Broomstick Limbo

What does escalation look like?

Photo montage based on Jennifer Uppendahl photo on Unsplash.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about escalation in fiction. The idea that a story or novel should build as it progresses. For me it’s not quite the same as suspense. You can have a scene that builds suspense, but it’s tough to have an entire novel that maintains that suspense, without falling into melodrama. Cue the music, the ticking clock, the bad guy coming out of the shadows, the baby carriage on the edge of the high staircase… you know the stuff I mean.

I’ve been reading (and loving) Don Winslow’s City on Fire, and it’s this novel that has me thinking on escalation. There are suspenseful scenes in it, quite a lot actually. But more than that the story itself is continually escalating. I’d describe it as me (the reader) thinking the main character is not going to do something… no way. And then, shit, he does it. The tension screws keep being ratcheted as the story progresses. I worry about the main character, hoping he isn’t going to do another thing… but of course he does. It’s damn impressive, and I’d highly recommend the novel.

Now for something completely different… sort of. I’ve wondered if this concept of escalation has been in my own work. Like most writers, I have a hard time taking a step back and taking a hard look at the mechanics of my own writing. I’d like to try something here, if you will indulge me. I’m going to paste in an older story of mine, one of my first published ones, Broomstick Limbo. This is a story where I was first learning to write in a younger voice—this ends up driving my novel Fall In One Day.

I’m not going to say anything about the story, yet. But I’d love if you post in the comments any thoughts on it—especially around the idea of escalation (and however you understand that.) Then in my next post I will offer my own thoughts on the story, including what I might do differently now.

Added bonus - this story was published in the great audio magazine Bound Off.
Sadly, they no longer publish, but you can still access the archives as podcasts.
If you’d like to listen to the story (read by the author… me), click the link below.

“Broomstick Limbo” Written and read by Craig Terlson. 5 minutes long, starts at 25:06.

Ok, here it is. I look forward to your comments.

Broomstick Limbo

It's the colour I remember -- an egg-yolk yellow broomstick, a bright orange t-shirt that said "Crush"; poplar leaves in the July sun; and blood that ran along a pale leg and disappeared into emerald grass.

         There were three of us, all nine years old, walking back from the pool. Paul had a big bag of salt and vinegar chips, the kind that made your mouth go numb; Brian had a bag of those damn strawberry marshmallows that stained your lips like some cheap lipstick from the Met store. My tongue, a deep purple from the giant Sweet-heart, buzzed as we passed the R.C.M.P. headquarters and took the last hill before my street.

         In my back yard, we rested against the tall poplar, the one that stood sentinel-like and looked out to the barren prairie behind my yard. I don't remember what we talked about, or what got us onto the subject of limbo -- who knows why kids say what they say.

         "We should do it," Paul said.

         "You got a long stick? It's got to be pretty long," Brian said with his red-stained lips.

         I don't know if they talked like that (it's hard to recall the exact conversation), but the sounds come back. The lawn had its own hum that drifted up and around us; it got louder as we became quieter. A car or a half-ton would whip by on the gravel road that separated me from the prairie -- it would drown out the other sounds and then they would wash back in. I used to sit in the back yard and just listen to the thrum. Wind rustling through shafts of fireweed came across the road and mingled with crickets and dragonflies and bullfrogs that skittered through the grass as they tried to escape the mower.

         That is the sound that comes back the most: the mower. My dad had fired it up just when we got back outside with the broom handle. "Fired" was a good word for it -- it belched thick black smoke as it chugged along, my father in faded cut-offs urging it through the thick grass.

         I didn't really want to do the limbo. Maybe it was too hot, or it bugged me how Brian started to do this "boom-de-boom-deboom" noise (even at nine, he thought he was an expert on things).

         "You gotta have a drum."

         He had to say it loud to be heard over the mower.

         "You go first." Paul pointed at me. Brian, with those damn lips, grinned.

         "Why me?"

         Brian's drum sound joined with the mower sound and this sinister feeling sort of swelled up in me. The two of them held the yellow broom handle; Paul swayed his head back and forth to Brian's beat. Limbo, there was something else about that word, something darker than just dancing; something other than just trying to bend your body close to the ground.

         "Uh, guys, maybe--" I started to say we shouldn't do this, we were messing with something I didn't understand, some weird religion thing, something that made me think of demons and fire.

         "C'mon. Do it," Brian said between drumbeats.

         He was the one with the Crush shirt. I stared at those white letters against a background that looked like it was already on fire. Brian boomed louder.

         There was a clack and a grind and then nothing but Brian booming, soft, under his breath.

         I knew the mower threw stones once in a while. I'd heard my father swear when one bounced off his jeans. Before I turned my head, I had an image of these rusty blades catapulting rocks at barelegged people.

         Paul dropped his end of the stick.

         "Roy," my father called to me. "Go get Winnie."

         I just stared at the silent mower, and my father in his jean cut-offs. I watched the line of blood thicken and then drip and then gush onto the ground. I wondered how a stone could do that, or even if it was a stone. What lay hidden in our grass that could rip open flesh like that?

         I barely remember how I got next door, or how, out of breath, I told my neighbour she had to come next door real fast, or how the ambulance came and drowned out all the other noises.

         My father lost a lot of blood in a short time and he limped for a few weeks. But that was about it.

         I do remember that afternoon going into the back yard and slamming that yellow broomstick against the tree until it snapped. Even as a kid, I felt some faraway connection to people that danced around orange fires that shot sparks into indigo skies. It's the colour that comes back again. We shouldn't do things that we don't know anything about. I thought that then, I think it now.

         And I remember how the stone that the mower threw sat on our mantle for a lot of years; its jagged edge reminded me of the thick black stitches that laced up my dad's leg; it reminded me of things I shouldn't do; and it reminded me of a guilt, that though unwarranted, after all these years, I still can't shake.

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