DARKNESS ON THE EDGE: Tales Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen

  To my wonderful wife Dee, who held my hand while I was working on a dream

  Loves ya

  Acknowledgements

  No book is ever put together alone, and that most certainly holds most true for an anthology. So, for fear of sounding like a literary version of an Academy Award acceptance speech, it’s time for the thank y’alls:

  Thanks to the contributors, for sharing my vision and delivering on your promises. One of the neatest things I noticed while putting this book together was that hardly anyone asked what the pay rate was; they wrote, submitted, got accepted, and then asked (and in some cases, not even then). As one writer said, “It didn’t occur to me to ask how much I was getting paid. I just wanted to be a part of it.” It was that kind of enthusiasm and support that kept me from feeling like I was just out there dancing in the dark.

  Special thanks to Lee Thomas, who grasped early on exactly what I was trying to do. His story certainly reflects that, and his support and belief in this project never wavered; and to Mike Arnzen, whose enthusiasm for this idea nearly matched my own, and who suggested the names of and gave contact info for a few of the authors who appear in these pages. Both you guys kept my head above water when I was ready to ditch the life preserver and swallow some saltwater. You guys gave me reason to believe.

  To Russ Schweizer, Lorne Dixon and Tom Piccirilli, for their longtime support and friendship. A guy couldn’t ask for better friends in this life.

  To Brian Keene and Brian Hodge: my deepest gratitude and my sincerest apologies. It was never a case of your best not being good enough.

  To Ellen Datlow, for letting me bounce a few ideas off of her early on (and yeah, to rant a bit), and whose advice and honesty helped tremendously as I stepped into the fire.

  To Mona Okada, for always politely taking my phone calls and who always communicated with the highest display of courtesy and professionalism; who, in short, gave the legalities I needed to address a human touch.

  To Bruce Springsteen, for the magic.

  To Pete Crowther, for getting behind this project right from my first email and riding this thing to the end. For everyone who believes there are still gentlemen left in the world of publishing…well, he’s living proof.

  To John and Bill, my blood brothers.

  To my mother and my grandparents, who always encouraged this kid with his “nose in a book.” As much as for anyone, this is for you.

  To my great kids, Jessica and Jason. My beautiful rewards…

  Introduction

  Grown’ up in the Darkness at the Edge of My Book of Dreams

  What you hold in your hands is not as much a book as it is a concept, one that maybe has not been done in quite this way before.

  This isn’t to suggest that music and literature have never met on the creative crossroads. There’s been music-based fiction anthologies (Jeff Gelb’s Shock Rock and Shock Rock II; It’s Only Rock and Roll: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Stories, including “Rock and Roll Heaven” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, who, incidentally, is also the author of “Greasy Lake”, a story inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s “Spirit In the Night”), songs, entire albums and even concert tour themes inspired by literature and literary figures (from artists as diverse as Springsteen, Metallica and Britney Spears), anthologies inspired by more than one musician (editor Matthew Miele’s Lit Riffs has Tom Perrotta, Jonathan Lethem, Aimee Bender and others penning tales inspired by a variety of songs, including Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” and Paul Simon’s “Graceland”) and anthologies inspired by the work of a single artist (Stars: Stories Based on Janis Ian Songs, co-edited by Ian and Mike Resnick, featuring sf writers such as David Gerrold, Mercedes Lackey, Harry Turtledove, Orson Scott Card, Spider Robinson and others). But I don’t believe there’s ever been an anthology that’s assembled such an eclectic group of writers of several genres–horror, mystery, suspense, science fiction, fantasy–given the freedom to choose as their inspiration any song, from any album, encompassing the full body of work of a single artist with the diversity, discography and dynamic of Bruce Springsteen.

  Legendary rock musician. Poet laureate of the working class. Voice of America’s conscience. Anyone with such status is sure to influence and inspire. Indeed, Sean Penn writes about Springsteen in The 2008 TIME 100:

  “In the chain of our responses to the most influential art, or artists, of our day, there is a link for most of us, an image…We see one hand passing a baton into another, the influences of the influential. And in that rite of passage, Bruce Springsteen is no exception.”

  Springsteen has been the subject of many nonfiction books. His lyrics can be found quoted as epigraphs in a couple of novels by Stephen King (most memorably, of course, “Jungleland” in the opening of The Stand). Elizabeth Wurtzel not only dedicates her book More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction to Springsteen, but names him as a major influence. Bobbie Ann Mason’s novel In Country not only opens with a quote from “Born in the U.S.A.”, but she’s said that the entire novel is in homage to that 1984 album. Countless singers have admitted Bruce’s influence on their work. Springsteen’s presence can even be felt outside the creative arena: John Kerry used “No Surrender” during his presidential campaign in 2004.

  What exactly is it that draws so many to Springsteen’s lyrics? What is it about those words that enable so many creative minds to take away so much from them and apply their meaning to their own work? To use them to reflect their own writing? To use them, even, to rally a political quest?

  The answer to that would be different, I suppose, for everyone.

  For me, I think it’s the brutal honesty of Springsteen’s songs. One of Springsteen’s endearing, and enduring, qualities is his ability to tap so deeply into the human spirit, to not shy away from man’s weaknesses, his vulnerability to failure, to feel pain and inflict pain, to question himself, doubt himself, question the world around him. The world of Springsteen’s songs is our world, for the most part, wrought with the same tensions and uncertainties and fears. As American novelist and physician, Dr. Walker Percy, once said of Springsteen: “He sings of us while singing to us”.

  Springsteen calls up our values, and then he strips them away, cutting down to the bone. What’s most important in your life? Your kids? Your spouse? Your home? Your job? Your freedom? It can all be gone, Springsteen tells us, in a moment. From men nostalgic about the hometowns they grew up in, to the beaten men giving the best of themselves over to the factories and highways of their work (and in many cases, the work of their fathers before them), to the men who left parts of themselves scattered on the battlefields of war or on the battlegrounds of love, to men searching for who they used to be and boys in hot rods searching for who they might become, to brave men gone cold with fear to tough men gone soft with love, we’re all afraid to lose our tenacious grip on who we are and what we are and all we hold dear.

  We all have hungry hearts: the desire to love those who love us, to succeed in our careers and our relationships and our private endeavors, to live life with clear minds and unencumbered souls. For the most part, a good story, like a good song, explores the confrontations and inner turmoil that result when one or more of these things are taken away. So many of Springsteen’s characters find themselves thrust into such a situation, through the loss of one or more of the things that matter most to us: a relationship, a job, self-image, self-confidence, freedom, dignity, choice.

  Loss is the common thread, in addition to the so
urce of inspiration, that runs through the stories found in this anthology (along with love and moral redemption, it’s one of Springsteen’s most-used themes). The tales in these pages all involve loss on some level, in some form, just as you would find it in so many of Springsteen’s stories.

  And that’s just what Springsteen gives us: stories. Lyrical short stories. Springsteen is not feeding us hollow prose in the form of mindless pop. He’s sitting up around the campfire and telling us stories. Life stories.

  And stories beget stories. Ideas beget ideas. Creativity begets creativity.

  One day some years ago, maybe stuck for inspiration or searching for a new story idea and wondering what it was that moved me, something I connected to that could spark my own creativity, I started to wonder if I could take a Bruce Springsteen song and find enough there to write a story of my own (I was then unaware of Boyle’s “Greasy Lake” or any other Springsteen-inspired writings). To allow the images and the lyrics and the themes to fit themselves into the confines of a story that would be, ultimately, uniquely my own.

  Not long after this initial thought, I sat down and did just that. I felt good about it. The story did exactly what I had set out to do with it.

  I was off and running.

  I mentioned the idea to other writers, and piqued their interest. I started to think I might really be onto something here. Having no clue what I was doing or what I might be getting myself into, I wrote up a proposal and sent it to several publishers.

  Enter Pete Crowther.

  And thus, to the book you now hold. This concept made concrete.

  I was fortunate enough to find enough writers who understood what I was trying to do, who were passionate Springsteen fans, who grasped the notion that his music could influence their writing. How it would all come together was something I could only, in the beginning, wonder about.

  If I had any fears, they were quickly squashed as the stories began to trickle in.

  The authors did exactly what I asked of them. They shared my vision and my passion. They each took a step–and in most cases, many steps–beyond the lyrics. What might the narrator of “Something In the Night” have found there in the darkness? What sins might need to be faced in “My Father’s House”? Who, or what, might really be vying for Mary’s soul out there on “Thunder Road”? What ghosts might be dredged up as you face your past walking the “Streets of Philadelphia”? What secret love might a man keep in the “Darkness on the Edge of Town”? For how long, and at what price, will a man hold onto the love he’s found in “Candy’s Room”?

  The bridge between song and story does not span nearly as wide as it may seem. For practical and legal reasons, you won’t find Rosalita or Crazy Janey or Wild Billy or Joe Roberts or Bobby Jean or any of the characters in Springsteen’s repertoire, nor their stories, in these pages. What you will find is the themes in the songs, and I hope you can feel those songs in these stories. I hope they succeed in making you feel that none of these stories would have been written without the songs that came before them.

  Though not a prerequisite, you might want to read the lyrics or, better yet, listen to each song represented here before reading each story. You might then easier feel Springsteen’s influence waft through the words. At worst, you’ve maybe revisited a Springsteen song you haven’t listened to in a while. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, in any event. Reading and listening to Bruce Springsteen.

  No, not a bad way to spend a few hours at all.

  Editing this book made me go back over so much of Springsteen’s work, made me connect to so much of it in ways I had not done so before. It also gave me exposure to some authors with whom I was not familiar, and gave me work from other authors whom I have long admired. Thanks to all, for being in my book of dreams. Tough as the road was, it all paid off.

  As fans of both Bruce Springsteen and fine fiction, I hope it does for you, too.

  So…Clarence is making that sax talk. Little Stevie’s strumming that guitar. Bruce is stepping up to the mike. He’s got stories to tell. And so, too, do these authors.

  Let’s rock.

  –Harrison Howe

  May 2008

  Nothing Forgiven

  by Lee Thomas

  (Inspired by “Something In the Night”)

  You drive south on Kingsley. At your back, the funeral of an uncle and the irritation of the family home, chatting uncomfortably with the strangers you call mom and dad and Aunt Lois. Beyond the windshield low buildings approach–shops and restaurants–all pasted against a sky of granite. Like familiar melodies, long unheard and thought forgotten, memories of youth return, rising from the houses, the road and the street signs marking familiar intersections.

  So much about the city is different, but even more is the same. After thirty-three years, details you thought long eroded emerge in sharp relief, chasing you from one landmark to the next.

  Long ago, you made a promise, swore you’d never return to this place. What you did here–what you allowed to happen in order to escape–was just too much to accept. You put the events down to dream, to delusion, to a mind soused with liquor. You saw things that could never be. And for many years, you blocked it out entirely. Jody. Bobby. They were hardly considered over the years. Now though, with your promise broken and the past’s topography rising, they return, joining you in the car like phantom passengers.

  A pang of guilt cuts your stomach. You search the row of low buildings for a bar, hoping to numb the ache with a shot of single malt. The drive to Newark is long enough without the company of such needling companions. You certainly don’t want them sharing the flight back to Dayton, back to Susan.

  Your wife is already furious with you. She resented your desertion, reminding you time and again that you couldn’t afford such a trip. The house needs a new roof; the toilet leaks, needs replacing; there is mould in the basement. Right up until you left for the airport, she reminded you how many times you claimed to hate the city of your birth. But you know her concern isn’t for you. These days, it never is.

  You can’t blame her. How can you? The accident was such a terrible thing. An evening run, a reckless driver. An active, beautiful woman paralyzed, the prisoner of a wheelchair. Her emotions were bound to be as broken as her spine. And though you can help your wife adapt to the physical limitations of her new condition, you are helpless to stop her depression, her anger, her fits of destructive rage.

  After three years, you are as much a captive of the accident as Susan.

  You go to work, come home. You try to make her comfortable, endure her irrational outbursts, her phases of black despondence, sometimes weeks long. The settlement is spent. Your lawyer was lazy, taking an insufficient sum, and the bills keep coming. Month after month, check after check, you never seem to make a dent.

  Susan was right; you can’t afford this trip, but you need it. You need to experience something beyond her disapproval and the pile of bills on the kitchen table. Yes, you hated this place. Returning was simply an excuse, a location away from the woman you love, because being with her hurts so damned bad that you thought it would kill you.

  You tell yourself Susan will be okay. Her sister is taking care of her for a couple of days. They get along well. Susan is likely grateful to be rid of you, despite her protests.

  Across the street, its sign glowing in the fading evening light, you see a bar. One drink, you think, just something to sand down the edges.

  In the bar, you sit on a stool, watch the bartender shake a martini. You run your drink order over in your mind as if you might forget it, though it hasn’t changed in over three decades: scotch, neat.

  But when the bartender, a young man with a shag of dark hair, leans on the bar and asks, “ ‘Can I getcha?” you say, “Gin and tonic.”

  Jody hates the smell of whiskey.

  The ache in your belly redoubles, and you squeeze your eyes closed, holding back the memory of a beautiful girl. Jody wants to be remembered, wants you to remember her, b
ut you aren’t ready. Not yet. Not here.

  You drink quickly and order another. The taste of gin is like blood on your tongue, reminding you of pain, but you drink until the second glass is empty.

  Head lighter and belly heavier with gin, you walk out of the bar into the fading evening light. It will be night soon, another night on the circuit. But no, the circuit is broken. Your parents railed with age-thin voices against the new buildings–a sewage treatment facility, some other construction–that now rise on Ocean, blocking off the street that was an integral part of the loop. Some of the bars remain, certainly the boardwalk.

  You wander to the corner and turn left. There is plenty of time before the flight.

  As a kid, you spent weekend evenings walking up and down Ocean, taking energy and joy from the cruising youths and the pulse of rock and roll beating between the ribs of the shore side bars. When you were old enough to drive and owned a car of your own, you joined the thundering parade on The Circuit.

  Round and round.

  You cross Ocean Avenue, walking with uncertain steps toward the Boardwalk while trying to remember how you felt on those long ago nights. You imagine cars and chrome, conjure crowds of people, their faces blurred and dull. You struggle with the mental film, but it will not focus, and nothing else about those years emerges. Even Jody and Bobby are absent for the moment. Too much time gone. You are a father now, a grandfather. It doesn’t seem possible. Your children are older than you were the night you left this place. Your daughter’s wonderful son is nearly a year old.

  For a while there, only a handful of years, you considered yourself to be on the easy side of life. Your children were educated, had families of their own, and you and Susan still had good money in the bank. The promise of retirement and comfort was already whispered in your ear. Then, Susan was run down, and then the hospital, the therapy, the wheelchair. The endless stack of bills.