{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6724", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 6724, "subject": "Short Story 189*: Rattler", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2015-04-22T14:11:35+00:00", "last": "2015-04-22T14:11:35+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com" }, "date": "2015-04-22T14:11:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Short Story 189*: Rattler", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "RATTLER\n\n “Rattler” was first published in *Realms of Fantasy* in 2004, co-authored\nwith Brian Hopkins, and is reprinted in Starwater Strains.\n\n\n SUMMARY:\n\nThe story is framed as a tale overheard in a truck stop in Oklahoma. Two\nmen in a nearby booth speak of training dogs, one claiming that a trained\ndog would also aid in training a new bird dog through direct instruction.\nThis leads to the other man telling his long story, refuting this statement\nwith the idea that dogs learn through imitation and expectation. “It just\nsees what the other's doin' and sees you like it. That's all. That pup\nwants to please, so it does like the other dog.” He tells of his coonhound\nBud, whom he believes was the smartest dog ever. Bud would sleep in the bed\nof his truck so that the speaker could not leave without him, and would use\nthe speaker's coonskins as bedding. The dog could also, according to the\nspeaker, climb up a ladder or a tree to get at a coon or coonskin.\n\nOne day he hears Bud growl at a boy loitering near the truck, but then he\nrealizes that Bud had died the week before. He thinks that the ghost of the\ndog is lingering near the truck, but when he starts up the engine, he hears\nthe same sound. Soon the truck starts behaving as Bud did, even leaving\nlittle puddles in the road when he has parked near trees. At first, the\nspeaker believes the truck is possessed, but it does not respond to being\ncalled Bud. When he refers to it as an old rattler, it reacts positively,\nand he realizes that it identifies with the name Rattler. Just as Bud did,\nit loves chasing after raccoons.\n\nWhen the other man is skeptical of the speaker's story, the speaker brings\nup his “dumb fat brother-in-law”, Junior. At first, Junior doesn't believe\nin the truck's self-volition, then he declares, “whatever a dog could do he\ncould do.” He starts to “teach” himself using a big green truck. The\nspeaker asks if he has taught the truck to fetch, and Junior inquires how.\nThe teller makes Rattler fetch a cattle. Junior continues to damage his\ntruck in his attempts to emulate the abilities of Rattler. His brother\nin-law-says, “the fact is you don't know nothin'. You get a good truck, and\nit's instinct. — All you got to do is get a good'un to start and bring the\ninstinct out. I never seen a good coonhound that would point birds, and\nneither have you.” He allows Rattler to scent out a raccoon at this point\nin their conversation, eventually driving up the tree, allowing the speaker\nto shoot it.\n\nSoon, Junior's wife begs the narrator to do something about the damage\nJunior has been doing to his truck, as it is driving them to poverty. He\ninvites Junior to dinner to speak some sense into him. Getting him alone,\nhe asks Junior about his attempts to educate his own truck. Alas, Junior\nreplies “the only thing I've learned it is to roll over”. Here, the speaker\nasserts that at times the teacher learns just as much as the intended\nstudent (and that, of course, a truck with automatic transmission isn't\nstupid, for it knows which gear it is in and when to shift). By\nThanksgiving, Junior is excited about an upcoming cattle auction and buying\nand selling at it when he becomes increasingly thoughtful, saying “the\nauctions a long grade and a steep'un, and sometimes a feller needs to shift\ndown.”\n\nThe narrative shifts out of dialect to Gene and Brian as they watch the\nspeaker and his companion leave. Gene quotes Robert Blake's Auguries of\nInnocence: “To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild\nflower”. They observe the speaker call Rattler over and get in the truck as\nit opens its own door for him. The speaker says to his friend, “you'll have\nto open your own door — He ain't learned that yet.” They watch the truck\ndisappear, the driver seeming to still fumble for his keys.\n\n\n COMMENTARY:\n\nRattler is written in Southern Oklahoma dialect, though whether there is\nany difference between Texan and Oklahoman speech patterns I will leave to\nmore experienced linguists. Clearly the birthplace of Brian Hopkins and\nWolfe's childhood home colored the stylistic choices they made in composing\nthis collaboration. The tall tale is included in a volume of science\nfiction as a staple of Southern storytelling, and despite its treatment of\na truck as a dog, we see that “Rattler” is really about the methods\ndifferent people have to acquire new skills and learn. The truck imitates\nthe dog which sleeps in its bed every day, acquiring its habits. Junior\nseeks to imitate the feats the speaker accomplishes with Rattler with his\nown car, but succeeds only in rolling it over and over. He finally realizes\nthat his approach to life requires a different strategy, and verbalizes\nthat buying and selling for profit sometimes requires “down shifting” and\ntaking it more gradually — thinking smaller. (Education through imitation\nand even through associating unrelated things is of course the method we\nsee in the instructional parables and stories of Jesus as well as many\nother moralistic fables.)\n\nThe idea that the truck is inhabited by the dog's spirit is of course\ndiscredited by the unique name to which the truck responds, “Rattler”.\nBeneath the light tone of the tale rests the theme that often\npresuppositions about what is possible are not actually true, and that\npeople we think of as stupid or slow are occasionally capable of\ntranscending that limitation with insight, often culled in a unique\nfashion. The idea of instinct and drawing something out of someone by\nunconventional means is a light theme, but perhaps an important one.\n\nThe quotation of Robert Blake's Auguries of Innocence comes from a poem in\nwhich small things are exalted and filled with importance, a warning to\nthose who would do ill to small creatures and ignore them or mistreat them,\nfor justice will be served, even in the form of damnation. The end of the\npoem becomes explicitly Christian in its mention of God-become-man. Of\ncourse, in this tale it merely highlights the abilities of the rural people\nto see such significance and value in terms sophisticated people might not\ndeem important.\n\n\n CONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nOne of Wolfe's few collaborations, Rattler is definitely in the vein of the\ndialect employed in “The Dog of the Drops” and in some of his longer novels\nsuch as sections of *The Wizard Knight *and Pig from *Book of the Short\nSun.* There is a close correlation between this short story and his other\nbrief dog vignettes, such as “Calamity Warps”. The stories in *Starwater\nStrains* are not strictly science fictional, and many are fantastic or, as\nis the case here, a tall tale. The metafiction of Hopkins and Wolfe talking\nat the end of the story show the frame story mostly from a 3rd person\nperspective, though a 1st person plural is also employed. Of “Rattler”,\nWolfe said:\n\n\n\n *Rattler* is a collaboration with Brian Hopkins. Brian wrote *El Dio de\nlos Muertos* and edited *13 Horrors*, and has written and edited a lot of\nother things. He is from Oklahoma, though. I like him, and I don't mind\nthat Oklahoma people are smarter than Texas people like me; but they don't\nhave to keep talking and talking about it the way they do. That was why I\nstarted listening hard when he said he was going to get himself a new truck\nwith a manual transmission, because he couldn't abide a pickup that was\nsmarter than he was. We got to talking about trainability, guide trucks for\nthe visually impaired, and so forth. It went on from there.\n\n\n Wolfe also wrote the introduction of Hopkins' short story collection\n*Phoenix*, in which he retells the story of his long dead aunt, also\nrelated in Wolfe's essay “Kid Sister”, with a narrative veneer that seems\nmore “fictionalized” and polished." } ] } ] }