#ScottPrize Shortlist in Profile: Rusty Dolleman

Biography

I currently live in San Francisco, but grew up in a small town in the western part of Maine. Many of my best stories take place there, and although I’ve slowly acclimated to the city, my guess is that I’ll never stop writing about where I grew up, or about rural people in general.

I got my MA in Writing from the University of New Hampshire, and after that I was lucky enough to get a Wallace Stegner fellowship in Fiction from Stanford, where I continued to draft and develop the stories that make up Other People’s Kids. Since then, I’ve continued working at Stanford as a lecturer and writing consultant, as well as teaching distance-learning courses in Composition at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. I really enjoy all of my students. They work hard, and I’m always impressed by how they juggle their courses with job and family obligations.

Being from Maine, it goes without saying that Stephen King is a big hero of mine. His characters listen to the same radio station I listened to growing up after all, and drive on the same highways, and I’ve always admired his dedication to deep, nuanced characters. I’m also about as diehard a J.R.R. Tolkien fan as you’ll ever meet, although this isn’t really reflected in my short stories—at least not yet. I’m very, very honored to have made the shortlist for the Scott Prize.

The Interview

So where did the book begin for you, how did the book come to be written?

I’m not sure this book has a real “beginning,” in the sense that I sat down with the idea to write a short story collection with certain themes or settings or anything like that. Even the stories that “share” characters came about more by accident than any kind of plan. I’d be working on a scene or situation, and then suddenly realize “Hey, this guy is the same guy who did that other thing in that other story.” My sense is that the periods when I was intentionally trying to assemble enough material for an entire collection coincided with my worst writing, whereas the times when I simply focused on individual stories purely for their own merits were when it all came together.

What was going on in your life while you were writing it?

The earliest story here was written when I was 26. I’m 36 now. I don’t think I could really explain all that’s happened in that time, but it’s funny to think about the “outside events” I associate with individual pieces. I remember lying on the floor of my girlfriend’s apartment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire as I came up with the opening paragraphs of “Winter Break,” and realizing that I had the entire arc of a story right then and there. I was working at a running shoe store that year, and this was the first short story I was able to write all by myself outside of the grad school/workshop context, so I was pretty thrilled. By contrast, the last story written, “The Megabucks” was something I just returned to this past fall, after having not touched it for three whole years. I couldn’t believe how easy it felt to return to those characters. That feeling of being happy with one’s work never seems to change, no matter what other developments have happened in our larger lives.

What do you think were the real driving elements within the book — the things that moved it all forward for you?

When I look at these stories, many of them seem to be about some intersection of violence and/or sexual attraction and/or class. Sometimes all three.

How long did it take to bring it all together?

Ten years, and counting.

Who was important to you in developing your writing life?

I’ve had a lot of great teachers, starting with my own family. My brother was really the driving force behind my own reading habits, and they’ve all been very supportive of my artistic pursuits from the very beginning. Charlotte Bacon, my advisor and professor at UNH, was especially great at pushing me to do my best work and in showing me how short stories work. I think that, without her, it would’ve taken an extra ten years to get where I am now.

Where do you think you’ll go to next in your writing — what are you working on now?

I have a novel that I’ve worked on pretty intensely, about a militia group that takes over an isolated small town in the American Northwest. It’s currently on hiatus, apparently at a really nice farm in the country where it gets to run and play with other struggling novels all day long. In the meantime, I’m working on some very rough ideas for fantasy/horror epics and continuing to polish my backlog of short stories about stolid, non-emotive Maine folk.

My editor.

September 1981

They watch the pre-fight sitting two abreast on each hotel bed, pull cans of beer from the red-and-white cooler Corey brought from Michigan. They can see Caesar’s Palace from the window, the ring of lights where the real Sugar Ray and the real Thomas Hearns are dancing around each other. The girls (one a real blonde, the other a fake) toss the pillows onto the floor and sit behind the men with their backs to the headboards. Their legs are tucked underneath their miniskirts, and they drink screwdrivers from glasses Ted found in the bathroom, talk to each other in low, barely perceptible tones. They’d been friendly enough when they’d arrived, giving hugs and kissing cheeks, but now that the fight is about to start they’ve retreated into their own private language. They know that they’re just a sideshow, a story to tell back home, and even though Howard can’t hear what they’re saying he can tell they’re talking shop, their words sawed-off, their laughter clipped and knowing. Eventually, he begins to feel crowded, moves into the lone plastic chair in the corner.
      “You girls from Vegas originally?” Corey asks.
      The girls stare. “No,” the one behind Corey and Ted, the real blonde, finally says.
      “No? Where’re you from?”
      “California.” The girl takes the last drink from her glass, swirls the ice around its bottom. Corey nods and they all turn back to the TV, except for Ted, who, even though he knows less about boxing than Howard, had never taken his eyes from the screen in the first place. The bells rings, and fight begins.
      For the first minute-and-a-half, no one says a word. Even the girls fall silent, respecting the enormity of the moment. Hearns stalks Leonard across the ring, left arm slung down to his waist, daring the quicker man to come to him, to show off those sweet skills. But Leonard doesn’t bite, backpedals away. After the bell, Leonard gives a playful push to the side of Hearns’ head, and Hearns responds by punching him on the chin. “Good for you Tommy,” Howard hears himself say, but Leonard just waggles his rear end against the ropes, and is still smiling when the camera cuts to his corner a few moments later.
      When the bell for the second round sounds, Hearns practically leaps off his stool. “Long fight, Tommy baby,” Corey says, “long fight,” and the men all murmur their assent.
      “Yeah, Jesus Christ Tommy, relax.” Perry takes his company hat off and then immediately places it back on his head in what seems like one complete, fluid motion, a nervous habit Howard remembers his son displaying as far back as little league. On the other bed, Ted shifts his weight. “For Christ’s sake, calm the fuck down,” he says, his voice so soft that Howard isn’t sure if he’s talking to Hearns or to himself.
      “Did you call Mom?” Perry’s hat comes on and off again, this time punctuated by a quick run of his hand through his hair.
      “She wasn’t there.” What Perry is really asking is whether or not Howard had told her how much money he’d bet.
      “Who’d you talk to?”
      “Valerie.” Howard says. “She said Rick’s pissed he didn’t come.”
      “Yeah right,” Perry says.
      “They’re all there now, though,” Howard says, meaning in his living room, and the whole family: Valerie and her husband Rick, Perry’s other sister Cindy and her husband Andrew, Perry’s own wife Mary and all of the grandkids. Jenny would be there now as well, home from her doctor’s appointment, all of them watching the fight on his big screen TV, eating and drinking daiquiris and taking turns to go out onto the deck and smoke and watch the kids jump in and out of the pool.
      “And here we are,” Perry says.
      Howard had been relieved himself to have Valerie pick up the line. He knew she’d never ask about the money for one thing, and when she told him Rick was second-guessing himself for not going, he’d reminded her that they were just going to watch on TV like everyone else. “Oh come on, Dad,” she’d said, “You’re having fun.” And because it was easier, he’d agreed that he was. By the middle of the third round, the men have begun to relax. Leonard’s face, that perfect, pretty face has finally been marked, and he is not so much backpedaling now as he is simply fleeing, side-skipping away and away and away from Hearns. With a minute remaining, Hearns finally finds him in the middle of the ring, and when he actually makes Leonard miss twice in a row, the men rise off the beds, high-fiving and shouting. The girls hold their palms over their drinks and even though they seem annoyed at first, they remember to smile. As the men sit back down they can hear celebrating in the next room, reminding them that they are not alone in this, and when the fourth round begins in the same way the third ended the girls trade their drinks for beers from the cooler and move to the front of the beds. The real blonde wraps her arms around Corey’s neck, watches with her head on his shoulder, and the other girl (whose name is Charity) does the same with Perry. “Is this okay, honey?” she asks.
      “I don’t know,” Perry says. “Let me check with my Dad.” Everyone laughs, even Howard.
      “That’s your dad?” the blonde asks. “Oh my god, I thought he was your brother.”
      “I know, me too.” Charity says. “How old are you?”
      “Old enough to know better,” Howard says, but he can feel himself smiling.
      “Better than what?” the blonde girl asks. The fourth round ends, and when the network cuts to a Toyota commercial a hail of obscenities comes through the wall from the next room. The men grin and chuckle, feel lucky that their own company is doing relatively well against the Japanese.
      “What’s that about?” The blonde is up on her knees now, massaging Corey’s shoulders and leaning in close, brushing her breasts against his back.
      “It’s the competition.” Charity glances over at Howard. “Right?”
      “Right,” Howard says, and he wonders why she’d looked to him for confirmation on this.
      “I buy American.” She takes Perry’s hat from his head, places it on her own. “See?” She cranes her neck to peer out from underneath the brim.
      “Yeah?” Perry half-turns in her arms. “What kind of car do you drive?” She ducks her head, says something indecipherable into his shoulder. “That’s what I thought,” Perry says, reaching around to pull the hat back off her head. Charity laughs, smoothes her hair back into place, then slides her arms back around his waist even more tenderly than before.
      “Hey,” she says. “At least it’s an American car.”
      “For the moment,” Perry says, and the men murmur again. When the fifth round is underway and the men are once again lost in watching Hearns track Leonard around the ring, Charity takes the hat from Perry’s head a second time. When she catches Howard staring at her, she shrugs.

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