"My son,” Vidkun said suddenly. “My son also took a trip abroad. Like you. He went to America, which I always told him was so wonderful. He went two years ago.” Vidkun's son had touched down in New York and spent a week there, then took a bus to cross the country. He wanted to get some idea of size and landscape. He was meeting up with friends in Yellowstone. Somewhere along the route, he vanished.
When word came, Vidkun flew to New York. The police showed him a statement, allowed him to speak to a witness who'd talked with his son, seen him board the bus. No witness could be found who saw him leave it. Vidkun searched for him or word of him for three months, took the same bus trip two times in each direction, questioning everyone he met on the route. No one who knew the family believed the boy would not have come home if he were able. They were all just so sad, my brother said.
So often over the years when I haven't wanted to, I've thought of Vidkun on that bus. The glass next to him is dirty and in some lights is a window and in others is a mirror. In his pocket is his son's face. I think how he forces himself to eat at least once every day, asks each person he meets to look at his picture. “No,” they all say. “No.” Such a long trip. Such a big country. Who could live there?
I hate this story. Vidkun, for your long-ago gifts, I return now two things. The first is that I will not change this ending. This is your story. No magic, no clever rescue, no final twist. As long as you can't pretend otherwise, neither will I. And then, because you once brought me a book with no such stories in it, the second thing I promise is not to write this one again. The older I get, the more I want a happy ending. Never again will I write about a child who disappears forever. All my pipers will have soft voices and gentle manners. No child so lost King Rat can't find him and bring him home.
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Acknowledgments
Most of the stories included here went through one or another of my multiple workshops. I love workshops. One can never have too many of them.
I have a beloved workshop in Davis, where I lived until recently, and another in Santa Cruz, where I live now. I attend, irregularly, a workshop in the San Francisco Bay Area. The weeks I've spent with the Rio Hondo workshop in Taos and the Sycamore Hill workshop, now in Asheville, have been among my very happiest. Going at it, hammer and tongs, over issues of voice, plot, authorial intention, text and subtext, prose and politics is my idea of a good time. The list of co-attendees over my thirty-some years is a very long one, and I thank every one of you.
Special thanks though to Sycamore Hill. Most of the stories here made their first public appearances at the Sycamore Hill critique table. I owe those of you with me at that table not only for the careful and sometimes crabby readings you all gave me, but for the weeks of conversation and the years of friendship. I owe you for the stories themselves, many of which only exist because you can't go to Sycamore Hill without writing one.
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Publication History
These stories were originally published as follows:
"The Pelican Bar,” Eclipse 3, 2009
"Booth's Ghost” appears here for the first time.
"The Last Worders,” Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 20, 2007
"The Dark,” The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1991
"Always,” Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2007
"Familiar Birds,” Journal of Mythic Arts, Spring 2006
"Private Grave 9,” McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, 2003
"The Marianas Islands,” Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, 1996
"Halfway People,” My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, 2010
"Standing Room Only,” Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1997
"What I Didn't See,” SciFiction, 2002
"King Rat,” Trampoline, 2003
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Karen Joy Fowler (karenjoyfowler.com) is the author of five novels, including Wit's End and The Jane Austen Book Club, which spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was adapted as a major motion picture from Sony Pictures. Her novel Sister Noon was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and her short-story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award. She has co-edited three volumes of The James Tiptree Award Anthology. Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children, live in Santa Cruz, California.
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