Novel Excerpt

Harraway’s Call

The trouble with Nova probably began much earlier but Christmas was a disaster this year, our first that had really gone awry. The subtle winter charms of Shorewell were still there; the conical lights on the lampposts, the edge of the world sense of deserted beaches, the tapering spires of the chapels, the asymmetrical swirl of slanted and winding avenues. A few parks, a golf course that wove through the north side and a cemetery relieved the compression of dwellings just enough to lend the village a hint of the country. Nova liked the academic aura of the town, even if it was thousands of miles from where she was born, though a part of her always seemed to remain in that distant hemisphere. As the branches revealed their stark networks again, sometimes there was the sense that she’d begun drifting, like a boat that had come loose and was going out with the tide.

There was an incident at Marsh Harraway’s Christmas party, and if Marsh wasn’t my best friend, we might have been scratched from any further invitations. Nova was fond of such gatherings and for her to be exiled from them was akin to being marooned on some lunar outpost. She said we were already on a few NSTA (never see them again) lists and couldn’t afford to be added to another. The party was an annual affair, known for its intriguing games and odd rituals. One involved the selection of the worst gift from the previous season and either smashing it or setting it on fire. It was an honor to initiate the demolition. Last year’s entry was the replica of a fountain which featured the illusion of trickling water, but the constant gentle sound had finally driven the Crenshaws to exasperation. Russ Graham dispatched the innocent object with a couple fierce passes of a ceremonial sledgehammer, catapulting some pieces to the far reaches of the yard.

On the way over, there was a pleasantly nervous edge to Nova’s movements, that special intensity of anticipation I have long struggled to resist. She disdained my preference for reserving any grand expectations, a strategy that had often proved useful to me in the face of what actually occurred. Yet as the evening began, there was no sign of anything more than the usual pitfalls.

“Thank God for this tonight” she finally said, staring at the colored patterns framing the facades of the houses, meant to ward off all the darkness. “People are so shut up indoors, fending off the cold. As if they were hiding from something. How does everyone not go mad?”

Introduction

My writing tends to gravitate toward certain themes: misunderstanding, romantic discord, the struggles of being a parent, conflict with a community’s prevailing ethos, and the characters’ frequent sense of exclusion from an accepted place in society. I like fictional situations where people are placed under stress, often due to their own mistakes, so that they end up reacting in a pivotal and unforeseen manner.

So here you will find: a guy unwittingly drops a torrid love note in the church collection basket; a jealous husband finds a unique way of seeking revenge against a romantic rival during a Christmas nativity play; a character who runs an independent wake up call service has trouble getting a crucial call of his own; a message written on a dollar bill and released into circulation somehow finds its way into the right hands; a father who plans to miss his daughter’s birthday party seeks the counsel of a friend who specializes in the “perfect excuse,” a condo owner is unwillingly elected president of the association’s board with disastrous consequences, a beleaguered character finds refuge in the treehouse of a neighbor and becomes an unintended spy; a man who is mistaken for someone else decides to impersonate him following the clues in the conversation. It may be tragedy of a sort but only in a minor key, the parried slings and arrows of modern relationship.

I enjoy the stuff of ordinary life, which, through a sequence of escalating difficulties, suddenly becomes remarkable and strange. I like depictions of the world that attempt to balance minor tragedies with irony and an occasional touch of humor. Also, the writers I most admire pay attention to the sound and rhythm of words, take risks with language and metaphor. It’s wonderful when the great ones create a structure of imagery beneath the surface of a story that seems to integrate it in some mysterious way.

Much has been said about the capacity of fiction to generate empathy for other points of view and science appears to bear that out. In an era of increasing tribalism, few traits are more needed than the one which compels us to hear the other voice, feel the unusual or contradictory experience. We need not agree with different perceptions but must be able to get to the root of them before any sort of understanding can take place.

By its very nature, fiction also helps cultivate and preserve language as the primary means of apprehending the world. While the proliferation of movies and videos and photographs and emojis are a marvelous addition to our lives, only language enables the recipient to bring his or her full imagination to the encounter. A novel or collection of stories uniquely engages a reader to construct a world right along with the author, to infuse what’s been created with a unique filter, to make the abstract visible in one’s own mind. If a “picture is worth a thousand words,” it cannot do quite the same thing as those words. In our rush to compress, to abbreviate, to go faster, to live more and more, this might be something we should not allow ourselves to forget.

~Tom Benz

About The Author

THOMAS BENZ graduated with a B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame. He recently won the 2017 Serena McDonald Kennedy Award for a short story collection called “Home and Castle.” The book is to be published by Snake Nation Press in the fall. In the last several years, he has had fifteen stories  (…read more)