"The Sunday-Go-To-Meeting Jaw" (1993)

[spoilers] I know Nancy A. Collins vaguely by name—I see she's written vampire novels—but can't find much on the internet about this story. I caught it in a Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology but it's actually more of a war story, specifically a Civil War story, and very effective as such. It's not even as much of a ghost story as Ambrose Bierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," which many take as a more of a war story. Collins's story is skillful and almost showoffy in its effects. For example, briefly making us think the approach home of a Rebel soldier might be the approach of a marauding serial killer madman. But no, it's just a husband and father, missing more than two years and presumed dead. A POW. Mistreated. His jaw shattered. A grotesque. This story also flirts openly with Southern gothic, which Collins, an Arkansas native, comes by honestly enough. Besides which, she is completely credible. The story feels well researched and authentic to 1865 post-Civil War South. It focuses on the 10-year-old daughter, who was 6 when this man left for war as her hero. Like a 10-year-old, she can't stand the sight of him now, refuses to believe he is her father, and says appalling things. The wife and mother is more resigned to her fate. She loves her husband, but this is not exactly her husband, but she is committed to him and accepts it. But with resignation—her husband's return is good news but also more bad news from the war, especially with the daughter acting this way. One former slave has stayed with the family. She is practically the returned soldier's second mother. The story drives to a stunning climax, or at least it took me by surprise, when the soldier hangs himself in the parlor only weeks after his return. Hester, the 10-year-old, is shocked, intrigued, and ultimately relieved that her monstrously deformed father will no longer embarrass her. It's a sad and bitter story of the South and does not seem to have any love for the Confederacy. But it has none for the Yankees either. I mean, let's admit, it's true they were dealing with slavers, but it's also true they got carried away in many instances, such as their treatment of POWs. (And Sherman, of course.) This story was also written or published at such a strange time in our history, the 1990s. White Southern hegemony was accepted as the norm then. Everyone was furiously pretending about post-racial this and "kinder, gentler" that. The vicious beating of Rodney King was starting to crack some things open. Whatever—this is a great story.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Story not available online.