Without Expiration - William R. Hincy

William R. Hincy’s Without Expiration is one of the most unusual short story anthologies that I’ve read in a while. The twelve stories, many of which have previously been published in literary reviews, share a common theme. Are good people capable of doing things as bad as those done by bad people on a regular basis? And what about bad people – are they capable of on occasion producing the kind good deed that would make good people proud? And most importantly (at least to me), is if the answer to both questions is yes, just how big a difference is there, really, between “bad” people and “good” people (excluding, of course, the psychopaths among us). Only the great scorekeeper in the sky can answer that one.

As almost always happens in any short story collection that I read, a few favorite stories loudly made themselves known to me. In the case of Without Expiration, there are four of them: “Left to Soak,” “Friendly Stranger,” “A Study in Discontinuity,” and “Flying.”

“Left to Soak” is the story of a couple that has made it through forty-four years of marriage despite the husband literally not washing or drying a single dish the entire time. Even while hospitalized, all the wife can think of is the sink full of dirty dishes that inevitably awaits her attention when she gets home. What I love most about this one is the incredible amount of tension that builds right up to the moment that Helen gets her first glimpse of the kitchen sink. Has Hank actually cleaned up after himself in her absence – or not?

William R. Hincy

“Friendly Stranger” is one of those stories with a narrator I can identify with from the very first sentence (most of us living in big cities will probably see at least a little of ourselves in this guy) when he says, “…my sole goal in life is to avoid waiting at a red light for more than one rotation.” Setting a weird series of events in motion, one day a jerk in a blue Infiniti cuts our friendly stranger off just as it looks like he will be the last guy to make it through the red light. The jerk does make it through, but friendly stranger doesn’t. And what happens next, catches both men – and me – by surprise.

“A Study in Discontinuity” and “Flying” are very different stories, but I am hard-pressed to determine which are the good and which are the bad people in either story. In the first, a woman comes out of a coma every so often only to remind her husband of his sins against her, sins that are ancient history to him but still fresh memories for her. The second is about a father and son whose relationship would be described as “strained,” at best. Whose fault that is, is open to question.

Bottom Line: Without Expiration is a compilation of wild short stories that range from pure comedy to pure tragedy. There is even one that I read twice (because it is so entertaining) without ever figuring out exactly what the author was aiming for. I figure that’s the one that the back of the book describes as “absurd.” Has to be.