If you've already read Clyde Edgerton's *Lunch at the Piccadilly (Algonquin, 2003) but still have a hunger for finely honed and observed American comedy, you need look no farther than Daryl Scroggins' marvelous short story collection *Winter Investments*. Not that Scroggins' tone, any more than Edgerton's, is always comic, but comedy dominates the stories gathered here, and a livelier batch of tales you could hardly wish for.

For years now Americans have largely eschewed literate comedy, opting instead for low-brow television and movie fare. Those wanting work on a more thoughtful and artistic plane have had recourse primarily to Merchant-Ivory films or the novels of Penelope Fitzgerald. But Scroggins' stories (a collection of short-shorts, *Oracle*, is also available from Trilobite) prove that Twain and Welty have at least one more descendant proud to carry on amid literary indifference. One of the marks of Scroggins' tales is the blend of a completely demotic narrative voice-- one that would not seem out of place on an episode of *Cops*-- with an extraordinarily astute eye for detail and the nuances of characterization. "A Gradual Appearance," for example, begins, "He didn't like my story, so I busted him one up side his head, and down he went right there in his little English professor's office."

What we finish with, in less than eight pages, is an experience that shifts as cleverly as O. Henry while poking fun at English professors, creative writing classes and higher education, and providing corroboration that a little learning is a dangerous thing, even if that "little learning" is occurring at the college level.

The broad redneck tone of "busted him one" slides smoothly into the telling adjective "little", which-- placed as it is-- not only delineates the size of the office space but also degrades the professor's individual status as well as the general status of his profession, all the while being delivered by a narrator who has placed himself under the tutelage of the man he so despises. As the story develops we learn-- gradually, of course-- why the professor's disdain has so irritated his student in this case. Operating even more slyly, Scroggins delays letting us know that the narrator's fellow students have also been fooled. When they later invoke all the niceties of the critical methods they have been taught and complain that the story would work better told from another viewpoint, we discover that the story-- which Scroggins has worked into the text by this time-- is, if [deliberately] cliched, also substantially true and that it has indeed already been through a twisting of outlook. What we finish with, in less than eight pages, is an experience that shifts as cleverly as O. Henry while poking fun at English professors, creative writing classes and higher education, and providing corroboration that a little learning is a dangerous thing, even if that "little learning" is occurring at the college level.

"A Gap in the Telling," on the other hand, employs similar techniques to an altogether more serious end. The small-town narrator-- this time just a kid-- pulls us into his milieu as quickly as his adult counterpart in "A Gradual Appearance". "I looked through the screen door," Scroggins' kid begins, "and could see Chuck on the couch in his underwear." The narrator wants Chuck to join him in boulder-rolling, their game of prying loose chunks of stone from the upper edge of an old, water-filled quarry so that they can hear the sound-- which Scroggins accurately records as "da-boosh"-- when the stones hit the water. First, though, the boys have to get Chuck's newspapers delivered. As Chuck's mother points out-- "It's pure daylight out there already." Later, while wedging out their first boulder of the morning, they are interrupted by Howie, "known all around as 'that skinny kid who stutters'." Howie begins tugging on the narrator and won't let go. Chuck notes, "Looks like Lassie's got hold of you," and declines to accompany his two friends on whatever errand has left Howie even more tongue-tied than normal.

The narrator wants Chuck to join him in boulder-rolling, their game of prying loose chunks of stone from the upper edge of an old, water-filled quarry so that they can hear the sound--which Scroggins accurately records as "da-boosh" ...

What's happened is that Howie's dog has run up on a bit of rebar protruding from a block of concrete and has imbedded it firmly into his chest. The boys go for Howie's dad, who does what he must: he removes the dog. But Scroggins refuses to give us a happily "comic" or even a heart-warming "Believe it or not!" ending. Instead the dog bleeds quickly to death. As Howie cries, the narrator shares his concern in the only way most boys would know how to: "I had my hand around the back of his neck, and I shook him sometimes like a brother would." Finally Howie calms enough to say what had eluded him earlier, "Dog. My dog," and the narrator thinks about how it must be, to get the words out only when it no longer matters:

"I thought about all the stories everybody tells about the quarry-- the stolen cars crashing over the edge, the naked girls swimming at night with a road flare burning under water. The drowned man found still holding the neck of his whisky bottle. And then I thought about how hard it is to tell yourself what just happened. How hard it is to get to the bottom of it all, before it fades."

The story, in five pages, has traveled from simple rural pleasure, through sudden-- if arguably inconsequential-- death, to a fairly heavy, but tonally appropriate, philosophical conclusion. Or has it? On one level, certainly it has, even if one wonders about such insight coming from a kid. But only three pages earlier, that same narrator has told us, "If the stories of what lay at the bottom (of the quarry pool) were all true, there would be a pile of wreckage and bodies tall enough to fill the hole," a statement which cast its shadow forward to story's end and calls into question even the terms of the narrator's reverie. If these stories aren't true, at what level is the narrator's story true? Exactly how big is Scroggins' "gap in the telling"? Other stories, though, are almost undiluted comedy. In "No Help in Big Spring," the twenty-something narrator longs to write a romance novel but is stuck in West Texas baby-sitting his wheelchair-bound Uncle Tump. "Neighborly Concerns" features the dog Rex who tends to work his way into a neighbor's negligees as they dry on the line, prompting the narrator's husband to wonder if their dog is "well, 'gay'." Or how about "Levels of Contentment" in which Carl decides to break through his wife Alice's carefully maintained poise by skydiving to his death into the center of her Zen garden?

Scroggins' talent is so great that we see the men with empathy, but without pity, and begin to understand that an apparently aimless life can be as full of activity, cherished rituals and human communication as any other and that our preconceptions of a "real" life ...

Scroggins' skills are readily apparent throughout the collection, but he shifts modes almost entirely with the title story which closes and caps the book. While not afraid to see the humor even in a situation as politically charged as homelessness, Scroggins' chief delight in creating this powerful and understated story is in giving us a keen observation of one special day in the lives of his three street people. Scroggins' talent is so great that we see the men with empathy, but without pity, and begin to understand that an apparently aimless life can be as full of activity, cherished rituals and human communication as any other and that our preconceptions of a "real" life-- principally shaped for most of us by either corporate advertising barrages or the slightly less rawly manipulative dicta of received and ossified religious norms-- are mostly no deeper than that of boys shucking boulders off a quarry ledge. Scroggins' first full-length collection may be slim and may be issued by a very small regional press, but it is more accomplished and more likely to survive this new century than anything Bertelsmann offers us this year.

Unfortunately you are not likely to find *Winter Investments* on the shelves of your local bookstore, unless you live in an extraordinary neighborhood, but you can ask your bookseller to order it for you. If that doesn't work, contact Trilobite Press directly at 1015 West Oak, Denton, Texas 76201-4036.

Mail to Cooper Renner

Cooper Renner also reviews books and engages in various critical activities for the online magazine 'elimae', under the name b. renner. He is a published poet and a very eclectic fellow.