Tony Earley

Tony Earley Reading Tony Earley's short stories in Here We Are in Paradise is like being able to actually tune into the personal thoughts of an average person as he/she goes about living the typical day-to-day activities in North Carolina, the author's home state. The story that gave the book its title as well as the one called "My Father's Heart" are indicative of the others included in this 1994 collection.

The characters narrating these two stories, Peggy in the former and Jimmy in the latter, do not pursue the same direction: One ignores her dreams and lets her husband define them, and the other follows his hopes despite the fact that his mother disagrees. However, they both find a way to resolve these conflicts and find the positive side of life. The reader "tunes" into the thoughts of Peggy, a middle-aged woman, after her recent double mastectomy.

She and her husband, Vernon, live in a mobile home on 25 acres overlooking a pond. Although throughout her life Peggy has been shy and adverse to expressing personal feelings, part of her now wishes she could actually voice her feelings to her husband. As the story progresses, Peggy, who realizes that the operation has failed and the cancer continues to destroy her body, increasingly thinks about her own needs and relationship with Vernon.

She recognizes that he has never loved the real her, since she has not allowed her true self to be known. Instead, he fell in love and still idolizes the Peggy in his mind: the beautiful, fragile girl he met at the square dance, when she was a high school senior and he was 32. Vernon is so attached to his "dream" idea of Peggy that he refuses to look at her scarred breasts and buys her presents that she accepts with indifference, such as the clipped-winged ducks for the pond.

Although life is seen only from Peggy's point-of-view, the reader gets a clear idea of Vernon's loving, but simple ways. Peggy says that he has always been a good man, but there are many of these in the area. The only difference between him and other men was his baseball pitching expertise, but he left the semi-pros many years earlier to work in the mill. Earley's writing style is relaxed and uncomplicated, just like Vernon.

It lends itself well to the daily doldrums, in which most people spend their entire lives. His descriptions paint vivid pictures of the people and scenery of his home state, with a mixture of sincerity and some lightheartedness: "Vernon was tall and broad-shouldered, strong-looking, but with a narrow waist and a high round butt .. " Earley wonderfully compares Peggy and the ducks that Vernon brings home.

Much to his dismay (as well as the ducks'), snapping turtles or foxes eat all of the birds except one (and the fact that one remains is questionable), since they cannot fly away to safety. In her own way, Peggy, too, dreams of flying away from her mundane life, especially since her life would soon be over like that of the ducks. However, in most part she has come to terms with what she has and has not achieved during her lifetime, including the safe delivery of a baby.

(He was stillborn.) The story ends with Vernon suggesting that they buy some more birds -- geese, this time. Peggy still had things she wanted to say to her husband, but did not want to hurt a man who loved her so much.

So "she looked all around her and supposed that it had been a good enough way to live." The last story, "My Father's Heart" is an offshoot of several earlier entries about a young boy, Jimmy, who grew into manhood while living with his mother and three uncles. His father had died of a heart attack while his mother was pregnant. His mother's only consolation was "that the child she carried was destined to live a life that mattered." While growing up, she never ceased talking about her dead husband.

Regardless of Jimmy's actions, it was because of his father's blood within him, and whatever small kindness he performed, it was because "he had his father's heart." As a result of these comparisons, at night the young boy Jimmy shook from fear and prayed that his heart would not stop while he was sleeping.

This concern was exacerbated by the fact that he really did have a diseased heart, and the doctors said that "he was lucky to be alive." Every day, Jimmy would listen to the trains that went by his house. He dreamed of traveling the rails to places near and far. Jimmy, unlike Peggy, thus found a way to escape his fears as an adult. Although he married and had two daughters, he was rarely home.

Instead, he rode the trains with Great Southeastern Railway for 37 years as a foreman, engineer and district supervisor. Since that was all he had wanted to do since he was a child, he felt satisfied with his life. Jimmy's contentment came even though his mother expected.