Bad Luck

Finished NaNoWriMo.  Now I need to finish the novel, probably another 10k words or so.  Should be Thursday if I can keep the NaNo pace up.  Also ran a 5k with my family.  It’s been 17 years since I ran in an organized race and this one was very crowded.  It was a little frustrating at first but after about ½ a mile the pack sort of settled and then we spent the rest of the time passing people.  That felt pretty good.

Thought I’d try something different for today’s story.

Bad Luck
by Jon Stark
December, 2014; about 700 words

The Squids came about five years ago, best we can figure.  Bounced off Mars and smashed into the moon.  Broke it and their ship.  Of course at the time we thought they did it on purpose and all those smaller ships descending on us were attack craft.

It didn’t help that they took out a U.S. carrier group somewhere in the North Atlantic.  Or that one of them burned into Beijing.  Sort of galvanized our resistance, global cooperation kind of thing.  It took two years and five billion people to beat them.  Worst luck we ever had.  As a race.  Squids killed clean.

Thing we didn’t know in time was that the Squids weren’t invading – those little ships were lifeboats and they were running.  Didn’t know that until the Cha’ah showed up.  We were trying to put things back together, one hand on the wall and the other on our extraterrestrial blast rifles so to speak, always with an eye overhead.  Wondering when round two was going to start.

We didn’t know there wouldn’t be a round two, that we’d destroyed the last of the Squids.  Ironic.  The Cha’ah pulled Pluto into Neptune’s orbit and then recycled it into a forward operating base.  They put an Illuminator in orbit around Jupiter and focused the ten jiggawatt beam on earth.  You want night?  Go underground.  There’s not a dark place left on our planet.  Seasons were messed up, clocks were already fried, we sort of lost track of when we were.

The Squids were NBA sized -- tall aliens with tentacles and beaks – but they had faces and spoke.  They wore suits and carried their weapons.  And we could kill them.  The Cha’ah are bugs.  Big, nasty, spidery things -- all legs and hair and eyeballs.  They’ve got these antennae things that sort of flop around and they chatter.  Clicks and whirs all the time.  They sound like tap dancers or drill sergeants when they walk on our ruined streets, clattering on claws and they swarm everywhere and I’ll tell you, doesn’t matter how you feel about spiders, they are terrifying.

Our weapons didn’t seem to touch them.  Worse, the best weapons we had were captured from the Squids and they had been beaten soundly by the Cha’ah.  You know how in the movies when the zombies or vampires or aliens showed up there was a guy, either one of the heroes or somebody they found, that knew how to kill the evil?  The guy who would say, “Garlic doesn’t work on them.  But Holy water does.”  Well, that guy hasn’t shown up.  Not here.

And if there’s a secret base somewhere with a captured Cha’ah ship that we’re reverse engineering, nobody has told me.  Nukes can’t stop them.  The President of the United States leading a fighter attack can’t stop them.  The unbreakable human spirit can’t stop them.  Even the common cold seems to be powerless against them.

They just march over us.  They suck the life out of you if they touch you.  They call down fire from orbital systems if you run from them.  We’re out of food.  There’s disease we can’t cure.  The oceans have nearly boiled away.  I’m not sure we’ll be able to make it even if we beat them back.

Not that there’s any chance of that.  We’ve been running and hiding and they just keep coming like a line of tanks advancing through the desert.  We run from hole to hole but none of them are deep enough.  There was one place -- might have been Colorado but who knows – where we hooked up with a military unit for a few days.  They had a Colonel who told us that he’d heard about somebody standing against the Cha’ah.  Somewhere in Europe.  Albania or Romania or something.  A group came out of the mountains and when the aliens attacked they were beaten by a man who used their own power against them.  Sounds too good to be true.

Sounds like a dying man grasping at straws to keep up the morale of his troops.  They fought well, when the bugs dropped in on us.  Left us wandering again.  But now we’re wandering east.  It’s a long walk to Moldova but that’s good.  A man needs direction, some sort of purpose, to keep going.  To get up in the morning and not quit.  To fight.

And who knows?  Maybe there is a secret base somewhere.  Or a man that has power against the scourge destroying the world.

Snapping the Pieces Together

Snapping the Pieces Together by Jon Stark
November, 2014, about 1100 words

Blustery is probably the best word, because the wind was fierce and when you’re on the corner of 31^st and Avenue of the Americas it’s hard to find someone to help you.  There was one nice man but he apologized, said he was from Brooklyn, and had no idea where Garrett’s was.

If you have never been to New York City than you can’t imagine how big it is.  Not really.  You can’t sympathize with the man from Brooklyn who didn’t have a clue about the iconic popcorn shop that I hadn’t even heard of before this trip.  And I lived there for years.  Brooklyn, not Manhattan.

Which makes another interesting point.  If you’ve never lived in New York City you don’t know how small it is.  You know how Legos all sort of snap together and make up interesting things but all the interesting things – death stars and Hogwarts and race cars – are made up of the same blocks?  That’s New York.  A thousand small towns where everybody knows everybody all snapped together and connected by a half dozen bridges and tunnels into a 7 million person metropolis.

I don’t live there anymore.  And my girlfriend said that when I came back I’d better have a bag of caramel corn from Garrett’s.  Apparently, to her, Garrett’s is New York.  I have another friend who told me to make sure I had a knish.  “It isn’t a trip to New York without having a good knish.”  For me it is.  I don’t like them.  Maybe a slice from Cosimo’s or D’Angelo’s but I didn’t bother with that this trip, New York isn’t about the food.  Not once you’re from there.

Not that I was ever from Manhattan, but I spent a lot of time in the lower part, down by Battery Park and Pearl Street and the towers.  That’s New York to me.  They’re gone now.  What they’ve put back is a sign of the city’s decline.  They dress it up with fancy language, but the truth is obvious.  If New York was still the center of the universe and a place of opportunity and growth, they’d have built something big.  Real Estate that valuable wouldn’t have been used for a memorial.

Don’t get me wrong, I think a memorial is good.  When I was dating Toni -- when I lived in Brooklyn --she and Mike’s wife had to go across the bridge for a procedure so Mikel and I went too.  And her son Brandon.  He was probably about three.  I didn’t know anything about being a father, wasn’t interested in being a father, but Mike was so it was a good day.  Sometimes I wonder if Brandon remembers that trip or if we were just part of the blur of faces that came in and out of his mother’s life.

The twin towers of the World Trade Center were huge.  You know what I mean if you’ve ever stood at the foot of them and looked up.  I remember one time driving across the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the towers disappear into a cloudbank only to emerge into bright sunlight a few hundred feet later.  They were like mountains, sheer unassailable cliff faces rising from the bedrock with more concrete and glass than my hometown.  We wandered in their shadow and stumbled across a firehouse.

There was no Dalmatian but the young men working there were friendly and went out of their way to show Brandon everything there was to know about their truck and the garage.  They even took us all upstairs to see the barracks and kitchen.

I think of those men every time I see smoke in the towers.  I hope they transferred before September.  It doesn’t change the tragedy of what happened but maybe the people who died weren’t as nice.  Bad things should happen to bad people.

There was a girl I knew who worked there.   In the towers, not the fire house.  Her name was Tricia and she liked Pinot Noir and I couldn’t afford to take her out again.  We’d meet socially on occasion and I liked to think she always wanted me to ask again.  I almost did a couple of times, but she was out of my league.  Or I was just scared.

When I stood at the construction site of what used to be the towers I overheard an old woman complaining to her daughter and grandchildren that she’d never been to the top of the towers.  She’d had the chance but didn’t want to spend the $17.  It was a regret, she said.  Don’t be cheap when life offers you a chance for something wonderful.

It made me think of Tricia.  I don’t usually think of her when I see the towers.  But it did then.  Her office was above the line.  Impossibly high.  I thought about her fear.  Her terrible choice.  I think she would have jumped.  I looked at the street, the broken sidewalk where I stood and wondered if maybe that was where she landed.

Or someone else.  I was suddenly overwhelmed and my knees buckled and the city around me became a blur and I had to get out and I couldn’t understand how the woman could complain about her life being incomplete when she was still alive and how could anyone blow their horn in impatience there, in the cramped quarters of the final resting place of thousands of souls who had loved the city and hated the city and gone to work excited or hung over and had plans for weddings or birthdays or were expecting children or grandchildren and it made me terribly sad.

And that was New York to me, not knish and certainly not Garrett’s Gourmet Popcorn but here I was, wind tearing at my ears and killing time before my train following directions on my iPhone that told me I was right there but I couldn’t see it.  The man from Brooklyn couldn’t see it.

And then I did see it.  I’d over looked the door a hundred times.  You know how it is, if you’ve ever looked for a special place in New York.  No awning.  No real store front.  Just a door and a window and a small sign that said, “Garrett’s.”

The door was open.  A woman held it for a family that must have been from North Dakota because they were in shirt sleeves and the rest of the world was freezing and I saw her face and it was Tricia and she was alive.

Strings Attached

I hope you enjoy today’s no-frills story.

Strings Attached
by Jon Stark
November, 2014

“Just us?”  Stephanie smiled.  His voice had that power.  It did other things too.  If she was fourteen she’d be up until midnight listening to his radio show.  That she hadn’t been fourteen in twenty years and he wasn’t a DJ didn’t diminish the fantasy in the least.

He always dressed well, one of the many traits she admired.  She took fact that he was wearing the tie she’d bought him for his birthday as a good omen.  She said, “You look good in that tie.”

He looked down at it.  “Thank you.  I think my kids got it for me a couple of Father’s days ago.”  She frowned, almost corrected him, was distracted by his eyes.  Oh, those eyes.  He said something about the restaurant being a nice place.

It was a nice place.  She didn’t remember it being so expensive.  She’d wanted nice, but the prices.  How did they stay in business?  There was hardly anyone even there.  When the waiter came she ordered soup.  Not even with a sandwich or salad.

He ordered the Beef au Jus without hesitation.  It made her shiver.  He was a hunter, a strong meat eating man, confident with what he wanted and rich enough to get it.  He hadn’t even looked at the menu.  This was his kind of world.

They made small talk.  Mostly he talked.  And smiled.  He could be reciting the Oxford Dictionary for all she cared.  As long as it was the unabridged version so that it would take longer.  Watching the big words roll off his tongue, between lips that had been sculpted by some divine agent.

He paused when the food arrived.  She made her move.  Asked how he was getting on with his family out of town.  Through a mouthful, slow trickle of au Jus on his chin, he said, “I’m not going hungry.”

Her turn.  A nod.  Then, “You sure?  I’ve got the afternoon off.”  She hadn’t practiced the words, exactly, but she’d been working on the tone.  And the look.  Combined with the outfit she’d bought on Tuesday he got the message.  Knife and fork stopped moving.  She could barely hear him over the rush of blood through her ears.

“Steph, I hope I didn’t give you the wrong idea.”  That wasn’t his line.  He was saying it wrong.  She missed most of the rest of what he said.  The crackers were stale.  $30 for a bowl of soup and the crackers were stale.  It made her so angry.  “… what you’re offering.  I’m flattered, truly, but it isn’t what I want.”

“What about what I want?” she said.  It sounded harsh, even childish.  She hadn’t practiced this at all.  How could he be saying that?

He shook his head.  “What about what Leslie wants?”  Our kids?”  So he’d thought about it.  She tried to get back to before, to when she had him.  “I’m not like that.  Never have been.  Never even thought about it.”

That couldn’t be true.  She didn’t want it to be true.  Those eyes.  They said it was true.  And the crackers.  Could it get any worse?  She needed something.  Tears were dangerously close.  He had to give her something.  “What if you didn’t have Leslie?  What if there were no kids?  What then?”

He did her the courtesy of thinking about it.  She thought he might even be appraising her, appreciating the effort she’d put into her hair.

“If I hadn’t found Leslie?  Was unattached?”  She nodded, encouraging him.  “I think I would probably be very interested.  You’re a remarkable woman.”  The words washed over her, cleansed her, warmed her.  She forgot about the crackers.  Move the conversation on.  Worked on getting back to normal.  He played along.  Nothing had happened.

She thought about what he said, nodding as he spoke now but not really paying attention.  If there was no Leslie he’d be interested.  She didn’t remember slipping the knife into her purse when the check came, but fishing for her keys back at the car, wondering where to go now that she had a free afternoon, it was there.

Somebody, somewhere.

I sat down to work on my NaNo project and remembered it was Monday.  Story time.

Untitled
by Jon Stark, November 2014

Henry drove east.  The fading sunlight blinded the folks coming at him, swerving a bit here and there, creeping over the yellow, not in a dangerous way but he was glad to have it at his back.  Gave him a Red Baron sort of confidence.  And a red tint to the world, maybe more orange.  Either way, it was on the way out and reminded him of the body in the car.

He was okay driving with a body.  He’d been on the detail back in ’90, driving a half-track through the desert loaded down with bodies.  Didn’t know them.  Didn’t want to know them.  Some of the guys freaked out.  Davis walked all the way from Nasiriyah to Kuwait just so he wouldn’t be with the corpses in the truck.  Henry was just thankful to be driving away from the killing and out in the desert there no SCUD drills.

Stateside was different.  He and Donna were married during his tour at Ft. Benning and then with the baby he decided not to re-up.  Didn’t have a lot of call for an infantryman in the civilian world.  School didn’t suit him although he did end up taking a custodial shift at the high school.  He also worked part time for his brother who, for some gruesome and inexplicable reason, had purchased a mortuary business.

Henry did a lot of driving for his brother.  Picked up bodies, delivered bodies.  He made a few runs to Florida.  Even went way out to St. Louis one time.  That was the trip he started talking to them.  It was a long way.  And a soldier.  He felt like they had something, some sort of a connection.  He wanted to encourage the boy, thank him, tell him it was going to be okay down here.

It was a good chat.  He had a few others, over the years, on those long stretches of interstate between bubbles of ticky tacky.  He liked talking to them.  They listened, gave him time to think through what he was trying to say.

Henry didn’t talk now though.  Nothing left to say, really.  Not to this one.  She sort of looked asleep, headlights sweeping across her face.  He drove on long after they should have been home.  The ride was nice.  Traffic wasn’t too bad.  The company was good.  And he’d driven for his brother.  He knew what would happen when he finally did stop.

And he wasn’t ready for that yet.

What Guy?

It’s November, that magical time of year when thousands take to the proverbial quill and parchment to craft the next great American novel.  But not me, I’m going for the next commercially successful American novel.  If you have any interest at all in writing the long form, please give serious consideration to participating in NANOWRIMO.  There is something magical about the shared experience and there’s a ton of encouragement floating around.  You might not write something great, but you have the best chance ever of finishing and that really does mean something.  I’m off to a reasonable start and it’s funny how different year 2 is.

I plan to keep the blog going during the month.  I remember last year getting a bit short on time and skipping out on a couple of entries.  This year I’m more professional.  And I fully expect to get blocked along the way so I’ll have plenty of opportunity to write posts instead of prose.

Anyhoo, on with today’s original fiction inspired by a conversation I had with #4 over the weekend.  For background, he and his brother like watching – and mocking – the “survival” shows on Netflix.

What Guy?
by Jon Stark
November, 2014

I was waiting for the train, as I often do, and heard a cell phone ringing.  I hate that.  People should have the decency to mute their phones when sharing public spaces.  But we can’t have everything and this wasn’t so bad, it was Frank Sinatra singing, “Same Old Saturday Night.”  One of my favorites.  In fact, I like it so much that I… oh.  Made it my ring tone.

I answered the phone.  It was Martin and he had an emergency.  It was a typical emergency and involved both being late and a girl.  Not what you just thought.  He was late for work and had gotten drawn into a long conversation with his favorite barista.

I asked, “Why was she so talkative?”

“Don’t know,” he said, “But from here on out I’m going to get just plain coffee.”  We shared a laugh.  “Traffic is awful today, I’m never going to make it.”

“Sure you will.  You always do.”  I wasn’t sure, but it was my line.  We had this conversation three days out of five.  “And you’ll get the same coffee you always do tomorrow.”

He laughed.  “Maybe. “  There was a moment’s silence.  I’m never sure if he is changing lanes or thinking of something clever.

“You guys want to come over this weekend?” he asked.   (He must have been changing lanes.)

“Probably.  I don’t think we’ve got anything going on.”  I heard the train whistle.  “I gotta run.”

“Sure – whoa, this guy is crazy.  What is he –“  There was some sort of noise but I had to jerk the phone away from my ear.

“Marty?”  No response.  I looked at the phone.  Call ended.  I tried to get him back.  Got voicemail.  Odd, I thought, but the train had come and I sit in the quiet car.  No calls.  But I was curious.  What guy?  What was he doing?  I sent a text.

Martin never answered.

Smoldering

Smoldering
By Jon Stark
October, 2014

Levi did what anyone else would do.  He pretended not to see.  But some problems don’t go away by themselves.  That’s what Hannah would say.  He still wasn’t ready to admit she might be right.

Things were out of hand now, though.  He couldn’t ignore that.  Fall was well on its way to winter.  Time to gather up the mess.  Time to get on with it.

Levi didn’t know how to do that, though.  The trash can was out, he’d never fit it all in.  A gust of wind stirred the mass of leaves in his yard.  Spun them up into a spectral shape that danced a hundred yards before dissolving, drifting back to the ground.  He shivered.

There were branches down in the yard too.  An idea formed.  Then the shape of a fire as he gathered sticks, broke them to size, and constructed a teepee within a log cabin.  That should do it.

No, it wouldn’t.  Levi gathered more wood and stacked it beside the carefully laid fire.  He crumpled newspaper and hid it inside the sticks.

More leaves fell.  Clouds roiled in the sky as night crept upon him.  He glared at the faces of his neighbors, peering from the windows of their warm houses, judging him with their immaculate lawns and orderly bags of debris stacked at the ends of driveways that got fresh sealant every summer.

He didn’t like being judged.  He’d told Hannah that a hundred times.  She had a problem though, involving judging, talking, and not listening.  The quiet was nice.

Dark had come when he was finally ready.  Those who knew him would say it was because he was lazy and started too late in the day, not because he’d planned it that way.  Others would suspect that he labored over the fire, adjusting everything just so, because be he sick in the head.

Once he had a good blaze going he headed to the house and dragged out some of the trash bags.  The rooms were packed with garbage, a warren that both comforted and horrified him.  The neighbors had complained unsuccessfully -- the homeowner’s association only had rules for the outside and to see his mess you had to be a nosey Nancy and look through his windows.

All the same, he’d blocked the windows.  Hannah didn’t like that, but she was too busy running her yap to do anything about it.

A pair of eyes watched Levi from his neighbor’s upstairs bedroom.  He stared back until they went away.  The fire flickered and the rising shadows turned his face to a grotesque parody of a man.

Levi heaved one of the bags onto the blaze.  It sputtered for a moment, hissed, then burned with a sudden furry.  He wasn’t prepared for the smell.  He’d thought it would be horrible but it was more like grilling steak.

Flashing lights caught his attention.  He rushed around front.  A sheriff’s deputy walked from the curb toward the house.  “What can I do for you, Officer?” asked Levi.

The deputy stopped, shined his 6 cell flash light at Levi, then walked over to him.  “Had a call about a fire.”

“Just burning some stuff I cleaned up,” said Levi.

“You’re supposed to call before you burn,” said the deputy.

Levi cursed under his breath.  How had he forgotten that?  “Sorry.  I was rushing to get it done, didn’t think of it.”

The officer nodded.  “That’s alright.  Just don’t let it happen again.”

“It definitely won’t happen again,” said Levi.

The man walked back toward his car then turned.  “What are you cooking?  Smells great.”

Levi stared at him.

“You okay?” asked the deputy.

“Dinner.  I’m hungry.”

The deputy frowned, shrugged, and went back to his car.  “Be careful with that fire.”

Levi didn’t wave.  He ran into his house and through the piles of collected junk to the freezer.  He grabbed a package of meat and put it on his grill out back near the fire.

The grill wouldn’t start.  He cursed.  He hit it.  Again.  He threw it around his deck.  It didn’t start.

The fire settled into coals.  He threw on another trash bag.  It caught quickly with a sickening hiss.  This time flames didn’t leap up, they crawled low and blue.  He watched them dance.  The way he watched Hannah dance.  He felt the same stirring.

It took some puttering but he wasn’t upset about the cop anymore and he got the grill going.  He wasn’t sure anyone ever grilled a roast but nobody would be that close.

He threw more wood on the fire.  He couldn’t afford to let it go out.  Then he dragged out a half dozen more trash bags, one at a time, carefully so that they wouldn’t rip.

One of his neighbors waved from her back deck, a can of something in one hand, a cigarette in the other.  He ignored her.

“You and Hannah having a late night barbeque?” she asked.

Levi snapped his head around.  The woman had come to the edge of her lawn and was watching him.  He glared at her, the fire casting a deep red tint on them both.

She caught her breath and stumbled back inside.

Levi spent hours at the fire, adding wood and trash bags until he was out of both.  He poked at it with a long stick, shifting the ash and bones.

He dozed on a rusting folding chair.  The moon came up and played hide and seek with the clouds.  Still the fire burned.  He startled awake, a curse on his lips.  He looked around.  Nothing.  And the fire.

The flames rose up, formed and reformed.  Arms stretched out and retreated.  A face laughed at him.  The wood was gone but still it burned.  He poked at it again.  He was tired.  How long would it take?

Dawn crept into the sky and the fire burned.  He sprayed it down but the fire kept burning.  He could clearly see the bones now, fire fliting in and out of the empty eye sockets of the cracked skull.

He ran to the garage and fumbled for a rake.  He worked feverishly and dumped piles of leaves on the fire, smothering it.  Smoke poured out, vile, acrid, thick.

Levi went inside.  He ate.  Outside, the fire burned through the leaves.  He went back to work, feeding the fire with leaves and fallen branches.

Every time it burned down he would sift and stir and each time he found the bones still burning, no hint that they were being consumed.  All day and into the night he labored.  He burned all of the leaves.  Still the bones looked untouched by the fire that clung to them.

His phone rang.  He ignored it.  A few minutes later his neighbor was back, with a fresh can and cigarette.  “Where’s Hannah?  I just tried to call and she didn’t answer.  Haven’t seen her in a few weeks.”

“Gone,” said Levi.  “Maybe to her mother’s?”

“Why would she go there?”  A drag on the cigarette.

“Didn’t say.”

“Or you weren’t listening?”  It was playful.  So was the subtle unzipping of the sweatshirt she wore.  “She say when she was coming back?”

Levi shook his head.  He threw some books onto the fire from where he’d moved the stack in the dining room to a pile beside the fire.  “I told her to shut up.  She said I couldn’t make her.  I stopped paying attention after that.”

His neighbor nodded sagely.  Finished her can.  “You let me know if there’s... anything I can do.”

“You can go home and leave me alone,” said Levi.  He threw the rest of the books on the fire.  She zipped up the sweatshirt and huffed away.

The fire burned all night.  He tried soaking it with the hose but the water just hissed and mocked him.  The fire danced and leered at him.

He emptied the house, burning decades of collected treasures but each time the trash was consumed, it left only the bones.  The sheriff’s deputy came back.  He chased the man away.  Promised he was almost done.

But he wasn’t.  When the trash in the house was burned he started on the garage.  Then the furniture in the house.  Then he tore up the floors and broke up the walls.  The fire consumed all of it.

The fire department chief came by and suggested that maybe it was time to put out the fire.  Levi told him he was on it.  His eyes blazed and smoke clung to him and the fireman retreated, shaken.

Levi tried burying the fire.  The bones moved together then, hiding from the dirt.  Scurrying out of the pit and onto his lawn.  He hacked at them with his shovel.  They danced out of reach.

Exhausted, he stopped for breath.  They came together.  Feet, legs, pelvis, ribs, shoulders, arms, hands.  He watched in horror as the bone fingers lifted the skull and set it in place.

A voice, harsh with smoke, hissed at him from the broken jaw.  He fell to his knees, covered his ears.  But he still heard her.

“You can’t make me,” said Hannah.

A new story and and a new contest

I hope you don't consider this cheating.  I wrote a piece for Wendy Strain's new contest last week and now that it doesn't have to be anonymous anymore, I'm using it for the entry today.

Please consider entering the contest.  It's 500 words or less, to prompt, to be posted on Friday with voting over the weekend.

Here's the story -- mine is the one about the fork.  http://www.writeonwendy.com/perspectives-wow555-writing-challenge-story-time/

The Swimming Hole

Happy October Exploitation Day.  Let’s celebrate with a story.

The Swimming Hole
by Your’s Truly
October 2014

Mr. Webster flipped through his manuscript again as the frown that seemed to be permanently etched into his face grew even more pronounced.  “Blasted tarniverous obfuscation,” he muttered.

The woman seated in the chair beside his work table looked up from her needlepoint and peered down her hawkish nose, across the rims of her spectacles, and on to the trouble form of the man who’d won her heart a half century earlier.  “What is it, Dear?”

“I’m missing something,” he said.

She considered his words, then the bulky collection of papers covered in his perfect script.  “I don’t see how you could have.  That book must be a thousand pages.”

“It’s more than that, but there are so many words.”  He thumbed through it again.  “So awfully very many.”

“Then it’s to be expected that you’ve missed a couple and no one will mind.”  She was a sensible woman which was why he’d chosen her over the flighty Mabel.

He considered Mabel for a moment.  Wondered how long she’d be content to sit in a chair with skein and needle.  Once more he counted himself fortunate to be with Merriam.

He looked down.  His breath stopped.  There it was.  “Ahh HA!” he cried out.  “I knew something was missing.  Right here between swill and swindle.”

Merriam, God bless her soul throughout the eternity to which she was predestined upon her baptism at Courtland Abbey, rose from her chair and ambulated to her husband’s side.  “What’s missing?”

He scratched his chin.  Then he scratched his lower back where something had bitten him in the night.  “I don’t know.”

“It seems to me that one word doesn’t make that much of a difference,” she said.

He looked over at two covers for his opus, identical but for the word “Abridged” attached as a subtitle to one of them.  “Sometimes one word makes all of the difference.”

The Jolly Old Party Snack

I think I know what it is to be a professional writer.  I have a large project I’m working on – the script, a short story that I just have to write inspired by the most remarkable wedding I attended over the weekend, and a blog post which, being Monday, must be a work of original fiction.

I don’t want to write the work of original fiction for the bog.  I want to write the short story, even as the script tugs at me as says, “Get me done.  You’re going to love the end.”  The discipline that lets me finish any of my writing insists that the blog must come first.

I know, I’ll just copy an entry from Washington Orville Hampton’s diary.

May 12, 1983 – Budapest.

This is truly a remarkable age we are living in.  I’m staying at the Prague and Pony, unspeakable thousands of miles from home, yet this afternoon upon waking – it was a very late night of  draw – so hungry I couldn’t stand it but between shifts in the hotel kitchen, I found a sort of delicatessen across the street and was able to get not just a pastrami on strange brown bread but also a cup of Pringles.

I remarked to the man behind me how much I loved the processed potato snack and he smiled before buying my lunch.  I thanked him and he suggested we take one of the sidewalk tables and enjoy the early afternoon together.  It was the least I could do for a fellow traveler and he spoke the Queen’s English with such charm that I could think of no more entertaining way to pass the time.

He also had a cup of the Pringles and devoured them with the sort of passion generally reserved for confections coated in chocolate.  The conversation worked its way around, as conversations do and in a moment’s pause I took up the cup and commented on the snack food being labeled a Crisp rather than a Chip.

For his part he shook his head and wondered, obviously not for the first time, why we insisted on calling crisps chips on the other side of the pond.  In good natured fun I assured him that it was because they were chips, not crisps.  We’d invented them first.

“But not the Pringles,” he said.  I thought on that.  On the bottom of the package it said they’d been made in Jacksonville, Florida.  “Is there a Jacksonville in Spain’s Florida?” I inquired.  “No,” he assured me.  “They are made in your Jacksonville.  It was the only place I could find the right ingredients.”

Now, I must admit that my curiosity was aroused. He’d only introduced himself as Christopher.  I looked at him again, could it be?  He beamed back at me and, with a flourish, said, “Lord Christopher Pringle the Second, at your service.”

That made more sense.  He was the heir, not old Chris Pringle himself.

You Can Win for Losing

Lydia couldn’t believe it.  Toni lost.  It was a close race all the way and several times she thought her friend was about to pass the lead car – even had a good line to pass – but then somehow she fell back.  She watched as everyone got out.  The winner was tall and his eyes were the special sort of blue that made Lydia dizzy.  Toni laughed with him.

Toni came over.  “Let’s play mini-golf.”  Lydia wasn’t sure.  “It’ll be fun.”  Toni’s gaze followed the tall boy where he and a friend were renting clubs.  Lydia followed Toni.  So did several other girls that he was ignoring.

Toni was very good at mini-golf.  So good that it wasn’t fun to play with her – the reason that Lydia had been hesitant – but for some reason she was off that night.  The tall boy, turned out his name was Justin, offered to help her the third time she hit him with a wild ball.

The four of them finished out the round together.  Under his watchful eye Toni did much better, but he still won.  And his eyes still made Lydia dizzy.

They played 8 Ball next.  Toni told him to watch out.  “Pool is my game.”  Justin caught up from way behind and then Toni scratched shooting the last ball.  Lydia couldn’t believe it.  “You never scratch.”  Toni shrugged.

Justin got bored halfway through the third game of air hockey, it was a close game – they all had been – but he was tired of the crowd.  “Let’s get out of here.”  Toni took his arm.  Lydia looked at the score.  “What’s up with you tonight?  You never lose.”

Toni winked at her.  “Winning is different than never losing.”

A Tisket

It’s Monday already.  I’m tempted to tell you about my weekend and call it an essay but that would be cheating, the tag, and promise, is for original fiction and while I may occasionally exaggerate in my reports, they are, at heart, true.

My stories are not.

A Tisket
by Jon Stark
September 2014

Donovan figured this was pretty much it.  If he didn’t say something now, he never would.  They weren’t at his father’s house, he hadn’t been there since he’d left, so the timing now was important.  He could have gone over to the house but that would have meant a special trip.  He could have called, but some things need to be said eye to eye.

Donovan had a list of those things.

He stood in the back of the room and watched – there was always a throng around his father.  Always had been.  The man had a knack for claiming center stage.  Everything was always about him.  Donovan thought about the first item on his list.  Fishing.

Then he wondered if maybe it would be better to start with Mel which got him thinking about Donnie, jr.  What kind of man pretends he doesn’t have a grandson?  That was it.  Actually, no.  He’d close with Donnie.

Mel put her hand on his shoulder.  “You don’t have to do this, Baby.”  He nodded.  She nodded.  They looked over to where the crowd had thinned, a break in the press of courtiers just wanting to be near him.  He sighed.  She squeezed his hand.  “I’ll be right here.”  He nodded again.

There was probably something to the set of his jaw because when Donovan reached his father everyone else scurried off.  It was the two of them.  Alone together for the first time in decades.  Donovan steeled himself.

He cleared his throat then met his father’s unfeeling gaze.  Donovan faltered.  His father waited.  He started and it came out as a squeak.  He braced for his father’s laughter, ridicule, a tirade about his failure to live up to the family name.  But his father remained still, patient, encouraging him.

“You never took me fishing,” began Donovan.  He didn’t make it to Donnie.  Mel came to him after a while, led him to a chair.

“Do you want to go home?”  She held him as he convulsed against her.  “We can go home.”

He pushed away.  “No,” he said, looking at the casket.  “I need to finish this.”

The New Plan

I’m supposed to be writing a Christmas play.  Actually, it’s supposed to be done already.  I didn’t think it was going to be a big project, a dozen pages or so and I already had it pretty much figured out from when I was writing one last year.

Turns out that I was way off.  My idea didn’t work when I started writing.  Maybe it’s because Falling Star was too fresh and they are too different.  Maybe it was a bad idea.  I tried a different idea.  Still no dice.  Then a third.  And still nothing that worked.  Scarry.  Is it that my standards for a first draft are off?  Am I too critical of the idea and it was actually good?  Am I actually facing writer’s block?  I have to confess I never thought it was real.

I was thinking I might just let it slide.  You know, “pretend” that I was too busy.  Which is a crock, of course, because writing is about the only thing that I consistently have time for thanks to the reality of a fairly long commute and the inability to retire yet.  Besides, that’s unprofessional and against my nature.  Last night I had a conversation with a young woman who rendered an outstanding flute performance of my favorite hymn and she asked about the play.  I confessed that I was blocked.  She made a joke that jolted my thinking and released a torrent of inspiration.  I am hopeful that this will work and I can have a workable draft by the end of the week.

Either way, it inspired today’s fiction that was originally going to be about flatware, another idea that likely wouldn’t have gotten very far.

The New Plan
by Jon Stark
August, 2014; 475 words

It was the perfect day to be somewhere else.  Gus was tired of chucking rocks.  The summer had drawn on just a tad too long.  School wasn’t exactly what any of them wanted next, but change – any change – would be better than the status quo.

“You know we never came up with a name,” said Roy.  He was the only one of the three that was standing, the sun slightly in his eyes so that he squinted in a manner suggesting a person with below average intellect.

“That’s because all of your ideas are lame.”  That was Stan.  The heat and boredom had sharpened his sarcasm to the point that Xacto blades seemed dull by comparison.

Roy wasn’t dissuaded from the topic.  “How about Renegades, Rebels, and Rogues.”  Gus didn’t bother to look up.

Stan replied, “Or Lameboy and his two ex-friends.”  That got a chuckle from Gus.

“The summer’s almost over, we’re out of time.  Next year we’ll be graduated and out in the world and it will be too late.”  Roy’s voice sort of squeaked at the end.

“We could go to the movies.”  Stan.  Always wanting to go to the movies.  Even though they’d already seen everything.

“We’ve already seen everything,” said Gus.  “Besides, I don’t feel like walking downtown.”

“I’ve got a transit card,” said Roy.  “But I don’t feel like the movies.”

“What do you want to do, then?” asked Stan.

“I don’t know.  What do you feel like doing?” said Roy.

“Don’t be coy.”  Stan stood up and kicked at the gravel on the side of the street.  “I guess we could just ride around.”

Gus shook his head.  He’d had a bad experience two summers ago riding into town.   They’d picked up a homeless woman, wrapped in some sort of quilt despite the heat, and she smelled like Stan’s feet.  Worse, actually.  It was awful.  His mother had said that’s what the corpses smelled like in Iraq.  Gus had spewed violently and nobody could even smell that.

In the distance they could see an approaching bus.  “Now or never,” said Roy.  Stan shook his head.  So dramatic.  But he walked toward the stop.

“I wonder where it goes,” said Stan.

“Lafayette,” muttered Gus.  “Says so, right on it.”

“I’ve never been all the way down to Lafayette,” said Roy.

“Me neither,” said Stan.  “Let’s do it.”

Gus shook his head.  The bus pulled up.  He didn’t move.  Stan and Roy stood at the stop.  The doors opened.  Roy got on, handed over the pass.  Stan got on, waited.  Gus didn’t move.  “Come on, Gus,” said Stan.

Gus shook his head.  “Not happening.”

The bus driver cleared his throat.  Stan said, “We’re going to the end of the line.”

Gus held his ground.  “You need a new plan, Stan.  I’m not hopping on the bus.”

Have You Ever?

Have You Ever?
by Jon Stark
August, 2014; 650 words

The mouse made his way carefully across the open floor.  There were no land marks, no touch stones, nothing to guide him except for his extraordinary luck and a tendency to walk in a straight line.  He spent most of the distance worried that the sliver in his back left paw would pull him off course.

Turned out to be a needless distraction.  He reached the kitchen table only a few feet from where his two friends were gathered and right at the point where a hunk of marmalade covered toast had fallen.  It was that luck.

He made his way over to the others, busy chomping at their own haul of breakfast leftovers, and gave a warm hullo.  They greeted him in return, but considering how hungry they were and how small the scraps they were finding were compared to the giant, belly filling hunk he had obtained, they skipped most of the small talk.

He didn’t mind.  The sun was warm on his fur and he turned toward the window to let it fall fully across his face.  The floor shook slightly, then more dramatically.  He backed up until his tail found the table leg and then he scurried up it, hiding in the cool shade at the top.  He could hear one of friends doing the same thing.

The tremors drew stronger and soon everything in the kitchen shook.  It was the Good Wife and she was early.  The shaking stopped.  The mouse listened.  He could hear one of his compatriots scurrying about under the table.  What was he doing?  She was going to see—

A scream erupted quite close to him and he fell from his hiding place under the table.  He dashed away and barreled headlong into his friend.  They sprinted off, side by side.  The woman screamed again, but now in rage rather than fear.  Something heavy hid the floor behind the mice.  They picked up speed.

His foot hurt and slowed him down, he kept brushing shoulders with his friend.  He knew he was slowing.  Behind them, the woman crashed into the edge of the table and began to swear a blue fury.  The jolt sent the last mouse tumbling and he landed on the woman’s foot.  She howled and kicked and went flying through the air, lending quite ungracefully on his two friends.

The woman came at them again and the three amigos dashed ahead again.  The mouse thought they should be at the wall by now.  They had been running for a very long time.  His foot hurt.  His side hurt.  His shoulder hurt from banging against his friend all the time.  Of course.  His bum foot was pulling them in a circles.  They were running around the kitchen in a giant circle, chasing the woman as much as she was chasing them.

She whirled on them suddenly and they belted into her, flopping and rolling, disoriented.  She brought her carving knife down with a jackal’s ferocity, hacking and smashing, slicing and dicing, but missing the mice who, for their part, were in a total panic and kept running into each other.

At last they found themselves in a line facing the same direction.  They took off toward the wall, the mouse with the lame foot now being guided by his friends.  The woman dove for them, the giant blade crashing down, severing their tales and embedding itself in the old floor.

The mice shrieked and ran even faster, striking the wall at full speed and then slipping along the baseboard until they found the entrance to their home, safe in the cool darkness of the wall.

Of course they didn’t notice the darkness part, being blind mice.  Outside in the kitchen, the Farmer walked in and found his wife vainly trying to pull the carving knife out of the floor.  Three little tales lay on the floor in a line.

“My goodness,” he said.  “I have never seen such a sight in my life.”

Hot Chocolate

So today sort of snuck up on me in my sleep.  I didn’t realize it was here until the alarm went off.  Bummer.  I think that, perhaps, the very best part of a vacation is that alarm clocks play an extraordinarily small part.

Hot Chocolate

Cole sat at the table, expectant and vacant.  This is what he did.  Behind him, Alex, a.k.a Mom, hummed softly while dumping a packet of Swiss Miss – the kind without marshmallows – into an old Steelers mug.  She took a spoon from the drawer and placed it inside the mug.

Cole didn’t see any of that.  He never turned around when she me his hot chocolate.  It wasn’t what he did.  Instead, he imitated a statue at table, waiting with the patience of eternity, while the world went on around him.

Alex resisted the urge to rub his head.  That wasn’t the sort of thing you did before the hot chocolate was done.  Sometimes after, he’d let you know when it was okay, but never ever ever before.  The kettle whistled and she took it off the burner.  Cole, naturally, paid it no attention.

It might have been imagined, but for a split second it looked like recognition in his eyes when the sound of the spoon against the side of the mug reached him.  When she set the steaming drink on the table he said, “Thank you.”

Alex always answered the same.  “You’re welcome, Pooh Bear.”

Wow, Jon.  What a dull story.  Hmm.  Maybe dull, maybe not.  There might be an expectation of something more.  To the point, if this was near the beginning of a longer story, you’d expect more.  And it wouldn’t be purposeless, there’s a bit about the characters here.

In fact, this is not my story.  It’s a scene from a movie that I have retold “in my own words.”  In the film it is a touching scene but nothing special.  It’s critical, however, because the single most powerful moment in the film, Mercury Rising is when the little boy (who was called Simon in the film) wants his afternoon hot chocolate and the enormity of his parents’ death crushes him.  That scene wouldn’t have meant much at all without the tender moment with his mother earlier.

Oh, and sorry for the delay, my computer went dead on the train this morning.

That Stings

Another summer week slipped by.  The weather reports have been a bit gloom and doom compared to what’s actually occurred so we had a pleasant excursion on the boat Saturday.  It’s possible that we even toasted marshmallows on the beach so close to the water that when the wake came in it splashed out the lower section of our heat source.

That Stings
By Jon Stark; July, 2014.

Tommy poked at the back of the pew in front of him.  He traced the scrollwork down to the book rack and then along the top of the hymnal.  Somewhere, far, far away, words were being flung toward him, important words, but that washed over him.

Lift up a signal flag toward Zion.  Run for cover!  Don’t stand still!  For I am brining disaster from the north – a great destruction.

Tommy’s mother nodded her head.  Tommy’s father stared straight ahead.  Tommy slipped from the pew to the floor.  The gum was still were it was last week.  And the month before.  Mrs. Tornafioraro’s feet smelled.  But it was quieter.

A lion has gone up from his thicket; a destroyer of nations has set out.  He has left his lair to make your land a waste.  Your cities will be reduced to uninhabited ruins.

There was a hole in the carpet that hadn’t been there before.  Tommy poked at it.  It went down into the wood.  It was deep.  His finger got stuck partway down and he felt a sliver pricking into him.  He looked up and saw that his parents were still not paying any mind.  Very slowly he reached for a pencil from the book rack.  With the patience of a safe cracker he pulled it out and down to the hole.  He looked carefully at it, then inserted the pencil.

“On that day” – this is the Lord’s declaration – “the king and the officials will lose their courage.  The priests will tremble in fear, and the prophets will be scared speechless.”

Tommy pushed the pencil down.  He felt a little resistance and pushed harder.  There was something down there.  He felt a slight vibration in the pencil was pretty sure that the droning he heard wasn’t the preacher.

He watched a vespula climb up the pencil.  It stared at him with its compound eyes.  He stared back.  It seemed to multiply as Tommy watched it.  Where there had been one he now saw twenty and they all stared and it was loud.

They have her surrounded like those who guard a field, because she has rebelled against Me.  This is the Lord’s declaration.  Your way of life and your actions have brought this on you.  This is your punishment.  It is very bitter, because it has reached your heart!

The vespula flew at Tommy and he screamed.  They stung and where there had been twenty there were now a hundred.  His parents turned to hush him and then screamed too.  A vast cloud of yellow and black swarmed from the hole in the floor and consumed the congregation.  At the front of the sanctuary, stuffy old men stared back in condescension that quickly turned to fear, then panic, then terror.

My anguish, my anguish!  I write in agony!  Oh, the pain in my heart!

The doors burst open and the faithful, now swollen and crying out, erupted into the sunshine.  Tommy lead the throng with his parents close behind.  “Thomas J. Sennett!” said his father.  “How many times do I have to tell you not disturb church?”

“Leave him alone.” said his mother.  “And keep your voice down before someone notices we’ve gone to our car.”

Freshly Chopped Basil, et. al.

It's the last day of vacation.  I was supposed to have written this post in the car over a week ago so I wouldn't have to worry about it.  I didn't.  Then I was going to write it first thing this morning, but there was horse, and a car that needed to get to the shop but still had the roof dongle attached and then there was the jungle that two of my boys were ready to mow if I could get the mower started for them.

But the mower didn't want to start.  It purrs like a kitten now.  And the jungle is mowed.  But there was the time lost... and the weed whacking that also required a bit of mechanical persuasion so that by the time I got to breakfast it was really almost lunch time.

After lunch I was supposed to go to the grocery store since pretty much everything in the kitchen was empty.  I went before lunch, since breakfast was so late.  While I was out the garage called and the car was fixed.  That was swell.  I made it home with groceries and the car in time for a 3 o'clock lunch.  I considered writing the post then but I had purchased the ingredients for my roasted potato salad and it's best if it's had a chance to steep so I made that.

Not random, clever.  Very clever.

If you haven't had it, you should make it because there is nothing that smells so wonderful.  Roast red potatoes and whole kernel corn.  Chop bell peppers and half a sweet onion, mix with sliced cherry tomatoes, freshly chopped Basil (the best) and chopped garlic -- don't use the press on this one -- while everything is roasting.  Combine balsamic vinegar with extra virgin olive oil and pour over the veggies.  About the time you finish that, the potatoes and corn will be done and you put that in the bowl over top of the rest and shake it around a bit.  Then you either eat it hot or put it in the fridge where it slowly gets even better over the course of the next 5 days.  On day six toss it.  But you won't get that far.

After that I was ready to write the post but the boys got back from Jake's house and they want to play so I guess I won't get the post done.  Maybe Wednesday.

Over Hill and Dale

Sometimes the inspiration for a story isn’t inspiration at all.  It’s the story.  There isn’t even any point in changing the names of the people involved.  In those cases, what separates a good tale from a news report is the telling.

I hope this is a good telling.

Over Hill and Dale

I found myself traveling over the hill alone this morning.  It was a combination of when I woke up and the nature of my mission that led to that state, it was only 8:15 and I was going to practice my offertory at the church.  Not especially exciting for anyone else and, since we were on vacation, a bit too early.

But not too early for beer, apparently.  As I drove down the hill into the quaint, 23 house dorf, I spied a man stumbling toward me.  I slowed, wondering what sort of ailment had befallen him and discovered that 1) he was much younger than I had expected, 2) had a walking cast on his left foot, and 3) was carrying not bags of groceries for his starving grandchildren but instead a case of beer for himself.

The broken foot and youth are what swayed me.  I asked if he needed a ride.  I felt it was fairly safe, I didn’t have a specific time to be anywhere and, really, how far could a kid with a broken foot need to go?

Turns out it was only about 178 yards.  Our conversation went like this.

M:  Do you need a ride?

D:  That would awesome.  I just live up there, it isn’t far, but thank you.  Thank you so much.  [He climbed into the car]  I’m really frustrated because the sheriff’s office doesn’t open until 8 and I’ve been trying to get a hold of them because last night I put my prescription meds on the windowsill and somebody stole them.  Who does that?  So I don’t have any meds and I’m trying to get a hold of the sheriff to get a report.  You’d think it would be okay to leave your stuff out but I guess not.  It’s the one with the blue mailbox.

M:  That one?

D:  Yes.  I’m Dale by the way.

M:  I’m John.

D:  Thanks for the ride.

M:  No problem.  I’m sorry about your meds.

D: I just want to feel better.  [He climbed out of the car]

Mondays aren’t nearly as bad when the weather is like this and the weekend was as awesome as mine was.  I realize that it’s sort of oxymoronic to think Monday isn’t so bad after a good weekend, after all, wouldn’t I like the weekend to continue?

Of course I would.  But I’d also like to have a 65’ Nordhaven and the money to operate it.  There are certain things that are beyond our control and we make the pie we have fruit for, not the one we’d like to have fruit for.

And I really like the boat I have now.  It suits my lifestyle and Friday (the Fourth) when the fam and I snuck down to the river for a few hours between birthday parties (one for #3’s friend, the other for America) someone riding in a dingy that had been launched from a 2 or 3 year old Cruisers 455 expressed a bit of envy for my Sunesta.  Forget that the river was so choppy that my children screamed in terror the moment we pulled out of the creek forcing an immediate return to calmer waters.  Or that the calmer waters were still so choppy and windblown that we dragged our anchor at 1.6 miles per hour.  I was very happy to be where I was.

The party for the 4^th was also a blast.  The community put on a very good fireworks show and being able to walk home from our neighbor’s house instead of fighting traffic was a huge bonus.  The traffic situation was not quite as good on Saturday when we went to the National’s game but it was mostly foot traffic so we got by.  38,463 people paid to get into the stadium.  It wasn’t full.  That’s more people than lived in my county while I was growing up.  It was a very good game (I’m not a Chicago fan) and my family loved it.  We were in the top deck, back row so the breeze kept us cool and we could see absolutely everything.

On the trip home there was some excitement on the metro.  Apparently someone failed to hold on to the hand of the young child that she was responsible for and during one of the stops he ended up on the platform while she stayed in the train.  Fortunately it was one of the shortest legs and since there was nothing in the news, the story must have had a happy ending.  I have been wondering which sort of reunion it was.  I’ve seen both the “hugs and joy” kind and the “angry with punishment” kind.  I’ve been hoping for hugs but the cynical Jon says that someone who would hug also would not have let go in the first place.

Then there was yesterday.  Also wonderful.  A much less choppy trip to the river.  With the dog that tried to drown me last summer.  He did much better this time.  And he didn’t pee in my boat.

We’re given a good life.  Don’t forget that.  Bad things happen but your experience doesn’t have to be defined or polluted by them.

It's Better This Way

Had a couple of funny things happen over the weekend.  The one that will probably find its way into a story someday involved a young boy, an electric fence, and a forehead.

It’s Better This Way
by Jon Stark
June, 2014; 475 words

The rain seems cliché.  I have time to think about that.  I think about the time I was riding in the middle of the cab of the box truck with Fat Joe driving and Bob on the other side of me.  We were crammed in there, like we were every day all summer that summer, and Fat Joe was his usual awful driving self and I was sure we were going to die and we crested the hill on Leary Farm Road that I used to hop with my motorcycle and the whole truck sort of shook when we landed.

Like it always did when Fat Joe was driving but today there was also a tractor with two hay wagons loaded down and it was sort of in the middle but more on our side of the road and Fat Joe panicked and we had three wheels in the soft gravel and then two of them in the ditch and the whole box truck was leaning over so far that I knew we were going to capsize but then the box caught on an apple tree and bounced us back on the road and Fat Joe said, “Oh, yeah!” and Bob said something else and I just shook my head.  Babies and Fools.  And there I was, stuck in the middle.

I’m not on the side of Leary Farm Road now and I can’t blame Fat Joe for sitting in a capsized truck.  This was my fault.  The rain keeps splashing off the dashboard and hitting me in the face.  It’s annoying.  I remember an early summer afternoon rowing around the pond up at Feldman’s.  It was somebody’s birthday, I think, but I don’t remember cake, I was rowing with Tara and didn’t want it to end.  She splashed me too but it wasn’t annoying.

I think I can see part of my leg.  Or maybe that’s the kid I hit.  I’m not sure.  I can’t turn my head.  I can’t move my arms either.  I think about being paralyzed and how that might change things.  I wonder about my leg – it has to be mine, I recognize the shoe – and if they give fake legs to people who are paralyzed.  It would be bad enough to have everyone stare at me for driving my chair around with my teeth.  The least they could do is give me a fake leg.

But I’m just wasting time.  I won’t need a fake leg.  Or one of those chairs.  I’m glad I’m paralyzed and can’t feel anything.  Maybe that makes me a coward, I don’t know, but I’m glad anyway.  I’m also glad that I never had a family.  They’d be sad now.  I think about the pond and Tara and for the first time in my life I am free of regret.

It’s better this way.

One Rung at a Time

I went to a graduation Saturday morning.  Saturday afternoon we went out for dinner.  On the way home we saw a hitchhiker.  The graduate suggested that we should give him a ride.  I said we didn’t have any room – which was true.  The graduate said that the hitchhiker might be an angel and we’re supposed to show hospitality.  I repeated that there was no room and this time the graduate acknowledged the fact.  Then the graduate’s mother pointed out that hitchhiking is illegal so it’s doubtful that an angel would be doing it.  Then the graduate wondered what would happen if you picked up a hitchhiker, made a citizen’s arrest, and dropped him off at that jail.

Who thinks like that?

One Rung at a Time
by Jon Stark; June, 2014

Will really wanted to be a G-man.  FBI all the way.  He could taste it, some days, getting caught in his teeth like corn silk.  He’d work his tongue at it until somebody said, “Hey, Will.  Where are you?”  Then he’d come back to the present, wipe off his hands, and get to work.  There were stages and he’d have to earn his way.

The way he saw it, if you wanted to be a G-man you had to be cop first and the best way to do that was to get a job at the jail.  But they weren’t hiring green horns so he needed some security experience – maybe Spectaguard, or Pinkerton if he was really lucky and aced the interview.  Of course none of the guard companies were interested in someone until they had bounty hunter experience which meant that Will had to lock up a few bandits.  He didn’t know much about it, other than what he saw on TV, but he’d responded to an advertisement on Greg’s List and was now the padawan of one Dwight J. Schmoot.

The first lesson had been to watch “The Phantom Menace” since he’d mistakenly asked Mr. Schmoot what a padawan was.  There were worse ways to spend a day – like watching the third movie in that series, a film so bad I can’t even remember what it was called.

Will actually did well in his studies and soon Dwight had him out working the streets, trolling for bandits and protecting freedom and democracy as a volunteer sheriff’s deputy’s assistant.

But Will was hungry.  He needed “a grab” and the pickens were slim in West Boonieland.  He dozed off, imagining that he and Special Agent Mulder were hot on the trail of agent Scully’s abductors.  A car horn woke him and he swerved violently to avoid colliding with the Mayor’s caddy.  He fishtailed through the truck pull-off sending gravel and retreads into McGee’s field, and rocked to a stop inches from the sign pointing to Farmville, just 13 miles away.

A man stood leaning against the sign post.  When the dust settled he coughed once, looked at Will through the dusty windscreen, and stuck out his thumb.

Will rubbed his eyes.  It looked like a hitchhiker.  He ran the wipers and squirted the last of his washer fluid (he didn’t realize that that, though).  The dust smeared but he could see a little better.  It was a hitchhiker.  He ran the wipers again and discovered he was out of fluid.  The windshield got really bad so he climbed out and looked at the man.

Sure enough, there was a real, live hitchhiker.  He had an army surplus back pack, a nasty sleeping bag, and smelled like Mrs. Tibertson’s garage.  Will wanted to ask if he needed a ride but was worried about entrapment. Sure, the man had stuck out his thumb and that would be enough for Judge Howard, but Judge Wood was a bit liberal with his interpretation.  “What do you need?” asked Will.

“Looking for a lift into Farmville.”  said the hitcher.  “You’re pretty good behind the wheel, it’s be an honor to ride with you.”

Will thought he had him, right up until the last.  Would that be enough for him to beat the rap?  “So you’re asking me to give you a ride to Farmville?”

The man nodded.  “That’s right.”

“But you don’t know me.”

“Sure I do, you’re Will.  The guy working with Schmoot.” said the hitcher.  He held out his hand.  “I’m Jake.”

Will wasn’t a lawyer but he was pretty sure that now hitching was out.  The man seemed to know him and being strangers was one of the elements of the crime.  “I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“That’s true and it would be fair to say that a reasonable person would not consider us acquaintances for the purpose of determining whether or you’d give me a ride.” said the hitcher.  Will smiled.  That was almost textbook.

“Well hop in then, Stranger.”  Will didn’t care for the odor, but he was excited.  This wasn’t getting someone after they committed a crime, it was actually interrupting it and saving some innocent bystander.

He pulled into the police station.  “Hey.” said Jake.  “This isn’t Farmville.”

“That’s right.” said Will.  “It’s the police station and you’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“I ask the questions here.” said Will.  “Will you get out of the car, please?”

They two men walked in to the station.  Jake protested quite loudly that this was totally unfair.  Dewey was at the desk and rolled his eyes when Will came in.  “What is going on?”

“Here’s one for the tank, Dewey.” said Will.

Dewey ignored Will.  “What’d you do?”

“Nothing.” said Jake.  “I was out by the truck pull off and Maverick here came sliding through.  We started talking and I asked for a lift into Farmville.”

“See!?” shouted Will.  “From his own mouth!”

Dewey looked at him, waiting for the rest.

Will continued.  “Hitchhiking!  He just admitted to you that he was hitching.”

Dewey nodded, gravely.  “Thank you, Will.  I’ve got it from here.”

“Do you need me to help with the processing?  I don’t want to be rude.”

“That’s okay.” said Dewey.  “I’m good.  You better get back out there.  I heard that Phil was driving his tractor on Highway 47 without a slow moving vehicle sign displayed.

Will couldn’t help it.  One of those things that just sort of happens.  He saluted and gave a crisp, “Yes, Sir.”  Which would have been okay if it weren’t for the hug.