Many years ago, I got into some trouble. It started as a lark. A Halloween costume. Airline pilot. I had forgotten to pick up a few things at the mall before the party and I noticed the reaction I was getting from everyone. One thing led to another and before long, I was in the jump seat of a commercial airliner. Well, I thought, if I’m going to fly for the airline, I might as well get paid. So I started forging checks. I did this for a couple of years before they caught on.
So I moved to Atlanta, where I did the same thing. Only this time I was a doctor at a hospital. No actual doctoring, just supervising interns. More ill-begotten money.
Then I was a lawyer.
Eventually the whole thing came crashing down around me. I was caught.
I did hard time in prison. The clink. The hoosgow. Lock-up. I was on the chain gang, busting up rocks with a sledgehammer. The food was the worst. Nothing but gruel. But the dementors were the worst. I tried to stay away from the dementors, but they were everywhere.
So I started planning my escape.
Every night I would scrape away a little mortar in between the blocks of my cell. I replaced it with toothpaste so the screws wouldn’t notice. It took years, but I was finally able to remove the blocks and get out of that cell. I made my way to the laundry where I hid in a cart of dirty sheets and rode out of the rock. Free at last.
Oh. I almost forgot. Before I escaped, I had befriended the warden. He got me a job working in the prison library. That’s where I learned about haiku. Years later, I wrote this song. In haiku.
There was a woman Isn’t that the way it is And then she was gone
Seems so long ago And time creeps into the night So glad to see dawn
Chorus
Verses come and verses go Did everything to forget you Strum the major sing the minor Even try to write haiku
Every song turns to thoughts of then And what we were when we were new Memories fade but oh so slow And leaves me lonely feeling blue
Life behind these bars| My prison with no way out My life as a con
No parole for me Dark are nights and darker days Because baby’s gone
Chorus
I mark passing days As the years grind without you Pictures poorly drawn
Wish I wouldn’t dream Pray to die before I wake Lost in Babylon
So now you know my story, my sad tale of woe. Don’t believe everything you read.
copyright 2022, joseph e bird photo by Hasan Almasi
His hair was greasy under his hoodie and his clothes hung loosely from his skinny bones and had he not already shot me in the arm, I would have smacked him in the face and rolled him down the street. But I’m a realist. I didn’t want to get shot again.
“Sorry,” he said. “Tried to miss you.”
At first I didn’t feel much, just a sting, then I smelled the gunshot, kind of a chemically smell. Cordite, I would learn later, the modern replacement for gunpowder and the reason I didn’t see smoke drifting from the barrel of his gun. A 9mm, I guessed, but for all I knew it could have been a 45. I have no idea what those numbers mean. I’ve never owned a gun.
I looked at my arm and saw a hole in my jacket, my favorite jacket, and a growing circle of bright red blood, being pulled by gravity into an ever-lengthening oval.
“Get in the car.”
I heard him say it, a demand, really, and though I knew he might put another bullet in me, I didn’t comply with his wishes. Instead, I sat down on the guardrail and put my head between my knees and tried to fight off the world turning darker than it already was. If I passed out, the second bullet might be in the back of my head.
I’ve been writing less these days and playing more music. I’ve been a regular at the open mic night at Coal River Coffee, and though I have no misconceptions about my musical abilities, it’s been a blast performing songs that mean something to me. I never would have done this if not for the encouragement of James Townsend. James is an accomplished singer/songwriter, as you can see if you watch the Press Room Recordings below. He’s also an excellent writer. He’s writing a serial story about Billy the Kid and is currently writing a musical on the same subject.
Of the songs in the Press Room Recordings, my current favorite (my favorites change frequently) is Wars and Rumors.
Remember the movie from a few years back starring Matt Damon? And all of those potatoes.
The movie was based on the book of the same name by Andy Weir. Here’s how it happened.
Andy Weir started writing his story and published it, serial style, on his website.
Then he self-published the complete novel.
Then a publisher purchased the rights and re-released it.
Then they made a movie.
And Andy Weir is rich and famous.
With no illusions of my story having the same outcome, I am nonetheless going to attempt to publish my story, Song of the Lost, serial style, on this site. You should see a tab at the top of the page named Song of the Lost. Everyday I’ll post a new chapter at the top of the page. Then when I post the next chapter, I’ll drop the previous chapter to the bottom of the page. Newcomers can read the chapters in order. Those who follow daily can see the new chapter at the top. That’s the plan, anyway. We’ll see how it works.
And please provide feedback with your virtual red pen. Tell me about typos, grammatical errors, plot holes, or anything that you don’t like. And feel free to tell me if something is working for you. So here we go.
In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders says this:
“If you’ve ever wondered, as I have, ‘Given how generally sweet people are, why is the world so messed up*?’ Gogol has an answer: we each have an energetic and unique skaz loop running in our heads, one we believe in fully, not as ‘merely my opinion’ but ‘the way things actually are, for sure’.
The entire drama of life on earth is Skaz-Headed Person #1 steps outside, where he encounters Skaz-Headed Person #2. Both, seeing themselves as the center of the universe, thinking highly of themselves, immediately misunderstand everything. They try to communicate but aren’t any good at it.
Hilarity ensues.”
Saunders is explaining Nikolai Gogol’s short story, The Nose. The story is absurd. It’s a form of Russian story-telling called skaz, where the narrator of the story becomes part of the story because of his own inept story-telling. Google it. Or better yet, read Saunders’ book.
I came across the passage and thought, yep, that’s how we are in real life. We’re all just skazzes. I find it funny because it’s true.
*Saunders used a description a little cruder than “messed up.” I took editorial liberty to clean it up a tad, though I personally am not offended by the cruder language. They’re just words, after all.
In The Darling, Chekhov tells the story of a woman who is somewhat of a serial lover, losing herself to whomever she loves. When we first meet Olenko, we admire her utter devotion to the man she loves. When he dies, she repeats the pattern with her new love. And when he dies, she repeats it again with her new love, and we begin to have questions about her. We begin to see the flaws in her character. And yet, her biggest sin is loving too much and too easily.
In his book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders offers this about Olenka:
“I feel about Olenko the way I think God might. I know so much about her. Nothing has been hidden from me. It’s rare, in the real world, that I get to know someone so completely. I’ve known her in so many modes: a happy young newlywed and a lonely old lady; a rosy beloved darling and an overlooked, neglected piece of furniture, nearly a local joke; a nurturing wife and an overbearing false mother.
And look at that: the more I know about her, the less inclined I feel to pass a too-harsh or premature judgment. Some essential mercy in me has been switched on. What God has going for Him that we don’t is infinite information. Maybe that’s why He’s able to, supposedly, love us so much.”
A publisher has expressed interest in my novel, Heather Girl. They like the story and the primary characters; however, they feel that I have too many sub-plots and secondary characters that take away from the main focus of the novel. There are a couple of sub-plots and secondary characters that I have no trouble eliminating. There are others that I’m hesitant to lose.
I’ve been reading a book recommended by Mr. Larry Ellis, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders. In the book, Saunders examines short stories of Russian authors so that writers may learn and hone their craft. Saunders just told me something that is helpful in evaluating Heather Girl. It is this:
Imagine we’re bouncers, roaming through Club Story, asking each part [of the story], “Excuse me, but why do you need to be in here?” In a perfect story, every part has a good answer. (“Well, uh, in my subtle way, I am routing energy to the heart of the story.”)
Our evolving, rather hard-ass model of a story says that every part of it should be there for a reason. The merely incidental (“this really happened” or “this was pretty cool” or “this got into the story and I couldn’t quite take it out again”) won’t cut it. Every part of the story should be able to withstand this level of scrutiny…
The second paragraph confirms what I think needs to be cut.
The first paragraph makes me hesitate on other parts, those that I believe are routing energy to the heart of the story.
And it’s running down my arm, dripping onto the dirty concrete, pooling like cherry jello next to the steps where I’m sitting, hoping someone has called for a wagon, but then I realize the closest ambulance sits idle at the hospital twenty miles away. It’s a long, deep cut and it’s all I can do to keep the pressure on.
Apologies to Dylan. He wrote that song, what, fifty years ago? Sixty, maybe?
Ma’s been gone a while.
Nothing good happens after midnight, she used to tell me. It’s 1:37 and all self-respecting people in this godforsaken town are fast asleep. Truth is, there’s not too many of them left.
There’s this photograph, a grainy black and white, probably taken about the same time Dylan wrote that song. I would have been about eight. Ma sitting at table with her sister-in-law, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. Looks like they had been working, or maybe getting ready to work. They all look tired. They’re all at rest now.
It seems to be slowing down a little. Maybe if knot my shirt around the cut. Kind of hard to do with just one arm, but if I can take one end with my teeth and pull tight. It’s cool out here but it was muggy in that closed-up building and I was starting to sweat before I went through the window so taking off my shirt feels pretty good. And there’s nobody around to see my soft, pasty flesh.
Ok. That’s better. But it’s hurting now. Not just stinging from the cut but real pain. The muscle’s been cut. I’m probably going to need surgery. I can’t stay on this stoop.
It’s alright, ma. I’m only bleeding.
Ma and her sister-in-law were young women with their glorious lives ahead of them. Later I would see the color photographs they were proud to show, their hair just right, their smiles beaming. But in this old black-and-white they looked tired. Just beat.
Kennedy was assassinated around that time. Then Martin Luther King. Then the other Kennedy. Death was all around. So when I came home one day after a nasty fall in the creek, blood streaming down my leg, ma looked at me like I was going to die.
It’s alright, ma. I’m only bleeding, I told her back then.
Dylan had nothing on me. If I could have just come up with the other existential verses and the complex rhythms and rhyming patterns and a hundred other songs I could have been another Dylan.
I’m walking now. Not to the hospital. I couldn’t do that under the best circumstances. And not home.
Just about every storefront I walk by is empty. More than a few with the glass busted out. So when Decker tossed me through the plate glass window of the old hardware store, it was kind of like if tree fell in the forest and nobody was there to hear it, would it still make a noise? If anybody heard, nobody would care. That’s how it is here.
And I can’t blame Decker. He had to do it.
I’ve always been an under-achiever. Ma had more faith in me than I deserved. Maybe it was just hope. My sisters were something else. Intelligent, outgoing. Honor roll. And my cousins, the kids of the sister-in-law in that photograph, they were the best at everything. And then there was me.
I don’t know. I tried. Sometimes. Most of the time I just didn’t care that much. Went to the university after high school but didn’t last a semester. Nothing good happens after midnight. But I had fun.
It’s alright, ma. I’m only bleeding.
He never even sings that line in the song but in my head he does and I’m singing it over and over because that’s the only line I know and the rest of the song is beyond my comprehension.
I haven’t had a drink in ten years. Not since ma’s funeral. I don’t know if I was ever an alcoholic. I drank a lot, but never on the job. But there was a lot of stress and the drink softened the edges.
Been married twice. Neither marriage lasted long enough to build a family. First one was peer pressure. Everyone was getting married and it seemed like the reasonable thing to do, but we were way too young. Didn’t know who we were. Second marriage I blame to an out-of-control libido. And when the flame died down there was nothing else.
My dad died when I was thirty. Hardly ever see my sisters. They’ve lived out of state most of their lives. They’ve got family. And their families got families.
There’s a safe house about five miles away. Little cabin about a mile off the hard road back in the woods. I’ll stay there and call Decker in a couple of hours. Have him run me over the mountain before dawn.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Not at my age. I should be at a desk. There’s younger guys that could have taken the assignment. It didn’t have to be me. Didn’t have to be good old Joey.
But Joey, he’s got no kids. No grandkids. No wife. Not even a regular girl. Evenings are bad. Weekends worse. I got to find something to fill the time. And so here I am out here after midnight, when nothing good happens. Right, ma?
I had to talk the captain into letting me do it. He didn’t come right out and say what I already knew, that I’m too old to be chasing bad guys and getting thrown threw a window. He’s right.
But I’ve seen what the pills do. And if it was just killing the ones who used it, I might be ok with that. But I’ve seen the kids, the ones I never had, and they end up being raised by their grandma. Or maybe their great-grandma. And I think of that photograph. And I’m glad ma lived in simpler times and I’m glad that those ladies in that simple kitchen never had to see what things have come to. And maybe I can save a family. Maybe I can do some good.
So Decker’s the middle man. He sets up the meeting between the docs and pharmacist. That’s me. At least that’s my role. We talk to the docs and convince them that it’s all safe. They can write the scripts and I’ll fill them at the pharmacy, no questions asked. Then we get a some of our younger plain clothes to pose as patients and when the doc rights the scripts, we start building the case. They wear wires and everything. Once things are set up, we move on to the next county. It’s usually low risk with meet-ups in a diner or sometimes at the doc’s house. But his was different. Should have known better.
The docs are usually forty-something. Maybe they realized they’re never going to be the hot-shot surgeon they thought they’d be in med school. Maybe they see they’re not going to have that big house on the hill, or the condo in Florida, so they see the chance for easy money and what they felt was their destiny. Or maybe it’s just simple greed.
But Doc Varney was different. He’s in his seventies. Everyone in the county knows him and there’s a cloud of fear that overcomes folks when you talk about him. He’s been involved in the drug business since before the opiates took over. So he’s a prime target.
He wanted to meet after hours at the hardware building. Bad move by me and Decker to agree to it. Should have been neutral turf. Supposed to meet at ten, but he called and put it off till midnight. Then one. Nothing good, I told Decker. Nothing good.
Varney shows up and he’s not alone. There’s another guy, body guard or some such thug. Varney’s probably around five-eight and his thumb-breaker, a neanderthal for sure, is maybe six-two and probably weights two-fifty, hair cut close to the scalp, belly puffed out beyond his windbreaker jacket. He looks at me. Eying me.
Decker’s talking to Varney, the usual patter. I hear my name mentioned. Joey will take care of everything he says. Plenty of money for everyone. And best of all, it’s legal. Well, that’s a lie. And if it was legal, it’s completely immoral. I see Varney smiling.
And then neanderthal pulls a gun. He points it at me.
He’s a cop, he says to Varney.
Decker looks surprised. No way, he says. He runs the pharmacy over in Herndon.
Neanderthal knows me for sure. He tells Varney and Decker that I was in the task force that took him and Gilley down. He calls me by name. What was it Joey, six years ago?
Yeah, I’m thinking. He’s right. Six years ago.
You’re a cop? It’s Decker. He gives me a backhand across the chops.
Varney’s left the building and is sitting in his car. That’s when Decker takes me by the collar and heaves me through the window. I hear a gun shot and see a puff of concrete dust where the bullet hit beside me.
Varney yells something and the goon gets in with Varney and they take off. Decker does, too. He’s staying in character. Too much invested in all of this just to give it up. Besides, I just crashed through the window. How bad could it be?
It’s alright ma. I’m only bleeding.
Another mile and I’ll be off the hard road. Feeling tired and thirsty but there’s food and drink at the cabin. And a real bandage.
I don’t hear the car and it surprises me as it came around the curve. I try to step back into the edge of the woods but I’m too slow. The car throws gravel off the shoulder as the wheels lock up.
I reach for my Glock but I’m too late. He’s leaning out the window, firing. I take a shot in the shoulder, then my stomach, then my chest.
I’m on the ground, looking up at the stars. I can’t move. I hear the car throwing gravel again.
I can’t move. I’m gurgling blood. I know what that means.
It’s alright, ma. I’m only dying.
copyright 2021, joseph e bird
A couple of months ago, Katie, my friend in Virginia, issued a short story challenge for 2021. The theme is Home. This is my February contribution.
Joseph E Bird 