Fellinger They Hover Over Us

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62095-994-7
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 168 Seiten

Reihe: They Hover Over Us

Winner of the 2011 Serena McDonald Kennedy Fiction Award, They Hover Over Us is a powerful collection of short stories about people from Pennsylvania's Rust Belt. Gritty, witty and ponderous, this collection explores complex yet relatable themes such as longing, loss and love. These are contemporary stories about people who never had a fair shot in life, or who remain stuck in mismatched relationships, or are struggling to overcome hardscrabble family histories. See why one reviewer called these stories 'flawless diamonds mined from Pennsylvania's very own coal mines, steel towns and Navy yards.'

Richard Fellinger is a writing teacher at Elizabethtown College and a former journalist. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, won the 2008 Flash Fiction Contest at Red Cedar Review, and appeared in many other journals such as Epiphany, Potomac Review, Willow Review, Westview, Forge and PANK. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University, where he won the 2009 Beverly Hiscox Scholarship for Excellence in Writing. A native of Altoona, Pa., he now lives with his wife and son in Camp Hill, Pa., where he's at work on his first novel.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fellinger, Richard

Leseproben

THE STUFF LEFT BEHIND It had rained for four days straight, and the old dam in Venango County was leaking and about to be breached. Cuppy Forster and his wife had left their small town beneath the dam and were headed to their daughter’s place in Pittsburgh to wait it out. They were 20 miles out of town when Cuppy realized what he’d left behind. He felt a ping in his gut and looked back in the rearview mirror, like the box might be sitting on the roadside somewhere. Downed branches and wet leaves were strewn across the roadway, and a steady stream of cars were headed south with their headlights on. “We have to go back,” he said to his wife Anna. “I forgot something.” They’d hardly spoken since traffic had started moving just outside of town, and Anna was slumped in the passenger seat while rain pelted their shit-brown Buick and the wipers slapped back and forth. “Wha—what did you forget?” “My Vietnam stuff.” She let out a heavy sigh, her own version of a distress signal. She watched his pink, crusty face for a reaction, but he didn’t respond. “No, no. We can’t go back,” she said. “We have to.” “Wait a minute.” Cuppy’s face tightened. He huffed and thought, She doesn’t understand. She’ll never understand. He checked the rearview again—this time gauging traffic—and saw only the southbound cars. The northbound lane was empty. He spun the car around. “We won’t ever get back in,” Anna said. “It’s a mandatory evacuation.” “Jesus Christ,” Cuppy said. “Don’t you realize that stuff won’t be there when we get back?” “I don’t care right now.” Anna ran both hands through her soggy gray hair. She felt dank all over, right down to her underpants, and the Buick smelled musty. She’d never been in a flood before, never seen water rush under a doorway like it had in their kitchen before they left. She’d seen television news images of rescuers in yellow and red jackets saving people from their cars in waist-high water, but they were always faraway places that never seemed real. When Cuppy and Anna had finally finished jamming stuff into their car, their basement already had a foot of water and the first floor had an inch. They’d packed luggage, boxes of important papers, family albums, the TV, DVD and his hunting rifles. They brought her back pills, his stomach and blood-pressure pills, a cooler filled with perishables, and his survivor kit with flashlight, batteries, bottled water and transistor radio. Left behind, in the top drawer of his bedroom bureau, was the heavy wooden box with his medals, ribbons, discharge papers, certificate of service from the governor, letters from home, and photos. There was a picture of Georgie, skinny and bare-chested, hoisting a Budweiser for the camera. There was one of Vaughn, slouched sideways in a jeep with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, smoking three cigarettes at once. The funniest was one of Danny kissing a picture of his girlfriend while he pretended to stroke himself. These were rare moments over there—the happy ones at base camp—the only ones Cuppy wanted to remember. The house was a rancher, so if the water rose more than three feet on the ground floor, everything would be gone. “I’m serious,” Anna said coldly, a tone he rarely heard. “We don’t know what we’ll run into back there. I want you to turn this car around.” He huffed again, and glanced over at her. She looked scared, but he couldn’t convince himself his stuff would still be there. “What a goddamned mess,” he said. “Have you been drinking?” “No. Hell, no. Why would you say that?” She turned and sifted through the bags in the back seat. It would have been a vodka bottle. It always was. She didn’t find one, but still wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t slurring his words or driving erratically, but he also wasn’t thinking straight. Sometimes it was so hard to tell. “I know what I’m doing here,” Cuppy said. “Georgie’s brother will let me back in town. He’d do anything for me. I’ll have one of his fire police call him on the radio and he’ll let me in. Get me some escort or something too.” “You never talk about that Vietnam stuff anyway,” Anna said. “Why is it such a big deal all of a sudden? I can’t remember the last time I heard you mention any of that stuff.” “You don’t want to hear it.” A minute passed, and she opened her door a crack and let in a burst of wind. “Stop this car or I’m jumping out!” “What the hell—” “Stop, damn it!” She opened the door wider, holding on tightly with both hands to keep it from blowing completely open. “I mean it,” she said. “I’m jumping out of here before I’ll go back there with you.” He slowed the car and said, “Now listen—“ “That’s it. I’m jumping!” she said, and stuck one foot out the door. “Okay, Jesus. I’ll pull over. Now just calm down.” He pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned Gulf station. With the car in park, he sat and looked down the empty northbound lane, staring for a moment at a deer-crossing sign flapping in the wind. “I know what we should do” he said, and climbed out of the car. He pulled the hood of his yellow parka over his head, walked around to her side, stepped over a big puddle and opened her door. He pointed his thumb at the gas station and said, “Get out and wait here. There’s a little roof over that door over there. I’m going back for my stuff and I’ll pick you up on the way back.” “You’re crazy. I’m not getting out of this car.” She folded her knees together and wrapped her arms around them. “Oh, I’m the crazy one now.” “That’s right. My brother always says that about you. If you’re not drinking, you’re shooting at animals from the back porch, and maybe sometimes both, and he’s always asking if I’m all right.” “Your brother’s too uptight.” “He wouldn’t drive me back into a flood.” A black Ram pickup with blue lights on the roof pulled into the lot and stopped beside Cuppy. The driver, a scruffy guy in his 30s wearing a camouflage parka, rolled down his window and asked, “Everything all right?” The pickup caught Cuppy by surprise. His back had been turned to the oncoming traffic, and when he realized it, he felt uneasy. He should have known better—never stop watching, never let your guard down. There’d been a time, years ago, when he couldn’t go to the grocery store if it was too crowded, couldn’t go to a restaurant without getting a seat that faced the door. And back then, he’d hit the ground when he heard a bang, even if someone dropped a bucket or toolbox on the job. And all that time, he never spent an entire night in bed with Anna, moving to the couch after he got up to walk the perimeter. “Yeah, we’re fine,” Cuppy said to the guy in the pickup. “No!” Anna said. “Everything is not all right. He wants to drive back into the flood to get more stuff from the house.” “Everyone’s got to evacuate,” the guy said. “I know, I know,” Cuppy said. “But I have to go back for something, and I know the fire chief, and he’ll get me back in safely.” “Chief Schruck?” “Yeah,” Cuppy said, glancing back toward the road. “I’m a good friend of his brother’s.” “Vern?” “No, Georgie.” “I don’t know Georgie.” “You wouldn’t. You’re too young.” “Listen,” the guy said, reaching for a radio on his dash. “I’ll put in a call to the chief, but I don’t think he’s letting anybody back in town. I mean anybody.” “Tell him it’s Cuppy Forster. Georgie’s buddy.” Cuppy heard bits and pieces of the radio conversation. The guy asked to “get Chief Schruck on the horn,” because he was south of town with “a guy named Cuppy something, who needs to get back into town.” There was static for a moment, and then a voice mentioned “state police management.” “The chief doesn’t have any say over anything at this point,” the guy told Cuppy. “State police have the town blocked off. They tell me you got to get somewhere safe.” Cuppy wiped his face and surveyed the area. Every southbound car made a swishing sound as it passed on the wet road, and sheets of rain slid off the empty northbound lane. The gravel parking lot was a maze of puddles, and that one deer-crossing sign was still flapping like a dying pheasant. The guy in the pickup had a bossy look on his face. Cuppy thought about speeding away, leading the pickup on a chase back to town and bursting through the state police line, but dismissed the idea. “You hear that?” Anna said. “We have to turn around now.” “All right,” Cuppy...