In the Walled City: Stories

In the Walled City: Stories

by Stewart O'Nan
In the Walled City: Stories

In the Walled City: Stories

by Stewart O'Nan

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Overview

An award-winning collection of short fiction from one of “the strongest American writers of his generation” (The Washington Post Book World).
 
Proclaimed “a master” by the New York Times and selected as one of Grantas Best Young American Novelists, Stewart O’Nan started his literary career with this outstanding collection of short stories. Selected as the winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, these twelve stories offer intimate portraits of a broad range of characters—including a ruined farmer, a black day laborer, an old Chinese grocer, and a young policeman who descends into madness after being separated from his family.
 
Probing and lyrical, these stories illuminate the connections that bind us and the obligations and sorrows of love. From The Speed Queen to The Names of the Dead to West of Sunset, O’Nan has dazzled readers again and again. Fans new and old will enjoy In the Walled City.
 
“These are stories of a high order, sophisticated, humane, persistent; once read, they don’t go away.” —Tobias Wolff

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802196699
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date: 04/01/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 97,684
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

About The Author
Stewart O'Nan's award-winning fiction includes Snow Angels, The Names of the Dead, The Speed Queen, A World Away, A Prayer for the Dying, Everyday People, and the story collection In the Walled City. His nonfiction includes The Circus Fire and the anthology The Vietnam Reader, which he edited.

Hometown:

Avon, CT

Date of Birth:

February 4, 1961

Place of Birth:

Pittsburgh, PA

Education:

B.S., Aerospace Engineering, Boston University, 1983; M.F.A., Cornell University, 1992

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Finger

Sundays, Carter saw his wife and baby. It was not his decision and not Diane's either, they just went along with it. There was nothing legal between them. They'd been separated barely a year, and if they still bristled face-to-face, distance had given him back some of his lost fondness.

Carter knew she was seeing people, but compared with their years together — the rhythm of apartments and, in those fat and sunny years, bungalows — a few dinner dates with slicked-up slobs from work didn't worry him. Sometimes when Diane was hurting for cash, Carter would take the bus over to Bay Shore after work and put an envelope in their mailbox. He was making the best money of his life at the landfill, and she had to pay the babysitter, she needed to buy food. Carter felt responsible in a way he hadn't when they were together.

This Sunday he was walking back from the bus stop along William Floyd Parkway toward his complex — at peace for having fulfilled his obligations — when a car shot by him with a man hanging out the passenger side window. He was maybe a little younger than himself, dark, with a DI and a pointed beard. Very clearly, the man called to Carter, "Fuck you," and gave him the finger, pumping his whole arm for emphasis. Carter stopped walking. The car — a big, brown LTD with New York plates — made the light at Montauk Highway, rumbled over the railroad tracks, and sped away down the Floyd toward the beach.

"Drunk," Carter said, and kept walking along the berm. It was Sunday, mild, late April, a few hours of light left. He debated buying a quart of Miller at the Dairy Barn and brown-bagging it on the beach. He needed some release after the effort of keeping the peace with his wife all afternoon. Jessie was sick, napping late, and he and Diane had sat in the kitchen, pretending to be civil, unscathed. She ran water for coffee, and he noticed the faucet leaked around the base.

"It's not your problem," she said.

"It's a two-dollar part. It'll take me five minutes."

She talked about gardening; she did every year but never planted anything.

"You don't like green pepper," he reminded her.

"I can get to like it. I'm going to give most of them to Mrs. Contas."

"What else?" he asked, because he liked to see her make plans. It was something he was no good at, and partly why he'd fallen for her. Her original plan was to get her circuit board certificate from the SUNY extension and work at Grumman's; then he could quit and go back to school full time. Late nights, sweeping the laundromat, Carter would stop amid the warm tumbling of the dryers and think of her taking notes, cross-legged, imagining in a few years he'd be there. He had wanted — and still wanted — to be a physical therapist. A year before their marriage, he'd laid down his bike in the rain and shattered a knee. When the doctors cut the cast off, the leg was grayish-yellow and half the size of the other, the quad jelly. He couldn't bend the knee and thought he'd never be the same. He wanted to be like the people who saved him.

The guy with the beard had leaned out, made a real effort, Carter thought. There was no one around him, no one else walking the sandy shoulder. He wondered, as cars shot by in hot waves of exhaust, if the man had mistaken him for someone he knew. Or if in some crummy part of his life he had actually known the man — had deserved maybe more than the finger. Maybe right now the LTD was doubling back. He kept an eye on the oncoming traffic. Probably just a joke, high spirits. Why would anyone wish that on another?

He and Diane hadn't been sleeping together for a few weeks when she told him she was pregnant. Their plans had fallen through and they were living off his father — money Carter had vowed he'd never accept. He'd been seeing an ex-friend of hers, and the way he flaunted his own coldness, he expected Diane would find someone — a guy from work, a nice guy, he didn't want to know. He had imagined it again and again, but a baby was stupid. He wanted to think it was his. Diane didn't.

Against his father's urging, Carter moved out east on the Island where it was cheaper. He had a one-bedroom in a failed retirement complex. A lot of the original tenants were still there, getting by on assistance. It was quiet, if a little rundown.

If he could buy a quart with just the change in his pockets, he would. It was a game he couldn't really lose. He was short a quarter but decided to splurge anyway. It was Sunday, he wasn't doing anything. He bought two and made sure to chat up the clerk, who looked like a regular guy, a good guy, Carter thought, maybe had a family. The Dairy Barn was a drive-thru; the man was probably lonely.

How the hell would he know?

The weather brought the oldsters out. On the lawn in front of his building, Mr. Katz and a guy Carter knew from the laundry room sat in folding chairs, bundled up. Mr. Katz had a Mets cap on to keep the sun out of his eyes. They were both holding dollar bills.

"Here's my friend Carter. Tell Manny here it is impossible to dig up a prehistoric elephant — we're talking a couple billion years old here — and eat it like it's leftovers. Will you tell him that?"

"Carter?" Manny said, "Carter, you've heard of the woolly mammoth, is that right? So you know they find them frozen in the ice. In the Arctic. What I'm saying is, these archeologists who find them find them totally preserved."

"Like a big freezer, he's saying."

"And when they taste the meat it's fresh like from the butcher. They eat it up, throw a picnic right there in the Arctic."

"I never heard that," Carter said.

"See? The man won't lie." Mr. Katz reached for the dollar but Manny pulled his hand away.

"I'm not talking Ripley's here, this is the National Geographic, for God's sake."

"It might be," Carter said, "I just never saw it."

"That doesn't prove anything."

"What do you want," Mr. Katz said, "the World Book Encyclopedia?"

"You guys want to drink some beer?"

"Gives me gas," Mr. Katz said.

"With my stomach?" Manny said.

"Mr. Woolly Mammoth," Mr. Katz said, "Mr. Picnic-on-the-Tundra."

"Carter," Manny said, "remind me never to ask you anything ever again."

Inside, Carter left his lights off, sitting in a square of sun, moving his chair as the beer dwindled. He imagined himself at the beach, the failing light bronzing the water. It was probably cold; besides, it was a long walk. He could not stop thinking about the guy with the beard, how he stuck his upper half out to yell at him. Carter was probably lucky they hadn't come back for him with baseball bats. Who was driving? Diane could have easily beaten him out there, the car her boyfriend's. Looked like her type — psychotic. She swore she wasn't sleeping with anyone, but he knew she was saying it for him, for the money. He did not want to believe his cynicism anymore; he was tired of living for himself, and liked to think the chill between them would — like everything of importance, unspoken, an understanding beyond argument — miraculously thaw. Every time he went over to the old place he had the urge to stay the night, stay the next day and on and on, as if nothing had changed. She never offered, he never asked.

The room was going dark, the beer dregs. He went to his foot-locker and made sure he had clothes for tomorrow. At work they provided jumpsuits, but Carter always worried that the smell of the garbage was seeping into his skin, like a virus. Since his father had finagled the job for him, he'd slowly lost his sense of smell. In the beginning he wore the mask they gave him, but it didn't work and none of the others wore theirs. On the bus sometimes people stayed away from him; other days they pressed right into his pits. If he stank he wasn't able to tell, but every time he did laundry he'd sniff and sniff, unsure.

Diane never said anything. She knew his father had gotten him the job after they'd broken up. At first Carter had hated him for it, but he no longer minded the job. He liked sitting high up in the Cat's glassed-in cab, packing and grading the great mounds of trash, the gulls thick and wheeling above. The fill was the highest point for miles, and on a clear day he could see the trawlers rocking far off Fire Island. Best, he knew the job was temporary. Not because he could afford to quit, but because he could not imagine himself working in the heat and stink for more than a few years.

He laid out his clothes for tomorrow, then made himself dinner — a fried egg sandwich washed down with HiC out of the big cold can. It disgusted and dismayed him. He told himself this was all temporary.

He called Diane.

"What do you want?" she answered.

"I just wanted to know you were all right."

"I'm all right."

"I had a good time today."

"Right. Look, we're eating."

"We."

"Me and Jess," she said as if he'd said something absurd. "I've got to go."

"Listen," Carter said, "I had this thing happen to me today."

"You're drinking. Jesus, I can smell it on you from here."

"Just beer, I swear it."

"I'll see you next Sunday," she said, and hung up.

By nine everyone in his building was in bed. Carter listened to the kids from the other buildings playing flashlight tag, private planes landing at Brookhaven Airport, and, beneath it all, the steady wash of cars on the Floyd. He couldn't wait to fall asleep, to wake up.

He rode the Cat, thinking of Sunday, far off and bright as the island sky. The wind was up, riffling skeins of plastic caught in the razor wire. Monday was white-items day, neighborhood contractors bringing in truckloads of doorless refrigerators and stoves and washers and dryers, halved kitchen tables and matching chairs, broken-backed couches, ripped Barcaloungers. Vernon, the manager, set aside the nicer pieces behind his trailer — first come first serve. Anything left on Friday got tossed. Carter's apartment was furnished with such junk, most of it beyond his means.

At break Lorena said there was a nice sectional he might like, and they took their coffees around back. Lorena knew his father from the water authority, and looked after Carter as if he were helpless. Carter appreciated it.

The sectional was tan and had five pieces including a curve, across which lay a plate-sized wine stain. Lorena swiped at the cushions and sat down.

"It's nice," Carter said, "but I don't have the room."

"The stain. Don't feel pressured. If you can't use it, my niece might. Did you look at the dresser with the nice handles?"

It was red oak, a little nicked but better than the pressboard one he had at home, found here last August. He could strip it and stain it.

"I don't know," he said, "I've got enough stuff already."

"Maybe Diane could use it."

"Maybe," he said. "Sure, hey, what the hey."

Lorena gave him a ride home with the dresser wrapped in an old army blanket, legs sticking out of the trunk. The Dairy Mart passed. Mr. Katz supervised them getting it up the stairs and into Carter's apartment.

"It was a mastodon," Mr. Katz said after Lorena had left.

"What?"

"Your woolly mammoth, it was a mastodon. Manny got this book from the library. These guys picked the thing apart like a nice whitefish. They even got a picture of it."

"What are you telling me for?" Carter asked.

"Mr. Irritable here. I thought you were interested. A stick of wood is more interesting, is that it?"

"It's for my wife." He had it on an island of newspaper in the living room. Mr. Katz was on the couch, his cane between his legs.

"What for?"

"It's a gift." He opened the can of stripper.

"What do you want to do that for? Buy her a nice dress or something, take her out to dinner." He took out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. "Are you supposed to be doing this indoors?"

Carter opened a window.

"Forget it," Mr. Katz said, and hobbled to the door. "Call me when she dumps you again."

"Leave it open," Carter said.

He brought a wobbly floor lamp over and took off the shade so he could see what he was doing. He soaked a pad of steel wool with stripper and rubbed along the grain. The stain came off gummy, dying his fingers like nicotine. He skipped dinner, scouring the scrolled legs, the ball-and-claw feet. The steel wool wore down and pricked his fingers, the stripper burned. Midnight, groggy from the fumes, he could see it was going to work. He stood back, admiring the bare whorls. The complex was dark, silent; he closed his door. Around two he ran out of steel wool and quit for the night. The stain wouldn't come off his fingers, even using Goop. Hours later, he got out of bed and closed the window.

He woke up with a crushing headache. It poured, fog sitting over the sea. The first two hours not a single truck showed. Only pros ran in the rain. He sat in his cab with the heater up, listening to the roof drumming, the wipers slishing. Gulls stood in flocks, puffed for warmth. He thought of the dresser sitting in his dark apartment, how foolish he was to think it would change things.

Right at break, a town truck climbed the hill, its lights on, stacks smoking. Lorena radioed him that he could go back to the trailer.

"You go," he said. "I'll take it."

"Sure?" she said.

The truck backed to the wall of trash, raised its bed, and began inching out, laying a long swath of garbage. Carter dropped his blade, throttled up, and headed for the pile. The truck lowered its bed and its gate banged shut. The driver gave Carter a flash of his high beams, which Carter returned. As they passed, the driver stuck his arm out the window and waved. Carter did not know him but waved back, confused but glad.

Walking back from the bus, he stopped at the Odd Lot to pick up some steel wool. It was a cheap store, piled to the ceiling with flimsy knotted pine and overpriced hardware from Taiwan that other stores couldn't sell. The local contractors drove the twenty miles to the Pergament in Bohemia; here were only men like himself, husbands looking for a length of downspout or tube of caulking to keep the house together until the next crisis, whatever the cost. They stalked the aisles searching for one item, and when they found it strode to the checkout, paid in cash, and were out the door, in the car, and away. Carter knew the routine; he liked working with his hands. When the screen door came apart or the tiles in the shower stall began dropping, he would hop in the Valiant before Diane had a chance to call the problem to his attention and streak to the Pergament. He never remembered to ask for a receipt, but he did good work, and only the rare landlord argued.

Carter was not familiar with the Odd Lot, and wandered through the aisles trying to discover some logic in the arrangement of pyramids of lacquer, baskets of flashlight batteries, and bins of drywall nails. All of it seemed to be on sale, each price jotted in the white center of the same fluorescent red explosion. He found a stretch of paint cans, above it a wall of brushes and rollers, but no scrapers or sandpaper, no steel wool. The woman at the counter said she didn't remember any. Considering it a dead issue, she picked a microphone from its wall mount, and her voice burst godlike from the ceiling: "Fred, front, Fred."

Fred took him back to the paint cans and gave up. "We should be seeing some next week," he said, doubtful.

The two lawn chairs Mr. Katz and Manny were in the other day sat on the front lawn, getting rained on. Carter took his beer inside and set it on the stairs, went back out, folded the chairs and hauled them in, one in each hand.

The dresser was waiting for him when he opened the door. He took off his coat by the closet, careful not to drip on the raw wood. He tried to drink his beer by the window, looking out on the matted patch the kids adapted to whatever they were playing, but the dresser lurked behind him, and he moved to the kitchen. He ate some questionable leftover chicken and, gathering himself for tomorrow — sunny, the weather said — buried himself under the covers and dreamed of the Pergament's bright aisles.

It was eighty the next morning; green shoots and tiny flowers fringed the gray mounds. Home owners showed up in pickups and rental trucks, dropped off their attic or basement clutter, then spun and dug their rear wheels into the loose dust. Far below at the base of the fill, a line of trucks formed at the scales, running along the access road, out the entrance, and down the county road in both directions. Carter and Lorena worked through break. It was the kind of day Carter loved. He unzipped his jumpsuit to the waist, peeled off the top and his T-shirt, and drove bare-chested, the sweat streaming down his arms. The sun climbed, then seemed to linger, high, and the afternoon flew. Even the crushed gulls couldn't stop him whistling.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "In the Walled City"
by .
Copyright © 1993 Stewart O'Nan.
Excerpted by permission of Grove Atlantic, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

The Finger,
The Third of July,
In the Walled City,
Calling,
Winter Haven,
Finding Amy,
Mr. Wu Thinks,
The Doctor's Sickness,
The Legion of Superheroes,
Steak,
The Big Wheel,
Econoline,

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