The Watch (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Rick Bass
- First Published: 1988
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The 1980's
- Setting: Seventy miles south of Jackson, Mississippi
- Principal Characters: Buzbee, Hollingsworth, Jesse
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Teaching or teachers, Parents and children, Adolescence, South or Southerners, Abandoned children, Midwest, 1980’s, Fathers, Floods, Clocks or watches, Old age or elderly people, Oil wells or oil-well drilling, Automobiles, Aging
- Locales: Texas, Utah, Montana, Jackson, MS
The Story
Buzbee is a seventy-seven-year-old man who has spent his entire life in a tiny community settled by his parents. Hollingsworth, his son, is only fourteen years younger; the two men have lived together primarily as friends for sixty-three years. One summer, Buzbee runs away to live in the thick, mosquito-infested woods alongside the bayou, and Hollingsworth posts an offer of a thousand-dollar reward for his father's return.
Hollingsworth is lonely without Buzbee and has to fight down feelings of wildness, especially in the evenings when the two used to talk. The...
[The entire page is 1599 words long]
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