There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories
By Brad Watson
Norton
288 pages
Brad Watson, a writer with a strong affinity for the Deep South, published two novels and two collections of stories before his untimely death in 2020. There is Happiness, a collection of new and selected stories, reminds us of what’s been lost.
In the opening story, “Dying for Dolly,” a newly-released convict named Marlon becomes a minor celebrity and, through a circuitous route, ends up as an opening act for Dolly Parton.
Along his way to semi-stardom, there are lyrical passages such as this:
“The back roads to Tuscaloosa are beautiful in the fall, with the weather cool and the grass growing thick and tall right up to the edge of the old highway through the fields, doves busting from it like they’re flying out of your fenders, everything sweet and green. I was cruising through a valley of deepening light, the sky so blue you could almost taste it, the colors of the ripened hay and corn softening until what light was left seemed to come from within them.”
As auspicious as his post-incarceration situation may seem, Marlon soon finds himself unable to escape the allure of his troublesome wife Charlotte, for whom he’ll end up twice serving hard time.
In “Eykelboon,” a boy named Eykelboon seeks the company of other boys, away from his abusive father. At first, the boys engage in typical teenage mischief in the woods. The story grows darker after Eykelboon suffers one too many times at his father’s hands. Watson captures the precise moment when his tender adolescent nature is irretrievably lost—a heartbreaking conclusion to this strong, tragic story.
In “The Zookeeper and the Leopard,” another powerful story (excerpted from an unfinished novel-in-progress), an alcoholic zookeeper plots revenge on the local animal-control officer who’s slept with his wife. The zookeeper’s ill-considered plot involves releasing a leopard from captivity and seeing what sort of havoc ensues.
Unfortunately, the leopard’s first victim is much closer at hand:
“A sickening fear crept through [the zookeeper] like a sluggish bolt of deadly current, and he thought for a moment he might throw up … And when he looked up again, the leopard was gazing at the cage door itself, and pawing it tentatively, the way a housecat might paw half-heartedly at a toy. And then it raised its eyes to see Walston sitting there, the passage open between them, in a freeze, his eyes very wide.”
It’s clear the author knows something about pacing in a short story. Here he cleverly interweaves a crucial flashback with present-time action—an event red in tooth and claw—transforming the zookeeper’s misbegotten hope for revenge into a gruesome (and border-line comical) act that feels just right.
Watson excels in creating a tight range of characters, mostly men in small towns who hunt and drink, and whose self-awareness is sometimes lacking. His vision, however bleak, is laced with humor—no small achievement, for which, with the publication of this posthumous collection, readers should feel thankful.
Author Bio:
Lee Polevoi, Highbrow Magazine’s chief book critic, is the author of two novels, The Moon in Deep Winter and The Confessions of Gabriel Ash.
For Highbrow Magazine