This time I’ve placed the author in the post title rather than the title of his story, and if I could festoon it with flowers and candles in a semblance of altar I would; I would indeed honor him.
Sometimes there’s a sentence, a phrase, a single story in an anthology that rings true and pure, and this story is it: Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You? The title alone tells you that this is going to be different–and not scratch your head, what the hell was that? different.
By the first couple paragraphs I was hooked by the writing as much as the story; by mid-point I had to check if the author used a pseudonym, for it sounded more like Cormac McCarthy than McCarthy has in some of his books. The writing is that beautiful:
He listened to the brook muttering to itself. Night birds called from the bowered darkness of summer trees. He drank again and past the gleaming ellipse of the upraised bottle the sky bloomed with blood-red fire and after a moment thunder rumbled like voices in a dream and a wind was at the trees. (p. 121)
Or this:
A woven-wire fence drowning in honeysuckle went tripping toward the horizon where it vanished in mist like the palest of smoke (p. 119)
And I’ve read it first from McCarthy and admittedly likely used it myself, but the repetition for effect works for Gay as if he’d come up with it first:
"…until the little lights flickered dim and dimmer and died."
"The rutted road wound down and down."
The story is there, as we follow a well-developed protagonist called "The Jeepster" and see him as a hardass with a vulnerability that evokes our sympathy in the loss of his first love. The ending is as weird as any and yet beautifully poignant and tastefully handled to the point of gaining our understanding.
One thing that’s come of this is that I’ve discovered a storyteller who also writes lyrical sentences full of impact and imagery. I’ve already checked Amazon and have added Gay’s first two novels to my "To Buy" list.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology