Pilgrims is a collection of short stories about people who
are living quiet lives that seem to be on the cusp of something. Sometimes,
they glide over that cusp and move into the shimmering yonder and sometimes,
they don’t. None of the stories in Pilgrims have a fantastic point to make.
Each one comes like driftwood, mossy and beautiful, a gift from a large ocean
of possible lives being lived out in this world. Some pieces of driftwood have
just a few simple grooves. Some others have more intricate etchings.
The first short in Pilgrims tells the story of a young girl
who is hired as a stable-hand in Wyoming. She is a sturdy girl with a sturdy
dream. Just the sort of girl who will do all the robust work expected of a
farmhand and then one day, just take off on her horse into the world.
Another one, ‘Elk Talk’ is a delicate tale of a woman living
with her husband and nephew high up in the mountains. They don’t have a
neighbour for miles around. One day, though, a family of three drops in
unannounced and introduces itself as the neighbours. It’s Halloween and their
little girl is dressed with antlers on her head. The father has invented a
whistle that emulates an elk’s mating call. All of them stand in the porch when
the father demonstrates this whistle. They stand there in silence for a long,
long time. Then finally a large, handsome elk steps out from the shadow and
stares at them. Towards the end of the story, the woman tells her neighbour to
stop whistling and moves away in a huff with her son. She is disgusted with the
way the man could manipulate a beautiful animal like that. Also, a little
resentful that the vastness around her that she had taken for granted has been
compromised.
In ‘Alice to the East’, a young girl and her brother get
stranded in Verona because their car has broken down. A stranger offers to
help. What happens, over beers in desolate pubs or dusty trips to a mechanic,
is a young girl excavating the man’s lonely life through conversations.
‘Bird Shot’ has a man trying to teach a young boy about his
father’s legacy as a good shot of game birds.
In ‘Tall Folks’, a divorced couple are also rival
pub-owners. One day, the man’s pub shuts down and the woman hires her nephew to
take care of her place. The man’s club, however, is bought over by a misogynist
sort of fellow with three daughters. He has pole dancers who mostly look sad
and bored. But in that dimly lit bar, some stories get exchanged between people
known to and estranged from each other.
The collection has a sweet, almost- love story called ‘Landing’.
A tough, sophisticated girl falls for a redneck driver and their scene ends in
silence in a diner over coffee.
‘Come and fetch these stupid kids’ is one of my favourites,
along with ‘Elk Talk’. Two couples in their teens or early twenties live
together in a huge mansion by the sea. The house belongs to a boy in the group.
He is spoilt, entitled, and has a charm that is impossible to indulge. One
eventful night, there’s a raging storm and the ocean’s heaving and churning. In
that storm, the spoilt boy wants to go swimming. The other boy in the group, J,
is the strong and sensible type. For some reason, he agrees as well. The girls acquiesce
and they all wade into the ocean. The rain pelts down, huge waves toss them
about here and there, lightning slashes across the sky and for a little while,
all of them can hold their own. Then slowly, each one, except for J, starts
losing steam. They sink and try to heave themselves out but get sucked into the
sea again. The worst case is the spoilt boy though. He has gone really far away
from the store and is drowning. J rescues him and swims back to the shore.
Meanwhile, the storm has become a lot stronger. J’s girlfriend watches him swim
to the shore and wonders if he will call the Coast Guards or come back himself.
While her other friend is trying to stay afloat, she wonders about her
boyfriend and how much resentment he might be feeling because none of his
friends can take care of themselves. Including her.
While this earlier set is mainly snapshots of a mood or a
specific time in a particular place, the next batch of stories have a more
pronounced plot. “The many things that Denny Brown did not know at age fifteen”
allude to whether comparison is an inherited compulsion. “The names of flowers
and girls” has a young man allow a woman to captivate his imagination to
understandable, sad results. “At the Bronx Terminal Vegetable Market” is an
interesting tour into the world of vegetable dealers and buyers in the Bronx.
It’s also a study of how one man keeps his dreams alive in that scenario. In “The
famous town and restored lit cigarette trick”, a celebrated magician loses his
mind and is later redeemed by his plain, stoic dogged daughter.
“Finest wine” has a 70 year old woman entering fantasy land
where she drives a bus filled with all the men she has loved foolishly and
wisely.
What struck me was the gentle commonplaceness of these lives
that Gilbert writes about. No great transformations occur. No great tragedies
or resurrections either. Yet you get this unmistakable feeling of how much
changes even when nothing happens.
