“If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close.”
— Edgar Mint, from Brady Udall’s novel, The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
Yo.
These characters in my book, they just keep spouting poetry. I mean, what’s up with all the rhymes? I think it’s Larry’s fault.
Now Katherine, the chick lost in the woods with her new BFF, James, apparently knows a little poetry. She recites this little prayer of thanksgiving as a toast.
“Through shadow and light I bear my quest.
In forest deep I find my rest.
Till day is done and sun’s set west
and then I know I’m truly blessed.”
Cheers.
Copyright 2014
In Three Seconds, a roadside fun-house called The Enigma serves as a metaphor for the illusion of truth the characters in the novel must face. In The Enigma, the laws of gravity are not what they seem to be and visitors are left wondering about the reality of it all. At the end of every tour, Rembrandt Walker offers this cautionary reminder.
Breathe in,
my friends,
while you still can.
When shall we tarry,
it’s all in God’s plan.
Marvel and wonder
at gravity’s plight.
The day is dark
and evening bright.
Live now and love,
while the spirit is young.
In life’s quick passing,
our song will be sung.
Not all we see
can we comprehend.
Up becomes down,
beginning is end.
Worry not, my friends,
and judge with much grace,
Our fate will come quickly,
our day we will face.
Look beyond
what you see
and know what is true.
It’s out there somewhere.
It’s waiting for you.
Copyright 2014
“I was found in a shoebox, brought up by welders, and educated by wolves. Then I went to Harvard.”
Harry Copeland, from the novel In Sunlight and In Shadow, by Mark Helprin.
Author’s Notes: This is another excerpt from my novel in progress. It introduces Katherine’s estranged daughter, whom she hasn’t seen in two years. Chloe has been mentioned in the story but very little has been revealed about her situation.
Chloe
It was a Monday evening, which meant absolutely nothing to Chloe Nielsen. Monday evening was just like Sunday evening, or Friday evening or Saturday evening. No better, no worse.
At seven o’clock there was lingering daylight and in Nashville it was still relatively warm. Chloe preferred the anonymity that the night provided, but she knew there were dangers; that others used the same dark cloak to hide their acts of depravity. It was a lesson she had learned firsthand.
She pulled her two-wheeled shopping cart behind her as she made her way down Seventh Street, past the vacant storefronts, the check-cashing service with its thick, bullet-resistant glass, past the liquor store. There were others who looked like Chloe, the ragged people looking for dope or sex or drink. There were also more than a few, who, like Chloe, never drank, did drugs, or provided sex for money.
They were there because they had nowhere else to go, or no one else wanted anything to do with them, or like Chloe, they lived in a world that had little to do with reality. Some she knew, and they acknowledged each other without so much as a nod of the head, but rather with a moment of eye contact. No words were spoken.
On an old wooden bench that served as a bus stop, a man with bloodshot eyes watched Chloe as she approached, then let loose a slurred hey as she walked by. Chloe shook her head and kept walking. At the corner of Washington and Seventh was a three-story brick building, its windows covered in plywood with pictures of musicians plastered all over. Some were old, from another era; others were hip, cool and edgy. The sign over the plywood read Seventh Street Studio.
The front door was locked. The front door was always locked. Chloe knew this and didn’t even try. She turned the corner on Washington Avenue and walked to the rear of the building where the back door faced a small parking lot. Three cars and a red pickup were in the lot. The red pickup belonged to Brad McNear.
There was an old picnic table tucked in close to the building that was used for lunch breaks, dinner breaks, summer jam sessions and sometimes hard drinking at the end of a day. An empty plastic pop bottle lay sideways at one end. Chloe wheeled her buggy to the table and took out the thin blanket that covered the rest of her possessions and laid it beside the plastic pop bottle. Below the blanket and on top of a layer of spare clothes was a bottle of water that she had refilled dozens of times and an assortment of modest treasures. A brightly-colored ceramic mug, a book of Robert Frost poetry, a collection of CDs that people had given her over the years, and an old, brass, magnetic compass. Nestled between the side of the buggy and her clothes, always cloaked and out of sight was a keyboard.
Behind the Seventh Street Studio, she felt safe. She pulled out the keyboard, an expensive Yamaha with special effects that Chloe would never use, and placed it on the table. She powered it up and began to touch the keys.
She played a C-major chord with her left hand. Then an F. Then a G. Her right hand played a melody. Though her left hand and right hand were precisely coordinated and accurately recreated a song that was popular many years before, they moved methodically, without rhythm, without nuance, without feeling. She played two verses, then the bridge, then the final verse, while the lyrics sang in her head. When the song was through, she sat silently for a moment, then started softly humming another tune.
A minor key.
She found the notes on the keyboard, her left hand first, then the right hand. A bluesy, jazzy rhythm. A run up and down the keyboard. She continued to hum, but as she played, words and fragmented thoughts escaped as she started to sing.
Love. To be with you. To feel your touch. Crying.
She went on for several minutes as the subtleties of the song evolved into haunting beauty. Then even more complexity. But after a couple of minutes, the rhythms started to break down; the chords didn’t quite match up with the tune. Her words had come together to touchingly tell the story of a lost love, but as Chloe played on, the lyrics grew more obtuse. And finally, her music was nothing more than a cacophony of noise and gibberish.
She stopped playing. The music didn’t reconstitute, it didn’t find its natural conclusion. She just stopped playing.
She picked up her bottle of water and took a long drink. The door of the studio opened and she turned to look.
She didn’t know the first two men. Young guys, long hair and skinny, carrying guitar cases.
They hesitated in their steps when they saw her, then moved toward their cars. A woman came out next. Youthful as well, with long red hair and a quick smile that Chloe returned.
“Hi, Genna,” Chloe said.
“Haven’t seen you in a while, Chloe. You doing ok?”
Chloe looked down. She couldn’t hold the gaze of Genna.
“I don’t know how I am.”
“I just mean are you eating well? You’re not sick or anything like that,
right?”
“I ate breakfast at the Union Mission. I had lunch at St. Mark’s. I suppose I’ll eat supper at Jericho House. And I feel fine.”
Genna nodded and smiled. “Been writing any music?”
“I can’t write music,” Chloe said.
“You might not know how to put it down on paper, but believe me, you write music. Do you have any new songs?”
“Yes. But I don’t remember them.”
The back studio door opened again with a creak.
“Hi, Chloe.” It was Brad McNear.
“Brad,” Chloe said as she turned toward him and smiled.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Genna,” Brad said. “Good session tonight. We’re making progress. Hopefully we can finish up the basic tracks tomorrow night.”
“Looking forward to it,” she said. “See you, Chloe.”
Brad leaned his guitar case against the table and sat down beside Chloe, put his arm around her and kissed her forehead.
“Play some music for me, girl,” he said.
Chloe fidgeted, tilted her head and put her fingers on the keyboard, then dropped them to her side. Again she raised them to the white keys, hesitated, then willed her left hand to play a C chord. Then the F, then the G, then the same mechanical tune she had played ten minutes earlier.
“Good, good,” McNear said. “Keep going.” He opened his guitar case and turned around so the Martin rested across his lap. At first he strummed along, playing the same chords as Chloe, but on the second verse, he started playing in the minor key and Chloe followed his lead, taking the song in a different direction. Her fingers loosened a little and as she relaxed, the expression on her face changed ever so slightly. By the end of the second verse, McNear was toying with the rhythm and by the time they hit the bridge, Chloe had left the song entirely and was hearing new music, her own sweet spot of jazzy blues that could seduce the soul. McNear reached over and hit the record button on the keyboard and continued to strum his guitar softly.
Chloe was humming, then singing.
You leave me crying.
Crying.
You leave me loving.
Loving.
To feel your arms around me.
To have your love embrace me.
And I would cry no more.
No more.
She started to lose her timing and her pitch was off a little. McNear hummed a little louder, strummed a little stronger, trying to draw out more of her genius. He took over the melody and gave her the freedom to explore. Her eyes were closed and her fingers began to dance up and down the keyboard. Her voice, a mix between a moan and cry, echoed the notes she played in a scat that was all her own. She went on for another couple of minutes before bringing her soaring song back to earth. She ended as she had started. C. F. G. The end.
McNear’s hands were trembling as he fumbled in his pocket for a flash drive.
“Chloe, that was amazing.” He slipped the drive into the keyboard slot and downloaded the music. “Do you care if I make a master of this in the studio tomorrow? I think you have something really special here.”
“I was just playing around,” she said.
“May I?” he asked again.
Chloe nodded.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll get you some fried chicken and take you back to Jericho House.”
Copyright 2014
Author’s Note: The following is an excerpt from my novel in progress. James and Katherine were each lost in a wilderness forest before finding each other. They work together to survive and try to find their way out. In this passage, you’ll see James in the lead role, but this is an anomaly. Katherine is the strong leader; James the weaker of the two. But because of injury and illness, Katherine can no longer determine her own fate, and James can no longer be the passive follower that is his nature. Early in his ordeal, James lost one of his boots. He is hiking with one boot, one bare foot.
James and Katherine
James walked bent over, Katherine hanging on his back. He occasionally had to hitch her up higher and bend forward a little more to keep her arms around his neck. She never spoke, and James wasn’t sure if she was asleep or even conscious.
He had been hiking for about an hour, he guessed, with no more focus than his next step. Not that he could muster much attention for that simple exercise. He misjudged a small log in front of him and clipped it with his boot as he stepped over. He barely reached out a hand to a tree in time to regain his balance.
But he did not stop.
The broken branches on the ground jabbing into his bare foot was constant. When the sole of his foot began to sting, he knew his skin had been broken. Many times.
But he did not stop.
Katherine cried out, as if she had awoken from a bad dream, or maybe she had banged her ankle, now full of poison and puss, against his leg. Or maybe it was her fractured elbow. It broke his heart to hear her in such misery.
But he did not stop.
One hour stretched into two, then three. The sun was high in the sky but the wind was picking up and the clouds were again starting to thicken. The air was brisk and his bare foot, his fingers, his nose and his ears were almost numb.
“James,” Katherine whispered, her breath warm on his neck. “I’m thirsty.”
“Hang in there,” he said.
He was afraid to stop. Afraid he might not be able to move again. Afraid that if he paused, even for a few minutes, he’d be tempted to try to shelter for the night. And as cold as it was becoming, he was afraid they would die.
So he did not stop.
But after another two hours, he came to an impassable precipice. He looked to his left, then to his right. The mountain had heaved up its jagged sandstone for as far as he could see. The stream he had been following gathered in a small pool before tumbling over the rocks and splashing down below. How far below, he couldn’t tell, but from the sounds of it, it was long drop. He walked toward the stream and found a flat boulder and eased Katherine down. She landed on her bad ankle, which was even blacker and more swollen, but she didn’t make a sound. She collapsed, virtually lifeless.
He looked around for shelter, something that would protect her from the wind and rain. He found a small cleft in the rocks, only large enough for Katherine, then went about collecting branches and leaves to make her the best bed he could. He carried her to the small cave and tucked his coat all around her, then took her jacket to collect water and food.
When he returned ten minutes later, he could barely rouse her enough to take a few sips. The berries he laid beside her. He touched her forehead and she was hotter than ever. He pulled off his boot, then his sock, and took it to the water where he washed it as best he could, then brought it still wet and cold, and placed it across her head.
“l’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. Then he kissed her cheek.
He looked up at the sun and judged he had a couple of hours before dark. His plan was simple: explore a little, try to find the best way down the mountain, then come back and spend the night with Katherine. And pray.
James Brown was in church most Sunday mornings, and sometimes worked the Bible into his reading routine. But praying wasn’t his strength. He felt selfish when he prayed. But as he climbed down around the rocks, he found himself pleading, not for himself, but for Katherine.
“Please, God, let her live.” Over and over again. He knew she probably wouldn’t make it. And if she died, he wouldn’t be far behind. “Please, God, let her live.”
He made it down the rocky cliffs and once again began his mindless, step after step after step, ignoring the all pain and weariness and mental fatigue. The ground leveled out and though he noticed, he had lost his purpose, his reason for leaving Katherine alone, and was simply walking again, his head light and dizzy, his eyes watering, his lips numb.
“Please.”
Scratches on his leg. A thorn in his foot.
“Live.”
The wind blowing hard. His body shivering.
“Katherine.”
Underfoot, there were no sticks, no rocks, the ground smooth like soft mulch. Then as quickly as the respite came, it was gone. Sticks, thorns, rocks. He had gone maybe fifty feet when he stopped. He turned and looked back, then started retracing his steps.
He stepped out of the underbrush and onto the groomed trail.
His heart raced. A whimper of joy released itself and at once he felt new life energize his body. He looked up the trail – north, by reckoning of the setting sun – then down the trail, south. He would go fifteen minutes, he told himself, then head back to Katherine. Tomorrow he would find a way to get her down to the trail.
He took a few steps south. Then he stopped, took off his shirt and tied it to a tree to mark the spot that would lead him back to Katherine. He started walking, then began a slow jog. The prospect of someone being just over the next little rise, or around the next curve of the trail, was too much. He couldn’t temper his hope with the rational thought he needed to survive. So he ran.
Fifteen minutes passed. Just over the next ridge. Thirty minutes.
And then the last of the evening sun betrayed him, and it was dark.
He looked down the trail, realizing he had gone the wrong way, and turned around to go back to Katherine. And just as quickly as the sun had vanished, so did his hope. He had never felt such despair. As the last of his adrenalin faded from his muscles, the lightness in his head returned and the fatigue that had been building over the last few days could no longer be resisted.
James Brown took two more steps and collapsed in the middle of the trail.
copyright Joseph E Bird, 2014,
Joseph E Bird 