Linda Davis - Best Short Stories from the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest 2014

Best
Short S tories
from
The Saturday Evening Post
Great American Fiction Contest
2014

Edited with apreface
by Steven Slon ,
Editorial Director
and Associate Publisher
The Saturday Evening Post

Series Editor, Patrick Perry ,
Executive Editor
The SaturdayEvening Post

Copyright 2013 TheSaturday Evening Post Society. All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage andretrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States by TheSaturday Evening Post Society, 1100 Waterway Boulevard, Indianapolis, IN 46202

saturdayeveningpost.com

This book is a work offiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, andincidents are the product of the authors imaginations or are usedfictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events orlocales, is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

By Steven Slon

By Michael Knight

Winner

By Linda Davis

Asingle mom struggles with school politics and a rebellious preteen in thiscomplex portrait of a family at a crossroads.

Runners-Up

By Erin Bartels

GarrisonKnight commands his orchestra with power and grace until a musicians strikeand his attraction to a young violinist combine to threaten his orderly world.

By Stephen G. Eoannou

Thediscovery of a windfall in the backseat of a cab on Christmas Eve triggers anethical conundrum. But the drivers chance encounter with three strangers leadsto an unexpected decision.

By Morgan Hunt

Ayoung mother, bolstered by unwavering love for her children, struggles with theisolation and stigma of divorce during the 1960s.

By Christine Venzon

Inpromoting a talented young street musician from New Orleans, a gallery curatorrediscovers her own artistic ambitions.

By Robert StevenWilliams

ForDavida and Granny Jack, life in the projects is a daily challenge. With herfathers pending release from prison, Davida plans an escape from the war-tornneighborhood and family ties that both alienate and sustain.

HonorableMentions

By Mary Flynn

JeremiahHendrik is a third-generation apple farmer whose wavering love of the land andits people is put to the test.

By Sharon J. Mondragon

GeorgeLeroy Marlin prides himself on a limitless capacity for idleness, but when thehapless husband is sidelined, can wife Marlene and the kids make it withouthim?

By Johanna Bilbo

Clydeis a very successful contractor with a talent for getting the best out of hisemployees, but adjusting to life as a single father proves a bigger challenge.

By Kendall Klym

For 17years, Millie and Harmon have been regulars at The Grease in the Pan thoughlittle else in the couples life seems quite as predictable.

By Bill Wasserzieher

ForMaury, editor-in-chief of the daily Herald , murder is his kind of word it sellspapers. But in the 60s, a cub reporter and Maury wrestle with more thanheadlines.

By Elizabeth Brown

At 15,Frieda lives under the watchful eye of the Brubachers and congregants at theFirst Evangelical Mennonite Church cut off from the outside world.

By Willa ElizabethSchmidt

Lucillebacked the Buick out of the driveway, still miffed at the stern tone in hersons voice. Surely, he knew how suddenly things could go wrong.

By Barbara Yost

To5-year-old Maria Rosa, the dress with its red puffs of sleeve and the full rufflesof skirt seemed a bird of paradise. To her mother, it represented somethingelse.

By Jacquelin Cangro

Filomenavisited the five-and-dime many times to buy material for curtains ortablecloths, but it never dawned on her that she could get paid for it.

By Elizabeth Rosen

It allhappened so fast! The bookstore. An accident. Panic. After that, all she everdid was look down.

By Gregory Johansson

Twocouples push off on a weekend adventure a canoe trip down the ColumbiaRiver tracing the path of Lewis and Clark. No one anticipated what came next.

By Kay Gill

Atwhat distance can you see life as it really is? After 25 years of marriage and success, Glenn andShirley face a future that is anything but certain.

By Marta Sprout

Twowomen forged a friendship over three decades but an unwelcome intruderthreatens that bond in inexplicable ways.

By Michael Easterling

Plumbingpipes and two handymen with lots of free time and a little imagination (andbeer) launch a new Christmas tradition along Highway 14.

By Cheryl Bartoszek

Roxynever met Elizabeth Stuart, a widow who loved her 1969 Buick Electra and themembers of Salem Baptist Church, but something is drawing them together.

Preface

The legacy of The Saturday Evening Post is inextricably entwinedwith great writers and great writing. Among the most notable of the magazinesauthors is F. Scott Fitzgerald, who would publish 65 stories over nearly 20years at the Post , beginning in 1920. A sale to the Post was a sign that you had arrived as an author. As our staffhistorian Jeff Nilsson points out, Years later, Fitzgerald recalled hisexcitement at the news of the Post accepting his work:Id like to get a thrill like that again but I suppose its only once in alifetime.

It is in this grandtradition that the Post today presents our second annual Great American FictionContest. This year, we received more than 300 entries and were overwhelmed bythe overall quality. In this e-book, youll find all 21 finalists, includingthe winner The War at Home, by Linda Davis. This is the first timeDavis has been published in a national magazine. On receiving news of theaward, she wrote, This publication pleases me more than any of my previousones because, if we think of our stories as our children, I have a particularlysoft spot for The War at Home.

There were so manyterrific pieces that we only wish we had the space to include here. To writers whodidnt make the finals, please keep trying. Youll find instructions for nextyears competition at saturdayeveningpost.com/fiction-contest .

Id like to thank JoanSerVaas, our publisher, without whose commitment to writing and to the artsthis project would not have been possible. I also thank the entire Saturday Evening Post staff for their hard work and dedication.And a special thanks goes to our judges, all drawn from the universe ofpublishing professionals and friends of the Post , including ElizabethBenedict, Lucy Bledsoe, Amanda Bixler, Peter Bloch, Ed Dwyer, William Jeanes,Michael Knight, Elizabeth McKenzie, Holly Miller, Linda McCullough Moore,Patrick Perry, Erica Rath, Estelle Slon, and Jesika St Clair.

Steven Slon

Associate Publisher and Editorial Director

Introduction

Quiet, Honest,
Interesting

In TheArt of Fiction ,Henry James writes, The only obligation to which in advance we may hold anovel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it beinteresting, an assertion as applicable, at least for the purposes of thisintroduction, to the short story, perhaps even more so when you consider therange of styles and subjects among the entries in this volume, all finalistsfor The Saturday Evening Post s second annual GreatAmerican Fiction Contest. What binds this years finalists to each other and toall the great stories The Saturday EveningPost haspublished in the past is a belief in the better instincts of humanity, anabiding faith that people can be and maybe already are moredecent than they sometimes appear. The characters in these stories are facedwith hard choices and they arrive, more often than not, certainly more oftenthan many of us, at the right choice, the one guided by their best selves. Inthese stories, as in life, that doesnt always lead to happily ever after butthe core decency of these characters remains, no matter where the writer leavesthem on the final page.