That Inscrutable Thing

Death

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:55:00 +0000

“No one could prove from the bodies of three wounded men, one with three bullet wounds in his abdomen, one with his jaw shot away and his vocal cords exposed, one with his femur smashed to bits by a bullet and his hands and face so badly burned that his face was just an eyelashless, eyebrowless, hairless blister that they were Russians. No one could tell from the bodies of these wounded men he would leave in beds at the Palace, that they were Russians. Nothing proved a naked dead man was a Russian. Your nationality and your politics did not show when you were dead.”
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Things Happen (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:18:00 +0000

Mainstream Fiction
2,881 words
Copyright © Eric Lanke, 1989. All rights reserved.

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When Sam and I were in the fifth grade we used to play kickball on our school’s playground. It was the favorite game of us fifth graders, and every recess we would run out to the corner of the playground where the bright yellow lines of the kickball diamond were painted. I remember one game where Sam and I played on opposite teams. I was playing third base and Sam was up to bat. The pitcher rolled the red rubber ball across home plate and Sam gave it a good solid kick. The ball exploded off his foot and hit me square in the face. I fell down with a bloody nose and teary eyes.

Sam was my best friend. He ignored first base and ran over to me. He asked me if I was all right and said he was sorry at least a dozen times. The ball had hurt, and I would feel the pain for a long time, but I knew it wasn’t Sam’s fault. I told him I was all right and that he didn’t have to apologize or feel sorry about it. I think I told him that things happen.

That was a long time ago. Sam and I stayed best friends through middle and high school. But, after graduation, I went to Madison to study astronomy and Sam went to Eau Claire to study criminal justice. We kept in contact with letters and phone calls and we remained close. It was in our sophomore year that I took a bus trip to Eau Claire to visit him.

It was in cold November that I made this trip. I got into town late on Friday night and Sam picked me up at the bus depot. It was really good to see him again. We were laughing before we got back to the dorms.

At the dorms we had a few beers and watched some useless late night television. I met Sam’s roommate, Brian, and Sam’s new girlfriend, Laurie. Sam always had a new girlfriend for me to meet. My relationships with girls were never as frequent, but I used to think that they lasted longer and meant more.

I slept on the couch that night, after the television had been turned off and Laurie had gone home. I wanted to talk to Sam in the dark about girls, like we used to do when we were kids and I was sleeping over at his house. But with Brian sleeping there, it just didn’t seem like the thing to do.

Sam belonged to the karate club up there in Eau Claire and Saturday night they were having a party for members and their friends. Sam was really excited about it, and it seemed to be on his mind the whole day. We went over to the commons and shot some pool and then Sam took me on a tour of the campus. At the bookstore, I bought a UW-Eau Claire Blugolds sweatshirt. I still have it, I think, but it has shrunk and the logo has faded.

Sam and I had a good time that day, but it is not the time I spent with Sam that I want to talk about. Saturday night, at the karate party, I met a girl named Beth, and what happened with her is what I have come here to say.

Of all the people in the karate club, Sam had the nicest stereo, so he volunteered to bring it to the house for the party. We drove over there early with it and set it up behind the bar. We put the speakers in the corners of the living room and covered them with trash bags to keep people from spilling beer on them.

Sam spent most of the time that evening behind the bar, keeping an eye on his stereo. Since I really didn’t know anyone else at the party, I spent the night at the bar talking to Sam. Laurie was one of the first guests to arrive, and with her came Beth, a friend of hers from the dorms. I can’t say that Beth really caught my eye when I first saw her, because she didn’t. She was of medium height, with shoulder-length curly brown hair and brown eyes. Pretty, but certainly no knockout. We were introduced to each other and we said hello. We stood silently by while Laurie and Sam talked to each other, and then we said goodbye when Laurie excused Beth and herself to go mingle. At the time, I really didn’t think much of her. Sam normally pointed all good-looking single girls out to me anyway, and he was quiet about Beth. I figured she was either taken or gay. This was college, after all.

So I sat there at the bar, had a few beers, and helped Sam pick out what song to play next. It must’ve been two hours later when I turned around and saw Beth standing alone in the midst of a crowd of people. She wasn’t talking to anyone and no one was talking to her. She was just standing there. Maybe I was getting beer goggles, but I thought she looked better than I had remembered. She was just wearing a sweater and jeans, but I thought she looked really good in them. I began to fantasize about her.

Beth saw me staring at her and came over to the bar. When she got close enough I saw that her eyes were watering. But I also saw that she was drunk. I’d had four maybe five beers since the party started, and she looked like she had been matching me two for one. Before I could say anything, Sam asked her what was the matter. She never broke out into tears, but all the while she spoke, her eyes were red and wet, and she sniffled like she had a cold. She said that ten minutes ago she’d had a fight with her boyfriend and that he had left the party without her. She wanted to go home, but she lived in the dorms, and in November that was a long way away. Sam offered to drive her home after the party, but she said she didn’t want to hang around waiting for the beer to run out.

So I offered to walk her home. I’d like to think I did this just to be nice, just to lend a hand where one was needed. But after what I was thinking when I saw her in the middle of the living room, it’s hard for me to imagine I was ignorant of what might happen. But regardless, we got our coats and left the party together. I remember stepping outside and feeling the cold wind blow in my face. I was drunker than I thought, but that wind sobered me up some. I asked Beth if she was all right and she said she was cold. I put an arm around her and we started for the dorms.

To get there, we had to walk over a pedestrian bridge that spanned the Chippewa River. Sam had told me that, in the winter, the wind coming off the river caused some of the lowest wind chills in Wisconsin on that very bridge, and that night I could believe him. As I walked across that bridge with my arm around Beth’s shoulders and with her arm around my waist, I remember thinking about the fish who lived in the river. I began to wonder if they could feel the cold, and if they could, how they could stand to be in that freezing water. I wondered if they got scared each year when the surface froze over. If they were afraid because part of their liquid world had turned solid on them and they didn’t know why or what had caused it. I remember wondering if they thought it was somehow their fault the river had frozen. If they blamed themselves and felt sorry about it. I remember wondering if the fish down there could see Beth and me hurrying across the bridge and if they wondered where we were going.

After crossing the bridge we started up the hill that led to the dorms. I can’t say we talked about anything while we were out that night. I think we were both too cold and just wanted to get inside a heated building. When we finally got to her dorm, there was a moment when I paused before following her inside. She didn’t exactly invite me in, but I really didn’t think she would make me walk all the way back to the party without at least letting me warm up first. But the pause wasn’t long, and soon I found myself walking up the stairs and down the hall to her room.

We went inside, took off our coats, and sat down on her bed. She had a fairly typical dorm room, but without lofts. I thought that was really strange. Nearly every dorm room I’ve ever been in has had lofted beds, but the beds in her room sat squarely on the floor, against opposite walls, and made the room seem really cramped. I was feeling uncomfortable. Here I was, alone and drunk, in the room of a girl I barely knew, late at night. She told me her roommate had gone home for the weekend and then she asked me if I had a girlfriend. I said no. There was an awkward moment when we just looked at each other and the silence in the room got really loud.

I leaned over and kissed her on the lips. I don’t think I even thought about it, or had the usual worries about whether she really wanted me to do it. I just did it. She kissed me back, and it was not a thank-you-for-walking-me-home-hope-to-see-you-sometime kiss. It was a spend-the-night-with-me kiss. I’ve gotten a few of them in my life and they are not hard to mistake. She moaned in the back of her throat and began to move a hand up my thigh. I slipped my hands up under her sweater and unhooked her bra. I started to squeeze her breasts. Her nipples were hard, and I don’t think it was because she was still cold. She had placed her hand in my lap and she was rubbing it back and forth. She whispered in my ear what she wanted me to do and I began to do it.

Since that night, I’ve often thought about what happened between us, and even now, I am not sure what it meant. I don’t think I’ve ever really understood what it means to have sex with someone. It could mean so many different things. You see it represented in so many ways that I don’t think you can ever really be sure what sex is supposed to be. Sex could be the purest physical manifestation of love two people can share. Sex could be the swelling abdomen of the expectant mother and the smiling cheeks of the proud father. Sex could be painted thick on the television screen every twelve to fifteen minutes when the programming stops and the commercial begins. Sex could be the worm at the bottom of a six-dollar bottle of tequila. Sex could be in the adult bookstore, patiently waiting amongst the walls of glossy magazines and the racks of rubber toys. Sex could be the bar of soap, your left hand, and your imagination when you are alone and in the shower. Sex could be the fuck the coke-whore parcels out to the pusher to secure some of her candy. Sex could be the lollipop that is promised to the preschooler if she will only get into the blue sedan. Sex could be the fist of the rapist that beats the victim into bloody unconsciousness so she won’t scream or bite. Sex could be any one or all of these things. Or sex could be something else entirely. When you think about it, sex could be locked up in your parents’ bedroom, under the bed and afraid of the light.

I don’t know what it all means, or even what it meant that night with Beth. All I do know is that I had the best sex of my life that night, and that when it was over, with Beth lying in my arms, sleep has never come so gently or so peacefully.

In the morning, she crawled out of bed and I lay there and watched her move around the room. She put on a pink terrycloth bathrobe, grabbed a small blue basket filled with soap and shower stuff, and threw a towel over her shoulder just before she left. She shut the door and locked it. I folded my hands behind my head and looked at the crumpled pile of our clothes on the floor, where we’d thrown them the night before. I looked around at the rest of the room. Beth had half a dozen posters of unicorns on the walls. I hadn’t noticed them the night before. Her roommate had a couple of dopey-looking stuffed animals on her bed. The curtains were pink and frilly, definitely not dorm issue, and Beth had a small framed picture of what I took to be her family beside her alarm clock. Just looking around the room like that, I began to feel really uncomfortable lying naked under her blankets as I was. I felt exposed, as if someone was watching me, and did not like what they saw.

I got out of bed and started to put my clothes on. I was buttoning my jeans when the phone rang. I stopped and looked at it. On the second ring I answered it. Like the first kiss with Beth, it wasn’t something I thought about doing. It just happened. There was a man’s voice on the line and he wanted to talk to Beth. His voice was scratchy and he sounded as if someone had just shot his dog. I was about to tell him that she was in the shower when a little voice in my head sang out.

This is her boyfriend. This is the guy she had the fight with last night. This is the guy who probably loves her and who would wring your neck if he knew who you were and what you’ve done.

And then, before I could say anything, this little voice in my head said three little words into the phone. I know it was the voice and not me because I did not think of these words and I did not say them. I only heard them.

“Sorry, wrong number.”

There was a pause on the line and then the guy hung up. I put the receiver back in the cradle and quickly finished dressing. I was tying my shoelaces when Beth came back into the room. She was still wearing her bathrobe but now her hair was all wet. She smiled at me as she put her small blue basket away and hung up her towel. I told her I had to be going and she gave me a confused look. I told her I’d really enjoyed the night and she said she had, too. She asked me when I was leaving and I said as soon as possible because I had some things to do in Madison before class on Monday. I was beginning to feel like a heel just standing there and I think she began to sense that. I kissed her goodbye, but it wasn’t a real kiss. It wasn’t the kind of kiss I should have given her. It was just that she smelled so clean and I felt so dirty. I just couldn’t bring myself to really kiss her.

I went back to Sam’s dorm room, but he was still out at Laurie’s. Brian let me in and I went back to sleep on the couch. I woke up in the afternoon when Sam came back and I told him everything that had happened. I didn’t tell him everything I thought about it, or that it troubled me for a reason I wasn’t sure of, but I didn’t leave out much else. I think Sam could tell things weren’t quite right, though, because he didn’t joke about it or give me a hard time. He was my best friend. He only asked me if I had a good time. I said I thought I had. I’m not sure, but I think he also told me that things happen.

And now, I guess that that is all there is to say about it. I’ve never heard from nor seen Beth since that night, but I’ve come to grips with what happened between us. It was really nobody’s fault, it was just something that happened. For a long time I felt guilty about what I had done with her, but after a while I realized that I felt worse about lying to her boyfriend than I felt about sleeping with her. But even that, like getting hit in the face with a red rubber ball, or the Chippewa freezing over in the winter, was just something that happened.

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The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 03:41:00 +0000

There’s an interesting story behind this one. Couple of months ago I was attending a professional education meeting and heard a talk by an engineer and neuroscientist who now helps professionals use the latest discoveries of brain science to develop practical strategies for making better decisions, leading organizations, and managing change.

After her talk I went up to introduce myself and ask her a question. It was a question I knew I couldn’t ask of just anybody, but about which I thought she might have an informed opinion.

“Where do you come down on the question of dualism?”

Her eyes went wide when she realized she had found a fellow brain geek.

Dualism, in case you’re not aware, is the concept that our brain has a non-material, spiritual dimension that includes consciousness and possibly an eternal attribute. Some folks call this dimension “the mind” to distinguish it from “the brain”, which dualists view as purely physical. The religious-minded are almost all dualists, and think of this dimension as “the soul.”

I was curious where an actual neuroscientist—the first one I had ever met in person, as far as I knew—would come down on this question. Steven Novella, the neurologist and host of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, has often said that he is not a dualist—that for him, “the mind is simply what the brain does.”

The speaker at my conference admitted it was a difficult and complicated question. Her own assessment was, ultimately, the brain was something larger than all of its parts, that there really was something transcendent going on. When I told her I leaned more in the other direction, but also admitted to being no more than an enthusiastic amateur, she recommended that I read Doidge’s book.

Well, now I have—and it was an interesting read. It central theses is that the brain exhibits something called “plasticity”—that it can be rewired and retrained throughout life, a notion that runs contrary to a hundred years of brain theory, but which is gaining more and more acceptance. Each chapter in Doidge’s book presents a case study of someone who consciously or unconsciously used the plasticity of their brain to change fundamental behaviors or regain functionality medical science predicted was impossible.

My own reaction is that this is fascinating stuff—but so what? Doidge makes a compelling argument that the brain is not as we once believed it to be. But is there a “mind” that does all this rewiring? Or is plasticity an inherent property of brains the way wetness is an inherent property of water? As I read chapter after chapter, I became convinced the latter was more likely true.

In one chapter Doidge compares the brain to a muscle. He knows the brain is not a muscle, but plasticity means that, like a muscle, the more it is used the stronger it gets. Fine. The body is replete with these kinds of examples. Yet none of us talk about the “mind” that exists within the muscle, the “mind” that causes it to reshape itself. If we’re going to use the muscle analogy for the brain, why equivocate on this point? Muscle builds up when it is used through a natural, biochemical process. It does not require a “mind.” Why do we think the brain is any different?

But Doidge keeps trying to steer us towards dualism. His text is littered with references to the “mind” and the “brain,” as if he understands them to be two different things, although he never goes so far as to provide definitions. The closest he gets is when he describes the views of French philosopher Rene Descartes, who argued…

…that mind and brain are made of different substances and are governed by different laws. The brain, he claimed, was a physical, material thing, existing in space and obeying the laws of physics. The mind (or the soul, as Descartes called it) was immaterial, a thinking thing that did not take up space or obey physical laws. Thoughts, he argued, were governed by the rules of reasoning, judgment, and desires, not by the physical laws of cause and effect. Human beings consisted of this duality, this marriage of immaterial mind and material brain.

Doidge goes on to admit that although Descartes’ view of the mind/brain division dominated science for four hundred years, he could never credibly explain how the immaterial mind could influence the material brain. My reaction—of course he couldn’t. Stating that the mind is something that does not obey physical laws is, by definition, admitting that it does not, in fact, exist. Or at least it is something whose existence cannot be demonstrated. But Doidge doesn’t want to go that far. Despite all the evidence in his own book that “we” are simply a manifestation of physical events going on in our brains, the farthest he will go is to say that “the firm line that Descartes drew between mind and brain is increasingly a dotted line.”

Dotted? All of his case studies demonstrate that no such line exists at all. Take, for example, the case of Bob Flanagan, a masochist who turned his fixation on pain into performance art. His backstory is intriguing, and clearly shows how easily disparate brain circuits can be wired together based on external stimuli.

Bob was born in 1952 with cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder of the lungs and pancreas in which the body produces and excessive amount of abnormally thick mucus that clogs the air passages, making it impossible to breathe normally, and leads to chromic digestive problems. He had to fight for every breath and often turned blue from lack of oxygen. Most patients born with this disease die as children or in their early twenties.

Bob’s parents noticed he was in pain from the moment he came home from the hospital. When he was eighteen months old, doctors discovered pus between his lungs and began treating him by inserting needles deep into his chest. He began to dread the procedures and screamed desperately. Throughout childhood he was hospitalized regularly and confined nearly naked inside a bubblelike tent so doctors could monitor his sweat—one of the ways cystic fibrosis is diagnosed—while he felt mortified that his body was visible to strangers. To help him breathe and fight infections, doctors inserted all sorts of tubes into him. He was also aware of the severity of his problem: two of his younger sisters had also had cystic fibrosis; one died at six months, the other at twenty-one years.

Despite the fact that he had become a poster boy for the Orange County Cystic Fibrosis Society, he began to live a secret life. As a young child, when his stomach hurt relentlessly, he would stimulate his penis to distract himself. By the time he was in high school, he would lie naked at night and secretly cover himself with thick glue, for he knew not what reason. He hung himself from a door with belts in painful positions. Then he began to insert needles into the belt to pierce his flesh.

It gets worse. But the essential point is that in Bob’s brain the pathways associated with pain and the pathways associated with pleasure got linked from all those childhood experiences.

Metal in flesh now feels good, gives him erections, and makes him have orgasms. Some people under great physical stress release endorphins, the opiumlike analgesics that our bodies make to dull our pain and that can make us feel euphoric. But Flanagan explains he is not dulled to pain—he is drawn to it. The more he hurts himself, the more sensitized to pain he becomes, and the more pain he feels. Because his pain and pleasure systems are connected, Flanagan feels pain, intense pain, and it feels good.

Children are born helpless and will, in the critical period of sexual plasticity, do anything to avoid abandonment and to stay attached to adults, even if they must learn to love the pain and trauma that adults inflict.

How can anyone read Bob Flanagan’s story and not think that the mind is just what the brain does? It seems straight out of Brave New World or A Clockwork Orange. We are programmable. And some of those programs call into question the very concept of “we.”

And how else do you explain obsessive-compulsive behaviors?

The UCLA psychiatrist Jeffrey M. Schwartz describes a man who feared being contaminated by the battery acid spilled in car accidents. Each night he lay in bed listening for sirens that would signal an accident nearby. When he heard them, he would get up, no matter what the hour, put on special running shows, and drive until he found the site. After the police left, he would scrub the asphalt with a brush for hours, then skulk home and throw out the shoes he had worn.

I don’t want to do these things, doctor. But I can’t stop myself. It’s like someone is in control of my very thoughts and actions. What about the “me” in these situations? Am “I” not in control of my actions? Evidently not…

The causes of severe OCD brain lock vary. In many cases it runs in families and may be genetic, but it can also be caused by infections that swell the caudate.

Wait a minute. Behavior can be caused by an infection? It sure can.

Each time he turns on the magnetic field, the fourth finger on my right hand moves because he is stimulating an area of about 0.5 cubic centimeter in my brain, consisting of millions of cells—the brain map for that finger.

Wait a minute again. Behavior can be caused by a magnetic field? Again, it sure can. In fact, one group of researchers used the same technique—TMS, or transcranial magnetic stimulation—to remove knowledge and behaviors from their subjects.

…when the team applied blocking TMS to the visual cortex of Braille readers to create a virtual lesion, the subjects could not read Braille or feel with the Braille-reading finger.

That is some really scary stuff. With technology like that, people could have their ability to do almost anything removed from them. Even, perhaps, the knowledge of who they are? Or what their body is?

After all, what expose on the brain would be complete without an appearance by V. S. Ramachandran and his work with amputees who still feel and feel pain in their amputated limbs? Ramachandran has come to understand that our sense of our own bodies is a phantom, something our brains have constructed purely for convenience. To demonstrate this to Doidge, he used a simple technique.

Taking out the type of fake rubber hand sold in novelty shops, he sat me at a table and placed the fake hand on it, its fingers parallel to the table edge in front of me, about an inch from the edge. He told me to put my hand on the table, parallel to the fake hand, but about eight inches from the table’s edge. My hand and the fake were perfectly aligned, pointing in the same direction. Then he put a cardboard screen between the fake hand and my own, so I could see only the fake.

Then with his hand he stroked the fake hand, as I watched. With his other hand he simultaneously stroked my hand, hidden behind the screen. When he stroked the fake’s thumb, he stroked my thumb. When he tapped the fake pinkie three times, he tapped my pinkie three times, in the same rhythm. When he stroked the fake middle finger, he stroked my middle finger.

Within moments my feeling that my own hand was being stroked disappeared, and I began to experience the feeling I was being stroked as if coming from the fake hand. The dummy hand had become part of my body image! This illusion works by the same principle that fools us into thinking that ventriloquist’s dummies, or cartoons, or movie actors in films are actually talking because the lips move in sync with the sound.

Later, Ramachandran did the same trick with Doidge, only this time without the fake hand, instead getting Doidge to feel the tapping on the tabletop itself as if it was part of his body.

After all these examples, Doidge actually poses the following question.

...if the brain is so easily altered, how are we protected from endless change? Indeed, if the brain is like Play-Doh, how is it that we remain ourselves?

My answer is not the same as Doidge’s. I say we don’t remain ourselves, because fundamentally, there is no "we." Moment to moment there is the appearance of consistency, but over the span of years there is wholesale change, so much so that the person at twenty is not the same person at forty.

Doidge himself quotes the studies on memory, the ones that show…

Memories are constantly remodeled, “analogous in every way to the process by which a nation constructs legends about its early history.”

What we remember, in other words, is not actually what happened, nor even what we remembered the last time we thought about it. They are constantly being reshaped and recoded in our brain cells, each time we think about them.

And he goes on to cite a case where one of his patients breaks into hysterics during a session…

…experiencing all the emotional pain that his defenses had pushed away, reliving thoughts and feelings he had had as a child—he was regressing and unmasking older memory networks, even ways of talking.

Who is “he” at this point? The adult? The child? Neither? Both? When sixty-year-old memories we’re not even conscious of can be brought to the surface and cause us to act like the infants we used to be, what exactly is the meaning of “we?”

The people in Doidge’s book prove that physical changes in the brain change who we are—not just what we are like, but who we are. Some of them wrap all the pathos of a ruined life into a single paragraph.

His own life is an impressive story of transformation. When Jordan was in elementary school, his father had a devastating stroke that cause a type of brain damage, then poorly understood by physicians, that changed his personality. He had emotional outbursts and what is called, euphemistically, in neurology “social disinhibition”—meaning the release of the aggressive and sexual instincts normally repressed or inhibited. Nor could he seem to grasp the main point of what people were saying. Jordan did not understand what was causing his father’s behavior. Jordan’s mother divorced her husband, who lived the rest of his life in a transient hotel in Chicago, where he dies of a second stroke alone in a back alley.

But Doidge never makes the final conclusion. After railing against old ways of thinking about the brain for 300 pages, he ultimately can’t break away from the oldest of old ways to think about it. After all, even the title of his book implies dualism. “The Brain That Changes Itself.” Doesn’t “itself” imply that there is a ghost in the machine somewhere? Itself? What itself? For all the information it reveals about how the brain works, the book could more appropriately be called “The Brain That Operates in Accordance with Natural Laws We’re Just Beginning to Understand.” I bet that wouldn’t sell as many copies, though.

Death

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:08:00 +0000

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Roots by Alex Haley

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:46:00 +0000

It’s been more than two months since I blogged about a book I’ve read. I guess there’s two reasons for that. One is that I chose the 729-page Roots as my next book. The second is that I joined a novel critique group and have been spending a certain percentage of my free time reading other people’s unpublished novels.

It’s been a good experience for me. I had to read and critique two other novels before the group would read and critique mine. And so far I’ve read and critiqued one more after I got the group’s feedback on mine. Perhaps I should mention that it was Columbia: Reflections in Broken Glass that I asked them to review—just the odd chapters that comprise the main story line, because the full manuscript was too long for the group’s guidelines. Evidently, they think a 267,000-word novel by an unpublished author has little chance of getting published. They’re probably right.

But let me get to Roots. I but dimly remember the sensation the TV miniseries caused back in 1977, and now that I’ve read the story that inspired it, I can more clearly understand what the fuss was all about. Even in 2010, Roots reads very much like a ground-breaking novel. It’s almost shocking to speculate on how it must have affected people when it was published in 1976.

It’s also a novel that suffers some from its own fame. The first 164 pages, as a prime example, which document Kunta’s life in Africa from birth to teenager, are an interesting and all-enveloping look at life within Kunta’s culture—replete with its strict class structure, Muslim faith, and rites of passage. I may have appreciated these pages more had I not known what was going to happen—i.e., that at some painful moment Kunta was going to be captured by slave traders and shipped across to ocean to the British colonies in America. That tragedy hangs heavily over this entire first section of the novel, and when it finally comes on page 165, it is at once surprising and expected.

He was bending over a likely prospect when he heard the sharp crack of a twig, followed quickly by the squawk of a parrot overhead. It was probably the dog returning, he thought in the back of his mind. But no grown dog ever cracked a twig, he flashed, whirling in the same instant. In a blur, rushing at him, he saw a white face, a club upraised; heard heavy footfalls behind him.

What follows is 50 or so pages of one of the most harrowing stories ever told—Kunta’s ordeal on the slave ship. Near the very end of the novel, when Haley himself is traveling the globe to track down the activities of his ancestors, the author says this about the imperative he felt to write this section as accurately as possible:

When we put to sea, I explained what I hoped to do that might help me write of my ancestor’s crossing. After each late evening’s dinner, I climbed down successive metal ladders into her deep, dark, cold cargo hold. Stripping to my underwear, I lay on my back on a wide rough bare dunnage plank and forced myself to stay there through all ten nights of the crossing, trying to imagine what did he see, hear, feel, smell, taste—and above all, in knowing Kunta, what things did he think? My crossing of course was ludicrously luxurious by any comparison to the ghastly ordeal endured by Kunta Kinte, his companions, and all those other millions who lay chained and shackled in terror and their own filth for an average of eighty to ninety days, at the end of which awaited new physical and psychic horrors. But anyway, finally I wrote of the ocean crossing—from the perspective of the human cargo.

Indeed he does, and it isn’t something I will soon forget. Kunta and his companions are kept chained and lying naked on rough wooden planks, packed and stacked into the ship’s hold like so much cargo, without room to even sit up or roll over. They all become sick at one point or another, and the waste of their bodies—the vomit, the diarrhea, the urine—is allowed to collect around them for days at a time, until the hold is periodically opened and the ship keepers come down with tubs of vinegar water to fight the stench and trowels to scrape away all the filth. About as frequently the captives are brought up on deck and scrubbed with sea water and stiff-bristled brushes, the sores on their shoulders and joints from laying on their wooden bunks opened up nearly to the bone.

Kunta survives it all—most miraculously with his Muslim faith intact.

He lay there in the darkness hearing the voice of his father sternly warning him and Lamin never to wander off anywhere alone; Kunta desperately wished that he had heeded his father’s warnings. His heart sank with the thought that he would never again be able to listen to his father, that for the rest of whatever was going to be his life, he was going to have to think for himself.

“All things are the will of Allah!” That statement—which had begun with the alcala—went from mouth to ear, and when it came to Kunta from the man lying on his left side, he turned his head to whisper the words to his Wolof shacklemate. After a moment, Kunta realized that the Wolof hadn’t whispered the words on to the next man, and after wondering for a while why not, he thought that perhaps he hadn’t said them clearly, so he started to whisper the message once again. But abruptly the Wolof spat out loudly enough to be heard across the entire hold, “If your Allah wills this, give me the devil!” From elsewhere in the darkness came several loud exclamations of agreement with the Wolof, and arguments broke out here and there.

Kunta was deeply shaken. The shocked realization that he lay with a pagan burned into his brain, faith in Allah being as precious to him as life itself. Until now he had respected the friendship and the wise opinions of his older shacklemate. But now Kunta knew that there could never be any more companionship between them.

There are times when he wrestles with his faith—questioning how Allah, of whom it was said that He was in all places at all times, could possibly be there with them—but they are largely fleeting. And his view of the “pagans” in the hold with him never truly wavers. Even as Muslim and pagan begin to die all around him, he can never quite bring himself to see the suffering of the non-believers as something that presents a true moral challenge to his faith.

When he arrives in America and is bought by a plantation owner, Kunta continues to do the best he can to adhere to the restrictions of his Muslim faith—refusing to eat pork regardless of his hunger—and he looks upon the slaves he meets that were born in North America as something less than human.

It was after sundown when the horn sounded once again—this time in the distance. As Kunta watched the other blacks hurrying into a line, he wished he could stop thinking of them as belonging to the tribes they resembled, for they were but unworthy pagans not fit to mingle with those who had come with him on the big canoe.

It’s a bit surprising to me—all this intolerance—but it’s likely an accurate testament to the intractability of humans and their various dogmas, regardless of the color of their skin.

From a narrative perspective, Kunta’s rigid thinking about Muslims and pagans sets up one of the few flaws in the novel—the issue of Kunta’s eventual acclimatization to the new society he finds himself in. When Kunta first arrives in America, it’s as if he is a spirit that can never be tamed. He runs at the first opportunity, gets caught, and runs again. This continues for several cycles until they decide to cut off half of one of his feet to keep him from running. That it does, but it doesn’t seem to quench the fire that still burns within him.

But despite this, on page 287, we read:

Nearly everyone was gone for the next few days—so many that few would have been there to notice if Kunta had tried to run away again—but he knew that even though he had learned to get around all right and make himself fairly useful, he would never be able to get very far before some slave catcher caught up with him again. Though it shamed him to admit it, he had begun to prefer life as he was allowed to live it here on this plantation to the certainty of being captured and probably killed if he tried to escape again. Deep in his heart, he knew he would never see his home again, and he could feel something precious and irretrievable dying inside of him forever. But hope remained alive; though he might never see his family again, perhaps someday he might be able to have one of his own.

What’s strange is that the scene that I so vividly remember from the miniseries – Vic Morrow whipping LeVar Burton, telling him again and again that his name is Toby, and all the while LeVar whimpering and mumbling that his name is Kunta, Kunta Kinte—doesn’t happen in the book. But it could very well have. That’s how defiant Kunta is in his early years in America, and when Haley makes him succumb it seems a bit out of character. The Kunta who survived his manhood training in Juffure, I think, would have kept running—half a foot be damned—until they killed him.

But Kunta succumbs and Kunta survives, as Kunta must because if Kunta is killed there would be no more story and no Alex Haley to be writing it. Kunta marries and has a daughter he names Kizzy, and it is in his relationship with his daughter that the true extent of Kunta’s tragedy is made manifest. This scene from when Kizzy is seven and full of the natural curiosity of youth is especially poignant.

“Do I got a gran’ma?” asked Kizzy

“You got two—my mammy and yo’ mammy’s mammy.”

“How come dey ain’t wid us?”

“Dey don’ know where we is,” said Kunta. “Does you know where we is?” he asked her a moment later.

“We’s in de buggy,” Kizzy said.

“I means where does we live.”

“At Massa Waller’s.”

“An’ where dat is?”

“Dat way,” she said, pointing down the road. Disinterested in their subject, she said, “Tell me some more ‘bout dem bugs an’ things where you come from.”

“Well, dey’s big red ants knows how to cross rivers on leafs, dat fights wars an’ marches like an army, an’ builds hills dey lives in dat’s taller dan a man.”

“Dey soun’ scary. You step on ‘em?”

“Not less’n you has to. Every critter got a right to be here same as you. Even de grass is live an’ got a soul jes’ like people does.”

“Won’t walk on de grass no mo’, den. I stay in de buggy.”

Kunta smiled. “Wasn’t no buggies where I come from. Walked wherever we was goin’. One time I walked four days wid my pappy all de way from Juffure to my uncles’ village.”

“What Joo-fah-ray?”

“Done tol’ you don’ know how many times, dat where I come from.”

“I thought you was from Africa. Dat Gambia you talks about in Africa?”

“Gambia a country in Africa. Juffure a village in Gambia.”

“Well, where dey at, Pappy?”

“’Crost de big water.”

“How big dat water?”

“So big it takes near ‘bout four moons to get ‘crost it.”

“Four what?”

“Moons. Like you say ‘months.’”

“How come you don’t say months?”

“’Cause moons my word for it.”

“What you call a ‘year’?”

“A rain.”

Kizzy mused briefly.

“How you get ‘crost dat big water?”

“In a big boat.”

“Bigger dan dat rowboat we seen dem fo’ mens fishin’ in?”

“Big enough to hol’ a hunnud mens.”

“How come it don’ sink?”

“I use to wish it would of.”

“How come?”

“’Cause we all so sick seem like we gon’ die anyhow.”

“How you get sick?”

“Got sick from layin’ in our own mess prac’ly on top each other.”

“Whyn’t you go de toilet?”

“De toubob had us chained up.”

“Who ‘toubob’?”

“White folks.”

“How come you chained up? You don sump’n wrong?”

“Was jes’ out in de woods near where I live—Juffure—lookin’ fer a piece o’ wood to make a drum wid, an’ dey grab me an’ take me off.”

“How ol’ you was?”

“Sebenteen.”

“Dey ask yo’ mammy an’ pappy if’n you could go?”

Kunta looked incredulously at her. “Woulda took dem too if’n dey could. To dis day my fam’ly don’ know where I is.”

“You got brothers an’ sisters?”

“Had three brothers. Maybe mo’ by now. Anyways, dey’s all growed up, prob’ly got chilluns like you.”

“We go see dem someday?”

“We cain’t go nowhere.”

“We’s gon’ somewhere now.”

“Jes’ Massa John’s. We don’t show up, dey have de dogs out at us by sundown.”

“’Cause dey worried ‘bout us?”

“’Cause we b’longs to dem, jes’ like dese hosses pullin’ us.”

“Like I b’longs to you an’ mammy?”

“You’se our young’un. Dat Different.”

“Missy Anne say she want me fo’ her own.”

“You ain’t no doll fo’ her to play wid.”

“I plays wid her, too. She done tole me she my bes’ frien’.”

“You can’t be nobody’s frien’ an’ slave both.”

“How come, Pappy?”

“’Cause frien’s don’t own one ‘nother.”

“Don’t mammy an’ you b’long to one ‘nother? Ain’t y’all frien’s?”

“Ain’t de same. We b’longs to each other ‘cause we wants to, ‘cause we loves each other.”

“Well, I loves Missy Anne, so I wants to b’long to her.”

“Couldn’t never work out.”

“What you mean?”

“You couldn’t be happy when y’all grow up.”

“Would too. I bet you wouldn’t be happy.”

“Yo sho’ right ‘bout dat!”

“Aw, Pappy, I couldn’t never leave you an’ Mammy.”

“An’ chile, speck we couldn’t never let you go, neither!”

So much of the sadness of this book is wrapped up in this one section of dialogue—as well as so many of its core themes. Kunta comes to accept the facts of his life in America, but he pledges to himself that he will raise his daughter in a way that she is not ignorant of her African heritage and what it means to him. But as this section shows, it is a world she cannot conceive, much less understand—her and all her progeny. Kunta’s tale is one they hand down from generation to generation, carrying it like a talisman whose secret they can’t unlock. By the time Kizzy’s son Chicken George passes it on to his son Virgil, it has become little more than a stale recitation of facts, absent any of the richness of Kunta’s actual experiences.

“Listen here, boy! Gwine tell you ‘bout yo’ great-gran’daddy. He were a African dat say he name ‘Kunta Kinte.’ He call a guitar a ko, an’ a river ‘Kamby Bolongo,’ an’ lot mo’ things wid African names. He say he was choppin’ a tree to make his l’il brother a drum when it was fo’ mens come up an’ grabbed ‘im from behin’. Den a big ship brung ‘im ‘crost de big water to a place call ‘Naplis. An’ he had runned off fo’ times when he try to kill dem dat cotched ‘im an’ dey cut half his foot off!”

Yet it is these facts that eventually allow Haley to connect all the broken pieces of the chain that exists from Kunta to himself and which are what make Roots possible. For this reason, the words have magic, even if the people in the book don’t always know what that magic is.

One other thing about that section of dialogue between Kunta and Kizzy. It foreshadows the ultimate tragedy of Kunta’s life, when Kizzy is sold away from him and the plantation he cannot leave for forging a traveling pass so that another young slave—the boy she loves—can escape.

“O my Lawd Gawd!” Bell shrieked. “Massa, please have mercy! She ain’t meant to do it! She ain’t knowed what she was doin’! Missy Anne de one teached ‘er to write!”

Massa Waller spoke glacially. “The law is the law. She’s broken my rules. She’s committed a felony. She may have aided in a murder. I’m told one of those white men may die.”

“Ain’t her cut de man, Massa! Massa, she worked for you ever since she big ‘nough to carry your slopjar! An’ I done cooked an’ waited on you han’ an’ foot over forty years, an’ he…” gesturing at Kunta, she stuttered, “he done driv you eve’ywhere you been for near ‘bout dat long. Massa, don’ all dat count for sump’n?”

Massa Waller would not look directly at her. “You were doing your jobs. She’s going to be sold—that’s all there is to it.”

“Jes’ cheap, low-class white folks splits up families!” shouted Bell. “You ain’t dat kin’!”

Angrily, Massa Waller gestured to the sheriff, who began to wrench Kizzy roughly toward the wagon.

Bell blocked their path. “Den sell me an’ ‘er pappy wid ‘er! Don’ split us up!”

“Get out of the way!” barked the sheriff, roughly shoving her aside.

Bellowing, Kunta sprang forward like a leopard, pummeling the sheriff to the ground with his fists.

“Save me, Fa!” Kizzy screamed. He grabbed her around the waist and began pulling frantically at her chain.

When the sheriff’s pistol butt crashed above his ear, Kunta’s head seemed to explode as he crumpled to his knees. Bell lunged toward the sheriff, but his outflung arm threw her off balance, falling heavily as he dumped Kizzy into the back of his wagon and snapped a lock on her chain. Leaping nimbly onto the seat, the sheriff lashed the horse, whose forward jerk sent the wagon lurching as Kunta clambered up. Dazed, head pounding, ignoring the pistol, he went scrambling after the wagon as it gathered speed.

“Missy Anne!...Missy Annnnnnnnnnnne!” Kizzy was screeching it at the top of her voice. “Missy Annnnnnnnne!” Again and again, the screams came; they seemed to hang in the air behind the wagon swiftly rolling toward the main road.

When Kunta began stumbling, gasping for breath, the wagon was a half mile away; when he halted, for a long time he stood looking after it until the dust had settled and the road stretched empty as far as he could see.

The massa turned and walked very quickly with his head down back into the house, past Bell huddled sobbing by the bottom step. As if Kunta were sleepwalking, he came cripping slowly back up the driveway—when an African remembrance flashed into his mind, and near the front of the house he bent down and started peering around. Determining the clearest prints that Kizzy’s bare feet had left in the dust, scooping up the double handful containing those footprints, he went rushing toward the cabin: The ancient forefathers said that precious dust kept in some safe place would insure Kizzy’s return to where she made the footprints. He burst through the cabin’s open door, his eyes sweeping the room and falling upon his gourd on a shelf containing his pebbles. Springing over there, in the instant before opening his cupped hands to drop in the dirt, suddenly he knew the truth: His Kizzy was gone; she would not return. He would never see his Kizzy again.

His face contorting, Kunta flung his dust toward the cabin’s roof. Tears bursting from his eyes, snatching his heavy gourd up high over his head, his mouth wide in a soundless scream, he hurled the gourd down with all his strength, and it shattered against the packed-earth floor, his 662 pebbles representing each month of his 55 rains flying out, ricocheting wildly in all directions.

This tragic and powerful scene—Kunta finally turning his back on the beliefs of his African past and figuratively destroying his past life by shattering the calendar gourd—is the last we will ever see of Kunta. At this point, the book begins to treat Kizzy as the main character, and then her son Chicken George, and then people of the multiple generations that follow. There are times early on when you think that perhaps Kizzy will see her father again, but as the years wear on you realize that it isn’t so, and that Kunta will remain the sad and desperate victim of his final scene for the rest of time. In keeping true to the book’s theme, it is an absolutely masterful technique.

The book is only half done at this point, but Kunta has been such a large part of the book’s attention for so long that many of the following characters seem a little like strangers in comparison. Chicken George comes closest to capturing that attention again, especially as he struggles to find acceptance in a world run by whites without alienating his black family. Several interesting themes get developed through this story line.

First is the fact that George is part white. His father is actually his own master, who forced himself on his mother Kizzy shortly after her arrival on his property. He gets the name Chicken George as a teenager when he takes on an apprenticeship under his master’s aging negro chicken trainer, and begins to excel at the assignment. Massa Lea is a cock fighter, and it is through George’s raising, training, and betting on his prize chickens that a shadowy father/son relationship begins to develop between the two of them. It gives him many privileges that are not available to his mother, his wife or his children, but at the same time it separates him from them in ways that pains him and them.

But more interesting—and maybe unintentionally—is Haley’s use of names. Kunta was born Kunta, named by his father in one of the most important ceremonies of his African village. He is given the name Toby by his American master, but never accepts and never comes to think of himself as anything other than Kunta. It’s the name his wife Bell consistently says, and the one the narrative voice uses to refer to him throughout the novel.

George is born George, also named by his father, but much more cavalierly than the pains that Kunta’s father took in choosing a name. George, too, is later given another name by his American master—Chicken George—but unlike Kunta who never truly became Toby, George becomes Chicken George—to his family, to the narrator, even to himself. Once the name is applied, it is used throughout the rest of the novel as the universal way to refer to him.

I think that says a lot about the world these people lived in. Wikipedia says there is some doubt over whether or not Haley plagiarized some of the content of his book—but even if he did, there are subtle elements like that throughout which add a lot of depth and meaning to the reading experience. There’s also some not-so-subtle descriptions that quickly and effectively orient you towards the alternate universe (to our modern sensibilities, at least) that the characters are living in. Descriptions like:

He had heard many a whispering of cooks and maids grinning and bowing as they served food containing some of their own bodily wastes. And he had been told of white folks’ meals containing bits of ground glass, or arsenic, or other poisons. He had even heard stories about white babies going into mysterious fatal comas without any trace of the darning needle that had been thrust by housemaids into their soft heads where the hair was thickest.

And like:

Kunta thought about how “high-yaller” slave girls brought high prices at the county seat slave auctions. He had seen them being sold, and he had heard many times about the purposes for which they were bought. And he thought of the many stories he had heard about “high-yaller” manchildren—about how they were likely to get mysteriously taken away as babies never to be seen again, because of the white fear that otherwise they might grow up into white-looking men and escape to where they weren’t known and mix the blackness in their blood with that of white women. Every time Kunta thought about any aspect of blood mixing, he would thank Allah that he and Bell could share the comfort of knowing that whatever otherwise might prove to be His will, their manchild was going to be black.

This is a strange land we’re visiting in Roots, but what makes the novel so powerful is the realization that this land is really not that far away. The story traces the generations down to the present day, and helps the reader see not just how far our society has come, but how painfully recently the improvements have actually been.

Power (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:17:00 +0000

Mainstream Fiction
2,889 words
Copyright © Eric Lanke, 1989. All rights reserved.

+ + + + + + + + +

Before I start I want to say that I no longer know any of the people I’m going to talk about. They’re from a part of my life that’s forever gone and I doubt very much that I will ever learn what became of them. But that’s okay, because when I think about it, I realize that I really didn’t like these people from my past. Only one of them ever really taught me anything about how things are, and that lesson was taught so well that I neither need nor want a refresher course.

This thing happened back in 1978 when I was ten and in the fourth grade and we were still living in the suburbs. I had two good friends back then, both in the same grade with me and who both lived in my neighborhood. One was named Tony, and I think I liked him better. It’s hard to remember what it was that motivated you when you were ten years old. It’s even harder to remember what guided your emotions. Most of your memories come back to you as facts and they don’t bring with them explanations as to why they are the facts. I just know that I liked Tony much better than Shitface.

It was what my father called him. His real name was Scott. My father had gone to high school with Shitface’s father, and he said that his father was a shitface, too. When we were kids, I guess I called him Scott, but now the name just doesn’t seem to fit my memory. I can’t help but call him Shitface, too.

It was during the summer that this thing happened. It was early in the season, but my parents were already making plans for the move we would make in August. It was a wonderfully hot summer day, the kind you only have before you become a teenager. The heat was oppressive, and my friends and I were out relishing in it.

I spent the day away from home, out in the neighborhood with Tony and Shitface, like we used to do. Not really going anyplace special, just hanging around. We would get some kids that we did or didn’t know and play baseball in the side streets with a tennis ball and a softball bat, or play ball tag in someone’s backyard with a big rubber ball. It was a long day and it was getting dark when I started on my way home for dinner. Tony and Shitface had to walk with me for a while to get to their homes, and as a group we passed the house were Cissa lived.

Cissa was an older boy, about sixteen or seventeen, who lived with his father in a run-down house on the corner of 106th Street and Lawn Avenue. Cissa was his last name and that was what everybody called him. I don’t know about anyone else, but I sure never knew what his first name was.

Cissa’s yard was traditionally a cut-through yard. I don’t know what it is about little kids that keeps them from using the sidewalks. It certainly wasn’t to save any effort, because often climbing fences and running from dogs wore you out more than walking down the corner would. I can only say that there is something clandestine about it that kids love. There is something secret agent-ish about sneaking through someone’s yard who you know doesn’t want their yard sneaked through. Kids love it and I guess kids will always do it. Who knows, thirty or forty years from now it may be me who is shaking a fist at the latest generation of 007s to march through my bean seedlings.

We were cutting through Cissa’s yard when Shitface stopped and shouted some taunts into the open windows of the house. Cissa was usually home alone at this time of day, his father worked second shift at the lumberyard. I’ve never known what happened to Cissa’s mother, whether she was dead or divorced, or whether he ever even had a legal one. It sometimes scared me to think how little I knew back then. At any rate, Shitface’s taunts were meant for Cissa, and he was the only one who could have been home.

“Hey sissy sissy Cissa!” Shitface shouted. “Sissy sissy Cissa! What a fucking sissy!”

Tony immediately joined in on the taunt and their voices sliced through the summer heat like the wings of a hornet.

“Sissy sissy Cissa! Nothing but a silly fucking sissy!”

Had I been older, or a little more independent, I would have kept right on going, cutting between the bushes and Cissa’s garage and on home to some of my mother’s good cooking. But I was young and stupid, and I guess I felt like I needed to belong, to do everything my friends did no matter how spiteful or juvenile it was. I’m not blaming Tony and Shitface for what was about to happen to me, but I think it should be said that if I had been alone, or perhaps just with Tony, I’d have been on time for dinner that night.

But I added my shrill voice to the taunt as well. It was immature and I really didn’t know why Shitface was taunting Cissa in the first place, but I taunted him all the same.

“Sissy sissy Cissa! Stupid silly fucking sissy Cissa!”

It was then that the garage door suddenly rolled up on its track and Cissa rushed out. The three of us spun and froze in surprised terror. I remember looking at Cissa dashing out of the garage and I thought that I’d never seen anyone so angry in my life, not even my father after I’d punctured a tire on his gold Pontiac with a lawn dart. Cissa’s face was all red and his hands were hooked into claws.

Tony and Shitface ran. It was like one second they were there and the next second they weren’t. My brain screamed at my legs to run, but with Cissa bearing down on me, it seemed like hours before they responded. I was running down the driveway, watching my friends pull away from me across the street, when Cissa caught me.

“Tony! Help! He’s got me! Get my dad!”

Cissa tucked me under his arm and ran to the house with me. I’d never before that moment thought about how big a person Cissa was. To a ten-year-old, any seventeen-year-old would seem big, but Cissa was massive for his age. If he’d actually gone to the high school he was supposedly enrolled in, I’m sure he would’ve made one hell of an offensive lineman.

I continued to scream and tried to squirm out of his grasp. I was usually pretty good at that. When I wrestled with my father, it would seem that I could always squirm enough to break his holds. But Cissa held me tightly. I began to get the feeling that my father had been letting me go. Cissa carried me into his house and down the steps to the basement. He threw me on a musty blue sofa that was set against the cold stone wall. I bounced off it and tried to run past him and up the stairs but he tossed me back onto the sofa. I stayed there this time. I stopped screaming. I’d long since stopped shouting words or anything coherent; I’d decayed into pure howls of panic. But I stopped doing even that because Cissa wasn’t doing anything to me. He was just standing there, glaring at me and guarding the stairs.

With the end of my cries, an uneasy silence settled down with the dust in the basement. I was still scared. Perhaps now more so than before. Cissa had me trapped down in his basement and there was no way I was getting out unless he let me out. I stood up and looked around. The furnace sat silently in one corner and a green felt pool table sat in the darkness, covered with dusty boxes, folded lawn chairs, and spattered drop clothes. The only light was the sixty watt bulb at the top of the stairs and the shadows looked like they were about to leap out of the corners and smother me. There was a chill down there, and after the heat of the afternoon sun, it made me feel faint.

Cissa took a menacing step towards me. “You name’s Kevin, ain’t it?”

I nodded my head quickly.

Cissa punched me in the face. He hit me right beside my nose, under my left eye, and I fell backward onto the sofa. I’d never really been punched in the face before that day. My father had slapped me when I’d been bad, but he’d never punched me. You see it all the time in those old western movies and it always sounds like a handclap or the crack of a whip. That may be how it sounds when you punch someone else, but when it’s you that gets punched, it doesn’t sound like that at all. It’s like how your voice sounds different to you when you hear it on a tape recorder. When you speak, you hear it through your skull as well as your ears. Your skull vibrates a little and it muffles the sound. That’s what happens when you get punched, except that it’s not just sound waves that makes your skull vibrate. The western movie handclap decays into a dull thud and you’re glad your vision goes black so you can’t see how pathetic you look.

“Well, Kevin,” Cissa said. “I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to teach you something it took me a long time to learn for myself.”

I was barely listening to him. My head was reeling and the pain was beginning to set in. I put a hand over my eyes and began to moan.

“Shut up a listen to me,” Cissa said.

I began to cry.

Cissa grabbed me by the shirtfront and hauled me off the sofa. He started to shake me and told me to shut up again. I wrenched free of his grasp and sat down, stifling my sobs.

“You are right now completely under my control,” Cissa said. “That is a fact. I have trapped you down here in my basement and I am able to do anything I want with you. There is nothing that can stop me from beating the shit out of you right now, and you know this. How does that make you feel?”

I said nothing.

“I’ll tell you how that makes you feel. You feel weak, helpless, and worst of all, controlled. And that’s what makes you mad. You’re burning up right now with your hatred of me, and only because I’ve shown you that you don’t have all the freedom you thought you had. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Good,” Cissa said. “The way you feel right now is the way I’ve felt growing up with my father. The power I have over you is the same power my father had over me. He laid down the law, and I was to follow it to the letter or he would beat the crap out of me. Anytime I did something he considered wrong, or against his wishes, or was disrespectful to him, he would beat me bloody and throw me down here in the basement for punishment. He did this until I learned what I’m about to teach you.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That you don’t fuck with people who have power over you. I used to hate my dad so much that I’d purposely do things to piss him off. Disobey him. Talk back. Things like that. I’d do these things and he’d beat me worse and worse every time. Then I decided that what I was doing was stupid. Let the old man have his way. I was sick of being kicked around. So I started doing what he told me to do. I fixed his meals. I washed his car. I cut the grass. And guess what? Things changed. Things got better. He stopped beating me, and he started to give me a little freedom.”

Cissa paused. He looked at me for a long time and the side of my face began to throb.

“Last night,” Cissa said, “my father came home after work really drunk. It isn’t something he does much, but it happens sometimes. When he does, I usually stay out of his way. He’s really irritable when he’s drunk. But last night, I was up watching cable when he came in. He started accusing me of taking his car for joyrides or some shit like that, I couldn’t really understand him. I was trying to calm him down and tell him I didn’t know what he was talking about when he hit me. He took me completely by surprise with that. He hadn’t hit me in over a year. He hit me with a good rap to the side of the head.

“Kevin, I looked inside myself last night and I saw someone who had done a lot of growing in the past year. I saw someone who wasn’t bucking the system. Someone who was doing his best to get along without being abused or hurt. Someone who was being hit not because he deserved it, but because his father had gotten drunk and was pissed off about something his kid hadn’t done. I also saw someone who had a little power of his own.

“I punched my father in the teeth last night and he fell on his ass just like you did. He sat on the kitchen floor for a long time just rubbing his jaw and muttering to himself. Eventually he got up and left. I haven’t seen him since last night. He’s probably shacked up with one of his bitches, but I honestly wouldn’t care if he was lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

Cissa drifted off into silence. He was staring at me but I don’t think he was seeing me. His eyes were a glassy blank. He suddenly shook his head and blinked a few times.

“Do you know what I’m trying to say?”

My face was pounding. “I don’t know.”

“I’m trying to say that in this world there are people who are going to control your life whether you fight back or not. If you are always rebelling against them, they are going to stifle you more and more until you are buried so deep that you will never get out. The only way to beat them is to play their game by their rules, and bide your time until you find yourself in a position to turn the tables. Then you act, and act fast.”

I was ten. I know I didn’t understand everything that Cissa was trying to tell me. But I’ve remembered his words, and now that I’ve become a man, I see that Cissa knew what he was talking about. I walk around town and I see all the protesters and the radicals out picketing and marching and shouting with the idea that they are accomplishing something. It doesn’t matter what they’re against or who they are. All they’re saying to those in power is, here we are, we’re the ones you have to watch out for, we’re the radicals. And those in power simply close their fist more tightly around that group of people, crushing the ones slippery enough to squeeze through their fingers with the heel of their other hand. But, as I said, I was ten. I just wanted to go home.

“Do you understand?” Cissa asked.

I felt the rising welt on my face. “I think so. Can I go now?”

Cissa moved away from the stairs. “All right, you can go home. Run right home and tell your dad everything I did to you down here. Or if that isn’t bad enough, make a few things up. Forget everything I said and have your dad call the cops. Maybe I’ll spend a night in the detention center, maybe I won’t. Either way, it’s not going to change what I just said.”

I looked at Cissa for a long time, trying to figure out what I should do. He had hit me, sure, but I think I realized that I had had it coming. Maybe not as much as Shitface or even Tony had it coming, but I had it coming all the same. I walked slowly to the stairs, expecting Cissa to stop me at every step. When I got to the bottom stair, I stopped.

“I’ll tell my dad I fell off Tony’s bike.”

“Good.”

“Why did you tell me all this?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Cissa said. “You’re not like those other two. They’re going to go through their whole lives fighting authority, and never for any better reason than because they are too fucking thickheaded to accept that the world will go on just fine without them.”

I looked at the blood that had dripped onto my shirt. “You didn’t have to hit me.”

“You’re right,” Cissa said. “But I did it anyway.”

I turned and ran up the stairs.

+ + + THE END + + +

Death

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:03:00 +0000

“If he had known how many men in history have had to use a hill to die on it would not have cheered him any for, in the moment he was passing through, men are not impressed by what has happened to other men in similar circumstances any more than a widow of one day is helped by the knowledge that other loved husbands have died. Whether one has fear of it or not, one’s death is difficult to accept.”
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Cynicism

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:52:00 +0000

“The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (Elizabeth Bennett)

Crying

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 02:36:00 +0000

“I suppose a cry does us all good at times—clears the air as other rain does.”
Bram Stoker, Dracula (Mina Harker)

Cruelty

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:23:00 +0000

“There was real fear mixed up in his love, and the precipitate from the mixing of these two is cruelty.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

The Rain Song (1989)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:16:00 +0000

Mainstream Fiction
3,729 words
Copyright © Eric Lanke, 1989. All rights reserved.

+ + + + + + + + +

Frog watched the rain through the plate glass window of the diner. It was really coming down. It was the kind of rain where it was best to stay indoors and watch television. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to check if the flashlight had fresh batteries, or even to sit down in the cellar with the radio fixed on the weather reports. He looked down at the row of silent red stools on the other side of the counter. Nobody was coming in here tonight. At least not until this storm blew over. A man would have to be crazy or just plain desperate to venture out on a night like this.

A flash of lightning outside revealed the slippery street corner and the resulting boom of thunder seemed to shake the flashing yellow streetlights. Frog looked at his watch. The red numbers glowed at him dumbly. 2:25 AM.

There was a jingle from the bell over the door and the rumble of the rain on the pavement suddenly became a sharp hiss. Frog looked up and saw a man shutting the door. The man wore no hat and his gray hair stuck to his head in wet, messy clumps. His face held a day’s growth of beard and bore lines deepened to middle age. The man wore a simple gray sport jacket over a white shirt and a gray tie. His shoulders were soaked and his cuffs dripped rainwater onto the waxed floor.

Frog quickly wiped down the counter with a rag. “Well, come on in,” he said. “I almost thought I’d be waiting the storm out alone. You just get caught in the downpour?”

The man ran a hand through his wet hair, pushing it back and off his forehead. His rubber-soled loafers squeaked on the tiles as he padded over to one of the stools and sat down. He fixed his steel gray eyes on Frog and said nothing.

Something in Frog’s guts twitched. He did not like the way the man was looking at him. It was his eyes, the eyes were too pleading. They were begging Frog to say something that the man wanted to hear. Something he needed to hear.

“Is there a problem?” Frog asked as he took a step away from the counter.

The man lowered his head and shook it slowly. He dug into one of the pockets of his baggy black trousers and brought out some change, which he dropped carelessly onto the counter. A quarter, a dime, and two pennies. He looked up and the rainwater on his face momentarily made Frog think he had been crying.

“How much is the coffee?” the man asked in a voice that had been used too much recently.

Frog rubbed the back of his neck and found it slick with sweat. There was another flash of lightning. This guy was giving him the creeps. It was as if he had just stepped out of an old black and white episode of The Twilight Zone. There wasn’t an ounce of color on him. Frog looked to the door, half expecting to see Rod Serling standing there in his black suit.

“Twenty-five cents,” Frog said as he fetched the pot and poured the man a cup of the steaming black.

The man left all his change on the counter and Frog did not pick any of it up. The man coughed, took a sip of coffee, and scratched the stubble on his neck. He placed one hand over his eyes and put his elbows up on the countertop.

Frog looked out at the rain. It was already beginning to let up a little, but still the streets were empty. Normally, even this late, people would be passing by the window; people who lived in the apartments across the street, party-goers moving from one neighborhood bar to another, prostitutes looking for a trick, panhandlers begging for spare change. But now, no one. Not in this rain. Only the man sitting here drinking black coffee.

“My friends call me Frog.” Frog was not sure why he was talking to the man. He tried to be friendly with all his patrons, but when they were obviously cold or gruff, he usually left them alone. He didn’t know why he was trying with this man. Something lonely about the rain, maybe.

The man looked up and managed to pull a weak smile across his pale lips. Lightning flashed again and Frog stared into the man’s gray eyes and waited for the thunder. One second. Two. Three. Each second seemed a little longer than the one before it. The thunder came suddenly, and after it had died away, the man spoke.

“Do you ever dream, Frog?”

“Well sure,” Frog said. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Did you ever have a dream so real that when you finally did wake up, you had forgotten you were dreaming?”

Frog paused. “I don’t usually remember my dreams so well. But I think I know what you mean, uh...Mister...uh...”

The man sighed. “Page,” he said with a mouth like an open wound. “Robert Page. My name is Robert Page.”

Frog thought the man sounded as if he was trying to come to grips with a startling revelation.

The man took another sip of coffee and gave Frog a long, measured look. He nodded his head and cleared his throat. “What’s the date?”

Frog gave the man an odd look. “The twenty-fourth.”

“Of what month?”

“August,” Frog said.

The man nodded again. “Of what year?”

“Nineteen seventy-three,” Frog said.

“Yes,” the man said. “Tonight, August twenty-fourth, nineteen seventy-three, I have had just such a realistic dream. I dreamed that I was born on February second, nineteen forty-two at Charity Hospital in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to a Mister and Misses Albert Morris, and was given the name Patrick Steven. My mother’s obstetrician was out of town that day and I was delivered by a young, blue-eyed intern, fresh out of medical school, by the name of Powers. In the years to come, my father would often joke that I’d picked up more information about the birthing procedure in nine months than Doctor Powers had in eight years.”

Frog narrowed his eyes at the man. “What do you mean by, ‘in the years to come?’”

“The years that I dreamed,” the man said. “I dreamed thirty-seven years of life as Patrick Morris last night.”

Frog raised his eyebrows. “You remember all thirty-seven years?”

The man nodded. “I think back on it now and I don’t find the half-remembered images and the broken fragments of a dream washed from my mind. Instead, I feel the solid memories of a life I have led. My early childhood is a hazy smear, but isn’t that true of everyone’s recollection? Once I reach the age of about nine, the images fall together into an orderly line of experiences. I feel I could map out every month of every year, so that it would resemble a timeline in one of those history books. Can you do this with your life?”

Frog did not answer the question. But he was thinking about what the man had said. He realized with a bit of shock that his blur went well past the age of nine.

The man drank some more of his coffee. “My earliest concrete memory is the day my parents brought my younger brother Waldo home from the hospital.” The man smiled. “Little Waldo. I was five when he was born in forty-seven. He was named after my only uncle, who along with his brother, my father, owned a book bindery over on Sheridan Place. The family naturally used Big Waldo and Little Waldo to distinguish between the two at get-togethers.” The man sat for a moment and shook his head, smiling the whole time.

Lightning flashed again. Frog was listening to everything the man had to say. He had dreamt he was someone else for thirty-seven years? In one night? The guy was either lying or crazy. Frog didn’t want to believe the man was insane, but he felt he would be disappointed to find out the man was making all this up.

“When I was twelve,” the man continued, “and Waldo seven, I remember I tried to teach him how to ride my new bicycle. It was a Schwinn Flyer that the company had started making in fifty-three. The bike was blood red and had those really thick tires. Santa Claus had given it to me the year before and I loved it.” The man raised his eyebrows. “Well, back then I thought Santa had given it to me, but now I guess I know better.”

Frog smiled, but it was here that he started to rely on the idea that the man was not sane. He was talking much too glibly about this dream, he was much too sure about what had happened in it. Worse, he was convincing himself that the dream had been real. The more he talked about it, the more comfortable his voice became. Frog began to wince every time the man said ‘I.’ There was too much conviction behind it.

“Anyway,” the man said. “I took Waldo to the top of the Villard Street Hill and set him down on the seat of my new Flyer. I started walking with him, holding onto the handlebars with one hand and the back of the seat with the other. Waldo stared down at the front wheel and tried to keep himself balanced. As we began to go faster, I let go of the bike for a second or two at a time, grabbing it again before Waldo could tip over. But he seemed to be doing fine, so I let go of the bike altogether. There I was jogging next to him as he steered my bike down the hill.

“Frog,” the man said, “I wish you could have seen him. He had this big dopey grin on his face and was giggling with excitement. I felt proud watching him have so much fun. I remember thinking how glad I was to have Waldo for a little brother.”

Frog glanced outside at the rain. It looked like the worst might be over, but it was still coming down hard. He looked back at the man. This guy is crazy. He’s crazy and this dream of his is some kind of delusion, or he was sane and this dream has driven him crazy. Frog was not sure why that scared him.

“That’s when I tripped over the long laces of my sneakers. I went down and skinned my knee, but I ignored the pain and got up right away. Waldo was picking up speed quickly as he continued on down the hill.”

“What did you do?” Frog asked.

The man raised his voice. “I ran after him. I kept hoping he would lose his balance and fall over. Sure, he would get hurt, but every moment he kept that bike upright, the worse the crash he was going to have. When I realized I wasn’t going to catch him, I started yelling at him to put on the brakes, you know, to go backward on the pedals. But he didn’t understand me. I was running into the wind, maybe he never heard me. I don’t know.” The man was shaking his head helplessly. “He just kept on going down that hill, screaming for me, ‘Patty! Patty!’ over and over again in that shrill little voice he had.”

The man ran a shaky hand through his wet hair. Frog stood and waited for him to continue. When he did, it was with a voice under tight control.

“Villard was crossed by Custer Avenue at the bottom of the hill, where Villard Street ended. The Murchinson’s lived right at the bottom and Old Man Murchinson was out that day cutting his grass. Waldo sailed across Custer, narrowly missing a moving van, and shot right up Murchinson’s driveway and into the old man’s prize rosebushes. Waldo went crashing through the branches and thorns like some kind of wrecking ball. When I finally got to the bottom of the hill, I ignored my new bike, all twisted and broken, and scratched myself up bad dragging Waldo out of those damned rosebushes. Murchinson came over and started yelling at us, but I just sat there and hugged Waldo tightly. He was bleeding and bruised and crying, but he was still safe, and I started to cry louder than he was.”

Tears welled up in the man’s eyes and his face grew paler. He took a long drink of coffee.

“I never hugged him tighter in his life, but he felt like he was slipping out of my grasp. That winter, Waldo would catch a bad case of pneumonia, and would eventually die after one of his lungs collapsed. But when I remember his last months, I don’t remember the funeral, or the hospital, or his fevers, or my parents’ tears. All I remember is the Villard Street Hill and Old Man Murchinson’s goddamned rosebushes.”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “I’m sorry,” Frog said, realizing after he had said it that he was offering condolences for a relative who had never existed. Did it matter? Real or imagined, pain was pain, and couldn’t the wounds go just as deep?

The story went on. The man resumed his tale slowly, but as he got farther away from the death of his brother, he became more stable and quick of the tongue. Frog sat and listened to the whole story as if engrossed in a good book. At first, he tried to pick holes in it, to show himself that the dream was a delusion of the man’s insanity. But as he listened, the events of the life of Patrick Morris rolled off the man’s tongue like the credits to a documentary. The man was honest and sincere in everything he said, and he spoke with a touch of melancholy that Frog supposed one could only present if one had actually lived the story at hand.

In 1956, Patrick’s parents, Albert and Christine, had their third and last child, a girl named Rose Marie. An adolescent Patrick secretly hated his parents for trying to replace Waldo.

In 1959, in his junior year at James Monroe Senior High School (whose principal, Doctor Smeffles, would beat kids with a yardstick if he caught them loitering in the halls), Patrick double-dated with his best friend Toby Zimmerman in Toby’s father’s 1955 DeSoto. They saw The Creature from the Black Lagoon at the Victory Drive-In, and Patrick lost his virginity to Elizabeth Hutchinson in the back seat while Toby was getting slapped in the snack bar for trying to steal a kiss from Becky Johanson.

In 1962, after joining the Army voluntarily, Patrick’s appendix burst while he was cleaning his rifle and he was taken off the dispatch list of troops going to a small unknown country called Vietnam.

In 1965, Patrick got a supervisor job at his father’s book bindery and met and fell in love with Jane, the daughter of Arnold Ross, the man who ordered the textbooks for the area high schools.

In 1967, Patrick married Jane in a small ceremony at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church and rode in a limousine to Indianapolis to catch a plane that would take them to a honeymoon in Las Vegas, where they would lose each other in the casino at the Desert Inn. Patrick searched for his new bride throughout the hotel and reluctantly gave up around two a.m., worried that she had been kidnapped and forced into some illicit stage show, only to return to his room and find Jane nude and sleeping in the king-sized bed.

In 1972, after years of trying to have a child, Patrick and Jane were crushed to find out from an ugly nurse with a thick Slavic accent that the tests had shown Jane was sterile.

Frog listened to it all and throughout it continued to rain and no one else came into the diner. It was only drizzling when the man neared the end of his tale, and Frog was expecting one of his regular early morning customers to come in at any moment. Frog had completely eliminated the possibility that the man was making this story up, and was now trying to decide if he was crazy or if he had actually had the dream. Frog was leaning towards the latter.

“The last night of the dream,” the man said, “was the Fourth of July, nineteen seventy-nine.”

“Seventy-nine?” Frog asked. Somehow, having this dream extend six years into the future was a bit too eerie.

The man nodded. “Seventy-nine. We were having a family picnic at my sister’s house and just about everyone was there. Mom and Dad, Uncle Waldo and Aunt Catherine, Rosie and my cousin Barbara, their husbands Dan and George, and their troop of kids. I remember standing in the patio doors with a half-eaten burger in my left hand, watching the kids ride around on the driveway with their bikes. My nephew, Billy, had a little red one with training wheels, and Barbara’s kids, who were a little older, had those new black dirt bikes. They would coast down the blacktop to the street and then pedal back up to the garage, only to ride back down again. They put their whole bodies into the upward trip, straining their muscles with the tirelessness of youth, just to soar down the hill again with the wind in their happy faces.”

The man had long since finished his coffee and Frog chose now to ask him if he wanted another cup. The man said no and pursed his lips to mutter something to himself.

“Mom and Dad left early,” the man slowly continued, “along with Uncle Waldo and Aunt Catherine, but the rest of us stayed until nightfall when we all went down to Frontier Park to watch the fireworks. The kids were insane with excitement and it was all we could do to keep them corralled together. Once the show started, however, they quieted down quickly enough. They sat silently and watched the fireworks in childish awe, and they craned their necks until I thought their little heads would fall off. Jane caught me staring at them and asked me for one of the few times in her life if I was sorry we could never have any of our own. It had always been a delicate subject for her; I think she felt responsible for her sterility.”

The man shook his head and swallowed head.

“I remember I turned and saw my wife like I had never seen her before. She was standing barefoot in the grass, wearing the same blue dress I had seen dozens of times before, but she looked different under the lights of the fireworks. The glowing colors in the sky danced around in her hair and flickered in her eyes. It made her look...ethereal in a way. As if she was not wholly there.”

The man was staring off into space and Frog purposely coughed to show the man that he was still there, that his audience was still listening. The man looked sharply at Frog and went on.

“She asked me her question again and I slowly shook my head no. She stepped forward and hugged me, leaning her head against my chest. I looked up into the sky and watched the fireworks. The grand finale had begun, and the night sky spilled over with brilliant flashes. It grew brighter and brighter until my eyes became blinded to it, and my ears began to ache with the booming.

“I remember Jane asking me if I was thinking about Waldo.

“There was a final flash that blackened my vision and when my sight returned, I found myself staring at the crack in the plaster above my bed over on Twenty-fifth Street. Patrick Morris was gone and I slowly began to remember who I really was. I remembered my name was Robert Page.”

The bell over the door jingled and Frog looked up to see one of his regulars come stumbling in.

“Frog!” the newcomer shouted. “You lousy amphibian! One hell of a storm, eh?”

“Morning, Irv,” Frog said. “Drunk again?”

“I ain’t this clumsy sober!” Irv shouted. “And I’m giving you one hour to fix me up.”

“Can’t be done,” Frog said as he got another cup and the pot. He poured Irv one and then held the pot over the man’s cup. “You sure you don’t want another?”

The man was collecting himself and apparently was getting ready to leave. He looked over at Irv, who had taken the stool next to his, and then back at Frog.

“No,” he said. “I think I should be going.”

The man got up and started for the door. Something wasn’t sitting well in Frog’s stomach. Don’t leave. Come back and have another cup of coffee and I’ll tell you some of my stories. Things aren’t that bad. It was just a dream and a week from now you will have forgotten all about it. So come on back and let’s talk some more.

The man’s hand was on the doorknob.

“Why don’t you come back tomorrow?” Frog said suddenly. “The place is usually a lot friendlier.”

The man turned and gave Frog a small smile. “Maybe I will,” he said and walked out onto the street. The door swung shut behind him.

“Who was that?” Irv asked.

“His name was Robert Page,” Frog said.

“Never heard of him,” Irv said resolutely and coughed into his coffee.

Frog scooped up the change the man had left on the counter and thought about all the man had said. He won’t forget. Dream or not, that kind of pain doesn’t go away. It’s like a bad habit that you keep feeding long after you know it’s bad. It’s ugly and it hurts you, but you know you wouldn’t be you without it. Frog knew. He had been rained on, too.

It wasn’t until he was about to drop the man’s quarter into the register that Frog noticed instead of the traditional eagle on the back of the coin, it bore a revolutionary with a drum.

Frog turned around and saw it had stopped raining.

+ + + THE END + + +

Crime

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:12:00 +0000

“Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lord Henry Wotton)

Creation

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:12:00 +0000

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the mirale of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonley mind of a man.”
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Consequences

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:32:00 +0000

“The consequences of our actions take us by the scruff of the neck, altogether indifferent to the fact that we have ‘improved’ in the meantime.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Conscience

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:06:00 +0000

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (Lord Henry Wotton)

Ghost (1987)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:15:00 +0000

Fantasy Adventure
2,354 words
Copyright © Eric Lanke, 1987. All rights reserved.

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Nog slowly crept up to the door and pressed his small ear to its rough surface. He stuck a stubby finger in his other ear and listened intently for any sound that might reveal itself.

“Anything?”

Nog waved his hand furiously at Ignatius to get him to pipe down. Humans were like that. Always shouting and clanking their cumbersome armor. Nog was surprised there were so many humans like Ignatius around. An awful lot of them must get eaten by something whose nap was disturbed by their constant clamor.

Nog slinked back to the party. “I couldn’t hear a thing. The door may be too thick.”

Ignatius snorted. “I think it’s your head that’s too thick,” he said in a booming voice. “I’ve always said that dwarven heads are mostly bone.”

Nog looked up at the huge human in gleaming platemail. “Well, Iggy, if you wouldn’t talk so loud—”

“Enough,” Roystnof hissed. “With you two bickering all the time, it’s a miracle we’ve made it this far.”

Nog and Ignatius exchanged venomous looks.

“All right,” Ignatius grumbled. “Just tell that pint-sized twerp not to call me Iggy.”

Roystnof sighed and scratched his beard. “Nog,” he said. “Go open the door. I’ll follow you, and Ignatius will bring up the rear.”

Nog nodded and quietly walked back to the door. He and Ignatius had known each other for many years, but they never seemed able to agree on anything. He was glad Roystnof was along to keep things moving. The wizard always kept a cool head and could be counted on in times of crisis to do what was necessary. That’s why Nog usually did what Roystnof told him to do without question. It had kept the dwarf alive so far.

Nog put both hands on the doorknob and peered over his shoulder to see if the others were ready. Roystnof gave him a nod and he swung the door open.

The room beyond was large and dark, but some strange glowing vapors were swirling together in one of the far corners. The trio entered the room and spread out as Nog and Ignatius drew their swords.

The vapors suddenly coalesced into a bulky humanoid shape. The shape had limbs, a torso, and a head, but its features were smudged in the shine of its own shimmering light. A strange red gem on a golden chain began to materialize around the creature’s neck.

The monster became more defined as it slowly approached the party, floating silently in the gloomy room. It looked like a man. A man whose eyes were sparkling more intensely than the dazzling gem it wore around its neck.

Nog felt an overwhelming feeling of pure terror tremble through his body. The mere sight of this ghostly apparition filled the dwarf with the urge to turn and flee. To abandon his friends and find a place to hide from the horror now blazing before his eyes.

“Do not fear,” Roystnof said as the spirit drew closer. “The ghost exudes an evil aura that panics all living creatures. This fear can be overridden. Concentrate. Do not allow the fear to control you.”

Nog clung to the wizard’s words like a security blanket. He repeated them to himself again and again. Almost without him knowing it, the fear dropped away. It didn’t disappear. It still gnawed angrily in the pit of his stomach, but Nog had it under control.

The musky air suddenly crackled with the flash of a blue bolt of lightning that struck the ghost with full force. The monster was thrown back for a moment, and then it quickened its advance on the wizard who had wounded it.

Nog jumped in front of Roystnof to fend the creature off with his sword. He swung at the ghost in a sweeping arc, but there was no impact. The blade had passed through the body of the specter without damaging it.

The ghost slowly extended a thin, glowing arm and touched the dwarf delicately on the shoulder.
Nog felt a shock wave reverberate through his body and every one of his nerves pulsed with pain. He felt faint and his ears began to ring. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the malignant smile on the cracked lips of the ghost.

+ + + + + + + + +

When Nog came to, he was not alone. Grimaldi was with him. It was as if Grimaldi had been with him from the beginning of their lives because Nog suddenly knew all that Grimaldi did and was. They were two fused into one. They shared the sum of their separate awarenesses, their separate memories, and their separate life forces. Both of them existed in a single body, and that body was the jewel that hung around the neck of the ghost.

With Grimaldi, Nog now knew exactly what had happened. Long ago—just how long ago Nog was unsure because Grimaldi had lost track of the passage of time—but at some point in the past a young thief named Grimaldi Darkblade and a small band of mercenaries had gone seeking their fortunes.

They had sought out a place, a castle, thought to be haunted and thought to hold treasures for anyone brave enough to face the undead spirits that guarded them. The group of mercenaries had gone into the castle and had fought their way past perils and pitfalls, slowly descending deeper and deeper into the catacombs beneath the abandoned castle.

Grimaldi and his comrades had eventually encountered a ghost, a malevolent monster of chaos. The phantom used its dark powers to capture Grimaldi’s life force and hold it prisoner in the crimson jewel it wore around its neck. The young thief could see out into the world of which he had once been part, and he watched as the ghost turned his body to attack his friends. The ghost was controlling Grimaldi’s body, and was using it to fight savagely against the group of mercenaries.

Grimaldi had watched helplessly as the others cut his body to pieces, defending themselves from the vicious onslaught of Grimaldi’s blade. The ghost frightened off the remaining mercenaries with its evil magic, or caused them to wither and die under its skeletal touch.

Grimaldi had been left stranded inside the gem, and there he had stayed, slowly slipping into the ethereal realm of the ghost.

And uncounted years later, another group of adventurers had come to the same castle for the same reasons. A member of this party was a dwarf named Nog, a stockily built warrior with years of experience in combat.

This group had stumbled upon the same ghost and, alas, Nog had fallen to the same fate as had Grimaldi. However, the life force of the thief was already possessed within the ghost’s jewel. The joining of the two life forces, Grimaldi and Nog, took place when Nog entered the jewel.

They were now one being with two legacies. They were merged by powerful black magic, and it would take equally powerful magic, white or black, to separate them again.

But now, Nog and Grimaldi watch. They watch from inside the gem to see what will become of the wizard Roystnof and the human warrior Ignatius. They watch to see if either will survive to free them from their prison.

+ + + + + + + + +

When Nog awoke he at first thought it had all been just a nightmare caused by another late night at the tavern. But he knew Grimaldi was with him. His thoughts were not his alone. They were being heard by the thief, just as Nog could hear Grimaldi’s thoughts in his head.

His head! He shouted with glee as he pounded his fists against his chest. He had his body back. Or, at least, he and Grimaldi had his body to share.

Nog felt as if he had known Grimaldi all his life. He knew all there was to know about the thief, because they shared the same mind. It was as if a lifetime of the deepest friendship had been compressed into half a second.

The door to the room opened and in walked Roystnof.

Grimaldi jerked their body in surprise and fear, but Nog reminded him quickly who the wizard was. A friend. A person to trust.

“It’s about time you got up,” Roystnof said with concern. “I was beginning to think the spell hadn’t worked.”

“The spell?” Grimaldi asked before Nog could stop him.

Roystnof recoiled. “What’s wrong with your voice? It sounds...different, somehow.”

Nog took control. “I—” he stopped short, suddenly realizing that he didn’t remember what had happened. Grimaldi wasn’t sure either. All they could remember was how Grimaldi had been captured by the ghost and the events up to the point when the monster had attacked Nog. “I’m not sure,” Nog said finally. “Tell me what happened after I passed out.”

The wizard just stared at the dwarf.

“I’m all right,” Nog said. “Just tell me.”

Roystnof cleared his throat. “I knew the ghost had captured your life force the moment it touched you. I’ve dealt with that kind of evil before, so I figured it would turn your body against us. Out of desperation, I cast a paralysis incantation on you, and your body fell helpless to the floor.”

“Then what happened?” Grimaldi asked, caught up in the excitement too much to restrain himself.

Roystnof gave the dwarf another strange look but continued the story. “Then, Ignatius stepped in and with his enchanted blade, he managed to defeat the apparition. That was your mistake. Unenchanted weapons cannot harm such mystical creatures. You shouldn’t have jumped into battle like you did.

“We then took the ghost’s crystal and your body and left the castle. I knew how to restore your life force to your body, but I couldn’t do it in the depths of that dungeon. I needed my books and talismans.

“The rest, was simple. We brought you here to my laboratory, I made the necessary preparations, and cast the spell. It took more energy than I expected, but that’s not unusual with these kinds of spells.”

The wizard made a mistake, Grimaldi told Nog with their thoughts. He didn’t realize there were two of us in the jewel. He doesn’t know I am present in your body.

There was a knock at the door and it opened to admit a solidly-built older man of great height. Nog noticed something familiar about the aged man but he couldn’t place him in either his or in Grimaldi’s memory. Nog was sure he had met this man somewhere before, however, and continued to search his head for some kind of clue. It wasn’t until he mentally removed the lines from the man’s face and changed his gray hair to black that the man’s identity became clear.

“Ignatius,” Nog whispered, astonished.

The lines grew deeper in Ignatius’ face as he smiled.

Roystnof spoke. “An effect of the battle with the ghost. The negative energy of such a creature dramatically accelerates the aging process of anyone it touches. If you’ll notice, you’ve aged about ten years yourself. But since dwarves can live as long as five hundred years, the change isn’t as apparent in you.”

Nog reflected and saw that it was true, His body—their body—was older. Grimaldi couldn’t tell the difference but the thief had only been in the body for an hour.

“Now,” Roystnof said, disturbing Nog and Grimaldi’s thoughts. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

The duo told their story to the wizard and the warrior, both of whom listened intently. Grimaldi told how he had become a prisoner of the ghost, and Nog finished it by describing how they had fused together and were still merged inside Nog’s body.

When they had finished their tale, Roystnof leaned back in his chair and folded his hands on his lap. There was a long moment of silence in which everyone stared at the wizard. Nog was sure Roystnof would know what to do, and he and Grimaldi sat patiently, waiting for him to speak.

“Well,” Roystnof said eventually as he rose from the chair. “It appears that we must find Grimaldi a body of his own.”

+ + + + + + + + +

Toby was lost. He had decided that half an hour ago. He was hopelessly lost and he was going to die. Why did he ever leave his village? He was a fool to think he could survive in the untamed wilderness alone.

Toby had always dreamed of setting off on wild adventures, just like the legendary heroes. He wanted to become wealthy and powerful by his own hand, he wanted to forge his own destiny, he wanted his name whispered on the winds of antiquity.

And so, young sixteen-year-old Toby Toringale had left the security of his village, and with a pack full of food and his father’s sword, had walked off into the unknown.

Toby threw his empty pack against a tree and sat down on the forest floor. He hadn’t eaten in three days and was ready to give up. He shielded his eyes from the sunlight with his hand and he looked at the blue sky above the canopy of trees. He was thinking of how much he would give for some help when he saw the smoke.

Toby scrambled to his feet and ran off in the direction of the smoke. It was chimney smoke. Somewhere up ahead there was a cabin.

After an exhausting run, he stumbled into a clearing and saw the small cabin beckoning to him from across the soil. He dashed up to the door and rapped three times on the cut timber.

His stomach growled as he kicked at some stones in the dirt, waiting for an answer. Toby saw a black rock and gave it a swift kick just as the door opened. It flew into the cabin and hit the owner in the shin.

Roystnof grabbed his leg and gasped in pain.

“Hey, Mister,” Toby said with a relived sigh. “Do you believe in fate?”

Roystnof let a smirk escape him. “Indeed I do,” he said and invited the boy inside.

+ + + THE END + + +

Confrontation

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:04:00 +0000

“It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.”
Bram Stoker, Dracula (Jonathan Harker)

The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition by Stephen King

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 02:19:00 +0000

Well, it's been about two months since I wrote about a book I've read, and that's because for the past two months I've been reading all 1,153 pages of the complete and uncut edition of Stephen King's The Stand. And mostly not enjoying it.

I'm a Stephen King fan from way back, but I sometimes wonder if I've outgrown him the way I outgrew Piers Anthony. This is not necessarily the book the judge him by, I suppose, because it is one of his earliest, but it also is the one that many fans consider his masterpiece.

I don't see it.

First of all, what exactly is The Stand? After setting us up for a thousand pages for the ultimate battle of good vs. evil, madness comes strolling along in the form of The Trashcan Man with an atom bomb and destroys them both. Is that supposed to be the message we take away from the book?

And then there's Randall Flagg. Is he a man? Is he the devil? Is he something in between? Some primordial force of evil that exerts itself whenever the society of man grows too big for its own britches? I think he's the latter, but it's not like I'm going to get any clues from the old Walkin' Dude himself, because I don't think he knows, either. There are only a couple of pages in the novel where we get to spend time inside Flagg's head, and it probably would have been better if King had never given us those glimpses, because all we get is a jumbled mess. Sometimes he's a man (like when he's thinking about how to defeat his self-appointed enemies and worrying that he may not be strong enough to do it), sometimes he's a demon (like when he transforms while impregnating Nadine with his hellish seed), and sometimes he's the primordial force (like at the very end when he seems to coalesce back out of the nothingness to infiltrate another burgeoning human society).

And then there's this little exchange:

"I can't read the future, Fran," Glen said, and in the lamplight his face looked old and worn--the face, perhaps, of a failed magician. "I couldn't even properly see the effect Mother Abigail was having on the community until Stu pointed it out to me that night on Flagstaff Mountain. But I do know this: We're all in this town because of two events. The superflu we can charge off to the stupidity of the human race. It doesn't matter if we did it or the Russians, or the Latvians. Who emptied the beaker loses importance beside the general truth: At the end of all rationalism, the mass grave. The laws of physics, the laws of biology, the axioms of mathematics, they're all part of the deathtrip, because we are what we are. If it hadn't been Captain Trips, it would have been something else. The fashion was to blame it on 'technology,' but 'technology' is the trunk of the tree, not the roots. The roots are rationalism, and I would define that word so: 'Rationalism is the idea we can ever understand anything about the state of being.' It's a deathtrip. It always has been. So you can charge the superflu off to rationalism if you want. But the other reason we're here is the dreams, and the dreams are irrational. We've agreed not to talk about that simple fact while we're in committee, but we're not in committee now. So I'll say what we all know is true: We're here under the fiat of powers we don't understand. For me, that means we may be beginning to accept--only subconsciously now, and with plenty of slips backward due to culture lag--a different definition of existence. The idea that we can never understand anything about the state of being. And if rationalism is a deathtrip, then irrationalism might very well be a lifetrip...at lease until it proves otherwise."

Speaking very slowly, Stu said: "Well, I got my superstitions. I been laughed at for it, but I got em. I know it don't make any difference if a guy lights two cigarettes on a match or three, but two don't make me nervous and three does. I don't walk under ladders and I never care to see a black cat cross my path. But to live with no science...worshipping the sun, maybe...thinking monsters are rolling bowling balls across the sjy when it thunders...I can't say any of that turns me on very much, baldy. Why, it seems like a kind of slavery to me."

"But suppose those things were true?" Glen said quietly.

"What?"

"Assume that the age of rationalism has passed. I myself am almost positive that it has. It's come and gone before, you know; it almost left us in the 1960s, the so-called Age of Aquarius, and it took a damn near permanent vacation during the Middle Ages. And suppose...suppose that when rationalism does go, it's as if a bright dazzle has gone for a while and we could see..." He trailed off, his eyes looking inward.

"See what?" Fran asked.

He raised his eyes to hers; they were gray and strange, seeming to glow with their own inner light.

"Dark magic," he said softly. "A universe of marvels where water flows uphill and trolls live the deepest woods and dragons live under the mountains. Bright wonders, white power. 'Lazarus, come forth.' Water into wine. And...just maybe..the casting out of devils."

He paused, then smiled.

"The lifetrip."

"And the dark man?" Fran asked quietly.

Glen shrugged. "Mother Abigail calls him the Devil's Imp. Maybe he's just the last magician of rational thought, gathering the tools of technology against us. And maybe there's something more, something much darker. I only know that he is, and I no longer think that sociology or psychology or any other ology will put an end to him. I think only white magic will do that...and our white magician is out there someplace, wandering and alone." Glen's voice nearly broke, and he looked down quickly.

I know King is in the business of weaving tales about magic--about trolls that live in the deepest woods--but I think he turned this one on its head. There are other hints throughout the novel that Flagg and his followers represent the forces of science and technology, and that Mother Abigail and her followers are the magical druids at one with their spiritual environment. But neither metaphor actually works. Both camps use rationality and irrationality in equal measure, and their ultimate confrontation is a vindication of neither way of thinking. It might've been a better book if King had actually chosen sides.

Confessions

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:10:00 +0000

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Coincidence

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:13:00 +0000

“Still you must admit this solves all your problems splendidly: suddenly you’re a free widower. Whenever you like you can marry a beautiful young woman with lots of money, who, furthermore, is already yours. That’s what simple, crude coincidence can do, right?”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Devils (Peter Stepanovich)

Suicide is Just a State of Mind (1987)

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:14:00 +0000

Mainstream Fiction
2,281 words
Copyright © Eric Lanke, 1987. All rights reserved.

+ + + + + + + + +

Jack stared at the forty-four. Big gun, he thought. Cold stainless steel. Eight-inch barrel that fired slugs as big as a marble. Dirty Harry. Make my day. He hefted the firearm into the air and felt its weight strain against the muscles in his wrist. Heavy. With a lot of kick. Put both hands on that baby or she’ll break your arm. Just sight down the barrel and squeeze the trigger. And that’s all she wrote.

Jack swung out the cylinder and dropped three bullets into the holes, leaving an empty chamber between each pair of hollow points. He gave the cylinder a good spin and flicked his wrist, snapping the cylinder back into place. Without pause, without ceremony, he cocked the hammer, placed the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

…click.

Jack brought the gun down and opened the cylinder. He retrieved the bullets and set them down upright on the nightstand, next to the three hollow points already there. He closed the cylinder, wiped his saliva off the forty-four with a rag, and set the gun down next to the bullets.

This was the third time Jack had tried to kill himself. Each night, usually around seven, he would slip a growing number of bullets into Mr. Loudmouth and play a round of Russian Roulette with his tonsils. And tomorrow the odds of Jack surviving would fall to one in three.

Jack got to his feet and walked to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. He was standing in front of the open refrigerator, trying to decide between the turkey and the ham, when the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Jack? It’s Kelly out at the observatory.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I hate to bother you like this, but I’m having some trouble with the drive on the Schmidt, and I was wondering—”

“You were wondering if I could come out and take a look at it.”

“You’re a mindreader, Jack.”

The Schmidt-Cassegrain, Jack thought. I’ve replaced more parts on that telescope than I have on my car. Nearly the only original thing left on it is the objective, a smooth thirty-six inch parabolic mirror.

“Jack?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Thanks, Jack. I owe you one. Oh, and could you get here as soon as possible? I want to get the Crab before it sets.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“You’re an angel, Jack. See ya.”

+ + + + + + + + +

Kelly Pemberton was a college senior working nights at the observatory for credit. Astrophysics was her major, but Jack had her pegged as someone who just liked to watch the stars. Jack liked her, they had much in common, and he often wished he had known her back when he was in college. All the women he had known then had either dismissed the stars as trivial points of light in the sky or had asked him his sign when they found out he was an astronomer.

When Jack reached the top of the mountain, he parked next to Kelly’s red Toyota and entered the observatory through the office entrance. Kelly was sitting there, reading a Stephen King novel.

“Hey, Jack,” she said when she saw him. “Thanks again for coming.” She put the book down and crossed the room to the sealed door that led into the observatory. She turned out the light and opened it.

“What’s the assignment tonight?” Jack asked as they entered the circular room with the domed roof.

“I don’t know,” Kelly said with a wave of her hand. “Some quasar in Draco.”

Jack nodded. “Three Cee Three Five One.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Now, what about this Cassegrain? I hit the drive and nothing happens.”

“Probably a stripped gear. Go get me the toolbox out of the office.”

Jack watched Kelly walk back to the office. She has a nice figure, he thought. She’s nice all around, really. And we have so much in common. Shooting the more spectacular parts of the sky while waiting for the exposure on the assigned target. I used to do the same thing when I worked here back in college. If only I was ten years younger.

Kelly returned with the toolbox. “What’s the damage?”

Jack crouched down and looked at the motor below the telescope. “Yep, stripped gear all right.”

“You don't have to run out for parts, do you?”

“No,” Jack said. “I should have some spares in that toolbox. Hand me a crescent wrench, a screwdriver, and a three-inch gear.”

Jack put his hand out behind him, took the materials from Kelly, and brought them to his face. He remained hunched over the motor for a moment and then stood up and turned around.

“Done?” Kelly said hopefully.

Jack smiled and held out a pair of pliers. “I said a crescent wrench.”

+ + + + + + + + +

“Okay,” Jack said with the stripped gear in his hand. “That should do it.”

“Great,” Kelly said. She began to page through a star catalog.

“Shooting the Crab, eh?” Jack said.

“Yeah. Just as soon as I can find the coordinates.”

Jack nodded. “Five hours, thirty-three point three minutes, right ascension. Plus twenty-two degrees, one minute, declination.”

Kelly look up from the catalog. “Why do you bother memorizing all that stuff? It is written down, you know.”

Jack put the tools back into the box. “Look, Kelly, I did have plans for tonight, so if that’s all you need...”

“Oh sure,” Kelly said. “I understand. Hey, thanks again.”

She followed Jack as he walked back to the office. He opened the door and entered the room beyond, and was about to pass through the outside door when Kelly stopped him.

“I didn’t know you had plans tonight, Jack. I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you by cooking you dinner tomorrow night.”

Jack looked down at her curly auburn hair and her large green eyes. He thought again of how much he really did like her. He thought of their similar interests, of her pretty face, of her beautiful body.

“Come one, you’re not going to turn down a free meal, are you?”

And of her wonderful personality.

Jack smiled. “Okay.”

“Super,” Kelly said with a smile of her own. “Drop by around seven.”

Jack stepped outside and closed the door behind him. He looked up at the sky and saw the mighty hunter, Orion, forever locked in battle with Taurus the Bull. He remembered how he had felt as a child, staring up in wonder at the stars; dreaming of what they could be and what mysteries they could hold. And now that he could pass those distant worlds off as mere balls of hot gas, now that he knew what they were and what powered them, he realized he still felt that same childish sense of wonder.

+ + + + + + + + +

It was fifteen minutes before seven when Jack reached for the revolver. He methodically opened the cylinder, dropped in four hollow point bullets, spun the cylinder, and flicked it shut. His thumb drew back the hammer and he placed the muzzle against the roof of his mouth.

He paused.

He thought of Kelly. He thought of her trying to call after he had not shown up at her place and listening to nothing but the phone ring time and time again. He thought of her eventually working up the nerve to come over here, once she had convinced herself that something must have happened to him. He thought of her knocking more and more loudly on his door and then walking in cautiously after trying the knob and finding it unlocked. He thought of her calling his name out through the empty house and of her finally finding him here on the floor with half his head splattered on the wall.

But I’ve already decided to commit suicide, Jack told himself. After all these years of lying to myself, of brainwashing myself into thinking that things might get better, how can I forget the promise I made to myself and go back to my deluded life? I know this feeling I’m experiencing now. It shows up whenever there’s the possibility of a new relationship. It’s a dream-like sensation. It tells me that things will turn out the way I want them to this time and that I won’t get hurt. It tells me that this will finally be the one that works. It fills me with hope by dangling love in front of my nose like a carrot on a stick. Oh yes, I know this feeling well. It’s the one that lies to me.

Jack squeezed the trigger.

…click.

Jack slowly removed the gun from his mouth. He opened the cylinder and took out the bullets. I’ve beaten the odds one too many times, he thought. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be dead.

Jack wiped the gun off with the rag and then used it to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

+ + + + + + + + +

“I’ve been staring up at the stars for as long as I can remember,” Kelly said before she took a slow drink from her wineglass.

Jack was staring at her. He couldn’t think of a time when she had looked better than she did that night. Her auburn hair fell in locks to the shoulders of a dress only a shade removed from the color of her eyes. Shadows from the flickering firelight danced across her delicate facial features, and her smile was more warming than the fire.

“When I was twelve,” she said, “I asked for a telescope for my birthday. I got a Viewmaster instead.”

Jack laughed, and Kelly quietly joined him. The night had gone well. The meal was good, and the conversation was better. I think I’m falling for this girl, Jack told himself. She’s so different from all the other women I’ve known.

“How about you, Jack?” What got you into astronomy?”

“I think I was born with it,” Jack said. “My father was a backyard astronomer, and as soon as I was able to stand I was out there helping him. I was photographing galaxies before I was reading, and once I learned how I simply read everything I could find on the subject. When I was eleven, I built my own four-inch Newtonian reflector. It was crude, but it worked.

“I missed more than my share of school because of staying up late nights trying to catch elusive quasars or periodic comets. A lot of people thought my behavior was obsessive, and it more than likely was, but that never bothered me.”

Jack saw Kelly smile and nod her head as if she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Realistically,” Jack said, “those twinkling lights in the sky are all I ever really cared about.”

Jack and Kelly sat looking at each other for a long moment in silence. Kelly’s eyes were watering, making them sparkle in the firelight.

Jack felt his heart swell within his chest. This is it, he told himself. The moment is right. Tell her how you feel.

“I love you, Jack.”

Jack almost didn’t hear her. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I love you.’ You’re so different from all the other men I’ve known. They weren’t looking for a girl like me. All they wanted was to hear how great they were in the sack. They didn’t want to hear the theories of Einstein or lectures on the physical universe. Or, God forbid, any original idea I might have about anything. So, when Mister All-American discovered he needed a dictionary to hold a conversation with me, he dropped me and picked up a bubblehead.”

Jack searched his feelings. He believed he loved Kelly, and he wanted to tell her that, but he just couldn’t bring himself to say it. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“I understand,” Kelly said. “I know your life hasn’t been easy for you. You’re afraid to give up your love because of how much pain that’s caused you in the past. It’s okay. I know. I feel the same way sometimes.”

Jack’s mind reeled. She was reading his thoughts. He didn’t have to tell her he loved her. She already knew it.

Kelly took Jack’s hand. “We really do have a lot in common.”

Jack held back a tear and kissed her.

+ + + + + + + + +

Kelly woke before dawn the next morning, still in Jack’s sleeping embrace. She felt the rise of his chest against her back with each peaceful breath and the warmth of his body against hers. Their lovemaking had been more than physical. They had shared something intimate, something they both had been searching for all their lives.

Kelly carefully crawled out of Jack’s grasp and slowly out of the bed. She stood nude before the large bay window and could see the Summer Triangle, which would be high in the sky in the coming months, twinkle at her from the horizon. Cygnus the Swan floated on the river of the Milky Way again. Summer was on the way.

Kelly sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her new lover dream. She knew she had found happiness. She knew that her turn had finally come. She and Jack would live the rest of their lives together and never run out of love.

She sighed.

And most of all, she knew she would never again find herself with the muzzle of her twenty-two caliber pistol pressed to her temple.

+ + + THE END + + +

Coincidence

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:24:00 +0000

"Shrugging things off as coincidence is the best way I know of to get in trouble."
David Eddings, The Seeress of Kell (Belgarath)

Coincidence

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:29:00 +0000

“Coincidences ten times as remarkable as this happen to all of us every hour of our lives, without attracting even momentary notice. Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities—that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.”
Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (C. Auguste Dupin)

Civilized Man

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:12:00 +0000

“No man, however highly civilized, can listen for very long to African drumming, or Indian chanting, or Welsh hymn singing, and retain intact his critical and self-conscious personality. It would be interesting to take a group of the most eminent philosophers from the best universities, shut them up in a hot room with Moroccan dervishes or Haitian Voodooists and measure, with a stop-watch, the strength of their psychological resistance to the effect of rhythmic sound. Would the Logical Positivists be able to hold out longer than the Subjective Idealists? Would the Marxists prove tougher than that Thomists or the Vedantists? What a fascinating, what a fruitful field for experiment! Meanwhile, all we can safely predict is that, if exposed long enough to the toms-toms and the singing, every one of our philosophers would end by capering and howling with the savages.”
Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun

Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Eric) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:23:00 +0000

“Christianity gave Eros poison to drink—he did not die of it, to be sure, but degenerated into vice.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil