Gangrey.com

Dismembered

Vernon, Florida

Tom Lake: VERNON - Nothing binds a town together like a powerful story: the Giants win the pennant, for example, or a mother wolf rescues twin boys from the riverbank, or a silversmith and a borrowed horse conspire to foil the Redcoats.

In this town, the story is broken.

The characters are not heroes. They are not even villains. They are merely conniving mercenaries with a tolerance for gore.

If you have heard of Vernon, population 780, an old steamboat port between the red hills of Alabama and the white shores of Florida's Emerald Coast, there is a good chance you have heard this story. To the outside world, it has become Vernon's master narrative.

Poor country folk get desperate. Poor country folk get an idea. Poor country folk buy insurance. Poor country folk fire guns at selves, blowing off hands or feet, and poor country folk get rich.

Comments

Re: Dismembered

I love this story. Funny, strange, a great read, with some corruption thrown in for good measure. Narrative with an ending that veers into investigative reporitng. Just great! Tom, if you're out there, how'd you decide to structure this the way you did?

Re: Dismembered

Reading this story was like watching a train wreck. You want to run, you want to look away, but you can’t. All you can do is sit there slack jawed and read.

I think one of the things that works so well is the strength of the narrator's voice. This story makes sense of things for you, connects the dots. Imagine if this same story were told in a more traditional "he said, she said" style.

Re: Dismembered

Brilliant story, Tom. To a certain extent, it's a collection of oddities until the end, when you tie together that these old-timers are doing the same thing they did long ago. Did you see the story that way, when you went up there? Did you know what you had? Why did you want to go to begin with?

Just fantastic.

Re: Dismembered

So, was the fourth-graf phrase "master narrative" inspired by recent Gangrey discussion? Haha. Lake, how do you find this stuff? Bill R. was right. That last section bumps this story up a notch from your typical awesome and entertaining weirdo tale to an investigation where so much is at stake (by the way, I love the idea of a highway as an "asphalt spine.") Your investigative details pack a punch, and your ending ties it all together. I bet it made your day when that lady said the last quote. High five, Lake.

Re: Dismembered

Thanks, y'all.

This story, like several others I've done, started with a question. I had heard about Vernon's strange history about two years ago -- a book somewhere, but I can't remember which -- and ever since then, I wondered, "What are those folks up to now?"

I pitched the story to an editor here at the paper with no knowledge of present conditions in Vernon -- only what had happened decades ago. Basically, I asked the folks at the paper to pay for a speculative trip. And for some reason, they agreed.

I went up there thinking about the minimum story and the maximum story. At minimum, I thought I would write something about perception -- about how the people in Vernon see their town now, and how those in other towns nearby see them. At maximum, I hoped to be the first reporter to get a candid interview with a member of the "Nub Club."

I was there for two days and a night, most of which I spent not knowing how the story would turn out. I just wandered around, looking for interesting stuff, talking to whoever I could. Near the end of the first day, I was interviewing a young guy with calluses all over his hands from a drywall knife and I got an idea -- what if I told the story of Vernon now through the hands of its residents? This way I could contrast the past with the present.

All the while, people were complaining about the road-building project. I didn't grasp its full significance at first. It wasn't until a few hours before I left, when I had lunch with Mayor Ward, that the picture came into focus. He was the one who told me about Boswell and Armstrong selling their highway-front property for what might be huge profit. Once I had confirmed what he told me, the story began to take shape.

Stories usually aren't this easy to organize, but with this one, the structure was very natural. The Past: folks blow hands off for cash. The Present: folks use hands for good. The Future: folks dismember town for cash.

Even then, though, I wrote a top section that had to be entirely thrown out because the editor, Bill Duryea, recognized that it could be better. And so I wrote a new one, and I think it was worth the extra effort.

Narvel refused to be interviewed while I was in Vernon. It was only a few days later, when I managed to get her on the phone, that she gave what turned out to be the story's closing quote.

The folks in town say everyone in the Nub Club is dead. I saw nothing to suggest otherwise.

None

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:
(include http://)
Title:

Comments:

Remember your info. on cookie?

Type the word in the image: