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With the exception of a few times when I was on leave (three semesters as a visiting writer at other universities, a semester on sabbatical, and a semester enjoying a writing fellowship) I've taught fiction writing at Alabama for the past fourteen years. My time at Alabama, the good fortune of making my living doing mostly things I enjoy, reminds me of a couple of lines Waylon Jennings used
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to sing about being a country music star: "I got my name painted on my shirt / I ain't no ordinary dudeI don't have to work." At the time that Malcolm MacDonald asked me to edit this book, I had no idea that I would be leaving the university. But, as things have turned out, I'll be at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville by the time Walking on Water appears. Hendrie, as Don Hendrie Jr is affectionately known, retired two years ago; Tom Rabbitt will take early retirement in three more years. If I indulge myself, I can think of this anthology as signaling the end of a small era. The making of stories, novels, and poems will continue in Tuscaloosa, but many of the names and facesfaculty and studentwill be new.
I take genuine delight in marking my departure with the book you hold in your hand. The stories I've chosen are spoken in a variety of fictional voices and represent widely different sensibilities and visions. Some of these writers' literary careers are well begun, while others (it pleases me to note) appear here in print for the first time. I use Walking on Water, from the story by Kim Trevathanhis first published fictionas the book's title, because walking on water is an apt figure for what the fiction writer attempts with each new story's beginning. One reader may see such an effort as a stunt, a slick bit of sleight-of-hand, while, for another, such a struggle may succeed in ways sufficient to approach the genuinely spiritual. As different from one another as they are, these stories all remind us that good fiction doesn't just imitate life but, rather, reinvents life. I hope, and trust, that after you've read this book, fiction will have merged with real lifethat you will have found at least one story so convincing, so moving that it will have become part of your experience, as alive in your memory as all of these stories are in mine.
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Fighting
by Michael Alley
First, the telephone rang. Twice. Kerry had not been asleep. He had been lying on his back, his right arm crooked under her pillow. He was waiting for her to fall asleep so he could leave.
When she answered the phone, she did not turn on the lamp. She sat up on her pillow, her back to him, the receiver cupped under the fall of her short blonde hair. As the hotel drapes swayed in the rush of the air conditioner, streaks of ocean-green light fell across her neck and shoulder. Her skinocean green, then shadow, then ocean green. He touched her shoulder, but she was not wet. Not even damp. She was as dry as his dayshis mornings of sleeping late, then eating breakfast, then sleeping again until he had to drive the half mile to the Pizza Hut where he worked.
"No," she said into the phone. "No. Wayne. You have no right to call me this late. No. No, I won't." In the stillness of the hotel room, her voice was shrill. Her name was Sharon. Kerry figured her thirty-five, maybe thirty-six. She had about ten years on him. In the Camelot Lounge she had told him about her tenyear-old daughter Elizabeth back in Lubbock and her ex-husband Wayne who worked for Iowa Beef here in Amarillo. Sharon lived in Lubbock, in a brick duplex east of the university. She was up this weekend for a training session so she could become a realtor.
From the pack on the near end table, Kerry slipped out one of her menthols and held it between his lips. Just held it, not lighting it. He didn't smoke. In the dark mirror above the dresser, he watched himself lying in bed, his pillow propped against the headboard, the cigarette in his mouth. Gray sheets were twisted across his chest. The streaks of light from the window painted the sheets mint white. Kerry traced the streaks of light across his chest, then across the narrow space between his side and her back, then over the curve of her shoulder. When he touched her, she did not move.
"Piss on you, Wayne," she said. "No, I won't. I'm not coming." She ran her hand through her hair. "Don't even think about it. I'm asleep.''
In the mirror she was not tall. She was curled on her side, her left arm folded over her breasts. Earlier tonight she had seemed tall. Maybe it was her high heels or the way she had dancedher back slightly arched. She was not beautiful, but she was pretty, girlish pretty. She was smooth and slender, her face narrow, her blonde hair cut Dutch-boy style. What gave away her age though were her
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eyesthin and hard and ice-blue. The half-circles beneath were shadowed gray. "No," she kept saying into the phone. "Just piss on you, Wayne."
It was almost one-thirty. The Camelot would close in another half hour. Above the hum of the air conditioner Kerry thought he could hear the band, the muffled beat of drums. He held the cigarette over the edge of the bed and flicked imaginary ashes. For the past three months he had come here regularlyat least once a week. Buddy Webb, his manager at the Pizza Hut, said it was an easy place to meet women. He said it held an older crowd. You don't have to be much of a talker at the Camelot, Buddy always said. Buddy had gotten married last December.
Most nights when he came here, Kerry just drank. The Camelot never had a cover, not even when there was a band. Draw beer was fifty cents, and on Wednesdays you could do tequila shots for a quarter. When there were single women, Kerry sometimes asked them to dance. Two-step mostly. Kerry wore calfskin boots, Levis, a tapered cotton shirt. He was a good dancer.
"Good-bye Wayne," she said. "You don't want me to go. Good-bye. No, you don't. Take Karen." She hung up the phone and disconnected it from the wall.
He waited for her to roll back over, but she just sat there, half-sitting on her elbow and staring away from him toward the drapes. He rested a hand on the curve of her hip. She made no move. The sheets were cool with sweathis sweat. When he had made love to her earlier, she had just laid there. She turned her face into the pillow and did not kiss him.
He rolled out of bed now and walked to the window to turn down the air conditioner. His jeans hung on a chair by the drapes. He turned the air conditioner to low and opened the drapes halfway. At the window he could hear the bandthe drums, the electric guitar and organ, the husky voice of the woman vocalist. In the bar, when he first asked Sharon to dance, she had said nothing. She did not even look at him. She sipped from her drink, then took a drag from her cigarette. He was about to walk back to his seat when she stood and said, "All right."
Now, outside, I-40 was bathed in purplish-white circles from mercury vapor lamps. Pockets of darkness lay beneath the lamps that were burned out. Semis disappeared into the pockets, then reappeared in the light, their gears grinding down on the Ross-Osage overpass. Kerry touched the window. It was warm. "I'm going to go ahead and leave," he said. Not looking at her, he slipped on his jeans.
She didn't say anything. In the reflection of the window he could see that she wasn't looking at him. He shouldn't even have told her, he thought. He should have found his clothes and walked out the door. He looked for his socks. One was behind the drapes. The balcony outside her window was a half-circle, the white stucco railing shaped like the top of a castle wall. He knew all the second-floor rooms had that kind of balcony. Still, the design looked odd from
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up here. The two times he had spent the night in this hotel, he had stayed in the ground floor rooms on the back side that faced the pool.
Sharon stood and pulled a folded nightgown from her suitcase and slipped it on. The gown was sheer. It hung just below her waist. She sat on the bed and lit a cigarette. "I'm sorry about the phone call," she said.
"Don't be." He couldn't find his other sock. He swept his hand under the table and drapes. Nothing.
"I don't know why he keeps bothering me."
Maybe the sock was under the bed. "How did he know you were here?"
"I don't know."
"You didn't call him?"
"No. I don't want to talk to him. Maybe one of his fr
iends saw me. He's got a lot of friends." She lit a cigarette and flicked the match in the tray. "He says he's got this special deal for a vacation down to Cancun. He says he wants me to go."
"Do it," Kerry said. "Do you see my other sock?"
She took a long drag from her cigarette and stared at him. "What do you do?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know, what do you dobesides hang around hotel bars and ask older women to dance?" Her eyes were thin and hard behind the orange circle of cigarette ash.
"What if I told you this was it?"
"I'd say you'd starve in a month."
He sat up and tried to laugh, but his laugh fell flat in the silence of the room.
"You live anywhere?" she asked.
"I got an apartment on Bell."
"You got a job?"
"I got a job," he said.
"What is it?"
He thought about saying his old linethat he drove a bulldozer for the caliché pits west of town. But he decided no. What did it matter what she thought. "I'm a cook at a Pizza Hut."
"Why are you embarrassed about it?"
"I'm not embarrassed. It's just a temporary job."
She took another long drag and tapped ashes in the tray. "You wear one of those floppy red hats and stand in the window?" She smiled at him.
"Yes," he said.
"You throw dough up in the air and catch it with your fist?" She started laughing, a soft easy laugh.
"Sometimes." He stood and walked over to the bed and sat next to her. He ran his hand over the sheet along the outside of her thigh. "It's not like you think. All night, red neon flashes in my face. It's always the samedark and
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red in there. A couple of years ago, a waitress was killed in the Hut on Western. You hear about it?"
"No," she said.
"You should have. My manager tells me it was on all the news."
"I don't watch the news," she said.
"It happened before I came here. This guy held it up and locked everyone in the freezer, all the customers and the two cooks and the manger, everyone except that one waitress. They say he raped her on the breadboard table and forced her head in the dough mixer. It crushed her skull. Afternoons sometimes, lots of times, when I make dough and the spindle's scraping around the bucket, I think about her I think about her when I'm in the freezer and the cooler motors are running and it's like I can hear her outside screaming. It's strange I should think about her like that, you know? I mean I never knew her. I've never even seen her picture. How can you care about someone you've never even seen?"
"I don't know." She ground her cigarette in the tray. Smoke spiraled in two gray ribbons above the ashes.
"You got to care about something," he said.
She was staring at him. The green light from the window danced smooth on her face. He kissed her. It was the first time tonight he had really kissed her. When he broke the kiss, she placed a hand on his shoulder, and he kissed her again. Her lips were smooth and soft. In the light they had a silver gloss.
Someone knocked on the door. Four sharp knocks, then silence. Then four sharp knocks again. "Sharon, I want to talk to you." It was a man's voicelow and dull and slurred. "Open up, hon. I just want to talk."
Sharon pulled away.
"Is that Wayne?"
"Shh," she said.
Four more knocks. "Sharon, I know you're in there. I just want to talk."
"Is that Wayne?" Kerry whispered.
She nodded.
"Damn," Kerry said. He walked back to his chair and started putting on his boots. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Maybe he should sit quiet and wait for Wayne to leave, or maybe he should try to get out. The drop from the balcony to the parking lot was a good twenty-five feet. No shrubs or cedars directly below to land on. Just the black hood of a Trans-Am sloping to hard sidewalk.
"Sharon, I'm not leaving till you talk to me."
"I'm asleep. Go away."
Wayne knocked again. The knocks had a sharp metal echo. Kerry imagined a brass ring on Wayne's knuckle. The ring was large and cold and hard.
"Hon, I only want to talk for a couple of minutes. Now open the door and talk to me."
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"Go away. I've got to sleep."
"Sharon, open the door right now."
"No."
"Open it."
"Piss on you, Wayne."
Kerry's right foot without the sock was cold in his boot. He looked for his shirt but couldn't find it. This was a domestic quarrel. He had always heard that domestic quarrels were the worst, that if you're ever near a domestic quarrel the best thing to do is run.
Four more knockssofter this time. "Come on, Sharon. I only want to talk. You can spend five minutes and talk to me."
"I'm calling the police," she said.
"No, you're not," Wayne said. "I know you. You're not going to call the police. Now just open the door and talk to me."
Kerry slipped over by the bed and connected the phone back into the wall. "Maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea," he whispered. "Does he have a gun?"
Wayne knocked again.
"Damn it," Kerry whispered, "does he have a gun?"
"At home," she said. "He doesn't carry it. Relax, will you? He can't get in here."
There was silence. The drapes barely swayed now. Kerry walked back to his chair and pulled it into the shadows. He hoped she was right about the gun. Still, it was better to be near the window in case something happened. Wayne knocked again.
"Leave me alone."
This could go on all night, Kerry thought. He wondered what Buddy would do. Would he call the police? Or just sit quiet? Or would he open the door and tell Wayne to get lost? Silence again. The wind pressed against the window. Kerry listened for footstepsWayne leavingbut there was nothing. Just the wind outside and the rush of the air conditioner against the drapes. From where he sat he couldn't see the door. It was blocked by the closet partition.
Four sharp knocks.
"Goddammit, Wayne. Leave me alone."
"You want me to do something?" Kerry whispered.
"What the hell are you going to do?"
"I'll answer the door."
"Just stay quiet. He can't get in here."
Silence again, then the doorknob jiggled. Kerry was about to ask if she had fastened the chain when he realized the door was going to open. He knew it was going to open just before it did, just before a yellow shaft of light sliced around the closet partition and fell on the oak-stained dresser, the television, the green carpet, the foot of the bed. Centered in the yellow shaft was Wayne's shadowhis shoulders were thick, he wore glasses. For a moment no one moved.
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Then Wayne slowly stepped into the room and shut the door. Again it was dark. Silently Wayne walked around the partition. He edged to the foot of the bed and groped for the mattress.
"Get out of here," Sharon said. She pulled the sheets up around her nightgown. "How did you get in here?"
"I just want to talk," Wayne said. Wayne wasn't tall. His forehead was sloped, his hair receding. He looked out over the bed, not directly at Sharon. He hadn't seen Kerry yet.