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The Poetry & Prose of Janet Buck
The Poetry & Prose of Janet Buck
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Vine Leaves Press
ISBN-10: 1925417158
Type: Fiction
Pages: 292
Copyright: Sept 6, 2016
ISBN-13: 9781925417159
Murder. Deceit. Dysfunction. Addiction. A fencing match between good & evil. Tenderness. Romance. A family built from "scratch." It's all right here in Janet Buck's Samantha Stone. Read and find out how one young woman dodges all these poison darts.
Samantha Stone, by Janet Buck, is a five-course meal of memoir, suspense, romance, deceit, and the tale of a young amputee who struggles to define herself in the face of adversity so complex it can’t be real, yet it is. Samantha loses her birth mother to Leukemia shortly after her 3rd birthday. A woman with a tongue so sharp it can slice a lemon without a knife takes her mother’s place, and the friction in the Stone home is more crippling than her disability. On the cusp of her 18th birthday, she finds herself leaning on her best friend’s arm in a world tainted by murder, deceit, and addiction. Samantha craves both approval and a man in her life who won’t dissolve like bouillon cubes in a boiling pot of grief and loss, yet trust itself seems nothing but a futile dream. Buck calls Samantha Stone an “Immorality Play.” Through that backdoor, puzzle pieces of “morality” itself emerge and glisten on the icy streets of Castle City. Abounding humor and witty dialogue make tragedy more edible. Read this book of torment and struggle—discover for yourself whether Samantha survives—makes angels in the snow—or freezes in its girth.
Excerpt
Silences
Samantha Stone was not a second late, which sent a spark of hope up and down his spine. “Hello, Ms. Stone, have a seat. The couch is soft. Most people find it comfortable. My name is Jack. I plan to be your therapist for quite some time.” Samantha took a hard, small stool in the corner of his office suite, as far away from him as she could scoot. The walls were weirdly slanted, painted white, a blinding white, a decoy plot to make the cage uncage itself. Samantha told herself emphatically, this whole place stinks like armpits in a city bus with people hanging onto loops to save their balance on a bumpy road. Actually, the office had a pleasant scent of citrus from a can sitting on the window sill. She purposely appraised the “stinking armpit” part to underline her reticence to be a doe between the headlights and the road—wondered why her father wanted dirty laundry of their lives spread on slides and set beneath a microscope.
“Why won’t you just get comfortable, take the couch?” he asked. Jack O’Conner drew the question much like muggers with a knife.
“Because I’m not that comfortable,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I’m not. My stepmom borrowed handcuffs from the cop next door, put my arms around my back, snapped the metal shackles closed, grabbed my hair, yanked it hard, threw me in her messy car, made me come,” Samantha said. The air grew sticky, sticky as the edges on a bowl of Cream of Wheat, left sitting in the sink for days. She could smell his ashtray breath, even at long distances.
“I doubt you’re telling me the truth,” Jack said. His wincing, little birdie eyes were aimed at hers, their sparkling glass covered by her lowered lids.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m checking out your skill at drawing clear distinctions between drama, exaggeration, and raw truth.”
“That’s interesting.” Jack seemed perturbed—he was perturbed—Samantha could tell by the way he drew out the word, separating every syllable, slowly as someone splitting an orange that won’t tear right. He talked briefly with William Stone the week before. All her father revealed was about as cryptic as it gets. “She’s either silent, tied in knots or writing in her diary. Samantha and I get along just fine, but there’s tension at home. Good luck with double knots.” Tiny as Samantha was, her stone demurral struck him as the sister of a whale stranded on a beach. That sinking sand he thought about just hours ago made him wonder—How can one man drag the weight of this internal rage back to sea, where water could dilute it some, salt the wounds?
Jack was used to portraits of faces dismissing his, especially when patients didn’t arrive by choice, but they usually sat on his leather couch, switching positions constantly, pretending their skin was stuck to it. Sometimes they would grab a pillow, press it hard against their chests, armour to deflect the bullets, questions brewing in the air. This time there was no reply. As conversations go, this was really nowhere land—picking up a phone with no one at the other end. He waited for some curt response. Not a word. They still had fifty minutes left. O’Conner handed her a set of forms, a clipboard, and a pen. She set the duties on the floor, kept the pen, chewed on it, then checked her cell for messages, which pissed him off. Samantha was a quilt stitched up tight, no batting loose, not a single thread to pull. When the silence gap grew wider and the clock just flat refused to move, she gave Jack a break.
“I’ll tell you this. I love words, I love to read, keep a running vocab list, find a word that fits my life, write it down, make a sentence where it slips like nylons in a shoe.” He took a breath. “That’s nice,” he said, embittered by incompetence, worried he hadn’t a single thing to scribble in her patient file. She’s no ninnyhammer, that’s for sure—she had this silence plan in place all along.
“So what’s your new word for today?” Jack asked, as if it seemed to matter, but it didn’t, not quite yet.
“The word,” Samantha said, “is mondegreen—a misinterpreted phrase, usually a lyric like what Jimi Hendrix sang as Kiss the sky, but people missed the point and thought he meant Kiss the guy. As you might guess, that really messes up the song, draws the tabloids to the door.” Jack attempted not to laugh, but chuckled anyway. “I really like this word,” Samantha said, “since no one ever gets who I am.” She left that one open wide by accident, so Jack dove in: “Who are you then?” The question seemed way too deep to ask this early on— despite the fact he saw his job as running patients through a sieve, picking through flies that didn’t slip through holes—dead or alive, the black and nasty parts—analysing bugs until they flew away or just got brushed off window sills. Samantha dodged his penetrating question with finesse he truly wasn’t ready for.
“I’m just an ordinary kid with scars—people think it’s some big deal.” She tagged her answer with another slip of tongue, thankfully not loud enough to reach his ears. “I’m a crab-apple tree in an orchard full of Comice pears.”
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