Mapping The Interior: A Short, Gripping Tale of Lost & Found

I discovered Stephen Graham Jones with My Heart Is a Chainsaw, which I desperately need to reread before starting on the other two books in that trilogy, a fantastically bloody homage to 80s slashers and final girls. He has a couple of novellas that I've picked up on my various trips to the Horror aisle of Barnes and Noble, and over Christmas I decided to dive into one of them, Mapping the Interior, and finished it within the day.

As always, spoilers ahead.

Jones gets right to it: Junior, the 12-year-old protagonist of the story, wakes up from sleepwalking to see his father cross the living room and head to the back of their home where his little brother, Dino, is sleeping. The problem is, his father drowned 8 years ago. And from there, the story takes us through Junior's competing desire and repulsion at his father's return, his concern for his younger brother who is showing signs of developing cognitive impairment and experiencing repeated (and increasingly intense) seizures, and the history of racism and colonialism that continues to echo through the lives of indigenous people both on and off the reservation.

The story is short, compact, and written in a sort of fluid, almost dreamy style that is both grounded in Junior's everyday experience but also disjointed in a way that fits the complicated thoughts of a young boy entering puberty who misses the idea of a father in addition to the man himself, the parentification that comes from an older sibling forced to protect his younger brother from the ever-present bullies ready to prey on his growing vulnerability, and the threats of random violence that always exist in the world, even in close proximity to home which should be a place of refuge.

As the story progresses, Junior's father transforms from protector to threat, and as much as Junior wants him back, he isn't willing to sacrifice his younger brother to make it happen. For everything gained, there is a cost, and Junior decides that this cost is too high.

His mother is both present and not present in the story; she clearly loves her children, but she is also limited by the pressures that come from being a widow and a single mother to two children, one of whom has growing special needs and medical concerns. She listens to Junior talk about his father's return, and she never chastises him or tells him what he believes is impossible. Maybe it's a battle she doesn't want to fight, but maybe she also knows that the world is more complex, and often darker, than it seems on the surface.

As Junior deals with his father's growing presence in their lives, he sees his mother take on a potential love interest, a sheriff's deputy, only to lose him just as quickly when Junior's quest to protect his brother sees him dispatch a violent neighbor in spectacular fashion with the man's "drop piece." I had to Google that, and it's part of the unfortunate reality of the violence that exists in the world and the very justified fear that marginalized people have for the police.

Through his journey to understand his father's return, Junior is able to "sleepwalk" into his father's history and learn the truth of what caused his death. He also learns more about the process of his spectral return, which comes in handy years later after his own son, a child fathered while Junior was touring on the fancy dance circuit (something his own father dreamed of doing), dies in a tragic accident. He knows that asking for someone to return means there is a cost...and now he's ready to pay a price that seemed unthinkable as he stood at the window at 12 years old, watching his dead father cross the living room in the dark, moving toward the threshold of his brother's room...