LISTENING TO THE SHANTY DRUMMER

by Rob Lopresti

Back in 1983 I was taking evening courses at the Newark campus of Rutgers the State University of New Jersey (and yes, that was the school’s official name … imagine singing the football fight song). So two nights a week I would drive through bombed-out-looking neighborhoods in that troubled city on my way back to suburban Maplewood.

Sometimes the highlight of the trip was seeing a teenage African-American who had put together a drum kit from garbage cans, plastic buckets, and anything else he could find. He sat in front of a boarded-up store, hammering out the most amazing rhythms without an apparent care in the world.

I thought of him as the Shanty Drummer, because in one of the courses I was taking the professor had told us that a “shanty” was a house built from material that was never intended for living quarters, just as this young man’s drums were all improvised equipment.

Driving home after a long day of work and a draggy evening of graduate school I used to marvel at how happy that kid seemed to be. There’s a story there, I thought.

But was I the right one to write it? A debate has gone on for many years over the appropriateness of members of a society’s dominant group — say a white male tall right-handed able-bodied straight Protestant — writing fiction about the lives of people who have been more marginalized by society.

I’m not going there. Instead I work from a very simple rule: Don’t write it if you can’t write it well. And I didn’t think I knew enough about that youngster’s life to tell, or even make up, a good story about him. So, regretfully, I put the idea aside.

Reversing the telescope

Years later I came back to the idea and turned it around. What if I wrote about a young businessman who drove past a person like the Shanty Drummer everyday on his way home from work? Now that was a character I knew enough to write about.

For contrast I wanted the businessman to be as miserable as the young drummer appeared to be happy. So I gave him a job he didn’t like and a wife who was ambitious for him to succeed in it.

Thinking of those night courses gave me another idea. I had my character constantly remembering bits from his college days. This served as a reminder of how much he regretted now the choices he had make back then.

I made some important changes to my drummer character from the real one. One change was vital to the story.

And then all I needed then was a crime. Ah, that was easy. So I started writing.

The World’s Leading Mystery Magazine

That’s what Ellery Queen calls itself and “The Shanty Drummer” is in their current, August, issue. I can’t tell you what a shock that is to me. I have been trying to get into EQMM since 1976, and this was my 77th try. (Actually when I got the contract I did tell you how surprised I was.) Nice illustration by Mark Evans, too.

By the way, I see that frequent CB commenter Jon L. Breen has a story as well, so this is one of those rare two-librarian issues. Be careful, folks! We’re taking over the genre!

But I have a confession to make. As I was editing the story I realized that Reality was not the only source of inspiration for the story. I had stolen big chunks of it from another short story.

Consider. Both stories involved an unhappy businessman with a troubled marriage. Both involve the same type of crime. And both end with a confrontation between characters in the same roles, although the outcomes of the confrontations are different (some might say the outcomes are emotionally identical).

You may have noticed I haven’t told you the title of the other story, and you might think that that is because I am afraid I will be sued for plagiarism. Well, no. I happen to know the author is a very sweet, understanding kind of guy. In fact, he’s me.

The reason I am not telling you the title of that first story is that it might give a hint about the plot of “The Shanty Drummer.” And we wouldn’t want to give you any excuse not to read it, would we?

Because God only knows when EQMM will let me sneak in again.