What’s Left on the Bone by Adrian Markle
A colleague was telling me about a project that he was working on that involved maritime churches, and he mentioned a historied local church called “The Church of Squalls,” which I thought was just such a remarkable name and I started getting ideas for a story immediately. So I steered the conversation away from that particular topic, as I was already getting an idea in my head and didn’t want it to be spoiled by facts; I think fiction that is just a thinly veiled relaying of true-to-life facts is self-limiting. I made it a point to learn absolutely nothing about this building and its associated community and history and then changed the name of it, so really any resemblance to the real place or a real person is totally coincidental (and I think highly unlikely).
Most of my writing is about male relationships, which are often fragile and stunted things when they exist at all—this character’s strongest relationship is with his dog, who is obviously non-verbal, which is tied to his inability to speak up for himself when he’s feeling exploited. The lack of strong or stable social relationships is equivalent to a lack of social safety, so this story ultimately became an exploration of the vulnerability a person without a personal social safety net might experience when he or she comes up against one of those “charitable” organizations that is ultimately out to further their own cause first.
In terms of craft, my writing tends to be hyper-focused in terms of time. Flash like this often takes place over the course of only a few minutes, short stories a few hours, and the novel I’ve recently written for my PhD takes place over the course of a few weeks. I think fiction is at its best when it shines brightly on a single significant moment for a character and then fades out, so that image lingers in relief in our minds. I think by being as lean as possible and stripping out all elements that aren’t essential to this one moment, we increase the significance of all elements that remain; for someone that’s starving, like this narrator and his dog may soon be, each bite of food will be more significant emotionally than it would be if food was plentiful. Every scrap of meat left on the bone is draws the hunger of the eye.
So here I knew I wanted to write about a character in a socially and financially precarious position—like so many people in marginalized communities are in right now—in the moment where he either chooses to take care of himself at the cost of further isolation or to further endanger himself while preserving social connection, and then I included only the elements I thought were absolutely necessary for the leanest version of this story, stripping everything else away in editing and hopefully leaving only the bare, exposed bone of emotional truth.