Last week I started reading a book I wanted to like. I read the first page, the fragments a good turn from the long, winding sentences of the previous book. But I couldn’t find the place. I read the second chapter, a new narrator, the chapters trading voices, but then came two chapters of the same voice, and neither voice was well enough distinguished except by their individual thoughts – no defining stylistic choices, only that the man had this work, the woman had this thought. I have been reading widely lately, reading to examine what I might do as a writer too. But I still quit the book, picked up another I read in three days – a plural narrator, something I try occasionally but haven’t figure out.
My ThirtyNine Stories project ends in two months. I have fifteen pieces to write. Yesterday I thought about looking up the parameters I set and decided against the reminder: there is something, I am certain, about ten thousand word stories (as in more than one) and I haven’t put one together. There are stories I am mapping, but not for this project. In February I decided to apply to MFA programs but wasn’t ready to slam together a portfolio in three weeks so I have only just applied to begin next semester. I am not yet accepted. But deciding to pursue an MFA and thinking about my writing from a more professional perspective, and a conversation with an old friend this summer has made me more protective of some of my work. Which means that some of my better, recent work is only mine right now.
Yet I will post a thirty-ninth story in early November. Last week I thought about how to make that happen. I am always making up some writing assignment for myself so two ideas came fast: Five Flash and Snapshots. Five Flash is the cheapest way I can think of to knock out five pieces: starting next Saturday I’ll post one story a day for five days. To prep I’ll write first sentences, maybe second sentences. Snapshots comes from writing practice I did a couple of weeks ago when I thought about the little green house my family rented after we returned to Wisconsin from Italy. For the practice of writing place and period, I want to write about three of my childhood places.
Back to dropping it. The piece I’m posting below is a start I’ll likely never finish. I was thinking about Bonnie and Clyde. I was thinking about grandparents robbing banks to pay their granddaughter’s college tuition. They have to get caught. The sprees they got away with in their youth are just not possible in a world of GPS, surveillance, web sleuths. I still like the idea but am dropping it for now. I held it for a fun minute though.
Her grandfather hollered down from the porch that she was lying, and what did she want anyway? I’m not lying, Diane yelled back, And I only came out here to tell you I saw it on TV! Her grandfather, who kept the pantry stocked with peanut M&Ms for her, who remembered her half birthday with a twenty dollar bill, who called her sweetpea even though she was nearly twenty years old, her grandfather took a shade of red and hollered she best be on her way. Next to him, her grandmother leaned over the porch rail like she might leap, leaning like the forward motion might propel them all to a better understanding. Diane took a step back, reaching for her bike, pushing off and pedaling as furiously away from the old farmhouse as she had, minutes before, pedaled toward the same. Near the road, Diane turned to look over her shoulder. Her grandmother with both hands, palms flat, on her grandfather’s chest, face tilted up. Her grandfather with rare, unkind strength, hands at his sides. It was their truck Diane saw in the corner frame of surveillance footage from the bank. The truck that pulled flatbed floats in the homecoming, Fourth of July, and Dairy Days parades, the truck that stopped at empty four way intersections, the truck that rarely tipped past fifty-seven miles an hour even on a flat stretch of county highway.
Diane was at Abigail’s when the news came on, the two girls microwaving popcorn to celebrate the summer home after a freshman year away to different UW campuses. At breaks during the year they had met to do this too, make popcorn and talk. About classmates who dropped at semester or broke up or got pregnant, about classes and what a bitch all that reading is now, how a C may as well be an A at university, about newly acquired or considered piercings or tattoos, about sending nudes once, about drinking beer versus vodka, about still going to mass. Diane hadn’t shed the strictures of her upbringing but the ties were loosening and Abigail’s stories were a peek at what sophomore year might contain. Diane was wary though. Her mother was manic depressive and Diane was raised in two homes during her middle and high school years, after her father fled, her mother’s small, high ceilinged apartment in an old brick building on the square, housed above the small, nearly extinguished town paper, and her maternal grandparents’ sprawling acreage two miles outside of town, the bordering fields leased out to other farmers now. Diane had started the summer at her mother’s apartment in town, selfishly because her mother was less attentive and Diane liked the freedom of hours she’d discovered at university. Her mother, at the moment Diane saw the news story in Abigail’s house, had no idea where Diane was, and couldn’t remember seeing her daughter the day before either.
It was her grandfather’s truck. Diane recognized the decal on the back window. An unusual, unique decal, the reporter said. Stick figures of a man, woman, girl and four cats. The decal, enlarged and enhanced, and the make and model of the truck was featured on local newscasts across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. Investigators were fairly certain this exact truck was at the scenes of bank robberies in the three states, the earliest seven years before when the truck was new off the lot. The microwave dinged but neither Diane nor Abigail moved to retrieve the bag. Both girls had drifted from the kitchen to the living room and stood numb before the gigantic flatscreen as the female anchor held her grave expression before a commercial cut in. Oh my God, Abigail said and pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jean shorts, thumb typing a search. Oh my God, Diane, it’s Papa and Nana. Look. She held out her phone and Diane looked at the silhouette of her grandparents sitting in the Ford truck at an Illinois toll booth. Police seek to identify suspects in tristate robberies. If you have information call. Investigators crossed state lines to piece together elaborate pattern of robberies. Diane put a hand to her mouth. The microwave dinged again and this time Diane moved, running out to the driveway where she’d parked her bike, hopping on, shoving off to race to Papa and Nana’s.
Papa and Nana didn’t believe in television, and that’s how they explained it when Diane asked could they please get a TV, at least for weekends. They did believe in internet though, even when it was molasses dial up. But even when they couldn’t get an internet contract without a cable contract, Papa and Nana resisted buying a television, compromising at watching the occasional movie on Diane’s laptop set on the coffee table. So when Diane arrived at her grandparents’ farmhouse, they hadn’t seen the news story about their truck, the link to half a dozen (or more) robberies, the decals everyone would now look for (the decals the whole town would know immediately, without the picture proof). You rob banks! Diane yelled before she’d even parked her bike. Banks! Her Papa and Nana were on the porch with the cats, as they were most summer evenings.
Twenty-five of thirty-nine. 877 words.
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