By Amanda Dyslin
Most Minnesotans reading Nick Healy’s short story “Uncle Ed’s Packard” will understand the brief reference to Armistice Day in the context of an impending storm.
Suddenly, the date is clear: Nov. 11, 1940. The events about to unfold are also clear: Unseasonably warm conditions will cause hundreds of Midwesterners out enjoying the weather to be trapped in a raging blizzard that set in so quickly many didn’t have time to seek shelter. Trains collided, boats sank and 154 people died.
But just as Healy, a Mankato resident, had hoped, the story — which won the prestigious 2009 Tamarack Award, presented by Minnesota Monthly, and appears in the November issue — works whether the reader understands the reference or not. This is a story about a teenage boy and his decisions, much more so than it is about a blizzard.
The story follows the boy, Farrell, who steals his uncle Ed’s black Packard near the site where Ed and a friend are hunting and takes it on a joy ride with his girlfriend, Lenora. The focus flips back and forth between the teenagers and the hunters, Kowalska, as the blizzard sets in.
“In a way, the story is about how innocent decisions or actions can have deep and devastating impacts — the decisions of teenage boys, in particular,” said Healy, an editor for Capstone Publishers who was honored at a ceremony for the award last week. “So often they do things without calculating what the results could be, or without having any sort of fear about the worst case scenario.”
The Tamarack isn’t Healy’s first honor. His short story, “And Other Delights,” won the Speakeasy Prize from the Loft Literary Center in 2005. He has been published in the North American Review, Water Stone Review, Blueroad and the Great River Review.
Still, the Tamarack, which comes with a $1,000 prize, is a special honor celebrating superior short fiction by Midwestern writers. And Healy had been trying for it for the past 10 years.
At first, he said, entering the contest was a way to get him motivated to write and finish stories, a sort of annual deadline he set in order to finish work. During recent years, however, as he went through the master of fine arts program at Minnesota State University and became serious about honing his craft, he submitted much more polished work.
“I might be the only winner whose first thought was, ‘Finally,’” he joked.
For a few years recently, the Tamarack came with $10,000, such as when Nicole Helget of North Mankato won it in 2005 for her story, “The Turtle Catcher.” But the decrease in prize money doesn’t take away from the prestige of the award among the Minnesota writing community. About 200 entries are received each year.
“Hey, usually when you get a short story published they pay you with free copies of the magazine,” Healy said.
Eric Braun of Mankato also won the award in 2007. Three winners from the MFA program in the past five years has been a huge boon and speaks to the quality and work ethic of local writers, said Rick Robbins, MFA Creative Writing Program director.
“It’s one of the high profile prizes in the state that’s connected with a single work of fiction,” he said. “It’s been around for over 20 years, so it’s got really good name recognition, and Minnesota Monthly has a healthy circulation, so it gets a person’s work out.”
Healy wrote “Uncle Ed’s Packard” in March or April, at the end of the miserable winter. The Armistice Day Blizzard wasn’t the catalyst for the story, but winter weather was on his mind, and the images from ninth-grade lessons about the great blizzard — school buses buried in snow, and the dead lying frozen and huddled on the ground — weren’t far behind. The “Little House on the Prairie” books he was reading to his kids also might have fueled the fire.
“Somebody is almost always falling in a creek, or getting caught in a blizzard, or being surrounded by wolves (in those books),” he said.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the story is the ending, which some might argue leaves the outcome up to the reader. Healy, however, says there is a clear ending for the less optimistic reader.
Robbins and others workshopped an earlier 8,000-word version of the story, which is about twice as long as the 4,000-word or less requirement for the Tamarack. Healy said he’s thinking about fleshing it out again, spending more time on Uncle Ed and his friend. But then again, maybe it’s best to leave well enough alone, he said.
As is, the story was good enough to win the Tamarack, after all.
Read “Uncle Ed’s Packard” at www.minnesota
monthly.com.
