The Black Box: A Short Story Response
I read Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and was floored enough to write a response.
I happened across a tweet today that sent me on a rabbit hole exploration of author Shirley Jackson.
I learned she had a number of books and various volumes that I would probably add at some point in time to my to-read list; but something made me click on a short story she published in the June 26th, 1948 edition of The New Yorker.
Now as I’ve written already, I have been slowly coming to terms with the ideas of utopias as utter bullshit and trash after spending time living inside the thought experiment/short story creations of Omelas, a creation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s (If you have not please, I implore you to read it The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas) and Um-Helat, a respondent creation by N.K. Jemisin (please also read The Ones Who Stay and Fight) earlier this year. But this…this horrific masterpiece is the most brilliant thing I have ever read thus far.
It starts off simple enough. A small town, somewhere normal — could honestly be anywhere — , where people are gathering for some kind of public event. A lottery is what they call it. And the people are there, making small talk, conversing about typical town-ly matters and what not (kind of how Omelas starts really), and as the story progresses this slow horror builds as you begin to realize exactly what the price of keeping things “normal” and “civilized” means in this quaint little town, especially as the population has now reached a healthy 300 people. I won’t spoil it for you but I will say I’ve read some horrifying shit this year: Kindred by Octavia Butler was the first, A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was the 2nd, and now this short story with it’s clear yet ambiguous ending is coming in at a solid and healthy 3rd.
The interesting thing about this allegory though is not the ambiguity. It honestly doesn’t matter what the people do and that is the point Shirley was trying to make. No matter the town, no matter the place, no matter the ritual or why it started; as long as the price for normalcy remains tied to the suffering of another human being, there can never be a justification for it. Which is interesting because in an interview excerpt I read on Wikipedia, she said the most common question she used to get at first was, how can I go there? A fact made horrifying by the fact that the readers of the New Yorker in 1948 were predominantly white and male literati; elite and academic (though given the current Karen epidemic and my experience in customer service, I’m certain there were quite a few white women looped into that crowd too).
What I saw in this story was an allegory that so perfectly encapsulated the All Lives Matter/ MAGA/ White Supremacist camp mindset in a mere 3,405 word story.
And because I am above all things a student and a writer. I chose to follow in the footsteps of my Mufasa and my Rafiki and craft a short story in response. Though I’m taking Rafiki’s advice and cutting the word count in half because I have some more writing to do tonight and I ain’t trying to overwork my wrists.
Additional Inspiration:
THE BLACK BOX by Jael R. Bakari
Clyde Dunbar was a good man. A respectable man. He paid his taxes as he should, he planted his corn on time like everyone else, and he’d never done anything even remotely horrible to anyone in town. He never cheated on Janey — his wife of 25 years. He always lent a hand to his neighbor and he was in church twice a week: once on Wednesday for Bible study and all day Sunday, making sure to stay behind to help with the clean-up of the Sanctuary. He was a good man. A godly man. And he remained so, through all the years he remained so. Even when they came for Ashley, his oldest daughter ten Junes ago, he stayed good and godly. And Ashton two Junes ago.
He remained godly and good, for keeping the good of the town in service of God is what he’d seen his father and his father’s father do for as long as the family histories could recall. It was their way; had always been their way.
But —
“How big is it?” he remembered asking.
He didn’t remember much of the conversation prior to that. Doctors have a funny way of going on about things men like him didn’t understand. Words like “alveolular grandules” and “metastasized” and “frontal lobe”. Them words didn’t make much sense to a man like him. He’d had a fairly ordinary education after all. But tumor — that word he knew. The Martin’s had a son with it once, oh about 4 Junes ago. Shame what it did to that boy.
“‘ Bout 4 cm’s from what we can tell so far,” the doctor had said. “Still need to run some more tests to get a full handle on it.” The doctor had paused. Clyde never understood why they did that. He’d survived 50 June’s for Christ’s sakes, just speak. Besides Clyde had used his measuring tape a lot in his wood shop, 4 centimeters was pretty small; right?
“The size of that one isn’t our primary concern,” there the doctor went, pausing again. “It’s just, that’s one of the few we can see.”
“Few?” Clyde asked. “As in — “
“They’ve metastasized across most of your pulmonary system and well into parts of your brain responsible for — “
“A few?” Clyde repeated.
The doctor sighed. “Quite a few actually Mr. Dunbar.”
That had been the most genuine look Clyde’d seen on another man’s face in his 50 years. Just shy of pity but a little more than worry.
“How long I got?”
“3…maybe 6 months?”
“I’d miss next June then?” Clyde asked.
The doctor nodded. “More than likely.”
That was May 27th.
On May 28th Clyde found it hard to attend bible study. He instead spent the night talking with Horace, his third son. He didn’t tell him or Herbert, his fourth son, what he and his Janey knew about next June when Horace would be old enough to stand in Clyde’s place. He just talked with him. Something about dying on a day that wasn’t June 27th, and knowing it was coming, made him want to just talk to his son. He learned a lot about Horace that day. Turns out his son was a bit of an artist. Pretty damn good one too from the drawings he showed him. He had a way with colors that seemed lacking in most things he’d seen. Then again Clyde reckoned he never paid much attention to colors prior to May 27th of that year.
On May 29th Clyde took Herbert out for ice cream and a ride on the Merry Go Round four towns north of here. He’d been too afraid to go before. Old man Warner’s tales of barbarianism and plain ole indecency, coupled with his own imaginations had stopped him then. But he was gone die soon, might as well see what all the fuss was about. It wasn’t that bad. Food was a little different, and the people were a little different, but not nearly as monstrous and uncivil as Warner had proclaimed. Herbert said it was the best day ever. Clyde couldn’t disagree.
On May 30th, he made love to his Janey in a field of corn, full moon shining on her beautifully aged body. She cried some.
“You’ve never been this passionate,” she’d said, as he lay his head on her chest, panting and misting. “God does have a sense of humor doesn’t he?”
He didn’t say anything. Too many spectres were floating in his head. So he made love to her again and they spent the night under the stars.
On May 31st, his gun jammed. He had it in his mouth but the damn thing didn’t go off. He took it out to try and fire it. Left a damn hole in the bathroom tile. Janey’s hawk-eyed self would see it soon enough. He took that as a sign from God and began to pray.
“Lord, I know you are just, and righteous. Worthy of all praise due to you. Beneficent and merciful,” the familiar words felt foreign now. So he stopped. A dying man shouldn’t offer lip service to his creator. So he began again.
“I been expecting June all my life. Daddy told me his stories and he died in June. Granddaddy. Hell even MeeMaw. Why would you take June from me Lord? I could deal with June. I know what June brings. But God why this? Why must you torment your servant so?”
And God was silent.
Clyde kept praying but God stayed silent for weeks.
That was until June 25th when the most ridiculous idea he ever had in his natural life came to him. If you asked Clyde, he’d tried to tell you it wasn’t a vision. He’d read the Bible, but them sort of things didn’t happen to normal people like him. Whether it was or not, one can only speculate, but what he saw was very much real.
A spotted white rabbit broke into his toolshed in a way that a spotted white rabbit should not have been able to. And looking on that hole, splintered and frayed in the wall of his shed; he knew then what he had to do. He told Janey of it and she agreed to help him get in there after dark. She was Mr. Summers’ assistant after all. So on the night of the 26th when Clyde tried to break into the safe in Mr. Summers coal plant with nothing more than a crowbar and a few tools from his shed, he was pleasantly surprised when Mr. Summer’s men took the time to break his leg (with his crowbar) and make it so he would be housebound for the ritual on June 27th.
Which is where we find him now in his house, sitting by that big old bay window and looking out on the field and that tiny hole in his shed wall.
“Papa?” Horace says as he comes in bursting through the door.
“Yes ‘Race?”
“Ms. Tessie got the spot.”
Horace never was one for the ritual, even as a baby, he never picked up a single stone. Not even when Clyde tried to push one into his hand.
“Is it done?” Clyde asks, not turning from the window.
“They’d just started when I left,” Horace says.
“Thank you son.”
Horace nods and returns to his room. Probably to work more on that comic of his, Clyde thinks.
Clyde rocks back and forth in that chair by the window, mumbling to God about signs and miracles. And in an act of divine providence, or pure coincidence depending on who you ask, he sees the damn spotted white rabbit again. This time the beast wasn’t content to just enter through the hole it had already created. It throws itself at the shed with an almost vitriolic abandon that Clyde envies. But a smile crosses his face as once more the vision of broken and splintered wood returns.
“I hear you loud and clear lord,” he says.
So he waits. And he waits for the night of June 28th, where he stands outside Martin’s grocery store. He still has the key from some work he did for them a June ago. Always forgot to return it. But small miracles right?
Clyde opens the door. Mr. Martin hasn’t changed the security code; and with the ritual, there never was a need for the security system. So Clyde walks right into the store, counts out the 7 aisles and walks 20 paces down the red and black linoleum tiled floors — buffed to a shine thanks to Mr. Hutchinson’s crew — and stops in front of the near empty third row shelf with a single weathered black box on it. Splintered, and worn just like the wood on his shed.
Clyde smiles. He’d always been like the others, too afraid to touch it. But if a rabbit could do it —
He picks up the black box — feeling no different for the sacrilege but wondering now why no one had before — and smashes it to bits with his hammer. He then pulls out his gun, the one that had jammed on him before, faces the window of the store and pulls the trigger.
In the distance something rumbles…
I had fun writing this. I was struggling with my crowding and leaping, trying to see what elements of the original story to hone in on while trying not to give away too many details of the original story. I wanted to keep in pace with the idea of the ritual itself not mattering but rather focus on the choice to go against the old ritual and what kinds of things would make someone dip away from it. I may do this again. Y’all have any other short stories you want me to respond to?
