BOOMER 40
2018
NORTH CAROLINA CAROLINA LLIITTEERRAARRYY RE REVVIIEEW W
A SHORT STORY BY LEAH HAMPTON
By the time May took the frog lamps, Larry was losing Hollow Rock. First she took the big stuff – loveseat, dining table, three bookshelves. When it was just State Forest Service guys like himself putting out small brush fires, before the election, before everything burned or surrendered, there had still been dishes in the cabinets.
WITH ART BY DONALD SULTAN LEAH HAMPTON is a native North Carolinian who taught English at Western Carolina University. In 2012 she won the Doris Betts Fiction Prize with her story “The Saint,” which was published in NCLR 2013. She is currently in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, where she won the Keene Prize for Literature for “Boomer.” This $50,000 prize is open to UT students “to encourage the writing and publishing of good American Literature, to lend financial support to the creators of such literature, and to enhance the prestige and reputation in the world market of American writers both now and in the future.”
The first of October was warm, and they were having some usual fight. This time, when May said it wasn’t worth it, that they ought to just hang it up, instead of punching walls, Larry nodded. All right, Maybelle, he said. Then that’s what we’ll do. May didn’t understand. You want to me to go? You’ve been trying to a long time, Larry said. She blinked. What would I do? Whatever you want, Larry said. Don’t take care of me. May narrowed her eyes. What is wrong with you? A lot I reckon, Larry said. May repeated each question, rewording each time. Larry answered the same. The next morning he got called in to assist a team on the Qualla Boundary with a quick-spreading fire close to state lands. Some kids had left their cookout at one of the campgrounds. Twelve wildfires Recipient of the North Carolina Award in the Fine Arts, DONALD SULTAN was born in Asheville, NC. He earned a BFA from the UNC Chapel Hill and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited internationally in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Selected public collections include the Ackland Art Museum at UNC Chapel Hill, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, the Tate Gallery in London, and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. The artist lives and works in New York, where his work appears in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His many honors include honorary doctorates from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC, the New York Academy of Art, and UNC Asheville. He was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Houston Fine Art Fair in 2011. See more of his work on his website.