The Revolt of Jack Crevalle (cont’d)
Point and Shoot, FL (YU)—And for his part,
Crevalle sat on a footlocker every morning filing his shovel razor-sharp and
grinning at the XO like Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes and grinning at the
second baseman.
Ty
Cobb was a baseball player who tried to intimidate opponents with mindfuck
games.
Can
you say mindfuck in a short story?
I
suppose you could describe a mindfuck without using the word.
Show,
don't tell.
I
don't write many short stories. It's a
demanding form.
The
novel, you just go on and on. But a
short story must be tight. No wasted
words.
A short
story must be crystalline. Etched. Engraved, as with a burin.
One
day things came to a head on the mound.
Crevalle
was shovel-shaving and the XO was micromanaging him.
He
stayed up in his face.
Instead
of pacing himself, Crevalle tried to out-pile-drive the steam pile-driver, like
John Henry.
John
Henry was going to pile-drive the mechanical pile-driver into the ground.
Crevalle
got fatigued, and his shovel bit into the dirt.
The
XO pounced.
He
told Crevalle to turn around and shovel downhill.
Crevalle
was standing downhill and shoveling uphill, the more natural, more comfortable
position.
The
XO walked off and Crevalle continued to shovel, not paying any attention to
conditions around himself, just trying to gut it out, until lunchtime, until
they broke for lunch, just grit it out with shit, grit, and Mother Wit.
Without
thinking about it, he inched around until he was standing downhill, shoveling
up, again, and without meaning to, his shovel bit into the dirt again.
He
was very tired now.
The
XO had snuck up on him.
He
got right back in his face.
"Goddamn
it, mister," he said, "I told you to stand uphill, shoveling down,
and here you are, standing downhill, and shoveling up. Are you defying me? You do as I goddam say you fucking piece of
shit."
The
right hand is the power hand, and the left hand is the control hand, everwhich
way it goes, like a fiddler crab.
The
power hand would thrust and the control hand would guide.
The
shovel would enter just over the pubic bone and rip upward to just beneath the
sternum, when it would twist, and spill the guts out into the sand, like
Giancarlo Giannini's guts spooling out in Hannibal,
where they would lay there smoking, as the XO looked at them, incredulous.
What's
the spirit of the bayonet, men? To kill!
Are
those my guts?
"No,
sir, I reckon I won't," Crevalle said, and walked down off the mound for
an unscheduled
He
sat in the shade and drank his water, trembling, from adrenaline.
He
had almost killed a man. Over measuring
dicks. Over whose dick was the biggest.