The Big Finish: A Story from Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events

By Kevin Moffett

"The Big Finish," a story from Kevin Moffett's dazzling new collection, Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events, takes readers on board a cruise ship with Hayes, a directionless thirty-something who takes a job as the host of the ship's bird shows for children. In his new role, he develops a strange and unexpected relationship with a fellow employee—and with the birds themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062233264

Kevin Moffett

Kevin Moffett's stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere, as well as in three editions of The Best American Short Stories. He is the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the 2010 National Magazine Award for the title story. He lives in Claremont, California.

Book preview

The Big Finish

A Story from Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events

Kevin Moffett

Contents

Cover

Title Page

The Big Finish

For More Stories from Kevin Moffett

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Big Finish

Everyone on the ship calls Hayes the birdman, except for the birds, who call him Ned. Ned must have been the name of the ship’s previous birdman, because Hayes’s name is Hayes. The birds say it with a Dixie accent: Nay-ed. The previous birdman taught them some nasty habits and Hayes doesn’t know enough about birds to unteach them. He knows very little about birds actually. He applied for a job as a line cook, and when the recruiter asked about his previous experience working in a dog-grooming van years ago, he explained it was one of the most worthwhile things he’d ever done.

I wasn’t just clipping dogs, Hayes told him in the man’s office. I was changing how they felt about themselves. Dogs can’t talk, of course, but during that final brushing, their expression would be like, ‘I am not the same dog.’

The recruiter scribbled into his notepad—Hayes calculated by the intensity of the scribbling that he was doing either very poorly or very well. The man asked Hayes what he knew about birds.

Well, Hayes said, I know I could spend the rest of my life admiring their liberty, their proud majesty. I know their pull is ancient.

Hayes, still living in the small college town he moved to after high school, had been feeling, but

Reviews for The Big Finish

[detailmuse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of nine short stories -- “pedigreed” stories you might say, since eight of them were previously published in literary journals like McSweeney’s, Tin House, and Harvard Review, and two of those were selected for volumes of The Best American Short Stories series.They're quietly funny, mostly accessible but sometimes confounding, and often melancholy but in a comforting way that says we get through difficult times. I enjoyed the originality in premise or voice in most of the stories, especially the title story about a young writer, his writing mentor, and his father who in retirement "began writing trueish stories about fathers and sons"; and another that opens when an architecture student, on board a plane awaiting takeoff to Italy, receives a text that the terminally ill father he just visited has died ... the tension builds beautifully as he hesitates, deciding whether to go back or go on.I gave up on one (curiously, the only unpublished) story and skimmed another. But I’ll look for more by Kevin Moffett.(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)