The one story he could write is the one he never will
This post was originally shared over at Share Short Story Club on Substack. If you want the full experience, you can join us over there for free, where we dissect classic tales of all genres.
A row through the tale
What I like to do when dissecting a story is to go through it paragraph by paragraph and assess where we are as readers. What questions are being posed? What promises? What do we think will happen next?
Over the years he has debated back and forth about whether the magic is in him or in the island.
And we start this tale in a reflective mood. Here is a man in the latter years of his life, feeling all the aches and pains. He steps us through his life so far, his regrets, why he didn’t do certain things, and alludes to the magical dune. A man in his nineties kayaking.
Now there is only unease.
These trips to this small island used to be exciting, but now they deliver unease only. Why is this? Unless you’ve been reading on your own island for the last fifty years, we know the type of tale Mr. King writes. Does he fear for himself? Does he wish it would all be over? That’s certainly the feeling I came away with in these opening segments. Regret, reflection, and some very nice imagery with the turkey buzzards.
Usually he finds nothing but rocks and bushes and sand, but every now and then there is something else.
I love this sentence. The word choice of something else is so vague, yet so fraught with creeping / otherworldly meaning that we can’t help but feel the unease our character feels.
So, we join the Judge on his trip to the island. He goes more into the melancholy mode, telling us about how his father has been dead for forty years, how his own attempts to write a memoir are lies. In his heart, he knows they will never be finished.
Why tell us all this? Isn’t it a bit too woe-is-me? A little, but it is purposeful, which is where the mastery in the tale comes from. As readers, we’re placed squarely where Mr. King wants. Is the Judge ‘taking care of affairs’? The weight of the story at this point certainly feels like it.
After giving a brief rustle of its raggedy wings, the turkey buzzard sits right where it is. Its beady eyes seem to say, But Judge – today you’re my business.
And if we’re in any doubt at this stage in the tale when he gets to the island, this excellent imagery with the cheeky, persistent turkey buzzard puts death firmly in our mind. Beecher tries to shoo away the thing and it all but laughs at him, staying put.
He looks at the dune, and at what is written there.
As readers, we know there will be something on the dune. This is the launch point of the story, so of course, there will be a name. I think King shows his remarkable skill here. He knows that we know that there will be a name, knows we expect it, so he is very straight forward with us at this point, not wasting a lot of words at the end of this scene. He understands the reader experience and plays in it. The best ones do.
The next and final scene in the story is Beecher inviting a younger attorney round. This very thing plays on the whole ‘sorting out your affairs’ business. The judge is old and tired. What did he see on the dune? Did it spell his doom?
Of course, at this stage in the tale, we don’t know what the spelling of the name means, but we feel the ominous nature of it thanks to the aforementioned imagery. Has he seen his own name on the dune? What does it mean, exactly?
Luckily for us, Beecher tells this young attorney everything about the dune under the promise that it doesn’t go anywhere. Again, we feel that he’s telling us because he’s never told anyone and he’s about to bow out.
Time is short
In his Will, Beecher wants the dune forever protected, donates some pretty hefty dough to do it. They do the Will and the Judge taps in his safe password without a care for the attorney seeing it.
Forgive me for listing it all out, but this is all done at expert level and with good reason. King has us where he wants us.
He finds that he wants to tell this story at least once before…
Well, before.
We get his explanation of how the dune works, how it spells people’s names and that person (or persons) always meet their maker. We get Beecher’s own musings regarding how much of the magic comes from him. He still doesn’t know how it works.
A key moment, for me, is the attorney’s direct question about Beecher not doing anything to stop it. Beecher has said he became addicted to it, could never give it up or keep from checking most days, but he never does anything to stop the death, even when it was his ‘grampy’.
Why not? This is a man in quite a powerful position, probably used to getting his own way. But, with his vice, this addiction, is he so scared of ruining it that he won’t stop the fate of peoples’ death lest he lose it? I don’t get the sense that he feels powerless, I feel more that he’s rather morbid.
And then, King drives the story home. The attorney assumes Beecher has seen his own name in the sand (as we as readers do), but no. It’s not his own name he has seen.
A switch story
I’ve spent a lot of time talking about priming and foreshadowing. The very best tales all seem (generally speaking) to set you up along the way. I went into this in detail when reading A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. O’Connor sets us up with hints about the end that comes. Everything in the story points to the end of the story and the tragedy that transpires so that we feel in some way it was inevitable.
But in The Dune, we have a surprise ending. We’re primed to see that Beecher is going to bite the dust. The moans about his old bones, the turkey vultures, the all round attitude in the tale of foreboding, means that we think that it is our Beecher that has had his own name appear in the Dune and he is wrapping up his affairs.
But, no, it is not him. We have a full-on bait and switch, which is marvellously done. He toys with us, leading us down one path all the way through.
This isn’t exactly the most inventive of things, these types of tales have been out there forever, but doing it well is something else. We’ve become too wise to fall for it, so if a writer is to pull off a surprise, it needs to be tight. They need to know exactly where we are as readers in order to hit the right notes at the right time.
What of our Beecher?
As for Beecher’s character, what does it say about him that he invited this man round to sort out his own affairs before the death happens? It casts him in a bit of a selfish light, but is he also there to try and save him? I’d like to think so, though it sounds like he’s never done that before. Is he changing his ways?
The tale, for me, is about addiction and its hold. He will not give it up. He will not let anyone touch the dune even when he passes. King couples this with aging to give us a very relatable tale.
Stephen King’s love of short stories
King seems to split a lot of people. I guess that’s only natural given how much of an audience the chap has, but I love his stories. And I love how he has dedicated himself to short stories, despite the bulk of his money coming from novels.
I never feel the limitations of my talent so keenly as I do when writing short fiction. Stephen King
Is The Dune his very best short story? Probably not, but it shows off his skill and his undeniable mark. Finding a story available for discussion was why I chose The Dune. My favourite stories from him are (probably) 1408, The Jaunt, Summer Thunder, The Cat from Hell, The Last Rung of the Ladder, Sometimes They Come Back, The Ten O’Clock People, The Answer Man (I could go on).
There are lots of things in life that are like riding a bike, but writing short stories isn’t one of them. You can forget how. Stephen King
We need more people to champion the short story like King has through his entire career. Many writers ditch the form as there’s not a huge amount of money or fame in it.
You’d be surprised – at least, I think you would be – at how many people ask me why I still write short stories. The reason is pretty simple: writing them makes me happy. Stephen King