Showing posts with label Permafrost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Permafrost. Show all posts

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Liberation

Well, it took longer than I expected, but the 2010 issue of the journal Permafrost has just been published, with my short story "Liberation" within its pages. You can't get this one online, folks; you'll have to pay the big bucks if you want to read it! (Actually, it's really cheap, only $16 for a two-year subscription.) Follow the link here to order.

Just to whet your appetite, here are the story's first couple pages. Enjoy!


Liberation

by J. David Bell


One remembers only that one remembers nothing.--Nadine Fresco, Remembering the Unknown

The Russians were kind to her, my grandmother said. The camps were full of stories, no one knew what to believe. But these Russians were kind and so gentle. They brought blankets, spare boots. They stole eggs from abandoned farms and offered the protein-starved inmates a thick, sloppy stew. Most could not eat, they vomited back up whatever they choked down. The Russians had a doctor, but he brought little for people in such condition, no antibiotics, nothing for sores or wounds or dysentery or typhus. All they could do for those too emaciated to walk was bear them in stretchers to convoys of horse-drawn wagons waiting to deliver them to the nearest unbombed medical facility, many miles away in bitter cold across snow-clad fields. The soldiers were efficient, disciplined; they heeded their officers’ commands with none of the brusqueness or grumbling one anticipated of military men long separated from home and assigned to such grim work. Some of them, men with unshaven faces and soiled overcoats, wept silently at the sight of the skeletal survivors. Others pulled prisoners aside and, in signs and broken language, spoke their secret solidarity: Jude, they said, laying a hand on their chests and nodding fervently. Jude. The prisoners, for their part, were too sick and incredulous at their rescue (though they’d heard the shells nearing for weeks) to respond with anything but stares.

My grandmother talked, and I took down everything she said, every word.

She sat in a wingback chair with a pale rose pattern, faded from the alcove sunlight. Crocheted doilies draped its back and arms. Her hands rested on her lap, unmoving, palms up; her head inclined gently to the right, an affectation from long years of diminished hearing. Her dark eyes hove behind her lenses, emerging, retreating. The room sweated, the bare iron radiators bristling with heat. Delicately, I asked her about the days before the liberation. She waved a hand.

Ah. That is water underneath the bridge. You have books, movies. For that you do not need me.

Don’t push too hard, Tam. My father’s wisdom. She doesn’t like to talk about it.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Prose in Print

Though I've spoken favorably in previous posts of the immediacy and accessibility of online publishing--and though I don't retreat from those sentiments--the fact is, I'm a child of print publication, and it's not so easy to overcome thirty-plus years of loving the printed word. (Plus, a few recent negative experiences with the internet, including a cousin's having his email account hacked into, have dampened my enthusiasm for the medium, at least for the moment.) So though I'm not ruling out online publishing--in fact, an essay and a short story of mine will appear in electronic form before the year is out--I've focused lately on placing my work in print venues.

And I've been fairly successful thus far. In the past few months, the following works have been accepted for print publication:
  • A short story having to do with the Holocaust, titled "Liberation." It should be out any day now in the journal Permafrost.
  • A horror story, referenced in an earlier blog entry, "The Burning of Sarah Post." It will appear, appropriately enough, around Halloween in the anthology Cover of Darkness.
  • A science-fiction tale set in deep space, titled "Frogsong." It was just accepted for publication in the anthology Farspace 2, and should appear around September.
  • A memoir, "Racist Like Me," having to do with my early experiences of integrated education. It'll come out in the inaugural issue of Smash Cake Magazine, publication date yet to be announced.

So there you have it. I know that print publishing makes one's work more difficult to find and more costly to procure, but if you've been following this blog and are eager for more--or if you've just happened upon it and like what you see--I hope you'll keep an eye out for these and other works in the future.