’d erase a whole problem, which is just stupid because it shows my hand. I mean, when you look from problem eight to problem ten and see this huge blank space in between, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out something’s off.

  I started to sweat. Mrs. Pickett was looking at me, and the class was quiet.

  “Could you come up to the board and help Jason with this problem?”

  Oh. That’s all. “Sure,” I said.

  At the board, Jason breathed in my ear and whispered “pussy-licker” at me while I finished his problem.

  I whispered, “You wish,” and only when I sat down did I realize the perfect comeback. You fucking bet I am. I said it now under my breath—“You fucking bet I am”—and Jenna Blalock, who’s already thirteen, flirts with everyone, a
nd has the third biggest tits in our grade, turned around, her eyes wide in mock horror.

  Later, during lunch, I thought of what I’d say if Mrs. Pickett ever did catch me. It’s perfect. It’s in every after-school special and probably every teacher’s student psychology handbook. “What is this?” she’ll say, pointing to some empty spaces. “That,” I’ll say, “is a cry for help.”

  Back to Port

  I’ve got a sunburn now, so there’s that. My stepfather puts another fish in the livewell, ripping the hook out of its jaw like it’s nothing, and then decides it’s time to go home. My mom’s been ready for a few minutes. I’ve been ready for hours.

  I help prepare the boat, though no one asks me, taking down the raised fishing seats so they screw in level with the deck. Then I sit in the one up front.

  My stepfather heads us back toward the boat ramp, opening up the motor when we get to the part of the lake where the hydrilla isn’t so bad. The boat bounces a couple times when we cross someone else’s wake, and then we round a bend and come in sight of the beach, where the Army Corps of Engineers trucked in sand so people can swim and play in a lake that poisons fish.