ABSTRACT FENCEPOST VOICES by Evan Steuber A collection of short stories and short-shorts following desperate characters who, despite their desire to do the right thing, find themselves succumbing to addictions, bad behavior, and bad luck in an often unforgiving world. FENCEPOST VOICES A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of English by Evan J. Steuber Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2011 Advisor: ______________________ Eric Goodman Reader: ________________________ Jody Bates Reader: ________________________ Susan Morgan TABLE OF CONTENTS Two Daughters............................................................................................................................ 1 Coming Down ............................................................................................................................. 7 Dorothy Nods ............................................................................................................................. 8 Boombox Break ........................................................................................................................ 14 Faces (In Four Parts) ................................................................................................................. 15 Curve ........................................................................................................................................ 32 Hannah‟s Revenge .................................................................................................................... 33 Borders ..................................................................................................................................... 45 These Hands ............................................................................................................................. 47 How To Move. .......................................................................................................................... 54 Oakie ........................................................................................................................................ 56 Tell Me About It. ...................................................................................................................... 64 Winter Lights ............................................................................................................................ 66 When The Music‟s Over. .......................................................................................................... 78 ii Two Daughters 1. “Were you drinking, Dad?” He looked up at her, but couldn‟t hold her eyes. She was thinking bad of him and he knew it. She was thinking all the worst. He deserved it, he took it in. He was drinking, alright. Damn right he was drinking. Think he‟d be shaking like this if he hadn‟t been? He kept picking at the frayed threads on the knees of his jeans, fat fingers that can‟t help but dial three numbers at a time, picking and picking. “Yeah.” She was quiet for awhile, all balled up inside herself, and he watched her, knowing she was trying to think of how to say something to him without breaking his heart. She was always afraid that she‟d break his heart. He had called her at work, left a message that he needed her, and she‟d come right after. She was still wearing a dirty apron and when she moved he could hear the change sloshing around inside, hear those nickels and dimes singing songs as she shuffled back and forth. She was making him more anxious than he already was and he couldn‟t stop moving, rocking back and forth in the faded orange recliner, staring at her and staring past her at the blank screen of his TV. It wasn‟t just the accident that was keeping him moving, keeping those fat fingers picking. She‟d been giving him her pills, for nerves, but she‟d cut him off the other day. She needed them, she said. He needed them too. He needed them deep down in his gut to fill up and explode that anxiety that was pouring in his head. Or whiskey, that sweet burn he‟d been denying himself since the accident— he was afraid someone would come to his house and test him. He was in no shape to pee in a cup. She stopped, coming up out of her head for a second, eyeing him. “Where‟s the truck?” “I parked it back behind the shed.” He put his hands up to his face, cupped his nose, and breathed in, smelling the smoke deep in his skin, smelling the sweat of alcohol that was forming beads on his face. “You sure it was a deer?” She paused, and looked at him knowing something deep down in her eyes that he didn‟t know. She was looking into him, right through him, like he used to 1 look at her when she‟d come in from playing with mud all over her. Were you in the creek, he‟d ask, and stare right through her, and she‟d smile playfully. But there was no smile here, nothing to admit to. It was a frown he felt pulling down on his cheeks, like he‟d just taken two Percocets and his skin was falling, drooping down below his chin. “Yeah, I‟m sure.” Some stupid animal wandering out into the road and getting caught in his headlights. It was big, and it made that truck thump and his head snap forward and then back again. Him pulling around a corner on Route 4, coming down the hill fast, windows open and Willie Nelson blaring on the radio. People hit deer down there all the time, came around those turns where the maples bend in on the road, branches jutting out above and shading over the stars and the moon. They have signs too. Big yellow ones with prancing silhouettes. Everybody knows there‟s deer down there. “I saw something on the news,” she said, and then she let herself settle down, falling back into the dusty old sofa to his left. When she sat down her apron bulged up and he could see the outline of a cigarette pack emerge behind the black cloth. “How about a cigarette?” “Dad, I thought you quit?” “I‟m just a little stressed. You stopped giving me those pills. It wouldn‟t hurt to have one.” He could‟ve got one out on his own. He could have leaned over, pulled open the door on the end-table and yanked out a whole carton. But, it wouldn‟t do any good for her to see that. She already knew so much about him, was ashamed of him for so much. He had to give her something to be proud of, even if it was pretend. She reached into her apron and threw the pack over to him. “Lighter?” The cigarette burned his throat deep and he liked it, pulling it all in, hoping he‟d choke on it. He ashed on the floor. “Don‟t you even have an ashtray?” “Doesn‟t make a difference to me.” “You hear what I said before? I said I saw something on the news.” 2 He looked straight into her eyes, past the guilt or grief or whatever was taking hold of her and all he could see was her young and running around, out playing by the shed in worn-down overalls, pushing around a big orange toy truck that one of the wheels had broken off of. “I don‟t watch the news. It spoils my appetite.” She looked at him cautiously, weighing her words, putting them on scales like she always did, always walking on broken glass around him, always afraid she‟d break his heart. “When‟d you say you hit it?” “It was last night, around ten.” After leaving the bar. Thank God he was drinking by himself. Nobody to notice him stumbling into the parking lot. Almost fell down pulling himself into the seat. Hands shaking on the steering wheel. “You sure?” “Sure it was a deer, sure it was around ten, sure I was drinking.” He felt irritated and needed her to tell him it was alright, tell him he didn‟t have to hide that damn truck out behind the shed, one headlight caught and broken and the grill filled with blood. “God dammit Dad!” And she started crying all at once like her face was full of tears and water and ready to burst, like she‟d been waiting years to cry. “Did you even get out of the fucking truck?” She shook her hands at him. He tried to reach out to her but he went too fast and shaky and his cigarette brushed against her, burning her forearm. “I‟m sorry. I‟m so sorry.” He got up and ran to the kitchen sink, running water over the cigarette and throwing it in after. He wet a towel and came back to her. “Put this on it.” “I‟m fine,” she said. “I‟m fine. But you really fucked up this time. You really fucked up.” “I just hit a deer, something somebody does once a day around here. So what? So I had a couple drinks? I wasn‟t drunk. I was paying attention. It just came out of nowhere. It just jumped out in front of me and got stuck in the headlights.” And he sat back down in the orange recliner and put his fingers back to picking at the threads that splayed out from the worn knees where‟d he kneel down to reach his tools, or to pray before he went to bed. And he waited, 3 looking expectantly at her, waiting for her to tell him it was alright, that it wasn‟t really all that bad. “Somebody died,” she said, but with her sobbing and her nose clogged up it sounded more like sommodimied. Sommodimied, somebody died. He was sweating. Dear God, it was hot in there, humid and hard to breathe, but he pulled it in, all that air and heat and frustration and sweat. “You need to turn yourself in,” she said. His own daughter asking him to turn himself in? And for what, for hitting some stupid animal that don‟t know when to stop and when to run? And he was getting angry, seeing those big doe eyes in his mind, watery and black, staring at him, those stupid eyes. Big soft graceful animal prancing in the road, taking its time. And then his mind was pulling away and putting something else there, replacing those eyes with his daughters‟. Soft blue, caught up in the glare, stuck in a broken headlight. 2. She followed him out back behind the shed, him mumbling and complaining under his breath that it was just a deer and she shouldn‟t be so worried. She was done crying then, all of her washed out onto the dirty carpet of his house, and she wasn‟t numb but she was tingly, feeling like little needles all over. She could see the blue bed of the truck sticking out from behind the shed as they approached.