Year of the LitMag: One Story #156

[Note: this is the 4^th installment in my Year of the LitMag series. If you would like to contribute to the series, leave a comment below or shoot me an email.]

One Story #156 “The Quiet” by C. Joseph Jordan

By now, everyone knows about One Story, right? It’s a little magazine that comes out every few weeks and contains just one story. It’s a cool concept and it’s also available on Kindle. (As soon as my print subscription expires, I’ll switch to the Kindle version, I think.) Lunch Hour Stories tried the same thing a few years ago, but it didn’t last as long, and is now gone.

This story by C. Joseph Jordan is a nice read about a Vietnam vet who comes home to Oregon after two tours. It’s been a tumultuous few years for him—his father died while he was in Vietnam; he fell in love while on R&R in Sydney, Australia; he killed a Vietnamese kid with a knife. And now he’s finally home. But as we know from every war story we’ve ever heard or read, it’s not that easy, and Sergeant Adlai Malick has some demons and secrets he has to deal with. So, upon arrival at his mother’s house, where there is a big, noisy welcome home party waiting for him, he goes into the basement in search of quiet. (Be sure to check out the editor’s interview with the author.)

Although the story is thoroughly readable, and my sympathies are with Sergeant Malick throughout, even when I fear he’s going to explode, even when he behaves badly, it had a feeling of familiarity to it. Because haven’t we read this story before? Beginning with “A Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway and followed by countless others, we’ve seen the difficulty a soldier has in coming home from war. Malick is damaged by the war and he is going to have to find a way to cope, or not, but I don’t feel that the story takes us anywhere new. Am I asking too much? Isn’t it enough that I haven’t seen this particular veteran and his particular circumstances before? Maybe. Maybe we’re ready for a new take on this subject. I just wish it had been a little more surprising.

Short Story Month 2011: One Story -- Ethan Rutherford (#ssm2011)

I'm not sure why it is, but I don't love stories about kids. I just don't. So I probably didn't come to "Summer, Boys" by Ethan Rutherford, in Issue Number 145 of One Story, with the right frame of mind.

Which is not to say I didn't like it. I think the writing is great. I love the sentences, some of which are these great sprawling things of the sort that I like to write. And I also love the point of view, which is unique in my reading experience. (It's basically simultaneously from the point of two boys, best friends, who have just finished fifth grade.) The issues the two main characters face, while important to 10 year olds, don't greatly interest me.

In any case, these two boys--we don't get their names because they're basically interchangeable--spend all their time together at one boy's house. They live Seattle and are big football fans generally and Brian Bosworth fans in particular. But in this transitional summer, something happens. They spend a little time with an older boy, a cousin, who is a skateboarder, and so they abandon their bikes in favor of skateboards. The older boy also doesn't care about Bosworth, or football, and while he enjoys a cartoon the boys like (Godzilla stomps on Bambi), he says he's got a movie to show them and will return with it the next day. When the older boy doesn't show up, the younger boys don't know what to do with themselves. Eventually, one of the boys goes home and they are separated for a few days--their first time apart. The separation is painful, but finally it ends and they watch the older boy's movie--which appears to be porn. ("Both of them know what they are watching, neither of them knows whether they should be watching it.") But the boys don't even hear the movie, or the approach of the father coming down the stairs. They hear only each other: "One friend is clumsily showing the other--the other, who knows nothing of himself, except that he wants to be included. There is milky, hairless skin. . . There is a flaccid taste, the bending of limbs, and a strange, tongue-less kiss."

Okay, then. A couple of kids discovering their bodies and cementing their friendship. I wish there were more to it.