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Red Hen Press - Pete Hsu

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102 pages

English

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ASIAN-AMERICAN STORIES focused on the lives of second and third-generation Americans coping with grief, loss, and masculinity through the lens of children and adult protagonist
A MISHMASH OF SHORT/LINKED STORIESexploring sexual identity and queer relationships
WINNER of the Red Hen Press Fiction Award
FOR FANS of Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam and The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa

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Los Angeles

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Publié par	Red Hen Press
Date de parution	11 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781636280547
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home
Copyright © 2022 by Pete Hsu
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book design by Mark E. Cull
Names: Hsu, Pete, 1972– author.
Title: If I were the ocean, I’d carry you home: stories / Peter Hsu.
Other titles: If I were the ocean, I’d carry you home (Compilation)
Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, [2022] | “2020 Red Hen Press Fiction Award.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2022007381 | ISBN 9781636280530 (paperback) | ISBN 9781636280547 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Short stories.
Classification: LCC PS3608.S885 I38 2022 |
DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220302
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022007381
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Albert and Elaine Borchard Foundation, the Adams Family Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, the Sam Francis Foundation, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

First Edition
Published by Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following stories have previously appeared in these respective publications:
The Bare Life Review : “Korean Jesus”; The Best of It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere: “The Donkey Is Definitely Asian”; Faultline : “Pluto”; The Los Angeles Review : “From the Brush, A Frantic Rustling” (as “Pieces”); The Margins : “A Penny Short”; Pinball : “King Kong Korab” (as “The Gift”); Saga : “Astronauts”; Two Hawks Quarterly : “If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home” (as “Chengdu”); and Your Impossible Voice : “There Are No More Secrets on Planet Earth.”
This collection owes a debt to the vibrant and generous spirit of the Los Angeles writing community of which the following played particularly important roles:
Red Hen Press, The Red Hen Fiction Prize, and The Los Angeles Review : Dr. Kate Gale, Tobi Harper, Monica Fernandez, Rebeccah Sanhueza, Tansica Sunkamaneevongse, and Susan Straight
Those who have given my stories a home on stage, online, or in print: Alistair McCartney, Anelise Chen, Cassie Leone, Charles Jensen, Conrad Romo, Dani Hedlund, David Pischke, Deborah Lott, J. Ryan Stradal and Summer Block, Jason Casem, Jim Ruland, Joe O’Brien, Julia Ingalls, Keith Powell, Lily Anne Harrison, Lisa Teasley, Liv Vordenberg, Lucas Church, Maria Kuznetsova, Michele Raphael and David Lott, Michelle Franke, and Umi Hsu
My community at large: Alex Espinoza, Amanda Fletcher, Angus McNair, Anthony Garcia, Ashaki Jackson, Ben Loory, Brad Listi, Brooke Delaney, Charles Yu, Chelsea Sutton, Chiwan Choi, Chris Daley, Chris Lee, Chris Terry, Dave Thomas, David Francis, Don Martinez, Elliott Chen, F. Douglas Brown, Jade Chang, Janet Fitch, Jenn Dees, Jian Huang, Joseph Tepperman, Julia Callahan, Leslie Schwartz, Lindsey Styrwoll, Luis J. Rodriguez, Luis Romero, Marnie Goodfriend, Maeve Bowman, Meg Howrey, Mike Buckley, Mira Velimirovic, Miwa Messer, Natalie Chudnovsky, Natalie Green, Natalie Lima, Natashia Deón, Noel Alumit, Patrick O’Neil, Paul Mandelbaum, Sam Dunn, Steph Cha, Tony DuShane, and so many others, most especially: Breanna Chia, Heather Chapman, Jessica Shoemaker, Chinyere Nwodim, Kirin Khan, Soleil David, Greg King, Hyunsoo Moon, David Huang, Daniel Yang, Evan Chan, and J. Ryan Stradal
And my family: Carol Tai Au, John Au, Dan Hsu, Rebecca Au Williams, and all my Hsu’s, Au’s, Tai’s, Williams’s, Chou’s, Concepcion’s, Wu’s, Shin’s, Chi’s, and Yoo’s
And my most dear: Jacob, Rainer, Helen
for Helen
Contents
PART ONE
Pluto
King Kong Korab
From the Brush, a Frantic Rustling
Game Five
If I Were the Ocean, I’d Carry You Home
The Fatted Calf
PART TWO
Main & Maine
A Penny Short
Korean Jesus
Astronauts
The Donkey Is Definitely Asian
There Are No More Secrets on Planet Earth

Part One
PLUTO
It was exactly one year ago that Mom died. I know now they call that a deathday, but back then we didn’t have a word for it. We didn’t have a word for it, so maybe that’s why nobody mentioned it. Not me or Dad or my brothers or my little sister either. Instead it seemed like a regular summer day. Us kids were still out of school for vacation, and Dad hadn’t been working for the past couple weeks. We were all five of us in the apartment together: me and Dad, my older brothers Stevie and Clayton, and our littler sister Maddy. We were all in the living room where the big AC was. We had it on full, but it was still hot. The heat made the apartment feel really crowded, which was okay by me, but not so much for Dad and Stevie. Dad seemed frustrated with not getting any peace, not getting any quiet. Stevie seemed frustrated with having to take care of us littler ones. The two of them both seemed frustrated with each other, as if the apartment was a wild west town that wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
Stevie wanted to go see The Exorcist at the Edwards, but Dad wouldn’t take us.
Stevie said, “You gotta be kidding me.”
Dad said, “It’s too scary for the others.”
Us three boys had already seen it, so Stevie said, “We’ve already seen it.”
Dad said, “Not Maddy. Not Paul.”
Stevie said, “Paul’s seen it,” and he pointed at me. I nodded and said that I saw it. Dad sighed really hard and rubbed his face, “We don’t have money for the movies.”
Then he sort of called out to us all. We got around him, and he told us that we all needed to get outside.
He took us out to the city college stadium. It was around six o’clock and still really hot when we got there. We stood around a minute while Dad did stretches. Then Stevie and Clayton said they wanted to play football. Dad said he was gonna go jogging. Maddy then said she also wanted to play football too. Dad told them all that was fine and then looked at me. I would have rather played football too, but it seemed like Dad wanted me to jog with him. He didn’t actually say that, but it’s what I thought he wanted.
So, me and Dad got on the track while Stevie and Maddy went out onto the field. Clayton went back to the truck to get the football. Then they were all three playing, Maddy looking tiny out there as she ran across the field and yelled for the ball. Clayton threw it. He threw it hard, but Maddy still caught it.
“Atta girl!” said Clayton.
Then Stevie raised his hand and said, “Give it here.”
Maddy threw the ball to Stevie. It was a clumsy throw. Stevie had to take a couple steps up to get it. He then held the ball in one hand and lined Clayton and Maddy up in formation, Clayton at receiver and Maddy on defense. Stevie got into a quarterback crouch and said, “Hut, hut, hut, go,” and Clayton started running. It was an easy route, just a straight run up the sideline. Stevie let Clayton get up the field. Maddy ran behind him, almost ten yards back. Stevie waited a couple seconds, then he let the ball go and it was like a kind of throw like from a movie, spinning through the air in a rainbow arc, sunlight glinting off the laces.
The ball hit Clayton in the palms of his open hands. He grabbed it and then slowed down to let Maddy catch up. Maddy jumped on his leg. He then started running again, with her still holding on to him. The three of them looked like they could have done that all day. Stevie calling out routes, Clayton and Maddy taking turns at receiver.
Meanwhile, Dad and I ran the track. Nobody to chase. Nobody to be chased by. No routes except the steady orbit of the four-hundred-meter loop, counter-clockwise, over and over and over, tracking every lap, every lap a quarter mile, every four laps a mile.
Dad said, “We’re gonna do two and a quarter today,” and I knew that meant two and one quarter miles, which meant nine laps. There were nine lanes on the track, which meant that we could do one lap in each lane. So, if we started in lane one, we would finish in lane nine. On the first lap, I didn’t say anything. Dad didn’t either. I didn’t like to initiate conversation. But Dad usually talked a lot, so it was uncomfortable to just be jogging in silence. We stayed quiet until we crossed the line with the lane number painted on to it. I called off one of the planets. The first one.
I said, “Lane one, Mercury.”
Dad looked at me like he thought I was weird. Then we went back to jogging, and at the end of the next lap, I did the same thing with the second planet, and then the next, and the one after that:
I said, “Lane two, Venus.”
I said, “Lane three, Earth.”
I said, “Lane four, Mars.”
At Mars, Dad asked about school.
I said, “It’s summer. There’s no school.”
Dad said, “I mean in a general kind of way.”
I said, “I don’t know, I guess it’s fine.”
Dad said, “Fine?”
I didn’t say anything to that.
Dad said, “How did that planets stuff go?”
The past year I had a planets project where I had to make a travel brochure for one of the planets. I did mine on Pluto. I didn’t pick Pluto. We just had them assigned to us.
“So,” said Dad, “a travel brochure for Pluto? Jesus, it must be freezing on Pluto. That’s the first thing, the cold. How about that?”
I hadn’t thought about it being cold there.
I said, “I made it a memorial kind of place, like for people to visit or something.”
Dad said, “Like a cemetery.”
“No. It’s not for burying the bodies. The dead people’s, like, spirits would still be there.”
“Like heaven.”
“Sort of, but not like a happy place. Everybody sort of floats around like a zombie there.”
“So, like hell then.”
“No, not like a punishment.”
Then Dad said he didn’t get it, and I tried to explain h