The Invention of Flight

by Susan Neville

  For a second I hope that we really will attract people, become some kind of annual sacred/secular event. But only a few handfuls come to the fair, another handful to the revival; people move back and forth between them. I leave my house and walk down the street, not to participate, just to look. The preacher works his crying people, is in the middle of a testimony, talking about himself. “I was egotistical,” he says, “self-centered, until I discovered the Lord had a plan for me.” I stand next to the tent, the moist green odor of a tent that’s been used only recently for camping, listening to him tell me the story of his life which adds up to something about God helping him dodge paying rent in South America. “Nothing matters,” he says. “Nothing that happens in the world as long as you yourself are saved.”

  The gospel rock band starts playing incredibly loud. I buy myself a Lemon Shake-It and watch the ferris wheel circle with no one on it and then with a small family on it and then a couple, the garish lights and the music. I look over to where the mother is sitting alone in her booth, surrounded by airplanes and no customers. But her eyes are thrilled as she eats a smoked sausage covered with green peppers and onions. She watches the rides, the lights. And back in town on their porches people sit and swing and cry and laugh, husbands touch wives, children show off, watching the end of the summer, knee deep in dust.

  I go home, put a record on the record player. Melissa comes into the living room where I am sitting and takes a chair in the corner. She leans into the room, sits trembling, lips quivering. I should have guessed earlier, I think; the eyes are soulful, there is a life in there. The mother comes home, dumps her airplanes onto the sofa, telling Melissa what a success the fair was, what a great job she did. Melissa looks at her mother, looks out the window at the lights, tugs at the second sweater she’s put on over the first one, her lip trembling more rapidly. “But they’re leaving in the morning,” the mother says. “They just found out they have to be in Illinois tomorrow night.”

  She begins a dance in the middle of the floor, an awkward, clumsy dance, her polyester jacket bouncing on her hips. Then the music stops and the lights go out in my house and, through the window, all up and down the street. It’s dark and quiet where the fair was, the revival. “Too much electricity,” Melissa says. “They’ve used up too much.”

  The mother picks up the airplanes in the dark, keeps dancing without music as she goes to Melissa and kisses the top of her head; the slick fabric of her jacket rubs the daughter’s face. Sparks jump from Melissa’s hair. I sink against a wall, touch a curtain, wonder why it has taken me so long to understand this, so simple, watch the mother waddle through the door. I am alone with the daughter sitting quietly in the chair. I feel a great sadness as I go to her and touch her hair where the mother has kissed her, feeling the room, the house, the town, the places we are all standing, slightly but definitely shake loose from the dust and begin to rise.

  THE FLANNERY O’CONNOR AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION

  David Walton, Evening Out

  Leigh Allison Wilson, From the Bottom Up

  Sandra Thompson, Close-Ups

  Susan Neville, The Invention of Flight

  Mary Hood, How Far She Went

  François Camoin, Why Men Are Afraid of Women

  Molly Giles, Rough Translations

  Daniel Curley, Living with Snakes

  Peter Meinke, The Piano Tuner

  Tony Ardizzone, The Evening News

  Salvatore La Puma, The Boys of Bensonhurst

  Melissa Pritchard, Spirit Seizures

  Philip F. Deaver, Silent Retreats

  Gail Galloway Adams, The Purchase of Order

  Carole L. Glickfeld, Useful Gifts

  Antonya Nelson, The Expendables

  Nancy Zafris, The People I Know

  Debra Monroe, The Source of Trouble

  Robert H. Abel, Ghost Traps

  T. M. McNally, Low Flying Aircraft

  Alfred DePew, The Melancholy of Departure

  Dennis Hathaway, The Consequences of Desire

  Rita Ciresi, Mother Rocket

  Dianne Nelson, A Brief History of Male Nudes in America

  Christopher Mcllroy, All My Relations

  Alyce Miller, The Nature of Longing

  Carol Lee Lorenzo, Nervous Dancer

  C. M. Mayo, Sky over El Nido

  Wendy Brenner, Large Animals in Everyday Life

  Paul Rawlins, No Lie Like Love

  Harvey Grossinger, The Quarry

  Ha Jin, Under the Red Flag

  Andy Plattner, Winter Money

  Frank Soos, Unified Field Theory

  Mary Clyde, Survival Rates

  Hester Kaplan, The Edge of Marriage

  Darrell Spencer, CAUTION Men in Trees

  Robert Anderson, Ice Age

  Bill Roorbach, Big Bend

  Dana Johnson, Break Any Woman Down

  Gina Ochsner, The Necessary Grace to Fall

  Kellie Wells, Compression Scars

  Eric Shade, Eyesores

  Catherine Brady, Curled in the Bed of Love

  Ed Allen, Ate It Anyway

  Gary Fincke, Sorry I Worried You

  Barbara Sutton, The Send-Away Girl

  David Crouse, Copy Cats

  Randy F. Nelson, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men

  Greg Downs, Spit Baths

  Peter LaSalle, Tell Borges If You See Him: Tales of Contemporary Somnambulism

  Anne Panning, Super America

  Margot Singer, The Pale of Settlement

  Andrew Porter, The Theory of Light and Matter

  Peter Selgin, Drowning Lessons

  Geoffrey Becker, Black Elvis

  Lori Ostlund, The Bigness of the World

  Linda LeGarde Grover, The Dance Boots

  Jessica Treadway, Please Come Back To Me