The best-written recent literary fiction: How to Dodge a Cannonball
Read the opening pages below.
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1 ANDERS TURNS SEVEN
“Good morning, niggers!” announced Anders, waving through the schoolhouse window. Cheer shone through his voice, emanating the joy of being alive and American, in that order. The bulk of the assembled students ignored him, but two waved back. Anders mentally marked them as his friends.
His mother thought he’d gone swimming, which had been true fifteen minutes ago. Anders found the water hard to enjoy: he couldn’t figure out floating, and letting the current drag him back to shallow depths tired him out. Now that he’d finished connecting with the Illinois River fish (and the rocks in the riverbed), it was time to learn.
Learning remained a core value, to the extent that he understood what core values were or why they mattered. Thus, it deserved special attention on his birthday. An event that mattered simply because it was his, and lowered the odds of an unprovoked kick from a moody adult. Visiting the only children in town that acknowledged him didn’t hurt.
Despite some dampness (overcast weather preempted his usual sun-drying method), he enjoyed his perch. Peering from the window put him above everything, as if he held court. A theater balcony had to look something like this, sans the risk of falling. He resolved to invite one of his two known friends to try it. The stools spread around the room looked shabby, so they’d appreciate the tip.
The teacher eyed Anders the way shopkeepers did, complete with a confused squint. Or practical: the teacher owned bifocals but only wore them under duress. Anders gleaned her first name from Mother, but proper learners stuck to last names. Bell never introduced herself, so she was the teacher. Shorter than most adults, equally confounding, and less impatient. She only looked tempted to smack him half of the time. But she always looked tired, even before he got on a roll.
Anders waved again, hoping to stir more of a reaction. Instead of responding, she turned back to her charges and opened a thick blue book. Tiny, tilted, hand-drawn letters dotted the browning pages.
“Are we doing figures?” asked Anders. He liked figures. Numbers made sense, which was why he could count all fifteen kids in the room and their twenty-two shoes. Words got complicated and made everything else complicated. Someone needed to find a way to replace them with numbers, so people could get through books faster. If the Bible used numbers, the world would be at peace.
With numbers, he also knew most of the black kids were older. The oldest were twice his age and had lost general enthusiasm for education. Sitting in on their session felt like capturing a piece of adulthood.
“Today, we’ll explore some history,” said the teacher. She expertly ignored and answered Anders at the same time. He considered it their personal game.
“How much history? Is there a lot?”
“Who knows why this town’s called Liberty Valley?” asked the teacher. She’d only ignored without answering, so Anders was ahead.
A girl two heads taller than Anders raised her hand. Anders might have called her cute, if his mother wouldn’t thrash him for that. Instead, he’d call her … something else.
She was very something else. “Robin.” The teacher acknowledged the girl with a point. The girl (Robin!) stood up (no shoes?) and spoke.
“Because we’re free.”
“Like me!” said Anders, participating.
“Yes, like you, Anders.”
The teacher had answered him without ignoring him. Anders was dominating this round of the game.
“We can be mayors,” Anders continued.
“No, we can’t.”
“Oh. Well, we can vote!”
“Just you.”
“Oh. Then Liberty Valley’s a dumb name.”
“Now then,” said the teacher. It was her go-to strategy when he’d made a point, but she planned to keep going. “Liberty Valley was founded in—”
“Mama calls it NiggerTown, which makes Auntie laugh. I think that’s nice, having your own town. Is there a WhiteTown? I hope they have a river.”
“It’s WhiteTown everywhere, Anders.”
“Oh.” Anders chewed on the words, and the whiff of venom that had entered the teacher’s voice. The sport had left the game. “That’s untoward, we should make a NiggerTown.”
A younger boy—one of the shoeless ones—in front made a sound between laughter and choking. Other students looked through Anders or made a show of staring at the teacher. For her part, the teacher started and stopped multiple responses, never making it past the first two or three syllables. Finally, Robin gave Anders the first look he could identify as a death stare.
Then Anders caught the edge of a familiar shape in his peripheral vision and let himself fall. He landed hard on his knees but knew worse approached.
Anders, like most surviving children, owned strong instincts. Those instincts told him to move after seeing his mother’s shadow. He heard metal ricochet off wood as he dove left, shielding his head with his forearms for the landing roll. By the sound, she’d only thrown a medium lid. That bode well: the medium cookware lacked the arrow-like speed of the small and the brutal heft of the large.
“Boy!” she shouted before launching a medium saucepan. “What in hell are you doing here again?”
“Learning,” volunteered Anders. He primed himself for a second roll, watching her hands. Whether she pitched with her main or off hand would shape his next move.
“At the nigger school?”
“It’s the only school here.”
“Are you a nigger?”
“Maybe?”
More on the book»
Literary fiction titles considered this month
Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Meet Me at the Crossroads by Megan Giddings
The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
I Found Myself by Naguib Mahfouz; translated by Hisham Matar; photographed by Diana Matar
The Slip by Lucas Schaefer
Endling by Maria Reva
Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
A Friend of Dorothy's by Richard Willett
Junah at the End of the World by Dan Leach
Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven
Fox by Joyce Carol Oates
How to Dodge a Cannonball by Dennard Dayle
Fresh, Green Life by Sebastian Castillo
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie
The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
Love Forms by Claire Adam
The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey
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