Chris Crutcher - Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories

Cover photograph 2002 by Ali Smith

Cover design by Hilary Zarycky

Cover 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

In my travels around the country and in letters from readers, I am constantly asked what happens to certain characters in my books. Does Willie Weaver make it when he returns to Oakland? Does he come back home to Montana again later? Where does Louie Banks go after graduation? Do Dillon Hemingway and Jennifer Lawless ever get together? Does Jeffrey Hawkins die?

The answer to all those questions is I havent the foggiest idea. My stories dont stop because I stop writing them, but my participation in them does. When I come to the last page of any novel, I present the characters to you, the reader. What happens next is up to you.

However, at times I find myself thinking about some of these folks on my own. I have lived the better part of a year with each, have taken long runs, fast motorcycle rides, and cross-country car trips with all of them. So once in a while I check in.

Athletic Shorts provides my avenue to do thatshort stories about characters from those books. Some of these stories take place before the time of the book in which the character appeared, some after, but all are enriched, in my mind, by that characters history in fiction.

In my relatively short life as a writer, I have heard my share of praise (for writing about real problems, stories that boys will read, stories that have teaching value and can be used in the classroom), and I have received my share of criticism (for packing too much into one book, for depicting my characters hardships too graphically, and for using language and ideas that kids dont need to be exposed to). Like most writers, I like to think the praise is well deserved, the criticism harsh and unfair. That allows me to go right on doing what I am doing.

But whether I am praised or criticized, writing is my passion. Whether it be comedy or tragedy or walking that high, thin tightwire between, my passion lies in connecting with people through the written word, through stories. The stories in this collection are stories I care about. There is a bit of my soul in every one, a bit of the hero that lies within me, a bit of the fool. They are filled with males and females, oldsters and youngsters, gays and straights, blacks, whites, and all colors between. Some are foolish, some heroic; most, in their own way, are both. In other words they are human.

To tell the truth, I like it when my stories are seen by my critics from the same perspective as that in which most human beings are seen by their criticsfor doing their best in tough situations, for failure, for excesses, for heart, for the glorious and the ghastly. I hope there is a little bit of all of that in Athletic Shorts .

A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune is the one story in this collection that does not include a character from any of my novels. In the fall of 1988, shortly after finishing writing Chinese Handcuffs and looking for something a little lighter to cool off my word processor, I received a call from Don Gallo, who had previously edited two collections of short stories for young adults. Don asked me to submit a story for his third, to be called Connections, urging me, if possible, to avoid such mainstay subjects of young adult literature as death, disease, and lost love .

When I need a good idea, I run. Something about the cadence of my feet pounding on the road and the rhythm of air flowing in and out of me frees my mind to run to new ideas. It is possible I ran too far that day, or the sun was much hotter than I thought, because when I returned home, I knew two things about my story: It would be about a fat kid with two sets of gay parents (so when he visited his mother, he also visited his stepmother, and when he visited his father, he also visited his stepfather), and his name would be Angus Bethune. I had waited years to use that name .

It was my first attempt at writing a short story, so I felt I had nothing to lose. My ego was not wrapped up in getting it published. What happened next was magical for me. The short-story form forced me to be precise beyond what had been required before, and the process gave me invaluable lessons in word and idea economy .

And I loved the finished product. So much that I wanted to keep it for myself. But I had promised it to Don, and to Don it went .

However, I like to have my cake and eat it. And lick the frosted beaters and sell it at the fair and have people jump out of it. So I took the story back, making it the only story in this collection that has previously appeared in another book .

Sometimes, when I stand back and take a good look, I think my parents are ambassadors from hell. Two of them, at least, the biological ones, the big ones.

Four parents are what I have altogether, not unlike a whole lot of other kids. But quite unlike a whole lot of other kids, there aint a hetero among em. My dads divorced and remarried, and my moms divorced and remarried, so my mathematical account of my family suggests simply another confused teenager from a broken home. But my dads arent married to my moms. Theyre married to each other . Same with my moms.

However, thats not the principal reason I sometimes see my so-called real parents as emissaries from way down under. As a matter of fact, that frightening little off-season trade took place prior tothough not much prior tomy birth, so until I began collecting expert feedback from friends at school, somewhere along about fourth grade, I perceived my situation as relatively normal.

No, what really hacks me off is that they didnt conceive me in some high tech fashion that would have allowed them to dip into an alternative gene pool for my physical goodies. See, when people the size of my parents decide to reproduce, they usually dig a pit and crawl down in there together for several days. Really, Im surprised someone in this family doesnt have a trunk. Or a blowhole. I swear my gestation period was three years and seven months.

You dont survive a genetic history like that unscathed. While farsighted parents of other infants my age were preenrolling their kids four years ahead into elite preschools, my dad was hounding the World Wrestling Federation to hold a spot for me sometime in the early 1990s. I mean, my mom had to go to the husky section of Safeway to buy me Pampers.

Im a big kid.

And they named me Angus. God, a name like Angus Bethune would tumble Robert Redford from a nine and a half to a four, and I aint no Robert Redford.

Angus is a cow, I complained to my stepmother, Bella, the day in first grade I came home from school early for punching the bearer of that sad information in the stomach.

Your mother must have had a good reason for naming you that, she said.

For naming me after a cow?

You cant go around punching everyone who says that to you, she warned.

Yes, I can, I said.

Angus is a cow, I said to my mother when she got home from her job at Westhead Trucking firm. You guys named me after a cow.

Your fathers uncle was named Angus, she said, stripping off her outer shirt with a loud sigh, then plopping into her easy chair with a beer, wearing nothing but her bra, a bra, I might add, that could well have floated an ejected fighter pilot to safety.