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A collection of short stories based around the life of a single narrator as he tries to escape his hometown and start a new life.
What is it in us that makes it so difficult to stay in one place, to be satisfied with the town we grew up in? And where is it written that one can only find happiness with success, with money, with a career?
Narrator Luke Cieslinski doesn't have the answers, and he can't stop searching for them. When he sees his opportunity to leave everything behind---his friends, his job, his family---he does, escaping his hometown and striking out to find something more. In an attempt to find success with his painting, Luke hitchhikes his way to the big city to start all over, and soon finds himself falling into the same traps all over again.
When Luke finally begins to see his life change for the better, tragedy strikes. "Dodge County," his friend once said, "is like a black hole. It doesn't let you leave, not without a fight."
This collection contains stories originally published in the following literary journal:
Deer Tales (Defenestration 2008, Santa Fe Writers Project, 2009)
Working Man (Predicate Literary Journal, 2007)
Cherries and Blueberries (Sphere Literary Journal, 2009)
The Third Pile (Predicate Literary Journal, 2008)
One in Six (Keepgoing.org)
Dodge (Predicate Literary Journal, 2008)
This book is now available for free as a download:
http://www.kenbroskyfiction.com/novels.html
Excerpt
I’ve been riding the past hundred miles with a guy who’s too drunk to drive. The first thing he told me
when he picked me up on the side of the road was that he went by the name Wolfman and didn’t answer to anything
else. It was just one of those things, he said, and I told him that was good enough for me, provided he let me have one
of those beers sitting in the cooler in the back seat.
He asked me when I first got in why I was standing on the road in the first place. I told him I ran away from
home even though I look in my early thirties. He seemed to accept the answer anyway.
We’ve been quiet, mostly, content with listening to a wild church channel whose announcer is attempting to
compare homosexuals teaching in public schools to weapons of mass destruction that may or may not still be hidden
away in Iraq. The car itself smells like stale beer and old fast food. There are different colored crumbs in both drink
holders and on the gear shift, along with an assortment of stains that mainly resemble the color of either ketchup or
mustard.
After we pass the last exit to a town claiming to have one of Al Capone’s Midwestern hideouts, the Wolfman
turns down the stereo a little bit. ‘You remember a couple months ago?’ he asks.
‘Sure,’ I say. How else to answer such a vague question, after all?
Wolfman shakes his head a little bit, causing his long dark hair to drop over his shoulders. It’s begun to
horseshoe around his forehead, but to hide that fact he had long ago picked out the biggest, thickest glasses he could
possibly find. They do well to make his large nose seem somewhat regular on his face. ‘The shooting, I mean. The one
with the Asian who shot those three hunters. It happened right in those woods coming up on your right.’
‘What happened?’
Wolfman takes a heavy slug from his bottle and savors the taste with bared teeth before answering. ‘Dunno,
really. He was trespassing, they tried to get him out, he shot ‘em.’
I look out the side window. Beyond the road is about fifty acres of corn crops and beyond that a thick forest.
At the edge of the trees, I can make out a small looking post, an elevated club house some people use to hunt deer. For
some reason, I play out the event in my mind and set it in the dead of night, putting myself under the bare canopy of
naked, twisting limbs, standing on a carpet of soggy wet leaves. One of my friends is already dead, and I take refuge
under a fallen log, listening to the Asian man’s footsteps on the wet ground. I hear my other hunting pal whimpering off
in the distance, then a loud crack of thunder that sends my ears ringing. Then silence. I see the Asian man creep closer
to my hiding place. He doesn’t spot me under the cover of night, even though his beady eyes skim right over my body.
The shooting probably would have happened in daylight, and in daylight, he would have surely spotted me.
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