A Hard Witching:
And Other Stories
By Jacqueline Baker
HarperFlamingo Canada,
181 pages, $26
The defining moment in A Hard Witching And Other Stories occurs in the hand of young Max, where a tiny worm emerges from a Saskatoon berry with "an absurd, desperate movement, as though rearing its head like a rattler: a movement of aggression or blindness, it could have been either." This idea, of the small, limited self reacting to a vast, half-seen world, is what holds together the eight stories in prairie author Jacqueline Baker's technically masterful and thoroughly enjoyable debut.
When I read Baker's story Small Comfort in a literary magazine last spring, I felt that inexplicable familiarity that good fiction can inspire. Ten-year-old Audrey's reactions to the seemingly absolute forces surrounding her are as desperate as the worm's, and almost as blind. Confronted with Barbra Streisand music and horse posters, Audrey flees an enforced haircut with insipid Elise and prim Cora Mae, of whom her Avon-lady mother brightly approves. Audrey is drawn instead to spastic, antisocial Boyd, whose perpetual, erratic motion makes him seem "as if he could shoot off in any direction without warning at any time." Baker beautifully conveys the balance between choice and impulse, and the impossibility of finding clarity in either.
This perspective (lack of perspective, we call it) is most often associated with childhood, and several of the stories in A Hard Witching are about children. But worse off, perhaps, are the adults who deny their ignorance. In the title story, Edna's well suddenly dries up following an appearance by her dead husband. When a poor neighbour at the church bake sale informs her she's dealing with a thirsty "haint," Edna snaps at her to "Speak like a Christian, for heaven's sake. . . . You're in a church."
Edna's reliance on the accepted and expected forms of things, her refusal of anything merely possible or potential, and her lifelong habit of judgment and suspicion make the arrival of the unknown something dreadful. When the man who has been checking her well starts to re-emerge from the darkness, Edna is "overcome with an awful terror, as if everything evil in the world was about to climb up out of that pit. Slam the lid, she thought, slam it quick and lock it." Baker's insight into Edna's debilitating small-mindedness is remarkable.
Comparisons between Baker and Alice Munro are inevitable, and in some ways justified. Baker subscribes to the formal approach of which Munro is so often called a master. Restraint, pacing, a fascination with ordinary life, these are not bad characteristics to emulate. But for Baker, the human tumbling of emotion and perception are more important than nailing down a story line, and she stops short of the airtight structures that make some of Munro's later work feel coffin-like. In general, Baker refers to CanLit traditions without being hindered by them. There's a nod at rural Gothic, for example, but it's just a nod.
Likewise, though all of the stories take place in rural Saskatchewan and half of them on farms, the observations are fresh. No King George and Queen Elizabeth visiting on the train. No kids getting lost in dust -- or snowstorms. Baker's Saskatchewan is one where "the smooth, pale Sand Hills shoulder up from the prairie," where there are "rattlers, curled like fat grey muscles," and where a carnival brings people into the streets, "ghostly and bristling with excitement." Mostly, though, setting is just setting, the background for Baker's characters.
Nadine Gordimer says that human contact is like the flash of fireflies, and that, "Short-story writers see by the light of the flash; theirs is the art of the only thing one can be sure of -- the present moment." In this way, Baker's stories illuminate moments in her characters' lives. What makes them so satisfying to read is their depth. While remaining loyal to the small frame, Baker is refreshingly unafraid of psychological complexity. In Lillie,Baker explores the erotic tension of a young boy watching his junior-high neighbour sunbathe: "He eased himself up, noticing how his shadow fell across her belly in a wide, dark stripe. He wondered how long he would have to stand there in order to leave the white shape of his body on her skin." Later, when he fills a spray bottle with ice water, we are acutely aware of its presence -- and its potential use -- in the dizzying heat of the backyard. Immediacy makes this story what it is, and yet his attraction, and her conflicting pride and shame, mean something real. Baker reveals characters rearing up with what -- we conclude -- is both decision and reflex, aggression and blindness.
A Hard Witching & Other Stories is a book to reread, twice as good the second time. Jacqueline Baker, with an honest and skillful debut, surpasses the crowd by miles. Fiona Foster writes short stories. She has nothing personal against the late King and Queen.