Small Tremors

For David A. Johnston

Looking up at the mountain, he thought about weathermen, and the hot summers of his childhood. How they would predict rain in early August, and he would watch the rapture of thunderheads along the horizon. They would say 70% chance. A seventy percent chance that the grass would turn a little greener, the cicadas would let the thunder speak louder, that the old nimbus of valley wildfire smoke would get washed out, gradually, like a pair of thrift store jeans washed of the smell of their previous owner.
The weatherman would speak on the radio. Local, probably lived down the street, drank the same beer, attended the rival high school. Everyone would look at the sky. At the thunderheads. They looked at their lawns. At their irrigation sprinklers. Drank iced water. The fat women fanned themselves with magazines and sat on porchsteps.
He remembered how the thunderheads would always move on, eventually. People would shut off the radios. Take the name of the poor weatherman in vain. Reckon that he probably hadn't even gotten a real meteorology degree. Was probably just some sap with a nice voice and a script. Read the same barometer, as well as drank the same beer.
He liked the sound of the dry tallgrass as he ran through it.
Eric looked up at Mount Zeta. A very cosmopolitan, olive-skinned sort of name for a volcano that helmed Bore's ridge in backwoods Montana. He thought about predictions, and weathermen. They had been chasing the pulse of this mountain for a couple of weeks now. Its small tremors, insinuations. Like a newly pregnant wife who hadn't quite told her husband yet. Watching the mountain bulge – literally, bulge – as cryptodomes formed under its surface, trying to set some sort of date. Their seismographs scrawling, etching. Trying to read some kind of clue from the seismic output, like the scribble of serial killer, when, where, how much. How long. He sat at the foot of Mount Zeta, as if beneath the window of a summer crush, with the voodoo equipment of a volcanologist, seismologist, geologist.
Speaking with the earth, without response. Trying to waterwitch some kind of answer, a prediction.
Chasing thunderheads.

:

In the kitchen. Cutting up bell peppers and tomatoes. He slips to the ground, there is no pain. The vegetables are bright and doomed. A television is on in the living room and he can watch it from his place on the floor.
Lying in the hospital bed. His father is in a coma. He is not used to seeing his father like this. A big man. Cutting up bell peppers and tomatoes. The old blue bruises of navy tattoos. He was cutting up bell peppers and tomatoes for a salad when he had a stroke. He had very big arms.
For a straight week, he waits after work by his father's bed. He thinks that maybe he should call in sick tomorrow. They would understand.

:

Sophie was playing with the seismograph. It was broken. The needle was broken. She was trying to fix it. It was very hot, and Mount Zeta's bulges seemed to breathe, like the gut of a legbroke mare. Tom was drinking the last beer. It was 10:37 in the morning. Eric checked his watch.
You're never going to fix that thing.
Sophie threw a too-small screwdriver at him.
The screw is stripped, she said. And besides, you think you can do better?
No.
Then shut up.
Tom said, Let's just take a quick trip back to the USGS. Pick up the other field seismograph. Aunt Zet isn't going anywhere.
Aunt Zet? Eric asked.
Affectionately termed.
Makes her sound like a whorehouse madame.
Or a psychic.
Which is something we could use, granted.
Well, we're out a crystal ball.
Sophie, let's just go back to base camp.
I can fix it, she said.
Funny. Same thing you said about your marriage.
Sophie sat back. Blew hair out of her face.
This is about sex, isn't it? Just because I don't have a penis doesn't mean I can't use a goddamn screwdriver, you know.
Hey, I'd never thought about it that way, Tom said.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.
No, the apt perversion of the word screwdriver.
Let's go back, Sophie said.
Well, you tried. Good thing, too. Because this is the last of the beer.
Eric looked back up at the mountain. He thought he loved her for her symmetricality. The nonchalant slopes. Neckline of snow. Very much a Japanese mountain. Her climbing lines like watercolor strokes. Cold jug air unraveling from her peak.
Slouching like a waiting nude.
He took a picture. The slope was silent, except for Tom and Sophie.
I'll stay behind, he said. Check the spectrometers.

:

It has been six months. His father's face is drawn, like a duelist's blade.
His skin is very pale, a skim of veins, thin sail of breath. The old man isn't sixty-five. The doctors say he is very close to the surface and that he could wake up at any moment. He thinks about the consciousness as a submarine. The slow pings against the undersea topography. The great baline whales of dream and thread somewhere.
He stops visiting the hospital.
He starts trying to imagine his father chopping wood, shooting deer, working under cars.
They say any minute now.
He finds it hard to remember his father doing much of anything.

:

The mountain was unopened. Remained unopened. Like a letter with bad news on the kitchen table. Mount Zeta was his third. Technically his first. The other two had been for his graduate and doctorate theses. He thought about David Johnston. The volcanologist who had died on the slopes of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 at 8:32 in the morning. Vancouver, Vancouver. This is it. He looked over at the radio on the table. He wondered what he would say. What he would say if the mountain burst, collapsed, summoned pillars of ash rising miles upward, like the push of a djinn against his bottle.
He thought that probably he wouldn't say anything.
He thought that he'd like to be without distraction or concern at a moment like that.
The first to be stricken by an act of God, or nature. As if he meant something. As if the universe was concerned enough with him that it would sweep him away before all the others. With the deliberate choice of the first candle extinguished.
Eric didn't go back with Sophie and Tom because he knew this was his chance. To be alone. Just him and the mountain. Like Moses and Sinai. He looked at the time. It was 11:02.
It was not as if he wanted Mount Zeta to erupt.
But he thought about David Johnston, and the great bulls of ash rushing toward him, capeless. Mt. St. Helen's glaciers, evaporated, the centuries of history and slow mustering incinerated. Hundreds of square miles of trees, toppled. What did he think as the mountain received him.
Her dropped peak, like a lowered hatbrim.
Eric had a picture of Mount Pelee on his wall in his bedroom. He had been to Vesuvius. Seen the fetal, captured bodies. How Vulcan was the god of beneficial and hindering fire. How he could climb to the top of Mount Zeta and see fifty miles in any direction. And now how she bulged.
What would he say.
He imagined that most people had considered this.
What would they say.
What would they echo.
Zeta purred. Showed her intimate cryptodomes, catacombs.
Rumbled on the horizon.

:

Now, he only came on Christmas Eve. He was sorry about that.

Wow, really great work! I was so absorbed into the story that I couldn't concentrate on finding any errors. O.O
I thought the description was done really well and the story had a unique feel to it. I enjoyed reading this.
The only thing that irritated me somewhat was that there were no quotation marks to help identify the dialogue. Without quotations marks, I had to do a double take to realize that it was dialogue there. I almost got a little bit confused.
I sugguest adding some.

They would say 70% chance. A seventy percent chance that the grass would turn a little greener, the cicadas would let the thunder speak louder, that the old nimbus of valley wildfire smoke would get washed out, gradually, like a pair of thrift store jeans washed of the smell of their previous owner.

Just for consistency's sake, either use "70%" or "seventy percent", but not both forms side by side. And I enjoyed the different ways of saying a storm washing over the land, and I understand it's common to make the last one longer than the first two (this one: "that the old nimbus of valley wildfire smoke would get washed out, gradually, like a pair of thrift store jeans washed of the smell of their previous owner."), but I feel like it gets too long and winded by the time we get to the thrift store jeans and we're running out of breath to say it all. Plus, the three ways are very grounded, peaceful images that exist in the land, and suddenly we're ripped from the land to a thrift store somewhere.

We have this line:
"Local, probably lived down the street, drank the same beer, attended the rival high school."
and a paragraph later, we have the people making conjectures about his life. It's not quite a parallel, though, since it says,
"Read the same barometer, as well as drank the same beer"
and we only get one similarity. So it seems more like you forgot that you had said the beer line. I think that line is unnecessary in the first half and you could move those ideas down to the second half. That is:
"Was probably just some sap with a nice voice and a script. Probably lived down the street, drank the same beer, attended the rival high school."

Its small tremors, insinuations. Like a newly pregnant wife who hadn't quite told her husband yet.

Love it.

As for the dialogue, it's quite easy to pick out Sophie from the men. But Tom and Eric get jumbled together. They can be teased apart if you do a couple backtracks, but that's too much work.

His father's face is drawn, like a duelist's blade.

This line confuses me, as I imagine "drawn" has two completely different meanings here.

He finds it hard to remember his father doing much of anything.

Amazing compact line that packs a punch.

the great bulls of ash rushing toward him, capeless.

This summons a terrifyingly great image.

All in all, I enjoyed this tremendously. It has a great peace to it with the tremors of a living beast underneath.

Hey Kylan,

Well, my first comment was going to be about the 70% inconsistency thing, but sarg just did that, so.

The weatherman would speak on the radio. Local, probably lived down the street, drank the same beer, attended the rival high school. Everyone would look at the sky. At the thunderheads. They looked at their lawns. At their irrigation sprinklers. Drank iced water. The fat women fanned themselves with magazines and sat on porchsteps.

I really enjoyed the beat of this paragraph.

He sat at the foot of Mount Zeta, as if beneath the window of a summer crush, with the voodoo equipment of a volcanologist, seismologist, geologist.

I think you could cut this line -- it seems superfluous after what's gone before it in the paragraph. I didn't really like the list of careers at the end, either, seemed unusually straightforward for you. Maybe merge the summer crush metaphor somewhere else.

I don't like to critique style (because, after all, it's what you are) but your sentence structures can get tiring. It's often "Blah blah blah blah blah, blah. Blah blah blah, blah. Blah blah blah blah, blah." Those little words added to the end are effective, but in short bites, not in regularity. Mix it up a bit more.

He slips to the ground, there is no pain

Sounds odd. Too passive, perhaps, too detached. It doesn't really seem like he falls to the ground at all.

Eric looked back up at the mountain. He thought he loved her for her symmetricality. The nonchalant slopes. Neckline of snow. Very much a Japanese mountain. Her climbing lines like watercolor strokes. Cold jug air unraveling from her peak.

That's just wonderful. I really felt the mountain love, it shone through in your writing.

Not much of a critique, I'm sorry. It's because I pretty much thing this is great. Just brilliant writing. If you don't become a famous author something is wrong in the universe.

p.s. I'm fairly sure that guy's name is David A. Johnston.

Hey Kylan,

I really like how you wrote about this. This story has a great rhythm and style and you do a nice job of combining enough context with great dialogue. The way you constructed your sentences worked really well for this story. It almost feels like a collection of vignettes, and what a cool subject! I really liked the series of Eric thinking about what he would say, that worked incredibly well. The only thing is that because you move so quickly from one scene to the next, certain subtleties are lost and the shifts can be a bit abrupt, specifically at the end. Otherwise, great work!

-Cath

Hey Kylan -

I have been trying to decide what I felt about this piece for some time now. Whether I felt. Whether I was supposed to feel. Small Tremors hangs in interim - appropriate, I suppose - but it seemed as if it was a downhill slide from a gently-sloping hill that sort of drizzled out. Feeble, despite the brilliant use of the extended metaphor throughout - waiting for the volcano to erupt and waiting for his father to come out of coma. That, I appreciated. So. I have mixed emotions.

Before I get into a deeper discussion, I want to point out a couple of things I noticed. The tense changes. Any particular reason? It's bizarre, but you know how the present tense is supposed to feel more...real? Yes, well, I actually found the passages written in past tense more real - perhaps because they were longer - while the present tense parts seemed like a smooth gloss over the events. It did take me a few reads to even notice - well done on your part - but I did wonder on whether I was getting the timing right or not: I assumed his father first has a stroke and then Eric becomes obsessed with the volcanoes, waiting for them to erupt much like he is waiting for his father to wake up or to just die. (I'm not sure which you were going for, but the ambiguity is something you could have played up.) However, since the mountain parts are written in the past tense and the visiting/thinking about father parts are written in the present, I wasn't so sure. Was that intended?

Second thing I wanted to mention: the use of simile. In some parts, it works. In most parts, it does not - it seems terribly out of place, like a dash of an exotic spice used to impress the audience with no greater purpose. Most do not add to the extended metaphor. Most appear extraneous, gaudy. The confident style of your writing is enough; you don't need flashy accessories to prove yourself. And the piece would be just fine without them:

like a pair of thrift store jeans washed of the smell of their previous owner.

Like a newly pregnant wife who hadn't quite told her husband yet.

like the scribble of serial killer

Slouching like a waiting nude.

Like a letter with bad news on the kitchen table.

like a lowered hatbrim.

Have another look at these. Don't they seem like overkill to you?

Just another specific to mention here - the conversation with Sophie and Tom. I see it provides some comic relief. I don't see how it adds significantly to the focal point of the story, the extended metaphor. The only way I could tie it in to the main theme is by contrast, not by how it complements it. That conversation is about fixing things. But is Eric trying to fix anything? Or is he, instead, waiting for it to fall apart? See, that's the contrast: it seems he's waiting for the volcano to erupt, but the ambiguity is whether that 'eruption' involves everything falling apart / destruction / death or whether that eruption will be something constructive, fixing, result in his father waking up to life. The way the possible eruption is described in the last major part suggests that Eric is waiting for his father to die, that an eruption would be releasing, chaotic, destructive. Regardless, I think there's so much more potential for what you could have done with that conversation in terms of highlighting that contrast. As it stands, it appears like a side-dish in a piece that's too short to allow for one.

You've got the extended metaphor figured out, which is great. But I am seeing just the bones of it here; the simplest version of it. He is waiting. For the volcano to erupt. For his father to wake up. Or for his father to die. The reason why the piece came across as passive, even detached was because of lack of engagement with both the audience and with the characters. I don't think the detachment was intentional on your part, not with the effort you go to describe the surroundings. But that's just it: a description, not so much a relevant or personified description. The piece shows the character; it doesn't make one feel. In fact, I would go so far as to say I have no idea if Eric does feel, based on the way he interacts - or rather, doesn't. I would have liked to have seen some kind of interaction with him and his father here, to give us an indication of their relationship. Of why his father matters - or does not matter - to him (and I get the impression he does, just not strongly). Yes, Eric's focus is towards the mountain, something of a distraction from the reality, but even here you could provide some direct conflict that ties the two together sharply.

Conflict. I think this is what the piece could do with. Eric has a name, an occupation, a situation. Beyond that, he's flat, blank-faced. I see him looking out at the mountain, lingering by it, thinking about it erupting, intellectualising it, wondering what he'd do in the aftermath. I do not see the obvious conflict - whether he wants it to erupt, or doesn't, or both, or in one way but not in another. In effect, whether he wants his father to just die or to wake up. I see him mildly attached to this mountain, to his father. Yes, that's it - he's mild. So mild that he's almost not human - the piece says little about the human condition, then; it doesn't make the point that it has the potential to. That he feels simultaneously like he needs to release of pent-up emotion and that it might be disastrous if that occurred. You could deepen that metaphor of the volcano if you showed that - the conflict, the paradox, the extremes of emotion, the metaphor of human relationship. That might get across something more lasting than this humble piece that glides in and wafts out.

Now, he only came on Christmas Eve. He was sorry about that.

And what are we to conclude from this? That he's not waiting anymore? That he's moved on from that focus? Where was the turning point? You can't give us the resolution before you've given the conflict! Or did he just make that decision in the same listless, straight-faced way he seems to do so much of everything else? Is the story about moving on, or waiting? Either way, the moving on story would require something of an uphill climb to a kind of climax and then a downward dip to a resolution, while the waiting story would lead up to and swirl around the climax, leaving us sorely dissatisfied. I only see a downward slide here. We need some structure.

But. I liked it for the metaphor, the softness. I can see why you titled it 'Small Tremors' - but the tremors (conflict, I am assuming) are so quiet that they hardly appear. I want to see these tremors; I want the little things that happen to have some kind of effect, emotionally. Can you build a story without the conflict? Can it have any kind of structure at all if it just wobbles around something distant, hazy, vague? Perhaps a rethink of your primary aim is in order. I don't see what mild teetering achieves in the longer run.

PM me if you want to discuss anything.


Navita

Kylan -

I have been rethinking some things about this piece. I had two major ideas -

Firstly, when I mentioned conflict/head/heart: I can see the piece is subtle. That's fine. If I asked for more characterisation / emotion, I meant only slightly more in places, just more of a hint to show it's there and leave the reader to appreciate the writing more for what you haven't told us. Of course, that is based on the assumption that the conflict is about whether or not he wants his dad to die, to tell us you are aware of the third dimension to the tale, and so should we be.

Secondly - this was my second thought: what if the main conflict isn't so much about the 'if' his father should die (as I had first assumed), but what happens after? This, to me, made more sense in light of the only internal conflict you portray towards the very end. In this case, I am even more prepared to accept the mild characterisation. I have a friend whose father died, and she reacted much the same - or rather, didn't react. He'd been in hospital, incapable of interaction for so long that it was as if he'd died - the actuality of it would just be the final closing. So, I can better appreicate the passivity in the piece. I can also see how Eric's 'mildness' would lead to a lack of conflict about whether he wants his father to die - instead, there is just a niggling doubt as to how he'll react afterward. In which case, if this was always your intended conflict, then it was handled superbly. And perhaps that then becomes the greatest thing about Small Tremors - instead of highlighting the drama, the incredible grief that comes with death, you give us a different side, a newer one. That of a lack of emotion or thought - something we would fear ourselves having in such a situation. But you make us accept it with the same seeming nonchalance Eric accepts the events in his life. That is also beautifully manipulated on your part - it becomes a 'this is how it is and I didn't feel or think about it and that's okay' kind of outlook - different, bizarre, possibly more real.

So. Just wanted to let you know. I love it more now that I have found a key to unlock it.

Thanks



Navita