Blue Suburban Skies
Richard Peabody
Main Street Rag Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-59948-376-4

Reviewer: Alice Osborn


          Taking its cue from the catchy lyric in the chorus of the Beatles’ iconic “Penny Lane,” Richard Peabody’s Blue Suburban Skies also uses place, music, and character to transform the particular into the universal. In this new collection of eleven short stories from the prolific editor, poet, and fiction writer, characters take an emotional or a physical risk in places where the ordinary is expected. Don’t let the title fool you: only half of these stories reside in suburbia, the rest include various settings such as Charleston, Woodstock, Western Carolina, Taos, New Mexico, and the Eastern Shore. Peabody expertly explores the suburban angst of forced friendliness with neighbors and with our families beyond the confines of suburbia.

          Peabody is at his strongest while capturing a male voice that’s sensitive, yearning, and funny. Angry that The Book Shop exists and angry at himself for purchasing an erotica magazine, Edgar in “Gunpowder Divertimento” decides to gun down Mr. Eyebrow, the young bookshop owner. Fate has other plans for Edgar and in the aftermath, he befriends the owner’s father. Now what?

          Mostly artists, poets, and teachers, these characters find themselves on the outside looking in, and they don’t like the status quo. Their lives, jobs, and relationships are going okay, but they also remember a time when their days held more excitement, art, and beauty. They recall connecting to something larger than themselves and they want that feeling back. But before this wish is granted, each must undergo an “Ah, Ha” moment while meeting the new stranger in town or becoming the stranger himself.

          In “A Great Big Smile on a Little Bitty Girl,” the protagonist, Scott Renfro, along with his neighbor, Dixie, and her daughter Hayley, spy a bear family eating out of the bakery’s dumpster. While this scene transpires, Renfro thinks about his own family he has escaped. A new father, Renfro experienced his daughter suffer a near-tragic bee sting, which resulted in him fleeing New York City to live in Woodstock. He thinks his wife won’t forgive him and contemplates starting an affair with Dixie. She comes across as someone who wants to coach him to better mental health, but as he gets to know Dixie, she also has some personal burdens of her own.

          In the titular story, Frank is an ex-hippie living in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and teenage son. His wife has just discovered his son’s badly rolled joints in his sock drawer and wants Frank to do something about it. After assuring his wife he’ll take care of things, Frank walks across the street to his neighbor, Walt, who’s putting out his recycling. Frank thinks Walt’s a loser, but he still shares his son’s weed with him. In the course of their walk and weed, they reminisce about Woodstock and salivate over the sticky buns from the neighborhood bakery. Maybe they have more things in common than their street address.

          In “The Copy Queen of Taos” Indian Eddie Luhan doesn’t know where he’ll hang out after Dori’s Bakery closes. A local celebrity poet, Eddie’s output has shriveled up due to writer’s block from his ex-girlfriend, Star, stealing all of his handwritten verses:

After that he’d been angry. Revenge fantasies blossomed bigger and wider than desert flowers after a summer rain. He wanted to hurt Star in the worst way. She knew he didn’t write with a computer. She’d taken his originals and his drafts. He had nothing to show for the past five years, the years since the appearance of his only book of poems—Ghost Oceans. She’d taken everything. This wasn’t about heartbreak. He hadn’t loved her in awhile, he had come to pity her, and to wish to help her mood swings. No, his reaction was born of betrayal. Pure and simple.

          Should he enact this revenge or stop blaming her and move forward? Peabody earns his ending for this story.

          “Country Porch Lights” is another romantic entanglement story, but unlike “The Copy Queen of Taos,” this one may end before it really begins. Wyatt, the faculty poet at a writers’ conference retreat in the Western Carolina mountains, falls in love with Callie, a native of the region, much to the horror of his literary colleagues. He’s completely captivated after his first time meeting her:

Wyatt watched her pick some ice from her tea and pop it in her large, soft mouth. She chewed the ice and surveyed the tourists who were multiplying as evening approached. His shirt had dried out pretty quickly. He’d sat and listened to her talk about her family’s market and spent a lot of time studying her bare feet as she slipped off her sandals and stepped first one and then the other foot in and out of a mud puddle. She’d coat her toes and wash them clean again. Over and over. And it seemed completely playful and unconscious. He couldn’t recall saying a word.

          What Callie lacks in sophistication, she makes up for in spunk and spirit. Before he heads back to his home in Charlottesville, Wyatt knows what he has to do to keep their relationship alive.

          Peabody takes his readers on a journey as he explores how place can be an excuse, an escape, or a means to enlightenment. Place is not only where one lives; it is also a ticket to self-discovery. In the process of the plot unfolding and after a twist ending, his characters see the world differently. These guys are most likely to change because they are thinkers who thirst for inspiration. They aren’t your stereotypical male buffoons from a Hardees commercial. Their transformations create ripple effects, impacting the lives of other characters. And, we see our own lives in these characters’ struggles and challenges; hence, we too are impacted. Peabody successfully shuttles the personal into the universal, making Blue Suburban Skies a memorable success.