Fiction Packet 2: Longer Short Stories

     While last week, I enjoyed all of the short stories, this week, I thoroughly enjoyed the readings. The stories from our second packet were longer, and as such were able to incoporate more "story." I say "story," because I dont know the techincal term.
     I'm not saying the short stories in the first packet weren't equally well written, but because of their short length, I could only "see" the detail. In the stories in the second packet, I was able to more immerse myself in the story. For exmaple, in the short story "All people in hell want..." the author gives characters a nickname.
     So what's in a name? In these fiction stories, a lot (in my opinion). If nothing else, having a character with a nickname instantly adds a level of intimacy between the reader and the story. You feel like you know the character on a more personal level, while simultaneously adding some level of additional mystery to the character. Even if the nickname is immediately explained afterward, for a brief time, you are left pondering his nickname, like Isaac "Ice" Dunmire.
     I have read a lot of stories before, and some of them undoubtedly had characters with nicknames in them, but being forced to examine something I have read has been interesting, if only because its forced me to more closely examine the story and instead of just read the story, I actually have to "listen" to what the author is trying to say, which has also bled over into my personal reading, so thanks CRWT.

Fiction Packet, "Morning News"

     Morning News is an absolutely amazing short story. Firstly, the author is never specific about what the news is. As the story progresses, the author discusses the implications of receiving life altering news. Expertly spinning out the details of the actions the author must now take, the author reveals (by not revealing) that he is being confronted by his own mortality.
     The "morning news," was given to the author by a doctor, and now the author must decide how to put his affairs into order, and say goodbye to those he loves. This resonates strongly with me, and moves me profoundly because the writer so clearly captures and describes their feelings and fears about their impending end. While reading his premonitions about his familys' reactions, it feels very personal and I put myself in the readers shoes.
     Because the author writes in a way that makes the story even more personal and intimate, I find myself more drawn in and more moved by it. This is an excellent example of fiction writing, and why spinning details is so important. Without the details the author uses (his wifes reaction, his own reaction), the story would not have connected with me the way it did.

Fiction

His heart is pounding in his chest, his breathing shallow and rapid. Doc was going to hyperventilate. "Get a fuckin' grip man," he thought to himself, "slow your fuckin' breathing down and get your fuckin' bearings." Doc quickly scanned his surroundings, unable to fully comprehend the maelstrom of action swirling around him. The young medic found himself totally engulfed in a choking cloud of deep brown dust. The air was thick with sand and grit that blurred his vision and filled his mouth with sand that crunched between his teeth. He couldn't make out faces, but he could see silohouttes moving through the storm of chaos, like the flitting apparitions you sometimes catch in your peripheral vision. Like lightning, realization struck him. There had been another explosion, very close to him. Toth, that had been her name. She was an engineer. The only people in this AO were his guys and some engineers building a school, so Toth must have been on of theirs. Women don't serve in the infantry so she definetly wasn't in Charlie company. The engineers had been working in Jisr Di'yala, a little slice of heaven just north of Sadr City. JD, as it was referred to by C. Co, was a death trap. It was a nightmarish labyrnth whos walls were the high roofed two to three story houses typical to that area, and whos streets were treacherously narrow. So narrow in some places that if a humvee were to drive down it, the sideview mirrors would scrape along the khaki, clay covered brick walls hemming them in. The whole city stank, the whole country stank as far as Doc was concerned, but the streets were especially bad. Outside Baghdad proper and the other major cities, people were lucky to have electricity let alone plumbing. In some towns, the denizens had enough room to build outhouses but not here. Here, you shit in a bucket. Once the bucket was full, you dumped it in the street in one of the two ditches that run parallel along all the roads through the town. The strip the engineers had been ambushed in was thankfully one of the bigger streets. You could fit two humvees down this one if it weren't for the sewer trenches. Docs platoon had been on patrol a few blocks over and heard the explosion. Felt would have been more accurate, Doc had been sitting in the back of one of the humvees marinating in his own sweat when he felt the concussion of the explosion pass through him. Experience told him that it was going to be bad. Experience told him right. From what Doc could tell when they arrived, the improvised explosive device had exploded beneath the lead humvee in the engineers convoy. The explosion had flipped the five ton armored vehivle onto its back and set it ablaze, dark black pillar of smoke rising angrily from the inverted vehicle. Painfully, Doc recalled that there had been survivors in the vehicle. He could hear them screaming as the burned alive, could see the imprint of their kevlar and nomex gloves pressing futiley against the windows. The hands were framed by hazy images of faces, twisted by screams and pain and terror. Doc and a few others rushed forward to help but stopped short as ammunition inside the vehicles began to cook off in the fire. Some dark but realistic part of him had hoped a stray bullet would put an end to the suffering of the men inside. He got his wish as a grenade inside the vehicle exploded, blowing the doors off the vehicle and both silencing the screams and momentarily deafening him. From beyond the burning hulk of ruined metal, Doc heard someone screaming "Medic!" and he was off running. Toth had been in the turret of the second vehicle, she had caught a piece of shrapnel in the neck from the explosion. Her comrades had pulled her out of the turret and laid her on the ground while calling for a medic. Doc rushed up, swiftly shrugging his dusty brown aide bag from his shoulders. With hands tragically skilled in the art of trying to mend broken young peoples sundered bodies, Doc opened his bag and pulled out a scalpel, cutting the chin strap on Toths helmet. While Doc was cutting, his eyes met hers. Her eyes were a haunting grey, and filled with a chilling clarity that caused Doc to hesitate momentarily. She had round, high sitting, tan cheek bones that were speckled with light brown freckles and a peanut nose. Her mouth was big, and coughing up blood. Her lips trembled and her mouth moved spasmodicly, silently trying to mouth words. The shrapnel wound to her neck had missed her arteries but had severed her windpipe. He had been about to insert a breathing tube into the hole when his world turned to light and pain before waking up on his back. Doc felt the second explosion for sure. The concussion had torn through his body, jarring his bones and moving his internal organs. With the thick and heavy ringing in his ears wearing off, Doc hears the chatter of gunfire. Bullets whizz past like angry and deadly wasps. The still thick haze clears a little more and now Doc can make out his guys taking cover behind their vehicles and returning fire. The thunder of the .50 caliber turret mounted machine guns join the cacophony, along with shouted orders and the screams of the wounded. Docs feels dizzy and tries to control his breathing again, feeling for the first time the stabbing pain in his chest. Looking down at his body, he can see has shrapnel wounds. Shards of metal have torn into his left arm and chest, a particualrly large, jagged, fire-blackened, piece jutting obscenely from his side. The digital grey of his uniform are now dripping with his blood. Docs breating is getting harder, tighter. He has tension pneumothorax, meaning his lung has been punctured and now is leaking oxygen into his chest cavity, filling up more and more with no where to go, crushing him from inside. He tries feebly to call out, but barely manages to make a croaking sort of gasp. Toth! The name tears through Doc's agony-wracked mind with searing clarity, temporarly banishing the the pain and fear, replacing them with a sense of duty. Scanning the wreckage-strewn road, Doc finds her. The second explosion had thrown her against the side of a building like a rag doll, leaving her in a heap in a shit ditch on the side of the road. Laying there, every second feels like an eternity, Doc laying there dying in the midst of battle. A lucky shot from a roof top strikes Carter, a Charlie company man in the face. A brief look of shock captured on poor young Carters face as the back of his head explodes out painting a terrible red mural on the building just behind him, before his body crumples like a marionette puppet whos strings suddenly vanish. An enemy fighter wearing khaki pants and a red pinstriped button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up appears in a doorway and raises an AK-47 with a broken butt only to be hit by the .50 cal, his body jerking as his left arm explodes like some nightmarish firework, a second round disintigrating his body, leaving an angry red cloud in its stead. Doc lays his head back slowly, his helmet resting on the ground. The sky begins to break through the stifling dust cloud, and somehow amidst the angry chaos surrounding him, Doc finds peace. Closing his eyes, a smile creasing his face, he comes to terms with the fact he may die, and hes ok with that, a life filled with so much death wouldn't be such a terrible thing to leave behind.

Mystery Stories

     In our fiction packet, I found the section, "Mystery Stories," to be the most interesting. I don't know why these short snippets are my favorite, but they resonate the most with me. I believe it is the very descriptive language that appeals to me the most .
     Each of the stories is only a short paragraph, but each paragraph uses its title and its language to create very strong imagery. Also, each of the short paragraphs almost starts a story in their own right. Its like the mystery stories are actually a series of first-paragraphs to a book or a chapter or some larger story. I would like to know what author Sharon Krinsky was trying to say or do here, but if it was only to be memorable so someone than she succeded.

"An old Japanese man is living alone on the outskirts of town. He feels sad and he is singing loudly about his bad fortune. I dream that I am this Japanese man. I wake up crying in the dream but not in real life."

     Of the short stories in "Myster Stories," my favorite was the  snippet entitled, "The Japanese Man." To me, this story almost seems like a poem. While whats happening in this snippet is clear, the reason behind its penning leaves a lot of question. Why a Japanese old man, why singing loudly about bad fortune, and whats the back story?

City Eclogue

     I enjoyed City Eclogue, by Ed Roberson. After reading Robersons giant poem, one section in particular continued to resonate with me.

The kind of walk that’s always taking cover
instead of steps that gets to the corner
and can see what’s around it by the faced
direction targets cite the shooter’s placed,

by where people look for what’s against them,
we slouch that walk eye on our government
without thinking because we can’t think
without our common term yet     
just a stink
What this section means to me and what its' authors' intent while writing are probably different, yet I still found great relevancy here, and I am always happy when I find something I can relate to, even if it's just me pretending like in this case.
     But I digress...to me, this section conjures painful emotions, memories, and brings to surface a great deal of inner conflict. I remember hot streets, hot like most people never know. So hot that when you walk on them your fuckin boots melt to the ground. I can feel dust and grit and sweat and heat on my face and in my eyes and in my mouth. Not gritty like the sand at the beach, when you get sand in your mouth and bite down and it crunches between your teeth, a different kind of grit that coats the inside of your mouth and makes it feel like wet sand paper. Your steps are all measured and while you scan for danger, you also scan for the nearest piece of cover in case the iron rain or the lead wind kick up and you need to shelter from it.
     Most vividly though, it reminds me thinking about why I'm here, and if the reasons I started that journey were the reasons I was still there. I remember at some point, while cradling the broken fragments of what used to be my brother, wondering what the fuck we were doing here. Aside from a year of blood and terror and shit and death and nightmares, what was being gained? I went for my reasons, what I thought were the right reasons, but truth is a very difficult thing to find and the only truth I knew then and know now is that its complicated.
     Its ironic though, Roberson I think implies that while people create dangers all around us, we often lose sight of the danger of the government because were distracted by events around us. Yet, it was in the middle of that very situation that I began to wonder if it wasn't the government that was possibly the real enemy? While I couldn't and can't put a finger on it, I wonder if that stink was coming from DC back home, or the open sewers on either side of every road I walked down. Its a complex question with a complex answer that I doubt I will ever have, and its impressive that 9 lines from a poem can capture that so very well, for me at least.