Living Things

Living Things

Black Creek, South Carolina: a small town in the swamps that convinces itself that nothing bad has ever happened and nothing bad ever will. Black Creek is the sort of place where young girls roam the streets free to imagine who they are and who they’ll become. Where women sell pies and plants at the courthouse square. Where the fire department rescues cats from the tops of electric poles. And what trouble there is, they’ll tell you, stays past the town limits, in the run-down house-turned-strip-club and Lake Darpo, where certain birds are going extinct. These eleven closely related portraits show that the real threats have long taken root. Black Creek is a place of poignancy and absurdity, love and loss, loneliness and the brief charges of connection. Its residents will do almost anything to protect what they think is theirs. "The unforgettable characters in Living Things are trying their best, against the odds, to make their own good in a so-called nowhere town in rural South Carolina. With great empathy and the voice of a poet, Landon Houle puts this town and the lives lived there on the map. She has pointed her pen at a forgotten America and said: These people matter. Here are their stories."  —Nicholas Montemarano, author of The Senator’s Children "Houle is a writer to watch. This stunning debut is filled with fresh, affecting stories connected by character and place. In the small town of Black Creek, we meet women and girls toiling ceaselessly to outrun or outsmart their own pasts, to operate just beyond their current abilities, poignantly reminding us that everyone wants the same thing—love, belonging, more . Charged with moments of grace and strength, the book is best summed up by Miriam in 'Some Threat of Explosion': 'So much had happened to all of them, and it didn’t matter that you tried to be careful . . . all any of them could do was hold out their hands even as they showed their teeth.'"  — Barb Johnson, author of More of This World or Maybe Another "I love the way that Landon Houle writes. She is a stunning painter of unforgettable images, and she creates characters that I can swear I’ve met before, that I’ve known my whole life. Living Things is just that—totally alive and as real as your own memories. This is a writer to watch."  — Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will Landon Houle ’s collection of linked stories, Living Things , is the 2017 winner of the Red Hen Press Fiction Award. Her writing has won contests at Black Warrior Review , Crab Creek Review , Dogwood , and Permafrost . Other work has appeared in Baltimore Review , Crazyhorse , Natural Bridge , Harpur Palate , River Styx , The New Guard , and elsewhere. Landon was born in Brown County, Texas, and currently lives in Darlington, South Carolina. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Francis Marion University, and she is the fiction editor at Raleigh Review . https://www.landonhoule.com/ From “Where We Go” Moto signed her grandmother’s social security checks and cashed them at the gas station down by the bridge, and out of this, she’d give her father ten dollars, sometimes five if she felt it was all she could spare. You got a heart of gold, girl, Jerry told her once, but Moto knew this wasn’t true. Her grandmother wore a thin cross around her neck, and it shone and caught the light even in the dark bedroom. It was gold, and no matter how long Moto stared at it, it was nothing like what she felt. Whatever was in Moto’s chest was sharp and cold, and lately it seemed to grow and turn upon itself in ways that made Moto feel like something terrible was happening. Things change, Lonnie said. It seemed like the worst part of the world, and yet, there were times when it was all Moto wanted, for everything to be different from what it was. She looked down at her grandmother, this naked, wasted body that did not speak, that only stared without seeing. It could be over. Fast and easy. It was, like breaking into houses, a trick she’d learned from the movies. Moto’s hands moved for the pillow. Or she might have done it with the necklace, turning it, tightening it until it was over. No, it could not have been gold in Moto’s heart, but what it was would remain there, a twisted scrap, because from outside, from that impenetrable night, came a yelp and a snap. The sound stopped Moto where she was and then drew her to the porch where she’d tied the pup and where now, from the cheap metal rail, hung only a section of rope. Moto looked out into that darkness. During the day, Black Creek was so humid you’d swear you were walking through a cloud, but some nights the air seemed to thin, and like a kind of vacuum, it could take your breath away. In the streetlight, the moths and the June bugs floated and spun like motes, nearly weightless. There was no sign of the dog, there or beyond, but Moto went out anyway. She glanced back, but from here, she couldn’t see her grandmother. She stepped outside and pulled th