Cornfield
When a story begins with a blowjob in the back seat of a stolen car, you can bet how it will end. There will be a high-speed chase scene, profanity, cops, those fuckers, trying to fuck things up, and a broken heart, or at least one sore dick. But this is not that kind of story. This is a story not about the stolen car or the guy driving it or the boyfriend of the girl in the backseat, or the boy who gets the blowjob (who's not the boyfriend). This story's more about the boy sitting in the backseat who merely unlocked the car so his friends could speed away on a joy ride. This is the story about the boy who's not even sure why he's there. This is the story about the boy who goes along for the ride and sits in the back seat while one friend drives like a maniac and the other sits with feet on the dash and lights up a joint and the third eventually ends up with that blow job, when the boyfriend of the girl, the one in the front seat, is too stoned to care. This is the story of the boy who sits in the car racing down the highway who dreams regularly of something so far away and so incongruous and farfetched he's never mentioned it.
This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.
Only Stevie knows how to break into a car in record time. It's not that hard — you just need patience to maneuver the Slim Jim right, especially in the stone-grey pre-dawn of a winter morning. Anyone can do it, really. Except Stevie's friends, who stand off to the side and jabber about the cold.
“Shut the fuck up, guys!”
“Yeah, let the master work!” Lucky's a real card.
Stevie shoots Lucky a look. “Dick.”
Lucky replies with the best — and, if you're Lucky, only -- comeback for Dick: “Pussy.”
Stevie ends the conversation: Click.
“Who's calling my boy a pussy now?” says Manny as he pushes past Stevie and hops in the driver's seat. At seventeen, Manny is all bravado and bulging biceps, and imagines himself the leader of this unlikely group of bandits. Manny always drives.
The others climb in and are soon heading down Route 2, rolling through the old tobacco country of South County. They stop by Ellie's and she nestles into the back seat between Rick and Stevie.
Corn and sorghum speed by. Lucky rolls a joint and passes it back to Rick, hand over head, and they take turns toking, front to back to front again. Twenty minutes later Lucky's passed out and Manny drives faster while Stevie squishes himself into his own backseat corner and sees Ellie reach her hand down Rick's pants.
“Seriously, Manny, where're we goin'?” says Rick while Lucky's girl gets busy in his pants.
Just then, blue and red lights come flashing from behind.
“Hang on,” says Manny, and veers off down a side road, throwing everyone right. Ellie squeals and flops into Rick, but when the car straightens she doesn't come up for air.
Stevie is now struggling to keep his eyes forward. He's used to all the fuck-ups but he feels sick now, either from the swerving or the idea of Rick getting blown at 9am in the seat beside him. He rolls his window down and leans his head out into the freezing wind. His ears feel like they'll fall off. Lucky's sound asleep up front, and next to him they aren't even trying to be quiet anymore: Rick's making little sobbing noises and Ellie's head's bobbing exuberantly.
Even worse, Stevie's about to look despite his best intentions.
But he's saved from his own depravity when the car lurches hard to the right and the next thing he knows he's airborne, tossed like a ragdoll and soaring across acres of a desolate winter cornfield.
The dreams are always like this. He's lifted on a blanket of warmth, cushioned on cotton candy clouds while Great Grandpa Gus riots along in heavy seas below. Stevie reaches out a hand to grab the whaling ship's rigging but as he extends his arm the canvas tears with a screeching sound and he watches helplessly as first the topsail flutters away and then the ship turns inside out, halyards howling and rigging wrenching angrily from the decks and flying up with the sails. The great heavy hull is the last to go -- lifted from the dark ocean and rising up, up, up, set twirling in the tornado-black air. Stevie tries to call for Great Grandpa Gus but panic rises in his gut because his voice won't reach from southern Anne Arundel County to Cape Horn where a great sailing ship is tearing apart at the seams nearly a century before.
The world slows and both ship and clouds disappear and all that is left is the cornfield now rising in a dizzy blur upward toward him. In one instant Stevie sees fire off to the side and he may even hear music — Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky — underneath the screeching tires and burning rubber and crunching metal. But he's not sure because he closes his eyes, only for a moment, and things go black.
When Stevie wakes in the hospital two days later and his father says, “Where've you been, son?” and his mother covers him in kisses saying “My darling child!” his mind first flashes to Manny and Lucky and Rick and Ellie and then he reaches once more for Gus. He tries to recall the cornfield over Maryland -- or was it Kansas? -- and he wants to say something about dust or wind but instead he replies, “Cape Horn”.
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Author's Note
From old tobacco country of my Maryland youth to dreamscape over a frozen winter cornfield -- with a little Kansas.
This story started as a much longer version. I'd like to know if this shorter one works. Playing with whether to keep in more details or keep it trimmed as best as I can.
How would you feel about taking out what is now the second section? ('Only Stevie knows...' up to 'desolate winter cornfield')
This section feels like it's more naturally part of the longer version. Or how about keeping it in but switching this section with the dream section?
Thanks, Carol. Interesting idea. I'll think on that. I can't see switching the sections, because the dream has to come sequentially after the crash... but I like the idea of finding things that can be trimmed away. Appreciate the comment.
great rollicking narrative!
Thanks for that, Walter. It was fun to write too. Still tinkering, thanks to comments by Carol and others. Appreciate it!
I love this! Especially the 3rd section with the sea dream.
I think, rather than cutting the second section or reordering, that I would like a bit more character development. Who are these kids besides what we know here? It might take just one more section added, then I bet it would work.
Ok, I admit to some feminist leanings but why does the girl have to be giving a blow job? It doesn't add to the otherwise lively story for me. Why not make her the driver unless the sex becomes a bigger part of the story. Sorry if I'm obsessing on a detail.....
Finally, a reason - almost - to like Dust in the Wind. Well, that didn't really happen, but I like the writing.
Favorite part - "The dreams are always like this. He's lifted on a blanket of warmth, cushioned on cotton candy clouds while Great Grandpa Gus riots along in heavy seas below. Stevie reaches out a hand to grab the whaling ship's rigging but as he extends his arm the canvas tears with a screeching sound and he watches helplessly as first the topsail flutters away and then the ship turns inside out, halyards howling and rigging wrenching angrily from the decks and flying up with the sails."
Good writing, Michelle. Especially like the way use the dialogue.
Thanks Heather -- and you're right, probably. I'm trying to see if this can fit into the under-1000 word range, but I feel it may well be much bigger. A lot about the characters gets cut once we move toward 'flash' -- even longer flash. In very good flash, the shortest ones, that does not matter. But I always find that a story that is longer flash requires more -- because it is actually moving toward something else. My gut tells me this is one of those. I appreciate your read and comment.
And Charlotte -- appreciate the comment. Who can *not* be immersed in feminist leanings? Yes yes, you are right to cringe a little. But these things happen, this is kinda integral to the story (and the longer parts, too). I don't engage in writing just for a cheap thrill but I do like experimentation in flow and feel, including taking something as ridiculous as a girl giving a blowjob in the back of a car, and then taking it someplace entirely different. But you are right to point this out: whether the story can start here and move elsewhere. For me, that was never in question -- but that is why I posted it here, to get this feedback and hear YOUR comments.
Thank you!
Thanks for that, Sam. The dream sequence is important... though someone did ask me how I moved from a cornfield to Cape Horn. Weird things happen in my head.
And that song - it's like one of those things from my childhood that has never gone away. Some things you just can't shake.
I feel it is a story that can be mapped. We find out what happens, yet how we find out is similar to how the characters find out: it happens. The blowjob is not what happens. The narrator cues us of that at the beginning. This is not a story about ... as some stories are ... as sometimes the narrative reason is sex the way sex itself can be a destination. And here, something bigger happens that takes them all away into adult realities not accounted for by sex, not answered. *
Thanks for that, Ann. I like the idea of mapping, and yes experiencing a story as it unfolds, for the characters. That's why I suspect putting things back in so the characters come alive more will work...
The destination is yet to come, I think. Thanks for reading this in this way - helps me, too.
It works indeed, in my opinion. The line at the end, "My darling boy," and click--it all falls into place. *
Thanks to you all for your points of view re the bj and helping me be a more discerning reader!
To be honest, i had the same reaction that Charlotte did. We're told that the blow job is not what it's all about, but i end up thinking about it anyway, perhaps because of the disavowal. I end up thinking that if it doesn't fit into the story in the usual way, then how does it fit?
This works without the first section, but it's a pretty different read.
*, Michelle. Excellent story, so well told. I really like how you backed into it, by telling the reader what it's not about. Maybe there are 3 or 4 stories in this one as well.
boy, oh boy. this is a super piece. takes the reader on the journey, into the story, and so many wonderful lines and images!***
Thanks for the continued discussion. Appreciate the honesty -- the positives and the questions. All very helpful!
Jake, Charlotte (again), Guy, David, James -- so glad you stopped in for this one, as it's part of a new thing I'm trying out.
The dream that accompanies the wreck is a great climax to this ride.
Much to like here. If I were cutting, I'd cut the "prologue" and let the characters, their actions, and the dream stand on their own. Just a thought.
GREAT story and a true STORY!
Don't change a thing.
*
Thanks, Christopher, Gary, and Bill. I like the relationship between the dream and wreck, Chris, but Gary: that is a good idea too, if I am looking to compress this even smaller. Yes, thank you for that. And Bill: that balances things, too.
Always good to post here and get various views. Great, thank you.
I enjoyed this so much! Great journey. It made me think about Garp. Lots of potential to expand. I hope this is part of a novel! *
Thanks, Rachel! Ha, Garp, yes.
I also thought about Garp, and then wondered why since I hadn't thought about that film, or that book, for that matter, in so many years. As usual, your lovely writing takes me on journeys that are unexpected, and for that I am grateful.
I was so close to you in proximity the past two weeks that I felt your song close-up.
Fave.
Good, Michelle, real good.
Enjoyed. A bit like a mashup between CHuck Palahniuk and Kathy Acker. I write prose myself but I dislike the fact concerning my own writing I'm not as economical as this.
Robert! JLD! Iain! Thank you. Lovely to come here and see your comments. Garp, Acker... those comparisons make me smile (and JLD: your 'real good'!). Glad the economy works for you, Iain. Still trimming and re-working. Always.