I’ve found myself wondering from time to time if a person’s life does indeed, “flash before their eyes” if they are killed with no warning.įor the image, I set the scene in a bank.
It delivers a shock of memory as his life passes before his eyes. The real bulk of story actually occurs in the microsecond that the bullet hits the brain and travels through his head. Bank robbers come in, the book critic mouths off to them and he receives a bullet in the brain. Synoptically speaking, its about an older cantankerous book critic standing in a line at the bank. This story, written by Tobias Wolff, is called Bullet in the Brain. He acted as Art Director on this and sent me on a little tour of short stories about the extraordinary within the mundane. Time for the shadows to lengthen on the grass, time for the tethered dog to bark at the flying ball, time for the boy in right field to smack his sweat-blackened mitt and softly chant, They is, they is, they is.I was feeling a little stuck in a rut so I enlisted the talents of a good friend and former instructor Jeffrey Smith. In the end it will do its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope and talent and love into the marble hall of commerce. The bullet is already in the brain it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. He takes the field in a trance, repeating them to himself. But that isn’t it, not at all-it’s that Anders is strangely roused, elated, by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music. The others will think he’s being a jerk, ragging the kid for his grammar.
He wants to hear Coyle’s cousin repeat what he’s just said, but he knows better than to ask. “Short’s the best position they is.” Anders turns and looks at him. He says hi with the rest but takes no further notice of him until they’ve chosen sides and someone asks the cousin what position he wants to play. Anders has never met Coyle’s cousin before and will never see him again. Then the last two boys arrive, Coyle and a cousin of his from Mississippi. They have been worrying this subject all summer, and it has become tedious to Anders: an oppression, like the heat. He looks on as the others argue the relative genius of Mantle and Mays. Yellow grass, the whirr of insects, himself leaning against a tree as the boys of the neighborhood gather for a pickup game.
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