PICTURES OF THE SHARK

by

THOMAS H. McNEELY

Short Stories / Southern Fiction / Coming of Age

Publisher: Texas Review Press

Date of Publication: July 12, 2022

Number of Pages: 205 pages

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A sudden snowfall in Houston reveals family secrets. A trip to Universal Studios to snap a picture of the shark from Jaws becomes a battle of wills between father and son. A midnight séance and the ghost of Janis Joplin conjure the mysteries of sex. A young boy’s pilgrimage to see Elvis Presley becomes a moment of transformation. A young woman discovers the responsibilities of talent and freedom.

Pictures of the Shark, by Houston native and Dobie Paisano award-winning author Thomas H. McNeely, traces a young man’s coming of age and falling apart. From the rough and tumble of Houston’s early seventies East End to the post-punk Texas bohemia of late eighties Austin, this novel in stories examines what happens when childhood trauma haunts adult lives.

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Praise

“McNeely’s brilliant stories are filled with delicious menace and heartbreaking hope.” – Pamela Painter, author of What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers and Fabrications: New and Selected Stories

“In these gorgeously crafted interlinked stories, Thomas McNeely demonstrates once again an uncanny ability to illuminate the darkest emotional corners of his characters with a vision that is as tender and compassionate as it is unflinching.” – Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, author of Barefoot Dogs

“With masterful prose, McNeely draws you down into emotional depths where your ambivalence and confusion show you at your most profoundly human. These stories hook you quickly and deeply and keep you even after they end. – C.W. Smith, author of Steplings, Buffalo Nickel, and Understanding Women

Excerpt from “No One’s Trash”

From Pictures Of The Shark

By Thomas McNeely

Outside the kitchen, past the glassed-in storm door, rain lashed the back yard, which was already filling up with water.  On the TV, light poles littered the streets, and freeway underpasses were ponds where windshields of cars peeked out like frogs.  Margot hoped Jimmy wouldn’t be foolish enough to drive across Houston to pick up Buddy; though she didn’t want to begrudge him their time together, either.

Buddy sat in front of the TV, his back to her, rigid as a mannequin, the usual mood he assumed when Jimmy came to get him on Saturdays.  Margot had left the back door open to keep an eye on the pecan tree that swayed over the fence with Mr. Knight’s back yard.  What good it would do to watch it fall on her garage, she didn’t know.  Even through the thrum of rain and air conditioner’s moan and the TV announcers’ gabble, she could hear the Knights arguing next door.

Just as she told Buddy to say a prayer that his father would be safe, the lights in the house went out, the TV went dead, the air conditioner stopped.  Buddy glanced back at her – she was standing at the sink, checking the road, which was still clear – then he leaned across the piles of paper on her desk, pressing his nose against the air conditioner to catch the last cool drops, his eyes closed, beatific, as if receiving a sacrament.  How delicate he still was, she thought, his milk-pale skin covering blue veins, his wrists so small she could circle them with her forefinger and thumb.  All morning, he hadn’t spoken to her; she still wasn’t sure if he would now.  Her heart constricted with tenderness for him, a physical ache.

Outside, there was only the steady thrum of rain.  Even the Knights had fallen silent.  Margot wanted to say something to Buddy, but felt suddenly shy.  It was a foolish thing, a humiliating thing, to feel this way with one’s own son.

The phone rang.  She nearly jumped out of her skin; in the sudden quiet, it was uncanny and absurd.  Buddy looked at her, then at the phone, an accusation.

It could only be one of two people: Jimmy, or her mother.  It was Jimmy.  All morning, Margot had called the lab, and Jimmy’s beeper, and his parents’ house, where Jimmy said that he lived.  Jimmy’s mother answered, and asked Margot who she thought she was, calling her son at all hours, hounding him, before she hung up.  Jimmy’s voice, now, was falsely causal, as if he’d just gone to the grocery store and was phoning to see if there was anything he could bring back.  He asked how they were doing, in a tone that suggested he still lived with them, a tone that never failed to jolt her with anger at its presumption, and relief that it was no longer true.  She said they were fine.  He asked her about the backyard.  She said that it was fine, too, that it hadn’t taken on any water, and thanked him for putting in the drain, which was what she knew he wanted to hear.  Buddy glared at her, catching her lie; she turned her back on him.

“I’m not going to be able to make it over there today,” Jimmy said.

“Of course not,” she said, too quickly.

“Have you thought anymore about the letter?” he said.

It was all she thought about.  “Not yet,” she said.

Buddy was watching her.  He’d understood, she saw, that Jimmy wouldn’t come; his expression was like water clearing – relief and also anger.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy said.  “Tell Buddy I’m sorry.”

“Tell him yourself,” she said.

Buddy cradled the receiver against his shoulder, turning from her, giving mumbled one-word answers to the questions Jimmy always asked:  How was school that week?  How was his horror movie coming along?  He told Jimmy he loved him, too, then put the receiver back in its cradle.  Then he jumped up and down silently, shaking his fists, baring gritted teeth – a hateful, sorrowing dance.  She had borne this kind of anger before from Jimmy.  Now she couldn’t look at him, at Buddy, her son.

Outside, she saw the Knight girls, Cara and Darla, hop across the paving stones in the back yard, like naiads, like water sprites, already soaked to the bone.  Buddy turned to her, his mouth pinched and vindictive.

“Get rid of them,” he said.

“I can’t do that,” she said.

She couldn’t, even if she had wanted to; they were already at her door.

Thomas H. McNeely is an Eastside Houston native. He has published short stories and nonfiction in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Ploughshares, and many other magazines and anthologies, including Best American Mystery Stories and Algonquin Books’ Best of the South. His stories have been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, and O. Henry Award anthologies. He has received National Endowment for the Arts, Wallace Stegner, and MacDowell Colony fellowships for his fiction. His first book, Ghost Horse, won the Gival Press Novel Award and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize in Writing. He currently teaches in the Stanford Online Writing Studio and at Emerson College, Boston.

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 FOUR WINNERS!

2 winners: autographed copy of Pictures of the Shark

2 winners: autographed copy of Pictures of the Shark

+ editorial critique of an excerpt (up to 20 pages) from an unpublished short story or novel.

(US only; ends midnight, CDT, 7/15/2022)

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