Perfect Attendance

by George Singleton

Exclusive for Kindle, Perfect Attendance, tells the story of Madison, and his father Charlie Kent. After his graduation, Madison left his friends—all of whom he felt sure would go off to either Clemson or the University of South Carolina, then come running back home one day after getting their college degree—and headed to Cap’n Del Kell’s Galley Bell alone. His mother came up to him in the parking lot and said, “Call me when you order, call me when you’re done. Do not let him talk you into lending him your graduation money.” Madison remembered his mother’s stories: his father swore off drinking one time, but within a week came back from the grocery store loaded down with three dozen jars of Vita-brand pickled herring in wine sauce. The next morning Madison’s mother found the jars sucked dry, the fillets standing on edge in their containers. She told a story of his father one time scraping his knuckles on purpose so he could apply isopropyl to the abrasions, in order to lick the alcohol.

 

George Singleton’s the author of four collections of shorts stories (These People Are Us, The Half-Mammals of Dixie, Why Dogs Chase Cars, Drowning in Gruel), two novels (Novel, Work Shirts for Madmen), and one non-fiction book of writing advice (Pep Talks, Warnings and Screeds). His fiction has appeared in magazines such at The Atlantic, Harper’s, Playboy, Oxford American, Book, Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, Georgia Review, and Southern Review. He’s had work anthologized in nine editions of New Stories from the South, plus a number of other anthologies and textbooks.  He is a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Singleton lives in Dacusville, South Carolina, and he teaches fiction writing at the S.C. Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities.

15 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 26, 2010