Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [56]
An introduction to “The Newton Boys’ Last Photograph”
The introduction to this story will be longer than the story itself. That’s because “The Newton Boys’ Last Photograph” is an example of hint fiction, a term coined by writer Robert Swartwood, who edited the 2010 W.W. Norton anthology HINT FICTION, of which this story was a part.
Hint fiction is a story that hints at a larger work, a larger world. One of the most famous was Hemingway’s 6-word masterpiece: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” You get the idea.
The idea for the 25-word story you’re about to read was originally encapsulated in a poem I wrote in college. When the opportunity to be a part of Mr. Swartwood’s anthology presented itself, my mind instantly returned to that poem, called “Whitewater.”
Glittering silver--
a shock of water
moves behind them
tearing down the
slender, gray-walled gorge
Three smiling
sun-burned faces
sunglasses reflecting
the burly, white-bearded hiker
holding their camera--
one last picture before putting in.
And they could not know
standing there
adrenaline showing
through their white teeth
arm in arm
shirtless
careless
that the faint grumbling
of distant thunder
hardly registered by their ears
above the screaming rapids
means a torrent of summer rain
miles upriver--
a body of living sky water
races towards them.
In Roger’s sunglasses
you can see the tail end
of the gear-laden raft--
a red cooler
a mildewed canvas tent
three fishing poles
and the enormous, waterproof
backpack they’ll find--
which will hold the camera
which holds the film
which holds this
beautiful eerie moment--
when the Fulton County
Sheriff’s Department dredges
the terminus of the
gray-walled gorge
for their bodies.
I like the poem, but it takes too long to get across the idea of how utterly oblivious we are when it comes to what our future holds. This anthology gave me the chance to revisit that idea, clarify it, and boil it down to its essence.
the newton boys’ last photograph
Their sunglasses reflect the backpack on the raft which will hold the camera, which will hold the film, which will hold this eerie, smiling moment.
An introduction to “The Meteorologist”
I’m a weather geek. Always have been. Snowstorms, hurricanes, extreme cold...I’m not sure why, but they move me in some way. I’m never happier than when watching a blizzard rage outside the window. Maybe it has something to do with the raw power of nature—I don’t know.
For years I’ve been attracted to writing a character who shared that love of weather, but who might also take that obsession to a dangerous, even self-destructive place. What if there was a man whose life’s mission was to experience weather in all its extremes, because it was the only way he could come close to feeling alive? More interesting...why was he this way, and how did he get by in the world?
“The Meteorologist” is the culmination of that idea. In some ways, this is a gentle story, the polar opposite of something like “Serial.” But it’s still very much me, brimming with emotion, and close to my heart.
the meteorologist
Summer of the year two thousand and six found him on the plains of west Kansas, veering onto the off-ramp at Exit 95. Hoxie (pop. 1200) lay sixteen miles due north of the interstate, the blaring inconsequence of the town only underscored by its station on the prairie. It was a black freckle on the roadmap, the sort of place one passes through in wonderment that people actually live there.
Peter secured permission from the owner of Hoxie’s only motel to squat in their parking lot for fifteen dollars a day. Paid for three in advance and emerged from the small office into an evening that had failed to release the preceding hours’ blistering store of heat. Across the empty parking lot, slats of sunlight glinted off the chrome hubcaps of his ’87 Winnebago Chalet. Peter considered the microwave inside and the TV dinners in the freezer, any of which he’d had twenty times before. It had