It has been a tough few days here for me interspersed with some good which you already know about if you read the news here and elsewhere Saturday. What may not come to mind was the fact that Friday was the four year anniversary since my Mom passed. I know how everybody says 2020 was bad and it was here at times with Scott’s seizure and my health issues including the cancer scare last summer and fall, but 2017 was way worse for me personally. Mom died that January, Sandi spent much of the year in the hospital including that summer when I got us moved here to the house and then Sandi came home on hospice the Friday before Thanksgiving and passed on December 1. Yesterday would have been Sandi’s 61st birthday. I am still here and still sober, so that counts for something, but the last few days have been really hard. I have not done much of anything, so, today is a repeat for you for Short Story Wednesday.
This week I remind you of Chalkers
by Michael Bracken. A lot is going on in these few pages. It is a very good
read and I tell you that again in my review from nine years ago. I also remind
you to go check out the reading suggestions by Patti Abbott and TracyK for today and every
day.
Using chalk to send coded messages on the sidewalks at an
unnamed Baptist university in Texas is a way for men with certain interests to
contact other men with those same interests. It was done 40 years ago when the
narrator had attended the conservative school and it is still the technique
used now.
40 years ago something happened one night and Bryce Daniels
vanished. The eleven remaining numbers of the group have hardly spoken to each
other since. Now, thanks to a sidewalk message in chalk in their traditional
spot outside the English Building, the remaining members of the group have been
summoned to meet once again. Secrets will be revealed in this complex story
from author Michael Bracken.
Along with his crime fiction, author Michael Bracken is
perhaps best known for his confession style stories published in a variety of
markets. Such is the case here in Chalkers as the entire story
consists of narration without almost any dialogue. A one sentence of dialogue in
the story is powerful because of the statement it contains, but also because
the one sentence explains almost everything. This short story of slightly more
than two thousand words from Untreed Reads Publishing works on all levels and
is a good one.
Material supplied quite some time ago by the author in exchange for my objective review.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2012, 2021
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2 comments:
I've seen Bracken's byline, but I'm not sure I've read any of his work yet. I'll keep an eye out.
Sorry for the tough anniversaries...four of the women closest to me have been going through several degrees of crisis over the last week or so, so that's colored things along with what's been going down in the larger world (my longest-term friend, a devout Christian who sympathetically joked a month or so back that my personal year had put me in the position of an Atheist Job, might've had the most severe of the crises, in and now just out of the hospital and needing to make some serious life-changes to keep the crisis from being a recurring one). May we all get through, things get better, and not too many Qs in our queues.
I hear that....and being listener to all that is also very tough. I need things to get better as you do too.
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