Crossing
The short story, ‘Crossing’, is written by Mark Slouka in 2009, and takes up father and son relationship together with man vs. nature. From the beginning of time fathers have taken their sons on camping trips or similar to pass on their knowledge about how to conquer Mother Nature. But more important it binds them closer together, and this is exactly these two purposes the father here wishes to obtain.

Through a third person limited narrator the reader is presented to a father who has a hard time in life after a divorce from his wife. Therefore he is now determined to find something that matters and has set his heart on maintaining a strong and sound relationship to his young son, ‘when he looked at her she shook her head and looked away and at that moment he thought, maybe – maybe he could make this right’(19-20). He believes that they can bond through male-things, things the son cannot do with his mother. By choosing something he himself did with his father he makes it more ritually and secret, it is something only father and son share.
As the narrator only knows what the main character, the father, thinks, feels and recalls, it is naturally told from his point of view. We get glimpse of the things that he struggles with, ‘he hadn’t been happy in a while’ (5). By using this narrative technique Slouka brings us closer to the father, and the readers feel and experience his pain first-hand, consequently the readers also want him to succeed. Because of the limited narrator there is no insight or access to the son’s mind, instead the author uses physical descriptions through the father’s eyes, who pictures him as a small and fragile boy he has to protect, ‘he looked over at the miniature jeans, the sweatshirt bunched beneath the seat belt’s strap, the hiking boots dangling off the floor like weights. “You okay?”’ (7-8).

Right from the start has the short story built up suspense through its mood, its setting and its use of words. Slouka manages to keep the reader in constant dark and anxious about what is going to happen, an example would be the bad weather conditions, which are dark and bleak, ‘the line of the open sky in the east was razor sharp’ (6). As mentioned the author also makes use of setting to create the right mood, exactly because the story is set near the raging river which, together with the barn, are described with words that usually give associations to death, ‘there was something about pitching a tent inside that skeleton’ (74-75). Furthermore the father constantly has to calm himself down, because the current makes him nervous, ‘he was thinking too much’ (100-101). Despite that is nature at the same time also described as the totally opposite; as beautiful and magnificent, ‘and sometimes, if you were quite, herds of elk would graze in the meadow at dusk’ (31-32), because father and son have great experiences in nature. Men become very small when confronted with the powers of the Earth. Another contrast is the one between the son and the river, since the boy is introduced as fragile and small, and the river as great and ominous.

Even though the father, who remains unnamed, has a feeling that the trip might end badly he does not call it off, because he is in such an in-between place in his life where going back is not an option, ‘for a moment he considered pulling out, explaining … but there was nowhere else to go’ (39-40). He needs to do this to get some meaning back with his existence. But as they come to the end and the inevitable happens, nature conquers the man, the main character still remains protective for instance by telling his son it is going to be all right, in spite of he knows they are doomed, ‘”I’m okay, kiddo. I’m okay. That wasn’t good, but we’re fine”. They weren’t fine’. For him the most important thing is to make a good memory out of the bonding-trip for his son, even to the last.

Slouka scatters breadcrumbs through the whole text and already in the title, ‘crossing’, it might suggest that the father lets go and they drown in the river, then it can be interpreted as if they cross from this world to another. This also connects with the main character’s earlier vision about death, ‘where had it come from – this slide into weakness, this vision of death like a tunnel at the end of the road and no way to get off or turn around?’(68-70).

This ending may seem tragic and unreasonable, especially because of the bond we have created to these two persons. Through Slouka’s narrative technique and use of suspense, the readers continually hope they will survive, and they do never get a definitive clue to what happens, since the author has used an open ending where the father and son are caught between life and death. It becomes up to each individual to decide whether they will survive. During the whole text he has given fleeting glimpses to what will happen, but none, as said, actually commits to how it ends. If they survive the father get to perform as the ultimate action hero – or as he himself says,’ Mr. Universe’ (119) – by being there for his son when he needs it the most, furthermore a survival would probably cause the life change the main character so desperately searches for, he will get back on track and finally make it right with his son.