Start Reading In the Cut by Michael Lockett!

“In the Cut is a big-hearted collection set in Appalachia that explores the lives of individuals trying to get by in the best way they can. Michael Lockett skillfully portrays characters grappling with circumstances beyond their control, including a child coping with the isolation created by the actions of her meth-addicted mother, a man torn between caregiving duties and personal aspirations, and a young boy just on the cusp of understanding what his preference for playing with dolls might mean. Lockett writes beautifully, with empathy and an insider’s familiarity with the region.” – Geeta Kothari, Author of I Break for Moose

From the Publisher: “Life in Appalachia is like a kid standing in the center of a seesaw. It’s a fragile balance, somewhere between the old world and the new, flat-broke or getting by, rooted in place or getting out. Sometimes, folks here lose footing, lean too far one way or another. If one end of the seesaw comes down hard, it knocks them right off.

These are stories of hard-scrapped, everyday Appalachians. Think laid off miners, moms who garden and can food, gravediggers, dishwashers, Mennonite farmers, and big-box store cashiers. They inhabit hollers, rust belt towns, trailer courts, and farms. In the Cut, A teen faces a pregnancy scare as a mountaintop removal mining operation threatens her home. A twenty-something Chile’s dishwasher returns to his small town from the city to deal with his hoarder mom and her pet raccoon. A third grader destroys a schoolmate’s Lisa Frank art kit after her methed-out mom crashes into a small-town football hero’s car, and two moms come face-to-face in the checkout line at Walmart after their daughters plan to run-off to Florida and things end tragically.

But it’s not hardship that defines these folks. Rather, it’s their dynamic nature, their resilience that spurs them to get on with life the best they can. With little resources, no easy pass, no money-bought solution, no ready way out, In the Cut will leave you somewhere between the balance and the fall.”

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About the Author: Michael Lockett has an MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University. He’s a lover of the short story and inspired by the works of Breece D’J Pancake, Lewis Nordan, and Catherin Mansfield. His stories are published in the Northern Appalachian Review, Prometheus Dreaming, Twisted Vine, Hive Avenue, Taint Taint Taint, Matthew’s Place through the Matthew Shepard Foundation, History Through Fiction, and Quarter Press. He’s a 2022 nominee for the James Baldwin Literary Prize. In the Cut is his debut collection from Sunbury’s Catamount Press. He’s a former Peace Corps volunteer who served in Mauritania, West Africa. Originally from Central PA, he now lives in the Northside of Pittsburgh with his partner, cats, and birds.

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“The immersive stories in In the Cut are filled with imagination and empathy. The range of these stories is stunning: Michael Lockett skillfully depicts the minds and hearts of characters including a woman who pushes raccoon kits around her neighborhood in a baby carriage, to a Mennonite father caring for his gravely ill daughter, to a closeted teenager wondering what might await him if he leaves his small town, to a pair of adult brothers who pick up shovels and bury their deceased father because digging graves is their family business. In these stories,Lockett grapples with what it means to be from Appalachia and brings readers into the homes and churches and schools and hospitals on this land. He shows why some characters choose to stay and why, for others, the only option is to leave. Lockett writes about neighbors and families and what bonds people together and what they hide from one other. Although the characters who inhabit Lockett’s stories struggle and may be overlooked or underestimated, In the Cut is ultimately about how they watch out for, care, love, and support their friends, families, and communities. This collection should not be missed; it’s a book with a generous, pulsing heart.” – Karin Lin-Greenberg, Author of Faulty Predictions, Vanished, and You Are Here

 

More Than an Accident

I stood in the back of the funeral parlor next to Great Uncle Walter. I looked away to avoid the photo of the accident in his hand. I’d already seen it three times, though Mom told me not to look, and I feared I’d be caught sneaking another peek. Cold air came from the vents in the ceiling. Sad hymns played in the room.

There were around twenty people there. Two stood at Uncle Butch’s urn. Two greeted my father and grandparents who sat in the front row. Some, like my mom and Ms. Lorraine, sat talking in the back rows of chairs. Others stood, whispering in the corners of the room.

Beside Uncle Butch’s urn, there were blue flowers Mom called carnations spread out like peacock feathers. Their strange smell filled the room. They didn’t smell sweet and rosy like the ones in the yard, but more like powder and the air in the freezer at home.

When I turned back to Uncle Walter, he stood with his magnifying glass, showing some man the photo of Uncle Bruce’s crash. I looked toward Mom to be sure she wasn’t watching me. I looked again at the photo. The charred-out cab of Uncle Butch’s truck was turned around on the railroad tracks. The engine of the train was stuck into its side.

Walter put the magnifying glass close to the photo to show the man Butch’s skull, which could be seen through the dark cab in the driver’s seat of the truck.

The man let out a gasp.

“The train dragged the truck some five-hundred-feet. The explosion knocked the engine from the track,” Walter said.

I noticed Mom turn. She gave me a come-here curl of the finger, so I went to her through an aisle of chairs. I expected she’d scold me for looking at the picture again.

“Sit here,” she said.

I sat in the cold metal folding chair beside her.

Ms. Lorraine was turned in her seat in the aisle in front of us. “How old are you?” she asked me. She pinched the corner of her rose-tinted glasses with her finger and her thumb and looked me over.

“Nine,” I said.

“And aren’t you a picture of Uncle Butch and your dad when they were boys,” Ms. Lorraine said. “I should know. I babysat them. Didn’t they give me a hard time. You don’t do that to your mom?” She asked.

“No, ma’am,” I said.

My dad sat just ahead of us next to my grandparents. The back of his arm rested on the empty chair beside him, in view of Butch’s urn. I looked past Dad’s curled up fist to the urn.

Seeing the urn, I couldn’t help but wonder—

“How’d they fit Butch in such a small thing?” I asked Mom.

“They turned his bones into ashes, like a powder,” she said.

“Is his spirit in there?” I asked.

“Oh no. The spirit goes back to God who gave it,” Mom said.

“Oh,” I said.

“What do you remember most about your uncle?” Miss Lorraine asked me. Her face moved into my view, like the moon into the night sky. I caught the old-lady perfume of her and the Lifesaver breath mint that rolled in her tongue when she spoke. Her eyes tightened, and crow’s feet filled the corners of them when she forced a smile.

“His goat Lucifer,” I said.

“A billy goat!” she said. “Named Lucifer!” Then, she puffed her shoulders, drew her head back, and shook it. “That Butch! That’s a bad thing to do, name a goat after the Devil.”

“You had about thirty seconds to get from the car to Butch’s trailer door before Lucifer was bucking at your rear,” Mom said. “That goat and Butch were a lot alike.”

Just about then, Old Aunt May came through the door and caught my eye. She wore a long black dress and a hair covering on her head. She stopped at the urn and put her hand on it. She stood there for a while, then turned to my grandparents and my dad with a hanky under her nose.

“Aunt May. The old-time Pentecost,” Ms. Lorraine said.

“Folks don’t dress holiness like that anymore,” Mom said.

Aunt May joined hands with my dad and grandparents. She prayed in tongues and swayed. Her teeth chattered and her head quivered. The prayer grew to a wail that hurt my ear.

I pressed my head into my mom, and she put her arm around me.

“Don’t fear the Holy Spirit,” Mom whispered. Then, she kissed me on the head.

My father raised his arm in the air. “Bless the Lord,” he said. Then he started to pray in tongues too. His always sounded something like, “Kashunda-ka-book-kashunda—” And he said this over and over again.

Dad was a minister. Uncle Butch always called him Reverend Ike, after the preacher on the radio. Mom said this wasn’t nice because Reverend Ike was a crook.

After the prayer died down, a hush fell over the room.

I thought more about Miss Lorraine’s question.

I remembered most the day we were visiting Uncle Butch’s trailer. While my dad was in the yard, Butch asked Mom why she had bruises on her neck. Butch went outside. I watched from the screen door, as he raised his fist to my dad like a prizefighter. “I’ll teach you to cuff-up your wife,” he said. Then Uncle Butch and my dad went rounds. Lucifer sprinted around them making his terrible maa-maa sound. Uncle Butch gave my dad a bloody nose.

“Butch was always up to some trouble,” Miss Lorraine said. “I was at that tent revival, up Moss Creek, and Butch was cutting-up in his seat. Reverend Hugill stopped preaching and called him out in front of everyone. ‘Young man, if you don’t stop playing games with God, you’ll die a fiery death,’ Reverend said. Butch walked out. Never stepped foot in a church after that, as far as I know.”

Mom shook her head and lowered it. She locked her fingers together over her lap.

“That stayed with Butch,” Mom said. “He went AWOL from the army, afraid he’d die in a blast. He’d freeze to death before he’d let a kerosene heater in that old trailer of his. Turned to the drink, but never to the Lord.”

Miss Lorraine looked down at the floor.

I had just been listening to Cousin Walter in the back of the room. I never considered what happened to Uncle Butch was more than an accident.

I brushed my hand over Mom’s sleeve. It slid up. I noticed bruises. This was something I’d seen a few times before. Each time I saw it, it caused an ache in my gut, the feeling of wrong.

Mom was quick to pull her sleeve back down.

“What does it mean to play games with God?” I asked Mom.

“The Bible says to be cold or hot. If you are lukewarm, God will spit you out of his mouth. It means you choose good or bad. There’s nothing between.”

Her words confused me more. I never thought of Uncle Butch as bad. In fact, when he cuffed-up my dad for hurting my mom, I found Butch to be downright good. My father stood behind a pulpit, but he put his hands on Mom. That was worse I thought than anything Uncle Butch had ever done.

The photo of the accident came back to my mind. Then what Ms. Lorraine said the reverend told Butch. A fiery death. It came true.

It was Reverend Hugill who gave a sermon at the funeral. He stood by Uncle Butch’s urn. He was a big man with white hair in a black suit. When he spoke, his voice was so deep that I felt it in my chest. It silenced the room. The reverend gave us our due warning.

“We have a choice. God or Satan. Every man will die and stand before the Lord. Don’t play games with God, lest you end up like Butch,” Reverend said. “Do you know this day, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if you were to die, you’d make heaven your home?” he asked.

I shivered all over, when he asked this. To the reverend’s question, I thought, I do not know.

At the end of his sermon, folks went up to the reverend in tears.

He prayed for them as they stood with their heads low.

I wanted to go up too, but I was afraid. I couldn’t move.

After the service, we all stepped outside the funeral home. I stood between my parents, regretting I hadn’t gone to the reverend for prayer.

I heard the rumble of a jet and spotted its stream in the sky.

I grabbed Mom’s hand and held it tightly. I swallowed hard, feeling my throat tight against my collar and my tie, too scared to slip it loose.

I imagined the jet would burst into flames overhead and crash down on us. It seemed, if the reverend was right, I played games with God. Same with my dad. Just like Butch, seemed a fiery death was fit for us all.

I imagined Great Uncle Walter would stand with a photo of the plane crash that killed us. He’d find my skull with his clouded magnifying glass. It would be there in the heap of the funeral home’s wreckage, cratered into the ground with black smoke rolling from the crash.

This excerpt is published here courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted without permission.