Research: Journals
The Journal, Issue 30.2
Prose: "Me and Paul"
by Steven WingateWinner of THE JOURNAL’s Third Annual Short Story Prize
Judge Lee K. Abbott has this to say about “Me and Paul”:
Here’s a story that succeeds not least for its narrator’s bittersweet understanding of himself, not to mention the verve of its prose. This is story told efficiently, its élan foremost in voice. Its characters are, happily, recognizably human, beset by the small wishes common to our tribe when it spies the future limping away into the distance. I like, too, the story’s unpredictability and, yes, its inevitably ordained end.
I still think it was the woman who made me a liar, who made me want to be something I wasn’t. Because in regular life I never lie to get something I want for myself, only when I need to keep my friends from bottoming out. When they aren’t sure who they are anymore and need somebody to say, “Hey, you’re doing great, you’re hanging in there,” or tell them they didn’t just mess things up forever with the person they loved the most. Growing up I was taught a lie like that is the same thing as kindness, and it’s a lot cheaper too, most of the time. You say the nice thing and you’re done, you move on, and you keep away from the person you lied to for a while so you don’t have to think up another lie to tell them later.
But in the middle of September I hooked myself on a lie that might’ve been the nice kind, and might’ve been another. Still too early to tell. I’d been hiking and camping up in Yellowstone to clear my head, walking the ridges and looking down at the tourists jamming up traffic for every moose, elk, or buffalo that came anywhere near the road. I got sick of it two days before I thought I would and checked my atlas to see if there was anything else to do in Wyoming before I headed back to Denver. Jackson? Too full of rich people, who needs it. Riverton and Lander? No idea what they were about—probably nothing. The little red print next to Thermopolis said WORLD’S LARGEST MINERAL HOT SPRING, so I pointed my truck there and showed up at eight o’clock Thursday night. I followed the signs through town and found the TeePee pools, which were still open for another couple hours. I paid eight bucks for my ticket, hustled into the locker room to change so I’d get my money’s worth of time, and didn’t bother showering like I was supposed to before I went out to the water. Big sin, I know.
Now I’m a hot springs person in general, and it’s hard for me not to like one, but you can’t class Thermopolis with Glenwood Springs or Steamboat Springs back in Colorado, the places I end up going most. Thermopolis has a shitload of water, sure—WORLD’S LARGEST—but there’s only a couple pools hot enough to really matter. Most of the pools there are like bathwater after you’re done with your bath. And you can’t really relax because there’s too many screaming kids playing volleyball or basketball or going down the waterslides. Usually at a hot spring I can find a quiet spot and some water hot enough to boil me back to my senses, but not at Thermopolis. To be honest, I couldn’t even feel the heat with all that screaming around me. I’m not saying I hate kids, just that I’m not real good at filtering things out. Noise goes straight to this one little nerve in the middle of my brain that tightens up my skin, and my whole body turns into one giant eardrum.
Anyway I got over it, like I always do. I spent most of my time in the hottest pool and cooled off in the lukewarm one by the waterslide, where I saw a good-looking blonde shooting baskets with a nine- or ten-year-old kid who had to be her son. Right away I knew there wasn’t a husband—if there was, he’d be the one playing ball with the kid instead of her. I knew it from the way she held that ball up over her head and made him jump for it, higher and higher till she decided he’d earned it, pushing him the way she thought a man would. They had a game going I couldn’t understand, taking three long-distance shots at a time and chasing down each other’s rebounds. I floated around, drifting towards them, and waited for the ball to bounce out my way. The woman came from farm people, I could tell that just from looking at her arms and shoulders. Pale white skin, but with a little gold underneath—not the kind of pasty white that gets flabby. Her fake-blonde hair came down to her chin, and she had those big, round cheekbones I always fall for. I got a look at her legs underwater and they were nice and tight, the kind of legs that said she’d never let herself slip too far no matter how bad things got.
To continue reading Steven Wingate's 'Me and Paul,' order a paper copy of Issue 30.2 here
