A New Story by Michelle Collins Anderson (fiction ’13 ) from Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies

EXTRA INNINGS

by Michelle Collins Anderson

Jenna and her brother Boo belted out “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” in the back seat of the Pontiac station wagon on the way to the Murphy family’s first-ever Cardinal baseball game. Boo — not quite three and unable to count backwards — screamed the chorus at the top of his lungs: Take one down, pass it around! At ninety-one bottles, their dad barked from the driver’s seat: “Put a lid on it, Pork Chop.”

Jenna almost said, “Put a bottle cap on it,” but she could see her dad was already mad about something. His brown eyes were almost black as he glanced from the rearview mirror to her mother, whom he called “Doodle” because she was such a scatterbrain. In Jenna’s family, there were lots of nicknames. Jenna was “Pork Chop,” even though she didn’t like pork chops at all, or even bacon. Her dad made “Pork Chop” sound sweet, but Jenna had the feeling he was making fun of her for something she couldn’t help: she had always been plain and a little pudgy. Meanwhile, her brother “Boo-Boo” or “Boo” (was it possible to have a nickname for a nickname?) had been a “mistake,” according to her dad, although her mother shushed him when he said that. Even the station wagon — a long yellow banana of a car flanked by dark wooden paneling — was dubbed the “Big Bruiser.” Her father was just “Dad” to Jenna and Boo and “Joe” to her mother. But then, Jenna knew he couldn’t be expected to give a nickname to himself. She was only eight, but she knew that wasn’t how things worked.

Read the rest of the story at this link: https://blogs.wp.missouristate.edu/elder-mountain/