mazie louise montgomery

is the author of COMPASSIONATE MOOSE, which is forthcoming on BEAR PARADE. She has myspace and a blog. The story below is from COMPASSIONATE MOOSE; below the story is an interview with Mazie Louise Montgomery.

IN A MOOSE LANGUAGE ONLY SHE COULD UNDERSTAND

In a coastal town in southern Florida a beautiful moose was born into a loving family. There was a mother, who stayed home and baked cookies, and a father, who went to work at an architectural firm where he designed tunnels and bridges that spoke to humanity's longings for the intrinsic qualities of nature within a structure made of steel and concrete. But this beautiful moose was unhappy, almost from the day of her birth. She wore a sad expression on her face daily. She talked only of sadness and pain and despair, but in metaphysical terms her parents could not understand. At Christmas she felt guilty because she received expensive Barbies and pogo sticks and tinker toys when other children were searching landfills for food. She cared nothing for school and stared out the window while contemplating the number of times the wind blew a dandelion bloom into the side of a building. Her teachers called her lazy. Her parents went to parent-teacher conferences and shook their heads. Her mother could not understand why, her father banged his fists against the wall and cried. The sadness of the beautiful moose was starting to affect the stability of the marriage. Soon there would be an affair with a beautiful bookkeeper. Soon the black leather couch and the dining room table would be all the furniture left in the house.

One day, in her freshman year of college, the beautiful moose became enraged with the world, so enraged that she contemplated killing her roommate, her biology teacher, her boyfriend and his dog. She did not understand why she thought of doing these things. She went to a well-recommended moose psychiatrist and told of her fears. The moose psychiatrist wrote down things like passivity, acceptance, indifference, ineffectual rage, and counteractions. He wrote PRIVATE and CONFIDENTIAL on her file and locked it in a mahogany-colored filing cabinet. He gave her a prescription for Xanax. The beautiful moose did not feel any happier, but she also did not care that she was unhappy. She did not kill her roommate or her biology teacher or her boyfriend and his dog. No one ever found out about the file. She graduated with a degree in animal husbandry and married a man who would become a prominent meteorologist at a highly-ranked local station that was independently owned by an environmentalist who believed in Global Warming and drove a hybrid SUV. They were a happy family. They moved to a small forest in Anchorage just far enough outside the city limits. They sharpened their antlers on glaciers made of blue ice and ate clover in the springtime. It was a magical world, but it would not last for long.

When the beautiful moose became with child she was blissfully happy for the first time in her life. She knew just what kind of mother she would be, she knew the games she would play with her moose child, the fun they would have at the park. But after the beloved moose child was born the meteorologist became moody and defensive. He became jealous of the moose child and worried that he did not make enough money to support the three of them. He spent nights away from home, telling his moose wife he was working hard to earn extra money. The moose wife became sad again, she painted every room in the house a different color, took up needle pointing and participated in a weekly Jazzercise class but nothing worked. She did not like staying home with the moose child when the meteorologist was out earning money so she ran away to New York, leaving her moose child behind. The meteorologist became enraged and threatened to keep the moose child from his beautiful moose wife unless she came back home. The moose wife became even sadder but she could not go back home. Instead she moved halfway back and settled in Montana, spending the rest of her life wishing that she had killed the meteorologist in his sleep long ago.

By this time the moose child was as sad as her mother had ever been and started cutting down trees with its antlers as a release from the pain and suffering. The meteorologist built her a canoe. The moose child carried the canoe to a campsite to embark on a soul-searching trip that she hoped would bring clarity to her life but a group of campers made fun of the way she talked so she beat them with the canoe instead, killing eight park rangers, two Inuit's, and an Alaskan Husky/Chow mix dog that was eating a peanut butter sandwich from the trash. When the rampage was over the moose child stood in the canoe, waiting for the police to arrive. Later the meteorologist would blame his beautiful moose wife for the problems of the child and the moose wife would accept complete responsibility. Later the moose child would dream of a life in Japan from her prison cell and speak to herself in a moose language that only she could understand.

INTERVIEW

What do you do if you're alone, have no obligations for the day, and aren't sleepy?

I so rarely have time alone with no obligations when I am not sleepy. I am usually always sleepy and I have a young daughter so my obligations are many. I am so used to never being alone that when I am alone I kind of freak out. It takes me a while to get used to the aloneness, the quiet. So I think my answer is: when I am alone and have no obligations and am not sleepy, I freak out.

How was getting an MA from the University of Southern Mississippi and being in Frederick Barthelme's class?

Getting an MA was very expensive. Being in Rick's class was very hard. People talk shit about your writing, you talk shit about their writing, Rick says something about your writing, maybe something good, maybe something bad, and then you go home and brood about how no one understands you.

What did you do in place of writing before you started writing?

I'm not sure. That was about ten years ago. I was married, I know that. I took care of my husband's children. I went shopping. I did the dishes. I cooked hamburger helper. I participated in backyard cookouts and read Harlequin romance novels.

You self-published a lot of chapbooks, where are those now?

They are in a dresser drawer, the ones I have left. I sold a lot of them. Some went to Boston and California and Arizona and I don't know where else. I put some in bookshops in New York when I lived there.

You edited a literary magazine called Dicey Brown but it is gone now. Do you read any online literary magazines? What is the similar alternative to Dicey Brown? Is there one?

I don't actually read any online literary magazines right now. I have not been impressed with a lot of the writing I've seen. When I started Dicey Brown, about four or five years ago when I was at USM, there was a lot of really great writing going on and a lot of magazines starting up and I felt like I had to be a part of that. But lately I felt like maybe that is on the decline. Maybe it is just my own apathy that I feel.

At the time I was excited about publishing my own writing online and lately that desire was diminished. It wasn't until I started writing the stories for Compassionate Moose that I became excited about it again.

I don't know what other magazine to compare Dicey Brown to so I don't know what to suggest in its place. We published art, photography, fiction, poetry and metafiction. And we had a kind of style and voice that I thought was unique. I had always hoped that when someone thought of Dicey Brown they could imagine a type of story or poem and go back time and again looking for the familiar.

Did you make friends in your MFA program?

Yes. My very best friend from USM is Lydia Copeland. She just had a baby. He is gorgeous. His name is Seamus. Lydia and I used to live together in a house I bought while I was there. The house was blue and had wood floors. It was an old house. We used to edit each other's work. I miss that. I miss having someone in the next room that I can ask to read my work.

What do you think about your forthcoming Bear Parade book, "Compassionate Moose"?

I am very excited about that book. It was a lot of fun writing it. It's the first project I've completed in a long time.

Will you bring your daughter to the computer and show her "Compassionate Moose"?

Yes I will. I'm not sure she will be interested in reading any of it. It's not exactly her style of book. Maybe she will read it when she is older. That would make me happy.

What do you think when you go in a giant bookstore and look at all the new novels that have been published and are getting read by everyone?

I am happy people are reading. I don't buy any novels from giant bookstores myself. The only things I buy from giant bookstores are professional books for my job and magazines that I can't get anywhere else. I prefer to get my reading material at used book stores and thrift stores.

What character in a Lorrie Moore story do you feel is most like you?

Zoe Hendricks.

What do you do on the Internet if you're bored?

I write on my blog. Sometimes I read other people's blogs. I used to work on Dicey Brown nonstop but now that I don't have that, I don't really do much online except write. Maybe one day soon I will have another online project that I feel excited about.