DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT By CHARLES F STERCHI IV A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 © 2018 CHARLES F STERCHI IV To my family ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Foremost, I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee, Jill Ciment, David Leavitt, and Ange Mlinko. I’d also like to thank Padgett Powell and Amy Hempel, and, of course, Michael Hofmann, who taught me how to pronounce my name correctly. Finally, I am grateful for the editorial generosity I have received from Madison Jones, Wynne Hungerford, Jacob Guajardo, Neal Hammons, Janna Moretti, and Alex Ender. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................ 4 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT............................................................................................ 7 FALLING FOR FLORENCE GREENE .................................................................................... 9 THE DUD PLEDGE ................................................................................................................... 18 DOUGH BOY TAKES YOU DOWN ....................................................................................... 21 IN THE GRAVEL LOT AT WILL SHAKESPEARE’S HOUSE ......................................... 24 FAKE ORANGES ....................................................................................................................... 27 HOSPITAL, MEMPHIS ............................................................................................................ 34 RIVER OF WOMEN .................................................................................................................. 35 THE RIVERBOAT EXPLOSION ............................................................................................ 37 CASUAL AMERICA.................................................................................................................. 40 ORPHEUS AND DALE ............................................................................................................. 42 MORE THAN ANIMALS .......................................................................................................... 44 JESUS’ PIMENTO CHEESE SANDWICH ............................................................................ 47 INEPTITUDE .............................................................................................................................. 49 JOHN O. AND THE SQUID...................................................................................................... 51 THE BANG BANG LADY ......................................................................................................... 64 A BRIEF ENCOUNTER WITH GARRISON KEILLOR ..................................................... 70 BELLTOWER WITHOUT BELLS .......................................................................................... 72 SECOND HONEYMOON ......................................................................................................... 86 PICKETT MOON AND THE MYSTERY OF ANTS ............................................................ 89 A TENDERNESS AT THE WHARF ...................................................................................... 100 THE REDEMPTION OF CHARLIE GORDON STOUT (NOVEL EXCERPT) .............. 105 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ................................................................................................... 117 5 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT By CHARLES F STERCHI IV May 2018 Chair: Jill Ciment Major: Creative Writing This thesis is a short story collection. It is set in Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama. The people in the stories are members of the United Methodist Church. The collection is influenced by jazz-age jazz musicians, and by the Gautama Buddha, who appears in several of the stories. 6 DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT Everybody, all across the countryside, was dancing in the moonlight. They danced upon brightly tiled platforms among the trees and the bonfires and the torches. They danced in gazebos and on porches, verandas, rooftops, piazzas, landings, driveways, docks, and lawns. They danced in pairs. The pairs danced all together, synchronized like lightning bugs, or like Christmas lights, blinking. Two of the dancers were Gary and Martha. They danced in the moonlight alone upon their platform, which was on the patio behind their blue colonial-style home. They held one another and did their pirouettes. They wore bandages beneath their clothes. They had had more work done, to their bodies. They found that having work done helped them stay together. There was always something new that way. One did not become bored. As the moon passed behind a cloud, Martha led Gary inside, up the stairs, and to the bedroom. Martha unbuttoned her blouse. Then Gary unhooked Martha’s brassiere, which was black, and unwrapped her gauze. Dozens of rose petals spilled from beneath the gauze and across the floor. She had had breasts the day before, but now the breasts were gone. Where nipples would have been, Gary found his own indigo eyes, or copies of them, gazing back at him. The eyes blinked several times, and the pupils began to adjust to the light of the room. “What do you think?” Martha said. “It’s marvelous work.” Martha blushed. No matter how much work she had done, Gary insisted she keep her original face, so that she could still blush. He loved her most when she was blushing. 7 “Dr. Parker has really outdone himself this time. Just wait till you see, dear Martha, what he’s done to me.” Gary undressed then, and unwrapped his gauze, revealing his latest augmentation. His penis had been replaced by a very noble Roman nose with distinctly American accents. It suggested, say, George Washington, and honesty. Martha and Gary embraced, and they turned off the light. The night seeped through the window screens and swallowed them, the way spilled motor oil might swallow two worms. The moon passed from behind the cloud then, revealing the countryside once more. The countryside was empty of people now. Everyone had gone inside to make love. Deer grazed among the trees, eating berries, leaves, and grass. The bucks locked antlers, making faint scraping noises in the night. The torches and bonfires burned on. Then slowly, one by one, they went out, and all that was left was moonlight. 8 FALLING FOR FLORENCE GREENE Everybody at the railroad trestle is jazzed up on speed and light beer. It’s seven guys and Florence Greene. All the guys except Pinky and I are diving into the Holston River, that shallow tributary of the Tennessee. They’re having a competition to see who gets to do the dog with Florence. They started off with cannonballs and jackknives, but in the fading light they have graduated to the swan dive and the back flip. They’re risking their necks out there for tail, but just try to stop them. You can’t. Pinky is depressed because his father has just died from flying a Cessna into the side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I have told the other boys I have stayed in the boat to be here for Pinky in his time of need. I am playing the good and thoughtful friend, but the truth is I’m not so crazy about jumping from that trestle. Florence is here, and she is growling, which I have to admit is a little exciting, but I am bad afraid of heights. Further, this whole deal with Florence and the boys and the sex makes me sad. I’m glad to sit here in the pontoon boat with sad Pinky and be close to Florence, but not too close. I tell myself I am superior and smoke Pinky’s dead father’s cigars. Florence Greene is thirty-nine and a junior member of my mother’s book club. The book club reads mostly Western sex novels starring lapsed Mormons. Under those limited circumstances, Florence raises not an eyebrow among her peers. They do not know she’s out here with the boys. They do not know she does this as a pattern. She was married once when she was very young, to an organ tuner who was just as young as she, and this young husband traveled to many distant churches and chapels and naves to fix the peoples’ organ pipes. Inside of one of these churches, somewhere in southern Illinois, he was discovered with his trousers 9 around his ankles and the reverend’s juvenile daughter just kneeling there, going down on him. He subsequently leveled accusations of frigidity against Florence, publicly, which did not keep him from being prosecuted, but which humiliated young Florence. A divorce followed, and now Florence seems to the town a fine enough lady who tried a normal life on and was unlucky in it by no fault of her own. In conservative dress, she is a vision, such that as a young boy, I maintained my own crush on Florence Greene. Those turtleneck sweaters of pale violet and the lavender scent of her book-club perfume set me on chemical fire. I remember watching her eat a Bartlett pear during a book club meeting my mother hosted. I watched from the stair. She got pear juice all over her hands and became embarrassed and excused herself to the powder room to wash off. That is where I first met Florence Greene, where the stairs come into the front hall and face the powder room. She found me on the landing and thought I could not sleep, that I was frightened, and so she carried me up to bed and tucked