Review of “Nuclear Toughskins”

“This story tells of a boyhood and of an era (the Cold War), all in the same neat package. While the boy (who narrates the story) schemes to wear a pair of shorts against his parents’ warnings of hell to pay, the whole country schemes to get the Reds, the ‘godless heathens.’ The boy does make a pair of shorts for himself, by cutting up a pair of Toughskins jeans, and for an afternoon he runs bare-legged and free. However, the threat of punishment prevails, and the blasphemous cutoffs are buried in the ground, like nuclear waste. And, like plutonium, ‘they’re buried there still.’ They ‘have outlasted Vietnam, the Olympic boycott, the Cold War, Star Wars.’ Hence, by the end, the scope has widened from family life to the sweep of history. I also admire the way that Fearnside sets the scene, evoking the heat of summer in a small town in the United States. The town has a five and dime, sticky ice cream, and fireflies at night. Those details are right on target.”

—Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Roughhouse (Kaya Press) and Tetched (Behler Publications), writing as final judge of Many Mountains Moving’s 2005 Flash Fiction Contest

Click here to read the review and story as published online.