The Best Short Story of 1976

SHORT STORY OF 1976

  By JT Pearson

  COPYRIGHT 2013 J T Pearson

  In our little town of Higby story telling is a tradition. Every year at the town’s Fourth of July celebration in the park we hold a competition for the best short story told that year. It is limited to fifteen minutes because Ida Haddler once droned on for two hours and forty five minutes about her dogs until people were leaving. Some thought that she was trying to win the prize by eliminating most of the other story tellers. She seems nice enough. I don’t think that’s the case. This year, being the country’s Bicentennial, the competition is going to be fierce, but I aim to win that prize in the park. All you get is a jar of Barb Mitchcock’s prize pickles, a free pass to our movie theater that has been recently renovated, and a small trophy of a man cupping his hand to his ear as if he’s listening to something really interesting. Walter Peevey, a local artist that has been featured in many of the papers from Gable to Meatwater, carves the trophy himself. But it’s not the fine prizes that I’m interested in. It’s the prestige. My Uncle Larry won it back in sixty four and he still gets to tell his tale down at his barbershop whenever he gets the urge. Everybody stops in to hear it, about his wife Lenore, and how she got liquored up and stole Farmer Balldinger’s prize eight hundred pound hog and rode it all the way into town one night, the ornery cuss snorting and snapping at everybody – the hog my uncle meant, not Lenore. I want that kind of fame. Like my Uncle Larry. Some of the folks around here tell me that I seem bright, and older than twelve. Because of the words I choose, I suppose. Mama tells me to go ahead and talk the way that I want to talk because no one’s ever really admitted to preferring a dullard child. I also tend to steal a little poetic license at times. The tendency to wax a fancy verse now and again just seems to run in my veins like it did in Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. I hope that you won’t begrudge me this one discretion, to practice my craft. You see, I’ve never been very good at games like my twin. She’s good at stickball, spud, flinch, honko, bruisefinger, kick the can, slick slider, head bender, you name it, but I take pride in the fact that I can really tell a good story like this one and every word of it’s true. Promise on my pet turtle Mumble Buddy. He doesn’t actually even mumble. He stays perfectly quiet all the time. I just liked that name. Anyway, here’s the story that I aim to tell this year at the Bicentennial celebration.

  My mother had guessed whether the coin would land on heads or tails correctly seventeen times in a row when my father hurried into the room. The three kids that had come home with me and my sister from school could see that this game was over because our father was real upset. Earlier that day at school when we were supposed to learn about dividing fractions we had tried to distract Miss Hornsby by telling her about mama’s unusual ability to read minds, and that she always knew exactly what either my sister or me were thinking, not just sometimes but at all times. Miss Hornsby laughed and told us that what we were referring to was called a mother’s intuition and that her mother had also possessed such a skill. Then she told us that if we didn’t get our minds back on math that somebody was going to get a slap. She didn’t really understand what we were saying about mama. But some of our classmates did so when a few insisted on seeing such a spectacle for themselves, we invited them home after school.

  After our classmates were gone - our father had sent them home - mama got up from the big brown recliner in our living room, our father’s favorite chair, even though he insisted that he had bought the chair for mama, and the two walked into the kitchen. No words were actually necessary because she knew what he was thinking and everything that he was about to say. That he loved everything about our mother, the naive, modest country girl that he had been married to for thirteen years. Except for her mind reading. He had always gotten upset when he found us playing the Guessing Games with mama. That’s what he called them, the Guessing Games, even though he knew just as we did that there was no guessing involved.

  Following a solid fifteen minutes of whispering in the kitchen our mother came out with our father in tow. He instructed us that he had decided that it was alright if we wanted to continue our game. Mama took a seat across from us once again with a sigh. My sister and I were excited that our father had finally given in and accepted mama’s unusual gift but as she proceeded to get a dozen guesses in a row incorrect we figured out what was going on, that he was attempting to destroy our interest in the game for good by getting mama to seem like she’d lost the ability or that she could never really do it. That it had all been just an incredible case of bizarre luck. But mama had to have been aware that by getting all of her answers wrong she was essentially getting all of them right. It was like she had no choice but to defy our father’s request. She couldn’t help herself. She was like a rare exotic bird that just had to show off its beautiful plumage.

  It isn’t like our father has no interest in reading minds himself. He is a psychologist employed by our school right here in Higby. It is sort of his job to know what is going on in all of the kids’ heads in our small town. He tries to use his knowledge of the mind to keep my sister and me in line. Whenever he wants us to do something without arguing he employs his psychology to trick us. Always saying one thing but meaning another. We refer to his psychology doubletalk as psychologizing, as in, ‘mama, our dad is psychologizing us again.’ Sometimes, even though we know that he is doing it we go along with it anyway, like we are totally fooled by his words because being psychologized hurts a lot less than a slap across the back of the head. Our father tries to psychologize mama sometimes but he can’t do it.

  My father saw the looks on our faces after mama got every guess wrong and realized that his plan had failed. Mama realized that father wanted another meeting in the kitchen. They left us in the living room where we listened quietly. Mama waited patiently again while father argued about the origins of her ability, that it probably comes from a dangerous source. It might even be evil. When she finally had her say we could tell that she was real angry this time. Their voices had been lowered but the sharp pronunciation of hard consonants and Ss caused them to sound like snakes hissing at each other. Then the heated debate slowly found its conclusion. Our mother marched out of the kitchen tight lipped and ascended the stairs. We didn’t see her for the rest of that night, not even for dinner.

  If someone could possibly be described as reluctantly controlling that is how I would describe my father. He feels that it is his role to lead us, that he is obligated to fulfill his job as head of the family because the Bible says so. But it seems to me and my sister as though he is always requesting permission from mama to do so.

  I don’t entirely blame my father for struggling with Mama’s gift. It can be downright frustrating to deal with her sometimes.

  The following is a conversation I had with mama last Thursday after school. It’s to the best of my recollection.

  “Mama, guess how many-”

  “Eleven.”

  “Remember Billy Walters from school, mama, they-”

  “Voted him class president.”

  “Mama, can I-”

  “Yes.”

  “And then can-”

  “That’ll be fine.”

  “Could-”

  “No. Definitely not. I don’t think it would be safe.”

  “My-”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “But-”

  “Yes. I’m certain.”

  “Mama, please stop! I just want to say the rest of the sentence once in a while! For my own sake! Just to hear it!”

  “I know you do, dear,” she told me sympathetically.

  She was just being herself but I stormed out of her kitchen and stomped each step as I ascended to my bedroom. I
thought about telling her that I was sorry but then I realized with renewed frustration that she already knew that.

  There was no way for my father to argue with her either. My sister had wanted a new bed so mama brought it up to father.

  “We need to get new beds for the kids, hun,” she told him. Then she proceeded to head off his objections before they even passed his lips. “And no, the kids can’t fit in the same beds for the next year, and no, you know that your boss is pleased with your work and going to give you a raise any day now, and no, we’re not going to spend that money on a trip to Denver, and no…”

  My father was a man that had always talked with his hands. Now they sat limp and disengaged at his sides as she had the conversation for both of them, his arms twitching occasionally, an involuntary reflex. Sometimes he never even attempts to open his mouth when they have discussions. He just stands in front of her silently like he is mute, like he did on Friday, content to watch her and wait for her responses to questions that he would’ve asked.

  “Yellow.

  On Wednesday.

  For your mother.

  About a dozen.

  When hell freezes over,” she said, walking out of the room after rolling her eyes.

  My brother and I find it best to stop filling in his questions with our