a children’s story
A LONG TIME AGO in Ireland, there was a man named St. Patrick. But before he became a saint, he was just a man named Patrick. To become a saint he had to perform a miracle, and his big miracle was chasing all the snakes out of Ireland.
ALL RIGHT, SETTLE DOWN. We don’t have long so I need you to listen to me closely. Take notes if you want to but when you’re out there you’re not going to have time to check them. You’re going to have to know what I’m telling you by heart and trust it enough to use it effectively. With all the noise and everything going on it’s going to be very easy to forget things, so listen up now, all right?
Published in the Fall 1999 Issue of Ploughshares
WHY WAS IT, Janice thought, that everything took longer than you wanted?–like life. It was the last day of summer, their last day together, and all the way upstate her mother went on about Cornell–the boys she dated, the friends she made–going “oh,” and “oh!” over the radio until Janice’s head went completely blank, buzzed emptily like when she skipped her Mellaril. They’d eaten at the travel plaza Roy’s (her mother ridiculously ordering a salad), and Janice could still taste her onion rings. Outside the world ran by, bright and hot and sharp as a paper cut.
HE’S BEEN SEEN standing in a vineyard in Westfield, beside the Thruway, waving to truckers, and then the same day in Conneaut, wandering the docks. A surveillance camera places him in Geneva; a carny operator sold him a doughnut in Geneva On The Lake. The police have received calls from Canton, Akron, as far west as you taped your homemade flyers on the sides of tollbooths, pinned them to rest stop corkboards. At this point you don’t know what to believe, how much hope you need to keep nested away like the cache of half dollars and keno tokens in his dresser.
THE NOVEL OF THE HOLOCAUST is coming! Yessiree–alive, alive, alive! SEE the freak of the twentieth century, the soul-searching survivor of the ultimate battle of good and evil! HEAR his pitiful story of torture and degradation! THRILL to the savage, inhuman acts of his captors! Yes, he’s coming, one command performance only, the sideshow setting up its tent in the meadow by the river. All day children have been racing their bikes across the bridge, fighting to peek under the canvas. Come one, come all!
The Works of Stewart O'Nan 