Ken McAlpine's Blog: The Hesitant Blogger, page 6

An affirmation of life and love...

Dear Readers:

I just turned in the line edit for my newest novel, "The Lost Years", which is scheduled for release this fall. I'm really excited about "The Lost Years", which I believe is, at its core, an affirmation of life and love. Here's the synopsis....

Pogue Whithouse is an ordinary, extraordinary man, his rich, but troubled, life spanning surging river rides on the backs of sea turtles, the death of a heroic brother, the corpse-bloated caves of World War II Peleliu and love gone right and wrong. Eighty-five and facing his own horizon, he takes a final trip in search of his country and himself, his shaky will inspired by a creature as old as the dinosaurs and as persistent as time. Encountering a cast of characters – a herpetological hermit, a white supremacist gang, a shy librarian, a woman who rescues starving horses and, most important, a small girl who loves bullfrogs and baseball – he learns to see again the infinite possibilities in an impossibly varied world. Pogue’s story is one of life-altering love and loss, of terrible mistakes, and the possibility of redemption at any age. The pain we suffer is not in things beyond us. The pain is in realizing, too late, that these things were not beyond us at all.

I hope that intrigues you. I worked really hard to write what I hope is a beautiful story.

If you'd like to read an excerpt, please go to http://www.kenmcalpine.com/the_lost_y...

If you'd like to weigh in with your thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Your lucky writer, Ken

Giveaway thanks

Hi Wonderful Readers:

I just wanted to thank all the interested folks who entered the giveaway for "Fog" (over 1,000, to my amazement). I also wanted to let the ten winners know that I mailed the books today. Thanks to you all for being readers. Of everything :)

All the best, Ken

Try

As parents, we all walk the often gray line between “yes” and “no”. I wrote this essay with those “yes” and “no” decisions in mind…


Try

He looks at the jetty, his hand in mine.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“You can do it,” I say, though the truth is I don’t know. The boulder-size rocks must look like the side of a building to a four-year-old. Very carefully he climbs up the side of the jetty. I climb just below him, one hand out to catch him if he slips, though I’m not sure if I can grab him before he hurts himself. When he reaches the top his smile tells me I made the right decision.



He stands at the water’s edge, peering out to the wood platform anchored seventy yards off the beach. Older kids are jumping off it, laying on their backs in the sun.
“I don’t know if I can make it,” he says.
Seventy yards must look like the horizon to a six-year-old.
“I’ll swim with you,” I say.
We stop three times on the way out. I tread water. His small hands press down on my shoulder. But he is smiling wide again.



He balances the surfboard on his head; eight-year-old arms are too short to tuck the board under an arm. The waves are small; they crumble softly without a sound, but I know they look small to me because I am grown.
He has been asking me to teach him how to surf for weeks, but here at the water’s edge he has his doubts.
“You’ll stay close to me?”
“Right beside you.”
I swim out with him. He stands on the first wave, wobbling, feet planted wide. He falls just short of the beach. I swim in as fast as I can. By the time I reach him he is already paddling awkwardly toward me. The smile is beyond words.



They are the biggest waves of the winter. They march toward shore, lumbering giants. The handful of surfers in the water bob far out to sea, farther out than we have ever seen them. When the waves break they throw forward with sledgehammer force and the sound is like not-very-distant thunder. Mist wafts through the parking lot, the aftermath of the thunder. More than a few surfers stay in the parking lot, leaning against their cars.
We change into our wetsuits. My mouth is dry and there is a lump in my throat.
He changes faster. These days he does everything faster. He fastens his zipper and turns to go. He is fifteen. He will not ask me to stay close to him. I think about telling him to be careful, but he is already running for the water. I am a little frightened, for him and for me, but the way he runs tells me I have, on occasion, done the right thing.

Guess Her Profession

I recently returned from a magazine assignment in Curacao, a lovely slice of Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela. I was there for a diving story but, in the way that life goes, the real story turned out to be Clarina Gomez, who, in her job working for the tourist bureau, spent a week showing me her island.

Spend a week with someone and you learn a few things about them, and what I learned about Clarina was that everywhere we went she was recognized. It’s true, Curacao is not large (some 40 miles long) and Clarina has lived on this block of limestone her entire life, by my guess sixty-some years (it is impolite, and to be honest mildly intimidating, to ask such a distinguished woman her age). But longevity and close proximity to one’s neighbors do not explain what unfolds as Clarina goes through her day. In restaurants, people wave from tables; from doorways they nod hellos; they get up from behind important desks, ducking their heads respectfully as they come forward. When Clarina walks the colorful streets of the Willemstad capital, they stop her. At traffic lights, they roll down their windows and lean across the seat, unleashing a happy torrent of Papiamento. There are times when I am certain that, in their excitement, they’re going to hop right into Clarina’s car, turning a deaf ear to the honking masses.

It is like being with Lady Gaga, but without all the self-obsession and weirdness. Of these people who wave and smile and offer their hand deferentially Clarina says, “Just to see them, it’s a happy day.”

She says this softly, but she is no softy. She commands respect. She brooks no nonsense (a handy skill when traveling with me); when a drunken pan handler approaches us, she gives him her “hard face” (her words) and he veers away. But she says things like, “Oh my goodness”, and in her eyes you see genuine caring, and she reaches into her purse for candies for little children, but not before asking the parents’ permission. She speaks five languages. She remains curious. Currently, she is devouring history books, learning more about her island, although she has likely trod its every inch. She is dushi (sweet). In the evening, our official day done, the phone rings in my hotel room. “If you aren’t too tired,” Clarina says, “I’d like to show you more of our island.”

I pick up my notebook and take the elevator down to the lobby. How can I say I am too tired to learn?

She is retired now, but that doesn’t matter

Juffrouw Gomez, they all say.

Teacher.

"Fog"

Hi Wonderful Readers:

After eight years of work/play between magazine assignments (that pay the bills) my novel "Fog"is about a month away from publication (we're shooting for Memorial Day). It's a strange feeling when the writing is done; relief, excitement and an odd kind of parting because you really fall for the characters, and then you walk away (although they still pad around inside your head). In the case of "Fog", I'm really going to miss Pomp,a terribly evil mooncusser (Don’t worry, if you don’t know what a mooncusser is, you’re in the majority) yes, but a man whose beliefs might not be far from your own. Good and evil blur, don’t they?

For a taste, read the first chapter at www.kenmcalpine.com and watch the video trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EodQzn...

And thanks for reading books, one of life's gifts.

Best, Ken

Find happiness where you can

Here's another piece from the work-in-progress/life-in-progress about life lessons from the ocean. How can we not be touched? There's salt in our veins. I feel a little lost in this massive Goodreads world, but if anyone finds this, thank you for taking the time to read.

Sincerely, Ken

Find happiness where you can

Tucked within the protected confines of Nantucket Sound, Quohog Beach is a beach for young children. As if attempting to make things pleasant for its primary patrons, everything about Quohog Beach is small, from its wee crescent of sand to the pint-size jetty jutting like a blunt thumb into the Sound.
At the moment we are consumed with the beach. We scour the sand, buckets swinging, poking through a tangle of seaweed, broken bits of whelk and moon snail, searching beneath a cloudless blue July sky for pieces of horseshoe crab. These prehistoric creatures once littered Cape Cod in such numbers that they were ground up and used as fertilizer by farmers. From what we observe on the sand their numbers haven’t decreased much, though each crab appears to have been placed atop a firecracker and then scattered by a schizophrenic wind.
No matter. Our plan remains straightforward. We will piece together a horseshoe crab, whole and complete. Cullen and Graham raptly pluck cracker-thin crab bits, placing them gently in their bucket. I follow their example, but with slightly less enthusiasm. I understand the odds. I glance at other parents, flat on their backs in the hot sun.
At six, Cullen runs things. He waves a magisterial hand at his four-year-old brother.
“If we don’t get enough pieces to put together the crab now,” he decrees, “we’ll get the rest later.”
“Uh-huh,” grunts Graham, possibly because he mildly resents being bossed around, possibly because he is sorely bent to one side under the weight of a bucket spilling over with pretty much everything he could pick up.
Cullen strides over to his brother’s bucket, peers in and scowls.
“Crabs aren’t made out of beer cans!”
I wish the beer can was full. My head has been cocked to the sand for two hours. The back of my neck feels like it’s been kicked by a Clydesdale.
Perhaps I slip into sudsy daydream. Cullen looks at us both and harrumphs.
“Am I going to have to do this all by myself?”
We collect jigsaw pieces for another thirty minutes. Not thirty-one minutes, not thirty-two. Any parent of small children understands exactitude. I can’t go a minute longer. I find an excuse called lunch.
The three of us walk up the path to the cottage where we are staying for the week, buckets bumping.
“I think we have the pieces we need,” says Cullen.
“Right,” says Graham.
He is too young for sarcasm.
We march through the front door and continue, as quickly as possible, on through the kitchen, where Kathy is fixing everyone lunch. We are not quick enough.
“You’d better wash whatever that is off their hands,” says Kathy.
I stand in the bathroom, watching Cullen turn a white hand towel black. I may be less attentive the second son around. Eating lunch I notice Graham has something shiny and snail-like on his index finger. I say a silent prayer and he answers it by licking it off.
That night Kathy and I lay in bed. Our sliding screen door opens to the porch. Occasionally a puff of wind brings a smell that makes me wonder if Stephen King is cooking something just outside. Beneath the stars dark shells lay methodically sorted, according to what I don’t know.
“Phew,” I say.
“Maybe you could put them in the yard,” Kathy says, but I know she doesn’t really mean it because she’s smiling as if we’re lying downwind from a potpourri factory.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Another six months and it’ll be a wrap.”
“Anything is possible,” my beautiful bride says to me, and I know why I married her.



The following morning we redirect slightly.
“I want to crab,” says Graham.
Cullen gives a magisterial nod.
“Let’s,” he says.
We have become fascinated with crabbing because frankly nothing, with the possible exception of King Henry VIII, eats with more gusto than crabs do. Also live crabs do more interesting things than dead ones. The small jetty pronging off Quohog Beach is loaded with crabs. We know this because on this, the fourth day of our vacation, we have already been crabbing roughly two thousand times.
We retrieve our buckets from the porch. Before we go, Cullen crouches to arrange a few promising horseshoe pieces.
“Hmmm,” he says, moving the pieces in circles like a centrifugal chess master.
“Hmmm,” says his brother, who at this juncture in time still admires him greatly.
Cullen finishes placing the bits in their proper places. There is something resembling a horseshoe crab body, but there are still great gaps occupied by cedar composite decking.
“There,” says Cullen.
What I see resembles a horse dropping after the Kentucky Derby field has run through it.
Cullen looks to Graham.
“Just a few more pieces,” he says.
“Hmmmm,” says Graham.
Small children wake well before the most conscientious rooster and even earlier on vacation. The world is gray. The light isn’t even up yet. The air is still damp with sea. The beach is empty.
We each carry our own bucket, chicken bits and string inside. I step gingerly along the jetty. The enormous rocks, sectioned in some distant quarry, are liberally colonized by barnacles that jab at the soles of my feet.
Cullen and Graham walk as if strolling across shag carpet. When I reach the end of the jetty Cullen is already crouched, peering into his chosen crevice.
“Breakfast time,” says Cullen, “but not for us.”
Graham is flat on his stomach, his face and the majority of his torso in his crevice of choice.
“What do you see?” I ask.
“I dropped my string.”
After I retrieve it, I tie a chicken piece to each string. The boys accept their strings, solemnly lowering the sacrificial chicken into the dark rift. I spread out the newspaper I brought, and put the remaining chicken pieces on it. Past experience has shown us we’ll quickly need room in our buckets for crabs.
When I finish I squat and watch our sons. They peer into the dark, brows furrowed.
“Come awwwwwwwn,” says Cullen.
Graham’s string jerks.
“Whaaaaaat!” he shrieks. “Caught one! Caught one!”
I have coached them thoroughly in the craft of crabbing. Wait for the crab to latch firmly to the chicken. Bring the string up slowly so the crab doesn’t know it’s being reeled in.
Graham stands straight up. The crab swings to and fro in front of his belly button, a dark pendulum oblivious to its change in circumstance. One claw affixed to the chicken bit, the other claw greedily spoons meat into its wet maw.
Reaching behind the crab, I pinch its body between my thumb and forefinger and pry it, with considerable force, from the now shredded chicken wing. I put it in Graham’s bucket where it makes a mad scrabbling.
“I was careful,” says Graham proudly.
Cullen pretends to ignore all this. His string is limp.
“I caught a crab,” says Graham, who is not yet schooled in subterfuge either.
“You pick up beer cans,” says Cullen.
Just when I start believing that the crabs in Cullen’s crevice have evolved into something wiser, they start leaping at his string as if they’ve suddenly realized they’re aboard the Titanic. They rise from their dark places furiously stuffing down chicken bits, exhibiting not a whiff of self-preservation.
There’s always opportunity for imparting parental wisdom.
“Crabs are called crustaceans,” I say. “Even though their shells are hard, you still need to be really careful. If you break off their claws they won’t be able to eat.”
“If their claw breaks off, a new one grows on,” says Cullen.
“It does?”
“I dropped my string,” says Graham.
The crabs now pour from the jetty like a locust horde, striking wantonly at the chicken bits and each other with harsh clicks. There is a parable here, the downfall wrought by selfishness and greed, but the boys are too young for that. Crabs are also distantly related to insects, but I keep this to myself too because I’m afraid Cullen will correct me.
In short order all three buckets are brimming with clacking crabs.
“We need to empty the buckets,” I say.
“I’ll do it,” says Cullen.
“Pour them out in the water,” I tell him. “You don’t want them cracking their shells on the rocks. You’ll have to lean out a little. Take one bucket at a time, and be careful.”
Perhaps I should be reported to Childhood Protective Services, but the water here is only a few feet deep and I want our boys to stretch.
Cullen inches carefully down the side of the jetty feet first, crab-like himself. When they are young, they follow your directions to the letter. He settles easily on a broad rock washed with a thin skein of surge. The spilling crabs make a sound like a fistful of rocks flung into the water.
I know what to look for next. I grab Graham before he can slide down.
“Your job is to get the buckets when Cullen passes them up,” I say.
His solemn nod assures me this is responsibility enough. But something in his eyes tells me he’s solemn for a different reason.
He looks toward the beach.
“We’re not going to find enough horseshoe crab pieces,” he says.
“We might,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he says.
I want them to believe anything is possible, but I want them to prepare for disappointment too.
“We might not find enough pieces,” I say and I feel something stick in my throat.
We return to crabbing. Cullen stays where he is, but Graham wordlessly moves close to me, sharing my crevice. It is quiet. I hear his small breaths. I feel the butterfly press of his hand on my thigh.
The sun breaks through the dawn clouds, striking the water in three gauzy silver shafts. Together we breathe.
Sometimes life’s pieces fit together in ways you don’t expect.

Do Stupid Things Because You Can

Hi: I'm not sure if anyone will even read this, but it's part of a book-in-progress about life lessons at the ocean's edge. If you do happen across this, thanks so much for reading.

Sincerely, Ken


When I was nineteen my friend Dennis and I drove to the Outer Banks of North Carolina for Thanksgiving. We were in college at the University of Virginia. We had a few days off from school. We drove past gray cities, then slow moving towns, and finally farms, ice-glazed and still. We drove across the wind-whipped Pamlico Sound. It leapt and churned, the water the color of chocolate milk.

We spent our first hour on the Outer Banks looking for the cheapest motel we could find. We found it in Nags Head. We stood at the front counter. The desk clerk looked out the frosted windows to where snow flurries now danced. His eyes took in our car.

“I hope you have the right gear,” he said.

“We do,” I said, and it was only half a lie.

“If you don’t, you’d be stupid to go,” he said.

We paid with a fistful of wrinkled bills. We had a little left for gas, a little for beer, and a little less for food. Food didn’t matter. We had a whole cooked turkey in the cooler we brought into the room. Dennis had cooked the turkey back at the house we shared with two other friends. Dennis loved to cook and he was good at it. Mostly he improvised. He would rummage through the cabinets, using whatever ingredients struck his fancy, making things up as he went along. He combined ingredients that would raise the hairs on the back of a real chef’s neck. He would shake in a little of this and a lot of that. If he used a cookbook I never saw it. I don’t know what he used to season this particular turkey, but whatever it was it was just right; the entire drive down, otherworldly smells tormented us.

The minute we got in the room, we opened the cooler and pulled out the turkey. Honeymooners don’t get down to business faster. Dennis had remembered to bring a platter for the turkey, but I had forgotten the silverware. It didn’t matter. Dennis had outdone himself. In short order everything, including us, smelled of turkey. Outside the wind roared and the snow moved in circles. Inside the heater clattered, and drafts pushed through the walls.

The motel was on the beach. Our room faced east. Over the tops of the dunes we could see the white-capped ocean.

Dennis rarely hesitated. He didn’t hesitate now.

“Let’s go,” he said.

We pulled on our wetsuits. Outside, the snow bit at our faces. It took us longer than it should have to get the surfboards off the car racks. Our fingers were already half frozen.

A small boardwalk crossed the dunes. The snow made a light dusting on the wood. Dennis walked in front of me. To this day I can still see the enormous prints of his bare feet. My own feet ached as much as my hands. Plenty of people surf in the winter but they are generally prepared, covered from head to toe – neoprene hood for the head, neoprene boots and gloves for the feet and hands - in wetsuit. I had lied to the desk clerk. We had brought what we had.

By the time we stepped on to the frozen beach everything ached, but I didn’t feel right about whining. I had no hood, boots or gloves, but at least my wetsuit extended all the way to my ankles. Dennis’s wetsuit reached only to his knees. His calves were turning a curious red.

Snow had gathered in Dennis’s hair. I knew what he would look like when he got old.

On the exposed beach the wind roared even louder. Brown gobbets of foam quivered on the sand.

Dennis stopped. He looked at the ocean, gray and heaving and then he looked to me because there was no one else to consult.

“What’s the water temperature?” he asked.

“Forty-six.”

“Are we stupid?”

“Yes,” I said.

Dennis watched me for another long moment.

“I hope we have enough turkey,” he said, and then he walked into the ocean.

I can’t recall how long we stayed in the water, but it probably wasn’t more than ten minutes. The waves were angry and roared in from every direction, clobbering us and punching the breath from our lungs and spinning us underwater in an oddly quiet brownish-blackness. But we were nineteen, and Dennis was an All-American swimmer with lungs like a Hoover vacuum and we were both so in love with the thrill of riding a wave that all the clobbering was worth it. You see, I had only half lied to the desk clerk. The right gear isn’t just something you buy.

I don’t remember how many waves we caught, but it was certainly less than we could count on one hand, and then we were running up the beach, half laughing and half weeping, partly because we were deathly cold, partly because Dennis jolted up the beach like a man on stilts, his legs now a nauseating shade of purple. Everything burned, and we were alive.

We surfed again the next day.

As I write this it seems like yesterday, but it isn’t. My friend Dennis died yesterday. His lungs killed him. That’s where the cancer started.

It’s stupid not to do the things you can.