by Steve Hely
Officer Ted Kobler was watching the scene, while a few higherups conferred on the patio. Kobler had never been in a house this nice, not in eight years of traffic stops and beat walking, not in his entire life. It had never occurred to him someone might have a Jacuzzi right in their backyard—not in Pittsburgh anyway. Beyond it, the grass, trimmed as tightly as a marine’s haircut, sloped down before revealing an incredible view, a Christmas tree of city lights, dots spaced out to the horizon, broken only by the dark waters of the Allegheny.
But with all that to look at, Kobler couldn’t take his eyes off that gunshot.
Then he felt someone slide past him. It took him a second to notice. A hell of a lot longer than it should take a cop.
A woman—straight black hair, tight khakis, leather jacket—bent over on the Spanish tile by the Jacuzzi and took out a notebook.
“Hey! Hey! You can’t be here! Lady!”
Then he felt a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Relax, Kobler.”
Detective Mitch Frilock stepped up next to him, drinking coffee out of a Styrofoam cup.
“Hey, Trang,” Frilock said. “You think those tits are real?”
Trang Martinez looked up from her notebook.
“I dunno Mitch. Maybe you should come over here and feel ’em. Probably be the first action you’ve had in a while.”
—excerpt from Strip Tease (a Trang Martinez Mystery) by Pamela McLaughlin copyright © 1997 Pocket Books, reprinted with permission)
The next stop on this Western junket was Montana. I picked up Strip Tease, one of Pamela McLaughlin’s books, at the LA airport and read it on the flight to Billings. By the time we were over Denver I’d finished.
The basic plot: Trang unravels these murders that are designed to disgrace various city councilmen. She realizes they’re being committed by this eccentric old guy who wants to keep his rotting rodent-infested house from being condemned. Once she’s cracked it, everybody thinks the matter’s settled. But Trang discovers the real reason the old guy doesn’t want his house condemned is that if they tear it down they’ll find the body of his wife, whom he murdered in a case that’s long since gone cold. So Trang solves that one, too. Also Trang is sleeping with a veterinarian who works with tigers at the zoo. That part’s just filler.
But the point, for me, wasn’t reading the book. It was that I, Pete Tarslaw, Famous Novelist, had slept with Pamela McLaughlin. That was how things went in the world of letters. Now I would do what Famous Novelists do: read with derision the works of former lovers.
This was all prep work for my appearance at the Great Plains Writing Program at the University of Billings.
I’d found the time in LA to Google myself and seen some new reviews. The Brooklyn Eagle said I had “a rare ear for the rural voice.” If there’s anybody who knows the rural voice, it’s a book reviewer in Brooklyn. The Miami Herald said my book was “flawed in conception and overwrought in execution.” The same thing is true of the city of Miami, but people seem to like that.
There was some intellectual backlash, too. Some blogger who called himself “The Pathetic Fallacy” wrote this long essay pointing out that my book was “everything that was wrong with contemporary fiction.” Which, given my method, was kind of a compliment. I mean, I’d hit all the bases.
But I was hoping to go over huge at the Great Plains Writing Program. This was one of the nation’s premiere graduate schools in writing, apparently. I’d never heard of it, but I gather it’s a big deal among your tea-drinking academic literati. Tom Buckley, who runs it, is a legend. He’d written a book of well-received short stories called Bird King, then settled down to teach the craft for fifteen years. He taught other people who wrote other well-received short stories.
The point being that winning him over could be the first step toward landing a sweet teaching job and beginning a long career of pipe smoking and sexual hijinks.
Along with his invitation to be a Guest Writer, Tom Buckley had sent some copies of the literary journal, Prairiegrass Review. After I finished with Strip Tease, I flipped through a few of those.
The contrast could not have been sharper. Consider this simple chart:
They each have their flaws, I guess is my point. But you can’t get Prairiegrass Review at the airport.
Those folks in Billings were trying to write earnest honest fiction about crows and almonds. If they were willing to try, I was willing to cash their modest honorarium.
The University of Billings had promised to send a student to pick me up. At the airport I had some exciting moments following the vectors of passing young women until they veered off toward baggage claim or to hug some mulleted slackjaw.
My student ride finally found me and introduced herself as Marianne. They’d at least had the common courtesy to send a girl, but she was hardly the specimen of coed loveliness I’d hoped for. Thankfully she didn’t want to talk about writing. In fact, as she led me to her pickup truck, she mentioned she hadn’t read my book. Not pointed or anything, she just put it out there. I respected her for it.
I’d written about Billings in The Tornado Ashes Club, despite never having been there. I’d had Silas, Grandma, and Esmeralda (née Genevieve) drive through, and I’d written that in Billings he could hear rattling metal and the rumble of truck engines, the chords of unashamed American work. True enough, although I’d made the place sound a lot more romantic than it actually was. Billings appeared in fact to be pristinely worthless, nothing but Pizza Huts and oil refineries. The passenger-side window of Marianne’s truck was made of cardboard and packing tape, and the March wind seeped in around the edges. Not in any kind of interesting way, just enough to make my ride unpleasant.
THE READING
We were late getting to the lecture hall. About forty people were shifting around in their seats, above average attendance for one of my readings. A third of the people were seniors who probably come to every event they see a flier for, just to keep their juices going.
Tom Buckley shook my hand. He was handsome in a pared-down way, as though years of prairie winds had blown off any excess from his face.
“Pete, welcome. Thanks for coming to Billings.”
“Thanks. Good to be here.”
“We’re so glad to have you as one of our guest writers. We’re all eager to hear you share some work with us. I’ve got some beginning writers here who I think could really benefit from engaging with it. We’ll open up some discussion.”
Part of me wanted to lean in and say, C’mon, guest writer? You’re a smart guy, you’ve obviously got a sweet gig for yourself here. But we both know I’m just a punk kid who cranked out a cheesy book instead of getting a job. Share? Engage? I’m gonna read a couple paragraphs, and your students are gonna sit glasseyed and think they’re getting their tuition’s worth. Then we’re gonna get some beers.”
Tom Buckley jogged to the podium and introduced me. This was always an uncomfortable minute. Nobody ever had much to say about me, except that I was young. But Tom Buckley’s presence alone enlivened the crowd; I could see them shift forward as he delivered some impromptu remarks about how I’d come all the way from Boston to give a reading. Tom said that he always liked to use the word give, because that’s what writers do. The students and the old women nodded at this beautiful notion as I gulped some water.
My set piece for readings was a flashback scene in France during World War II. Luke and some Resistance types are going through a forest, and they come across a pregnant woman, a collaborator who’s been kicked out of her town and is about to give birth. Some of the Resistance guys want to shoot her, but Luke decides to stay behind and help her.
This bit works well for readings. There are some funny parts where the woman swears in French as Luke ineptly tries to help and gets freaked out by all the mess. I do the French voice in an accent—an impression of my high school French teacher, Madame Bouchand. This always gets laughs. But the scene wraps up with emotional punch, as Luke holds the baby in his
hands. Everyone loves babies. Sometimes mothers in the audience are almost crying at the end.
Except at U. Billings, I was distracted. Tom Buckley was sitting right in the front row, halfway out of his chair, smiling a smile a kindly priest might give to an atheist.
I kept losing my place. For a patch I forgot the French accent, and started doing something like Scrooge McDuck.
Finally I stumbled through to the end. Luke wipes the baby’s forehead with a rag still stained by gun oil. The audience applauded for the exact amount of time basic etiquette required.
Tom Buckley pounced up and grabbed me on the shoulder.
“Any questions for the author?”
There was a pause, four coughs long. Then an old woman stood up.
“Do you ever write mysteries?”
“Uh … no, I never have.”
As she sat down she shook her head no at her sister, who I guess didn’t hear. Two more coughs. A kid in the back who was maybe seventeen stood up.
“My name is Edward. Luke’s rifle, would that be a standard M1 Garand or an M1A1 carbine?”
“Uh … the latter.”
No one else had any questions.
Tom Buckley thanked me. There was tempered applause. Under it he leaned in to me and clasped me on the shoulder.
“It’s tough to really craft a scene, really breathe air into the lungs of it, isn’t it?” He said this as though no one had ever meant anything more. “This writing’s a tough craft! Tough set of tools. You gotta get ’em and keep ’em sharpened, all the time.”
THE CLASS
As it happened, it was Marianne’s day to read her latest story in class that afternoon. She intoned it as though it were the Apostles’ Creed.
“She felt the chocolate against her teeth as she heard him splash water from his hands against the cracked tile of the bathroom sink. She knew he would dry them as he always did, against the back corner of the towel, the patch of fabric still firm.”
As Marianne droned on I was really wishing I could’ve skipped this part of the afternoon. If this was what teaching writing was like, I was going to have a very hard time. When she was done, what was I supposed to say? The whole thing was kind of a mess. She was clearly worried about getting every detail right. That’s a stupid and time-consuming way to write.
After our silent ride I’d come to like Marianne. I wanted to tell her, “dude, it’s called fiction—just make something up!” I wanted to wave Pamela McLaughlin’s book at her, and say “people are perfectly happy with this crap! Why are you knocking yourself out getting some detail right about towels?!”
Her story was called “Caramel,” and it was about struggling parents on Hallowe’en who’ve just taken their autistic kid trick-or-treating. They’ve finally gotten him into bed, and they sit at the kitchen table, smoke a joint, and decide to eat his candy. All of it, Milky Ways and M&Ms and Skittles.
Which is not a terrible premise. You could make somebody cry with that premise, easy. But Marianne was insisting on making it a slow evocation of ambiguity or something. Keyword slow.
“Jesus, we get it!” I wanted to tell her. “Is eating the candy some kind of cruel revenge? Is it childish? Is it a tender act of love between the parents? Whatever.”
One guy who was not having my problem was Tom Buckley, at the head of the table. His whole body was spread open, filling his chair. He was listening to her with such focus that he practically sucked words out of her.
“He put the back of his hand against the cold linoleum of the tabletop. She dropped two Milk Duds into his hand. They stared at each other, and then away. Their jaws pulled hard at the caramel.”
Marianne put her story down. Tom Buckley held his pose for a silent minute, just in case there was more listening to do.
“Okay! Thank you, Marianne, for giving us that story. Let’s all take a breath! Then let’s see if we can’t dig out the meat of this story. Who’s ready to dig? Pete, how about you?”
The last thing I wanted to do was dig the meat out of anything.
“Well, there’s a real texture here, isn’t there?” I said. “It’s almost … tactile.”
I saw a few of the students write tactile in their notebooks.
“‘Tactile,’” nodded Tom Buckley. “Let’s hear more about that.”
“Well,” I said, “there’s a quality to the language. You can almost … feel this story. You can almost—put it on, like an old sweater.”
Would that stave off these weirdos?
“There’s a comfort to it,” Tom Buckley said. “A familiarity.”
What? I thought.
“Exactly,” I said.
Different students started to chime in. Easily, at first, but then it ratcheted up. People were damned hard on her. Her prose was called wooden and somnolent and irritable. Someone accused her of being “derivative to the point of plagiarism.” People kept saying they were going to make “prescriptive comments,” and then they’d tell her how she needed to fix everything.
This southern kid named Ethan, who had a chin that curved out far enough from his face to resemble a winking crescent moon, attacked Marianne’s use of the word vaporous.
What the hell are you guys talking about? was what I was thinking.
Not on the story level—the story was crap and they were right to tear it up.
But what was the point of any of this? Let’s say, after a year of polishing and rewrites and edits, this story gets published in Prairiegrass Review. Then what, Marianne gets like five hundred bucks? That’s how much America values a great short story. It’s worth less than a PS3.
An hour passed. Still more criticism and comments.
Jesus H., you guys! RELAX!
Finally Tom Buckley ended it all.
“Pete, thank you for joining us and for giving us your comments,” said Tom Buckley. “Anyone who’d like—and Pete, I hope you’ll join us—why don’t we keep the discussion going over an adult beverage or two, down at Cullock’s?”
“Oh I’d love to,” I said. I still wanted to get a job. Maybe not here but in, say, Florida or someplace.
THE DISCUSSION CONTINUES OVER ADULT BEVERAGES
I rode—silently—with Marianne in her pickup truck to Cullock’s.
At one unusually long stoplight I felt I had to say something. “You really—I think you really hit on something with your story.”
“Thanks,” said Marianne, with an air of not-at-all believing me.
At the bar the writers of the Great Plains Program were sequestered in a back room, a square brick polyp attached to the corner of Cullock’s. They huddled over a table already forested with pitchers of Bud. Tom Buckley was pressing his back against the wall and grinning a suspicious grin of wisdom.
Marianne squeezed in, lit a cigarette with one hand and with the other took delivery of a shot of whiskey. She danced it down her throat with shakes of her head, the careless performance of someone who intends to get super drunk. I could hardly blame her.
Ethan had bought her the whiskey—it was his job to do so because his criticisms were voted to be the most devastating of all. That was the tradition, to keep everybody from getting too pissy.
Discussion of Marianne’s story was safely capped, but every conversational line and thread seemed to weave back to writing and authors. These people apparently couldn’t think or talk about anything else. Supertramp would come in from the main bar on the jukebox, and somebody would mention they’d had this tape in junior high, and I’d liven up a little, thinking maybe we could hang out and talk about Supertramp. But within two redirections everyone would be talking about Alice Munro.
Somebody tossed off Nick Boyle’s name as a derisive adjective.
“Nick Boyle is awesome,” I said into the din. But this seemed only to confuse everyone. Ethan laughed, and another guy looked at me much too long, as though trying to figure out if my statement was some kind of Zen puzzle. So I shifted policy, deciding to drink steadily and hope my silence would be mi
staken for wisdom.
Josh Holt Cready came up. Marianne made a scoff and a derisive flutter with her cigarette hand. But then she shot her eyes at Tom Buckley, afraid he might have heard.
Tom Buckley, for his part, said nothing bad about anyone. When he spoke you could feel the table sag as everyone leaned in. He mentioned “Rick Yates” and “Ray Carver” as though reciting the lineup of a championship team from his boyhood.
After a few hours the place thinned out. This was a mystery to me, because where could writing graduate students possibly have to go?
There were only five of us left around the table when Tom Buckley said, “Talking about stories”—we’d been talking about stories—“what’s the lonesomest story you ever heard?”
I considered getting up and putting Supertramp back on.
Tom Buckley’s question was to everybody, and he looked around at Ethan, Marianne, and me, defying anyone to try and bore him.
No one rose to the challenge.
“I’ll tell a lonesome story. I used to have a friend out in Butte. ’Bout ten years or so ago I got to know him. Out in Butte, that whole area is studded with copper mines. This friend of mine was a miner, a real oldtimer by the name of Bill Stubbs. Bill liked his bourbon, and sometimes I’d get a bottle of Early Times, knock on Bill’s door, and say, ‘Bill, why don’t you get us some water and some glasses, and we’ll sit on the porch, and we’ll drink a glass of good bourbon.’ He’d come on out, we’d sit and talk.”
C’mon, dude, save it for Prairiegrass. It was hurting my face to look interested.
“One night Bill got to telling stories of the mining days. He said once an explosion went off—methane—just as he was coming up. Most of the fellas got out. But one guy—Jack, his name was—got trapped in the mine, caved in. They dug, and they brought cranes in, hoping Jack might have enough air to keep alive. His wife waited there, wringing her hands as they dug.”
