Working-class characters set in a pre-Katrina New Orleans and its environs are the focus of the linked short stories in Barb Johnson’s debut work, “More of This World or Maybe Another.” It tells stories filled with longing and dreams, of people trying their best but often, and sometimes tragically, coming up short.
The stories march through the book largely in the chronology of its central character, Delia. The reader meets her, in the collection’s title story, on her way to a high-school dance.
She has grown up in a town outside of New Orleans, a place on the Mississippi that is home to tank farms, and dreams of something better. High-school boys are thinking about whether they can dodge the draft, and “Delia thinks about the future when she’ll likely have to marry one of the idiots behind her, or somewhere in the room, at least.” She is just beginning to come into a sexual identity, and the story ends with a simplicity that is deceptive in its power.
There is a sense of inevitability in each of the nine stories, and a sizable cast of characters swirls around one anothers’ lives. Delia seems headed down the path she’d cynically predicted in “Keeping Her Difficult Balance.” She’s engaged to Calvin — good-looking, good-natured, not necessarily bright — her regular high school date.
They now share an apartment in New Orleans; Calvin works at Sparky’s Automotive and Delia runs a laundromat. Looking at a collection of trailers across the bayou one Friday afternoon while Calvin is fishing, she wonders about the artists who are said to live there: “In her mind, Delia . . . takes a seat on one of the cypress stumps and waits for the artists to come out and join her. She imagines the artists telling her how they all found each other.” What she doesn’t dare imagine is herself as part of the group.
Dooley, Delia’s younger brother, is introduced in “If the Holy Spirit Comes for You.” His father is working offshore and his uncles come to celebrate his 13th birthday in an outpouring of male energy that is, at best, confusing and frightening. Dooley knows, from his catechism, that “the Holy Spirit will give you the courage to do what you need to do in life, like going hunting, for instance.” He will need every bit of that courage to get through this day’s events.
“Titty Baby” introduces the single character who grows from a back story. We first meet Pudge as an adult, but here, he is a fifth grader whose girth makes him an object of derision. His mother intentionally dresses him in too-small clothes, telling him they “would be an incentive to lose weight.” She is a font of unhelpful wisdom: “If you cry, his mama has told him, it only makes the bullies want to hurt you more. That doesn’t make any sense to Pudge, but he knows it’s true. When his baby sister cries, it only makes his father hit her more.”
Pudge and Dooley seem to be following equally desolate paths in ways that are beyond their control. Both have good hearts, but life deals them bad hands in which they are complicit in their own ill fortune.
The stories in “More of This World or Maybe Another” are things of beauty. Johnson’s prose isn’t spare, but it’s sparse enough to provide just enough detail, allowing the reader’s imagination to flow. They are all that short stories are meant to be, a distillation of experiences that, in total, define a piece of life.
Each is well-crafted, finely focused and moving without diversion to its inevitable conclusion. Johnson’s endings are extraordinary. Each has a twist that could be taken as an homage to O. Henry, the twist that in retrospect seems inevitable. The other characteristics of the stories — the sense of absolutely knowing the characters, of wanting to comfort them, or distract them from paths you know won’t end well — is lovely icing on this rich, insightful collection.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who lives in Centennial.
FICTION
More of This World or Maybe Another
by Barb Johnson
$13.99
