Clayton Lindemuth's Blog, page 3

New Novel: TREAD (REBEL NOIR)

All Righty. Yall know that until a book has a number of reviews on Amazon, it’s almost impossible to give it away. SO… I’m giving it away. For a limited time, email me at claylindemuth at gmail dot com for a PDF of TREAD. If you dig it enought to write a quick review, well I’ll appreciate that a lot.

You can get a sense of the writing by checking out Chapter One below. I love the way this novel starts, the pace, the voice. I hope you do too.

Now available on Amazon… 

Within a day on Kindle:

BACK COVER:

On the run from an unplanned murder of a law enforcement officer at his camp outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, Nat Cinder blazes to Phoenix on his Triumph Rocket. Soon he stumbles onto a packet of photos showing Governor Virginia Rentier lustily paired with three high-ranking women in state government.

Though Cinder and the Governor clashed sixteen years before when his wife died in a car accident, Cinder prefers to keep his dislike of Rentier focused on her politics. He’s too busy blaming himself for his wife’s death, fighting his way back into his son’s life, and leading a crew of lazy secessionist misfits to become involved in an intrigue about the Governor’s sex partners. 

But when the bullets fly, Nat asks questions, and learns that his sudden war with the Governor traces back sixteen years. And that the photos were put in his path by a provocateur who knows Nat Cinder’s a rough-hewn rebel with enough weaponry cached across Arizona to start a revolution, and that the secret at the bottom of his wife’s death will turn him into a powder keg. 

TREAD is what fans of Clayton Lindemuth’s “thrilling, visceral, and unsparing” prose (Publishers Weekly) have been waiting for: a novel that pairs his lean noir voice with the explosive tempo of the modern political thriller.

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

Flagstaff at sundown. I drink a quarter of my flask of Jack in two gulps. There’s a crew of secessionists in the cabin behind me, bitching about the same old. It’s endless, and that’s why it’s got to end.

I’m on the porch wondering when I should tell the boys to get lost. They got guns but won’t use them. They got the same reasons to be pissed as I do. A tax code seventeen thousand pages long, for shit’s sake. But they’d rather suck beer and fart than defend themselves against the almighty Machine. And what am I doing? Sitting here drinking whiskey and thinking about a dead woman’s feet.

One more gulp of Jack and I’m going in. The only one that has any stones is George Murray—the bastard’s lugging around a set of cannonballs. The IRS closed his bait shop and he’s stockpiling black powder. He’s raising a fuss and I want to hear it.

“We ought to firebomb ‘em,” Murray says. “Hit the IRS, courthouses, Fish and Game. Then they’ll know what we’re about.”

I stand at the door beside a floodlight swarming with moths.  Murray and Charlie Yellow Horse, a white man with a sixteenth of Apache blood on his mother’s side, are nose to nose.

“Fucking moron,” Yellow Horse says.

“Talk!  Talk!  Let’s blow some shit up!”

It’s about damn time they show a little spirit. So far all the boys have done is snivel. They come from all over. One smokes Dominican cigars and the rest chew Copenhagen, but when it comes to bearing arms, they each take their panties off one leg at a time and when their asses are bare, they bend over.

Except Murray. Praise Jesus.

The fire lights surrounding trees in an orange glow. I get the feeling we’re not alone. Might be a chipmunk in the leaves, but this kind of group attracts attention. All we do is talk, but it’s the wrong kind of talk.

Tree branches break the outline of the moon and the breeze carries a storm. The sky flashes but no clap follows. Electric is in the air.

Murray talks and my head snaps back to the show.

“I’m sick of being a goddamn government mule,” he says. “Any of you ever have the IRS chain your shop shut? Pay this, pay that! I’m sick of it!”

“Why don’t you do something about it, shithead?”

“Well, well. The Indian who dyes his hair black is talking tough. Why don’t you reach down and see if those wampum nuts of yours are big enough to join me?”

“Behold the modern White Man,” Yellow Horse says, and jabs Murray’s shoulder with his closed fist. “Talk.”

Cowboy boots shuffle on the plank floor as fat men slide back in a hurry. Yellow Horse shoves Murray through the screen door. Murray stutter steps past me and falls off the porch. He’s a heavy man, but Yellow Horse has thrown him. He rolls and leaps to his feet.

Yellow Horse steps outside and they square off in front of the fire.

Someone cries, “Whooo-hooo!”

Yellow Horse is quiet now. He wishes he was a real Apache starving on lichens and grass, killing men with knives, flitting across the rocks like a ghost. Instead, he’s a grad student at ASU writing papers about the evils of assimilation, wearing a leather necklace with a silver arrow as the jewel.

Murray puffs his chest and throws his shoulders back, fists high, arms parallel, like an Irish pugilist. And I know Yellow Horse is praying to Red Cloud to make him a man, just one damn time.

Murray has the pounds, but Yellow Horse is sinewy and lithe, his stance like a coiled spring. His hair catches firelight and the illusion is strong. He circles Murray.

Yellow Horse lunges. They lock arms on shoulders and dance around the fire.

“Gittim Murray!” Merle cries.

In a minute they’re gasping tired and I imagine this fight will reach the back-slapping, good-buddy stage before anyone bleeds. Sure enough, Murray steps back and drops his arms.

“You don’t know when to stop running your dick-licker,” Yellow Horse says, and drives his fist into Murray’s jaw. “Maybe if I bust it, they’ll wire it shut.” He throws another and the sound is wet with blood.

Murray touches his mouth and his hand goes to his chest like a man patting a wallet he can’t feel.

Yellow Horse sends a flicker of a look to me. Our eyes lock.

Yeah, I saw it.

I watch the woods again; hair stands on my neck. You get a sixth sense as a Ranger; I have a seventh.

Yellow Horse charges and grabs Murray by his arms and jerks him forward. Murray falls and throws him with a practiced move—the kind you see on TV. They roll and Yellow Horse is back on top with his knees pinning Murray. Yellow Horse punches him below the right eye. Murray bucks, but can’t marshal the strength to throw him. Yellow Horse thumps him again.

Maybe there’s hope for this group.

I take a couple slugs of Jack. I’ll need a refill soon. I’ve felt like I’ve been in a river for the last fifteen years, sucked along to a destiny that includes this kind of action. Maybe these men have something to do with my end, after all.

Yellow Horse sits on Murray’s chest and gives him a sudden jerk like a dog snapping a rabbit’s back. Murray’s shirt rips open and a flat black rectangle is taped to his chest.

Yellow Horse tears it off and tosses it to me.

“Gee, Murray. This ain’t too good,” I say.

“It’s a voice recorder,” Yellow Horse says.

“You didn’t get this gizmo at Radio Shack, didja?” I say.

Murray coughs bloody spit and hocks it to the side. “Just trying to protect myself.”

“How’s that?”

“I was afraid y’all’d say I was instigating shit here.”

Yellow Horse pops Murray in the jaw. His knuckles glow red when he pulls back and wails one more time.

“You was the one talkin about blowin shit up. Wouldn’t that be entrapment? Murray?”

Yellow Horse looks at me and his eyes pass to the group behind me.

“You’re under arrest for conspiracy and sedition,” Murray says.

“Sedition? They didn’t even get the Rosenburgs for sedition,” Yellow Horse says. He grins; he’s holding a law enforcement officer’s life in his hands. He’s lost himself and in this moment has a chance to measure against an old standard.

The group has ten members. We haven’t named ourselves a militia or printed some redneck banner to fly on our Jeeps. We haven’t voted for leaders, though they all know I’m the one with the dough. None has ever taken action on behalf of the others, save springing for a kegger. And yet the central government—the Machine, as Yellow Horse calls it—finds us dangerous.

It’s the worst confirmation. My country’s made me its enemy.

It’s formal, now.

Yellow Horse watches my face as fire reflects little orange dots in his eyes. His jaw is frozen: a white man transforms himself into the savage he always wanted to be. He’s fluttering on the cusp of metamorphosis, and just when I think his courage will fail him and leave him with nothing but a good story, his hand falls to his side.            

I jump. “No!”

With blurring speed Yellow Horse unsheathes a boot knife.

His arm whips forward and he slices Murray’s throat. Murray writhes and gargles blood; Yellow Horse flips the blade in his hand and drives it into Murray’s forehead. He stands and turns to the rest of us, trembling with courage.

“Jesus,” I say, though the Almighty had nothing to do with it. One of the boys behind me throws up on a lounge chair.

Murray is dead but shaking. I smell piss and blood and remember Gretchen, my wife, suspended above me in a flipped Ford Bronco.

The smell just about breaks me and I turn aside.

Yellow Horse watches me. I finish my flask and wipe my mouth with my sleeve.

“Well,” I say, “they’re on us. This group is done.”

 

X

 

By dusk the temperature had fallen from mid-afternoon highs of one hundred-twenty to a reasonable hundred-five. The crowd cheered Governor Virginia Rentier as she cut the yellow sash. It fluttered to the ground and she stepped to the surveyor’s mark, cognizant as kiln-baked clay pressed pebbles against her soles.

Mick Patterson, Chief of Staff, placed the handle of a round nosed shovel in her palm. The crowd stilled.

“Here?” She indicated a stake with a pink ribbon. A bronze man with day laborer shoulders and a black five o’clock shadow nodded.

Holding the shovel vertical, she dropped it. The earth rejected the point without a chip.

“Eh, Meez Governor—you wan mi hombre bust ee dirt?” A different man from the crowd spoke. He wore ragged flannel and his back was stooped. Even in the purple street-lamp glow, his face was crinkled like the scorched clay underfoot. Rentier followed his eyes, trod a few steps, and returned holding a pickaxe level at her hips.

The second man nodded at her. The first grinned.

She swung the pick overhead; her left hand slid along the shaft and she whipped her back and buttocks. Her heel broke. A small cloud of dust popped free as the metal shank plunged to the rounded swell of the handle. Vibration stung her hand.

Holding the man’s eyes, she lifted with her knees and pried loose a heavy chunk of baked clay.

The stooped man smiled wide and his compadres cheered.

Votes.

Rentier held their eyes, pair by pair, until she owned them. Finally her gaze settled on Dick Clyman. The Republican Minority Leader of the Arizona House stood with the others, his pale Anglo face distinct from the Hispanic throng, his mouth lopsided in a Dick Cheney grin.

This wasn’t his kind of event, and Rentier was suddenly aware that she stood lopsided.

Her fingers closed toward an old burn scar high on her right cheekbone. She swept the willful hand through her hair, waved, and kicked off both shoes. The group erupted. Photo bulbs flashed white under the streetlamp glow. She steeled herself to step across the sharp pebbles.

“I—”

A frenzy of cheers silenced her.

She passed the pick to Patterson, took the shovel and tossed aside a spade of loose dirt. Camera flashes sparkled like a Flagstaff snowstorm.

“I am honored,” she said, and waited for their whooping and clapping to subside. “I am honored to break ground for the Arizona Center for Undocumented Americans. Across the street, the Chavez Center stands as a proud reminder of the Hispanic community’s contributions to Arizona. Now the ACUA will join the fight to expand the civil rights of the Undocumented, hear their voice, and amplify their voice.”

More cheers.

“The Arizona legislature will soon pass the Vallejo Bill, and I will sign it. I will take your fight all the way to the White House. May God, Arizona, and the United States bless you!”

She stepped away. Patterson and a contingent of state police security men shepherded her toward the limousine.

“Governor!”

It was Clyman.

Chief of Staff Patterson stepped forward to deflect the minority leader. A state trooper opened the limousine door and Rentier slipped to the seat. She watched Patterson and Clyman between elbows and torsos that gathered at the vehicle until Patterson leaned close to the window, his blank eyes searching the darkened glass. She lowered it.

“Clyman wants a meeting tomorrow morning,” Patterson said. “It’s urgent.”

“I can’t. You know that. I’m with the Girl Scouts tomorrow morning.”

“Governor, you need to see him.”

Patterson’s Marine Corps bearing, like his flat top haircut and Hitler mustache, touched a nerve. His cropped grey hair often made her think of the day her father burned her—it was one of the reasons she kept Patterson around.

She touched her cheek. Plastic surgery, concealer, foundation, powder, and still her fingertips found the shiny-smooth cigarette scar.

“Mick, it just struck me you look like Adolph Hitler. Shave your moustache.”

“What?”

“Tell Clyman to get in. He can ride back to the tower with me.”

Patterson’s jaw clenched.

“What?” she said.

He turned away.

A moment later Clyman was beside her. His arms poked from his barrel chest like legs on a blood-gorged tick. He’d escaped a childhood in Jerome, Arizona with his closed mind intact—before gays, bikers, and painters made the mountain copper town chic. He was a lineman on the Sun Devil football team in the seventies, then matriculated to a Catholic law school in Pittsburgh. Now he was a fat Republican who panted after climbing into a car seat.

He was too close. He regarded her with wide-set eyes that lorded a secret.

She drew her knees together. “I hope this isn’t about Vallejo.”

His lips thinned and the right side curved upward. She’d seen that look years ago, when he defeated a minimum wage increase she’d asked a junior representative to submit on the House floor. The same leer graced the front page of the Phoenix Times when he lambasted her for visiting Mexican President Vicente Fox. Behind those pinprick eyes, his brain was as tight as a sparrow’s ass. Why did conservatives elect such ugly men?

Clyman shifted. “I have information that might help you avoid a public relations problem. Thought we might come to an understanding.”

She caught the driver’s glance in the rearview mirror. “Mitch, I’m sorry. Will you raise the divider?”

The window climbed and nestled to the roof.

“What are we talking about, Dick?”

“Veto Vallejo.”

“No way. That bill has a long history, and I’m going to be the governor that signs it.”

“It’ll kill the state.”

“Only a Republican would say more power in the hands of the people is bad. Or are they the wrong kind of people?”

“Why make it good for illegals to be here? Why make it easy?”

“We’ve disenfranchised these people while living off their sweat. They pay the same taxes you do. Some fight your party’s wars. You don’t have anything that can make me rethink this, Dick.”

“Who franchised them in the first place? They broke our laws coming here, and aren’t entitled to a damn thing, Virginia. They don’t have a stake.”

The limousine swept through a turn and she cast her hand to the seat. He looked at it too long.

“We’ve argued this to death in the papers. Talk radio. The House floor. Why stake a pro-slavery position? Twenty-two states in the past had no citizenship test to vote. The country did fine.”

“That so? I have a different story. My mother—seventy-five years old—comes home from the grocery store. Finds two spics busted in. They knock her around, tie her so tight her hands turn blue and rob her blind. When the police catch the perps, not only are they illegals—they’ve been caught and released twice before! Like goddam fish!”

“I didn’t know about your mother.”

“She had gangrene. Doctors had to amputate her hand to save her life.”

Rentier drank water. Stared forward, then at Clyman.

Clyman’s face changed. “We can be friends.”

She waited. The car turned to a highway onramp and accelerated.

“There’s photos floating around,” he said, “and I hear someone blackmailed you. You know, compromising photos. Queer stuff. If word gets to other Republicans—hell, Democrats—they’ll cry for impeachment. That’s the last thing I want. I think you and I can work together. Am I communicating with you?”

Rentier studied his face. Clyman smiled.

The Secretary of State—who became governor if Rentier became incapacitated—was a Republican. Clyman didn’t want her removed because he thought he could control her.

“And you can make this problem go away?”

“No; I don’t have the photos. I’m not even sure they exist. Let’s say if you and I were allies on Vallejo, you might assume my help in this matter.”

It was her fault, in a way. Heat flushed her face; her scar pulsed.

“Dick?”

“Yeah?”

“Put those pictures in your personal collection, right next to the Vaseline. It’s the best use you’re going to get out of them.”

The limo stopped at the glass doors to the entrance to the Executive Tower. She rapped the glass divider and it lowered. “Park in the garage and call a cab for the Minority Leader to get back to the Capitol.”

 

X

      

Yellow Horse drives a pick into the ground.  We’ve been up all night and I’m running on fumes. We took Forest Road Forty-Four deep into the woods outside Flagstaff; I looked at his gas gauge to make sure we’d make it out. We came to a place so arbitrary and lonely it seemed fit for a clandestine burial.

The pick wedges between a rock and a root. “Son of a bitch,” Yellow Horse says. He pries it loose.

The body rests under a tarp on the ground, one leg splayed and visible in the moonlight.

I didn’t used to be like this. Before Gretchen died I managed a section at Honeywell. Had an MBA and a secretary named Cyndi.

I left for work at four a.m. and always kissed Gretchen’s forehead. That last morning she had her leg kicked out from under the blanket. I passed around the bed in the dark and her toes caught my suit pant. I rubbed her sole and along her outer arch. Her feet always hurt, maybe from the weight of being pregnant. Her foot was soft as her inner thigh. She died that night.

I kick Murray’s leg under the tarp.

“You could’ve let him go,” I say.

“And let the Machine grind me to dust? Inject my veins with poison?”

“They don’t do that for talk.”

“It was the wrong kind of talk.”

I drink from my flask. “Keep digging. It’ll be dawn soon.”

 

 

Murray’s blood has curdled in the bed of the truck; the clots glisten like cherry pie filling flung with a spatula and worked with an oil rag.

“No problem,” Yellow Horse says. 

“They have chemicals that make blood show up.”

“Not after I take a torch to it.”

“You might try Clorox.”

He shakes his head and his eyes light up; they don’t fit the face of a man that just murdered another. “This is a 1972 F-150,” he says. “It gets burned.”

“I figure you have a couple of hours. I’m surprised they weren’t on us when you stuck him.”

“It was a recorder, not a transmitter,” he says.

Yellow Horse grabs Murray’s arms and I get his feet. His ass drags as we work him to the pit. The body’s getting stiff. We drop him in.

“You better pull that blade out,” I say.

“Why?”

I can’t think of a reason but it doesn’t seem right to send him off with a knife in his forehead, so I jump in the hole and yank at it. His jaw falls open and each pull pumps dead air through his lungs. It stinks. I climb out.

Yellow Horse shovels dirt on Murray. I suppose he thinks he’ll be able to tuck away the killing in a corner of his mind. Or maybe he thinks he’ll revel in it. But human beings aren’t built that way. He’ll be running from the law and himself the rest of his life.

We cover the grave with dirt and pine needles and soggy oak leaves, then get in the truck and head back to Flag. Last night’s storm fizzled at the damp wind stage. Wet air collects on the windshield.   

I look at Yellow Horse and wonder if he’s plotting his next moves, maybe running to Mexico this afternoon.

I’m going to sleep. No one but Yellow Horse knows me as Nat Cinder. The secessionists think I’m Tom Davis. When I get out of this truck, I disappear.

 “You can drop me off here.” I say. Yellow Horse pulls to the curb two blocks from the house where I left my bike—where I plan to spend the morning in the arms of a skinny blonde named Liz.  She lives with Rosie, a big-boned woman liable to quote the Constitution the way some women quote psalms. I hear “we the people in order to form” and I get a chub like to club a seal. Liz and Rosie are rednecks, bar women prone to throaty laughter; they view tattoos as the same kind of vanity as big earrings and big hair. They embrace all three.

I stand beside the truck with the door open. The sun’s been up for hours but the air is brisk and damp.

“You’d best get out of town,” I say. “See what shakes out.”

“There were a lot of witnesses,” Yellow Horse says. “Eight, counting you.”

“And half of them fairly new to the group. We’re gonna have to start over. One person at a time. Work in cells.”

I expect him to turn away when I open the door, but his eyes are narrow. “You gonna be alright?”

“What do you mean, Charlie?”

“Last night. I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

“Wait a good while until you get in touch,” I say.

He pulls away and I walk toward the house. Under leafy maples, shade outweighs light and brief splashes of sun warm my skin. I need sleep and I think of Liz. It ain’t love but she beats Miss Palm and her sisters. I see her like I remember her, legs spread, and just as I can damn near smell her musk, tires squeal and two brown sedans swerve front and back of Yellow Horse’s truck. They skid to a stop. Four guys in suits jump out waving guns. They wear sunglasses in the shade and they converge on the driver’s side door.     

Yellow Horse bolts from the passenger side and sprints across a lawn to the woods behind. The men fan out and chase. After a few seconds the trees hide them, but their shouts mark their paths. 

There’s no one on the street either direction; no parked cars. I trot across a lawn and behind a house. A Rottweiler lunges but a chain jerks him short. I jump a half-rotted fence that almost collapses and cross a lawn to a parallel avenue. FBI men bellow in the distance. Yellow Horse used to be a distance runner and I have the feeling these patent-leather chumps will be sucking wind inside a mile. 

Liz and Rosie live in a small house with sooty white siding and a rusted bike collection under the eaves. I approach from the back yard and push my Triumph from the porch. It’s a cold-blooded machine and I choke it. While the engine steadies out, I rap the back door. 

Liz stands in her underwear and a shrunken t-shirt with a mug of coffee. Her legs bear the sheen of a fresh shave and I take a third of a second to debate taking her back to the room.

“You better clear out,” I say. “FBI was layin’ for Yellow Horse. They’ll be checking houses if they don’t get him. They were outside, so they know this place.”

“You takin’ off without a goodbye kiss, Tom?” Liz says. Rosie watches from the kitchen window, her face illegible.

I give Liz a peck on the lips and she grabs my mess. She smells of cigarettes.

“Get out,” I tell her, and drink from the mug.

“How much time do we have?”

“Not much.”

“Well stick around. Can’t I ride with you?”

“No.”

She slams the door and the pane rattles.

I told her my name was Tom Davis when I met her at a bar a couple years ago. Thomas Jefferson and Jefferson Davis. I’d been scouting Flagstaff to get an understanding of grassroots thinking on secession. I had the time and the bucks, and figured other folks saw the same freedom meltdown. After Ruby Ridge and Waco, you don’t let government know who you are or what you’re doing. I set up a fake name and did a few credit card transactions to support it. I have two more identities in Phoenix.

One more gulp of coffee and I climb on the bike—a Triumph Rocket. It has a car-sized engine but no cup holder. I take a final drink and toss the mug to the lawn, then cut a mark across the grass and over the sidewalk.

At the junction with Maryland Street a black sedan pulls to the corner on my right. A suit watches me from inside. I drive straight and the car turns left. He stays in the open, an FBI harassment technique. It’s also what disinterested strangers do, but I know better. 

I take Madison and then Santa Clara; the car falls back but remains in sight. He weaves. There’s no traffic so I figure he’s fiddling with the radio or a cell phone. Checking his email. One more turn and I’m on the road to Interstate 17.  I’ve made a loop and I’m parallel to where Yellow Horse left his truck and sprinted into the woods. If it was me, I’d be sticking to the flat ground and making distance. He’s covered a mile and a half, if I’m right.

Soon the houses thin to one every hundred yards and the macadam weaves between a dirt bank on the left and a hollow on the right.  Tall trees choke the undergrowth with permanent shade. It’s like driving through the dank air of a tunnel. 

Yellow Horse runs like a raped ape to my right. The air whips his hair and I recall last night, when the illusion was strong.  He’s in his element. If he lives only ten minutes, he’ll be glad these were his last. I’m not quite so exhilarated.

Three men follow at a distance; their white shirts flash through the trees. I bump my horn and Yellow Horse angles to the bike. The sedan behind me accelerates.

We meet fifty yards ahead. I skid on the pavement and Yellow Horse leaps aboard, rocking my balance. I pop the clutch and the bike rights itself. The engine screams like an dago tenor with a wine bottle rammed up his ass. I yell, “hang on!” too late and Yellow Horse claws at my side to keep from falling off the back. The bike explodes. The rear tire chirps; the front tire lifts. It’s as close to instant travel as man can come. I push it hard—the car is right on us and there’s a hand with a gun sticking out the window.

We bank right and left and when we’ve gone a mile I swerve on a left fork and press the bike again. The wind has fists and bugs feel like sling-shot rocks. Yellow Horse doesn’t have sunglasses and he buries his face to my back. I come to another turn and take it. We’ve lost our pursuers and I skid to a stop. 

“If I was you I’d visit Mexico,” I say.

“If I was you I’d get rid of that yellow flag.”

I look at the back of the bike where I’ve mounted a small yellow pennant—the Gadsden flag—with a coiled rattlesnake and the words, DON’T TREAD ON ME.

Yellow Horse slaps my back and disappears into the woods.

I figure every federal dick in Flagstaff and Phoenix is scouring the land looking for a Triumph Rocket. They have cars, motorcycles, and thanks to Janet Reno, Abrams tanks. They probably have helicopters after us by now and I won’t be shocked if the NSA offers up a satellite. 

The sum of the facts is I’m not taking Interstate Seventeen back to Phoenix.  I wouldn’t make it to Mund’s Park.   

I head down 89A through Oak Creek Canyon toward Sedona and mix with tourist traffic. The famous red rocks stand bright in the sky; emerald grass ripples as cars pass. The double lane winds along the creek. I’m behind a string of cars a mile long—people that saw the Grand Canyon yesterday and will visit the O.K. Corral tomorrow—when a helicopter flying NAP of the earth pounds overhead. I hunker down without thinking and when I look up I’m under heavy tree cover.

The bird continues along the road and by the time it banks right it looks more like a dragonfly than a chopper. I can’t see any markings. Mountain-sized boulders block the left, Oak Creek the right. Every turn dead-ends in fifty feet. I go straight but watch the sky. 

One of the witnesses called the FBI. Like Yellow Horse said, Murray wore a recorder, not a transmitter. Unless it had some kind of GPS, which I wouldn’t put past the wily sonsabitches, there’s no other way they know Murray’s dead.

I could turn on Yellow Horse and save my ass, but what kind of choice is that? When I break things down to black and white, the grays are obvious for what they are.

Two miles before Sedona, on the right, a stone wall gaps at a driveway with a twelve-foot gate. The top of the worked iron rolls into an eagle crest, wings spread as if braking for prey; outstretched talons hanging ready to rend whoever passes unauthorized through the gates. 

A hundred yards distant, at the top of a knoll, a log cabin with a wraparound deck peeks through the trees. It dates to 1891, built by one of the first settlers in Sedona. A later owner planted an orchard on the field to the right, and between us, Oak Creek gurgles over rocks.

The governor of Arizona, Virginia Rentier, escapes the desert here. She could be inside right now, cutting a deal with another political cutthroat or scoring a business transaction. A security element patrols the cabin whether she’s there or not.

I’ve mused about this ranch.

In Sedona, tourists fight for parking spaces and wander with cameras and plastic shopping bags, searching for meaning at souvenir shops, tarot readers, psychic healers, and food service joints. Want a genuine Navajo trinket? Here, from China with love. Mexican blankets and Baja jackets, five bucks each, also from China. Who knew China was so racially diverse?

Nobel Prize-winning economists tell us the global economy is a positive thing; it isn’t a zero sum game. But deep inside, I can’t help but think there’s something good about being able to make our own trinkets.

Tree cover thins after Sedona. I follow 89 to Cottonwood and cut across to Jerome. The old copper town tugs at my heart; climbing the switchbacks I pass eight biker bars. The air chills and my hands grow stiff. I stop at the rest area at the crest and take a leak, then replace the lost fluid with fresh Jack Daniel’s from my flask. Back in the midst of trees, I park the bike in the sun and think. I’d be smart to hole up. I’m confident they don’t have my name, but my bike marks a trail like fresh blood on snow.

I have a place near my trailer on the outskirts of Phoenix. Maybe I’ll make it. 

 

What does GOD say about money?

So what does God say about money?

Is debt evil?

If we tithe a lot, will God make us rich?

Does God want us in fifteen year mortgages?

 

I’ve released a new book that is not directly intended for my regular Noir audience.

It’s called The LORD and Money, and it is available on Amazon as a Kindle book and paperback.

I’ve been in the financial services industry for fifteen years, twelve as a ChFC and CLU (Chartered Financial Consultant and Chartered Life Underwriter) and it dawned on me last year that the people I help take financial advice from a lot of different places, but rarely the Bible. I set out to understand what the Bible says about money, and ended up writing a book and a seminar on the subject. Remarkably, what God said many thousands of years ago is just as relevant in today’s world of credit cards, 401(k)’s, and hedge funds, and boils down to a fairly simple formula that anyone can apply.

The book contains about 250 scriptures on 28 money-related topics, as well as 11 commentaries. In my experience as a financial planner I can assure you that even the most financially unhealthy households can right themselves by applying God’s principles.

The LORD and Money does not discuss current financial tools–I’ve read the Bible all the way through a couple of times and I’ve never seen a single word about term life insurance or fifteen year mortgages. But the Bible does offer principles for living and dealing with money that, once learned, will form a foundational understanding that will allow anyone to make principled financial decisions.

As an additional promotion, the Kindle version will be free from July 6 through July 10, 2014. Please let everyone at your church know.

How does it happen that the author of the brutal Cold Quiet Country is a budding Christian apologist? That’s a long story, but the root of it is that as long as God is the best explanation for the resurrection of Christ, I can do nothing else. In some ways I’m like an animal trapped by bars of logic and reason. No explanation–save that Christ is the Son of God–answers all the historical facts surrounding the life of Christ, the empty tomb, and the growth of the church. Science is forever changing what it calls truth, but history is history. Things happened that demand the existence of God.

I’m still confused by the hideousness of certain aspects of the human condition, and will continue to render fictional worlds with all the brutality of the real. But at the same time I’m convinced the ugliness that surrounds us results from human free will and the consequences of human beings choosing evil over good.

And I’m also convinced that God hears us when we call to Him, and that the Spirit of God indwelling the hearts of believers is real. It just so happens that most of us do a rotten job of heeding His advice, which is why it’s rare that a Christian would object when a disbeliever calls us hypocrites. Yeah, we know better than you. Trust us. That’s kinda what it’s all about.

The LORD and Money part of a growing ministry that I’m developing: providing no-cost seminars to churches, so that attendees walk away with a PDF of the book and numerical proof of the validity of the financial principles. My hope is that I’ll be able to help folks study the Bible, extract its financial wisdom, and make better financial decisions. If you can help me spread the word, I will be in your debt.

So cheers. I hope you get value out of The LORD and Money.

The post What does GOD say about money? appeared first on Clayton Lindemuth.

What does GOD say about money? FREE PDF: the LORD and Money

So what does God say about money?

Is debt evil?

If we tithe a lot, will God make us rich?

Does God want us in fifteen year mortgages?

 

I’ve released a new book that is not directly intended for my regular Noir audience.

It’s called The LORD and Money, and you can download the PDF free, here. Download

Current downloads: 10

If you download The LORD and Money, I’d appreciate if you’d consider reviewing it on Amazon.

The LORD and Money is also available on Amazon as a Kindle book and paperback.

I’ve been in the financial services industry for fifteen years, twelve as a ChFC and CLU (Chartered Financial Consultant and Chartered Life Underwriter) and it dawned on me last year that the people I help take financial advice from a lot of different places, but rarely the Bible. I set out to understand what the Bible says about money, and ended up writing a book and a seminar on the subject. Remarkably, what God said many thousands of years ago is just as relevant in today’s world of credit cards, 401(k)’s, and hedge funds, and boils down to a fairly simple formula that anyone can apply.

The book contains about 250 scriptures on 28 money-related topics, as well as 11 commenataries. In my experience as a financial planner I can assure you that even the most financially unhealthy households can right themselves by applying God’s principles.

The LORD and Money does not discuss current financial tools–I’ve read the Bible all the way through a couple of times and I’ve never seen a single word about term life insurance or fifteen year mortgages. But the Bible does offer principles for living and dealing with money that, once learned, will form a foundational understanding that will allow anyone to make principled financial decisions.

As an additional promotion, the Kindle version will be free from July 6 through July 10, 2014. Please let everyone at your church know.

How does it happen that the author of the brutal Cold Quiet Country is a budding Christian apologist? That’s a long story, but the root of it is that as long as God is the best explanation for the resurrection of Christ, I can do nothing else. In some ways I’m like an animal trapped by bars of logic and reason. No explanation–save that Christ is the Son of God–answers all the historical facts surrounding the life of Christ, the empty tomb, and the growth of the church. Science is forever changing what it calls truth, but history is history. Things happened that demand the existence of God.

I’m still confused by the hideousness of certain aspects of the human condition, and will continue to render fictional worlds with all the brutality of the real. But at the same time I’m convinced the ugliness that surrounds us results from human free will and the consequences of human beings choosing evil over good.

And I’m also convinced that God hears us when we call to Him, and that the Spirit of God indwelling the hearts of believers is real. It just so happens that most of us do a rotten job of heeding His advice, which is why it’s rare that a Christian would object when a disbeliever calls us hypocrites. Yeah, we know better than you. Trust us. That’s kinda what it’s all about.

The LORD and Money part of a growing ministry that I’m developing: providing no-cost seminars to churches, so that attendees walk away with a PDF of the book and numerical proof of the validity of the financial principles. My hope is that I’ll be able to help folks study the Bible, extract its financial wisdom, and make better financial decisions. If you can help me spread the word, I will be in your debt.

So cheers. I hope you download The LORD and Money, and that you get value out of it.

YWriter Review: free Book Writing Software

YWriter Review: free Book Writing Software

I downloaded yWriter about a year ago because it was free and I was looking for a better way to handle a novel-sized document than Microsoft Word. My experience after switching from Word 2007 to 2013 was bad. The program froze a lot, took a long time to load a 100,000 word document, and hesitated with every command, almost like a punk lieutenant unsure if I was really the boss.

yWriter is radically different from Microsoft Word. The programs are designed with different things in mind. Whereas Word allows you a nearly infinite array of options for formatting a document, it does a terrible job of helping you organize a document. The longer your story, the more difficult it becomes to manage. Word allows you to add links and a table of contents, and keep the contents up on the sidebar so you can navigate more quickly. That’s great, so far as it goes. But yWriter does much more.

You can download yWriter here.

Tweet: I found a kick butt free novel writing program here. http://ctt.ec/iJ802+

I’m not a yWriter expert, and the program has a lot of functionality I didn’t use, such as a handy way to keep track of details about characters and locations. But I did write the rough draft of my last novel STRONG AT THE BROKEN PLACES (which I’ll release this summer) on yWriter. I learned to use the program by bumbling around, making errors–which means that it’s not too difficult to learn. You can also refer to the wiki on how to use the software, located here.

My expectations weren’t high. Seriously, free book writing software? Let’s just say I kept my expectations low so that I wouldn’t be disappointed.

I was very pleasantly surprised. This is what the program looks like populated with a rough draft of a novel.

book writing software review

 

Getting Around yWriter

On the left you have every chapter, the word count for the chapter, and the number of scenes in the chapter. Then a running total word count, and a brief description of the chapter. The bottom left shows a detailed chapter description, which I didn’t use. Because this novel is about an ultramarathon runner solving a murder mystery while running the race, I found it useful to note each chapter with what mile my protagonist was on. To add an additional chapter, go to the main menu, click Chapter, and Add New.

The top chapter on the left is highlighted in gray. This is the chapter that everything to the right refers back to. If you look at the top of the page, center to right, you’ll see the scenes that are in that chapter, in this case the Prologue and Mile 26. To add another scene, you guessed it. Main menu, click and click. When setting up the scene you choose whose viewpoint it is in, which is a handy thing to see beside the scene name. You can also note the exact date and time, down to the minute, the scene takes place in, where it takes place, and every other key piece of organizational info. This is helpful, as you’ll see below.

The prologue is highlighted in gray, meaning it is the scene that is operative in the sizable text area below. You can’t edit the text that comprises the scene from this view. Instead, double click on the scene heading and a window pops up that looks like a basic word processor–just the stuff you need. See the screen shot below.

That black triangle? Press it and your computer will read your text out loud for you. Granted, Microsoft Anna sounds like a robot, but she’s cool in a sterile way:

 

http://www.claytonlindemuth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014-03-09_11-22-50_11-22_230010000_vc.wav

 

You can do the regular stuff that you can do on Word. You can format the font, size, spacing, drag and drop to edit, and find and replace. Word count is all over the place, on each scene, running total on the left side with each chapter, and bottom right.

One nifty feature is that black triangle pointed rightward. Click it and your program will make typewriter sounds… so you can close your eyes and imagine you’re Ernest Hemingway, if that’s how you roll. Incidentally, the title STRONG AT THE BROKEN PLACES is a Hemingway quote. 

 

http://www.claytonlindemuth.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2014-03-09_11-19-53_11-19_370010000_vc.wav

 

 

 

I found yWriter superior to Word in several big ways.

First, access to information:

Organization is one of the biggest challenges a novelist faces. Keeping track of the million things that are going on, the plots, subplots, character arcs, who wants what and what stands in the way, and how the motivations are changing. Oh, and how old the protagonist was in the first flashback, so that his age progression is right by the ninth. Did he break his right leg or his left? And where did I put the scar that looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud?

That’s a lot of stuff to keep in your head. Writing on Word, I had to write a rough draft in a flurry of activity, so everything would be fresh. Even then, I had pages and pages of notes tacked to the end of the manuscript. I often had to do word searches to find the info I needed to make sure new text didn’t contradict the old–and then another word search to find the text I was working on when the question arose. When you write in multiple points of view and a dozen timelines, you spend as much energy double-checking yourself as writing.

Ywriter solves all of that by giving you efficient access to the information.

This screen shot shows my notes area. Under the heading Project Notes, I made note pages for different reasons so the info I needed was only a click away. Every time I thought of something I needed to add to the story–such as when I decided the protagonist’s sister needed to be confused on Hydrocodone, I made a note under “Story Still Needs” to remind myself to add her drug habit to an earlier chapter, so it wouldn’t be a surprise later on. Another example: when I needed to know how far my protagonist should have traveled, based on his pace, I went to the Splits note, which is the one shown below.

 

 

Second, Getting around and Moving Stuff

The second way I found yWriter an exceptional improvement over Word has to do with getting around the document and moving text.

In Microsoft Word, if you want to jump from scene to scene, you have to set up a table of contents and use the headings to describe the contents so the description shows up on the menu, if you have it set up to display all the time on the left side. If you want to move a scene, you have to cut and paste the entire thing. Moving more than one scene become a tedious, error-prone exercise.

With yWriter, you can drag and drop scenes from chapter to chapter, so it’s easy to reorganize, or insert new material into the story. In fact, before I set up all the chapters, I created one chapter with a zillion scenes. As I fleshed out what would happen in each scene, I started thinking in terms of story questions, plot turns, and the like. As I hammered out the details, I created additional chapters so that I could start to “store” the drafted scenes elsewhere, and be able to see the overall story starting to develop. As I thought of new twists and turns, I simply dragged and dropped scenes to accommodate.

The point is that however you create, yWriter will allow you to handle the text the way you need to so that you remain in control.

Third, Understanding the Whole Shebang

Each scene has an area that allows you to write a brief synopsis, which 1) allows you to quickly see what the scene is about, and 2) the program will use to create a brief or thorough synopsis.

yWriter gives you three ways to grok your story in the big sense: a brief synopsis, a detailed synopsis, and a storyboard. If you take the time to fill in the basic info as you’re creating your scenes, all three of these tools are just a couple clicks away when you need them. That can save time. Say your agent asks, “Where are you at on that novel?” You click a couple buttons and fire off a synopsis.

Of course, it’s far more important what the tools do for you than for your agent.

Writers get myopic. We see the story so much we lose the ability to be surprised, so we struggle to understand how the story will hit a reader. That’s true from the smallest level, word choice, to the biggest, plot turns and character motivations.

The synopsis and storyboard provide a quick, thorough way to get a macro understanding of how the story is developing. The synopsis spells out, in sequence, every scene description, word count, and point of view. The storyboard, which you can see below, shows scenes arranged on point of view character’s timeline, within the context of every other character timeline, and thus, the entire novel’s timeline. 

You can see each plot shift, monitor the story questions you’ve created and the timing of the clues you’ve provided your readers. You can see whether the story is unfolding logically. All of that is embedded in my shorthand scene explanations you see below.

 

In my case, after I wrote the rough draft, I used a handy tool built into the software that exported the scenes and chapters into a Word document. I found I preferred editing in Word for two reasons. First, I had the scenes in the order I wanted, and all of the details were in place, meaning from then onward, I’d have little need of my extensive notes. Ease of use became paramount and I’m more familiar with editing in Word. To keep my eyes fresh for the text, I like to be able to change the font, line spacing, and margins for the entire document. I could do that more easily in Word. Second, I like to edit on paper and then update my document based on the red ink. I find it easier to navigate the commands, drag, drop, cut paste, backspace, delete, in Word than yWriter.

Wrapping it Up

Using yWriter was a great experience and the next time I sit down to write a rough draft, I’ll return to yWriter. The program allowed me to capture ideas coming out the floodgate, while imposing enough order on them that later editing and organizing was made easier. The program increased my efficiency, allowed me to see fundamental problems in story structure long before I got married to the text through multiple edits. The program allowed me to keep track of tons of information so that I could quickly organize a very complicated story, with a lot of timelines and flashbacks, without a lot of word searches, or reading vast swathes of text to make sure I wasn’t contradicting myself.

yWriter has a lot of functionality that I haven’t discussed, and I’m sure that if I was more familiar with the program I could have avoided switching to Word until the very end.

The best thing about yWriter is that it is free, so it isn’t going to cost you anything to see if it will work for you. Check it out here.

Please take a moment to comment on your experience with yWriter or other book writing software. Also, if you’re a writer you probably know plenty of other writers who’d love to know about yWriter. Consider using the buttons on the left to post this article to your Twitter or Facebook page!

Write on!

A bedtime story: Puppydog Heaven

This is a bedtime story I wrote after Julie and I lost our second pit bull, Wallace. His sister Layla died two years before him, and having them both die so quickly was terrible. For those of you who have read any of my other works, you’ll see this story comes from a different place entirely. It’s appropriate for children, written with the soft touch of profound grief, yet in a manner that produces happy tears and hope. It’s an adventure story, about Wallace, on his first day at Puppydog Heaven.

This story is available on Kindle if you want a permanent copy. I can’t price it lower than $.99.

 

Puppydog Heaven (a bedtime story)
Clayton Lindemuth

 

“Wallace!  We have to go!  She’s after us!”

Wallace opened his eyes to flower petals and pinecones and the familiar scent of his sister, Layla.  She nudged his neck and before his body could respond, his heart leapt and a growl whispered from his throat.  She jumped in front of him and sniffed his nose, her rapid, excited grunts and pants tickling his whiskers.  It was Layla, but not like the last time he’d seen her.

The night she left, she stretched on the carpet, and Wallace crouched in a corner watching, listening to the pain in her shallow breaths.  Her ribs heaved until they stopped and he smelled something different across the room.  He wriggled to her and sniffed her nose.  The scent was strong and foreign and he leapt away with a yelp.  That was two years ago.

But now she wagged her tail and bounced around him.  Her eyes were wide and the whites were clear.  “Wallace!” she said.  “Wallace!  I’ve waited so long for you, but now we have to hurry!”

His heart grew stronger by the second and as he breathed he recognized aspects of this new place, but the location didn’t fit any memory.  Scents cascaded into his awareness, Layla, then rabbits—dozens of them, it seemed—and woodchucks.  There were squirrels and even the rich orange-blue scents of butterflies.

Then, with a presence like a dark cloud, another odor came to him.  It was the She-Doberman.

“We don’t have much time!” Layla said. “Hurry!”

“I…” he said. She stood behind him and pushed his haunches with her nose.

“Where am I?” he said.

She padded around in front of him. “Wallace, can’t you tell?  You’re in Puppydog Heaven.”

“But where’s Julie?  Where’s Clayton?”

Layla lay in front so her paws crossed over his.  “It’s going to be hard for a while, but you won’t see them anymore.  Not for a long time.”

“Do they know I’m okay?”

She shook her head.  “We might be able to get a message to them later, but I don’t think they know we’re here.  Right now, we have to go.  Can’t you smell her?”

“She-Doberman?”

Layla nodded.  “She still has it in for us.”

“But if this is Puppydog Heaven, how can she be here?”

“Wallace, all puppydogs go to heaven.  Even the bad ones.  It’s just the bad masters that go to the other place.”

“Oh.”

Only a minute had passed, but strength charged his muscles as if he was a puppy again.  He licked his forearm and his coat was clean.  He couldn’t remember feeling so much energy, and he jumped three feet straight into the air.  The ground bounced like Julie’s bed.

Wallace pranced and Layla watched a few feet away.  He pounced to bump her shoulder and roll her, like they used to play, but the next thing he knew, he sprawled on his back with his new feet clawing the air.  He rolled but when he regained his feet, Layla clenched his ear with her teeth.  Even in heaven, they were sharp.  She tugged him forward.

“Oww!”

“We don’t have time for this.  Come on!  Let’s go!”

She sprinted and he chased her.  The terrain grew familiar, as if he’d been to the same place when it looked different.  The contour of the ground seemed predictable, and when he saw a ring of stones and smelled campfire, he knew this was where they had camped so many times with Julie and Clayton.  Sort of.

“Why is it so different here?”

“Places aren’t the same here,” she said.  “Things are as they are.”

“Then how come I remember so many trees and so much shade?”

Just then a rabbit started from a clump of grass and Wallace yelped and bounded after it.  It zigged and zagged and he got so close the whiff was rich and he could almost taste its downy fur.  Two things happened at once.  The rabbit disappeared and Layla charged in from the side, connected shoulders, and sent him sprawling end over end.

“Hey!  Why’d you do that?”

“You weren’t going to catch him anyway.  We don’t have time—”

“I was too!  I almost had him!”

“You can’t catch rabbits here,” she laughed.”  This is Puppydog Heaven, but other animals get to come too.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you think about it.  All the fun is in chasing them.  Who wants a mouthful of fur when you’re never hungry?”

“Never hungry?”

“It wouldn’t be heaven for the other animals if we ate them, would it?”

“But don’t you get hungry?”

“Just thirsty.”

He chased her.  She settled into a confident lope, away from the scent of the She-Doberman.

“Where are we going?”

“She’s been chasing me ever since she showed up a few months ago.  She wants to get even for that time I bit her when we were still down there.”

“Can’t we hide?”

“She’s got a really good nose.”

“Oh.”

“Do you remember our sister?”

“Of course!  Is she—in Puppydog Heaven?”

“She has to be, but I’ve been waiting for you so we can find her.”

“Let’s go!”  Wallace jumped to the lead.  He stopped and Layla ran into him.  “But where should we look?”

“That’s the problem.  It was so long ago.  She was just a baby—all I can think is to go east—where she left us.

“But that’s so far away.”

“We have a long time to find her.”

Wallace pushed his nose high in the air and sniffed.  The She-Doberman was close.  Layla jumped away and he followed.

They padded over pine needles.  Wallace lost himself in wonderment: his fresh, springy body, his sister whom he’d missed so terribly, the scents of javelina and squirrel and rabbit and elk.  The bright sun warmed his coat, and when they splashed into a stream he lapped water until his belly would hold no more.  It tasted like melted snow.

Layla jumped to the far bank and shook herself, spraying him in a mist that made a tiny rainbow.  He jumped and trotted beside her.

“How can we make sure Julie and Clayton know we’re okay?”

“I met a puppydog a while ago.  She said there’s a porch tail where you can send signals down to your family.”

“A porch tail?”

“It’s a Heaven thing.  She said it wasn’t far away, just a little south of here.”

“Let’s find the porch tail,” Wallace said. “Julie and Clayton—they were there when I went away. They were upset. When you went away, too.”

“But what about the She-Doberman?  We have to keep going.”

“We’ll keep a sharp lookout.”

They turned south and within a few minutes, ran across an open field that started low and seemed to rise and rise.  At the top of the hill, a giant circular device sat on a grey metal frame, angled down and away from them.  It was huge, even in the distance.  Maybe it was the porch tail.

Golden grasses swirled in a breeze that carried the smells of birds and mice and rabbits.  Every few steps Wallace jumped high to see far around them, and it was such great fun they fell to nipping at each other and wrestling.

They forgot the She-Doberman.

Wallace and Layla reared on their hind legs, their forearms intertwined like human dancers, and heaved against each other until they both fell to the side and rolled.  Layla stood and Wallace braced for her attack, but she stood with her eyes wide, shaking.  A wisp of air brought Wallace the scent of the She-Doberman.  He jumped and she stood four feet away, grinning with ivory teeth and beady black eyes.

Layla lowered her head and growled.  Her coat bristled from her neck to her tail.  She took a wide stance and flexed her chest, ready for the worst.

Wallace rolled to his feet and slitted his eyes.

“Layla!  No!” the She-Doberman said.  “Please wait.”

“Bouwr?” Layla said.

“I’ve been trying to find you for months—I’ve really felt awful.”

“Bouwr?” Wallace said.

“When we fought down there, I just wanted to say, ‘Hi.’  I guess I startled you, charging in like that, and I’ve felt horrible about it.”

“Really?”

“We never had a chance to be friends, and when I heard you were up here too, I was so excited.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Lady?”  Wallace said, grinning, “the movie star.”

The She-Doberman cocked her head, and Layla sniffed her nose.  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I never learned your name,” Layla said.

“I’m Loki.”

They licked faces and frolicked.  When they stopped to catch their breath, Loki said, “Where were you going?”

“We heard there’s a porch tail where you can send messages back to your family.”

“A porch tail?”

Layla nodded.  Wallace shrugged.

“Oh!  You mean ‘portal.’ I know every puppy up here, and I heard about it right away. It’s right over there. Follow me!” Loki jumped away.  Wallace leaped after her and Layla ran beside him.

Loki ran far ahead, and at the summit, turned to face them.  “Whoa, slow down!” she said, “You don’t want to fall over the edge.”

They reached the top and sniffed the ground at the grey metal circular thing.  It was cold and smelled of other puppydogs.  Thousands, or millions of them.

“Over here!” Loki called.

A terrible wind came up from the edge and when they reached it, they could see down into another world.  There was a mountain, and a highway with a string of cars going uphill on one lane and downhill on another.

“Hey!” Wallace said, “that’s the Jeep!”

“Where?”

“Right there, coming around the turn!  Hey, up here!” Wallace barked.  “We’re up here!”

“They can’t see you, Wallace,” Loki said.  “You have to get their attention with this.”  Loki jumped to the metal circle.  “It’s a signal.  We can shine it through the portal, and when your masters look up, they know it’s you.  I don’t know how, but it works.”

“Quick!” Layla said.  “Before they’re past the mountain!”

Wallace and Loki joined Layla and they pushed and heaved against the mirror.  It wouldn’t budge.

“It’s stuck,” Wallace said.  “We have to get it to move!”

“Clayton’s driving.  They’re going so fast!” Layla said.  “Hurry!”

Wallace jumped and rammed the shiny metal disc with his shoulder.  When he was level with it in midair, he saw his reflection and was surprised.  His muscles were full and his coat shiny.  Schwartzen-pitbull.  The disc rang like a bell and creaked backward.  It caught the sun and shot a beam of light across Puppydog Heaven.

“More!” Layla cried.

Wallace bounded again; the disc rang and the gears creaked.  Finally it moved on its own, drifting downward, until the light found the Jeep. Clouds split the beam into two columns.

“Bowrrrrruuuu!” Layla howled.

“Bowrrrrruuuu!” Wallace joined.

“Now they know,” Loki said.

“I miss them so much,” Wallace said.

“Ohhh,” Layla said.  Wallace didn’t like her voice.

“Oh, poo,” Loki said.  “Look.  There’s five of them.”

Wallace turned.  Coming up the hill, five pit bulls raced toward them at full speed.  Their heads were like anvils and their coats were red.  They fanned across the hillside and they would arrive in seconds.

“What can we do?” Wallace said. The edge to the other world was behind them.  “What if we jump?”

“You won’t go back to their world,” Loki said.  “You go to the other place.  We have to face them. But…”

“But what?”  Layla said.

The pit bulls charged closer.  They were almost upon them.

“They look like you.  Are they–?”

“Layla?  Is that Sis?” Wallace said.

The pit bull in front barreled in and skidded on the yellow grass. Her scent! It was Sis!

The others arrived and the seven of them circled and wagged tails, sniffing ‘hellos.’

“We were taken away so early, we didn’t even get to know you,” one said, after introducing himself as Thunder.

“I don’t remember, but you smell like family,” Wallace said.

“I’m Killer,” another said. “I’m the oldest of all of us.”

“By three minutes,” Champ said.

“First to get here, too,” Biker said.

“How long have you been here?” Layla said.

Sis led Layla and Wallace a few feet away, and spoke quietly.  “I was here first,” she said.  “I passed in the shelter, right after we were rescued from the woods. Our brothers, except for Wallace—were taken away for fighting. They don’t like to talk about it. It’s tough to remember, even up here. They only lasted a couple of years.  We’ve been looking for you ever since, waiting here, mostly.”

“Why here?”

“We hoped you had a good life.”

“What do you mean?” Wallace said.

“The puppydogs that had good lives always want to say goodbye. This is where they come.”

Wallace walked away and lay in the grass, alone. He plopped his head to the ground and closed his eyes. The sun was bright and made orange dots on his eyelids.   He thought about Julie and Clayton, how they cried when they hugged him, right before he went to sleep. He whined.

“Are you okay?” Layla said. “They know we’re up here now. Everything’s okay, and we’re all reunited.”

“I didn’t want to go,” he said. “I wanted to see you, but I didn’t know about this place. I didn’t want to leave them.”

“Oh Wallace,” Layla said.

Loki stepped closer. “That’s the way things are down there. No one ever remembers the best always comes right after the worst.”

“But I miss them,” Wallace said.

“They miss you,” Loki said. “That’s love.”

“I didn’t want to go.”

“You couldn’t have stayed. But don’t worry, they’ll visit, someday.”

“What do we do until then?”

“Well, I haven’t found my brothers and sisters, yet,” Loki said.

“I’ll bet eight of us can sniff them out.”

 

THE END

 

You might also enjoy Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her, a novel set forty years later involving some of the same characters…

Or my debut novel, Cold Quiet Country, which earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and was selected for the Indie Next List.

Or my novel My Brother’s Destroyer, which I wrote because I hate the “sport” of dog fighting, and frankly wanted to distance myself from it after writing Nothing Save the Bones Inside Her.

 

 

And Sometimes Bone: entire novel up on my site

And Sometimes Bone: entire novel up on my site

I’ve posted the entire novel AND SOMETIMES BONE, the prequel to NOTHING SAVE THE BONES INSIDE HER, on my website.

To find the novel, simply hover over title on the menu above. There you’ll see each chapter. Click on the link and read away.

I posted the novel this way, instead of making it available as a PDF download, because I’m interested in learning how many folks who read enough chapters to get into it, will follow through to the end.

My reasoning? If a person quits after a couple chapters, he probably isn’t in my target audience. You have to dig grit lit, obscenity, brutality, and raw justice to get into my writing. It isn’t for everyone and most folks know within a chapter or so whether they’ll find value or not.

So if a hundred people click on chapter five, and ninety-nine click on chapter twenty-eight, I’ll assume that most of the folks who generally like my stuff generally like the novel. In that case I’ll publish on Kindle and paper.

If only twenty make it to the end, I’ll delete the whole thing and beg forgiveness.

So what’s the story, you ask?

Well, see, for those of you who’ve read NOTHING SAVE THE BONES INSIDE HER, you’ve met Angus Hardgrave. You know he’s got McClellan blood, and you know there’s a mysterious walnut tree that drips evil down by the lake. AND SOMETIMES BONE is Jonah McClellan’s story, and tells how he wound up haunting the walnut tree on Devil’s Elbow. (Not to give it away, but he made a deal with some dead Indians. Jonah was a whoremaster and it turns out even dead men like women.)

You’ll see a young Angus Hardgrave, a boy tough as nails and full of ornery promise. You’ll meet his aunt Grace, a woman with more grit and steel in her spine than the men around her. You’ll also see pure refined cowardice in the form of Hoot Hardgrave, Angus’s father. Last, and best of all, you’ll get a bellyful of Jonah McClellan. I’d easily put him on par with Sheriff Bittersmith and Angus Hardgrave, in terms of being pure cold evil.

This is gritty, scheming, brutal stuff. If you like that sort of thing, I’m hoping you’ll like this.

It’s up on the website for your enjoyment.

Here’s the cover. If you click on it you should be able to read the back flap:

 

And Sometimes Bone: Chapter One

And Sometimes Bone
Chapter One

 

I brace against the ground with my left hand and drag my right arm across my mouth. Spit bile from the back of my throat to the pool of vomit below my face. My knees press into wet dirt. The sun burns my neck, my back, and the sweet humidity from yesterday’s thunderstorm mingles with the stench of the rotted child a few feet from my hands. I spit again, swallow bile. Stand, and turn to the body of my runt son.

Henry.

I regard the gravity of it: the completeness of a corpse.

My lungs barely fill with each breath; still, I pull a carved cherry pipe from my breast pocket, rap it to my boot, and fill the bowl with leaf. I’m cognizant of Sheriff Brooks’ eyes upon me. I strike a match and hold the flame to the bowl.

“Not a damn track,” Brooks says, “save these dog prints.”

I study Henry’s face, mostly shredded by fangs. The dog was here after rain softened the ground. Tracks lead across the field and of the thousand possible places he could have come from, the trail suggests that after dining on my youngest, frailest son, the dog loped toward the Hardgrave place.

Tobacco smoke and stomach acid burn my throat. The bite is harsh but the tobacco fortifies. I know my mind. I stare at Henry, resting on his back, flies circling the oval that used to bear his countenance.

The surrounding dirt is pocked with a jagged mess of paw prints. I stare to Hardgrave’s until Sheriff Brooks looks that way too.

“You need anything else?” I say.

“No, Mister McClellan. Plain enough he was beat to death. There’s nothing left on the ground to study. I’ll have Doc look the body over, just same.”

Holding my breath, I slip my arms beneath Henry’s back and shoulders and lift him. His head falls back where his neck was cut. Air escapes. I grit my teeth.

“I’m truly sorry,” Brooks says.

“Get the hell out of here.”

Long past rigor, Henry is limp. I carry him across the field toward my house and marvel that in all the searching I and the others did, none crossed the field between my house and Hardgrave’s. Everyone agreed the boy had wandered off with some kind of mischief in mind, and my foreman Eddie suspected Henry had run off for real, like I did fifty years ago when I joined the Union to fight the Rebs.

But Henry never had that kind of grit.

No one searched until he was gone two days, and it took two more to locate him—half way to Hardgrave’s house.

I keep my face pointed toward the lake breeze and try to outpace stink that follows faster than I walk. Carrying my youngest is brutal work. I’m an old man.

I arrive at my house. Brooks has already driven the team around.

“Mister McClellan, I got to take him into Walnut.”

“I wanted him to come home.”

I land Henry on the wagon bed. Look deep into the boy’s sunken eyes, take in his torn flesh. Behold his crushed cheek, battered brow, sliced throat. I suck in the stench of my dead flesh and blood one last time.

“Who would do this?”

“You’ll find him, Mister McClellan,” Brooks says. “You’ll find him.”

“When I do—”

“Don’t say no more. Best you don’t say no more.”

Brooks circles to the front and climbs to the seat. “Hiyah!”

I watch my son judder on the wagon until dust and distance render him invisible. Enter the house and sit at a writing desk. Listen to the silence.

Maybe I’ll bring in a woman. Maybe one from the house in Dubois—have some clucking around. I slump deep into the chair, confused at feeling so much. Bring a woman and set her to work cleaning and doing laundry. One girl comes to mind, has a fine education but teaching school doesn’t fill her bottom half.

No, I’ll stick with the plan. Mame Gainer, from Pittsburgh—a madam of considerable skill who has proven too wily for ordinary negotiations. She wants a contract, total control over all my cat houses, and a salary—regardless of the fruit of her efforts—of twenty thousand per annum. I considered her demands and now that the situation with Henry is resolved am eager to make an alternate proposal. That will wait another day or two.

Henry’s odor comes up through my sleeves, my chest. I gag at the wash basin. Nothing comes. I rinse my mouth, strip my shirt, dump pipe and tobacco on the table and keep the matches. Outside at the porch edge I strike one and light my shirtsleeve. Toss it to the grass and watch flames lick across the cloth. Gray smoke wavers low to the ground. I remove my undershirt and cast it to the fire as well.

Upstairs, I dress in a suit. I’ve spent two days in farm clothes; the time has arrived to get about business. I have the houses to run and a madam to woo from her comfortable situation in Pittsburgh. I have grain to purchase.

Big plans in Oil City.

And I have to assign blame.

 

 

I drive a Saxon Six, a smoke-farting touring car with a six-cylinder engine. The newspaper advertisement claimed the manufacturer achieved twenty-five point nine miles per gallon of gasoline over a seventy thousand mile test. Further the advertisement stated the car averaged a hundred and seventy-five miles per quart of oil.

My experience has been different, but I have arranged for a car man—Eddie’s brother—to serve as my car man. Meanwhile I make do. Normally the drive to Walnut is pleasant; today I slip into thought and find myself jerking the wheel to keep the Saxon out of the ditch.

I arrive in Dubois late in the afternoon. Like all of my houses, this one is cracked and peeling drab white, deliberately unattended, and located beyond the bars in a neighborhood populated with proprietors of businesses catering to humankind’s baser desires. I pay a stipend, usually in tail but sometimes cash, to each police chief in whose jurisdiction I operate. My cat houses draw little unwelcome attention and are seldom visited by evangelists or worse, progressives, except in the anonymity of night when they arrive not to rail against whoredom, but to purchase it.

I sit in the Saxon with the engine running and the clutch disengaged, my foot on the brake. Upstairs a curtain moves—Ursula—a pendulum-titted and ambitious whore who speaks her second language English better than most of the men she uses it upon. I think of her powdered skin and perfumed hair and my stomach hesitates on the edge of violence.

My son is dead. I’ve one left, globe-trotting Mitch.

Bernadine meets me at the door. “Word on Henry?”

I pass her, turn left at the parlor and enter the anteroom she uses as an office. Ursula perches at the top of the stairwell and jiggles to the lower floor, flesh lopping against her corset like waves on a steep bank. She joins Bernadine at the door.

I study the ledger.

“Anything on Henry’s whereabouts?” Ursula says.

“I’m here to collect. Bernie?”

Bernadine enters the office and kneels at a floor safe. “I don’t see why you don’t use the local bank.” She aligns numbers on the knob. “Just as good as the one in Walnut.” She passes to me a thin handful of paper money.

“Light for two nights,” I say.

“That’s every bit of it.”

I count fifteen dollars. Examine—and count—names on the ledger, an operational necessity I learned from an early conversation with Mame Gainer.

“You ever wonder what them boys would do if they knew you kept track of their likes?” Bernadine says.

Ursula, standing behind Bernadine, fetches my eye. Bernadine turns as well and Ursula smiles as if she had nothing to say to begin with.

“What’s with McCoy only coming in for head?” I flip pages deeper into history. “Each Tuesday McCoy comes in for a slob. With you, Ursula.”

“It’s his mother. She’s with Christian Temperence.”

“She services his other wants?”

“He feels guilt.”

I study the wall while I collect my thoughts and frame my next action.

“It’s the truth,” Bernadine says. “The boy’s saving himself.”

“Ursula. Run upstairs.”

The corners of her mouth twitch upward. “Of course.”

I close the door. Bernadine steps backward. I fan the fifteen paper dollars and place them on the desk, then watch Bernadine until she looks away. Clench my right hand and relax it. I press fingers to the bridge of my nose, but I do not yet have the clarity I desire. I stack the bills, tuck them to my wallet.

“Don’t leave,” I say, and open the door. “I’ll have a conversation with you.”

“Yeah, well I ain’t going nowhere. And before you dip your wick—the roof’s leaking again. I know you like Harvey and all, but he’s no roofer.”

I close the door on her.

 

 

Ursula reclines against a stack of pillows, legs apart, fingers woven across her midsection. Several undone buttons leave the top corners of her blouse folded open, revealing mounds of blue-veined flesh behind a corrugated corset straining withstand the pressure.

I sit at the edge of the bed and place my hand on her foot.

She sits upright. “What is it?”

“Found Henry.”

I extract my pipe and fill it. Ursula swallows. I inhale smoke and lean forward, one hand on my knee. She’s silent, her face painted with dread. “There in a field,” I say. “His head beat in.”

She spins her legs over the mattress edge and shifts beside me. “God’s mercy.”

“I only said so because you asked. I come up here…”

“Anything you need, Mister McClellan.” She rests her hand on my shoulder.

I lift it. “You had something on your mind, downstairs.”

Ursula crawls behind me and her fingers work the stiffness in my shoulders. “There’s something you should know. This isn’t an appropriate time, but I’d never forgive myself for keeping quiet.”

I observe her reflection in the dresser mirror.

“The book you checked is incomplete.”

“I know. How many?”

“Six I’m aware of, from Friday. Then I counted every man who entered the house on Saturday and there were twenty-two. The book says fourteen.”

“Why’d you think to count?”

“Bernadine asked me to mind the parlor on Friday. She stepped out.”

“Where to?”

“An errand, she said.”

“Say who she was seeing?”

Ursula shakes her head. “I found Billy Kroh wasn’t in the book, though he was with Linda an hour before. I thought of telling Bernadine, but thought again. I read all the names and discovered another five not on the list.”

“Why’d Bernie pick you?”

“I had Aunt Flo.”

I release a long blast of smoke and look at Ursula’s reflection.

“But she’s gone. Aunt Flo.”

“Don’t you girls usually polish knobs about that time?”

“There’s only so many need polishing, and none take more than a few minutes.”

“Uh huh.” I glance over Ursula’s belongings. A few European baubles on doilies, maybe frilly things in the closet and bureau. I stand. “Gather your things—”

“I—”

“Shut up. In an hour Bernie’s room will be empty. I’ll give you the same terms I gave her.”

“You’re giving her an hour?”

I consider. “You’re right. I’ll throw her out now.”

 

 

I enter the parlor. Bernadine sits at the desk with a deck of cards arranged in a game of solitaire.

“Local bank where you keep what you skim from me?”

“That’s a lie,” she says. “I been honest by you.”

I head down the hall toward her room.

“What are you doing?” Bernadine shuffles behind, gaining quick, tugs my elbow and I belt her. She’s on the floor looking up, hand on her jaw, insolence in her snarled nose and eyes.

I pivot at the last door, try the knob. “Unlock it.”

“You got no right going through my effects.”

“Open it.”

“No.”

I stoop, clasp her by the neck and pin her to the wall. Fish between trussed tits and come out with a key. I snap the necklace chain and release her. Bernadine sinks like I ripped out her spine.

“I got six cathouses, Bernie. You have more girls than any of them, and there’s more screwing going on here than anywhere. Give me fifteen dollars and I’m fucked too. But I don’t get fucked, Bernadine.”

“I turn over every cent to you.”

I unlock the door and enter. Lifted an ostrich-plumed hat, step to the hall and spin it to her. “Put it on.” I rifle through each drawer of a maple bureau; open the closet and cast articles to the floor. Strip the bed and flip the mattress upside down.

“What’s this, Bernie?” I slip two fingers inside a slit in the side of the mattress she’d had pressed to the wall, and withdraw a fold of paper money.

Counting the bills I stop at fifty, though most of the stack remains.

Bernadine sits with her legs crossed, weeping. I split off ten dollars, let them fall to her one by one, fold the remainder and tuck it into my pocket. “Get out, Bernadine, and don’t come back.”

 

 

I drive the Saxon to the legitimate business district and park in front of Miller’s, my barber. A shoeshine boy snaps his cloth and watches my legs, waiting to judge the condition of my shoes. The boy is Marshall Brady, a chap with moxie and apparent intelligence. Under my tutelage, a boy like that could become somebody.

“That’s a lot of scuffs, Mister McClellan. C’mon here for twenty-cent you’ll be strutting like a game cock.”

“I am a game cock, Marshall. Maybe you’d ought to learn another line.”

“You got better, tell it.”

“Tell it? I’m a businessman. I’ll sell it.”

“What for?”

“Free shine.”

The boy squints. “I dunno. My line works fine.”

“It’s a business deal, boy. I sell you the line, and if it works, you increase your business, and cover the cost of purchasing the line. See?”

“But my line fetches any man needs a shine as it is.”

“You know why?”

“Cause quinny likes shiny boots and men like quinny. And there’s no one else around shining boots.”

“Monopoly, son. Beautiful.”

“I don’t need your line as much as I need the twenty cents I’d give up to get it.”

“I see. But what if my line would allow you to charge twenty-five, even thirty cents?”

“Give me the line and I’ll decide if it’s worth a shine.”

I grasp the boy’s shoulder and kneel until he is eye-level. “Here’s what I’m thinking, son. You got a sharp mind, and good instincts. I’ll give you the line free of charge. Maybe one day when I have an errand needs accomplished, you’ll be interested in taking your business to a higher plane of profitability?”

“Yes sir, Mister McClellan. Yes sir.”

I sit on the bench outside the barbershop window.

“What’s the line, Mister McClellan?”

I place my hands on my knees and lean to Marshall. Look left and right—and notice farther down the road, a gleaming Willys Knight parked at the curb. Unless some new dandy’s rolled into town, banker Thurston Leicester is in the vicinity. I twist, spot him in the barber shop. Miller brushes Thurston’s suit jacket as the banker retrieves a note from his billfold.

“The line, Mister McClellan?”

I give Marshall twenty cents. “You do the best shine you can, and we’ll see if it lives up to the line.”

Marshall sighs. With his brush he raps my sole—harder than usual—and sets about cleaning the dirt from my heel.

“How’s your schoolwork holding up?”

Marshall shrugs.

“Your pap don’t mind you playing hooky all the time?”

“He set me up with this shine kit.”

“Whole family’s business-minded.”

Thurston Leicester stands at the step. “If it isn’t Jonah McClellan.”

Marshall finishes his brushwork, dabs his bare fingers in polish and massages the wax into shoe leather.

“I been after that girl of yours up the house,” Leicester says. “Struck me the other day I work with every businessman in town. Pay top interest, charge the least. But I’ve never sat across a desk of contract paper with the great Jonah McClellan.”

I hold Thurston’s look as I reach to Marshall, touch his shoulder. “Marshall, listen. If I took a bushel of corn to the granary and they gave me a receipt, that’d be as good as money. I’d be able to give it to the barber if a haircut cost a bushel of corn, wouldn’t I?”

“Suppose so, yes sir.”

Thurston looks at the boy, then me.

“Marshall, son, what do you think would happen if the folks at the granary said, ‘People pass our notes like money. Why don’t we print up a bunch of extra receipts, and lend them out at interest?”

“You mean without having the corn in the granary?”

“That’s right,” I say.

Thurston checks his pocket watch.

“That’d be wrong,” Marshall says.

“Why, son?”

“It’s just like musical chairs, ‘cept the last man wouldn’t get no corn.”

“That’s good thinking, Marshall. I might give you another line for that. What do you think, Thurston? Got any ideas on that?”

“Talk like that causes bank runs.”

I stand. “Marshall, here’s lesson number two. Never put your money in a bank, or trust a man who makes his living from numbers alone. They’re thieves. I’d call them lazy, but some are damn industrious. Anything you want to add, Thurston?”

Thurston Leicester steps closer and looks up steeper into my face. “There’s two ways of putting down a bank run, McClellan. One involves bringing in more money. The other, guns. You think you’re sucking first tit, got Sheriff Brooks and your man, Eddie. You got the town sewed up.” Thurston shakes his head and steps backward. He turns toward his car. “You keep thinking you got things the way you want them. Good day.”

I sit, place my hand on Marshall Brady’s shoulder. “That lesson make sense, son?”

“Yes sir.” Marshall snaps his rag one last time. “Lookit that. That shine’s worth three lines.”

I squeeze his shoulder. “Indeed. But I only brought the one.” I lean. “You ready?”

Marshall tips closer.

I whisper.

Marshall’s mouth draws into a wide smile. His eyes gleam sunlight. He mouths the words and I follow each one on his lips. Marshall finds his voice. “Make your boots shine like snot on a glass doorknob.” Marshall beams. “Like snot dripping on a glass doorknob. A glass doorknob covered in snot.”

“Endless possibilities, that glass and snot,” I say.

“Yes sir!”

“Use that line right, you can charge any price you want.”

 

 

I quarter five hired men in a bunkhouse set fifty yards from the main house. Currently I employ six, including my jack-of-all-trades foreman, Eddie Bonter, a man who has spent time in the Pittsburgh state penitentiary, and only works in Walnut to escape the reputation he’s cemented with Pittsburgh law enforcement. Capable of hard work and willing to do jobs assigned in quiet, he has proven discretion and flat nerves.

Today I will test him.

I stand at the bunk house entry. Eddie sits at a table at the far end with Jerome, a young fellow who has eschewed education in favor of permanently tilling another man’s fields, harvesting another man’s corn. The world needs such men.

Eddie looks at me and breaks off his sentence. He slaps Jerome on the shoulder and the younger man exits through the back door, his head low with a sidelong glance.

I note the thud of my heels on the sodden floor planks. Pause and look outside at Jerome, barely discernible through dirt-filmed glass.

“I’m amazed that men can live in conditions like this—free men—and not want to look out clean windows.”

Eddie doesn’t live here with the men he oversees, but often spends his final minutes of the day chatting with them. He stands as I arrive at the table.

“Ain’t a whole lot of time or ambition left, after a twelver in the fields.”

“Much as you nanny after these men, you might share with them that a man can bootstrap himself out of poor straights only by changing himself, and that starts with cleaning the fucking windows.”

Eddie exhales. “Sure, Mister McClellan. I’ll get after it. That what brings you here?”

“You look like a beat dog.”

“I am a beat dog.”

“Well, I’m going to Pittsburgh tomorrow. Back the day after.”

Eddie nods. “Running two sites tomorrow. Expect twenty gallon. That’s what you wanted, right?”

“Twenty is fine. Don’t let them skip the doubler. If I get less than twenty, I’ll charge more.”

Eddie thumps the table with his thumb.

At the door I say, “Came by to tell you Bernadine’s leaving town.”

“What?”

“What I said.”

Eddie stands. “Where to—another your houses?”

“Not one of my houses.”

“She gone yet?”

“I give her an hour—two hours ago.”

“You give her? You run her off?”

“She’s a thief, Eddie. Shake her hand you got to count your fingers. Your pecker if you poke her.”

Eddie wipes his brow. He faces the wall and sits on the chair like it’s a raft adrift.

“I left her with money. Twenty years ago I’d have left her dead.” I turn part way out the door. “You was soft on her and I wanted you to know I did right by her, though she didn’t do right by me. And there’s yet plenty of whores to get soft on. Plenty better’n Bernadine.”

Eddie turns to me.

I say, “Two weeks back you said something about your brother?”

“He’ll be along tomorrow’s train.”

“Skilled with motorcars?”

“He’ll be ready to work.”

“Younger brother?”

A nod.

“What’s got him running up here, so far from the action?”

“I don’t know, Mister McClellan.”

I open the door, step to the landing, swat a moth that alights with the noise.

Eddie calls after me. “Brubaker found another fire pit.”

“I’ll be interested to see it.”

“Like any other. Coal seam’s close to the surface. Ground’s falling in all over the place.”

“A strange geologic phenomenon.”

I pass the charred remains of my shirt along the way toward my house. Standing on the porch, I look to the left through a neck of hemlock bordering my lawn and Hardgrave’s wheat fields. Almost invisible through the trees stands the Hardgrave house.

Inside I select a .500 Weatherby from the cabinet in the main room.

 

Book Review: Running on Empty, Marshall Ulrich

Running on Empty, By Marshall Ulrich: Book Review

Running on Empty tells the story of Marshall Ulrich running across the United States, with a preamble about how he started running after his first wife’s death, and a rapid bucket list accomplishments, such as climbing the world’s tallest seven mountains, each on his first attempt, running the Badwater ultra marathon course four times, back to back to back to back, covering almost 600 miles through scorching heat, and another dozen exploits, each alone wicked enough to make the average man’s testicles shrink like they were dunked in ice water.

His run across the US covered 3,063 miles in 52 days–that’s an average of two marathons and a 10K per day. At 57 years of age.

The narrative is interesting partly because one always wonders what goes on during heroic exploits. What’s the backstory that explains the motivations? What’s the inside scoop on the infighting behind the scenes? We don’t want dirt, necessarily, so much as grit. We want to know we’re not being put on, spun.

Running on Empty delivers unflinching truth on all of the above, including many of the author’s relationships. Completing the book, I wanted to meet Marshall’s amazing wife Heather, shake her hand and thank her for her role in his achievement. And I winced as Marshall reported, and opined on the motivations of Charlie Engle, the man who organized the run with him, participated, dropped out, and began to sabotage the record attempt. This book doesn’t blow smoke, like so many self-congratulating books that are available about extreme athletes. Marshall’s story is raw, told with integrity, humility, and conviction.

The story of the cross country run is interesting in it’s own right, and easily justifies reading the book if you like reading about awesome people who make great sacrifices to accomplish great feats. Marshall gives plenty of detail about what he saw.

I found the book especially interesting for two other reasons. The first is that my upcoming novel Strong at the Broken Places is about an ultra marathoner. I assumed greatness at the sport would almost require a person to be unbalanced in two ways. First, the motivation to run forever must often arise from a wound, a blemish, something that pushes an otherwise normal person to the far right of the bell curve in a half dozen character traits.  In Marshall’s case, he started running seriously after the tragic death of his first wife, and his run across the country coincided with grieving the rapid loss of four men he greatly loved and respected. The second way I presumed an ultra runner champion would be unbalanced is in the amount of time, focus, and life energy given to the sport, at the expense of family. Marshall is plain about what his running cost him: a feeling of having been a poor husband and father.

The second other reason I found the book so compelling is that (because of writing my ultra marathon novel) I’m running a hundred miler in about six weeks. Running on Empty is chock full of insights that will assist the aspiring distance runner conquer new milestones. What I especially appreciate is the amount of time Marshall spends on the topics of physical and mental pain. There are multiple sections of the book where he breaks down what he did to get through it. He discusses mental toughness, mental tricks that helped him keep running, hallucinations, even an out of body experience… (Marshall relates asking Yiannis Kouros, the greatest ultra runner alive, if he has had similar experiences to Marshall’s, in which he saw himself running as if out of his own body, and then regained normal consciousness after fifty miles elapsed in the blink of an eye. Yiannis said something like, sure, all the time. It happens when the body is not habitable because of pain, and the mind goes somewhere else.)

Marshall relates how he trained, (a sample of his 200-mile per week training schedule is in the appendix,) how he overcame injuries, how he fueled his body, what his support staff did, on and on with interesting nuggets woven into the narrative. For an aspiring runner, whether you’re thinking about your first 10K, marathon or ultra, you’ll find the book rich with insights and almost overwhelmingly inspirational. The book makes you want to hurt, just so you can master it.

Marshall’s tone is warm and friendly, but his honesty is intense. I couldn’t help but think it takes a man who really knows himself, and is comfortable with his flaws, and humble in his awesomeness, to put it all out there the way he does.

If you’d like to know more about Marshall, you can find his website here, and listen to an awesome interview done by UltraRunnerPodcast here. In fact, the podcast interview, which is free, made me want to buy the book. Also, you can buy the documentary about his run (which I haven’t seen) here.

Running on Empty is a profoundly good book. Intelligent, inspirational, honest. It shows a great man’s flaws, his greatness, and how they really couldn’t exist without each other. This is a bigtime recommendation for anyone who likes running or biographies about cool people who have done big things.

 

Why an Ultra?

Why an Ultra?

The idea of running an ultra marathon, particularly a hundred miler, settled in my mind last fall. I was looking for something to watch on Netflix and everything seemed like a twenty year old B movie. I switched to YouTube and somehow, a video about Akos Konya appeared in the menu. The video documented his first attempt running the Badwater 135, a race that starts at the bottom of Death Valley and ends 135 miles later a few thousand feet from the top of Mount Whitney. I watched the video a little stunned by his effort, by the challenge, and by the secret longing it created in me. I wanted to push myself like that. I wanted to run right past oblivion.

Not to spoil the end, but it was the 2005 running of Badwater, and Akos did not win. His story is dumbfounding, but the winner’s story is dumbfoundinger. Scott Jurek won, setting a new course record, and this only two weeks after his win at another 100 mile race—Western States—the Super Bowl of ultra running. I reviewed Jurek’s book Eat and Run here. That led me to another book, Born to Run, by Christopher McDougal, which I have not reviewed but heartily recommend. I quickly found UltraRunnerPodcast, a website created by a couple of Ultra fanatics, and began listening to dozens and dozens of interviews of the sport’s greatest legends, both past, present, and emerging.

What I discovered in all of this is that a tribe exists around the sport, and it is just about exactly what one would expect from a peripheral study of what ultra running entails. Meaning, as a group, who do you think would be attracted to a healthy kind of self immolation? In short, super competitive (often competitive against self), radical freedom lovers. (Not freedom in a political sense, but in an existential sense.) To me, that’s the common thread. All humans are bound by their bodies to a certain continuum of human experience. Walking and running are part of that continuum. Flying unassisted, as a bird might fly, is not. Swimming a thousand feet below the surface of the ocean is not. Well, people in the ultra tribe generally want to see how far they can warp their limits outside the normal range. Ultra running presses outward the boundaries of experience, and at the same time, the freedom to experience. Ultra runners are willing to endure because they know that when they stand on the ground that was formerly outside their limit, they will know something new about themselves. They take as obvious that what they learn will be worth the price they pay to acquire it.

Naturally, all of the above makes a perfect setting for a murder mystery. A hundred mile footrace is a perfect host for the protagonist’s external struggle. He must win the race at all costs, which is made exceedingly difficult by losing his crew chief to a murder, and being questioned as the prime suspect of the murder, while running a hundred miles with multiple injuries. The race imposes a natural deadline to the story, which increases latent tension. The race allows for an extraordinary setting—someplace we don’t ordinarily get to experience in everyday life. Finally, the unfolding of the story during the day-long period of the race allows me to employ a nonlinear storytelling format, infusing flashback into the present. It’s too deep to get into here except to say that I love the nonlinear format’s advantages, which I wrote about for the blog WriteItSideways, here.

The internal struggle has great potential as well. Why? Because a person who can always run a hundred miles faster than the competition gives up something about his or her humanity to do so, and life has a way of reverting to the mean. A person cannot forever live at the fringe of possibility and not face the clamor of mundane consequences. My protagonist has stored up hurts to give him the mental fuel to run well. He conditions the body like any champion runner, but he conditions his mind by clinging to emotional pain. Thus, to keep himself fueled, he farms pain by neglecting the people he loves. He’s learned that when other people suffer, he suffers, and that is good for keeping him winning. Meanwhile his life devolves into chaos.

The real question is, Am I fulla shit?

How can I know about the training, the highs and lows, the importance of diet, fuel, miles, mind, everything, unless I do it? How can I make an authentic champion without participating? I can learn from reading what ultra runners write, but what if they miss something important? What if by training for and running a hundred mile race I could discover some detail that makes the story more authentic? Wouldn’t it be preferable, given the choice, to run a hundred miles, instead of sitting on my ass, thinking about it? Of course.

What I’ve learned so far:

I’m hitting about 70 miles per week running. I’ve cut fifteen pounds of gut in three weeks. With a diet change, I’m rapidly becoming a fat burner instead of a sugar burner. But that’s not the real lesson.

Running distance does something for the soul that nothing else does. It’s time away. It’s survival. It’s strength found in weakness. It’s elation and pain and the feeling of achievement that fulfills even if no one knows about it. A long run is existentially gratifying, both in the simple and philosophic meanings of the word. It affirms and applauds existence, and provides a stunning post-post-modern meaning to life. In the moment of the run, life is undeniable. It’s meaning is undeniable. You feel your heart, your lungs, the breath through your nostrils and the pain in your foot. Your back. The answer is not: The meaning of life is ____________.

When running, the meaning of life is.

Awesome! Just Broke the Top 100 on Amazon Paid list for Crime Thrillers!

My Brother’s Destroyer just broke the top 100 on Amazon, in a fairly broad category, Thriller/Crime.
Get your 99 cent copy here, before the timed promotion runs out!