Student opts for short fiction
Timothy Schaffert, a senior
English major, will attend the
University of Arizona graduate
program in fine arts. Schaffert is
from Aurora.
An excerpt from Tumbling
After, a story set in a small Mid
western town in 1947.
The minister was nervous and
inexperienced. He had been read
ing nis notes from recipe cards as
he spoke softly, almost conversa
tionally, to the family of the de
ceased. The previous minister, with
his old ideas and methods, might
have taken advantage of the facts
of the death—Whitey McKeelen's
drunkenness that led to the car
turning over and killing him and
the prostitute at his side. The old
man would have shaken the pul
pit, screaming of Misspent Youth.
But the new minister, with his
lightly stubbled chin and crooked
tie, spoke quietly of sad irony —
how sad it was that W'hitey, after
surviving theiunglesand swamps
of the South Pacific, should die on
an old back road he had traveled
hundreds of times in his twenty
some years.
The old woman, her pin curls
drooping and loosening in the
sweat ofncr forehead, stood from
thepew and collapsed in the aisle.
"I tnink I'll be sick," she told her
husband, and she brought a hand
kerchief to her mouth as he led her
from the front.
The church wasn't full. The
people there were the same ones
that went to all the funerals. The
only family members of Whitey
c .■ '•■am—-T■1
McKeelen were five people who
had been seated in the front row,
and the parents had just stumbled
out. The reverend cleared his throat
and addressed his comfort to the
sister and the brother and the
brother's wife.
It had been turning spring and
the days were hot, the nights cold,
and everyone had difficulty ad
justing. During the service, women
would take their straw hats wired
with flowers from their damp
twisted hair. The men would reacn
up and pluck at their shirts that
stuck to patches of sweat at their
chests and beneath their arms. The
air was tiredly pushed about by
hand-held paper fans, some with
oriental designs, others with vio
lets and pink breasted birds.
Shortly after the minister had
started in again about the tTagedy
of it all, the sister stood, her hands
at her stomach, and she, too, left.
The minister cleared his throat and
looked toward the brother and the
wife, only to watch them rise,
looking more bored than distressed
or sick, and go after the rest of the
family. An awkward silence fell,
and when the minister started
speaking again, he stuttered and
his voice cracked and he dropped
his recipe cards. The organist, ner
back usually to the congregation,
the clasps of her corset visible
through ner thin dress, helped him
to collect his sermon. Once every
thing was together again, he redi
rected his words from the empty
family pew to the rest of the fu
neral-goers.
The sermon, dull to begin with,
was made worse by the reverend's
---*T1
flat, nasal-twanged voice. The
tu ming of the thin pages of a hymn
book sent a light wisping and
snapping sound through the
church. The sermon ended when
the minister lost his train of thought.
Then one of Bea Tooley's many
ugly children stood to sing The
Old Rug ged Cross in a voice as
harsh and slashing as an eighty
year-old woman's. But she did sing
loudly, and she enunciated.
Evan Peevy usually avoided
church. The drifting scent of altar
strewn flowers mixing with the
thick smells of old lady perfume
and pipe-smoke infested suit coats
made nis stomach churn. But he
attended Whitey McKeelen's fu
neral hoping to relieve himself of a
recent, some what burdening, pre
occupation with death.
Evan w as nearly ten years older
than Whitey, so he hadn't known
him well, just from the poolhall.
But the news of the death had still
been upsetting. There had been
many nights that Evan had driven
See SHORT on 11
Stacy Collingham, a senior art major, works on her latest
painting in Richards Hall. Another of her works, Stepha
nie," sits in the background. Collingham is the 1991
recipient of the Francis William Vreeland Award in art.
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