Crisis flows in short stories

“Floodmarkers” begins with a tale of incestuous teenage cousins, raising the worrisome possibility that we’re in for that kind of Southern storytelling.

Thankfully, North Carolina author Nic Brown moves far beyond stereotypes in his debut short-story collection. Set on Sept. 22, 1989, the tales all take place as the outer bands of Hurricane Hugo dump torrents of rain on the fictional Lystra, N.C. Though each story stands on its own, they coalesce into a vivid portrait of life in one small, Southern town.

Brown, a musician who grew up in Greensboro, N.C., and now lives in Chapel Hill, re-creates the world of his childhood with precision, conjuring the strains of the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” and the bad-girl allure of Kelly McGillis in “Top Gun.” Readers familiar with North Carolina will appreciate his references to the likes of Harris Teeter, the Barn Dinner Theater and Tweetsie Railroad.

He brings that same specificity to each of his characters, among them:

Cotton, a widowed grandfather happily raising his 9-year-old grandson, Lee, who was born to his autistic daughter after an unfortunate incident at her assisted-living home.

Bryce, a community college dropout who is nevertheless “College Boy” to one particularly hostile co-worker he works alongside on the graveyard shift at the hot dog factory.

Isaac, a young, white singer of obscure spirituals who drives a school bus to support himself and his pregnant girlfriend.

As the storm rages, each faces an immediate crisis: Cotton falls and breaks a hip; Bryce nearly gets beaten up by a co-worker; Isaac must care for two stranded children when school is canceled.

But each is also dealing with deeper troubles: Cotton wonders how to impress upon Lee all of life’s lessons in the few years he has left; Bryce hates his job but suffers from tremendous inertia; Isaac doesn’t think he’s ready to be a father.

Brown writes with a palpable compassion for all his characters, even the most imperfect of them. Our flaws, he seems to believe, lie at the core of our humanity.

And they also sit right there on the surface: Nearly every story contains a reference to some disgusting but normal aspect of the body, from snot bubbles and popped pimples to garlic-and-cigarette breath and drool. Being human, sometimes, is gross.

No one in Brown’s world has been more betrayed by her body than Fletcher, the 15-year-old protagonist of two “Floodmarkers’” stories, including the one that gives the book its title. Fletcher has cancer.

“It started with a sore in her neck, and then, like lifting an old tire and finding the swarming life beneath, they discovered the rest. Lymphoma.”

But the crises she faces in the storm restore a little of her sense of control over her body.

In one of the book’s most beautiful passages, she experiences a moment’s peace in the midst of the tempest as she swims in what was until that morning the neighborhood park:

“She was in complete control, circling her hands to keep herself in position. Small branches and bits of vegetation floated gently by, yet there was barely any current, just a random spilling of the banks. Soon her lungs began to burn and she started reluctantly to rise. The hour of medication and pillows neared as she floated upwards, and when her nose surfaced at the same time as her toes, rain pounded her emerging flesh like a thousand tapping fingers insisting she awaken.”

At just 172 pages, “Floodmarkers” can be read in less than the day it took Hurricane Hugo to pass over Lystra. But thanks to its author’s skill, its emotional storm surge will linger long after the rain has passed.

Fiction

“Floodmarkers”

By Nic Brown

172 pages. Counterpoint. $14.95.