The Standard Grand
Page 37
When she pulls into the drive, the boys in the cab rouse.
Foxtrot and then Wright look up from their digging. The Jeep’s open top allows in their calls—hard to tell dog from boy—yelps and giddy whines that enter into and course through her like a warm inoculation. She isn’t sure how she managed it—it’s all unreal—but she feels lucky and indebted, forever obliged to forces far greater than she.
Her boy and her dog scramble out of the hole. Wright drops something and stops to fetch it. Foxtrot heels and waits wagging his tail. You’d never know the boy’d been born nearly two months premature—4 lbs., 10 oz.—spent his first twelve days on the neonatal intensive care unit. There, she came to know him, tiny Wright Tyro Smith, came to love him, decided to keep him, he a little fighter from the start, hungry for life, hungry for her. Had he been on time—fat, all secure—she might’ve surrendered him.
Wright holds up what he dropped. A plastic tan Army man, gift from Goodman, who took care to give only Army men not bearing arms: the scout with the binoculars adhered to his eyes, the mine detector, the radio operator. Displaying the retrieved toy soldier, Wright runs toward Goodman.
Ant cuts the engine, opens her door, hops down, and shouts, “Wright! You best get your little tokhes on over here now.” She takes a knee in the dust.
Wright beams, hoots, and happily changes course. Foxtrot skids to a stop, cocks his head, then follows. He reaches Wright and nudges him, leans against him while they run, behaving more like a herder than a retriever. The long, reddened shadows of the boy and the dog wash together on the red earth in the lowering sun red at their backs. Over their eager, bobbling heads, the old road narrows into the distance, and everything’s behind them, everything before them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While I won’t acknowledge the socioeconomic schizophrenia of corporate personhood, I’ve come to believe in the notion of the novelist as person incorporated. A publicly traded company. Call me I, Inc. When a character in Exodus asks God’s name, God, ever the smart aleck, answers, “I Am That I Am.” Had He bothered to write the Old Testament, God might’ve replied, “I Are We.” That gets at the metaphysics of the novelist, I think. I are we, and we am I. And we’ve been raucous. Even when I wanted, I could not shut us up. We woke me countless times in the night. We fought each other, fucked each other, talked to each other and to me. We lived and drove, loved and died, all inside of me. That’s how this novel came to be. Now that I’m rid of it, I still hear us, but we grow distant. We disturb me less, and I miss us. In the time it took us to write this—nearly every day for over five years—we learned that if I’m not actively bossing us around, and being bossed, my imagination turns on itself. Then I am me and me alone. I’m much better—more engaged, less crazy—for the company, and so here’s to us, my characters, for keeping me from going out of our mind. We must next, as part of this initial public offering, recognize Jennifer Carlson, agent extraordinaire and cheese connoisseur. Jen helped me narrow this novel down from 800-plus pages and, over interminable years, she’s ushered me gamely through rejection, failure, and, finally, into the hands of my remarkable, artful editor. Elisabeth Dyssegaard labored ardently for my novel and me. She’s a writer’s ideal—part Maxwell Perkins, part Pippi Longstocking—and she helped me to realize this, my most drawn-out desire, with fewer flaws and greater force. Gratitude to the devoted, determined, and book-adoring folks at St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan, chiefly Alan Bradshaw, Bill Warhop, Talia Sherer, Laura Apperson, Laura Clark, Courtney Reed, and Dori Weintraub; and to the likeminded, indie-spirited owners of Bookbug in Kalamazoo, MI, Joanna Parzakonis and Derek Molitor, doting shepherds who tend a wonderfully wide-ranging, ever-wandering flock. An ovation to Josh Ritter for his glory of a song, “Girl in the War,” and for permission to use a few lines as half of my epigraph; and to Meena Mohammadzai, for her smoke-flower translation of Nadia Anjuman’s poem. Appreciation to my former sister-in-law, Specialist Nicorvo, for the inspiration despite—or maybe due to—the difficulties. Snappy salutes to Maj. Todd Perry and Brandon Davis Jennings, the finest pair of veteran drill instructors a novelist could ask for. Stiff debts—stiffer drinks—are owed to my spendthrift writing teachers: Ray Wonder, Scott Ward, Peter Meinke, Frederick Reiken, John Skoyles, Margot Livesey, Pamela Painter, Dennis Lehane, and especially my mentor—and adopted papa—Sterling Watson. If not for Sterl, instead of writing this sentence, I’d be selling sinkhole insurance in south Florida, or building picnic tables in prison. Cheers to Don Lee for making me the Ripper all those years ago, and to Martha Rhodes for welcoming me into her Four Way home. Susan Weaver helped keep me (reasonably) sane. Thank you to Ellen Levine for her generous gift from the Ellen Levine Fund for Writers, and to Jeffrey Lependorf for his nomination. Also, thanks to the National Society of Arts and Letters for a Career Chapter Award. A shout goes out to the founding members of the Phenomenal Nobodies: Michael Dopp, Clintel Steed, and Matthew Aaron Goodman. Love to my immediate family: brothers Shawn and Dane; aunt Gail Guscott; mother-in-law, Myra Nissen; and my mom, Sharon. Mom spent the better part of thirty years behind the counters of umpteen 7-Elevens, working harder for less than anyone I’ve ever known. Because of her example—the willingness to give most of her waking life in desperate support of the half-wild creations she brought into being—I was able to keep writing for so long with so little to show. (This, the first novel I’ve published, is the fourth novel I’ve finished.) I owe everything else to Thisbe Nissen—best friend, first and last reader, wife—who sustained me in all ways during this outrageous, years-long flight of fancy. We go far for small things. And to our son, Sonne Niscorvosen (I hope I spelled that right), who put his little hand in mine and pulled me toward the grace that comes from trying to see the world through the eyes of others. This list could go endlessly on—my apologies to those not acknowledged by name—and that hints at the embarrassing extent of my grand fortune. Finally, I want to recognize US service members, including those who abandon their posts. Whether or not we approve of war—or vote for representatives who do—we, by virtue of being citizens of the US republic, are responsible for our wars nonetheless. One way we can acknowledge the service of veterans is by actively trying to imagine what they live through. If we do, we may better appreciate what they die for, and why.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’d be remiss if I didn’t confess to my dependence upon the following sources: Larry Chambers’s Death in the A Shau Valley: L Company LRRPs in Vietnam, 1969–1970; Elizabeth D. Samet’s Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point; Frank Johnson’s Diary of an Airborne Ranger: A LRRP’s Year in the Combat Zone; Keith Nolan’s Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970; Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books; Tania Grossinger’s Growing Up at Grossinger’s; The Long Path Guide, edited by Herb Chong; Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory; Maxine Hong Kingston’s Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace; Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke; Robert Young Pelton’s Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror; Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War; Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry, edited by Sayd Bahodine Majrouh, translated by Marjolijn de Jager; Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home; John Edgar Wideman’s Brothers and Keepers: A Memoir; Friar Diego de Landa’s Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, translated by William Gates; The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, translated by Ralph L. Roys; Kevin Powers’s The Yellow Birds; Jeremy Scahill’s Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army; Kim Hopper’s Reckoning with Homelessness; Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk; Donald Anderson’s When War Becomes Personal: Soldiers’ Accounts from the Civil War to Iraq; David A. Snow and Leon Anderson’s Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People; Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, edited by Andrew Carroll; Steve Fainaru’s Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq; P.W. Singer’s
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry; James Ashcroft’s Making a Killing: The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq; John Geddes’s Highway to Hell: Dispatches from a Mercenary in Iraq; Brandon Davis Jennings’s Waiting for the Enemy; Dan Briody’s The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money; Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer’s It Happened in the Catskills: An Oral History in the Words of Busboys, Bellhops, Guests, Proprietors, Comedians, Agents, and Others Who Lived It; the films Full Battle Rattle, directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss; Restrepo, directed by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington; the songs “Hell Broke Luce” by Tom Waits; “Sam Stone” by John Prine; “Written on the Forehead” by PJ Harvey; “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane; “Trouble in Mind” by Nina Simone; “Handsome Johnny” by Richie Havens; “Sovay” by Andrew Bird; the websites sofrep.com, warisboring.com, famsi.org, wikimapia.org, nytimes.com; and on and on.
ALSO BY JAY BARON NICORVO
Deadbeat: Poems
ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR THE STANDARD GRAND
“Like O’Brien and Stone before him, Nicorvo’s language lays bare the sinewy lusts, rattling hopes, and incommunicable fears that are our human machine.”
—T. Geronimo Johnson, author of Hold It ’Til It Hurts and the national bestseller Welcome to Braggsville
“Nicorvo’s canvas is large, multicultural, contemporary, and magnificent. He is a gifted writer and The Standard Grand is one great gift of a book.”
—Frederick Reiken, author of The Lost Legends of New Jersey
“Nicorvo’s The Standard Grand is, from its eye-catching title to the prophetic peal of its last word, a stunning debut performance by a young novelist of extravagant talent. This novel gives readers everything—a gob-smacking plot, language that sings like the angels, and characters as compelling as our best and worst friends and lovers.”
—Sterling Watson, author of Suitcase City
“This novel pops and sears. It picks you up and doesn’t let you go until it’s finished with its rollicking, fiery story. Nicorvo has produced a masterwork.”
—Don Lee, author of The Collective
“It seems possible that Nicorvo has ingested all the darkness of this life and now breathes fire.”
—Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
“Kaleidoscopic in its vision, encompassing in its humanity, here is a novel I wish I could send to Robert Stone.”
—Scott Spencer, bestselling author of Man in the Woods
“Jay Baron Nicorvo’s debut novel, The Standard Grand, is so exuberant, so irreverent, so full of incident and color and an addictive linguistic patter emerging from the jargon of soldiers, that it was absolutely irresistible. Like Cara Hoffman’s Be Safe I Love You, another necessary contemporary novel about female soldiers, Nicorvo’s book pushes at our assumptions about the human beings who are the pointed edge of US foreign policy, and how they can possibly go back to being ordinary citizens once their license to do state-sanctioned violence has expired. So there’s serious stuff going on, but it’s also funny as hell, and constantly surprising, with characters and phrases that will be ringing in my ears for a long time. It’s so awesome to find that Jay, such a lovely person in the literary world, also has true writing chops, and that he’s chosen to tell this particular story as only he can tell it. Read it—you won’t be sorry.”
—Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, Co-owner, Greenlight Bookstore
“This is a big-hearted, multi-voiced epic for the PTSD generation. And it’s a real New York book. The Catskills setting works so well because it puts such a diverse and modern group of characters up against all the old ghostliness of this region. It was a joy to read.”
—Jacqueline Kellachan, Co-owner, The Golden Notebook
“Channeling the absurdist humor of Heller, the corporate intrigue of Pynchon, and an empathic, sure-footed storytelling entirely his own, Nicorvo has given us the next great (post) war novel. Nicorvo is the kind of writer I’m constantly seeking—compassionate, fearless, deeply intelligent—and The Standard Grand—utterly unputdownable—is a book I’ve been awaiting.”
—Derek Molitor, Co-owner, Bookbug
“Captivating from the first page—a uniquely American epic tale of human beings left struggling in the wake of war, industry, and unpredictable circumstance.”
—Kelley Drahushuk, Co-owner, Spotty Dog Books & Ale
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAY BARON NICORVO lives on an old farm outside Battle Creek, MI, with his wife, Thisbe Nissen, their son, and a couple dozen vulnerable chickens. His writing has appeared in Salon, Poets & Writers, and The Believer, and has been featured on NPR and PBS NewsHour. He’s published a poetry collection, Deadbeat, and served as an editor at Ploughshares and at PEN America, the literary magazine of the PEN American Center. He was membership director for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (clmp), and he’s a sometimes teacher at Western Michigan University, where he helps advise the journal Third Coast. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
The Concerns
Dedication
Epigraphs
Summer 2012
Fall 2012
Winter 2012
Spring 2013
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Also by Jay Baron Nicorvo
Additional Praise for The Standard Grand
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE STANDARD GRAND. Copyright © 2017 by Jay Baron Nicorvo. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
“The Deserted Voice,” here, translated with permission of the literary executor of Nadia Anjuman. Translation © 2016 by Meena Mohommadzai. “Girl in the War” lyrics here © Josh Ritter, courtesy of Rural Songs.
www.stmartins.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Nicorvo, Jay Baron, author.
Title: The Standard Grand / Jay Baron Nicorvo.
Description: First edition. | New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046600 | ISBN 9781250108944 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781250108951 (e-book)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / War & Military.
Classification: LCC PS3614.I3548 S73 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046600
e-ISBN 9781250108951
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First Edition: April 2017