In these three paragraphs from the short story "Midair," Frank Conroy relies on a variety of sentence structures to convey Jack's memory of winning a Ford convertible in a church raffle. Note, in particular, Conroy's effective use of appositives and absolute phrases to add key details.
from "Midair"*
by Frank Conroy
He drifts away, remembering sophomore year and the old Mercury he'd bought from Elvin Marsdale in French House. A big, top-heavy brute of a car, it had broken down constantly, forcing him to spend as much time in junkyards looking for parts as on the road. When, finally, his tuned ear told him the engine itself was dying--inexorable death from the inside, rings totally worn, valves gasping, driveshaft groaning--he'd sold it to an ignorant graduate student at a slight profit.
For awhile he had no car, and then an extraordinary piece of luck occurred--he won a Ford convertible in a lottery, a new model full equipped with accessories, white walls, and a St. Christopher's medal. He suspected fraud, a telephone prank on the part of his classmates, but when he showed up at the rectory of an enormous church in downtown New Haven the car was indeed there, parked in an inner courtyard, and when he handed over the lottery ticket a fat priest gave him a set of keys, the registration, and a slap on the back. In the courtyard he walked around the car several times. The chrome gleamed with almost unbearable intensity. He could see a distorted image of himself in the waxed black body, his face slipping like oil over the curved surfaces. He was afraid to touch the car. When he got in he was afraid to start the engine. He stared at his eyes in the mirror (familiar blue--he was apparently there) for several moments before adjusting the glass. Then he pushed the seat back a couple of notches, turned the ignition, and rolled slowly out of the courtyard and onto the street.
The car became his in time, of course, but it was never entirely his. There was an aura of the supernatural clinging to it until the end, until trade-in. In dreams the fat priest asked for it back. He treated the car badly.
Selected Works by Frank Conroy
- Stop-Time, memoir (1967)
- Midair, short stories (1970)
- Body and Soul, novel (1993)
- Dogs Bark, but the Caravan Rolls On: Observations Then and Now, essays
- Time and Tide: A Walk Through Nantucket, nonfiction (2004)
* "Midair" appears in Frank Conroy's story collection Midair, published by Dutton in 1970 and reprinted by Penguin in 1986.
