Back Story: Trajectory and Problems of Inertia by Ron Yates
During the late nineties I made my living operating an automotive repair shop, a practice that usually left me at day’s end with aching muscles and busted knuckles. In my spare time I read and tried to produce literary fiction. Like most of us, I was spending my hours pulled between the sublime and the mean, lofty and base, and in a sense, the spiritual and physical realities.
This concept of being caught between worlds is the main subject of the novel I was working on at the time “Inertia” was conceived. Many inexhaustible literary themes reside under this umbrella: teen alienation, social and class issues, wrong-side-of-the-track love stories, betrayal, romantic tales of good versus evil, and just about every type of story imaginable deal with this universal human condition. Also, most writers and artists at some point experience that sense of “otherness,” the feeling that they are different and thereby sentenced to live life on the sidelines. It was natural for me to explore this subject then, and I’ll probably never be done with it.
Ty, the protagonist, is like many guys I knew in high school and into college as I worked at various factory jobs while trying to earn a bachelor’s degree in English. For Ty and those like him, being a man means getting lots of pussy, having a bad-ass ride, and not letting any bastard grind you down. These dudes, if they reach maturity, get broken by the world, or else die in their stubbornness. “Inertia” is an examination of Ty forced into a corner by the hard truths of life. The consequences of past actions have risen up against him to knock some sense into his head.
His outer shell is tough, but inside him a small, quiet self waits to be born, an embryo of a better Ty whose identity begins to emerge, perhaps for the first time. This thing inside—conscience, superego, soul—is surprisingly strong, able to upset his organs and make him tremble. Birthing a new self will be painful, but trying to suppress the emerging identity and persisting in his previous state may cause more damage. Ty’s options are symbolized by his motorcycle—the “Beast” he is riding toward oblivion—and the blue-eyed girl with “her peaceful aspect,” whose number is in his wallet. When he rides his mechanical beast into the sunrise, neither he nor the reader is sure which direction he will take, but he is now without excuse; with an understanding of human frailty in the face of the enormity of accruing consequence, Ty is still capable of twisting back the throttle of the Beast, but not blithely, not without worry over “possible repercussions.” Beyond that, there is a suggestion in his mind that changing directions may lead to more than safety, that life may provide, through unfathomable workings of blind luck, divine intervention, and individual choice, glimpses of the sublime.
In the larger scope of the novel in which Ty was born, he is the antagonist, pitted against an orphaned young man with better instincts, a different kind of heart. To fulfill his role in the longer work, Ty is never able to correct his trajectory and meets with an appropriate fate. Within the tighter frame of “Inertia,” though, with Ty caught between worlds, potential for change exists. His ultimate direction depends upon the reader’s level of optimism regarding human nature.
Some time after I finished the chapter in the novel that contains most of “Inertia,” I recognized its potential as a separate story. Pulling it out, though, proved difficult. The roots were too deeply embedded in background material. Extricating the short story as a self-contained unit, plausible and tight, required tedious surgery, like amputating a limb with the goal of saving it along with the patient. Some veins, nerves, and tendons were cauterized while others were tucked in and reconnected.
Coach Thompson, Ty’s old nemesis, could not be discarded, so the flashback scene at the high school dance that introduces him and the blue-eyed girl had to be included in a way that seemed organic. We have this glimpse into Ty’s memories as he tries to collect himself after his fight and subsequent near-death experience on the Beast. His memory of the girl and the furtive warning gaze that dispelled the dark tormentors in his mind becomes the planted seed of hope, the suggestion that there is indeed a different way to live.
According to Chekhov, an artist should not “confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the artist.” The story ends with Ty still caught between worlds; I can only hope the reader finds his problem correctly stated.
Ron Yates recently earned his M.F.A. degree from Queens University of Charlotte. He has lived in the South all his life and currently resides in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Alabama. Yates’s stories have appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Clapboard House, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Rose & Thorn Journal. He has completed a novel titled Ben Stempton's Boy, set in the rural South of the tumultuous early 1970s. While seeking a publisher for the novel, Yates is busy working on a collection of short stories. He can be found on Facebook or contacted at rydatsun@centurytel.net. Read "Inertia" in the spring 2011 issue of Rose & Thorn Journal.
I hope to read your novel soon. Love your writing.
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