“Just maybe?”
“Or probably.”
We threw the ball.
“Tell him Stratton,” I said, “not Bromley. In the lodge they have chocolate-chip cookies as big as your head.”
“Whoa. That’s rad.”
“He probably won’t want to bring you back,” I said. “He told me you’re really, really hard to leave.” I looked at her in between throws, and she was nodding.
“Oh, you knew that?”
“To the max.”
I threw the ball so that it hit off the ceiling and came down so fast she didn’t even get her hands up. It bounced off her chest and came down gently in my hands.
“Do it again,” she said, and this time she caught it and rolled it over to me. “Again,” she said. “Again.”
* * *
My mother was seeing someone new, an orthodontist ten years older, who with his patient eyes and caring smiles reminded me more of Don than any of her boyfriends from Levi. While they played Boggle or watched VCR movies in the living room, I’d go in the basement and light the woodstove. It was a cool, wet May, and in the stove’s itching warmth, I’d sip airline bottles from behind the fence, enjoying the half hour to myself.
The fire would hiss and snap, webs of steam lifting from the iron stockpot to a small box fan in the kitchen floor vent that blew the heat up. One of the fan blades was bent or loose, and the soft thump of that imbalance lulled me into my imagination.
We’re together again, Nick and I, in the ZL1, that outrageous promise of a car, as Billy Motts raises the bet money as a flag. With two quick throttle snaps Nick clears the exhaust, and I look at him expecting to see the awareness we both have that the car is unbeatable. But his eyes are wide and ambivalent, as if this time he might have to push the tremendous engine for all it’s worth. I don’t understand, but then I do—he’s freeing himself, if only for these thirteen seconds, from the laws that define him, the certainties of math and physics and even time—which he hoped to undo—and submitting to the proposition that anything can happen. I find myself submitting as well, and for an instant the world has possibilities it will never have again.
Then in a quick lever motion he dumps the clutch and drops the hammer, and for entire seconds the nose of the car lifts skyward, Nick our pilot leading us bravely on that flight from everything we know to untouched infinity, reaches of space and time only dreamed of.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m deeply grateful to the following people for their advice and edits: Martha Bayless, J. T. Bushnell, John Groves, Betsy Hardinger, Caye Harrison, James Hausman, Andy Kifer, John Larison, Paul Martone, Patricia Moran, Diane McWhorter, Rosalind Trotter, and Jeff Voccola. Thank you to the English Department at Oregon State University for encouragement and support, and to Literary Arts for a generous fellowship. And this book would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of my agent, Seth Fishman, and my editor, Yaniv Soha, two of the very best in the book business.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WAYNE HARRISON is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop whose stories have appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, and Narrative magazine. One of his stories was selected for Best American Short Stories 2010 and his fiction has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. His short story collection Wrench was a finalist for the Iowa Book Award, the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award, and the Spokane Prize. He teaches writing at Oregon State University.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SPARK AND THE DRIVE. Copyright © 2014 by Wayne Harrison. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Sections of this book have appeared in different forms in The Atlantic and Best American Short Stories 2010.
Cover designed by Rob Grom
Cover photograph by Philipp Nemenz
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Harrison, Wayne, 1969–
The spark and the drive / Wayne Harrison.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-250-04124-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3735-5 (e-book)
I. Title.
PS3608.A78384S67 2014
813'.6—dc23
2014000133
e-ISBN 9781466837355
First Edition: July 2014
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