Synopsis:

David McGlynn's first collection takes on the inner lives of the zealous, their passions and desires, and the ways religious faith is both the compass for navigating daily life and the force that makes ordinary life impossible. From the coastal highways of Southern California to the bayous of Houston, Texas, the stories take place against the backdrop of disaster-a landslide, a fire, a drowning, a hurricane-as the characters question whether faith illuminates the world or leaves them isolated within it.

 

Book Excerpt:

Moonland on Fire

 

He waits by the trunk while Rhonda shares Christ with the skycaps. The skycaps wear pressed white shirts and black caps. There are two of them. They peer over Rhonda's shoulders at the yellow booklet squeezed between her thumbs. Four Steps to Salvation. "There is a gulf between God and Man," she says. Her voice is garbled some by the traffic and the plane passing overhead. Gary hopes it is Nolan's plane. Gary's circled LAX twice and doesn't want to go around again. Two years since he's seen his son, and he's thinking of everything that could go wrong at the last minute. Traffic could jam up and Nolan could grow tired of waiting, figure himself forgotten. The landing gear could break, a rogue wind shear could sweep across the runway from the Pacific, someone could have a gun stashed in a seat pocket. Just yesterday he saw a news report about a saw blade flying off the back of a truck and slicing through a windshield. Rhonda says he can expect a lot worse: When the rapture comes, planes will fall from the sky. A gust of heat blasts his face and neck. Beside him a woman holds her hair in place with her hands. Cars emerge suddenly through the rippled haze. He hides his hands in his pockets and listens for the sirens, the explosions.

Rhonda's booklet is three-by-eight and has only four pages. She's on the second. "As far as the east is from the west," she says. She spreads her arms to illustrate the distance. Her breasts stretch the buttons of her rayon blouse. The booklet flaps at the end of her hand. "Farther than this," she says. "Much farther." The skycaps nod, their octagonal caps bobbing, visors glinting in the sun. "If you died today, do you know what would happen?" She has a way of saying that word, know, that leaves everything in doubt. The man on her right is sweating. He removes his cap and wipes his shaved head with his palm. Gary watches Rhonda wet her teeth with her tongue. Her teeth cant outward along the top row and her upper lip always looks slightly pursed. She flips to the end and asks the skycaps, "What's stopping you from giving your life to Jesus?"

Gary wants her to hurry up. Nolan has met Rhonda only once, a disaster Gary would rather not repeat. Nolan and his sisters met Gary and Rhonda at a Mexican restaurant in Richardson, just north of Dallas. The restaurant was a storefront converted from a karate studio, the walls dressed up with colored rugs and sombreros, pralines wrapped in wax paper buried in the chips. Neutral territory. The divorce had been final for a little more than a week; he and Rhonda were leaving for California in three days. After the waiters walked away with the menus, Rhonda spread the Four Steps booklet on the table and said, "This could change your life forever." Nicole, seventeen, spat back, "I think you've done that already," and stormed out without waiting for her lunch. Natalie, eleven, went with her, her bottom lip pushed up into her mouth, her chin clenched like a fist. Gary didn't chase after them. He tried to send back their food, but the waiter said he couldn't. Nolan ate both his own plate and Natalie's-shoveling big spoonfuls of rice and refried beans to keep from talking-and took Nicole's home in a box.

As the baggage-claim doors hiss open and shut, it scares Gary to think that he might not recognize his son. Nolan might walk right past him and he wouldn't know it. Gary turns his mouth toward his shoulder to pray, but stops when he catches a little girl staring at him. Then he sees Nolan pass through the doors, an enlarged version of the child he left behind: sixteen now and a good three inches taller, his arms long and wiry, his jawline speckled with patchy stubble. He wonders how his daughters look, how much weight, if any, Nicole has gained her first two years of college and whether or not Natalie has begun to wear make-up, if Sharon allowed her to pierce her ears. Such little things make us into different people. He thinks of Sharon, too, the point of her nose and the pouty upper lip she passed along to Nolan, how many men she has dated, how many she has slept with, how many have awakened to the sound of his children among the other noises in the house.

Nolan carries a backpack and an army-issue duffle bag, a green tube packed tight as a bomb. He shifts the duffle from his right to his left and extends his hand. He squeezes hard. "Hey, Dad."

"How was the flight?"

"Okay. They showed a movie."

"Anything good?"

Nolan shakes his head. "It passed the time."

"You made it," Rhonda says, suddenly beside him. Gary flinches, and when he turns he sees that her cheeks and neck are flushed. The gospel does this to her. One of the skycaps stands with his arms crossed over his chest, the other with his hands in his pockets. They both look a little dazed. Rhonda says, "The Company of Heaven just got a little more crowded." Gary feels Nolan stiffen beside him; a vein emerges on the underside of the arm holding the duffle. Gary is almost thankful to see the airport police two cars back, the officer's tongue extended to the tip of his pen. Gary reaches for Nolan's bag and says, "Let's go before I get a ticket."

 

Four freeways take them south and west to the Pacific Coast Highway. The highway crosses through the state park, bronzed hills above the road, and a rocky beach below it. Gary takes the first left and turns onto a street filled with cottages built in the Fifties, but renovated to include rooftop balconies and backyard guesthouses and small squares of groomed lawns. Among them, Gary's house looks out of place. It looks like the house in a movie where children go in but do not come out. The wood shingles over the roof and walls are rotted and splintered, the white paint weathered yellow-gray. The front yard is a pit of weeds and cracked dirt, and brown skeletons of sun-murdered ivy snake up the walls to the crumbling chimney. Several panes in the diamond-light front windows are broken, black holes scattered against the glare.

Nolan shields his eyes and turns his head. Gary is embarrassed by the house. He can't believe he ever thought of bringing his daughters here. It's all he and Rhonda can afford, and even it is a stretch. Rhonda works at a church on the inland side of the state park. Her job pays very little, and Gary's still got lawyer bills and Sharon's credit cards from before the divorce and Nicole's college tuition, all on top of the eighteen percent of his paycheck deducted each month by the Texas Child Support Division.

Next door, an orange-haired woman paces along the glassed walls of a porch overlooking the driveway. Rhonda climbs out of the backseat and waves. "That's Aggie," Gary tells Nolan. "She's been here since the street was built. Nothing gets by her." Aggie's house isn't renovated. Gas heaters have been added to the porch, and security lights installed on her front walk, but the shutters and clapboard siding are original, clean, and well kept. Her fig tree is manicured to keep the overripe fruits from landing on the hood of her car. Her car is a Mercedes, typical of the street, only an old one, a diesel.

To see the rest of "Moonland on Fire," please pick up a copy of The End of the Straight and Narrow.

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Author Comment:

Thank you for your interest in my work!

Topics/Categories:

Blindness, California, confessions, Religion (especially Evangelical Christians), Texas

Type of Work:

Short Story Collection

Publishers:

Southern Methodist University Press

Purchase From:

Amazon.com
Southern Methodist University Press

Original Publish Date:

2008-10-01

ISBNs:

978-0-87074-550-8

Formats:

Hardcover