Cowboy Jamboree Magazine
Good grit lit.
Good grit lit.
|
|
|
|
excerpted from Adam Van Winkle's Hardway Juice, a novella forthcoming from CJ Press in September
About the book, due out next week from CJ Press: A local wrestling legend comes home as the independent circuit swings through a small Texas town one Saturday night in the Fall of 1997 in this novella. Paul wants to go to the matches if he can get past his drunk stepdad. Lisa wants to leave town altogether but her dad is dying to take her to the show. A week of anxiety and hope and despair and debauchery follows the teens, townsfolk, wrestlers and all to the high school gymnasium where worlds collide and there can only be blood.
“Gonna go to see the wrestling little queer says.” Paul’s stepdad was drunk and it wasn’t the watery-eyed stare into space beer drunk. It was the narrowed-pupil snake eyes whiskey drunk. When he picked on Paul the most. “Bet you never tried to put a move on that pretty little brunette.” He was talking about Lisa.
Paul’s cheeks were hot but he just couldn’t muster anything to say.
Fact was Lisa had asked him to kiss her. He had felt under her shirt when she placed his hands there. But just that once. When he tried to kiss Lisa the next day she stopped him. And she never asked him to again. Never mentioned it again. Paul felt that she liked it when they had, but she didn’t seem to want anymore.
Paul fantasized about it all the time. Masturbated to it regular. But he’d never say any of that to his stepdad. It wouldn’t shut him up and it might get Lisa in trouble if that prick told her dad.
“S’what I thought,” Paul’s stepdad said when Paul made no reply, and left it there.
In his room Paul turns on the TV. It was Monday and that meant wrestling on TV tonight. He could lose himself in some new prime time action.
When he wasn’t watching the weekly wrestling shows, he’d cycle through his payperview tapes. He’d bought them for ninety-nine cents a piece from the used rentals bin at All-Star Video Rental when he stayed with his dad the summer before. When he brought them home, Paul bought a used VCR from the church yard sale, the same place he bought his wood-consoled TV the year before. They’d been on constant loop since.
He knew all the matches. All the moves. He’d watch the tapes so much he started to see when the wrestlers talked to each other, working out moves during the match. He could see when wrestlers feigned good combat by rubbing their foreheads against taped fingers, razor blades hidden in the tape. He watched so much he was becoming a master of the craft, he imagined.
Tonight he could maybe wait for his stepdad to pass out and sneak out to the gas station to visit his mom for free food.
She’d give him some anytime she worked. Pizza pockets, burritos, fried potatoes, stuffed jalapeños—she could fry any of ‘em up for Paul when she worked. Problem was, if his stepdad knew what he was doing he’d stop Paul. Tell him not to go bothering his mama at work. She had money to make and didn’t need to feed Paul’s fat ass while she was doing it, he’d say. At least that was his reaction the first time he found out.
Paul knew his mom didn’t mind, but he didn’t like to push stuff with his stepdad, and if he pushed on this his mom might get in trouble too.
Paul knew he could wait his stepdad out. He never really bothered Paul when Paul stayed in his room watching TV, watching wrestling. Paul’s stepdad only worked three days a week at the most, doing part time construction. Days like this when he didn’t work, he started drinking in the morning. He’d be passed out by the time the Monday night show was over. Then Paul could ride his bike up the road to the gas station. Visit with his mom a little bit, and bring a couple of pizza pockets back to his room to rewatch Wrestlemania VII. It’d be a nice little night, and, on Saturday he’d get to see the Snake live.
Life was okay when Paul could think like this, just focus on his pleasure, things that made him feel happy like pizza pockets and wrestling, look past all the moments in between.
About the book, due out next week from CJ Press: A local wrestling legend comes home as the independent circuit swings through a small Texas town one Saturday night in the Fall of 1997 in this novella. Paul wants to go to the matches if he can get past his drunk stepdad. Lisa wants to leave town altogether but her dad is dying to take her to the show. A week of anxiety and hope and despair and debauchery follows the teens, townsfolk, wrestlers and all to the high school gymnasium where worlds collide and there can only be blood.
“Gonna go to see the wrestling little queer says.” Paul’s stepdad was drunk and it wasn’t the watery-eyed stare into space beer drunk. It was the narrowed-pupil snake eyes whiskey drunk. When he picked on Paul the most. “Bet you never tried to put a move on that pretty little brunette.” He was talking about Lisa.
Paul’s cheeks were hot but he just couldn’t muster anything to say.
Fact was Lisa had asked him to kiss her. He had felt under her shirt when she placed his hands there. But just that once. When he tried to kiss Lisa the next day she stopped him. And she never asked him to again. Never mentioned it again. Paul felt that she liked it when they had, but she didn’t seem to want anymore.
Paul fantasized about it all the time. Masturbated to it regular. But he’d never say any of that to his stepdad. It wouldn’t shut him up and it might get Lisa in trouble if that prick told her dad.
“S’what I thought,” Paul’s stepdad said when Paul made no reply, and left it there.
In his room Paul turns on the TV. It was Monday and that meant wrestling on TV tonight. He could lose himself in some new prime time action.
When he wasn’t watching the weekly wrestling shows, he’d cycle through his payperview tapes. He’d bought them for ninety-nine cents a piece from the used rentals bin at All-Star Video Rental when he stayed with his dad the summer before. When he brought them home, Paul bought a used VCR from the church yard sale, the same place he bought his wood-consoled TV the year before. They’d been on constant loop since.
He knew all the matches. All the moves. He’d watch the tapes so much he started to see when the wrestlers talked to each other, working out moves during the match. He could see when wrestlers feigned good combat by rubbing their foreheads against taped fingers, razor blades hidden in the tape. He watched so much he was becoming a master of the craft, he imagined.
Tonight he could maybe wait for his stepdad to pass out and sneak out to the gas station to visit his mom for free food.
She’d give him some anytime she worked. Pizza pockets, burritos, fried potatoes, stuffed jalapeños—she could fry any of ‘em up for Paul when she worked. Problem was, if his stepdad knew what he was doing he’d stop Paul. Tell him not to go bothering his mama at work. She had money to make and didn’t need to feed Paul’s fat ass while she was doing it, he’d say. At least that was his reaction the first time he found out.
Paul knew his mom didn’t mind, but he didn’t like to push stuff with his stepdad, and if he pushed on this his mom might get in trouble too.
Paul knew he could wait his stepdad out. He never really bothered Paul when Paul stayed in his room watching TV, watching wrestling. Paul’s stepdad only worked three days a week at the most, doing part time construction. Days like this when he didn’t work, he started drinking in the morning. He’d be passed out by the time the Monday night show was over. Then Paul could ride his bike up the road to the gas station. Visit with his mom a little bit, and bring a couple of pizza pockets back to his room to rewatch Wrestlemania VII. It’d be a nice little night, and, on Saturday he’d get to see the Snake live.
Life was okay when Paul could think like this, just focus on his pleasure, things that made him feel happy like pizza pockets and wrestling, look past all the moments in between.
DYSPHORIA IS HERE!!! (more an e-reader? Kindle e-book here!) A New Novel from the incomparable Sheldon Lee Compton and Cowboy Jamboree Press What can you save with a Mason jar? Money? A life? When Paul heads back to Red Knife, Kentucky for his father's funeral, his visit turns into an extended stay and a search for the people and places that made his dad so dysphoric about life. What he finds is years of tumult and abuse and shame, all centered on one day, long ago, and an accident at an abandoned mine tipple. The hauntings of the past become all too real for Paul, and, as he comes to grips with his father's death, his own life is endangered... A new Appalachian gothic from Sheldon Lee Compton, the man Donald Ray Pollock has called "a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown.” MORE ON SHELDON LEE COMPTON & DYSPHORIA: "Sheldon Lee Compton is the definition of what Faulkner meant when he described the closeness between the short story writer and the poet." - David Joy, author of The Weight of This World “Sheldon Lee Compton is one of the new young breed of Kentucky writers–talented, fearless, and strong–bringing us word from the hills." - Chris Offutt, author of My Father the Pornographer “A fierce and lyrical writer who, in his depiction of contemporary Appalachian life, is equal parts uncompromising and compassionate." - K. L. Cook, author of Love Songs for the Quarantined “Sheldon Lee Compton is a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown.” - Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time "Compton is an author whose art imitates life. A writer who understands the importance of portraying beauty and brutality in literature. A novelist who appreciates the elasticity of the defining line between right and wrong." - Matthew J. Hall in PANK "Sheldon spins the hard and raw of his native soil into his characters, creating lives that are immediately poignant and real." - Kari Nguyen "Sheldon Lee Compton is like a living, breathing John Cougar Mellencamp song (minus guitars and hand claps) but with much better stories." - Brian Alan Ellis, author of Something Good, Something Bad, Something Dirty "Compton articulates the real hardscrabble world of contemporary Kentucky Appalachia he so intimately understands, writing with a stark and powerful but emotionally subtle voice." - Charles Dodd White, author of Sinners of Sanction County "It's a damn hard world, but Compton still finds beauty and humanity in the hardness." - David S. Atkinson, author of Apocalypse All Time "An Appalachian writer of consequence and influence." - April Bradley, editor at SmokeLong Quarterly "We hear his characters in a way that brings them closer, that localizes them within our head, not just visually but audiovisually—it works to give each man, woman, child or teenager an incredibly substantive presence." - Michelle Bailat-Jones in Necessary Fiction “No sooner had I read ‘His hands were two leather balls folded in his lap,’ the pool called 'Red Knife,’ and Larry's back with its ‘dinner-plate shoulder blades,’ than I was hooked on Sheldon Lee Compton's Dysphoria: An Appalachian Gothic. The rhythms of its speech, word choices, depicted events, and sensory observations are a trip back home. The description of an old bedroom as having the ‘scent of deep body odor’ captures a memory of Appalachian lifestyle I know in my bones. Combined with the most believable characters and a harrowing plot, this is evocation of the heart's experience of Appalachia at its best.” - Ron Houchin, author of The Man Who Saws Us in Half “Dysphoria is ugly and gothic and morally questionable the way the best gothic writing should be, but then there’s this innocence, these moments of tenderness and beauty, this intent to do good almost as much as bad. I think that’s what makes me squirm the most. That these are real people, not headlines or punchlines. Often they are boys and men who can’t fully escape being boys, but they’ve got real good and real bad in their heart, often doing the wrong thing in the name the right thing and vice versa. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, it mostly makes them fester and boil over, the scab never fully crusting over. Time and Sheldon Lee Compton don’t let anyone off easy, and that’s just it, what makes Dysphoria timeless and never more relevant. It’s that deadly mix of Old Testament Vengeance, Original Sin, and Murphy’s Law lurking around the corner of every action and reaction that makes you turn each page with one eye open and the other half-shut with a wince. And yet, with every page there’s Compton, ever the wide-eyed witness to all of it, and not just them. Us too.” -Benjamin Drevlow, author of Bend with the Knees "When a reader steps into the pages of a Compton story, the reader must maneuver through sharp edges, and wade in the mud of Sheldon's honest and poetic world in order to reach the reality of Sheldon's people, his characters. He's digging deep into the realness of his skin, a place most authors are scared to go to. Dysphoria: An Appalachian Gothic is Sheldon's masterpiece thus far. This book is like putting a revolver in to your mouth and pulling the trigger. Each bullet plugging the brain with honesty, pain, grit, fear, and truth." -Frank Reardon, author of Interstate Chokehold SCROLL DOWN FOR EXCERPT! Excerpted from
DYSPHORIA an Appalachian Gothic novel by Sheldon Lee Compton (available from CJ Press here) DYSPHORIA- (def) a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life. Paul sat on the river bank with his knees pulled up to just below his chin. His dad squatted beside him, bent over an inflatable raft, inhaling and then exhaling in large bursts. The raft hardly moved, its thick blue and white wrinkles expanding only occasionally and then dying again, flat and collapsed. The raft was hardly a raft at all. It was more like a balloon. Along the river to the left of Paul and directly in front of his dad larger rafts negotiated the rapids, bought maybe in Wyoming and shipped here. They zipped past, full of laughing people, paddling people moving ahead while together he and his dad watched blue and white wrinkles grow large, disappear. When the job was complete, Paul stood beside the raft. Roughly six feet in length and about three feet wide, it would seat two people. There were no paddles, just the raft. After a minute to see that it didn't deflate, they pushed it to the edge of the water, scraping rocks and pebbles along the bottom. After the raft hit the water, held back with his dad's large grip, Paul thought then it would have been better if they had just picked the raft up. But he didn't say anything and instead eased carefully through the water and crawled into the raft in front of his dad, who had taken a seat in the back, one leg draped over the edge, anchoring the fifteen pound vessel with toes dug into the rocky riverbed. No words, no conversation, as the two pushed ahead their combined weight and started across the water. Within seconds, a larger raft swept in from behind them carrying a man and two small boys, all wearing helmets, all wielding paddles, looking at Paul and his dad and the blue and white raft. They were laughing hard and they were laughing at Paul and his dad and the raft. They pushed ahead, and Paul couldn't see his dad behind him, but he knew what was in his eyes, blue determination. The trip had been planned quickly after Paul returned from vacation with a set of cousins rarely heard from in Florida. His dad had sent Paul with his cousins, saying he couldn't afford a vacation, but if he wanted to go and stay for a couple weeks, it was fine by him. It had been a wonderful two weeks, and, when Paul returned, he spoke often of the things they had done. Fishing and strawberry picking and shooting basketball with the ocean twenty feet away. Two days after he returned, his dad bought this raft, and now here they were floating down the Big Sandy with the trees whipping past and the sky moving slower overhead and his dad tense and determined behind him. The entire situation made Paul feel as if he couldn’t gather air into his lugs. But, after a time, it was easy to forget with the way the river stretched out ahead of them, starting to turn from the muddy color that collected near the banks to the clear white-capped sections they were beginning to navigate. Paul didn't mention paddles, and saw no real reason to. His dad shifted from side to side, guiding the raft just to the left and right of rocks, hitting just the pocket of stream to keep them far enough away from the bank and moving ahead. Further ahead, more rafts passed, canoes, families, friends, laughing. Pointing. His dad bought the raft for ten dollars at a bait shop on the drive up. He was uncomfortable then, going into the shop and buying the raft. Paul could see it on his face. And he seemed uncomfortable now, spearing this way and that way, guiding the raft through the water. And before long, they were passing one of the custom-made rafts. No more laughing and pointing. Just stares. Paul didn't even look in their direction. He was focused on what was ahead, a clearing. Other families rested in the clearing, backsides in the sand of the riverbank, their arms wrapped lazily around legs, heads hanging down, beaten by the short interval of rapids he and his dad had just cleared without paddles in a ten-dollar plastic raft found hanging above the display of nightcrawlers in a dusty cardboard box at Denver's Bait and Tackle Shop. As the two swung into the clearing, Paul pulled at the sides, bringing the raft into a spot where the water was calm and tossed out, hanging the crook of his elbow onto the raft while his dad raised slowly and stepped into the water beside him. They walked onto the bank, pulling the raft behind them, and examined the men and boys drenched and banged up all along the bank. It was only then, when they were standing on the bank, Paul's dad stuck out his chest and nearly folded into the sand and rocks underfoot. He bent low, holding himself up with two large hands across his shaking kneecaps. Water dripped slowly from the tip of his nose and his hair hung in thick, black clumps over his eyes. And Paul stood beside him with his hand on his shoulder and then around his waist and then around him, holding him close enough to feel his heartbeat against his own chest. "Let go of me," his dad said. Paul stepped back slowly. "We made it," he said and tried a smile. He was still holding to his dad’s elbow. "Let go of me." He let his arm drop and watched his father stalk off up the bank, past the fathers and sons without looking up. None of the sons and none of the fathers offered to help him deflate the raft and fold it under his arm. It was nearly dark before he finished, and he walked very slowly back to the car. [Current Cowboy Jamboree call for Fiction and Non]
SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE ARE CLOSED-"Henry Chinaski is a Friend of Mine"-- Fall 2019 open call for grit lit stories and essays and art: We love ham on rye and we want good grit lit, be it in the vein of Father Bukowski or not. Deadline is September 7, 2019. Check out our back issues or look at CJ Press' book list to see the kind of stuff we dig. As always, our Jobbers page is open to rolling subs. Submit to cowboyjamboree@gmail.com. 
Our 3rd book is in the works too. Bull Men's Fiction editor-in-chief Benjamin Drevlow has delivered a killer manuscript of good grit: Ina-Baby, a love story in reverse by Benjamin Drevlow, 2019 from Cowboy Jamboree. Excerpt coming soon! |
Introducing JOBBERS. It's our first rolling submission and acceptance publication a couple of tabs over. As of December 2018 we are open for submissions all the time. Here we want grit lit, fiction or non, about the carny world of wrestling. Jake the Snake, Bruiser Brody, Ricky Steamboat, the von Erich brothers, Rick Rude, Dusty Rhodes, ya know? We plan on creatively showcasing prose on the Jobbers tab, and if all goes to plan, we'll have material for a Jobbers anthology late in 2019.
Our 2018 PUSHCART NOMINEES.
Congratulations and Good Luck!
From Issue 3.2 (Spring 2018):
Benjamin Drevlow, "Rusty, the Jesus Years"
Sheldon Lee Compton, "Remodeling"
C.W. Accetta, "Quik-Mart"
From Issue 4.1 (Fall 2018):
Jay Halsey, "Hard and Harder"
Amy Wilson, "Confessions of a Lovesick Garage Sale Queen: a Faux Memoir"
Kirk Lake, "Low Expectations"
Congratulations and Good Luck!
From Issue 3.2 (Spring 2018):
Benjamin Drevlow, "Rusty, the Jesus Years"
Sheldon Lee Compton, "Remodeling"
C.W. Accetta, "Quik-Mart"
From Issue 4.1 (Fall 2018):
Jay Halsey, "Hard and Harder"
Amy Wilson, "Confessions of a Lovesick Garage Sale Queen: a Faux Memoir"
Kirk Lake, "Low Expectations"
Our Magazine Style and Purpose
It's in the title.
COWBOY [kou-boi] (def.)
1. American plains animal herder who tends cows
2. one who is reckless or ignores risk, i.e. "cowboy attitude"
3. tradesman with questionable or atypical practices, i.e. "cowboy plumbing"
4. fast or careless driver on the highway, i.e. "slow down, cowboy"
5. slang for "outlaw"
JAMBOREE [jam-buh-ree] (def.)
1. a large celebration or party, typically boisterous
2. a carousel of noisy merrymaking
Follow us on Twitter @CowboyJamboree @gritvanwinkle and like us on Facebook
All original art by Adam Van Winkle unless otherwise noted.
It's in the title.
COWBOY [kou-boi] (def.)
1. American plains animal herder who tends cows
2. one who is reckless or ignores risk, i.e. "cowboy attitude"
3. tradesman with questionable or atypical practices, i.e. "cowboy plumbing"
4. fast or careless driver on the highway, i.e. "slow down, cowboy"
5. slang for "outlaw"
JAMBOREE [jam-buh-ree] (def.)
1. a large celebration or party, typically boisterous
2. a carousel of noisy merrymaking
Follow us on Twitter @CowboyJamboree @gritvanwinkle and like us on Facebook
All original art by Adam Van Winkle unless otherwise noted.