Written almost entirely in lockdown, these 48 stories (16 published in literary magazines) were mostly inspired by means of an unusual process of random word generation.
My stories feature spies, artists, ex-cons, bomb disposal experts, plasterers, stuntmen and intergalactic smugglers. Their linking theme is interconnection, and the hope it engenders.
Meet Mata Hari, Van Gogh, giant black humming alien cubes and, in the title story, two young women on the run from the FBI, guarding a miraculous child.
Written almost entirely in lockdown, these 48 stories (16 published in literary magazines) were mostly inspired by means of an unusual process of random word generation.
My stories feature spies, artists, ex-cons, bomb disposal experts, plasterers, stuntmen and intergalactic smugglers. Their linking theme is interconnection, and the hope it engenders.
Meet Mata Hari, Van Gogh, giant black humming alien cubes and, in the title story, two young women on the run from the FBI, guarding a miraculous child.
Leopold Wainwright III, lifelong off-grid eccentric and illegal distiller of unreasonably strong spirits, woke to the sound of his front door being mercilessly assaulted. It must be early – Duke the rooster had not yet crowed in that insistent way that would send Leo lurching downstairs with murderous intent, particularly on mornings after he had sampled a new batch of moonshine.
Leo tore open his front door and shouted at the trespassers, who were triply indistinct because he couldn’t find his spectacles, was hungover and the screen door pixelated everything.
“Who in Satan’s name are you? What are doing on my porch?”
Two figures, both slender and petite. Women?
“Mister, please, you gotta let us in. We ran out of gas.”
Leo wasn’t falling for that. Nine months previously, Mrs Gantry, who ran the pet store in town, was robbed at knifepoint after she took pity on a drifter with an empty guitar case that he filled with all her valuables (precious little, as it happened, so he took her head too).
“I have a loaded shotgun and I don’t see well enough to wing you!” he replied.
Leo heard a vehicle approaching along the dirt track that led up from the highway. Given his deliberately remote location, Leo knew the second car was unlikely to betoken anything good.
“Round the back so I can get a look at you”, Leo ordered, grabbing the shotgun he kept by the door, which hadn’t fired properly for several years.
The mystery couple raced around the building as the approaching car skidded to a halt. Leo squinted through the back-door spyhole and saw two dishevelled women, one with bright blue hair, the other sporting a nose ring and a fierce expression. They looked like bad news but the sudden rap upon the front door sounded worse. The dark-haired woman, who looked half Native American, was cradling something in her arms. A baby? Might be a scam, thought Leo, a doll swaddled to elicit sympathy.
“Please, we need somewhere to hide. The Feds want to take my baby.”
Leo shuttled through a series of assumptions and counter-assumptions. He was fiercely anti-establishment, plus the woman’s story was so peculiar it might just be true.
“FBI! Let us in.” The tone and mandatory warning were familiar. Leo had just seconds to act. He opened the back door on its chain. The women were scarcely in their twenties, desperate and afraid.
“Lean-to out back. Take a couple of jars, fill your tank. Now run!”
The door burst in behind Leo as he heard the fugitives race away.
Running Coyote made it to the sheds first, with the baby held firmly to her chest. Melanie limped behind her, wondering how her day had gone so horribly wrong. A social worker who’d undertaken a routine evening call to visit single mum Coyote, she’d taken one look at the baby and had known that the hysterical story the Native American had told her might just be true. They’d driven through the night before the Feds had caught up with them.
Coyote pulled open the first door, revealing a cloud of flies and a stench that was far from sanitary. The john. She gagged and joined Mel as she entered the larger shed, which was dark and dank. There must be cans of gasoline somewhere. Mel found a switch; a dim bulb flickered on. The lean-to contained only a home-made still and a shelf of demijohns full of clear liquid. The air was thick with the ferment of mashed barley.
Mel unplugged a jar and recoiled at the smell of 80-proof alcohol.
“Jeez – man, this’ll blind you.”
Coyote looked panicky, her baby growing restless, gurgling slightly. “There’s no gas, is there? He tricked us,” she said, wondering why Mel was smiling.
“Nope,” said Mel, holding out a hammer and a six-inch nail. “Can you get to their vehicle unseen if I take the kid?”
Now it was Coyote’s turn to run the risks. She nodded, handing Fallen Star over. Raised voices issued from the shack. It wouldn’t be long before the Feds checked the outhouses.
Coyote used the skills her grandfather had taught her, dashing with grace and speed between rocky red outcrops until only a 20-yard sprint stood between her and the Feds’ black sedan. A whirl of windblown dust provided the necessary cover. Moments later she crouched behind the car, took a deep breath, and drove the nail into the tyre. It burst with a low pop and Coyote raced to her own car, a ramshackle 1972 Oldsmobile, where Mel was emptying a second demijohn into the tank.
“Will this work?” Coyote hissed, climbing behind the wheel as Mel tossed the jar aside and slid into the passenger seat, holding firmly onto Fallen Star, who was mewling softly.
Coyote gunned the engine, which spluttered inconclusively. The front door of the shack opened and two impressively tall men in dark suits emerged, eyes shaded behind standard issue Ray Bans.
“Stop where you are!” shouted one, raising his gun. Coyote turned the key again. The starter struggled, then the engine abruptly rumbled into life.
A warning shot blasted over their heads.
“They won’t risk harming him!” Mel reassured Coyote as she spun the Oldsmobile, throwing up a spiral of dust. The Feds had jumped into their own vehicle.
“They’d better fucking not!” yelled Coyote, as they tore away down the track, through the baked red brutality of the Utah Badlands.
Growing restless in Mel’s arms was the beautiful, strange hybrid Coyote had brought into the world, his wings struggling to unfurl, his green lizard eyes alive with intelligence, his voice like the music of distant nebulae – not crying so much as singing his frustration. Mel turned to see the Fed’s car skid as it skittered three-wheeled behind them, losing pace.
They would make it to the border, where their strange little family could spread its wings, Fallen Star literally. Evolution couldn’t be stopped – love would have its way.
I confess - illness only allowed me to get through half the 48 short stories in London-based, Gavin Boyter’s Running Coyote and Fallen Star and Other Stories. Nonetheless, if you love the language in unpredictable twists and shifts, the collection will impress and thrill readers who love words. Writers will find themselves inspired to a new dedication.
The title drew me in, but the short background of the work’s random word creation sealed the deal:
I’d always found such challenges entertaining and inspiring.
I’m also a big fan of the OuLiPo writers of the 1960s, including George Perec, who famously wrote an entire book without including the letter “e” (brilliantly translated into English by Gilbert Adair as A Void). The OuLiPo movement, which began in 2France, used deliberatively restrictive rules to inspire creativity. I wondered if I might borrow from some of their practices. The notion developed into the concept of writing and reading aloud (on my YouTube channel) 1000-word short stories inspired by and incorporating five random words. I visited the website textfixer.com to come up with the words, which proved particularly challenging. The American site tossed up such unique terms as “goldbricker” and “Badlands”. In true OuLiPo fashion, I decided the stories had to be exactly 1000 words long, not a word more or less. I began writing these stories daily, each of them inspired by the random associations of words thrust upon me by an unknowable algorithm.
The author's creativity also accounts for clever titles such as “Stardust at the Beehive” and “A Sign from Above”. Most impressive is how Boyter masters a heap of clever descriptions. For discretion sake, and to highlight the words, names and plots are ripped from the quotes. In “A Sign from Above,” a character, “carried the last box downstairs and inserted It into the three-dimension Tetris game of his U-Haul truck.” The writer vividly renders scenes and characters with just a turn of phrase. In “Stardust,” he introduces a young journalist, “who mingled in circles as varied as meat-packing mobsters and midtown grandees.”
Boyter’s diction and the similarity to the 1,000-word treats in Running Coyote and Fallen Star to a box of chocolates left me to finish the collection. I am anxious to leisurely sample the clever plots and sweet words, and am never sure what might be found.