Feathers - Vintage down and gritty Raymond Carver, a short story that could easily be made into a twenty minute film. The unnamed narrator, a guy I'll call Sam, tells Fran, his tall, attractive wife with beautiful long blonde hair, they've been invited over for dinner by Bud, his friend at work. Fran isn't exactly thrilled; she'd much rather stay at home and eat her own food, drink her own wine, and watch her own TV. But Sam convinces Fran it should be all right even though Bud and his wife have a baby.
Sam and Fran are off, Fran studying the map Bud made up since his house is twenty miles out in the country. And to think, Sam and Fran never once drove their car this far out of town, being town people through and through. A batch of my favorite bits:
They reach Sam's house and can see a baby's swing-set in the front yard and some toys on the front porch. Sam pulls the car up and they hear this awful squall. "Then something as big as a vulture flapped heavily down from one of the tress and landed just in front of the car. It shook itself. It turned its long neck toward the car, raised its head, and regarded us." Ah, Sam and Fran recognize what kind of big bird this is - a peacock. "Can you believe it? Fran said. "I never saw a real one before." Turns out, Sam's wife always wanted a peacock and she talked Sam into buying one for her.
Bud comes out on the porch to greet them as they get out of the car. The peacock walks up and presses its head against Fran's leg. Bud moves down and thumps the bird on the top of its head. "Joey, goddamn it." (Joey is the name of the peacock).
Once inside the house, Sam and Fran can see stock cars tearing around a track on the color TV. They also meet Bud's wife, Olla, who is a plump little woman with her hair done up in a bun and her hands rolled up in her apron. They watch TV; Bud talks about a big pile-up earlier where some drivers got hurt. Fran offers a comment: "Maybe one of those damn cars will explode right in front of us. Or else maybe one'll run up into the grandstand and smash a guy selling the crummy hot dogs."
Fran catches sight of something nasty on top of the TV. She nudges Sam and whispers, "Do you see what I see?" Bud realizes they're looking at old plaster teeth packed into something resembling thick yellow gums. Then the explanation: Olla always had bad teeth and Bud paid for Olla to go to the dentist to get braces so her teeth would look great instead of awful. Olla keeps the model of her bad teeth on display as a reminder of just how wonderful Bud has always been to her.
After dinner Fran asks to see their baby now that the baby is awake and crying in the back room. Olla gets up and brings her baby boy back to the living room. Sam tells us: "Bar none, it was the ugliest baby I'd ever seen. It was so ugly I couldn't say anything. No words would come out of my mouth...It had a big red face, pop eyes, a broad forehead and these big fat lips. It had no neck to speak of, and it had three or four fat chins....Even calling it ugly does it credit."
Now the Carver kicker: Sam and Fran are quiet on the drive back home but this day with its peacock, its stock car race, its bad model teeth, its ugly baby will turn out to not only be memorable but transforming, most especially, transforming for Sam's beautiful blonde wife.
How exactly? You will have to read this Carver for yourself.
Comments
Post a Comment