SSM 2010 - Discussion of Pinckney Benedict's "Bridge of Sighs"

With week two of Short Story Month 2010 comes two new discussions from the two short story collections we've chosen to focus on.

From Pinckney Benedict's Miracle Boy and Other Stories we take a look at "Bridge of Sighs."  It originally appeared in Zoetrope:  All-Story and then was selected to be included in New Stories from the South:  The Year's Best 2008.

There very well may be spoilers in the discussion of this story this week.

 

“Bridge of Sighs” by Pinckney Benedict

 

John Fox

 

I thought I'd throw out a few observations that people might want to run with. A catalyst post. Or lightning rod? 

 

What got me into this story was the high concept: a father and his son exterminating demon-possessed animals using a macabre suit.

 

I love that Benedict doesn't stop with a demon-caused epizootic, but uses it as a way to root out a sickness in humankind -- "the epizootic had made the leap over into human beings." So when the television-watching son hallucinates a flame-thrower nightmare of war, it seems like war's the representation of the epizootic haunting humans.

 

John Keeper, the only man who crossed the Bridge of Sighs both ways, is the only guy who cheated death. The father aspires to be Keeper, but knows he hadn't escaped the slaughter like John Keeper had -- "[the father] had taken the abattoir out into the world with him." Death haunts the father, but Keeper managed to escape death.

 

Every character seems to have a divided self. The Father is separated from the Exterminator -- all the language between him and the Exterminator is dissociative, as though he's one being and the Exterminator is another: "My father didn't do the killing. The Exterminator did the killing." Also, in the heartbreaking scene when the father scares his sons while wearing the Exterminator suit, the Exterminator seems to be a monster independent of his father. Scurry, the stockman, is divided as well: he hides his cattle, but ends up showing the son where the cattle are hidden. And the son has a double life, dealing with the world "jumping its tracks" while pretending nothing is the matter.

 

The father/suit divide matters a great deal, because at the end, after the son's insistence that the suit kills but his father doesn't, Scurry reveals that the father's still responsible for the killing. "The suit just keeps the blood and the gore off of him," Scurry says. While the son prefers to think of his father as a good individual and project all the murderous habits onto the Exterminator, Scurry erases that division.

Comments

[Pinckney Benedict]

Aha! I think I've discovered how to navigate the site, and the discussion, and to post things too. Welcome to the 21st c, Pinckney Benedict.

I'm glad (if that's the right word) that you found the father-scares-sons scene "heartbreaking." It's based on the father of a great buddy of mine, just the nicest guy you'll ever meet, who loved to play practical jokes.

One Halloween he put on a scary mask and waited outside his house (the family lived in a pleasant subdivision, pretty rare at that time in our part of the world) in his bushes until a couple of little neighbor kids came along. Then he jumped out at them, roaring.

Of course, the kids were completely mindblown and ran away screaming, went back to their house, and wouldn't come out again that evening. Their mother braced my friend's father and asked him, "What is wrong with you?"

Whenever he told this story, my friend's father always laughed and simultaneously looked chagrined. He'd enjoyed scaring those kids (and it was Halloween, after all!), but he could also see that he'd gone too far. It's one of the things I liked best about him: his jests always went just a little further than his targets would have liked or were willing comfortably to tolerate.

So heartbreaking, yes! But also, I hope, a little funny too, in that way that makes you think you probably shouldn't be laughing, but you can't help laughing, either, and don't really want to stop.

Thanks for your good close reading, John. As you know, it's a privilege afforded to most writers - and I am one of those - most rarely.

[Pinckney Benedict]

By the way, I don't know why the little square next to my name shows a blue spider web. (Is that what it is? My eyesight is failing.) I don't think of myself that way. Dan Wickett? How do I change that? I want some badass avatar. A gun, maybe, or some fangs.

[Dan Wickett]

Hell, Pinckney, if I knew how to change that I've have an avatar of that pistol you brandished at an SIU reading from back in the days of Mag and Udall.

Glad you're here though and we're all enjoying the hell out of your collection.

[Pinckney Benedict]

Ah, the good old pistol-brandishing days! The writing world has grown so domesticated since then.

[Dan Wickett]

And they hired you AFTER that? No wonder I like SIU so much.