The beginning of the fall semester means having to straighten my office, dry-clean some shirts, wash out my coffee maker that the summer has turned into a science experiment…but the good news is that it also means rereading some favorite stories that my creative writing students will be seeing for the first time. One that I keep returning to is Richard Bausch’s story “The Man Who Knew Belle Starr.” There are any number of wonderful aspects to this story, from its blend of humor and tragedy to its take on American mythologies to its clever nod (in my view, anyway) to Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
But what really gets me is the opening paragraph.
I love how much we learn about these two characters without ever being told explicitly. But I especially love how what looks at first like a relatively straightforward paragraph of summary is actually a series of small mysteries that raise key questions in the reader’s mind, questions that make us want to keep reading. (The footnotes are mine.)
On his way west1 McRae picked up a hitcher, a young woman carrying a paper bag2 and a leather purse, wearing jeans and a shawl—which she didn’t take off, though it was more than ninety degrees out and McRae had no air-conditioning.3 He was driving an old Dodge Charger with a bad exhaust system and one long crack in the wraparound windshield.4 He pulled over for her, and she got right in5, put the leather purse on the seat between them, and settled herself with a paper bag on her lap between her hands.6 He had just crossed into Texas from Oklahoma.7 This was the third day of the trip.
(From The Stories of Richard Bausch. Copyright 2003 by Richard Bausch)
- Why is McRae heading West? And what, specifically, is his destination?
- Um, what’s in the bag?
- Why won’t she take off her shawl? Also, McRae must not have a lot of money.
- Yep. These details confirm that he’s pretty broke, which makes his road-trip that much more interesting and tinged with desperation. (And as anyone who’s ever driven a car with a large crack in the windshield knows, this is a precarious situation: the windshield could shatter at any moment!)
- The woman shows no hesitancy at all. No fear.
- Seriously, what’s in the paper bag? It’s been mentioned twice already. She sure is protective of it. Must be important.
- Oklahoma? He still has a ways to go. Perhaps this doesn’t bode well…
That’s a lot of work for one paragraph—especially one that reads like no work at all.
Any favorite story openings?
Michael Kardos is the author of the story collection One Last Good Time, forthcoming in February 2011 from Press 53. While earning his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri, he served as Contest Editor for The Missouri Review. He currently co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. His website is michaelkardos.com.
I have two!
From “The Ballon” by Donald Barthelme:
“The ballon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, expanded northward all one night , while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park. There, I stopped it; at dawn the northernmost edges lay over the Plaza; the free-hanging motion was frivolous and gentle. But experiencing a faint irritation at stopping , even to protect the trees, and seeing no reason the ballon should not be allowed to expand upward, over the parts of the city it was already covering, into the “air space” to be found there, I asked the engineers to see to it. This expansion took place throughout the morning, soft imperceptible sighing of gas through the valves. The ballon then covered forty-five blocks north – south and an irregular are east-west, as many as six crosstown blocks on either side of the Avenue in some places. That was the situation, then.”
From Franny and Zooey by Salinger:
“Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend – the weekend of the Yale game. O the twenty-some young men who were waiting at the station for thei dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold , open platform. The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, tlking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries.”
Sorry those are both long…