Short Story
Adam alerted me to this short piece in this morning’s NY Times. It’s a gem.
SMALL FARM REPORT
By Verlyn Klinkenborg
Here is how things stand at midsummer. One of the Tamworth pigs is tame enough to be scratched behind the ears. The other isn’t. Two of the white geese have clubbed together and banished the third white goose from their society. The lame Ancona duck has taken refuge under the old chicken house. We would put her out of her misery, except that her misery is her life. The old Dominique rooster seems to be in a vertiginous state, always leaning and nearly always dozing. During the listless heat of the day, the chickens all lie in the dust beneath the pickup. The horses stand in the hickory shade, incognito in fly-masks, tails flicking.
The vegetable garden has gone feral. The walking onions, the chives and the blueberries are the only signs of civilization there. The less said about that the better. Hopes are high for next year. The crop of chipmunks is incredible. There have never been fatter woodchucks. The pasture is filled with the trial cawing of young crows. The swallows nearly clip me with their wings as I throw hay down from the loft. The bees are populous. The pasture at dawn is covered with spiderwebs that look like the footprints of ethereal elephants. The scarlet bee-balm is in bloom down by the mailbox, and the thistles are purpling. The hollyhocks are coming into blossom and also rotting in the leaf, as they always seem to do.
The days still come in order. Gray light collects in the bedroom long before dawn. Then comes a bleached noon and nearly always the threat of a late-afternoon thunderstorm. The darkness is notated by fireflies, who have been unusually numerous — or is it unusually bright? — this year. The crickets are now whining away, as if they were reeling in August. I am laying in all the thinking I can against a time when summer is in short supply.
The prose has a Garrison Keillor air to it. Except for Klinkenborg’s somewhat shorter sentences, the phrasing, the similies, the metaphors and the creative adjectives and verbs are Keillor’s. Has Garrison left broadcasting and gone to work on a farm? Or does Verlyn just channel all the good wordstuff through the same Platonic ether that Keillor does?
Comment by rakkityed.schmahl — July 28, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
I assumed Verlyn was a female.
Comment by michael — July 28, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
Interesting. When I read it again imagining Verlyn is a woman, I see Renee Zellweger (Ruby, in Cold Mountain) striding vigorously across the garden, sweeping bees out of the way, and calling to the chickens.
Comment by rakkityed.schmahl — July 28, 2007 @ 6:03 pm
I love the short sentences. I tend to lean that way myself when I write. I love the descriptions ending in, “the thistle is purpling.” So cool. I can feel it.
Comment by Jen — July 30, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
I like the “horses…,incognito in fly masks”, which is poetic as well as showing that the farmer cares for his horses enough to get fly masks for them.
And I like the “crickets reeling in August”, insect fishermen on a space-time pond.
Comment by rakkityed.schmahl — July 31, 2007 @ 10:02 pm
And I, as you might, love the simple dependable order of things. Then there is this, ” We would put her out of her misery, except that her misery is her life.” which reminds me of why we let our friend Dan go on.
Comment by michael — August 1, 2007 @ 7:53 am
Wait. What?
Comment by Jennifer — August 1, 2007 @ 9:06 pm