Fall Contest Winners

CJ Hauser, whose story “Bangana” won First Place in Narrative’s 2014 Fall Fiction Contest, is the author of the novel The From-Aways (2014), which is set in small-town Maine. She received an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University, where she also teaches. Hauser was awarded the 2012 Jaimy Gordon Prize in Fiction and the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Orlando Prize for Sudden Fiction.


FIRST PLACE WINNER


Bangana

A Story

by CJ Hauser

I commute to war five days a week in a station wagon the color of an egg. I count on ten minutes of traffic by the Dunkin’ Donuts intersection. When I slam the car door, I count on the tree above my parking spot depositing a green scrim of pollen on my flight suit. What I can’t count on is it being the same war. Most days I operate over Afghanistan, but I fly in Iraq too. I say flew, I say I fly, and unless you’re out there winging around in an F-16 I don’t want to hear a fucking thing about it.

I hear a lot about it. Hell, I used to dish a lot about it.

Because I was Air Force. Eight years flying real planes from real cockpits. We gave the drone operators such shit. Called the reach-back crew geeks. Cubicle monkeys. Made fun of their video-game controllers. Their La-Z-Boy command chairs. We tore them apart if they used words like serve, or deployed, or fly.

But then I had Bug.

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