WINDOW OF THE DEVILSMOUTH INN

Devilsmouth was aptly named though the owner softened the truth of it by pronouncing it Devilsmuth, using the same reasoning that one pronounces Dartmouth University Dartmuth.

Bud knew better.

He had seen its light from where his car had blown its engine, and he made his way toward what was strangely like the beckoning glint of an eye.  It was a steep road, gouged with deep ruts.   As he climbed, he engaged in the grim, silent battle with his voices.  One predominated.

The road leveled.  To the left, the Inn came into sight.  Two other buildings stood beside it, dark, with windows that were flat, gray, dreamless.  The three buildings, standing at the very edge of a jutting jaw of land, resembled rotting teeth protruding from festering gums.

Bud felt even more the truth of this simile later, while leaning out the open window of his second-story room, puzzling over the pulsing yellow glow somewhere down in the deep, hungry belly of the valley.  Curiously, this attracted him while simultaneously terrifying him.  Before he could shut and latch the window, a putrid stench belched up from below as from a sour stomach.  No sooner had he latched it than the voice cajoled him to throw it open and embrace its reality.

 * * *

It would’ve been easier if the owner hadn’t given his name.  But, when Bud entered the lobby, the other looked up from his reading, beamed, and thrust out his hand.  “God bless you, brother.  Name’s James.  You’re my only guest, so the room’s free.”

James was small, well-groomed, and from all appearances, a sublimely happy man.  Even before he’d turned to get the key, he’d already given Bud much of the history of Devilsmouth, and this, its only Inn.   James had every reason not to be happy.  Only three had been left to run the Devilsmouth Inn after the population of about 200 deserted in just one month.  James remained along with his wife, Edna, and the joy of their life, eighteen-year-old Dorendina.

“The night-sulfur caused it,” he said.  And, he added matter-of-factly and without rancor, “That and the night-heat.”  The geological experts the mayor had hired couldn’t explain it.  The mine had been inactive for over fifty years.  There was no scientific explanation for the God-awful stench that occurred every evening between nine and eleven-thirty, accompanied by a measurable fifteen to twenty degree increase in temperature.  “So the town escaped like rats from a stinking ship.”  He smiled at his bon mot then glanced to see if Bud appreciated it.  Bud didn’t.  He was busy battling his own voices.

“Three-weeks later, Edna suffered a massive stroke and died.”  Out of the ensuing silence, James suddenly laughed.   “God’s gift on loan to me — Praise God!  Called back to be with Jesus!”

“And, Dorendina?” Bud asked, more to squelch his own voices.

James sighed, then smiled.  “She’s young.  She’ll be back.”

Bud imagined Dorendina, sitting in the shadows, glancing side-long at her father those long nights, bewildered by his perennial smile and the happy tune he always hummed.  He pictured James’s beguilingly lovely daughter slipping away without a good-bye in the yellowing glow of the night.

The voices were becoming more insistent.  He hadn’t noticed James facing him.  “You okay, brother?”  Smiling, he held out the key.

“Now!” the voice shrilled.

“I-I can’t!”

“Now!”

Bud fumbled in his pocket, withdrew the revolver.

“Now!  Now!”

He squeezed the trigger three times and heard the internal voice invade his own throat and lips, intoning, “Where evil enters, good departs.”

* * *

He thought the sinister voices had at last been silenced with the words spoken like a malevolent requiem over James’s body.   As he mounted the steps to his room, he felt he was freed of them.  But with the latching of the window they resumed again.  Their nature had changed, though.  What was once menacing was now alluring, strangely seductive.

“Beloved,” one whispered, and Bud, sitting on the bed, covered his ears.  “Beloved son…”

“No,” Bud moaned, rocking between his knees.

“Come beloved, come ….”  Of itself, the window unlatched, opening with such violence it gouged the wall.  The room flooded with hot pungency.

“No,” Bud cried out again, but part of him was secretly thrilled as his body lifted off the bed, and, as though the palm of a hand flattened against his back, something nudged him toward the window.

“It’s easy, so easy ….”

“No, I – “

“Easy … through the portal, thy kingdom waits.”

And, then it truly became easy.  He fairly drifted to the window.  His only reality was his pocketed revolver clacking against the sill as he dove through.   He spread his arms and soared, raven-like, through the hot, sulfurous fog, down into the promised kingdom, the pulsating yellow belly of the beast.

 

REMEMBRANCE

What I remembered first, nine years, seventeen days earlier, was the shriek and my sprint toward it.  In a shadowed place between the dorms, the larger figure on top turning a bewildered face, scrambling, turning, reeling.  A missed blow caroming off his shoulder, and another that found the angular bone of his jaw, a mist of alcohol left behind his twisting sprawl; his bellying the grass, writhing.

And, looking down at her, I had only a blurred sense of the other scuttling, crablike, on his hands-and-knees, somehow finding his feet and lurching off into the darkness.  She was motionless, but her strange sea-green eyes followed me.  Her mouth and nose were bloodied; her flowered blouse ripped and pulled to the side, peak-a-booing her breast.  Somewhere, far off, I heard a siren.  She whimpered as I gently tugged her skirt, wadded at the small of her back, down over her buttocks and smoothed the skirt-front down to cover her thighs.  Her eyes anchored to mine.

I couldn’t remember when memory ended.  I know I’d been considering whether to attempt the pleasantly illicit adventure of pulling up her torn panties that hung off one shoeless foot when a sharp, white pain launched my oblique slide into darkness.

 * * *

Jamie — that was her name — was a vegetable.  At the trial, the doctor asserted that while her brain functions tested normal, her speech loss and paralysis must have been the body’s mode of coping with her savage attack.  Her eyes locked eerily on mine.

They entered my journals as evidence.  As a writer I’m nothing if not honest about myself to myself.  They were meant for no other eyes.  Yet their private truths helped publicly convict me.

That and sundry other things.  My past was spotty:  Drug possession at eighteen; nabbed at twenty, lifting a six-pack from a 7-11; and worse … an arrest for stalking my former girlfriend.  Everything circumstantial, but this last one, especially, didn’t set well with the jury.

* * *

    Prison was not as unpleasant as I’d have thought.  Some there didn’t like me.  Some did.  Fortunately, those who did were greater in number and body mass.  I was left pretty much alone with my writing.  The guards loved me.  They gave me a notebook three days a week to write on, returning it and the pen at each hour’s end.  I invented intricately plotted scenarios concerning the torturing of a man I named Herman.  Each session was more graphic than the previous.  I never revealed that Herman was the one I was doing time for.

I didn’t dare write about Jamie.  Had there been a more divine distancing, I might’ve carved with words the meaning behind her engraving eyes — how those eyes, in their helpless vacancy, possessed my solitary nights … Why I strangely embraced them.  Without the focus on paper of thought-wedded-to-word, my imagination tethered itself to a flotilla of vagabond images:  the image of her firm, white thighs, the torn panties, hanging from her bare foot like the flag of a vanquished country.  Those same eyes that possessed me now justifiably convicted me.  No, not me, but the maleness of me!  At the trial, her mother called me an animal and spat.  Animals, we, yes!  The image of the bewildered attacker floated by.  “There, but for the grace of God go I ….”  In my heart, I was as guilty of the crime as he.  Jesus affirmed it!  A strange peace blanketed me.  I smiled.  I had the advantage he denied himself.  I was able to physically atone for it.  Oh, sweet penance!

* * *

     But something was happening in that other’s life that I wouldn’t learn about until later.  Seven years into my sojourn (and traceable to the very day of my epiphany) … on the dirt floor of an enormous tent in a small town, Roger Reynard lay on his face, in the presence of 900 believers, and he bawled.  Crucified by memories, he wailed, “Jesus, I’ve sinned and am not worthy of your love.  A man’s in prison for rape I committed.”  Then, falling into profound silence, it was there, he later confessed, that Jesus told him what he must do.

Still, no one believed him.  Painfully he discovered when the judicial system speaks, it resists mightily any retraction.  Roger was not a poor man, but it exhausted all his considerable assets to enlist the best legal minds to work with the only focus being to bring the scales of justice to right balance.

* * *

    Two years, seventeen days later, two prison doors in two states opened.  Through one Roger Reynard, beaming, at peace, entered.  Through the other, I departed with a Federal apology and a hundred thirty-two thousand dollars in a brand new account.

I knew I should have been happy ….

THE GEEZER & THE LOSERS

 

“‘Before you guys do anything stupid,’ I warned them, ‘listen!  One of three things can happen.  Do either of the first two—you lose.

 

“‘I’m sixty-seven.  You swing and connect, I’m going down.  But, see all those people walking the bluffs?  I’ll go down loudly.  Oh, yeah!  They’ll hear me!  It’ll make the six o’clock news, guaranteed.  Newspaper, too!  Hoodlums attack senior….  And, you lose.

 

“‘Suppose, instead, I slip your punch, give you three short right hooks to the kidney, and, as your legs go liquid, a right uppercut.  I boxed in the military—was pretty good.  You don’t forget.  It’s like riding a bike.  And I am in good shape.  Think that’ll make the six o’clock?  Senior k.o.’s  hoodlum.  Others flee.  You lose.  Big time!  Might even have to leave town, eh?

 

“‘The third thing?  Walk!   Walk, now.  Apologize—and walk.’”

 

“Geez!  Had to add ‘apologize’,” the tall cop said, writing on his tablet.  “Why’d they pick you?”

 

“I’ve walked these bluffs for months, getting in shape, and nicely tanned, for my fiftieth reunion.  These hoodlums drove by for two weeks, whistling and making obscene comments.”

 

“You were dressed like this?” the female cop asked.

 

“Shirtless, shorts,sneakers—yes.”

 

“Maybe you were asking for it ….  But, why today?”

 

“Today I snapped.  I raised my arm straight up as I walked, fist balled, like the militant blacks of the sixties.”

 

“That’s all?”  The cop stopped writing.

 

“Well, something might’ve popped up out of the middle of the fist.”

 

“Popped up?”  The cops shared smiles.

 

“I heard their brakes, and them pulling to the curb.  And, feet stampeding behind me.  They surrounded me.  I was strangely calm.”

 

“Then you said that stuff to them?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And?”

 

“Two went back to the car.  One stayed.”

 

“This one?”

 

“Thought he’d leave, too.  But, he looked around, I think for witnesses, then he swung.  I wasn’t wearing my glasses—the frames would’ve spoiled my tan—so when I saw this really blurred roundhouse coming at me, I raised my left arm and diverted his fist past my ear.  Then, stepping toward him, I drove my right fist as hard as this old geezer could into his ribs.  I’m not a violent person, but, damn, that felt good!  I’m still enjoying the ache of the recoil in my wrist, elbow and all the way into my shoulder socket.”

 

“You hit him just once?”

 

“That’s all it took.  He dropped to his knees, then fell forward.”

 

“Then you what—kicked him?” the female cop asked.

 

“No, ma’am.”

 

“Come on, Mr. Squires.  No jury in the land’s gonna convict you anyway.  So, ‘fess up—a sixty-seven-year-old fist can’t kill a young man with one punch.”

 

“Mine did.”

 

“Quite a tale for the class of …”

 

“Fifty-seven.”

 

“Senior kills teen hoodlum with bare hands.”

 

“Hand—singular.”

 

“Yeah, sure….”

 

“My yearbook did pick me most likely to succeed.”

 

“And to think it only took fifty years!”

 

“Life’s a marathon, officer, not a sprint.”

 

AT THE PRECIPICE

 

                                  

 

                                 Let us linger a moment more;

                                 I promise then we’ll go;

                                 A moment more to gaze

                                 Across that ancient spread.  See?

                                 Those distant and marvelous peaks?

                                 See them there?  Those peaks

                                 Which eat endlessly the valley

                                 Somewhere beneath the smoldering plain?

 

                                 Oh?  Why not then take it on faith,

                                 What my imagination knows first hand?

                                 How, hidden in this valley

                                 Are all the unpopular miracles:

 

                                 Secret groves that dazzle the eyes,

                                 As would an emerald sun;

                                 Magnificent trees (those needly towers)

                                 That are loftier and more splendid

                                 Than any child’s dream could make them.

                                 And everywhere, everywhere,

                                 Wildflowers waft a fragrance

                                 Much too delicately perfumed

                                 For anyone… Save those witches who,

                                 In veils of white gauze,

                                 Whirl among the trees

                                 Beside the path that winds

                                 Round and round beneath their dance.

 

                                 No!  Not go!  Not yet, my love;

                                 Or, rather we, hand in hand

                                 Step out upon that plain…  No?

                                 Then, hush! And let my words paint,

                                 What below, together, we’d surely find:

 

                                 Below, there are a thousand ponds,

                                 And at each pond’s edge,

                                 Water Sprites imitate the Universe

                                 With their spritely feet

                                 In water so frigidly azure,

                                 That on its surface snow and swans

                                 Transform eternally as they drift.

 

                                 But, oh! Do you feel it too, my Love?

                                 Are you as overwhelmed as I,

                                 Here at the precipice

                                 By a sudden chill?

                                 Look!  The sea spreads now before us—

                                 Truly the Arctic Sea;

                                 A limitless expanse of troubled foam,

                                 The dull, lusterless color of ashes,

                                 The color of the sky.

                                 Terrifying, yet ravishing, No?

                                 It stretches out

                                 Through the twin polar caps,

                                 Further than imagination can measure.

 

                                 Still, reason tells me,

                                 (as do you!) that soon

                                 All will be dispersed by the sun:

                                 The witches, the Water Sprites,

                                 The sea, everything…

                                 All will vanish;

                                 For, nothing that mind creates

                                 Can endure that terrible sun,

                                 The sun’s first shafts.

 

                                 So, now we may go.

                                 Let me wrap in mine your hand,

                                 And together step forward;

                                 Or turning, go back;

                                 Because in a moment

                                 All will vanish, everything…

                                 Everything, except the mountains,

                                 Those primitive altars,

                                 Those marvelous peaks,

                                 Eating endlessly the valley below.

I Am the Skimmer of Stones

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am The Skimmer Of Stones

 

                                        

            I am the skimmer of stones

            And I fancy myself as well

            The smooth stones skimmed

            (Imagination lets me, you see);

            I am, too, the surface of Jacob’s Pond

            They skim across

            Or not entirely across

            Or not across at all.

            But, if the stone falls short

            I do not become the pond’s depth;

            Oh, most assuredly not the pond’s depth

            (Even imagination won’t take me there)

 

                        Though years and years ago it would and did.

 

            To be a skimmer of stones

            I first must find the perfect stone;

            For I am not a pitcher of balls

            To be given the full game’s span

            To peak the perfection of my throw

            No. I allow myself but one –

            One toss to test my form and faith

            My existential curriculum.

 

            It must be smooth and flat, of course

            But not too flat and light that at first skip

            My leading edge will lift me up to glide too high

            Then fall before my enthusiasm’s spent.

            The perfect stone will fit the half-mooned slot

            Between crook’d forefinger and thumb

            As snug there and seamless as a duck’s webbed foot.

            The wrist knows when the stone is right;

            From the body’s deeper knowing, I listen

            And watch my wrist test the heft.

 

            And, when the time is right

            I measure the span from lapping water’s edge

            To the far concave that curves its arms toward me

            While it holds within its caress

            The surface of its length and breadth

            I’ll soon lay the spinning stone upon.

 

            The stone and I have learned to admire

            The stateliness of skimming the surface of things,

            Whirring past the center’s downward pull,

            The perpendicularity of the mystery below.

 

            They say at the center the pond’s immeasurably deep

            That the depth of the pond’s mysteriously deep;

            They say, and I say I must agree

            That sometimes a mystery’s best left to mystify.

 

            But once I thought my courage deeper

            Than Jacob’s Pond could ever be.

            So I became one with the stone I skimmed

            That hummed and skimmed and skimmed again

            But not entirely across.

            And, where it sank, there too I plunged

            Down from the surface of Jacob’s Pond

            Down with immortal youth and a lungful of air

            Down into the heavy-black-deepness of Jacob’s Pond.

 

            That Jacob’s Pond went deeper forever

            Was not mine to know that day

            For fear soon squeezed life from courage

            And a blur of my spider’s legs and arms

            Sent me scrabbling up the bubbled web

            To light and air and breath

            And the safety of surfaces.

 

            For, it’s a blessing now

            To be once — and only once — young

            And once to test the depths

            Once to dare to fail

            And Once to Succeed in Failing

            And in failing, yet survive

            With a greater knowing

            That there’s a near infinity of learning

            Oh, a precious, near infinity of learning

            From lightly skimming

            From blithely skimming

            The safer, monocular surface of things.

 

 

Where “The Exorcist” Meets “Ghost Busters” — A Review of “The Hauntings of Cold Creek Hollow”

I first met Alexie Aaron on a writer’s website a few years ago.  The book she offered there for reading, The Hauntings of Cold Creek Hollow—well—haunted me.  I remember being moved by her mastery of character-development, pacing and suspense, all culminating in the dramatic impact of her story’s climax.  In a word, I was wowed!

 I picked up Hauntings again, just recently, (having bumped into Alexie on Facebook) thinking I would refresh my memory of its plot-line and characters, simply skim through it, preparatory to reviewing it.

 So much for intention!

 What I didn’t account for was that a really well-written book is just as hard to put down during the second reading as it was the first.

 Hauntings is such a book.  Oh, I suppose I could have forced myself to stop reading after the first chapter, then scanned the rest, and written a reasonably decent review.  But—and this is important—I DIDN’T WANT TO QUIT.

 The Hauntings of Cold Creek Hollow may not alter your life in a profoundly existential way.  There are enough books and writers out there that profess to do that.  But, thank God, that isn’t this book’s intent.

 What it will do, though,—and do it pretty profoundly—is make you RETHINK the wisdom of ever spending a night alone in a cabin in the country!

 From my personal perspective, this disturbingly scary story left its imprint on that part of my psyche where exists my first viewing of The Exorcist, right alongside its unlikely neighbor, Ghost Busters.

 Both elements exist in Alexie Aaron’s well-crafted novel.  On the one hand, you have an otherworldly horror that crosses over into a kind of Psycho/Spiritual Warfare, culminating with that soul-crushing confrontation between Good and Evil. It is a fine battle—from the literary standpoint— hard-fought by both sides.

 On the other hand, you have a couple of really likeable ghosts, seemingly more at home in the more comedy-driven Ghost Busters movie.  These ghosts appear on the surface have no hidden agenda, no axe to grind—well… (well, that’s a kind of inside joke you’ll be privy to when you get into this novel).  But, they are much more than comic relief.

 And, somewhere between the one hand and the other the reader is introduced to the lovely, quirky, feisty Mia, our protagonist, who just happens to see dead people and is therefore feared and despised by most of the townspeople.  Oh, you’re gonna love to get to know Mia!

 I do want to emphasize, that while this is a serious, and a seriously entertaining, novel, don’t get the impression it’s without humor.  Mrs. Aaron has developed characters that are fully fleshed-out (I’m speaking now of the living characters, but a good case could be made for the otherworldly as well). As with any well-written novel, the humor grows out of her characters and the situations in which the characters find themselves.  You’ll find humor, but you’ll also find the full range of other emotions.  There is romance that can go one way or another—can develop then deteriorate, which  of course does—and, I promise you, the reader’s heart is thu-rumping right in the midst of it.

 Then, as you would expect in a story of this nature, there is conflict and violence in spades!.  And, throughout all of it, the reader is dragged by the scruff of his emotional captivity along whichever path of action Mrs. Aaron decides to tug him.

 So, join me in the pages of this remarkable novel.  You’ll discover dark corners of terror you may never have explored elsewhere, and you’ll soar to levels of selfless courage to which most can only aspire.  And in the mix you’ll find plenty enough romance and intrigue to carry you right up to the final page of this wonderful journey.

 And, lest we forget, there are a couple of ghosts I guarantee you’re gonna fall in love with.

As Seen Through the Eyes of a Pigmy

 

 

 

I confess, there are times I spend much of the heat of the Bakersfield afternoon staring through the glass door of my office and across the parking lot to Columbus Avenue where, about half way up the door, Matchbox cars zip from behind the one closed Venetian blind of one window, across the door, just above the top of the open sign, and behind the other closed blind.

The street the cars are on is not really halfway up the door.  It just appears to be.  And, while I’m in the mood of righting that lie, I’ll tell you that the cars are really full-sized, and just seem to be the size of Matchbox model cars.

Now that I’ve spoiled the illusion, I’ll move on.

 I once listened to Joseph Campbell on my cassette player as I rode my stationary bike at home.  For those of you who have not heard of Joseph Campbell allow me to smile with just a hint of condescension and tell you he was a great mythologist and human being.  That day he was explaining on the cassette, as my legs and lungs were getting stronger, that a particular tribe of Pigmy Indians, I believe from the Amazon, lived in the dense forest where everything was pressed in around them.  There were no clearings.  In their life there was no such thing as distant.  Everything was very nearly within touching distance.  Well, it happened that one from this tribe was taken out of the forest and brought to an expansive plain.  There, off in the distance, were animals, probably horses, but that part isn’t important.  What was important was that the Pigmy had no concept of relativity in terms of distance.  The animals, which might have been 200 yards away, were no bigger, to his way of thinking, than the fly that crawled up his arm.  To tell him he wouldn’t be able to take that animal between his thumb and forefinger and crush the life out of it would have been absurd to him – unless he reckoned it was poisonous, like a spider – but that just muddies the point.

And, there is a point I’m angling toward.  It is this:  If you were to take one such Pigmy from the compressed environment of the Amazon forest, bring the little guy blindfolded to sit in my office chair, face the chair toward the door, then remove the blindfold, what would he tell you he saw?  Dispensing with the irrelevancy of not knowing what cars (or glass doors or windows for that matter) were, I’m certain he would report the objects as simply appearing, or perhaps were birthed, from behind one side of the blinds and subsequently disappeared, or died, behind the other side.  In other words, the little tyke would observe it, naturally, as it occurred.  An illiterate poet.  The literate (that is, civilized) poet would have to struggle mightily to see it with fresh eyes, as the Pigmy did, and then scour his civilized mind for the words to approximate it.

The Pigmy sees his new world as metaphor.

Enlightened man looks at things in his own old world as palpably familiar to him as an old sock, then describes it as a simile.   He fills in the gaps he can’t see with his own personal knowledge.  Guesswork.

At those times I sit and stare at the cars, I often let my mind follow those thoughts and let them inevitably escort me back to Plato’s cave, to appearance versus reality, maybe even to Jesus’ little children, who, unless you become as, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Metaphor.  Simile.

Usually, though, I just sit and stare.  I don’t think a whole lot.  I stare past the street of zipping cars (just accepting the truth of what they are), at the barren field on the other side of the chain length fence that lines the far side of the street.  Angling away from the street, an ugly string of apartments, like a row of bad teeth, follow the course of the canal, empty now that no more snow is melting in the mountains to feed it.  When the canals are full, children always seem to be drowning in them, ignoring the signs that announce: “Stay Out – Stay Alive!”  But I suppose children drown in swimming holes, rivers and oceans, too.  Wherever they needlessly choose to drown, it’s always a waste.

I cannot see the mountains from my office chair.  I can only see a tatter of foothills through the scrub trees growing in the riverbed a mile away.

My insurance office is squeezed between three other businesses – a 7-11 store and a Laundromat to my left and an H & R Block office to my right – in a small strip mall in Bakersfield, California.

Alas!  Bakersfield.

Truth be known, for the whole of the twenty-four or five years I’ve lived here, I have been acutely embarrassed by the town.  An irrational embarrassment, I should hastily add.  I had moved here from Santa Maria, whose name was as shimmering as Bakersfield’s was lusterless.  Which is a strange way, when you think of it, of conjuring up a lasting attitude.   From a name, I mean.  But, that’s what it was on a gut level, which, if not a true level, is at least an honest one.

Just follow me.

Santa Maria was named after a Saint – Saint Mary.  It carried in its name something of the depth and breadth of the religious experience.  In more recent history, it was the name of a tiny ship that set out on a vast sea in an adventure of discovery.  There was the feeling of the heroic quest in its name.  Yes, Santa Maria shimmered.  I loved that town – I still do.

A job opportunity came, though, at a time my career was foundering.  I hear the critic in my head tell me it was hardly a career I had!  I had been trying to sell life insurance savings plans to young couples who, the Santa Maria Times told me had just given birth. – or, that one of them had.  Well, I’d telephone them, cajole them with gifts for their invitation to let me spend just twenty minutes of their time to share with them something I knew they would find interesting.  I was always amazed that some people would actually say yes.  When I was new and green in the insurance business a book once told me if you stood on a busy street corner and said, in the most unappealing voice, to the first 100 people passing by:  “You wouldn’t want to buy some life insurance, would you?” at least one would say, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do want to buy some life insurance.  Here’s my check.  Where do I sign?”   So, I should not have been amazed that some of the new parents actually said yes. It really was a numbers game.  But I was amazed just the same.  That didn’t mean they would be home, though, when I showed up.  Sadly, most weren’t.

And, when that happened I would go home dejected, but trying to sound upbeat to my wife, hoping she would buy the lie that I was going to have a really good appointment tomorrow, a sure thing, and we weren’t going to lose our house after all, or if it was a different part of the month, we would be able to make the payment on my oldest boy’s braces.

I know I didn’t tell my wife at the time, I’m not even sure I told her later, that at one of those black moments I had even called the Air Force recruiter.  What was the chance of getting back in the Air Force?  He asked me my age.  I told him.  And that was that.  Thirty-five was too old to kill the enemies of my country, thank you.

Then the offer came.

A General Agent for a small insurance company was looking to expand from his base in Fresno.  He needed an ambitious and energetic young man to open an office in Bakersfield.  He thought I might be that man.  He and his wife sat opposite me in the restaurant.  He made little nodding movements of his head at everything I said.  His wife looked vaguely bored.

How did I feel about management?

How did I feel about management?  Hell, I couldn’t even manage myself.  How could I manage my hirelings?

Certainly, I can do it, I told him.  I think I would be that man you think I might be, yes.

Then, he looked at me in that appraising way a diamond cutter would look at a rough stone that housed the diamond whose beauty he would be privileged to release.  Do you know what the most important thing is, the diamond cutter was asking me, in managing men?  Let me tell you, young man.  Then you can tell me if you are up to the challenge.  He smacked his dry lips, making those little affirmative movements of his head.  It’s to be able to tell when they are lying to you.  He paused, letting his words seep in around me.  Your people will lie to you every chance they get.  They’ll lie to you when the truth is sufficient.  Do you think you can handle that?

Of course, I had been lied to by the best, not to mention I had done my fair share of lying.  And, who better to see through the lies of others than one who was damn good at the process himself?  Prudence told me the last part wasn’t what the man wanted to hear.

I told him it was important to see through their lies.  It was equally important, though, to let them know that lies are unacceptable to me.  I will not brook lying, I said fiercely.  I watched the smile form, the eyes light up and I think I could even hear the tap tap tap of his mallet to the head of the chisel.  He was exposing quite a brilliant facet here!

Secretly, though, I think he knew I was scamming him.  I think, now, it was evident in the very way I carried myself, probably the fact that I appeared over-eager in my over-confidence, and too readily swallowed his proffered bait.  Yes, I was sure he could easily see how badly I needed a new start.  I figure he must have needed a manager equally as desperately.  We needed each other.  What was a diamond cutter without his rock?  What good was the diamond-in-the-rough without the cutter?  One thing, though – he certainly knew how to push the right buttons.

How did I feel about management?  I needed to say more at this point.  I needed to consolidate my position.

I haven’t the slightest doubt in my mind that I can do the job, I told him.

He took it to phase two.  He explained that I would be paid the generous salary of $1,500 per month to recruit, train, and motivate the new hire, and that would mean, more times than not, getting him prepared to pass the State Licensing exam.  Once licensed, I would take him out on the first few appointments and I would allow him the full commissions on everything I sold.  If he needed more babysitting, then it was expected we’d split the commission down the middle.  In addition to my salary, which I felt was grand, I would receive from my General Agent a percentage of the premium of each policy my people wrote.  It was called an override.  In about a year, he promised, my commissions on the policies I wrote, the commissions I split with the lazy or the cowardly agents, plus the overrides on all the policies that were sold would triple or quadruple the salary I started out with.  I would consider my salary at that point as puny, the other incentives grand.  That’s how he puffed me up to feel.  That was how it was going to work.   In theory at least.

Of course, I explained to him, my wife and I owned our home.  I needed to go over the offer with her.  I was confident she would be supportive, but we would need to put our home on the market.  That took time.

He gave me a look.  I took the look to mean: How can you manage men, if you can’t even manage your wife?  To which I could have added:  Hell, how can I manage my wife if I can’t even manage myself?  After the look he gave me he suggested – assuming my wife saw what a marvelous opportunity this would be for us – that I make my move to Bakersfield right away, get my office (he said my office!) set up, work up an action plan, maybe even put a recruiting ad in the Bakersfield Californian.  The sooner I got started, the sooner I could start making the big money.

We shook hands.  His wife smiled and said she was pleased.  Was she pleased that she met me, or pleased that her husband had hooked a live one?

Then, as though to answer that open question, her husband set the hook, gave it a final little tug, as he turned back to me, his hand still on the knob.  “Oh, don’t forget to keep your receipts.  We’ll reimburse you for your move.”  Matter-of-factly.  That was how he said it.  The tone of it said to me: You are just about to enter the big leagues, young man.  I’m investing in you because I know you’re going to bring big money to the table.  When you make money, I make money.

I don’t remember the exact words I used that night when I sat at the foot of our bed and tried to transfer to my wife’s mind and heart something that could only be a hint of the hope and reckless confidence that had been injected into mine.  The man thought I could be a leader of men, could manage them, get them to make money, so I could make money, and make money for him.  Of course I didn’t have any experience, I agreed with her, but neither did anyone else until they started getting the experience and then, lo and behold! they suddenly had that experience.  Yes, and I was sorry for the sarcasm.  No, I was not trying to be condescending.

If memory serves me, she was lying on top of the covers, propped up on a couple of pillows while, as I said, I was sitting at the foot of the bed.   “Do you realize how hot it is in Bakersfield,” she asked me, suddenly, in a way that I think was supposed to close a door on the subject.  The weather in Santa Maria was lovely, no doubt about it.  It was so mild in the summer that no one owned an air conditioner.  If there ever was a freakish hot spell it lasted no more than two or three days.  The definition of “hot” was anything above eighty degrees, so if the thermometer nudged higher than that it would not be unusual to see a grownup sitting in a lawn chair in his front yard, under the arc of the sprinkler.

“I thrive in the heat, darling,” I told her.  As it turned out, there would be about a half dozen times over the next twenty some years, when, during the searing summer Bakersfield heat she reminded me how she had warned me about the heat.  And I would always deliver back to her the same weary joke, long after it stopped being funny to her: “Why, dear, you must not have heard me right.  What I really said was, ‘I drive in the heat!’”

One thing we both agreed on, though, was that life was not going to get any better for us in Santa Maria.  So, I packed a few things in my Pinto and headed out to begin my big adventure over the Cuyama Mountains, into the San Joaquin Valley and the city of Bakersfield.  My wife stayed behind with the four kids, readied the house for sale and went on doing what she did best, which was single-handedly holding the family together financially and emotionally.

I could go on and on with this, but then it would end up being just another life story, not much different from any number of other life stories: not shameful enough to be riveting, not uplifting enough to be a helpful model for another’s behavior.  What I really want to tell is a simple story with its usual beginning, middle and end – direct,  simple, entertaining, yet one that the reader might remember next week or the week after.

So, let me just say, without further fanfare – that the job I accepted, for which my wife sold our house, crammed four kids and the first load of our belongings, and traveled the 163 miles over the Cuyama Mountains and into Bakersfield, lasted about four months.  I was being fired, he told me, because I could not be a manager of men.  And that probably meant that I let my three men and two women lie to me, let them tell me they had 7:30 and 9:30 no shows, or that the couple’s four-year-old really did throw up on the kitchen table and ruined the thrust of the presentation, not to mention the application.   Either I was incapable of recognizing an obvious lie, or I so much wanted to believe that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow would bring better things that I would let today’s activities blur into a kind of vague acceptability.   And, for that he terminated my employment.

How I got from there to here, to the job that has provided me this office and paid me to sit in this chair over the past twenty some years, is worth scarcely more than this sentence.  Where I really want to take the reader is right back to this office, to a day about two weeks ago.

I was fiddling around with the computer when Reena came in the door.  Computers are a divine mystery to me, so when I say “fiddling around” I’m saying it with the utmost reverence.  It’s safe to say that I am on the computer – Googling down an obscure line from Dylan Thomas or scouring for documentation that Jesus really was married – every bit as much as I am staring slack-mouthed out the front door.

She took the chair in front of my desk.  Reena is not a small woman.  Nor is she tall.  That leaves one general direction by which her size is defined.  She leaned her girth toward me with her elbows on the desk and her ample cheeks resting in those magnificently tiny palms.  I smiled at her and nodded, holding up an index finger which I always assume the other takes to mean I’ll be with him or her in one minute.  Then, I turned back to the screen, pretending to be finishing up something.  She came in once a month to pay on her auto insurance, but I knew she was not there for that reason today.  So, I punched a few keys and minimized a few screens, and I listened to her labored breathing.  I knew what she was there for, and I was avoiding it.

“Jay,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” I said, feeling stupid.  Like I had forgotten she was there.  Like she couldn’t see I was stalling.

“My attorney says he can’t take his truck off now.”

“He says that?”

“He says he has to keep it on the policy until -”  There was a perceptible pause while she swallowed.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Until it’s final, he said the policy has to stay the way it is.”  There was a sudden steely edge of resolve to her words.

“How did you know about the truck?”  I had just taken it off their policy the day before and put it on Oscar’s own policy.

“Oscar called me.  He can’t do that.  Not until it’s final.  The truck’s in both names.  You shouldn’t have done it.”

I explained to her that it wasn’t an ownership question.  It was an insurability one.  With both their names on the registration he had the right to have the truck on a separate policy.  I spoke with authority.  I articulated with my deepest, most modulated tone.  I hoped I was right.  It sounded right in my head.  I hoped, if I was not right, at least she bought that it was right.  And, I immediately felt cheap and guilty for feeling that way, for already looking for a way out.

“I have a letter from my attorney that says he can’t do it.  He says it has to be kept on the policy.”

“I’ll probably have to have a copy of that letter, Reena.  If you can get that to me.”

“I’ll see if I can find it.  Can’t you just put it back on?  It’s in my name, too.”   Resolve had left her voice.  Desperation was starting to seep in.

“He had the registration, Reena.  It’s already been done.  I’ll need that letter.”

“The insurance cancels tomorrow.”

 I pushed some buttons and typed in their last name.  Four selections came up with that last name.  I chose the right one.  It popped up on the screen.  “Yes,” I said.  “Tomorrow.  Actually, twelve-oh-one A.M, so it goes out one minute after midnight tonight.”

“He has to pay it.  My attorney says.”

“Does he know?”

“He knows.  That’s why he wanted to insure just his truck.  So he wouldn’t have to pay it all.  You shouldn’t have done it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it.  “He led me to believe it was final.”

“He would.”  She swallowed hard.  Her eyes filled.

“It’s okay,” I said.  It was the second time I’d said that.  Why did I say it was okay?  I was trying to tell her it was okay to show her feelings.  But, who was I to tell her that?   She didn’t need my permission.  It was something one man would say to another man.  Women just let their feelings out – no apology.  How did she take my words?  It was not okay to her.  Her life was caving in around her.  She was not young.  She wouldn’t easily rebound.  It was not okay.

She moaned.  It came all the way from the center of the earth.  It carried the primitive memory of all betrayed women of all time.  “Ohhhhhhhh,” she moaned.  She put her head on her forearm.  Her forearm was on my desk.  I was left looking at the top of her head.  There was a part down the center of her hair.  The part caught my attention. Strands of gray were silver meteors streaking into the blackness of the night, which was the rest of her hair.  Metaphor.

“You okay, Reena?  Is Stacie in the car?”  Stacie was her daughter.  She was the one who normally brought in the premium payment while her mother sat in the car, waiting to catch my attention so she could wave at me through the glass door.

“Ohhhhhhhhh,” she moaned.

“Where’s Stacie?”

She raised her head from the desk.  Her face was wet and slack.  There was a wet spot on the desk, where her face at been.  It was roughly the shape of Texas.  She saw my eyes looking there and frantically tried to rub it dry with the palm of her hand.

 ”Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“You know what really hurts, Jay?”

It was not really a question I could answer.

“I’ve always been a good wife.

“I’m sure you have.”

“We had our problems.”

“Uh-huh…”

“But who hasn’t?”

“Who hasn’t.”  I shook my head, frowned at my hands folded on the desk.

“We always pulled through.  We had a rough time of it money-wise, but he wouldn’t let me work.  I should be home with the kids.  Then, he wanted me to go to college while the kids were in school.  We never had a lot, but we raised some good kids.”

“That’s no small tribute.”

“But it doesn’t look good on a job resume.  Fifty and raised some good kids.”  She pinched her nostrils between thumb and forefinger, then sniffed.  “Any Kleenex?”

I went to the desk in the back corner of the room, got the box and headed back.  When I got there I saw her head was back on her forearm.  Her back was rounded, her shoulders hunched forward, hiding her neck.  She was saying something vicious, but unintelligible to the desktop.  She pounded her punctuation into the desk with a white-knuckled fist.  I’d have not been surprised if, just as her tears formed the replica of the State of Texas on the desktop, so could the ferocity of her emotions now trap her mind’s image of that poor fool’s face in laminate, and when she raised up again that image would be there, all bruised and swollen from her beating.

“Here, Reena.”   I held out the tissue for her.

She raised up.  I looked down where her face had been and felt a pang of disappointment.  “He couldn’t be man enough to tell me himself,” she cried into her tissue.  “I had to – to hear it form his own mother.  Bastard!  I’m sorry.”

 ”That’s okay.”

“He – he even takes her with him when he has a job out of town.  Leaves her in the motel, watching television, while he works.  Then, when he gets off they go dining and dancing.  Then, they come back and do their filthy little thing.”

“Geeze.”  I wondered, though, how she got all this firsthand knowledge.

Suddenly, her face dove, the mouth sobbing, into her open hands.  Her generous back curved forward with great, wracking spasms.

I got up from my chair, came around the desk and stood behind her, casting a cautionary glance through the door.  “Now, now.  Easy.  That’s okay,” I said, massaging her shoulders.”

“He’s a bastard,” her voice muffled into her hands.

“You’ll come through the other end,” I said, wondering what I meant.

“Why?” she said.

“There’ll be light at the other end.”  I was starting to get a handle on what I was driving at.

“Ohhhh,” she moaned.  “Why?  Thirty years.  Why?”

“You’ll get through it, Reena.  Easy.  There, now.   Easy.  Easy.”

All at once she sat up, stiff, erect, her hands slapping her thighs, smartly.   “I have to go now,” she said.

“Should you be driving?” I asked.

“I need to go.”

“Can I call someone to come get you?”

“I have to go now.”

“I can call Stacie.”

“Good-bye, Jay.”

“Let me call Stacie.”

“You’ve been kind.  Thank you.”  She turned and pushed open the door.  She went through.

I went to the door, did not open it, but watched at an angle through the distortion and dust as she backed out of the parking space, crossed the parking lot looking straight ahead, sternly, over the steering-wheel.  She pulled out onto Columbus.

I had heard of a bartender, once, being called to task for selling a customer that final drink that caused that driver, not ten minutes later, to misjudge the screeching blur hurtling through the intersection toward him (he thought, in a smiling, drunken stupor) like a meteor shooting through the green, red and silver stars that was the shattering windshield that his head and shoulders and half a steering wheel had shot through, the instant that thought ended.  The bartender used poor judgment.  He may even have asked if he should call someone to drive him home.  But, in the end the customer said, “I have to go now.”  And the bartender used poor judgment in letting him.

The next morning I received a phone call.  It was Oscar. The bastard.  The home wrecker.  I had already figured his reason for calling.

He would be telling me to hold off from doing anything.  No matter the letter from her attorney.  Keep the new policy the way it was, the truck comfortable in its own new blanket of security.  No reason to change anything.  Reena was dead.  She missed a curve on her way home, rolled her car seven times where it torched itself and the field it came to rest, upside down, in.

Was he sure?  She was just here yesterday.

He wondered: what did I say to her?  The coroner did an autopsy.  Her emotional level was two points.  One point was legally driving while emotionally impaired.

Reena is dead?

Dead.

You’re sure?

Dead!  Dead!  Dead!  What wasn’t I telling him, he asked?

“I’m sorry, Jay, I put you to all that work.  Reena’s attorney called me and said the truck has to stay on the other policy.”

“Yes.”

“You heard.”

“Reena said.  She was going to get me the letter from her attorney.”

“Don’t bother, Jay.  You’ll have to go ahead and put it back the way it was.  As soon as it’s final we’ll do it again.  I’m sorry for the extra work.”

“It’s okay.”

There was a silence – always more uncomfortable over the phone.  I knew he wanted to say something more.  And, then he did.

“Reena called me this morning,” he said, probing, like the robin jabs its beak into the worm-rich loam, feeling for the plump resistance to his prod, which was breakfast.

“She got home alright?”

“Why wouldn’t she get home alright?”  Mr. Robin found his worm.

I told him she was pretty emotional and she didn’t have anyone with her to drive her home.

“She was emotional?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Damn!  I thought so.  What’d she say about me?”

I chuckled nervously, wondering as I did it why I would show my nervousness by chuckling.  Part of me wanted to tell him just enough to get him to open up.  I knew he had his side of the story, his hurts, his justification, and I knew it was just as cogent – to him – as hers.  It was the other part of me that spoke, though.

It said: “Client privilege, chum.”  I think the “chum” came from an old movie I had seen.

He laughed, and it was short and mean and dry.

“Client privilege?” he snorted.   “You’re an insurance peddler, not a lawyer!”

“If you won’t accept that, then,” I said, ”how about this: a gentleman doesn’t gossip.”

“I’m sorry.  Of course you wouldn’t.”

There was another long silence.  A very long silence.

“So,” I said, “I’ll add the truck back on.  Are we finished, then, Oscar?”

“Did it ever occur to you that a person can get just as emotional over a lie as the truth?”

“Why should that occur to me?”

“Did she tell you what happened back when our marriage was still young?  Still had the mist on the bloom, as they say?”

“Most marriages are very good when they start out.  Why would she -”

“Did she tell you” – he took a deep and ragged breath – “that I walked in on her and her lover on the day of our tenth anniversary?”

“Um…”

“Yeah.  I had a hunch she wouldn’t,” he said, dryly.  “The kids were in school.  She was supposed to be taking a class, herself, at Bakersfield College.  Back then she was a knock out.  She took care of herself back then.  Anyway, I came home early to put up some crape paper and some other decorations.  She used to tease me about not being romantic, so I had planned a special evening.”  Again, a breath that caught, then stair-stepped up into what sounded like a stifled sob.  “Oh, yeah, it really turned – turned out special!  This guy in her Comparative Religions class.  They – they didn’t even have the decency do it in – I don’t know, someplace else.  I pushed open our bedroom door, looking for a roll of Scotch tape, to tape up the decorations.  There they were, buck naked on our bed!”

There was an uncomfortably long pause that should have been filled with something out of my mouth, but I could think of nothing to say.

Finally, he filled it himself.

“It sure added a lot of credence to the rumors I had heard during all the years before that, not to mention all the sympathetic looks I got from people, even total strangers.   Of course, I didn’t believe any of it.  She was my woman.”

“My God, Oscar,” I managed to get out at last, “I’m sorry.  You went through a lot.  It’s hard to believe someone could -”

“Yes,” he broke in.  “I guess it would be hard to believe.”  He invested a special emphasis on that last word.  He chuckled.  It sounded strangely out of place.  “Of course, you could ask her -”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant!” I rushed in to say.  I felt my face get hot.

“Yeah, you could ask her, but then I’m your client, too.  Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be too gentlemanly.”

“Why would I want to ask her anyway?”

“Well, to find out if it’s true.”

“If it’s true?”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“Are you saying it’s not?  That you were lying?”

“Would you believe me if I said I was lying?”

“You sounded damned convincing.”

Like I said, a talented person can be just as convincing with a lie as the truth.  I mean, that’s what Hollywood is based on, isn’t it?  Appearances.  After all, you believed Reena, didn’t you?”

“Shouldn’t I have?”

He paused through a silence that probably contained a shrug, a pause and a shrug that was supposed to invite me to think through my question.

After a decent interval he said:  “Appearances, Jay.  By the way, if it matters, I’m going to remain here in my apartment.  As my insurance agent, though, I want to assure you I’m not going to risk driving.  I know I’m too emotional to be getting behind the wheel.  I’ve got to say though… it would sure be nice if I had that whore here – Reena told you about her, didn’t she?  It would be nice to have someone like her here to massage my shoulders.  Jesus!  Just to have her fake a little tenderness and help me get through this pain.  Ohhhhhh,” he moaned.  “Christ, Jay, if you only knew -”

I put the receiver softly on the cradle, leaned back in my chair, and stared out through the door at the matchbox cars zipping from behind the one closed Venetian blind of one window, across the door, just above the top of the open sign, and behind the other closed blind.

 

 

 

HOW THIS CRITTER CRITS — Intermezzo –

TAKING THE PAST WITH US INTO THE FUTURE

 The preface and the first chapter laid the groundwork for why I felt it was important for me to explain my method of critiquing (critting) and why I chose to call myself a critter instead of a reviewer.

The next two chapters of this series revealed the process I use to get an overview of the selection I’ve chosen.  The process is largely intuitive and is developed from the “weight” and the “movement” of the piece.  It is best accomplished with the eyes slightly out-of-focus.  I call this process Macro-Critting.

The next three chapters began the nuts and bolts of the process I call Micro-Critting. First, we discussed “beginnings” and “endings,” and looking for the effectiveness of “hooks” in the openings of short works as well as in chapter endings of longer works.  Then, we looked at the importance of drama in fiction, and we introduced the obvious idea that nothing creates drama like dialogue.

We finished off the last two chapters with a half-dozen or so common dialogue abuses, any one of which could interrupt the precious bond between reader and writer.

 Now… join me, won’t you, as we take a longish intermission from the nuts and bolts. Take your cigarette or potty break. I’ll just hang around with you and lay down some of the ground-rules for my process of deep-level analysis. Ladies, don’t forget to lift the lid when you finish!

 

 

 INTERMEZZO

 

            First you select a short story to study. Choose any, I suppose, though I would start with a published story. Here, the unpublished, undiscovered writer leaps to his feet. “I object,” he shouts, his words arriving a mille-second before the fine spray of spittle. “Why published? Why, why, why? Are you saying my story isn’t as good as one that is published?”

            “Not at all,” I say. And, I’m quick to tell him, because he frightens me in his boldness and his passion, that I don’t mean his story is not at all good; rather, I don’t at all mean that the published story is better. But, now that I’ve talked myself into a lonely corner of utter consternation, I realize I ended up telling him just about the opposite of what I had intended to say. What I really wanted to tell him, and would have if I had any courage at all, was this: “Look, buddy, I don’t know if your story is better than a published story. I don’t know because I haven’t read your story. But, if you think it is better then you owe it to yourself and thousands of readers to try to get it published. Because, like it or not, publication is the benchmark for a story’s success. Then, if it does get published it has already exceeded a certain industry standard. We have to assume it is better, or at least more salable than the vastly larger number that did not rise to that standard. At bottom, it’s a lesson in economics. Forget art! An editor does not choose a story for publication that won’t make money for his publisher. Economics one-oh-one.” 

            My hope, at this point, is that the propulsion from his newly acquired enthusiasm catapults our writer out the door on his way to buy manila envelopes and stamps. Either that or out of his angst he slumps back down behind his word processor, grumbling, perhaps, but no longer belligerent.

            I’m counting on one or the other. I’m counting on it because this is not a chapter about how to get a story published. I know it started tilting in that direction, but that’s not the chapter’s intent. It’s much more modest. It’s how to get the most out of reading a story. It’s about how to align your deep-level analysis as closely as possible with the writer’s vision.

            Again, first you need to choose a story—a published short story. And while we’re at it, why not choose a short story that represents the best of published short stories? Why not choose one from one of those “best of” anthologies? You can go on and on and get more and more rarified, selecting from the greatest American short stories (if, for example, you are American), and finally the world’s best … here, though, we might have overstepped our boundaries, from the perspective of this stage of our learning. 

            There’s something to say for a person selecting a story that is a part of the cultural tradition with which he is familiar, which would also mean something written in the same century—perhaps even the same decade—in which he lives. In other words, choose from the best of the best of the stories that are written with something of the same language pattern that you use (born out of a similar cultural and social environment). This is a starting point, for this chapter, anyway, It certainly is not a finishing point. 

            I’ve chosen a short story by Alice Munro that was written sometime before 1968, since that was the year it was copyrighted. Her biography tells me she is older than I, but not by much. Since one’s mind bathes in the same pond of shared humanity as one’s contemporaries, there is a kinship on the social and cultural level that we do not share with the likes of an Anton Chekhov, a Guy de Maupassant, or even a Samuel Clemens (though we come closer to the latter). Alice Munro and I have shared in the effects of at least three major wars, with all their ramifications; we’ve developed morbid imaginings out of the dread of atomic and hydrogen bombs—and the cold war they spawned. On the positive side, we’ve witnessed the birth, and struggled through the infancy and adolescence of television; and we proudly watched on those same televisions as men walked on the moon. These are our shared memories: the archetypal memory of the art of our century. 

            I am not in any way trying to say that you and I can’t plumb the deeper meanings from the translations of foreign writers, or of writers two or three centuries older than we, regardless of their language. That would be a slap in the face of my English teacher, Mildred Bain, may she rest in peace. But, the classics have been around a century or five; aren’t they likely to still be there a month or two from now? I am merely saying that in order to develop a close understanding of the craftsmanship of first one writer and then a second and a third, why stack the deck against ourselves?

            Furthermore, since many of us want to earn our livelihood from our writing, why not study the fictional models that are representative of what is being published today? Really study them! Not blindly copying their styles. Study them! Learn what makes them tick. Learn also what makes them clatter and clunk. And, most importantly, by learning to recognize tick-tockery as well as the hyper-clatteral and the infra-clunkery, you might just learn what to embrace in your own writing, what to add to, subtract from or abandon entirely. You’ll learn to recognize what works and what doesn’t. You’ll develop an ear and even a nose for what’s right and what’s not. 

            Let’s not make the process more than it is: it is simply taking a story, chopping it into its parts, at first, possibly, with the studied caution of a medical intern, but later with the deftness of a surgeon.  You’ll be taking it apart, then putting it back together again, taking it apart once more, and putting it back, but this time switching parts.  You may elongate a section and compress another.  All the time you’ll be asking questions and looking for the answers, what-if-ing all over the place.  You’ll zero in on a part of it, brushing away some grit and seeing if it moves easier.  During the entire process, you’ll be searching out the life energy that runs through the piece. 

            Some may worry that such literary surgery is almost a sacrilege. But I maintain that the story, when it is complete and synchronized in all its parts is as perfectly balanced as a tightrope walker on his high wire. Such a story resists major modification. If you can make improvements to it without interrupting its integral life energy, that is, without altering the basic premise of the story, then you’ve helped bring it into a better balance. Can we believe a tightrope walker learns his craft on a wire strung between two buildings, four hundred feet from the ground? Wouldn’t he, instead, be flailing about at a height of more like three feet from the ground? I know I would.

            Equally as important, if you cannot make any changes to it, if you cannot alter it without throwing it out of balance, then haven’t you learned something more about balance? Haven’t you, through deep-level analysis learned how the writer brought about this miracle of literary equilibrium?

 

            With your short story opened on the table in front of you, your pen in hand, coffee cup at your elbow, you’re ready to begin. I hope you’ve chosen a magazine or book that can be written on, not a library book or one you borrowed from a friend. Choose a color of ink that stands in contrast to the print in the book. I use red ink with a fine point so the letters it forms are crisp, even when written small. Also, you might find a yellow hi-liter can be handy for blocking out sections.

            I should say a few words about the approach I use to arrive at a deep-level understanding of a story: Very simply it is that it is the approach I use. It’s not the only approach. It may not be the best approach for you or anyone else. It is the best one for me—though even in that it is evolving, so that what is the best today may not be sufficient a year from now, or even tomorrow. Oh, yes—and at the risk of sounding tutorial in nature, I am not going to say throughout, “I do this,” or “I do that,” because it gets rather cumbersome. In all cases, know that it is implied, though. 

            So … as Howie Mandel would say [When there was]  on Deal Or No Deal, “let’s find out! …

NEXT TIME ….”

 

MICRO-CRITTING: Three More Illusion Crashers

NOTE TO THE READER:  There has been about a three-month hiatus since the posting of the previous chapter of “How This Critter Crits”.  Any new reader to the series should be advised that the entire series has been archived up to this present offering.  I hope he or she will find this segment interesting or instructive enough to want to go back and re-read the previous chapters.  To those stalwart readers who have  read all the previous postings and would simply like to refresh themselves as to the major points before beginning this one, I’d like to remind them there is,  before each segment,  a short review of  what went before.

 

TAKING THE PAST WITH US INTO THE FUTURE

 

The preface and the first chapter laid the groundwork for why I felt it was important for me to explain my method of critiquing (critting) and why I chose to call myself a critter instead of a reviewer.

The next two chapters of this series revealed the process I use to get an overview of the selection I’ve chosen.  The process is largely intuitive and is developed from the “weight” and the “movement” of the piece.  It is best accomplished with the eyes slightly out-of-focus.  I call this process Macro-Critting.

The last three chapters began the nuts and bolts of the process I call Micro-Critting.  First, we discussed “beginnings” and “endings,” and looking for the effectiveness of “hooks” in the openings of short works as well as in chapter endings of longer works.  Then, we looked at the importance of drama in fiction, and we introduced the obvious idea that nothing creates drama like dialogue.

Last chapter we held a magnifying glass on dialogue and explored the first of writer abuses in that area that can break the mystical bond between him and his reader.  Now, may I invite you to look at three more examples of writer abuses with dialogue? 

 

 

 

MICRO-CRITTING

THREE MORE ILLUSION CRASHERS

 

            It seems only yesterday that I posted the last chapter about those two illusion crashers, dialogue (or speaker) tags and unnecessary or non-pertinent dialogue.  I know it wasn’t just yesterday.  It wasn’t yesterday, or last week, or even two weeks ago.  I  know this because I have been frantically working my brain knuckles to the skull bone for at least that long, critting my colleagues’ creations to hone my critting craft, to hopefully help some, and to earn their respect — and, well, forty-two-point-three-eight member dollars as well as twenty-seven member cent pumps.  Fortified and funded, then, I’m ready to launch into three more examples of illusion crashers under the heading we’ll call Being Set Up.  Join me, won’t you?

 

            Being set-up:  Suppose the writer needs to convey some information to the reader — information that is needed to further the momentum of the plot, for example, or add some insight to a character.  It’s his call.  The options are his … not all of them good.  He can, if he chooses, step in, as author, and lay it out all nice and neat for the reader.  Sometimes this is necessary to increase the pace of the narrative and to move the story from one physical place to another or back (or, I suppose forward), in time.  My main concern here is the transition into and away from dialogue.  It can be a distraction, an illusion crasher, unless handled adroitly.  If it’s too obvious he is trying to make something known to the reader, it is called author intrusion.  To this critter, the writer’s announcement could well be preceded by an “ahem,” as though saying, “May I have your attention, please?”  In the body of story it may look something like this:

 

            “Why are you pulling away from me, Mary?  Just a moment ago you said you loved –”

            “Please, let’s go a little slower, Mark.”

            “Slower!  You want to go slower!  I knew you were the one I wanted since we slept on our mats together in kindergarten.  Come on, darling.  Just let me –”

            “Don’t!  You’re scaring me!”

            [Ahem...]  Mark had no way of knowing — Mary had never told him, but kept it her dark secret — that while she was away at college, and he was home waiting for her, a young man she thought she could trust had forced himself on her.  She thought he was her friend.  Now, she agonized over whether she should tell Mark.  Would he understand?  Would it be all over between them?

            “Is there someone else?” Mark asked.

 

           Yes, Mark, there is someone else!  It’s the author.  And, he’s a most unwelcome “someone else” to the story.

 

            Another way the writer can translate important information to the reader is to get inside the head of a point-of-view character and let that character mull it over.  Assuming that character is Mary, this can be a bit subtler.  Unlike the “author intrusion” distraction, the reader feels at least connected with one of the two characters.  Nevertheless, when it is used to avoid dramatic action it has something of a “pssssst” feeling to it — certainly less stark than “Ahem,” but, nonetheless, inviting the reader to scoot over close and listen to something that’s meant for his or her ears only.  Observe:

            Mary pulled away from Mark, still feeling the tingling impression his fingers had made on her arms.  She thought she was ready for this evening.  This room had to have set him back close to a hundred dollars.  Then there were the flowers and dinner.  Now, as she looked across the bed at him, all she could think of was [Psssst -- Psssst --Psssssssst!] that night, a year ago, when Buford walked her home from the school library.  She thought she could trust Buford.  He knew she had Mark waiting for her at home.  Still, in the shadows next to her dorm he pushed her against the wall and forced himself on her.  How could she tell Mark now that the closer they got to the moment he was waiting for, all she could think of was Buford?

            “Is there someone else?” Mark asked.

 

            Was there someone else?  Mark, Mark, Mark — if you only knew!

            And there is the rub:  If Mark only knew.  This scene is central to their fictional relationship.  Mark’s reaction, if Mary gave him the chance to react, would be crucial to the plot of this story.  The reader needs to be part of the unfolding present action of the plot.

           While I am a big fan of being privy to the thoughts of the point-of-view character (I love getting right in there and swimming around all that gray matter), vital exposition comes out of the mouths, or the actions, of the characters who have life-changing interests in the outcome of the plot.

            So, as a critter, I ask no more from the writer than to have the incantation of his words on the page so thoroughly engage me that I am oblivious to the tape and staples and glue that hold all the parts together.  If the writer leaps onto the page to flatly inform me of something that the characters should, instead, be performing in stereo and full color, on the screen of my mind, then the fictional illusion is shattered.  Even if the writer conspires with his point-of-view character to have her whisper in my ear that same information, the impact of it affects me similarly: I’m forced outside the story; I’ve become merely an eavesdropper! 

            But wait … the writer has come up with a third method of sneaking information to the reader.  Since I’ve developed a fondness for Mary and Mark, we’ll let them exemplify this distraction.  Only, I’ll have to ask that you forget all about Buford and that little incident beside the dorm.  It happened, all right, but let’s just say Mary worked it out with Mark.  Love was stronger than Mark’s wounded pride or manhood, or whatever is wounded in times such as these.  They marry and move on, have one child, Mariah, who grows up, falls in love — or rather, stays in love with a young man she’d known since kindergarten.  We’ll call him Marcos.  Mariah is going off to college.  But she pledges to stay faithful to Marcos, who secured a management position at the local Taco Bell.

            This is the point at which the writer chooses to begin his story.  Just remember: this is a brand new story.  You’ve never even heard of Mary or Mark … or Buford — especially not Buford!  It’s all still in the writer’s head.  When he feels the time is right he will spring it on you.  As a matter of fact, it appears you won’t have long to wait:

            “Darling,” Mark said, putting a hand on Mary’s arm.  “What a delicious meal.”

            Mary couldn’t conceal her smile as she stood up, set his plate on hers and gathered up the silverware.  “Well, I did get my degree in home economics, you know.  I wanted to make sure when my husband returned from a hard day at Firestone he would have a comfortable home and a warm meal to look forward to.”  She took the plates and utensils to the kitchen.

            “You’re a wonderful wife, Mary,” he said loudly enough that she could hear him over the running water in the sink.  “But, you know I don’t work that hard.  Remember, I’m a manager there.”

            “I know, darling,” she said, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and sitting down again.  “It’s hard to believe you’re still working there.  You started there right out of high school.”

            “Yeah, just when you left for college.”

            “You waited for me.”

            “Yes.”

            “And, now Mariah is going off to college.”

            “Our daughter’s all grown up and going off to college.”

            “I hope she’s grown up enough.”  Her eyes filled.

            “You’re worried about her, aren’t you?”

            “Well … you remember what happened to me!”

            “You mean what Buford did to you — that bastard!”  He put both his hands over hers.  “It wasn’t your fault, darling.  You fought him off.”

            She sniffed.

            “I know how hard it was for you, Mary….”

            “Would you like some dessert, dear?”

 

            Now, for those critters who actually took me at my word and erased from their memories the first two examples of the drama that took place between Mark and Mary and Buford, I set out in bold type the information the writer was trying to sneak into the dialogue.  I have a hunch, though, I needn’t have gone to the trouble.  It should have been as painfully obvious to read as it was simply painful for me to write.  In this case, perhaps just slightly more than the preceding two instances, didn’t you feel gaggingly set-up?

            Admittedly, examples of being set-up are likely to be less obvious and less an assault on the reader’s intelligence than the three I’ve penned.  Some might even be so subtle as to slip past him in a cursory reading.  If he wants to be a serious critter, though, and especially if he aspires to be a serious writer, he needs to develop an ear and an eye at least as sharp as those of the editor he sends his story to.  He should train himself to look for dialogue in which one character says to another what is already known by both.  Signal words that seem to pop up at these times might be “Remember …” “As you know …” “I know …” or, “You mean …”  Not far from those words you might well find the information the writer wants you to have.

 

            The serious writer knows that accurate and realistic writing is hard work.  To write well is extremely challenging.  The writer who sets his reader up, as in the ways shown above, is abrogating that challenge and his responsibility to the reader.  This is, of course, assuming he is not a beginner, unskilled in the rudiments of the craft –and Lord knows, we’ve all been there!  But, the experienced writer who still sets up his reader is almost always being lazy.  He is trying to get from point A to point B by taking the most direct route.  He has a story that is important to him, or he wouldn’t have a need to tell it.  He knows (or he thinks he knows) where it should begin and he knows, more or less, where it should end.

            The problem is, our writer chooses to take the thoroughfare and drive straight away, looking neither left nor right … while the reader wants (read that as needs) to take the surface streets, to stop at a stoplight here and there, to slow down here to study a billboard, to hurry through that vaguely threatening part of town back there, to be alive to the surroundings, to pull over to the curb and take ten minutes, or an hour and ten minutes, to stroll through the park with his or her sweetheart.

            To take the thoroughfare, on the other hand, to take the quickest way to get from A to B, the primary emphasis is to get his story told.  He elects to tell it.  The reader craves being shown what is happening in and around the characters.  The reader wants to slide in among them.  He wants to cavort with the characters, to laugh with them, perhaps even to cry with them.  Above all, the reader wants to fully engage his own brain and his own heart, to let both resonate with the thoughts and feelings of those characters who are let loose in their own created world.

            “And, that,” as dear Robert Frost would — and did — conclude: “that makes all the difference.” 

 

THE MEDICINE MAN, HIS LOVELY DAUGHTER & NUTMEG

Once, when I was just twenty and fresh out of the military, the opportunity of being Tribal Historian for a confederacy of Indian tribes fell in my lap. I was to travel the U.S. with an itinerant medicine man and his gorgeous teenage daughter. The first time I saw her, I gazed upon a bronze tan covering her sleek body. She wore a short buckskin skirt and had jet black hair, sporting two braids with an actual feather, for God’s sake, tethered to each.

 She smelled faintly of nutmeg and romance.

 I was to accompany them to the various reservations across the U.S., compiling mountains of notes while learning—as the medicine man promised I would learn—the true story of the American Indian. Later I would document it all for posterity.

 All I had to do was go home and pack, dole out my goodbyes and return in one week.

 But, I was a lad of twenty and my mother had something to tell me:

“They will kill you and steal your money,” she argued.  Fact was I had no money. They’d have found that out soon enough.  What I did have was the promise of sixty or seventy more years in my bag of life … unless said bag was wantonly emptied and its contents strewn along some lonely road by these two peripatetic miscreants.

 * * *

At this point, how many readers are asking, “Why would you listen to her?” And, really, had I heeded, instead, my youthful exuberance, and embraced the future, I actually just might have compiled that gargantuan history. Who knows? And, in the process I might have risen to undreamt-of heights of spiritual awareness. Then too, how about all those romantic detours from which I would emerge smelling faintly of nutmeg?

 As I think about it, the real question I should ask is: “Why did I allow her fears to lodge themselves so snugly in my soul that they would reverberate there at least once more while I was still relatively young?

 Fast forward five years:

 * * *

 I was living the bohemian lifestyle in Los Angeles, in a communal house I shared with three others. Every day was an adventure in which we guzzled cheap wine from gallon jugs, argued heatedly over the placement of a comma and dreamt out loud. It was a damned good life!

 I don’t know who came up with the notion—I think it was Joe—that we should buy bikes and ride from California to New York. I’m sure each immediately rejected the idea in his own private mind, but it nestled like a grain of sand in the oyster of my brain. Over the next few days while they were working, going on their dates and engaging in drinking and partying, my tiny grain of sand quietly grew to a precious pearl.  Call it the pearl of thrilling possibilities.

 When I announced to the group that I would be buying my bike the next morning and would begin my adventure in two days, they met it with stunned silence. But, soon after, they cheered and assured me that if they didn’t have their damned jobs, they would certainly join me.  Secretly I felt a touch of superiority.

 However, that night I felt something more. Something powerful, compelling, sinister. The pearl had settled in the pit of my stomach where it transformed and grew to the size and heft of a cannonball while I lay there staring at the ceiling. Call it the dread of the unknown. Call it the powerful undertow from the past. Call it …

 ”A truck will run you over.”…

 ”Nah, ma, I’m gonna be careful.”

 ”You’ll get a flat in the middle of nowhere.”

 ”I’ll fix it!”

 ”You won’t.”

“Ma!”

 ”You won’t. You don’t know how.  It’ll be cold and rainy, your socks will be soggy … and you won’t … know … how!”

 Next morning, while the others were at work, I was on a bus back to Santa Maria.

 * * *

 End of story, you ask?

 No … it’s actually the beginning—or rather the beginning of many stories.

 Okay, let me explain:

 The first few paragraphs of this blog—the part about the medicine man and his gorgeous daughter—I lifted from the preface to my first Noah Winter novel, RSVP: Invitation To an Alchuklesh Massacre.  Only after I reread the preface today did it dawn on me that Noah Winter is, in spirit, pretty much everything I am not.

That set me to wondering … how many other writers, when they examine their own creative progeny, discover themselves peering out their own protagonists’ eyes at paths they wished they’d pursued—at least with their protagonists’ depth, intensity, integrity, honor or courage?

 While I won’t presume to answer for any other writer, I’ll try to noodle out a one paragraph answer about myself:

 Contrary to his wussy creator’s life, Noah Winter tends to launch himself a little too vigorously into the thrill of the unknown. It’s like he has the ghost of the medicine man tugging at his right shoulder. And, if you broach the intimate space of Noah’s love interest, Colleen, you may just carry back from the pages you were reading, the lingering scent of nutmeg.

 I may be wrong, but I don’t think Noah Winter fans would have it any other way.