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LIKE MEN, MADE VARIOUS
short stories by Paul Bowers
ISBN 0-9762114-2-4 ISBN-13:
978-0-9762114-2-6 $18.00 US $21.00
CANADA 6 x 9 124 pp
Praise for Paul Bowers
Here’s a writer! Paul Bowers’s Like
Men, Made Various is aptly titled-—a “biological
philosopher” seeks the essence of Life, only to be overwhelmed
by the sonogram vision of his soon-to-be-born daughter; a Vietnam
vet eccentrically acts out his post-traumatic stress; the father
of a cancer-stricken child rages against the conventional concept
of God’s Providence; the president of a failing small college
stages a desperate sit-in to revive it; a man commits suicide by
drowning as he kills the mule that killed his wife . . . Bowers’s
range is seemingly limitless, his stories intelligent, imaginative,
profound, and polished to a compelling luster.
—Gordon Weaver
The men in Paul Bowers’ debut include an unlikely hero and
a university president, a farmer (and his deadly mule), an expectant
father and a father preparing to grieve. These characters know something
about hope and anger, duty and powerlessness, loneliness and love.
Bowers knows something about telling stories that are absolutely
true.
—Diana Joseph, author of Happy or Otherwise
In Like Men, Made Various, Paul Bowers writes with compassion, wit,
and wisdom, giving us a glimpse of humanity and an undercurrent
of dark humor. . . . What I love about these stories is their variety
and the artistic manner in which they are made.
—Allen Learst
Paul
Bowers lives with his wife and daughter in Enid, Oklahoma, a town
in northwest Oklahoma situated along the old Chisholm Trail. He
is an avid horseperson, and enjoys training both equines and canines.
He is a certified therapy dog evaluator and, along with his seventy-five
pound canine partner, Buddy, makes frequent visits to assisted living
centers and long-term care facilities. He earned a B.A. from The
University of Tulsa, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University,
and currently teaches writing and literature at Northern Oklahoma
College.
Exerpt from Like Men, Made Various
Mule
Burgess, feeling pinched in his old joints, left the pasture gate
open, hoping the mule would leave of its own accord. He sat on the
porch all day, his bare feet caked red in pasture mud, and carved
away and chewed up two plugs of Bull Twist tobacco, but the mule
simply rested in the shade, relaxed in a three-legged stance. Tommy
Phillips left off hoeing his purple hull peas the day before just
to drive over and volunteer to shoot the mule himself, but Burgess
told him to mind his own business. Tommy cradled the stock of his
new .22 semi-automatic in one hand, hugging the butt of the rifle
under the stump of his other arm that was pinned up in a shirtsleeve.
The rest of his arm was lost somewhere along a corn row, taken off
above the elbow by a stripper, and Burgess knew he was just looking
to try out his new rifle on something other than tin cans and skunks.
Tommy settled the freshly oiled gun over his good shoulder, leaned
over so as not to spit on his own boot, said, “Suit yourself, but
I wouldn’t let that animal live for what it done if it was mine.”
Burgess wanted to tell him to go shoot that stripper that took off
his arm if he needed to blast away at something, but he held up
and stared at the puddle of drying tobacco juice at his feet until
Tommy finally climbed back into his rust-pocked truck and drove
away. Burgess busied himself slicing away a thick callous on his
thumb with his Barlow knife, hoping Tommy Phillips would keep to
his peas and tin cans for the day while he considered what to do
about the mule.
She was still holding the snake, a big glistening black racer, when
he found her face down in the turnips. It had curled itself around
her arm, its head squeezed tight in her dead hand, its slim tail
tucked under the sleeve of her cotton blouse, like the staff of
Moses in the bible, waiting patiently to be turned back into wood.
Burgess figured it was the snake that made the mule kick, that Vess
had raised it up and was about to throw it out of the turnip row
and her head just got in the way when the mule saw the snake hanging
long and black in the air. Nothing scares a mule more than a snake.
And he knew Vess wouldn’t just grab the racer and sling it away.
She would have looked at it to make sure it didn’t have a white
milk spot on its mouth, which would have meant it was the soul of
a still-born child looking for its mother’s breast. A black racer
with a milk spot must be let go on the road, otherwise it won’t
travel on and the woman who finds it is sure to have it crawl into
her bed before the third night.
Burgess hadn’t bothered to look for a milk spot when he unwound
the snake from Vess’s arm and ground his boot heel into the creature’s
head. The snake coiled and roped into knots, then froze belly-up
against the slope of a furrow. He focused, instead, on Vess’s swollen
face, plump and yellowed like a cantaloupe that seemed to roll at
his feet when he turned her over. Her lips were twisted and bruised,
her teeth unbroken but stained red in between like she had been
eating raspberries. The mule’s hoof caught her just above her left
eye, and her eyebrow, misplaced by a bloodless gash, lifted into
an arch just as it did when she puzzled over some stubborn but unimportant
problem.
Out of habit he had whistled for the mule to come just as he would
any other time he had a load to carry to the house, but he stopped
mid-shrill. Vess wouldn’t like being jostled onto the back of the
animal that did her in; and besides, despite the weakness in his
aging knees, Burgess needed some counterweight in his arms to balance
the grief that threatened to topple him. But Vess was not a large
woman, and when he wrestled her roughly into his arms her slightness
didn’t stand up well to the heft of loss and he stumbled to the
hard ground several times, once into a stinging bull nettle that
burned his arms like match flames. He laid her out on the bed and
draped her with a quilt. Before the Sheriff came, he cleaned her
face and hands with a washrag and a little Ivory dish soap, careful
to remove the dirt in the wrinkles around her eyes. Then he brushed
her teeth with baking soda that left a salty white ring around her
mouth.
The Sheriff, Bill McGowan, square-bodied and rugged, but cursed
with the high-pitched voice of a woman, was the first to offer to
shoot the mule—in fact, he told Burgess he thought there might be
a legal obligation to destroy the animal since it showed signs of
a vicious nature. “‘Course, I can’t say that don’t only apply to
mad dogs, but I’ll take care of it for you without consulting the
books.”
Burgess told the Sheriff he didn’t want anybody wasting bullets
on his account, and since it was his mule and his wife, he figured
the law shouldn’t have much to do with it. And he had a gun of his
own, an old ten-gauge double-barrel that belonged to Vess’s daddy
that would do a better job than any county-issued .38 revolver.
McGowan settled his hand on the leather flap of his holster, as
if to protect his gun from further insult, and left Burgess to do
as he pleased. . . .
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