Krishna
A collection of stories invariably hurts the ratings. Why? Because in a collection there are some gems and some lemons invariably. We have also reviewed Stephen King’s collection of stories like this one before : Just After Sunset or Everything Is Eventual.
Mile 81 is the first story. George and Pete are brothers and Pete, the elder, has gone off to play dangerous bicycle diving games with his friends and forbids George to join them. Miffed, he want to show the big kids that he could face danger too, and decides to explore the abandoned rest area. (True Stephen King setting, right? Like the young college kids always think it is best to explore dark houses and corners alone with a flashlight in their trembling hands). He goes to a broken down and abandoned former Burger King restaura
nt. While he is sleeping, a pickup van stops with the door open and when a Good Samaritan, a reformed sinner called Doug Clayton comes in to investigate if there is a problem, the car simply eats him up. Literally. He is followed by Julianne Vernon, a gay activist; a family of four with the surname Lussier; There the two kids survive and George wakes up at that time. He watches in horror as the car chews up a policemen who went unwittingly close to it. How George manages to overcome it is the rest of the story. Brilliant.
Premium Harmony : The next story deals with Ray and Mary, a childless couple who argue a lot. Ray and Mary and a dog who travel to a relative’s house. On the way Mary goes into a shop but seems to have just dropped dead. Ray is called in. Ends kind of weirdly but this one is very short. And not as good as the first one.
Batman and Robin Have An Altercation : Sanderson goes regularly to visit his dad who is in a care facility with severe Alzheimer’s. When he takes his dad back from a lunch one day, and they get into an altercation when his car hits the back of a truck that cut him off and he finds himself facing a bully who is in absolute rage. The story is short as well but then the title makes no sense at all at the end. Yes, there is relevance to the story in the discussion between the dad and the son but what has that got to do with anything that happens in the story?
The Dune is the next story. Judge Beecher goes on his pilgrimage to the Dune on the private island his father has bequeathed to him. The dune writes terrible messages and he is addicted. It seems to tell the future but only disastrous things. He is addicted and even pusing past ninety, he goes. When he sees the latest name, he calls his lawyer and makes a final will, altering the old one. Why? The ending is interesting.
Next comes Bad Little Kid – Leonard Bradley, the lawyer, goes to see George Hallas in prison. Hallas was in there for killing a child. He narrates his story. When he was friends with a girl called Marlee who was soft in her head, a kid shows up with her stolen lunchbox and throws it in the street, in time for a teacher’s car to come and hit her. She dies. Later in another town George gets a girlfriend called Vicky in a drama club. When Vicky fluffs her lines in an important part, the bad kid turns up, not aged one day and discourages Vicky so much that she ends her life. George gives up acting and focuses on business management. He marries Vicky’s friend Carla. The bad boy gets to Nona, his caretaker and mother figure, after his father is killed in a mining accident. When Carla loses her baby due to a bomb thrown by a bewildered kid at the instigation of the bad kid, George knows he should take action. And he patiently baits the kid and kills him. Bradley disbelieves the whole story but gets a rude awakening after George has been put to death by lethal injection as per the conviction. Nice.
A Death is the next one : Thursdale is arrested and is charged with killing a child, Rebecca Cline, and possibly raping her as well. Everyone thinks he is guilty but the Sheriff has his doubts. Thursdale keeps denying that he even knew Rebecca and doggedly insists that he is innocent. The trial seems to be a farce, where the prosecuting attorney is the same as the judge and the defence attorney has consent from the victims before representing Thursdale and also has no hopes that he will be found innocent. The ending surprises you.
Bone Church – A story in a poem. No, don’t expect anything to rhyme. The story is not worth wasting words on either.
Morality – Husband and wife, jobless. Troubled for money. Husband a substitute teacher when he gets called, jobless in between. WifeNora is working part time looking after a retired priest called Winnie. He makes a proposal that makes them agonize – the offer is money that can change their lives. The author hems and haws before revealing what it is that they are to do but once you know what it is and read about the unexpected repurcussions (guilt, marriage breakup etc) you wonder why such a fuss for “that thing”. It could have been stronger but to me it looks very weak and therefore kind of weird to feel the consequences. Mind you, I am not arguing that what they did was right but that the extent of remorse is humungous.
Afterlife – An investment banker Bill Andrews dies and finds himself staying in a corridor. What follows is a surprising conversation. Stephen King is fond of mixing the supernatural/ mythic with everyday surroundings and in this too, he has a conversation with a St Peter like man but someone who is like a minion in a bureaucratic office, who gives him two choices : open the right door and choose oblivion or the left one and live your life again, but with no memory of the previous iteration of the life. And what does Bill choose? Not much of a surprise.
Ur – Wesley has a friend with benefits, Ellen, who left him. He buys a Kindle as a kind of revenge as she hated his reading. But the Kindle is pink, which he has never seen and the books it shows are from Ur library, which seems to feature writers in different dimensions, with books and even genre that are different from what they normally write here on earth. He goes completely obsessed with the thought. When he finds that he can see the future and can change it, with the help of Robbie Henderson, a student of his, the story gets interesting. The references to the Tower and the Low Men are a bonus. Ending is cute.
Herman Wouk is Still Alive – What a stupid story. He describes an accident and an old couple witnessing it. Narration is OK but otherwise very insipid. The title has nothing to do with the story either if you are curious.
Under the Weather – An ad agency executive, Brad Fasprin, whose wife Ellen is recovering from illness has a recurring dream. Well, let’s cut the crap. The dream has nothing to do with the story. The story is about her wife who has a weak heart and seems to be under the weather, the smell that comes from somewhere in the building (he is in an apartment) that smells like a rat has died, about the notes he has left on the fridge for his wife because he needs to work, and what it all builds up to. Nice.
Blockade Billy – A baseball catcher joins a team and creates history. It is an interesting story, not complex. The ‘substitute’ Billy turns out to be so good in baseball that he rises to professional level, before the team’s euphoria is badly shattered.
Mister Yummy – An old people’s home. Ollie, a resident, gives a family heirloom watch to Dave. He claims he will die soon and wants Dave to have it. He sees death as a young boy whom he has nicknamed Mr Yummy. After he dies, the rest of the story is as anticipated and you can see it coming.
Tommy – Terrible. Is is prose or poem? The less said, the better.
The Little Green God of Agony – Multibillionaire Newsome is bedridden after an accident and refuses to do painful exercises to heal his muscles. A pastor Rev Rideout came to visit him and claimed that (though he is Christian) there are many gods, the god of agony being one of them and that Newsome is possessed by her. What happens next is amazingly written. How the Reverend gets the thing out and what price he really pays for it. Nice.
The Bus in Another World – A man in a hurry to go to a presentation of a lifetime fleetingly passes a bus where he sees what looks like murder being committed. Does he call the cops? Or does he make it to the presentation on time?
Obits – Michael Anderson is a journalist. A nasty obits journalist. He hates the owner Jeroma and does a mock obit of her being dead. When it happened really, he puts it to a coincidence. When it happened again for Peter Stefano who murdered a rising star, he is astounded. The story goes on to describe the unintended consequences – on whom it strikes and also how addictive it becomes… And ends well, in my mind
Drunken Fireworks – Arden McCauseland. He and his mom came into money after his dad died and left their work and started drinking heavily. Stephen King has tried a funny story for a change, about the escalating July 4 fireworks arms race between the poorer McCauseland family and their rich neighbours across the river. It has a crazy ending, and kind of works as a duel that got out of hand.
Summer Thunder is the last story in the collection. Robinson and his dog Gandalf. They are alone, he having lost his family in a disaster involving radiation poisoning of the world. The story is very moving, and is definitely worth a read. Nice ending too. He introduces one neighbour Timtim who has survived and a dog that has. So beautiful to see how the hopelessness clouds the story slowly and takes over.
A mixed bag, as his short story collections always are. But there is more wheat in this than chaff and so let us say 7/10
– – Krishna (Feb 2019)