Sightings

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bloomington & Indianapolis

B. J. Hollars

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© 2013 by B. J. Hollars

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No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses' Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI
Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-00838-1
(pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-253-00846-6
(e-book)

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TO MY WIFE, MEREDITH,
WHOSE CAREFUL EYES HELPED ME
SPOT THESE SIGHTINGS

Acknowledgments

INDIAN VILLAGE

SCHOONERS

SIGHTINGS

WESTWARD EXPANSION

THE CLOWNS

LINE OF SCRIMMAGE

DIXIE LAND

LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS

ROBOTICS

MISSING MARY

Credits

This book would never have been possible without the help of a grand troupe of family, friends, editors, and supporters. I am indebted first and foremost to my co-conspirators in the
MFA
program at The University of Alabama (you know who you are), and in particular, to Michael Martone, Wendy Rawlings, and Kate Bernheimer, in whose classrooms many of these stories were born.

I am also grateful for the encouragement of a wide array of editors, including Megan Paonessa of
Flying House,
Jill Adams of
The Barcelona Review,
Caitlin McGuire of the
Berkeley Fiction Review,
Christopher Heavener of
Annalemma Magazine,
Mike Czyzniejewski of
Mid-American Review,
Jill Meyers of
American Short Fiction,
Brenda Miller of the
Bellingham Review,
Ryan Ridge of
Faultline,
Jessica Pitchford and Suzanne Jamir of
The Southeast Review,
Dave Housley, Mike Ingram, Joe Killiany, Matt Kirkpatrick, and Aaron Pease of
Barrelhouse,
and also Jamie Vue, for scaring the typos away.

To Brendan Todt – compass, sextant, navigator, and tireless reader of my work.

To my peer reviewers, whose straight talk proved invaluable.

To Linda Oblack and Sarah Jacobi of Indiana University Press.

To my family, old and new, and in particular, my brother, for using his own talents to support mine.

And finally, to my good friend Sasquatch. Thanks for playing Hide-And-Go-Seek.

It was the summer of 1975, and we were supposed to be feeling good.

Gerald Ford had just put an end to the war in Vietnam, and even more exciting, through the hail and the sideways rain, our hero, Bobby Unser, had somehow managed to be the first to limp his way past the checkered flag in Indy. Far less impressive was my own recent limping-completion of the seventh grade, an accomplishment whose only reward was leaving me stranded somewhere in the foggy terrain of my crushing adolescence, another casualty in a long line of those already infected.

Through no fault of their own, boys who had once been stars on their little league teams suddenly found themselves stretched and refashioned, stricken with nicknames like “string bean” and “crater face” with no signs of letting up. One morning they woke wholly dispossessed of coordination – their feet suddenly replaced with clown's feet, their legs the legs of giraffes.

Our symptoms were no different than those faced by others our age, leading us to believe that our shared suffering was likely the result of some top-secret government conspiracy (someone had poisoned the water supply!), leaving us susceptible to growing older.

At the end of the school year, several of us began passing around a dog-eared copy of Stephen King's
Carrie,
which we devoured partially for its pornography but mostly for its self-help. We took refuge in Carrie's predicament, basking in her unbridled displays of strength. Even we boys who knew nothing of the mysteries of menstruation reveled in the possibility that we, too – while enduring the curse of our fading youth – might uncover our own secret powers.

We lived in a place called Indian Village, a small neighborhood constructed on the fringes of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Small, ranch style houses butted up alongside one another in an array of lime green and tangerine orange. They were modest homes – screen doors and back porches – with bird-covered mailboxes punctuating the property lines. The only characteristic that distinguished our neighborhood from the next (aside from the street names identified by Indian tribe) was the canvas teepee displayed in the grassy center of the neighborhood. We never really spent time there (much preferring our summer days dedicated to the icy waters of the Pocahontas Pool or the baseball field of Indian Village Elementary), but our neighborhood's theme took on an entirely new meaning when the rental truck screeched to a halt on the corner of Kickapoo Drive.

I didn't know anything about real, live Indians except for what the movies taught me – all that business about feathers and bows and arrows. And thanks, in part, to an R-rated flick I should never have seen, I'd also learned a thing or two about scalping; how for generations, Indians' bone-handled blades had sliced over the still-warm bodies of white men, sawing across hairlines with one hand while pulling flesh tight with the other.

This gruesome image returned to me as soon as the tall, quiet man with the jet-black hair stepped from the rental truck. He threw open the doors and gave two sharp whistles, releasing his tribe into our otherwise near-perfect lives.

It was hard to determine how many there actually were. Five or six, most likely. Mother and father and five or six Indian braves. A dog, too, who throughout the summer made it his business to do his business in close proximity to my mother's gardenias. Who knows how old those boys were, though the youngest hardly measured past my waist. However, the older ones (and most of them seemed older) were broad-chested and gaunt-faced, intimidating in their silence.

Several of us gathered at the end of the block, gripping our baseball gloves as we watched them unload boxes.

“Looks like they're sticking around,” Ronald Carpenter observed, spitting into the grass.

“Maybe they'll play outfield,” added Jim Kelp, who was regularly stuck playing outfield alone.

Despite our gawking, the Indians never bothered glancing up. They'd formed a hapdash assembly line – father handing the box to his oldest son, who handed it to the next, then the next, until eventually it was placed into the open palms of the smallest Indian who huffed it into the house.