I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 3, 2023] “Shouting Wenkie”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my sixth time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individual short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.  Now in its ninth year, the SSAC is back to once again bring readers a deluxe, peppermint-fresh collection of 25 short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.

The author of this story was Peter Orner.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 3. Peter Orner, author of Still No Word from You, is running unopposed.

This story is funny, even though it’s dark.  And dark even though it’s funny.

It opens with the shooting of a dog, which isn’t funny.  But this event became part of the town’s folklore.  The narrator knows what happened that night but he’s not here to set the record straight.  He just wants to tell the story.

His family was obsessed with politics. They lived in a small town and his father was the mayor.  I can’t decide if the fact that their name is Yarmo, is the laziest anagram of mayor or strangely clever.  Anyhow, he successfully ran for mayor several elections in a row.  So much so that he was unopposed in 1984.

His wife, the narrator’s mom, was his campaign manager.  And she was aggressive and a but crazy about the elections.  As soon as the election was over, she was a normal , quiet woman, but while running the campaign, she was out for blood.  So much so that she was angry when her husband was unopposed.

What kind of pansy ass runs unopposed?

It was so bad that they got divorced.  And she soon found an opponent for him and threw all of her power behind the other guy.  The other guy was Chuck Wenkie, their next door neighbor.

After the election, Yarmo started calling their dog (whose name was Gretchen) “Wenkie.”  And it seemed whenever he called her t hat it made her bark.  And then she started barking a lot.  So much so that it drove the neighbor on the other side a little crazy.  Hence the shooting.

I love the way Orner wended this story around these ideas–there’s so much more to this story than this outline.