Recently, Flywheel Magazine was lucky enough to sit down with Chuck Kinder, a man who, among other crimes, is the author of “REDNECK SHOOTS DOWN FLYING SAUCER!!!!!!!” featured in our debut issue. Interviewing him was a bit like trying to lasso a tornado…
The first thing I notice upon approaching Mr. Kinder’s house is a gigantic metal sign in his front lawn that reads “KinderCare,” adorned with the logo of a popular chain of children’s learning centers. After some confusion at the door where I was mistaken for the pizza delivery man, I was ushered into the “Jungle Room” where Mr. Kinder regularly holds counsel. It is a Graceland of exotic animal sculptures, roadside trinkets, blinking Christmas tree lights, and framed photographs of the author fishing with Raymond Carver, Indian leg-wrestling Tobias Wolff, and shaking hands with various heads of state, including President Nixon and McGruff the Crime Dog.
The second thing I notice is, of course, his cats. Where Ernest Hemingway needed thirty-one cats to provide inspiration, Mr. Kinder needs only two. Christened “Tammie” and “Mister Jones,” they sit perched and attentive on either arm of his chair like fuzzy gargoyles, tails twitching and daring you to come any closer. (Later, I would realize they were actually a lot like the hellhounds in Ghostbusters. By this, I mean visitors could easily find themselves taking their place at his side while he scruffed their necks and held them up off the ground).
WHEEL: How did your cats get their names?
KINDER: Well, Mister Jones is named after George Jones, the old possum of country music pain. So, if you’ll just think for a moment, the source of his pain was Tammie. And that would be the cat who is now on your left shoulder, right shoulder. No, don’t move…
[Physically, Mr. Kinder resembles a combination of Cable Hogue and Captain Beefheart, and he speaks with an accent that is best described (depending on his level of impatience) as a combination of Jodie Foster's character in Silence of the Lambs and Anthony Hopkins'—particularly when he’s making fun of Jodie Foster’s character in Silence of the Lambs.]
WHEEL: I have to get one question out of the way first. Do you provide daycare here?
KINDER: Huh?
WHEEL: Outside in your yard, you have a sign from— 
KINDER: Oh, that. No, a former student of mine stole that as a gift for chairing his manuscript committee. I guess he thought it was funny or something to stick it in my goddamn yard. What was funny was seeing the video on the news of him wrestling the sign loose from the playground then running away with it under his arm. Write this down: If you ever want to get arrested, steal shit from a playground.
WHEEL: That is a huge sign. Why haven’t authorities confiscated it?
KINDER: Part of the plea deal. I keep the sign. They keep the student. Also, because of my last name, I’ve actually filmed a few short commercial spots for KinderCare.
WHEEL: Is this true?
KINDER: Yep! Stay up late enough and you’ll see ‘em. “KinderCare. Don’t Be Scared.” Enrollment fuckin’ tripled.
[The pizza finally arrives—thankfully, as I suspect he’s still waiting for me to produce one. Mr. Kinder quickly begins rolling up slices and consuming them two at a time. ("Doctors orders!" he insists.) I press on as he hands the delivery man a dog-eared copy of Tropic Of Cancer for a tip.]
WHEEL: Can we talk about your piece in the debut issue of Flywheel?
KINDER: Sure. I loved the photograph you paired it with, by the way. That is how I’ve always pictured ol’ Cindy’s “double-wide.”
WHEEL: Yeah, our nonfiction editor was pulling double duty searching for just the right trailer, something she probably never thought we’d ask her to do.
KINDER: It is truly beautiful.
WHEEL: Speaking of Cindy Sinpatch, what was the inspiration for her, and for this particular piece of fiction?
KINDER: Fiction? What fiction? What does that even mean? This is a true story.
[Mr. Kinder begins to thumb through a dictionary to make his point.]
WHEEL: But if this was a true story, then how—
KINDER: Okay sure, I may have added a word here or there, but this particular event was lifted directly from a newspaper article I was using to wrap salmon. The only meat I’m allowed these days, by the way. Besides gorilla.
WHEEL: Was this article from a tabloid?
KINDER: No. From the Wall Street Journal, Bernstein. What the hell do you think?
[He claps the dictionary closed under my nose, but not before I catch sight of the revolver-shaped outline cut into the pages.]
WHEEL: I meant, was it supposed to be a parody of a news report? In the story you refer to a Pittsburgh Pulp Exchange, but there doesn’t seem to be any record of any publication with that—
KINDER: Boy, are you calling me a liar?
[It should be noted here that Mr. Kinder is quicker than he looks. By the time he gets to the word "liar," he has somehow twisted two pizza crusts around his knuckles, giving his fists the appearance of 4-ounce MMA gloves, presumably to cushion the blows he is now set to deliver on my cranium.]
WHEEL: No, no, no, I just—
KINDER: Hold on.
[Mr. Kinder spits what appears to be a tiny lemon seed into a nearby ashtray.]
WHEEL: Wait, what was that?
KINDER: Another stroke. My body shrugs them off at this point. I think I have one about every 45 minutes. I’m what they call a “medical miracle.” Guinness stopped by yesterday actually.
WHEEL: Is that a world’s record or something?
KINDER: Huh? No, I mean Guinness the beverage. Another endorsement deal. But I told them my contract with WhupAss Energy Drink was iron-clad for another decade, at least.
WHEEL: So, let’s get back to this actual news report about a flying saucer.
KINDER: Yeah, it was a real bona fide article, documenting a real-life event. In fact, that line about the mournful sound of Milk Duds? That was in the original. I suspect that writer’s wasted talent was crying out in the darkness with that beautiful little nugget. So I stole it.
WHEEL: What else have you been working on since your retirement from teaching?
KINDER: Oh, this little thing…
[Mr. Kinder drops a manuscript the size of The Starr Report on my shoe. As I reach down to check for broken toes, I notice it is The Starr Report.]
WHEEL: Are you reading this?
KINDER: Sort of. [pause] No.
WHEEL: I don’t understand.
KINDER: I’d heard there was a 666-page document detailing former President Clinton’s blowjob, and I wanted to make sure it really existed. I thought it was a bit…short-sighted. Read like The Da Vinci Code. Oh, here it is…
[Mr. Kinder drops an even larger manuscript on my other shoe. I am relieved that the swelling will be symmetrical.]
WHEEL: Poetry, eh?
KINDER: I aint’ scared of it.
WHEEL: Besides a new interest in poetry, could we also talk about your newfound love of punctuation, specifically exclamation points?
KINDER: Don’t ask about asking. Just ask. Don’t be scared.
WHEEL: Okay. Why all the exclamation points?
KINDER: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
WHEEL: You have 66 exclamation marks in your Flywheel piece. 73 if you include the title.
KINDER: I didn’t put those in there.
WHEEL: But if you didn’t then who—
KINDER: On occasion, because of my dotage, I’ll send a student to make copies for me on campus. Sometimes they get excitable in their youthfulness and amazement, and a bit of that can end up on the page.
WHEEL: On the page that they’re photocopying.
KINDER: Hell, yeah! I’ve sent them kids out for groceries before, asked for something as simple as a tub of peanut butter. And they come back with some sort of insanity where the jelly is already mixed up with the peanut butter in the jar. It’s like a ship in a bottle! But nobody asks how that happened, do they? Think about that. Peanut butter and jelly together. In the jar. Like this…[Mr. Kinder hold up his fingers and jams them together like the children’s church-steeple game. I expect him to finish with "And here’s all the people," but he just cracks his knuckles in a threatening manner instead. The tails on his flanking cats suddenly expand into pine cones, and a growl rises in someone’s throat.]
WHEEL: Oh. Okay, just one last question. It’s about the ending of your story. What starts out as farce becomes, by the end, something much more emotional, even sentimental. Is this technique intentional or did you find yourself softening toward your character and their situation by the end?
[Obviously long done with our interview, Mr. Kinder stands, claps my shoulder, and smiles. But before he releases me, a small, almost imperceptible squeeze sends a charge through my spine. This is when I realize that he's draped himself in Christmas tree flamingos and somehow illuminated them without an electrical outlet in sight. And goddamn it if after that squeeze I didn’t find myself unable to resist ending this article, and every sentence after, with the first exclamation points I’ve used since January 26th, 1986! This was the day the Space Shuttle blew up, by the way!! An incident that was reported by newscasters as a "major malfunction" without any emotion whatsoever!!!]
Before Chuck Kinder became a full-fledged fictioneer, whose work reflects his personal philosophy that everything one writes should be as literally true as the Bible, he worked variously as a coal miner, moonshiner, bartender, bouncer, bandit, prize-fighter, circus performer, tango teacher, white-water river guide, professional cook, cowboy, and itinerant college professor. He is the author of the novels Snakehunter (Alfred A. Knopf), whose Gnomon Press paperback is still in print; The Silver Ghost (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), which was reprinted in 2004 by Fazi Editore in Italy; and Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a 2001 New York Times Notable Book, which has been reprinted in Italy (where it became a best-seller), France, Spain, and most recently Israel. His most recent book is a redneck noir, pulp romance meta-memoir titled Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life, which was published in 2004, reissued in quality-paperback by Carroll & Graf in 2005, and reprinted in 2010 by Fazi Editore in Italy.
