Come for the scenery, stay for the food.
I want to have pride
like my mother has.
And not like the kind in the Bible
that turns you bad.
I want to have friends
that I can trust.
Who love me for the man I’ve become,
and not the man I was.
copyright Robert Crawford/Scott Avett/Timothy Avett, from the song The Perfect Space
He took another drink of coffee.
“I think a lot about that guy I hit upside the head with the shovel. Think about how I ruined his life. Destroyed his family. I feel bad. And you don’t know the depth of how bad. Cause there’s nothing I can do. I did it. It’s done.”
“Look, Darnell.”
He ignored her.
“When they sent me to prison, I just wanted to survive, like I told you before. That’s why I was lucky to find Pops. Do my time under his wing. Yes, ma’am, I was real lucky.”
She didn’t even try to stop him.
“But prison turns you into yourself. By that I mean, you have so much time to yourself, you can’t help but to think about things. Now the old guys, guys like Pops, they just live moment to moment. They know their time has come and gone and all they care about is their next cup of joe. But everyone else thinks about themselves. Why they did what they did. Whether they meant to or not. And how bad they think themselves is. They look inside and see that dark speck on their soul. And generally, it goes one of two ways. A lot of guys see that dark speck and think that’s who they really are. And they accept it. And that dark speck grows until it eventually just takes over. Black, Miss Heather. Black as night and twice as scary.”
“And you went the other way.”
“I know I did wrong and I can’t do nothing to change it.”
“What am I supposed to do, just pretend none of this ever happened? Forgive and forget? I’ll forget when he’s gone.”
“No you won’t.”
“It’ll be a step in the right direction.”
“There’s two kinds of forgiveness. The one where you suck it up and forgive the one that done you wrong. That can’t happen unless he comes to you and tells you he’s sorry. Even then, it’s a hard thing to do. But your daddy can’t do that. I mean, he can’t even remember what he did. Before he went all loose in the head, he had that dark speck, and it was growing. It was slow, but it was getting worse. By and by it gave way to mindlessness. But that ain’t what I’m talking about, anyways.”
“Good. Because that’s not going to happen.”
“See, that first kind of forgiveness is for the benefit of the one that done the wrong. So that he can move on. The other kind is for the one that was done wrong to. God says to let it go and let him be the judge.”
“Really? You’re preaching to me now, Booger?”
“I ain’t preaching. Just telling you truth.”
“Well, thank you for that. I’ll take it under advisement.”
“You’ll be dead soon, too.”
“What the hell, Darnell?”
He shrugged. “We all will be. You have Huntington. I might drop dead of a heart attack sitting here at this table. Then again, we might have twenty years ahead of us. Maybe more. That’s a lot of time for that dark speck to grow. Best to let that bitterness go.”
“You think I’m bitter?”
“Best to let it go.”
“That’s easy to say when you have a future.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. As much as he screwed up his life, and in spite of his dire predictions of death at the kitchen table, it was very likely that Booger had another thirty or forty years to do something with his life. So, yeah, choosing a positive outlook made sense.
But his sermon had nothing to do with her situation. She was dying. In so many ways.
copyright 2018, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl
we sit
the two of us
at a table outside
on this warm evening
there’s not much to be said
because we’ve spent our words
and must wait for others
to come forth
and they will
because they always do
so we listen
to the birds flitting
in the trees
and the cars driving by
and to the people around us
talking
and we hear words spoken
but not sentences
and not stories
their words are simply
sounds that soften
the edges of our silence
the nothingness
is peace itself
and it holds us still
and a bird lights on the ground
next to our feet
and cocks its head
at the next table
a young girl offers the bird a crumb
and the young man who is with her smiles
and though they talk
we hear nothing
but their easy voices
and we sit
the two of us
at a table outside
on this warm evening
copyright 2018, joseph e bird
Life above the common.
I really like that phrase. I stole it from Larry Ellis. It’s the theme of his novel-in-progress about Rachel, a young woman, who, upon the death of her husband, faces a choice. She can either take her life insurance proceeds and live the good life sipping margaritas on the beach, or do something far more risky in the hope of building a life with meaning and purpose, one whose legacy will endure long after she is gone. For Rachel, there is no choice.
She’ll buy the house – the house that once was a symbol of everything that was right and good about her town – and sink her savings into its restoration. Not for her own vain pleasure, and not for the sake of an unrealistic nostalgic vision, but for the people of Walhonde, who may see in its restoration as a home, who may see in its revitalization as a community cornerstone, a shining example of what can be achieved when the choice is made to live life above the common.
It’s not the easy choice. It’s the idea reflected in the West Point Cadet Prayer.
“Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.”
Larry’s novel is inspired by the real-life Mohler House, located in our small town of St. Albans, West Virginia. In the novel, the name of the town is changed to Walhonde. Though a tale of fiction, Larry weaves historical facts about the house into the narrative which occurs in the present, but is supported by the legacy of the men and women who shaped the town – and the world – in the early 1900s. You can read excerpts here.
nibbling on sponge cake
watching the sun bake
Sure, that’s one way to go.
His plan was to resign as Vice President of the largest engineering firm in the state and start his own company.
Then came the unexpected diagnosis: cancer. The prognosis was not good.
He could have stayed put. He had good insurance, made good money. He would have the support of the entire company as he started his fight for life. It would have been the easier path. But Harvey Chapman seldom chose the easier path.
He left anyway. He started the company from a spare bedroom in his house.
He landed a couple of projects and quickly hired some help. It was hard, grueling work with long hours. Add chemotherapy to the mix.
One evening he was going to an interview for another project, his young employee driving as he sat in the passenger seat going over his presentation notes.
“Pull over,” he said.
On the shoulder of the road, he opened his door and vomited. After a couple of minutes, he put himself back in order and closed the door.
“Let’s go.”
They got the project.
It would go on like that for twelve years. More treatments. Bone marrow transplants. Experimental procedures. The company grew. He bought a historic building and renovated it to house his thirty-some employees. He ran 15-mile road races. He got married. At times he would feel great; other times he was kicking death away. But he was always looking for the next challenge.
He pushed his employees hard. Starting a company from the ground floor is no easy thing and he needed people to be committed. But there was more to it than that. He saw their potential. He saw that they could do great things if they made the right choices. As he had.
Not that he never made mistakes. But the one choice he made over and over again that was always the right choice, was to live life above the common. To choose, not necessarily the easy path, but the right path. To sacrifice the moment’s pleasure, for the promise of a future with meaning. He went through the Air Force flight training. He didn’t have to. He flew C-130s for the Air National Guard, even while he was running his company. He didn’t have to. He gave his employees generous bonuses and cared for their families. He didn’t have to.
Cancer eventually won. That was 22 years ago. The company he started still bears his name.
I don’t know what his last thoughts were, but I know he had to be content. It sounds cliche to say he fought to the end, but he did. And not so he could go sip margaritas on a beach somewhere. No, if he would have rebounded again, he would have been back at work, ready for the next challenge.
Ready to again live life above the common.
words.
words arranged in sentences.
sentences into paragraphs.
paragraphs into chapters.
chapters into a novel.
first sentence:
The lines in his face looked like furrows in the dirt, deep and irregular, grey and dusty, as if someone had made a half-hearted attempt to start a garden in a barren corner of the earth, and then just given up.
last sentence:
She pushed the joy stick and her chair turned and she looked at Lucas, smiling as best she could, and knowing that he wouldn’t be able to understand her, told him she loved him, knowing that he understood her perfectly.
the space in between:
well, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
If she were being truthful – and she wasn’t – she would have acknowledged that she was calling just to hear his crazy Cajun-Jersey accent, his easy and relaxed way of talking, to imagine his comfortable, confident masculinity, his close-cut hair, his stubbled beard, his crooked smile, his worn t-shirt and his muscled arms weathered from years on the rig, his jeans hanging loosely on his hips, his sneakers, white at one time, but now a dirty gray from days on the pier and the beach and the sidewalks of Galveston. If she were being truthful, she would have told him that she just needed an excuse, any excuse, to call, because her days were few and her opportunities to smile were fewer, and it had been so long since she even had a reason to smile and that simply hearing his voice had accomplished that and more, and she knew right then that she wanted to see him, to be in his company, and that she would, even if she had to steal a car and drive to Galveston.
copyright 2018, joseph e bird, from the novel Heather Girl.
“And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.”
― William Kent Krueger, Ordinary Grace
photo-art copyright 2016, gloria m bird
Joseph E Bird 