Who Goes There?

Robert McCammon made his debut in 1978, but didn’t really come to prominence until the latter half of the ’80s, in what was a meteor shower of both novels and short fiction. His longest and most ambitious novel up to that point, 1987’s Swan Song, won him a Stoker, and the next half-decade or so saw a turnout of one novel every year, each one being very well-received. At the beginning, McCammon’s work was decidedly horror, of the Southern Gothic variety (he was born and raised in Alabama), crossed with that rather nostalgic-whimsical style Stephen King became famous for. This mixing of influences arguably reached its climax with Boy’s Life in 1991, which is only nominally horror while at the same time being a mish-mash of several genres. By the time Gone South was published a year later, McCammon had become disillusioned with the horror publishing industry and quit the scene for about a decade, which no doubt hurt his chances at having long-term success, but from his perspective it was a necessary move. “Yellowjacket Summer” is simple, maybe a little too straightforward, but it shows McCammon during a time when he was compulsively writing spooky fiction by the mile. There’s some King in there, undeniably, but also a strong touch of the rural South that’s totally McCammon.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the October 1986 issue of Twilight Zone Magazine. The only notable reprint is in the McCammon collection Blue World and Other Stories, which is in print.

Enhancing Image

Right away something is kinda off with how McCammon tells this story, and it took me a day’s reflection to figure out exactly what it was: it’s the fact that we have a third-person limited narrator who switches perspectives between characters on a dime and without scene breaks. This is a problem for some people with a novel, but with a short story it’s pretty much a deal-breaker as far as technique goes. We’re in Georgia, in the middle of nowhere at some gas station, with a boy named Toby, who (the introductory blurb basically tells us) has a nasty trick up his sleeve. We soon switch perspectives to a family coming by the gas station where Toby’s at: Carla, the mom, plus her two kids, Joe and Trish. Perspective jumps to Carla, then Joe, then back again, all without a pause in the action, which I found distracting. I cross-examined the TZ printing with how it appears in Blue World, because scene or even chapter breaks might be added or removed for a story between its original printing and elsewhere; but no, I guess this is really how McCammon intended the story to be understood. I know this might come off as overemphasizing a certain flaw, but I do think it seriously gets in the way of what is otherwise a perfectly competent horror yarn about what it’s like to be stuck on the side of the road without cell cervice.

Anyway, what McCammon does do well here is evoke a certain time and place, which I’d already figured from reading Boy’s Life. What Stephen King does for New England, McCammon does for the Bible belt. Consider this description of the gas station: “The ancient-looking gas station, its roof covered with kudzu and its bricks bleached yellow by a hundred summer suns, was a beautiful sight, especially since the Voyager’s tank was getting way too low for comfort.” Ignore that obviously the gas station could not have been around for literally a hundred years, it’s the idea that counts. Now, when the family gets there Joe has to go pretty bad, and when you gotta go you gotta go. Right from the beginning we get the impression that Toby is kind of a bastard, but it’s the scene in the bathroom with Joe that we get our first real taste of Toby’s telepathic power over bees—yellowjackets, specifically. Why he has this power or how he got it, don’t know. This is not a story about the why or the how, and it’s not even a story that’s really “about” anything, other than the visceral horror of being confronted with one mean kid and an endless horde of bees. This is not a fun thing to read about, of course, especially if you’re allergic to bee stings. Thankfully Joe survives the encounter, but unfortunately this is just the beginning of the family’s troubles as they move from the gas station (not being able to get gas there), to a nearby cafe, which happens to be eerily deserted.

McCammon doesn’t strike me as someone who’s into giving incisive social commentary (Consider that Swan Song, a novel clocking in at over 800 pages, has a message that boils down to: “Nuclear war is bad.” Well of course it’s bad, Robert.), but if “Yellowjack Summer” is “about” anything, it’s about the maggot-gnawed husk that is rural America, or what used to be the American frontier. In Georgia we have Atlanta as the beacon of what we think of as civilizatuion, but there are pockets in this state (among others) that seem have been frozen solid decades ago, or gotten quietly left behind by the rest of the country. This story takes place in Capshaw, which is a town, but not much of one. Capshaw is one of many places in America which the country at large has long pushed under the kitchen rug, like some old bread crumbs one can’t be bothered to vacuum up.

Consider this:

The town was quiet except for the distant cawing of a crow. It amazed Carla that such a primitive-looking place should exist just seven or eight miles off the main highway. In an age of interstates and rapid travel, it was easy to forget that little hamlets like this still stood on the back roads—and Carla felt like kicking herself in the butt for getting them into this mess.

I should probably take a moment to bring up an obvious influence for this story, which is Jerome Bixby’s “It’s a Good Life.” Had McCammon read the original story as well as seen the Twilight Zone adaptation? Probably. It’s a rock-solid premise: What is a child suddenly got telepathic powers and bent a small town to his will? Toby doesn’t have the world-shattering capabilities of Anthony, but he’s older and more actively sadistic. It becomes clear that one reason why Capshaw is a mostly deserted town is because of Toby, and the few people remaining are too scared to leave. Emma, a rather gaunt woman who works at the cafe, has reached her breaking point by the time Carla arrives, which results in a pretty tense scene. I just wish I cared more. Maybe it’s because of the constantly shifting perspective and the underdeveloped setting, but I found it hard to get invested, even if McCammon has an eye for pacing and this is a smooth read.

There Be Spoilers Here

The good news is that while the yellowjackets do sting a lot, and the chances of getting to real civilization in a van that’s running on E are low, it turns out that evil children are not immune to getting run over with a fucking car. Good to see that child murder wins the day.

A Step Farther Out

Sorry I didn’t have much to say about this one, but sometimes that’s just how it is. I feel like I may have been a bit harsh toward McCammon, but I think it may have to do with his being stronger as a novelist than with short stories. I could be wrong, of course, and it’s possible that “Yellowjacket Summer,” which anyway hasn’t been reprinted much, may just be a relatively weak entry in his vast oeuvre.

See you next time.