by Mark Dunn
Ericka switched on her car radio. The station was repeating an audio documentary about the past century that had originally aired in January. There was mention of the “Bonus Army” march on Washington in 1932, the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, the gas shortage of 1973, and, more recently, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. A middle-aged man, Broderain Tyson III, spoke tearfully of having lost his wife in this act of domestic terrorism.
On May 10, 2001, Gail Hoyt passed away. She was survived, incredibly, by her roommate, Catherine Uhlmyer Gallagher Connelly, who went on to live another year and a half to the chelonian age of 109 (and a half).
Ericka put off doing what she had been charged to do. (The will had given custody of the ashes to Ericka. What she was supposed to do with them was not mentioned.) After all, rationalized Ericka, Gail hadn’t said just when she wanted her ashen remains sent eternally airborne. This was left to Ericka’s discretion.
And then…
On a clear blue morning in September, the opportunity for fulfilling Gail’s final request to the letter was lost in the horror and chaos of that epoch of national tragedy. It was an act that clearly belonged to the new century, not to the one now past—the century that all of Gail Hoyt’s Tri-century Centenarian friends claimed as their own for each of its 36,524 days.
Without the World Trade Center, what was to be done? Ericka could keep the urn with her always and always feel guilty, or she could do the only logical thing that she was sure would appease Gail’s hungry, restless, empyreal soul.
Ericka Prager had been to Africa, but she had yet to visit Asia.
She would climb Mount Everest.
AMERICAN DECAMERON SYNOPSES OF STORIES
1901 ARBOREAL IN TEXAS
A baby girl born on the eve of the Great Galveston Hurricane survives the storm, finds love and then rejection at the orphanage that takes her in, and starts along a life path that parallels the ascension of the much-storied American Century.
1902 VEHICULAR IN NEW YORK
A collision with a tree brings a young man to the door of a wealthy woman and her nubile but querulous daughter. The courteous young man and the discourteous daughter are apparently on more intimate terms than circumstances initially indicate.
1903 DEDUCTIVE IN MICHIGAN
The sudden elopement of their daughter has Mom and Dad scratching their heads, while Younger Brother, sniffing coercion and intrigue, springs into action in the guise of his idol: Sherlock Holmes.
1904 IN MEMORIAM IN PENNSYLVANIA
The wife of the last surviving member of Haverford College’s Class of 1904 sees only a man in the final stages of senility, while within the sanctuary of his trapped thoughts, the man revisits his golden college days, when his whole life lay spread out before him.
1905 GENEALOGICAL IN RHODE ISLAND
The unofficial draft of the official record of the 1905 reunion of the Livergood Family Association of Warwick, Rhode Island…with copious commentary.
1906 PUNCH(ING) DRUNK IN PENNSYLVANIA
The painful relationship between two brothers whose lives took wildly different paths reaches a life-threatening climax that neither could have anticipated.
1907 PROBLEMATICALLY BETROTHED IN MASSACHUSETTS
On the eve of their daughter’s marriage, a troubling revelation about the groom-to-be causes Mother and Father to consider canceling the wedding, though Daughter doesn’t seem bothered in the least.
1908 VOLANT IN NORTH CAROLINA
An expedition to the sandy wilds of the North Carolina coast confirms what most had believed to be a hoax.
1909 MORBIFIC IN NEW YORK
A female reporter scores an interview with a notorious criminal in isolation and comes to sorely regret the trip.
1910 PORCINE IN NORTH CAROLINA
A boy who displayed piggish manners at the table is forced by his aunt to wear a papier mâché pig nose for a week, though his uncle and schoolteacher don’t agree that this is the best means of behavioral correction.
1911 EFFLORESCENT IN MAINE
A wealthy grandmother falls short when it comes to guiding her granddaughter easily through the garden of budding adolescence.
1912 TRISKAPHOBIC IN WISCONSIN
A would-be assassin winds up in the history books, but fate, a metal eyeglasses case, and the folded pages of an eighty-minute-long speech keep him from becoming a household name.
1913 CLAIRVOYANT IN NEW YORK
The three grown offspring of a woman being milked of the family fortune by enterprising charlatan-psychics set a trap to drive the scammers out of town.
1914 DEVOTIONAL IN ILLINOIS
An eighteen-year-old woman’s diary reveals the details of a life-changing summer upon the grounds of the New Piasa Chautauqua, a spiritual and educational retreat.
1915 HAVING A SINKING FEELING IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC
An accidental reunion provides an opportunity for two couples, survivors of the torpedoing of RMS Lusitania, to speak of that which they hadn’t been able to talk about before.
1916 INCARCERATED IN OKLAHOMA
A convict reveals to his cellmate the reason for his imprisonment: the murder of his uncle, stopped in the course of trying to drown the convict’s mentally challenged brother as directed by the convict’s own father.
1917 PRINCIPLED IN MASSACHUSETTS
A short story writer on the staff of a popular magazine must decide whether to serve his country’s propaganda machine or be true to his own views about a war he doesn’t support.
1918 TREPID IN FRANCE
A World War I doughboy sees fear embodied in a terrified young private, for whom the only thing worse than death is the dread that can often precede it.
1919 VESTAL IN NORTH DAKOTA
A disturbed war veteran finds a tragically counterproductive way to protect womanhood from the depravities of man.
1920 FILIAL IN TENNESSEE
The deciding vote to grant universal suffrage to American women is cast by a young man who has always minded his mother.
1921 COMPOSED (?) IN OREGON
A nationally renown classical composer, commissioned to write a concerto for ukelele and orchestra, finds himself tormented both by the demons of his schizophrenic nature, and by the one from whom he inherited those very demons.
1922 CINEASTIC IN ARKANSAS
A minister learns that his young son has been sneaking off to the wicked picture show. The discovery has an unexpected effect on the relationship between the two.
1923 CONSPIRATORIAL IN NORTH CAROLINA
A jury in Greensboro must decide the fate of a woman who fired a shot at her husband’s lover. The case isn’t all that it seems, but then again, neither is the jury.
1924 DOUBLE FAULTED IN ILLINOIS AND D.C.
Two teenage boys die within weeks of one another, one the famous son of a sitting U.S. president, the other a soon-to-be famous victim of cold-blooded murder—each death inadvertently brought on by a love of the game of tennis.
1925 ACROPHILIC AND AGORAPHOBIC IN PENNSYLVANIA
1901’s high-flying little girl is all grown up now—a daredevil, flag pole-sitting flapper who falls for (and with) the brother of two young men who cannot leave their house until called to the ultimate test: to rescue their fallen brother and his new love.
1926 BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL IN KENTUCKY
An old woman looks back at the tragic reason behind her parents’ divorce.
1927 ASSISIAN IN MASSACHUSETTS
A drunkenly candid supporter of the Fall River Animal Rescue League tells the “true” story of Lizzie Borden and the murderous deed that historical consensus has ascribed to her.
1928 MISDEEMED IN INDIANA
A newlywed wife can’t abide her husband’s disgustingly peculiar fetish; in an effort to understand it, she solicits the opinion of an ill-equipped door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.
1929 TAKING A DIM VIEW IN MICHIGAN
A sexually reticent woman w
ho is losing her eyesight decides to cop a look at a well-formed man in his most natural state before it’s too late.
1930 WITHOUT APRON STRINGS IN DELAWARE
A middle-aged man finally tracks down the mother who gave him up for adoption when he was a baby, with unexpected results.
1931 AWED AND WONDERING IN CONNECTICUT
When propositioned by her boss with the admonition that a refusal will result in the loss of her job, a woman gets a response from her unemployed husband that she never expected.
1932 FASCISTIC IN D.C.
A participant in the “Bonus Army” march on Washington gives his account of the last hours of the army’s occupancy of the city, with special attention paid to the man whose job it was to clear D.C. of all veteran “vagrants.”
1933 LETTING GO IN MISSOURI
While waiting for the midnight legalization of “near” beer, two friends who are also employer and employee at a local ice company discuss the recent crash of the dirigible USS Akron and its relevance to a difficult decision the ice company’s owner has made.
1934 ADULTEROUS IN ILLINOIS
The husband of one couple and the wife of another decide to confess their affair to their respective spouses at the Chicago World’s Fair with disastrous, albeit not unpredictable, results.
1935 PERSEVERINGLY TERPSICHOREAN IN WASHINGTON STATE
Two older women from different sides of the track form a friendship while watching a dance marathon and cheering on their favorite couples—a friendship that is destined to last no longer than the viability of the couples who compete before them.
1936 SHABBY-GENTEEL IN CALIFORNIA
A migrant worker is invited to a proper tea party, but all is not what it seems.
1937 DEPILATED IN OHIO
A teenage girl takes a stand against her adoptive parents’ constant displays of hatred for one another; she threatens to cut off all of her luxuriously long hair, and then promptly follows through with the help of a sympathetic local sheep shearer.
1938 JIVING IN NEBRASKA
A physically disabled, jitterbug-music-crazed young man moves back to Omaha from New York and tries to convince his girlfriend to join him, though she no longer wishes to keep to the sidelines with the whole country jump-jivin’ with able-bodied exuberance.
1939 GALACTOPHOROUS IN VIRGINIA
MGM wants to turn a novelist’s best-seller into the next Gone With the Wind. The problem: the writer has the last word in how the story gets retold for the screen, and pre-emptive censorship on the part of the studio is making it a bad day for all concerned.
1940 AU FAIT IN COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, AND CALIFORNIA
A fifteen-year-old savant on the Santa Fe Super Chief befriends Charlie McCarthy and earns a slot on the Quiz Kids radio broadcast, before the tragic truth about the boy’s limitations derails his parents’ dreams for their child.
1941 UNDER ATTACK IN HAWAII
A Hawaiian third grader writes a personal account of the bombing of Pearl Harbor a few days after the attack.
1942 CERULEAN IN WISCONSIN
A young wife whose husband is serving in World War II suffers debilitating and nearly tragic post-partum depression following the birth of her second child
1943 TELEGRAPHIC IN IOWA
A Western Union messenger boy in a town hard hit by World War II casualties cannot help being regarded by his neighbors as the messenger of death.
1944 SEQUESTERED IN NEW MEXICO
A married couple remembers the Manhattan Project as something both historically monumental and domestically challenging.
1945 HYPERNATREMIC IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Two sailors, survivors of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, wait in shark-infested waters for help that doesn’t come.
1946 ENNEADIC IN IOWA
A Dutch-American mathematics professor, having lost his family in the Holocaust, finds in his ongoing calculation of pi something that betrays his belief in disbelief.
1947 RACIST IN TENNESSEE
Memphis’s censor czar, exercising bigoted and sometimes ridiculously arbitrary control over the movies that will be seen within his jurisdiction, entertains a visiting delegation of movie house managers hoping to convince him to soften his heavy-handed authority.
1948 HAUNTED IN CONNECTICUT
One of the men digging a well for a World War II veteran’s new house in Connecticut bears a haunting resemblance to a soldier who saved the man’s life during the Bataan death march.
1949 BALL CHANGING IN MISSISSIPPI
A Saturday morning kiddy talent show broadcast takes a few unexpected comical twists and turns before the winners are finally crowned.
1950 POIKILOTHERMAL IN WEST VIRGINIA
Snowbound with his fiancée and her family, a disturbed young man wrestles with sadistic impulses that are ultimately his undoing.
1951 PSITTICINE IN PENNSYLVANIA
A blind woman discovers the troubling truth about her friend’s potty-mouthed parrot.
1952 DOUBLY UXORICIDAL IN COLORADO
Separated-from-birth twin brothers discover one another by chance and take advantage of their good fortune by plotting crisscross murders of their respective problem spouses.
1953 PHARISAICAL IN WYOMING
A traveling tent show revivalist preacher becomes self-appointed and unwelcome negotiator on behalf of the hostages in a bank holdup.
1954 FAMISHED IN TEXAS
A self-absorbed suburban wife can’t be bothered to help her emotionally fragile, literally starving aunt, even though it means losing her husband and daughter.
1955 AGITATED IN ALABAMA
Riding the bus in Montgomery, two white female friends find little common ground in how they view the city’s black bus boycott.
1956 DISCREETLY SILENT IN MONTANA
A doctor and a deputy sheriff must decide what to tell the families of the two closeted teenaged boys whose lives came to a tragic end in a late-night automobile crash.
1957 LOYAL IN UTAH
Faculty and staff of a Presbyterian boarding school are asked to sign a loyalty oath as a condition of their employment.
1958 EXPLOSIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA
A story told in reverse about the accidental dropping of an atomic bomb (sans nuclear components) on a rural community.
1959 TIGHT IN NEW YORK
It’s New Year’s Eve in Westchester and the babysitter’s balking; she refuses to get in the car with her employer, who’s started his potable-partying a little earlier than usual.
1960 SMILING IN CALIFORNIA
A failed writer decides to end his life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. An unlikely heroine makes it her job to stop him.
1961 UNLITERATE IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
A woman buys a first edition of The Joy of Cooking at a neighborhood yard sale and discovers an uncashed check inside.
1962 THROWN A CURVE BALL IN NEW YORK
As a boy listens to the very first Mets game alongside his stepfather, to whom he has become closely attached, he learns that his mother and stepfather are divorcing.
1963 ESTIVATING IN NEW JERSEY
An appliance salesman discovers an unexpected link between himself and two children who come in each afternoon to watch cartoons in the store in which he works.
1964 NEARLY INTERRED IN ALASKA
In the aftermath of the great Alaskan Good Friday earthquake, a frightened babysitter is punished for her selfish cowardice by the children in her care, who thoroughly despise her.
1965 MISTRYSTED IN NEW YORK
An Affair to Remember-like rendezvous between two World War II lovers at Grand Central Terminal is impeded by a citywide blackout.
1966 OUTRAGED IN IDAHO
An elementary school concert tribute to the popular musical The Sound of Music hits a major snag when the teacher planning the event wants to include a song from the original stage version that few are familiar with—one with a distasteful message.
1967 GOING THE VOLE IN NEVADA
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A young man decides to put all the money he and his wife have on one life-changing roll of the roulette wheel.
1968 HIERATIC IN KANSAS
On the night of the Miss America pageant, a wife, husband, and their old friend, a priest, place the feminist movement and the general state of relations between men and women into a decidedly personal context.
1969 PARENTAL IN ARIZONA
Every summer a wealthy couple takes their kids on a joyful “travelcading” adventure through the American West, but this year is different; half-sisters of the father find a fly in the ointment—a fly that they put there themselves.
1970 SKIRTING THE ISSUE IN WEST VIRGINIA
A department store buyer has a personal reason for bemoaning the foisting of the unflattering “midi skirt” on the female American consumer.
1971 BIBLIOPHILIC IN ALABAMA
Members of a family of voracious readers on beach vacation work in concert to use their book smarts to save a drowning fellow vacationer.
1972 PRECIPITATE IN ILLINOIS
A woman at a mall witnesses a child abduction and knows that she is the only person who can save the little girl.
1973 VENGEFUL IN MARYLAND
While waiting in a long gas line, an ex-wife has the opportunity to exact revenge on her former husband.
1974 VICINAL IN TENNESSEE
Twin brothers spend the night of their eighteenth birthday with a neighbor: Elvis Presley.
