2 posts tagged “teaser tuesday”

Today's Teaser Tuesday excerpt is from "Inheritance," the short story that's being published in the upcoming anthology Harlan County Horrors. This is the opening:

The kitchen reeked of lilies and Jania's diaper. I scrubbed Becca's lasagna pan with steel wool and stared through the window at a patch of early-turned leaves.

Becca thunked a laundry basket onto a clear space of kitchen table. “Baby needs changed,” I said.

“You can't do it?”

“I'm washing your dishes.”

“So? I was washing your shirt.”

“Where is it?” I half turned to look at the laundry basket.

Becca scooped up her youngest and tickled her. “In Mark and Tommy's room.”

“Is that where I'm sleeping?”

“Unless you want the attic.”

“No,” I replied too quickly.

“You still afraid of the attic?”

“Not afraid,” I said, running fresh, steaming water over the pan. “The stairs are too narrow. Too steep.”

“I put the boys up there,” she said, turning her back to me.

“Do they go up there much?” I tried to cover the crack in my voice with a cough.

“You are still afraid of the attic.”

I began to protest but she'd already taken Jania up the stairs.

 

That night, I read while the boys watched an obnoxious movie on DVD. Becca knitted a sock, her first, and she constantly wrinkled her nose at the book providing the instructions. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her sigh, close the book and coil the half-knitted sock around its needles. She stashed everything in a canvas bag and popped back the recliner.

“What're you reading?”

“It's for work,” I say, not looking at her.

“About what?”

“Selkies”

Her sons turned around. “What's a silky?” Tommy asked.

“Selkie, not silky. It's like a woman with a seal skin she can take on and off, kinda like a mermaid.”

“Never heard of that,” Becca said.

“We got a report of some sightings in Scotland.” I decided to keep my transfer to myself. The timing was perfect and I'd been raised too superstitious to do anything to jinx it.

“Cool,” Matt said.

Becca threw her feet over the edge of the chair. “How do you study all these things and you don't believe any of them?”

“Because I study them.” I turned a page I hadn't really read.

Matt opened his mouth but before he could speak, Becca announced that it was bedtime. The boys groaned. “We have to get up early for Grandma. I don't want any fighting or sass tomorrow.”

Soon as the three of them headed to the attic, I flipped off the TV and followed their footfalls. The boys settled in the back of the attic, near the door for the steps. That was good. It was the front of the attic that concerned me. I hadn't yet figured how to get Becca to allow me to poke around but I needed to see the trunk. Better yet, I needed to see that it wasn't there.

I got this idea from Kristen, who got it from Jen. It's "Teaser Tuesday" where you post a bit of your ms to your blog. I won't do WS b/c it's currently in the ABNA contest. So I guess this week, I'll do RFM.

The narrator (Seth) is a homeless 20 year old who's been dumped in State College, PA by a trucker (the opening scene is Seth robbing a convenience store). He's spending his time following students to different auditorium-sized classes on the Penn State campus. He's just come out of Rec Hall with the idea that, until he decides where to run to next, he could live on campus and blend in with the student population (sleep in the library, shower at Rec Hall, stay up all night and read at The Diner, etc.). Here he's sitting on the steps of the library eating popcorn and looking for someone else to follow. It's January 1992.

I saw her walk before I saw her. She had a book bag on one hip and the flap wasn’t latched. So every other step, the flap bounced. Hard. She was swaddled in a neon green ski jacket so it was hard to tell how her body was. If she had the hips to match that walk. From my experience, I guessed that she probably did. I wanted to keep enjoying her so I made her my target for the next round of classes.

Frizzy ringlets of hair poked out from under a stretchy wool hat. It was black. Her hair and the hat. It was hard to tell one from the other. She wore bright aqua-blue gloves. One hand coiled around the strap of her bag. The other hand stayed pretty much motionless at her side.

She went up two flights of stairs and down a long hallway. Mesmerized by her walk, I wasn’t paying attention and I walked right up to the door. It was an old room with a lot of dark wood. The desks. The teacher’s desk. The trim around the windows. The door. And it was small. Too small. I took a step backward.

“English 213?” The guy wore a tie, an open collar and glasses. His question hung in his eyes.

I stood there like a dope. The girl put her bag down and took off her hat. She had great hair. Curly-kinky and kind of short but a lot of it.

“Excuse me.” A guy in a black jacket eased past me and into the room.

“I… um…”

“Are you here for poetry writing?”

Oh that’s fucking fine. Poetry writing. With like twelve people. “Um… I’m not really registered for this class, no.”

Tie Guy started rolling up his cuffs. “Are you here to audit?”

The girl I followed looked up. I didn’t want to let her go just yet. It’d be sad and obvious to hang outside a door she might not use. So I said, “Yeah. That.”

Tie Guy motioned to the desks. He didn’t seem pissed. I don’t know what he seemed. I sat in the back left corner, away from the others. “Let’s get started. How about we put the desks in a circle?”

Metal scraped linoleum. Chalk scraped slate. He wrote “English 213” and printed “Jason Braddock” underneath it. Then he pulled a notebook out of a leather bag on the floor, turned a desk from the front row around and joined the circle. I inched my desk forward and swore at myself.

“We’re all going to get to know each other pretty well. Not just because it’s a small class but because of the nature of what we’ll do here. There’s no book for this class but you will have to buy a poetry journal. I don’t care what it is. It could be a binder or a steno pad or a spiral notebook. But I will be reading everyone’s journals as part of your grade. Now let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves.”

Fuck.

“Just tell us your name and maybe where you’re from, your major and why you’re taking this class.”

Fucking fuck.

The guy who came in after I did went first. While he talked, a smoosh of snow fell off his shoe. His name was Mike. He was from Philly. He was an English major and taking poetry for a writing credit. No one elaborated much more than Mike had.

The girl I stalked was a seat away from me. Before her turn, she pressed her lips together and crossed her ankles. “I’m Natalie. I’m from, um, near Pittsburgh and I’m an English major too. I’m taking poetry writing because I want to learn how to economize words.”

That went over big with some of the class. I couldn’t read Braddock. He just looked at the guy next to me and waited. I coughed into my fist and thought about what I’d say my major was.

“I’m Hal. I’m from just outside New York…”

“What part of Jersey are you from?” Dan from Camden asked.

Hal smirked at him and kept going. “I’m a history major and I signed up for poetry writing because I thought it would be a good way to meet girls.”

It was like a drop of water on an over-filled glass of water. Everyone shifted and laughed, even Braddock. Once we were suitably tense again, he looked at me and said, “Go ahead.”

“I’m Seth,” I said without thinking. Brakes squealed in my mind. For fucking fuck’s sake. What is wrong with you? Jee-zus. I coughed again to cover my brainfart. “I’m from…” Quick, shithead. Answer the question. “a lot of places actually. I don’t, um, really have a major.” That got a couple small laughs. “And I’m here because, ah, I got lost.”

They laughed again and seemed to like it. Braddock just moved on to Corrin from York. I didn’t hear any other names or places. I felt like stabbing myself in the head. I hadn’t spoken my name aloud in three years now all of a sudden there it was. Thanks to Hal and his big joke making me forget to lie. God damn it. I’m following him out of here and beating the shit out of him.

I ran over the confrontation in my mind. I wouldn’t say anything. Just walk up behind him and shove him. He was bigger than I was but I could take him if I surprised him. I imagined his bloody face and what it would be like to pick his bone fragments out of my knuckles. I could kick him in the stomach while I did.

What are you pissed at him for? He didn’t do anything to you. Hal leaned back and I caught a glimpse of Natalie. Which would be better? Following him and beating him unconscious or following her and fucking her in some mud-slushed alley under an orange streetlight?

I weighed my choices for a while until Hal elbowed me. He handed me a couple sheets of paper and indicated the old “take one and pass it down.” I did. It was a list of homework that Braddock expected. And he wanted a poem by the following Thursday. A love poem. He was telling us what he wanted – three stanzas of four lines each in free verse with no words of endearment or adoration.

“Think about your pacing. Be particular. Give it a storyline. A motif. Create an image and show it to us. Make,” he paused to count, “fourteen, no, fifteen copies. And work through it in your poetry journal. Pretend it’s math class. I want to see your work.”

People started getting their things together, packing up notebooks, folding the syllabus and putting it inside notebooks and folders.

“And read every week. I want to know who you’re doing your anthology paper on by March 1. Make notes about who you’re reading in your journal. See you Tuesday.”

Tuesdays. Thursdays. At 2:30 in the afternoon.

I stumbled out as part of the crowd. I lost Hal and Natalie somehow. But I caught sight of Mike from Philly and Camden Dan. My subconscious latched onto them and without thinking I followed them across the campus to a different bookstore. They blathered about the upcoming Superbowl the whole time.

The campus bookstore had high ceilings and looked to have more clothes and souvenir crap than actual books. I poked around a few aisles. Considered buying a used book or two. In the end, I bought a stenographer’s pad, a mechanical pencil and a Hershey bar without almonds. I put it all in my duffel, between the dirty laundry and the rubbers.