Fiction - $10.00 The collision of dreams and reality, the shadows cast by sunflowers, the strong undercurrents of rivers, the distant sound of a train pushing back the night of time promising places we’ll never go. . . . Douglas Campbell reminds us of places we’ve been to, but would rather forget.
Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories
“The characters in Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories are men who have lived for awhile. There they are, right on the surface of the page, where Douglas Campbell places them next to women. He gives them authentic and rarely heard self-actualized male voices, nuanced and yet not held back, as they—in the words of the husband narrator in the story ‘Accidents’—wrench some sort of order out of the chaos.” Cynthia Litz, author of Imprints
Douglas Campbell’s fiction has appeared in many print and online publications, including Smokelong Quarterly, Vestal Review, Fiction Southeast, The Northville Review, Short Story America, and Potomac Review. Douglas daydreams, writes, and plays his guitar in a tree-shaded bungalow in a little town in southwestern Pennsylvania.
M o n k e y P u z z l e P r e s s . c o m
Douglas Campbell
Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories
Douglas Campbell
Monkey Puzzle Press Harrison, Arkansas
Copyright Š 2014 Douglas Campbell
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. Printed in the United States of America.
Cover Art Original painting by Judith Pincus judith.pincus@gmail.com
Design Nate Jordon
Monkey Puzzle Press 807 S. Oak St. Unit 3 Harrison, Arkansas 72601 monkeypuzzlepress.com
With this book I honor my inner child, the survivor whose strength has never failed me.
Table of Contents
Accidents
1
Apprentice
4
She Knocked on My Door
6
Curveball Summer
9
Sunflowers, Rivers
12
I Think You Know
17
The Engineer’s Space
22
Something Like that River
25
Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories
Curveball Summer One of the best things that ever happened to me was finding a book by Bob Feller in the town library, in January before my twelve-year-old summer, my last summer of Little League. Feller was a star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians in the 1940s, and he wrote a book about how to pitch. He laid it all out: the fastball, curveball, slider, change-up. Exactly what your arm, wrist, and fingers should do. Nice drawings showing the grip for each pitch, where to put your fingers in relation to the seams of the ball. A beautiful book. I wanted a curveball in the worst way, and couldn’t wait for spring to see if I could throw one. Good thing I found Bob Feller, because the only thing my father ever taught me was what a worthless piece of shit I was. He seemed to hate everything about me, even the fact that I loved to read. He’d throw open the door to my room, see me reading on the bed. “Don’t you ever get your nose out of those goddamn books?” Then he’d make that happen by rousting me out to wax his Lincoln Town Car. Not easy for me as a boy, wiping thick dried wax off a car that big. It wore me out quick. “You proud of that?” my father would say, pointing at a cloudy patch of wax still clinging to a fender. Then he’d haul off and kick me in the ass, hard. “Stop wiping like a girl, and get that wax off.” My father wasn’t the only bully in my life that year. Jimmy Newsome, a pimply, fat-faced fifteen-year-old, decided he hated me too. When we got off the school bus he’d call me a fucking
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Douglas Campbell
faggot, punch me in the stomach, and throw me on the ground. He was big, and it hurt. I didn’t understand it then, but now I do. Some people just flick you the wrong way with how they look and act, even when you don’t know them. I guess I was one of those people for Jimmy Newsome. Between Newsome and my father I lived scared, getting my butt kicked damn near every day. When spring came, my pal Norman and I began tossing the ball around. Things sound easy in books, but the curveball didn’t come easy in real life. I gripped the ball the way Feller said, twisted my arm and wrist when I threw it, tried to get it to roll off my fingers just right. I kept asking Norman, “Did it curve?” and he kept shaking his head. To throw a strike with a curveball you have to find just the right release point. Let go of the ball too soon, it sails high and inside. Hold on too long, you’ll yank it sideways and into the ground. You have to make it spin fast too or it won’t curve, or maybe just barely curve, and that’s no good. If it curves slow and lazy, like a banana, anybody can hit it. A curveball has to break sharply and suddenly. That’s when batters jump away from it or swing and miss it by a foot. But to do that the ball has to be spinning fast, and I couldn’t seem to make it do that. I tried for weeks, throwing from over the top, three-quarters, sidearm, even submarine. I’d throw so long some days, jerking my arm in that curveball motion, my arm would ache from shoulder to fingertips. It frustrated me so much I was almost ready to quit baseball, and I was a kid who kept baseballs on my bedside table just for their smell. New, leathery-smelling white ones, old, darkened ones smelling of grass. One day Norman got sick of me asking him if the ball had curved, even when I knew it hadn’t. “Give it up, Randy,” he hollered. Well, damn it, that flicked me the wrong way. I wanted to throw the ball through Norman’s fucking head, and I flung it at
10
Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories
him as hard as I could. Just for the hell of it I tried spinning it too. And for the first time I saw that sucker curve. “Whoa,” Norman said, “that thing broke three feet!” I tried it again, threw it the same way, hard, with a sharp snap of the wrist. And it worked again. The ball flew off my fingers with a fast, tight spin and curved so much it scared the crap out of Norman. He jumped away from it and swiped at it with his glove, but he didn’t even touch it. “You got it,” he said. “Jesus!” And I did, I had it. That’s what I’d needed all along, that extra twist of ferocity. When I got that, the curveball clicked. Going into that summer I already understood how dangerous people are, how happy they are when they find ways to hurt you. My father taught me that, and Jimmy Newsome. But by the end of the summer I didn’t care, because I didn’t need other people. Learning the curveball taught me that. Anything I needed to know I could figure out for myself. When Little League season rolled around I was unhittable. I went 9-0, and led the Flyers to the town championship. I threw my curveball right at the hitters. They’d lurch back out of the way, and the ball would break over the plate for a strike. I loved that, seeing their knees buckle, watching them stumble away from the plate, wide-eyed. Sometimes their batting helmets fell off, bounced on the dry dirt, kicked out a poof of dust. One kid spun away from a curveball, dropped his bat and helmet in the dirt, and left them lying there. He walked to the bench, to his coach, with tears rolling down his cheeks. That was the best moment of the summer. The little jerk was scared to death of me.
11
Acknowledgments The author wishes to credit the publications where these stories first appeared: “Accidents” won the 2007 Many Mountains Moving Flash Fiction contest and appeared in Many Mountains Moving. “Apprentice” appeared in Fiction Southeast. “She Knocked On My Door” appeared in Potomac Review. “Curveball Summer” appeared in Slow Trains Literary Journal. “Sunflowers, Rivers” won the 2011 Able Muse Review Write Prize and appeared in Able Muse Review. “I Think You Know” appeared in Fiction 365. “The Engineer’s Space” appeared in Litsnack. “Something Like That River” won the 2008 Coffeehousefiction. com Short Story Contest and appeared on their website.
Thank You Thanks and a hug to Judith Pincus of Morgantown, WV, whose artistic talent provided the cover for this book. Another big thank you to Nate Jordon, editor at Monkey Puzzle Press, for his careful attention to the many details that go into the making of a book and for his amazing patience. And a big shout out and thank you to my friends and fellow writers in the Flash Factory on the Zoetrope.com website!
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Fiction - $10.00 The collision of dreams and reality, the shadows cast by sunflowers, the strong undercurrents of rivers, the distant sound of a train pushing back the night of time promising places we’ll never go. . . . Douglas Campbell reminds us of places we’ve been to, but would rather forget.
Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories
“The characters in Sunflowers, Rivers, and Other Stories are men who have lived for awhile. There they are, right on the surface of the page, where Douglas Campbell places them next to women. He gives them authentic and rarely heard self-actualized male voices, nuanced and yet not held back, as they—in the words of the husband narrator in the story ‘Accidents’—wrench some sort of order out of the chaos.” Cynthia Litz, author of Imprints
Douglas Campbell’s fiction has appeared in many print and online publications, including Smokelong Quarterly, Vestal Review, Fiction Southeast, The Northville Review, Short Story America, and Potomac Review. Douglas daydreams, writes, and plays his guitar in a tree-shaded bungalow in a little town in southwestern Pennsylvania.
M o n k e y P u z z l e P r e s s . c o m
Douglas Campbell