Sarah Black's Blog: Book Report, page 13
February 15, 2013
Loving Your First
You remember your first? First kiss? First boyfriend who breached the portals? First story?
Now, I have to wince a little here, because I just went back and read my first story, and I wish I could crawl under a blanket and hide. Good God! It’s still there on the internet for the world to see. With my name on it! I wrote this story in 2004, sent it in to an erotic story contest, where it won an honorable mention. I was so clueless, I didn’t know how to cut and paste. So I wrote the story, then typed the entire thing into the submission box on the website. They sent me a check for 25 bucks, which I still have not cashed.
The story was called The Olivetti, and was an erotic typewriter story. That was the contest theme, typewriters, sponsored by Desdmona. She had a writer’s workshop for those of us John Gardner was talking about in his famous introduction to The Art of Fiction when he said –‘every writing teacher has the unfortunate experience of finding he is teaching a pornographer.’ Some people just have dirty minds.
I decided to go ahead and write this story and send it in, my first publication effort, because I had an actual typewriter story to build my little porno on. I set the story in the library at ODU, Old Dominion University, where I attended both undergrad and graduate school. I had many adventures in the library, some involving typewriters, but never one like I wrote about in this story, naturally.
It was published in 2004. So it looks like I’ve been writing for 9 years. It seems to me like it has been longer, but maybe it’s just been a long 9 years. I went from writing shorties, like The Olivetti, to other silly pornographic short stories, lured by cash and publication. I wrote a screamingly funny story about menopause and sex with a goat, which even then I decided was the pinnacle and the end of my porn career. I mean, really. Enough was enough. I wanted to write about love, not sex, and I was starting to take it seriously. What I mean by taking it seriously was not myself, but the stories and the readers. I felt like I wanted to go for quality, and I wanted to say something that had meaning, say something about what it meant to love someone.
So now I have a new first. The General and the Horse-Lord, out on April 5 from Dreamspinner, is my first novel. I’ve written a few that were close, but this one is around 62,000 words, making it the first story to breach that barrier. It seems different to me from the shorter stories, in that it is an exploration of the characters. A short story is about something- Sockeye Love, for instance, is about learning to let go and try again. Flamingo says that love comes at all ages, and when we least expect it. This new novel, though, is not described so easily. It’s complicated! Sex, but no sex with goats. It is not pornography, and I can say that having written more than my fair share! It is, however, a great big beautiful romance, and I am very happy to share it with the world. With my name on the cover. And no typewriters anywhere to be seen.
Now, I have to wince a little here, because I just went back and read my first story, and I wish I could crawl under a blanket and hide. Good God! It’s still there on the internet for the world to see. With my name on it! I wrote this story in 2004, sent it in to an erotic story contest, where it won an honorable mention. I was so clueless, I didn’t know how to cut and paste. So I wrote the story, then typed the entire thing into the submission box on the website. They sent me a check for 25 bucks, which I still have not cashed.
The story was called The Olivetti, and was an erotic typewriter story. That was the contest theme, typewriters, sponsored by Desdmona. She had a writer’s workshop for those of us John Gardner was talking about in his famous introduction to The Art of Fiction when he said –‘every writing teacher has the unfortunate experience of finding he is teaching a pornographer.’ Some people just have dirty minds.
I decided to go ahead and write this story and send it in, my first publication effort, because I had an actual typewriter story to build my little porno on. I set the story in the library at ODU, Old Dominion University, where I attended both undergrad and graduate school. I had many adventures in the library, some involving typewriters, but never one like I wrote about in this story, naturally.
It was published in 2004. So it looks like I’ve been writing for 9 years. It seems to me like it has been longer, but maybe it’s just been a long 9 years. I went from writing shorties, like The Olivetti, to other silly pornographic short stories, lured by cash and publication. I wrote a screamingly funny story about menopause and sex with a goat, which even then I decided was the pinnacle and the end of my porn career. I mean, really. Enough was enough. I wanted to write about love, not sex, and I was starting to take it seriously. What I mean by taking it seriously was not myself, but the stories and the readers. I felt like I wanted to go for quality, and I wanted to say something that had meaning, say something about what it meant to love someone.
So now I have a new first. The General and the Horse-Lord, out on April 5 from Dreamspinner, is my first novel. I’ve written a few that were close, but this one is around 62,000 words, making it the first story to breach that barrier. It seems different to me from the shorter stories, in that it is an exploration of the characters. A short story is about something- Sockeye Love, for instance, is about learning to let go and try again. Flamingo says that love comes at all ages, and when we least expect it. This new novel, though, is not described so easily. It’s complicated! Sex, but no sex with goats. It is not pornography, and I can say that having written more than my fair share! It is, however, a great big beautiful romance, and I am very happy to share it with the world. With my name on the cover. And no typewriters anywhere to be seen.
February 11, 2013
Barista
This little flash was published in Smokelong Quarterly
Barista
That kid, he's as sweet as a Twinkie. He brought me a Mexican Mocha in a bright red cup, the foam on top a curvy little heart. He's letting his hair grow, and the bangs are curling on his forehead like some guitar boy from 1967. Which I remember, being alive in 1967. He was born in 1987. Or possibly later.
I picked up the cup, sucked the tail of the little heart into my mouth, cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet chocolate. He watched me drink, leaning over the counter on his elbows. I knew I had a little mocha moustache but I couldn't lick it off, not with him watching. My face flushed red. It wasn't a pink blush, like this pretty, soft-eyed boy would do, but a real flush, a hot flash flush, and I had to stumble like a fool out the door, stand in the street and let the snow blow cold on my face.
Barista
That kid, he's as sweet as a Twinkie. He brought me a Mexican Mocha in a bright red cup, the foam on top a curvy little heart. He's letting his hair grow, and the bangs are curling on his forehead like some guitar boy from 1967. Which I remember, being alive in 1967. He was born in 1987. Or possibly later.
I picked up the cup, sucked the tail of the little heart into my mouth, cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet chocolate. He watched me drink, leaning over the counter on his elbows. I knew I had a little mocha moustache but I couldn't lick it off, not with him watching. My face flushed red. It wasn't a pink blush, like this pretty, soft-eyed boy would do, but a real flush, a hot flash flush, and I had to stumble like a fool out the door, stand in the street and let the snow blow cold on my face.
February 8, 2013
Intuitive Writing and the Horse-Lord’s Soap
I just got home from work, and I’m still in my work clothes when I rush over to the little experiment that has taken over the kitchen. I have a bunch of glass bottles holding Q-tips soaked in essential oils- different combinations of sage and cedar and cinnamon and orange. I’m trying to isolate a combination so I can make the soap that smells like the soap one of my characters uses in the shower.
I am delirious over this guy, Gabriel Sanchez. I call him the Horse-Lord for the lethal Apache helicopters he used to fly in the Army. My POV character in the new book, General John Mitchel, is also delirious over Gabriel. John uses Dial soap and he would not consider letting me find him some new soap. He thinks it’s nonsense and has no time to waste on soap. But he seemed interested when I said I was going to make Gabriel a couple of sweet-smelling bars. He will certainly be willing to sniff Gabriel’s neck when he comes out of the shower.
My house smells like the houses I write about. I like to cook their food, smell their soap, listen to their music. It’s my thing, the way I sink into the characters. And once I am living with the characters and drinking their drinks and smelling their aftershave and listening to them have conversations, I can write intuitively about them.
What do I mean? I plan out scenes generally, but the characters surprise me all the time. They just do what they’re going to do, and their story moves forward. If I have thought about them enough, their behavior makes sense. I can put these two guys, Gabriel and John, down into any situation and write a scene and their behavior would make sense. Without my planning what they will do or say, they’ll do their thing and be themselves, and the end of the scene will have moved the story forward.
I have to drive lots of miles in my current job and I think about the story while I’m driving. I think about the characters. I let them have conversations in my head. When I’m ready to write, they just take over and do what they’re going to do. I call this intuitive writing because it feels intuitive to me. But it only works when I do adequate character work before I start writing.
The prep work isn’t just done driving, of course. I pick out their clothes when I’m surfing online. I find books for them in the bookstore. I research till my eyes are falling out of my head. But the smells are really evocative. When I’m playing around with my essential oils and Q-tips in the kitchen my mind seems to light up like a Christmas tree! And so now I’m going to make them a couple of bars of soap.
I have ten pounds of coconut oil, plus palm oil and olive oil and mango butter for superfatting. The recipes are online and I have a bottle of sodium hydroxide. I am very close to finding Gabriel’s scent. I am going to have so much fun this weekend!
I saw a sunset last weekend that was the strangest color, and my characters thought so, too. Here’s the scene I wrote in my head while I was driving. It’s not in the book- that’s finished and in editing:
**
John studied the candy-colored sky, raspberry pink edging to smudgy purple dusk the color of a grape lollipop. The colors reminded him of Turkish Delight, a candy he’d been offered once in a Bedouin’s tent. The old man’s grandson had filled two teacups with mint tea so sweet John could smell the sugar over the dust and sun-warmed canvas. Then he offered the plate of Turkish Delight with a flourish and a bow. The boy had black liquid eyes, with lashes thick as caterpillars, and John felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He turned his head and watched the boy’s hand slide down his leg toward the bronze-colored dagger in the top of his boot.
Then Gabriel was there, quiet as smoke, his rifle cradled in his arms, and the boy froze. John set his tea cup down, refusing the old Bedouin’s hospitality. A hard line drawn in the sand, nearly as hard a line as the one drawn when you cut someone’s throat over a plateful of Turkish Delight. The old man had eyes like his grandson. John stood up, backed out of the tent, and Gabriel spread his arms, the rifle in one big hand. No one could mistake the gesture. It said, no one touches him. You come through me to get to him.
John stared down into the cold frame. The basil seedlings looked ready to come out into the big world, taste the cold night air. Gabriel walked across the yard, jeans and his favorite tee shirt that said, First, Kill All the Lawyers. He slung an arm around John’s shoulder. “Hey, boss. You up for a steak?”
“I could eat a steak.” He looked at the sky again. “It looks like Turkish Delight, doesn’t it?”
Gabriel’s arm tightened around him. “Yes, it does.”
**
I thought about this scene after I wrote it down and set it aside for a bit. Why did Gabriel spread his arms in the tent? That was dangerous. That was stupid, I mean, the kid had a knife. He could have thrown it. Did he really do it to say something about needing to protect John?
But Gabriel explained it to me. “He was a backstabber. He wasn’t the kind of assassin who would put a knife in your chest, not with you looking right at him. I was just letting him know I knew who he was.”
So now I’m going to have to change that paragraph, since now I get what he did a little better.
The story is called The General and the Horse-Lord, and it should be out from Dreamspinner around April. If the soap turns out, I’ll give away a few bars when the book comes out!
I am delirious over this guy, Gabriel Sanchez. I call him the Horse-Lord for the lethal Apache helicopters he used to fly in the Army. My POV character in the new book, General John Mitchel, is also delirious over Gabriel. John uses Dial soap and he would not consider letting me find him some new soap. He thinks it’s nonsense and has no time to waste on soap. But he seemed interested when I said I was going to make Gabriel a couple of sweet-smelling bars. He will certainly be willing to sniff Gabriel’s neck when he comes out of the shower.
My house smells like the houses I write about. I like to cook their food, smell their soap, listen to their music. It’s my thing, the way I sink into the characters. And once I am living with the characters and drinking their drinks and smelling their aftershave and listening to them have conversations, I can write intuitively about them.
What do I mean? I plan out scenes generally, but the characters surprise me all the time. They just do what they’re going to do, and their story moves forward. If I have thought about them enough, their behavior makes sense. I can put these two guys, Gabriel and John, down into any situation and write a scene and their behavior would make sense. Without my planning what they will do or say, they’ll do their thing and be themselves, and the end of the scene will have moved the story forward.
I have to drive lots of miles in my current job and I think about the story while I’m driving. I think about the characters. I let them have conversations in my head. When I’m ready to write, they just take over and do what they’re going to do. I call this intuitive writing because it feels intuitive to me. But it only works when I do adequate character work before I start writing.
The prep work isn’t just done driving, of course. I pick out their clothes when I’m surfing online. I find books for them in the bookstore. I research till my eyes are falling out of my head. But the smells are really evocative. When I’m playing around with my essential oils and Q-tips in the kitchen my mind seems to light up like a Christmas tree! And so now I’m going to make them a couple of bars of soap.
I have ten pounds of coconut oil, plus palm oil and olive oil and mango butter for superfatting. The recipes are online and I have a bottle of sodium hydroxide. I am very close to finding Gabriel’s scent. I am going to have so much fun this weekend!
I saw a sunset last weekend that was the strangest color, and my characters thought so, too. Here’s the scene I wrote in my head while I was driving. It’s not in the book- that’s finished and in editing:
**
John studied the candy-colored sky, raspberry pink edging to smudgy purple dusk the color of a grape lollipop. The colors reminded him of Turkish Delight, a candy he’d been offered once in a Bedouin’s tent. The old man’s grandson had filled two teacups with mint tea so sweet John could smell the sugar over the dust and sun-warmed canvas. Then he offered the plate of Turkish Delight with a flourish and a bow. The boy had black liquid eyes, with lashes thick as caterpillars, and John felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He turned his head and watched the boy’s hand slide down his leg toward the bronze-colored dagger in the top of his boot.
Then Gabriel was there, quiet as smoke, his rifle cradled in his arms, and the boy froze. John set his tea cup down, refusing the old Bedouin’s hospitality. A hard line drawn in the sand, nearly as hard a line as the one drawn when you cut someone’s throat over a plateful of Turkish Delight. The old man had eyes like his grandson. John stood up, backed out of the tent, and Gabriel spread his arms, the rifle in one big hand. No one could mistake the gesture. It said, no one touches him. You come through me to get to him.
John stared down into the cold frame. The basil seedlings looked ready to come out into the big world, taste the cold night air. Gabriel walked across the yard, jeans and his favorite tee shirt that said, First, Kill All the Lawyers. He slung an arm around John’s shoulder. “Hey, boss. You up for a steak?”
“I could eat a steak.” He looked at the sky again. “It looks like Turkish Delight, doesn’t it?”
Gabriel’s arm tightened around him. “Yes, it does.”
**
I thought about this scene after I wrote it down and set it aside for a bit. Why did Gabriel spread his arms in the tent? That was dangerous. That was stupid, I mean, the kid had a knife. He could have thrown it. Did he really do it to say something about needing to protect John?
But Gabriel explained it to me. “He was a backstabber. He wasn’t the kind of assassin who would put a knife in your chest, not with you looking right at him. I was just letting him know I knew who he was.”
So now I’m going to have to change that paragraph, since now I get what he did a little better.
The story is called The General and the Horse-Lord, and it should be out from Dreamspinner around April. If the soap turns out, I’ll give away a few bars when the book comes out!
December 23, 2012
Burning Hitler's Bones- A story to say Happy Holidays!
Burning Hitler’s Bones
Ethan stared at the ringing phone like it was a snake. It had been a day of straws: last straws, final straws, straws that broke the camel’s back. He knew that this call was trouble, desperately serious trouble, because trouble was his business and he had the instincts. He picked it up and held it to his ear. “Lieutenant Frome. Portland Fire and Rescue.”
“Beaver? There’s trouble.”
It took a moment for his mind to switch gears. “Sparks?” Oh, God, who’s died? Sparks hadn’t spoken to him willingly for almost ten years.
“No one calls me Sparks anymore.”
“Really? No one calls me Beaver.”
“Okay, Dickhead? There’s trouble.”
Sparks had been a smart-ass in the womb. They had grown up next door to each other. “Sorry. It’s been a day. What’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“Not me, Ethan. Your dad. He just called me from the hospital. He’s been in an accident.”
Ethan stood, reached for his jacket hanging on the coatrack, checked his keys were in the pocket. “Is he in the ER?”
“Yeah. He’s shook up, not hurt. The cops made him go get checked out.”
“The cops?”
“Now, Beaver, don’t freak out.” Sparks took a deep breath. “Okay, he hit somebody. Somebody on a bike.”
Oh, fucking hell. “A motorcycle? Shit. And he called you first? Does it appear he’s going to need a lawyer? Was the other person…”
“Um, yes, I would say he is definitely going to need a lawyer. Not a motorcycle. A bike. A girl riding a bike.”
**
Ethan thought that if someone could take a picture of the inside of his chest, where he always felt fear and panic and fury and other desperate and life-wrenching emotions, it would look like a big vermillion devil-flower, one of those sick-o flowers that ate meat and had stamens like snake’s tongues. His daddy, his kind and gentle dad. Dieter would never forgive himself if he’d hurt someone.
She’d been hurt, not killed, thank God. Sparks said they were both in the ER, and the girl had some abrasions and contusions and he’d seen a splint on her arm before the nurse had twitched the curtain back to shield his view.
Dieter Frome had been born in Berlin in 1936, and he’d grown up with war and hunger. It had made him a gentle man. He couldn’t stand to see a child without food. He’s spent his life feeding children, first as a farmer and then through managing the regional food banks. Even now, when he had to use a motorized scooter to get around Wal-Mart, he kept individually wrapped Lifesavers in his pockets and gave them out with a wink to any kid who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a couple of hours.
He’d come to the States in 1960, married a beauty of an Austrian girl he’d met the first day in New York. Annalise Rohr had been a smart girl with a very sharp sense of humor. Ethan sometimes wondered if she’d married his dad for his last name, so she could name her son Ethan Frome. They had lived together happily for many years, and when Ethan arrived unexpectedly, like some menopausal Jack in the Box, she’d know immediately what to call him.
Ethan read the Cliff notes of Ethan Frome when he was in high school. He did not appreciate his namesake’s story, or the joke his mother had pulled in naming him for some weak-willed fictional character in a book. He’d told his mother he had no intention of living a life crippled with regret. She said it was symbolism, darling, and don’t take yourself so seriously. “You can’t control the whole world, Ethan,” she’d said, studying him with her beautiful blue eyes. “Sometimes things happen that are bigger than you are.”
He’d stared at her, his arms crossed over his chest. He had no intention of allowing things that were bigger than him to control his destiny. He was an American. He would control his own destiny.
“The key, darling, is to always remain yourself, whatever else happens. No matter the surprises the world springs on you.” Good advice, and he remembered it on the way to the ER to get his dad after the accident. He had not been able to control the world. In fact, looking back over the last ten years, since about when Sparks had stopped speaking to him, the world looked a lot like a snowball, picking up mass and velocity as it hurtled down the mountain.
His work was fire and rescue. He was the man who went running into burning buildings, not out of them. When someone was in danger, he was supposed to rescue them. But some days he didn’t even seem to be able to rescue himself.
**
Dieter was sitting crumpled into an ER chair, a kid in a police uniform standing at attention next to him. He kept darting anxious looks at the cop. Ethan was wearing a uniform as well, and his outranked the cop’s. He was also taller, and older, and pissed off, and he used all of these factors to intimidate the grim figure into leaving the immediate vicinity of his father.
“That police officer took my license,” Dieter said.
Ethan had him up, a hand under one arm, and put the cane in his other hand. “My truck’s outside, Dad. Let’s get out of here and get you home.”
“Can I just leave? Should I tell someone?”
“Let’s just go. Sparks will find out what’s going on. I’m not letting them question you tonight.”
“Can we find out how the girl is doing? I just want to make sure she’s going to be okay. Maybe I can give some blood.”
Ethan put his arm around Dieter’s shoulders, lifted him until his feet were barely touching the ground. “You don’t have any spare blood to give, Dad.”
In the truck, Dieter stared out the window. It was a typical Portland winter day, gray, cloudy, rainy, windy, and already dark by four thirty. “This is where I hit that girl,” he said, pointing out the window. The intersection did not have a designated bike path, and it was down a quiet paved road close to the farm, miles out of town.
“Dad, can you tell me what happened?”
“I was turning right, going home. I was watching the other direction for cars. The little girl was on my right.”
“By the passenger side window?” Ethan thought about it. “So you were stopped and she was stopped, and you turned right and she was going straight?”
Dieter nodded. “She flew right off that bike, Ethan. Like she had wings. I thought my heart had stopped in my chest.” He pressed the flat of his hand down against his chest. “It’s all my fault.”
“Why do you say that, Dad?”
“I didn’t see her. Because of the cataracts.”
“What cataracts? You’ve got cataracts?”
“They wanted a $400.00 copayment for the surgery! Can you believe that? I told them forget it, I could see just fine.”
Silence filled the truck. “I think now I should have had the surgery.”
Ethan braked gently, stopped the truck in the middle of the road. “I can give you the money, Dad. I mean, four hundred bucks isn’t that much.”
“It is to me. And it’s the principle of the thing.” Dieter reached up, rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Stupid principle, and now a girl is hurt.”
“Dad, you didn’t tell that policeman about the cataracts?”
“Yes. And that’s when he took my license.”
“Does Sparks know?”
Dieter nodded. “He said he would get it back and come out to the farm. He said the blackshirts didn’t have any right to take my license and I wasn’t charged or under arrest and lots more. Lots and lots more. He was talking on that phone of his so loudly the nurses made him go outside.” Dieter shook his head. “Blackshirts. That’s not right. I told him not to call them that name.”
“Well, Sparks is just…being Sparks, I guess.”
Dieter gave him a long, silent look.
“Dad, not tonight, okay? Just leave it alone.”
**
Dieter started peeling potatoes for potato soup. He pulled a chair up to the table, sat down to peel. He couldn’t stand at the kitchen sink for very long anymore. Old farmers didn’t go gently into that good night; they went with terrible back pain and frozen shoulders and arthritis that turned their knuckles the size of turnips. And they went with cataracts.
Ethan changed into an old pair of sweats he had left in his bedroom and went outside. The paddock next to the house was home to a small flock of alpacas, pets that Dieter hadn’t been able to sell as breeding stock when he stopped farming. They were skittish, twitchy animals that made a strange little woofing noise under their breath when they were excited or scared. Ethan sometimes wondered, if he could sneak up on an alpaca and startle it, make a noise like clapping his hands, if an alpaca would actually jump out of its skin? He would believe it if someone told him they’d seen it. He opened the gate and the alpacas scattered hysterically, re-gathered trembling with fear at the back fence, so he wasn’t able to test the theory.
He lay down in the wet grass, stared up at the dark sky. No stars. The cloud cover was too thick. The phone rang in the pocket of his sweats. “Frome.”
“Where are you?” It was Sparks.
“Out in the paddock.” He looked over, spotted a fragrant pile of pellets near his head. “I’m lying right next to a large pile of alpaca shit.”
“Eww. Gross.” Ethan heard the gate creak, then Sparks was walking across the grass and standing over him, his phone still pressed to his ear. “I’m hanging up now,” he said. Ethan put his own phone back in his pocket.
Sparks was wearing jeans with the cuffs turned up about four inches and a pair of chestnut suede Chelsea boots. Ethan studied the ensemble, then looked at Sparks’ hair. He was sporting a red flat-top. “What happened to your hair?”
“Nothing happened to it. I get it cut at Rudy’s every Tuesday.”
“Why can’t you buy jeans with the correct inseam?”
Sparks turned around and started back to the gate. Ethan let him get three steps away. “I’m sorry. Come back.”
Sparks stopped. “You don’t sound sorry. You sound like you’re looking for a fight.”
“I’m really, really sorry.”
Sparks walked back to Ethan, lowered himself to the ground gingerly. “Why are you lying next to the alpaca shit? There is a huge field of soft grass here you could have picked.”
“It was too dark to see when I got here.”
“An excellent defense. I might use it.”
“Why did he call you, Sparks?”
“When he needs a lawyer, he calls me. When I need an alpaca, I call him.”
Ethan didn’t want to know how often Sparks called for an alpaca. He lay down in the grass, stretched out and put his head down on Ethan’s belly. “Okay, Ethan? There’s more bad news.”
“What?”
“The girl he hit? She’s an advocate. A bike safety advocate.”
“No fucking way.”
“Yes way. And that’s not all. She’s pregnant, Ethan.”
Ethan closed his eyes, felt his fingers reached down for Spark’s face. “Please tell me the baby’s okay.”
“Yes, the baby is okay. There’s more. She’s a nun.”
Oh, God. A nun? How much worse was this going to get? His mind skipped and stuttered to a stop. “Wait a minute. A pregnant bike safety advocate nun?”
“Okay, I made up that last part about the nun. The rest is true.”
He liked the way Sparks’ flat-top felt under his fingers, sort of springy, like good Bermuda grass. “So, are you still giving me the silent treatment?”
“Obviously not. I’m waiting for an apology.”
“Not going to happen. You were fifteen, Sparks.”
“I was a very mature fifteen.”
“So that makes you what, twenty-five now?”
“Something like that. I’m no longer a virgin, though. I couldn’t wait for you forever.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Ethan sighed when he realized Sparks could hear the truth in his voice.
**
Dieter looked at them across the kitchen table and smiled happily. “Look at my boys, all grown up.”
Sparks had his memo book out. “You didn’t see anything flashing from her bike or her clothes? No lights or reflectors?”
Dieter shook his head. “But maybe it was the cataracts.”
“Okay, maybe, but maybe not. I saw her clothes. She was wearing black pants and boots, a black jacket. Did you see a helmet?”
Dieter thought about this, then shook his head. He stood up, got the butter out of the fridge and put it on the table. “I didn’t see a helmet.”
“And what was she doing out here anyway? It was almost five. Too dark to be going for a ride. I checked her addy. She lives in Portland, down in the Pearl.”
“Eat, Sparks. Eat some more soup. Have some bread and butter. I have some pickles, too. Do you want some pickles?”
Ethan watched Sparks’ face soften. He put his pen down. “Do you still make those bread and butter pickles Aunt Annalise used to make? I loved those pickles.”
Dieter was up, rummaging around in the fridge. “I have some, and some pickled onions! You’ll like those.”
Ethan laid his hand on Sparks’ arm. “It doesn’t matter, does it? What she was wearing? Why she was out here?”
Dieter was back with a jar of pickled onions, and he passed them around. “I want to tell you boys a story. It’s about my father, before we left Germany.”
Ethan and Sparks looked at each other. Dieter Frome never talked about Germany, never talked about growing up during the war. “My father, he was a tobacco farmer. Every year, during the winter, the SS would come get him, send him off to fight. When it was time to plant the new crops, he could go home, but they would always come get him again. It wasn’t something he could refuse, you understand?” Ethan nodded. “So the last year he was in the Army, he was with a unit fighting. They were in a swamp, and it was cold, winter, you see? So my father, he goes to look for material, leaves, to put down into the legs of his pants, to insulate his shirt against the cold. And while he was in the woods, the unit was hit with grenades. He heard the explosions, and when they stopped, he went back to the swamp and everyone was dead. Bodies everywhere. He looked around, thinking there was maybe a coat somewhere, and a last grenade was thrown. He woke up lying half in the muck, mud up his nose, blood all over his face. The other soldiers, he didn’t know where they were from, they were walking through the swamp, checking the bodies. They had already walked by him, so he just kept very still, and after they were gone, he stood up and found a coat and started walking home.
“It took him a month to get home, and there was very little food. He had a dent in his head from the grenade, right in the forehead, and he was so thin. So my mother didn’t recognize him when he came into the house after so long. She’d been told he was dead, you see? So she screamed and ran at him with the broom and started to hit him. He said something to her then. I never knew what he said, just something that made her drop the broom and pull him into her arms, and then he fell to his knees and rolled over. I thought he was dead, and I started to cry, but Mother told me to be quiet. She was very fierce, and I took his feet and she took his legs and we carried him into the bedroom.
“It seemed to take forever for him to get better, but by summer he was back to work in the fields. He was so happy then, Mother was, too, because they both thought that the SS would think he was dead and they wouldn’t come for him again. But the next winter, just like every year, they came and took him away. He pointed to the dent in his forehead, said he couldn’t fight anymore. They said he wasn’t going to fight. They said he was going to Berlin, they had special work.
“He was gone for a long time, and it was summer before he came home again. Mother had done the planting on her own, with just me to help, and he sat at the kitchen table and ate everything she could bring him from the garden, even the vegetables that were barely out of the soil.
I heard them talking together very late, speaking very quietly. Father said he had been told to make bonfires. All through the winter, he was to make fires and then he went with his wheelbarrow and collected whatever they gave him to burn. He burned books and ledgers and papers and maps, he burned passports and troop records. Then in April the suicides started. One night he was brought to a bunker. He was told that he would hear a shot, and when he did, he was to go in with his wheelbarrow and fetch out the body inside and put that body on the bonfire. He made a very large fire, and he broke up some furniture so he’d have some extra wood, he could keep it very hot. He heard the shot and went into the bunker with his wheelbarrow and picked up the body. The man was wearing a uniform and his face was gone. He’d shot himself in the mouth. So Father took the body to the bonfire and piled the wood on top and kept watch while it burned. When it was done, Father picked up the wheelbarrow and started walking home. He was still pushing that wheelbarrow when he came up the road to our farm.”
Dieter bent over his bowl of soup, ate several spoonfuls. “The wheelbarrow stayed in the barn for a few months. I would see them, mother and father, staring at it sometimes, like they could see the body inside it, the blood from the bullet hole in his mouth. Then one day, father used it to take a load of manure to the fields, and after that it just became a wheelbarrow again.”
Sparks gave him a look, a wtf was that? sort of look. Ethan shrugged. Dieter picked up a slice of bread, spread it with butter and took a bite. Ethan ate a small pickled onion.
“My boys, my boys, together again at the table.”
After supper, Sparks stalled around until it was obvious there was nothing else they could do this night and he needed to go home. He didn’t live next door anymore, and his parents had sold their farm and moved, so going home meant driving back into downtown Portland. Ethan walked him out to the car, listened to the last few instructions on how to deal with the media if any called.
Ethan wasn’t sure what was happening. He and Sparks had talked in the paddock, lying in the damp grass, and he’d remember how much he loved running his fingers through curly red hair. They had talked like that a million times, studying the sky of their boyhood, their adolescent sky. Sparks loved to lie down in the grass and rest his head on Ethan’s stomach. Ethan had loved it, too, even when he was grown up, until suddenly Sparks was grown up, too, and it meant something different. But it was all just nostalgia, right? Some memory of times past, echoes of sighs and smells and memories, bouncing off the bones of the skull.
He opened the door to Sparks’ Nissan Cube, a funny blue car that looked exactly like the sort of car Sparks would drive. Sparks sighed and climbed in, and Ethan closed the door after him. The window buzzed down. “Meet me for breakfast. We can have a strategy meeting.”
“I’ll meet you for breakfast,” Ethan agreed, “but only if you stop talking about this. My ears are full of strategy.”
“What do you want to talk about, then?”
“What do we always talk about? You, idiot. I want to hear all about your wonderful gay life, since you’re not a virgin anymore.”
“Okay, then. 0730? The Byways Café?”
The house seemed strangely quiet when Ethan went back in. “Dad?”
“In here.” Dieter was on the computer. Ethan looked over his shoulder. He was hunting for an address for Becky Green.
“Dad, no. Let’s not do this. You don’t need to contact her right now. Let things settle down, okay? We need to get you scheduled for your cataract surgery. Have you been to see the doctor?”
Dieter was quiet for a moment, his hand on Ethan’s arm. “I’m so proud of you, son. Have I told you that today?” Ethan shook his head. “Doesn’t Sparks look wonderful? He’s grown to be such a handsome man. He still looks at you the same way he did when he was six and you were sixteen. But ten years is not so much anymore, is it? It seems the years get shorter as we get older. The years are shorter and time is faster. But you and Sparks, together again, sitting at the table, telling me what I need to do.” He sighed. “It reminds me of those times. One of you was always a teenager, it seemed like to me. A teenager so much smarter than the old German father. Thanks goodness, I thought more than once, that I had these boys to tell me what to do, otherwise I might not be able to find my way home! And now, here you both are again, helping me find my way home.” He patted Ethan gently on the arm. “Son, I’m fine. You don’t need to stay with me tonight. And I know how to call the eye doctor. You call me later and let me know what you and Sparks have decided I need to do.”
**
Ethan arrived at the Byways fifteen minutes early, but Sparks was already there, set up in the back booth like a mafia Don getting his ring kissed. He had his tablet propped up and his phone up to his ear. The opposite bench was taken up by some Baker Street Irregular who slid out of the booth when Ethan glowered at him. He gave Sparks a camp look, eyebrows raised, then checked out Ethan’s butt when he reached up to hang his dripping jacket on the coat hook next to the bench.
“Give me a break,” Ethan said.
“Good morning to you, too.” Sparks looked hot in a charcoal business suit, with a grey button down and an elegant silk tie the exact color of his shirt. The only color on his person was the bright red of his flat top. He set off the gloomy gray morning like a flame. Very subtle and very hot. “I’ve got to be in court at nine.”
“Better tuck a napkin in your collar then so you don’t go before the judge with egg on your tie.”
Sparks rolled his eyes. “You’re still eating eggs? Ever heard of coronary artery disease?”
The waitress filled up both coffee cups and set a bowl of fruit in front of Sparks. “I’ll take biscuits and gravy,” Ethan said.
Sparks reached into the bowl and popped a blueberry into his mouth, then flicked one across the table. It hit Ethan on the nose. He felt ridiculous, all of the sudden, trying to pick a fight just because Sparks was dressed up like a man and looking fine and he wasn’t six years old anymore, running next door to drive Ethan crazy with his nonstop chatter.
He sighed, closed his eyes and picked up the coffee cup. Before he could formulate a tough-guy sort of semi-apology, another one of Sparks’ irregulars sidled up to the table.
Sparks handed him a couple of twenties.
“I sent the details to your email, but she never left her apartment after she got in last night.”
“Thanks, Bryan,” Sparks said.
“Later, Jude.”
“Did you arrange for every gay man in greater Portland to wander in here this morning and try to make me jealous?”
“Yes, Ethan, I did. I’m trying to drive you mad with longing.”
Ethan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Sparks stared across the table, his mouth pressed into a straight line. His eyes were moss green this morning. They were hazel, and changed color with the time of day, and the color of the sky, and his mood.
“Okay, sorry, sorry. I’m being an ass. That guy called you Jude. Nobody calls you Sparks, huh?”
The green eyes softened a bit. Sparks never stayed mad for very long. “Nobody ever called me Sparks but you. I talked to your dad this morning. He’s okay.”
“Really? I talked to him, too. He didn’t seem like he wanted to chat.”
“Maybe that’s because he was out feeding the alpacas when I called and I interrupted him.”
Ethan watched him eat his fruit, the napkin tucked into his shirt collar like a spill of snow. Why had he ordered biscuits and gravy? Just to agitate Sparks. What he really wanted was some cantaloupe.
“So where should I start? You want to hear about the first boyfriend? The first sex? Current partners?”
“None of the above,” Ethan said, and picked up his own napkin when the waitress slid a platter full of delicious saturated fats in front of him. “All I want to know is if you are currently in love with someone.”
“Yes,” Sparks said.
“Someone other than myself.”
“No.”
“All right, then.” Ethan picked up his fork, cut his biscuit into quarters, and ate a bite. Sparks reached across the table with his spoon, tasted a tiny bit of gravy.
“That’s not as bad as it looks,” Sparks said.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m in love with someone besides you?”
Sparks gave him a look full of pity and went back to his fruit. “Ethan, please.”
Ethan watched him tap on his tablet, eat his fruit, talk into his phone. “Sparks, what did you do?”
“I just arranged for some surveillance of the girl. I want to know what she’s up to.” His eyes were narrowed, and he studied his tablet. “I wish I could put some eyes on her, just a little camera.”
“That’s getting a bit creepy, don’t you think? We don’t know she’s going to do anything. Maybe she’s just a little pregnant bike-rider who got too far out of town and didn’t realize it was getting dark, and here comes Dad with his cataracts.”
“I don’t know. I’m suspicious of too much happenstance. There is no such thing as too much information, Ethan.”
“Just don’t get in trouble.”
“Ethan, what do you make of that story he told us? Do you think your grandfather really burned Hitler’s bones?”
Ethan shrugged. “I guess so. Dad wouldn’t make it up. He’s never talked about that before. And I never knew my grandfather. He died before I was born. Were we supposed to get something out of that story? I got the feeling I was missing something.”
“I know. I thought that, too. I was waiting for him to say, and the moral of this story is…I’ve got to go.” Sparks pulled his napkin out of his collar, threw it down on the table and started packing his electronics. “What time are you off work?”
“Five,” Ethan said.
“I’ll come by and pick you up. I told your dad we’d be at his place for supper. He’s got me craving pickled onions.”
Ethan looked up when Sparks slid out of the booth. Sparks stared at him for a moment, then he leaned forward and kissed Ethan on the mouth. “I’m craving pickled onions, too,” Ethan said, and Sparks laughed and kissed him again.
**
Ethan was tired by the end of the day, with the twitchy, agitated sort of tired that comes from too much thinking, too much stress, and not enough exercise. “I need to work out,” he told Sparks, climbing into the blue Cube.
“Yeah, me, too.” Sparks had changed into a pair of old jeans and a hoodie that was faded and frayed from years of wear. It was corn-yellow, and had a picture of an onion on the front. The graphic said Maui Sweet Onions. “I’m not a runner, though. I do Tai Chi.”
“Yeah? I’ve been thinking about trying Tai Chi. You go to a gym?”
“Down by my loft. It’s a twenty-four hour gym. You want to come back with me, and I’ll show you the moves?” Sparks grinned at him, and Ethan flashed on Sparks’ seven year old self, freckles and red hair, bouncing up and down, saying, want to see my Ninja moves, Ethan? Do you? Come on, watch my moves.
“Absolutely I want to see your moves, Jude.” He looked across at the driver’s seat. “I’m going to try and remember you’re all grown up, and you have a grown up name now. You remind me if I forget, okay?”
Sparks reached over and grabbed Ethan’s hand, put it on his thigh. “Keep your hand right there, Ethan. I promise it will help.”
Ethan bit down on his bottom lip, tried hard to keep from hyperventilating. The thigh was hard under his palm, and the denim was soft. This was a grown-up thigh. He wondered suddenly if the leg he was clutching was covered with curly red hair.
“Holy shit! Look at that.” There was a beat up white VW Beetle in the driveway. “That’s her car! The girl, Becky Green! What’s she doing here?”
“Dad was trying to find her address online last night after you left! I told him to leave it alone. What if he invited her out here?”
“Oh, God, if he tells her about the cataracts she’s going straight to civil litigation! She’s got an uncle in a law firm downtown. I don’t know much about him. He’s got a rep as a shark.”
Dieter and Becky Green were not in the house. Sparks, no, Jude, Ethan reminded himself, Jude followed a set of footprints out to the paddock. They were feeding the alpacas by hand. Ethan took Jude by the hand and they tiptoed into the barn. Ethan thought it was strange that the alpacas didn’t scatter and run when Becky Green was walking among them. They seemed actually calm. What was it about him that freaked them out? Jude climbed up on a stack of hay bales, peeked out the window. “Ethan, get up here! They’re coming this way.”
Ethan climbed up next to Jude. They lay down flat, on their stomachs, trying to catch a word. The girl was talking.
“So after he told me he’d had a change of heart about fatherhood, I sort of lost it. He said, ‘it’s too much, you know? The idea is freaking me out.’ Freaking him out? I was the one freaking out. Where did he get the idea he could change his mind at this point? I mean, shit! The baby’s got fingernails! We saw them on the ultrasound. So anyway, I just started riding, and I rode and rode until I found myself out here. It was getting dark, I didn’t have any idea where I was, and I was crying. I saw you next to me, and I even saw your blinker was turned on, but it just didn’t compute. I wasn’t taking anything in.”
Jude grinned and held both thumbs up in a gesture of victory.
“You are going to be a wonderful, strong mother, Becky, and already you will have stories to tell the baby! How a stupid old German farmer nearly ran you both over with his car because he was too stubborn to get his cataracts removed.”
“Well, I have to agree with you about that. That copayment was ridiculous.”
Jude was screaming silently into his hands. Ethan waved him off.
“You have family, Becky? A mother and father?”
“They’re a long way away from here. And they don’t approve. They thought I should have gotten married first. I haven’t even told my mom about him leaving. She’s going to think this is somehow what I deserve. For breaking the rules, you know?”
“Things happen,” Dieter said. “It’s just life. Sometimes life is so much bigger than we are. All we can do is remain ourselves. Remain true to ourselves. That’s what my father taught me. No matter what is happening around you, just try to remain yourself. This boy who left you, he is being himself, and he will regret it for the rest of his life. And you, you are being yourself, so strong and brave, and you are going to rise, and rise again, all the long years of your life.”
Ethan heard a muffled sob. He leaned over the edge of the hay and watched them, Becky in his father’s arms, crying, and Dieter rubbing her back, making soothing little noises. Jude peeked over the edge of the hay bale next to him, and Dieter looked up, caught sight of them both. He stared at them as if he had gone insane, then closed his eyes and sighed.
“Thank you for telling me that story. About the bonfire, and the war. About what happened to your father.”
“Shall we make a bonfire? You want to burn up everything this selfish boy left with you, and start a new life?”
Becky shook her head. Her hands went down to her belly. “No. Some things I’ll keep.”
“Let’s go into the kitchen, heat up some soup for supper. My boys will be home soon, and they will want to meet you. Such good boys, but there are no grandbabies coming my way, not from that pair. I don’t know what I’ll have to do to get a grandbaby. Maybe I should find a beautiful young mother and run her over with my car. You think that would work?”
Becky gave a shaky laugh, and then she swallowed a sob, and Dieter walked her back into the house, his old arm around her shoulder.
Ethan stared at the ringing phone like it was a snake. It had been a day of straws: last straws, final straws, straws that broke the camel’s back. He knew that this call was trouble, desperately serious trouble, because trouble was his business and he had the instincts. He picked it up and held it to his ear. “Lieutenant Frome. Portland Fire and Rescue.”
“Beaver? There’s trouble.”
It took a moment for his mind to switch gears. “Sparks?” Oh, God, who’s died? Sparks hadn’t spoken to him willingly for almost ten years.
“No one calls me Sparks anymore.”
“Really? No one calls me Beaver.”
“Okay, Dickhead? There’s trouble.”
Sparks had been a smart-ass in the womb. They had grown up next door to each other. “Sorry. It’s been a day. What’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“Not me, Ethan. Your dad. He just called me from the hospital. He’s been in an accident.”
Ethan stood, reached for his jacket hanging on the coatrack, checked his keys were in the pocket. “Is he in the ER?”
“Yeah. He’s shook up, not hurt. The cops made him go get checked out.”
“The cops?”
“Now, Beaver, don’t freak out.” Sparks took a deep breath. “Okay, he hit somebody. Somebody on a bike.”
Oh, fucking hell. “A motorcycle? Shit. And he called you first? Does it appear he’s going to need a lawyer? Was the other person…”
“Um, yes, I would say he is definitely going to need a lawyer. Not a motorcycle. A bike. A girl riding a bike.”
**
Ethan thought that if someone could take a picture of the inside of his chest, where he always felt fear and panic and fury and other desperate and life-wrenching emotions, it would look like a big vermillion devil-flower, one of those sick-o flowers that ate meat and had stamens like snake’s tongues. His daddy, his kind and gentle dad. Dieter would never forgive himself if he’d hurt someone.
She’d been hurt, not killed, thank God. Sparks said they were both in the ER, and the girl had some abrasions and contusions and he’d seen a splint on her arm before the nurse had twitched the curtain back to shield his view.
Dieter Frome had been born in Berlin in 1936, and he’d grown up with war and hunger. It had made him a gentle man. He couldn’t stand to see a child without food. He’s spent his life feeding children, first as a farmer and then through managing the regional food banks. Even now, when he had to use a motorized scooter to get around Wal-Mart, he kept individually wrapped Lifesavers in his pockets and gave them out with a wink to any kid who looked like he hadn’t eaten in a couple of hours.
He’d come to the States in 1960, married a beauty of an Austrian girl he’d met the first day in New York. Annalise Rohr had been a smart girl with a very sharp sense of humor. Ethan sometimes wondered if she’d married his dad for his last name, so she could name her son Ethan Frome. They had lived together happily for many years, and when Ethan arrived unexpectedly, like some menopausal Jack in the Box, she’d know immediately what to call him.
Ethan read the Cliff notes of Ethan Frome when he was in high school. He did not appreciate his namesake’s story, or the joke his mother had pulled in naming him for some weak-willed fictional character in a book. He’d told his mother he had no intention of living a life crippled with regret. She said it was symbolism, darling, and don’t take yourself so seriously. “You can’t control the whole world, Ethan,” she’d said, studying him with her beautiful blue eyes. “Sometimes things happen that are bigger than you are.”
He’d stared at her, his arms crossed over his chest. He had no intention of allowing things that were bigger than him to control his destiny. He was an American. He would control his own destiny.
“The key, darling, is to always remain yourself, whatever else happens. No matter the surprises the world springs on you.” Good advice, and he remembered it on the way to the ER to get his dad after the accident. He had not been able to control the world. In fact, looking back over the last ten years, since about when Sparks had stopped speaking to him, the world looked a lot like a snowball, picking up mass and velocity as it hurtled down the mountain.
His work was fire and rescue. He was the man who went running into burning buildings, not out of them. When someone was in danger, he was supposed to rescue them. But some days he didn’t even seem to be able to rescue himself.
**
Dieter was sitting crumpled into an ER chair, a kid in a police uniform standing at attention next to him. He kept darting anxious looks at the cop. Ethan was wearing a uniform as well, and his outranked the cop’s. He was also taller, and older, and pissed off, and he used all of these factors to intimidate the grim figure into leaving the immediate vicinity of his father.
“That police officer took my license,” Dieter said.
Ethan had him up, a hand under one arm, and put the cane in his other hand. “My truck’s outside, Dad. Let’s get out of here and get you home.”
“Can I just leave? Should I tell someone?”
“Let’s just go. Sparks will find out what’s going on. I’m not letting them question you tonight.”
“Can we find out how the girl is doing? I just want to make sure she’s going to be okay. Maybe I can give some blood.”
Ethan put his arm around Dieter’s shoulders, lifted him until his feet were barely touching the ground. “You don’t have any spare blood to give, Dad.”
In the truck, Dieter stared out the window. It was a typical Portland winter day, gray, cloudy, rainy, windy, and already dark by four thirty. “This is where I hit that girl,” he said, pointing out the window. The intersection did not have a designated bike path, and it was down a quiet paved road close to the farm, miles out of town.
“Dad, can you tell me what happened?”
“I was turning right, going home. I was watching the other direction for cars. The little girl was on my right.”
“By the passenger side window?” Ethan thought about it. “So you were stopped and she was stopped, and you turned right and she was going straight?”
Dieter nodded. “She flew right off that bike, Ethan. Like she had wings. I thought my heart had stopped in my chest.” He pressed the flat of his hand down against his chest. “It’s all my fault.”
“Why do you say that, Dad?”
“I didn’t see her. Because of the cataracts.”
“What cataracts? You’ve got cataracts?”
“They wanted a $400.00 copayment for the surgery! Can you believe that? I told them forget it, I could see just fine.”
Silence filled the truck. “I think now I should have had the surgery.”
Ethan braked gently, stopped the truck in the middle of the road. “I can give you the money, Dad. I mean, four hundred bucks isn’t that much.”
“It is to me. And it’s the principle of the thing.” Dieter reached up, rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Stupid principle, and now a girl is hurt.”
“Dad, you didn’t tell that policeman about the cataracts?”
“Yes. And that’s when he took my license.”
“Does Sparks know?”
Dieter nodded. “He said he would get it back and come out to the farm. He said the blackshirts didn’t have any right to take my license and I wasn’t charged or under arrest and lots more. Lots and lots more. He was talking on that phone of his so loudly the nurses made him go outside.” Dieter shook his head. “Blackshirts. That’s not right. I told him not to call them that name.”
“Well, Sparks is just…being Sparks, I guess.”
Dieter gave him a long, silent look.
“Dad, not tonight, okay? Just leave it alone.”
**
Dieter started peeling potatoes for potato soup. He pulled a chair up to the table, sat down to peel. He couldn’t stand at the kitchen sink for very long anymore. Old farmers didn’t go gently into that good night; they went with terrible back pain and frozen shoulders and arthritis that turned their knuckles the size of turnips. And they went with cataracts.
Ethan changed into an old pair of sweats he had left in his bedroom and went outside. The paddock next to the house was home to a small flock of alpacas, pets that Dieter hadn’t been able to sell as breeding stock when he stopped farming. They were skittish, twitchy animals that made a strange little woofing noise under their breath when they were excited or scared. Ethan sometimes wondered, if he could sneak up on an alpaca and startle it, make a noise like clapping his hands, if an alpaca would actually jump out of its skin? He would believe it if someone told him they’d seen it. He opened the gate and the alpacas scattered hysterically, re-gathered trembling with fear at the back fence, so he wasn’t able to test the theory.
He lay down in the wet grass, stared up at the dark sky. No stars. The cloud cover was too thick. The phone rang in the pocket of his sweats. “Frome.”
“Where are you?” It was Sparks.
“Out in the paddock.” He looked over, spotted a fragrant pile of pellets near his head. “I’m lying right next to a large pile of alpaca shit.”
“Eww. Gross.” Ethan heard the gate creak, then Sparks was walking across the grass and standing over him, his phone still pressed to his ear. “I’m hanging up now,” he said. Ethan put his own phone back in his pocket.
Sparks was wearing jeans with the cuffs turned up about four inches and a pair of chestnut suede Chelsea boots. Ethan studied the ensemble, then looked at Sparks’ hair. He was sporting a red flat-top. “What happened to your hair?”
“Nothing happened to it. I get it cut at Rudy’s every Tuesday.”
“Why can’t you buy jeans with the correct inseam?”
Sparks turned around and started back to the gate. Ethan let him get three steps away. “I’m sorry. Come back.”
Sparks stopped. “You don’t sound sorry. You sound like you’re looking for a fight.”
“I’m really, really sorry.”
Sparks walked back to Ethan, lowered himself to the ground gingerly. “Why are you lying next to the alpaca shit? There is a huge field of soft grass here you could have picked.”
“It was too dark to see when I got here.”
“An excellent defense. I might use it.”
“Why did he call you, Sparks?”
“When he needs a lawyer, he calls me. When I need an alpaca, I call him.”
Ethan didn’t want to know how often Sparks called for an alpaca. He lay down in the grass, stretched out and put his head down on Ethan’s belly. “Okay, Ethan? There’s more bad news.”
“What?”
“The girl he hit? She’s an advocate. A bike safety advocate.”
“No fucking way.”
“Yes way. And that’s not all. She’s pregnant, Ethan.”
Ethan closed his eyes, felt his fingers reached down for Spark’s face. “Please tell me the baby’s okay.”
“Yes, the baby is okay. There’s more. She’s a nun.”
Oh, God. A nun? How much worse was this going to get? His mind skipped and stuttered to a stop. “Wait a minute. A pregnant bike safety advocate nun?”
“Okay, I made up that last part about the nun. The rest is true.”
He liked the way Sparks’ flat-top felt under his fingers, sort of springy, like good Bermuda grass. “So, are you still giving me the silent treatment?”
“Obviously not. I’m waiting for an apology.”
“Not going to happen. You were fifteen, Sparks.”
“I was a very mature fifteen.”
“So that makes you what, twenty-five now?”
“Something like that. I’m no longer a virgin, though. I couldn’t wait for you forever.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Ethan sighed when he realized Sparks could hear the truth in his voice.
**
Dieter looked at them across the kitchen table and smiled happily. “Look at my boys, all grown up.”
Sparks had his memo book out. “You didn’t see anything flashing from her bike or her clothes? No lights or reflectors?”
Dieter shook his head. “But maybe it was the cataracts.”
“Okay, maybe, but maybe not. I saw her clothes. She was wearing black pants and boots, a black jacket. Did you see a helmet?”
Dieter thought about this, then shook his head. He stood up, got the butter out of the fridge and put it on the table. “I didn’t see a helmet.”
“And what was she doing out here anyway? It was almost five. Too dark to be going for a ride. I checked her addy. She lives in Portland, down in the Pearl.”
“Eat, Sparks. Eat some more soup. Have some bread and butter. I have some pickles, too. Do you want some pickles?”
Ethan watched Sparks’ face soften. He put his pen down. “Do you still make those bread and butter pickles Aunt Annalise used to make? I loved those pickles.”
Dieter was up, rummaging around in the fridge. “I have some, and some pickled onions! You’ll like those.”
Ethan laid his hand on Sparks’ arm. “It doesn’t matter, does it? What she was wearing? Why she was out here?”
Dieter was back with a jar of pickled onions, and he passed them around. “I want to tell you boys a story. It’s about my father, before we left Germany.”
Ethan and Sparks looked at each other. Dieter Frome never talked about Germany, never talked about growing up during the war. “My father, he was a tobacco farmer. Every year, during the winter, the SS would come get him, send him off to fight. When it was time to plant the new crops, he could go home, but they would always come get him again. It wasn’t something he could refuse, you understand?” Ethan nodded. “So the last year he was in the Army, he was with a unit fighting. They were in a swamp, and it was cold, winter, you see? So my father, he goes to look for material, leaves, to put down into the legs of his pants, to insulate his shirt against the cold. And while he was in the woods, the unit was hit with grenades. He heard the explosions, and when they stopped, he went back to the swamp and everyone was dead. Bodies everywhere. He looked around, thinking there was maybe a coat somewhere, and a last grenade was thrown. He woke up lying half in the muck, mud up his nose, blood all over his face. The other soldiers, he didn’t know where they were from, they were walking through the swamp, checking the bodies. They had already walked by him, so he just kept very still, and after they were gone, he stood up and found a coat and started walking home.
“It took him a month to get home, and there was very little food. He had a dent in his head from the grenade, right in the forehead, and he was so thin. So my mother didn’t recognize him when he came into the house after so long. She’d been told he was dead, you see? So she screamed and ran at him with the broom and started to hit him. He said something to her then. I never knew what he said, just something that made her drop the broom and pull him into her arms, and then he fell to his knees and rolled over. I thought he was dead, and I started to cry, but Mother told me to be quiet. She was very fierce, and I took his feet and she took his legs and we carried him into the bedroom.
“It seemed to take forever for him to get better, but by summer he was back to work in the fields. He was so happy then, Mother was, too, because they both thought that the SS would think he was dead and they wouldn’t come for him again. But the next winter, just like every year, they came and took him away. He pointed to the dent in his forehead, said he couldn’t fight anymore. They said he wasn’t going to fight. They said he was going to Berlin, they had special work.
“He was gone for a long time, and it was summer before he came home again. Mother had done the planting on her own, with just me to help, and he sat at the kitchen table and ate everything she could bring him from the garden, even the vegetables that were barely out of the soil.
I heard them talking together very late, speaking very quietly. Father said he had been told to make bonfires. All through the winter, he was to make fires and then he went with his wheelbarrow and collected whatever they gave him to burn. He burned books and ledgers and papers and maps, he burned passports and troop records. Then in April the suicides started. One night he was brought to a bunker. He was told that he would hear a shot, and when he did, he was to go in with his wheelbarrow and fetch out the body inside and put that body on the bonfire. He made a very large fire, and he broke up some furniture so he’d have some extra wood, he could keep it very hot. He heard the shot and went into the bunker with his wheelbarrow and picked up the body. The man was wearing a uniform and his face was gone. He’d shot himself in the mouth. So Father took the body to the bonfire and piled the wood on top and kept watch while it burned. When it was done, Father picked up the wheelbarrow and started walking home. He was still pushing that wheelbarrow when he came up the road to our farm.”
Dieter bent over his bowl of soup, ate several spoonfuls. “The wheelbarrow stayed in the barn for a few months. I would see them, mother and father, staring at it sometimes, like they could see the body inside it, the blood from the bullet hole in his mouth. Then one day, father used it to take a load of manure to the fields, and after that it just became a wheelbarrow again.”
Sparks gave him a look, a wtf was that? sort of look. Ethan shrugged. Dieter picked up a slice of bread, spread it with butter and took a bite. Ethan ate a small pickled onion.
“My boys, my boys, together again at the table.”
After supper, Sparks stalled around until it was obvious there was nothing else they could do this night and he needed to go home. He didn’t live next door anymore, and his parents had sold their farm and moved, so going home meant driving back into downtown Portland. Ethan walked him out to the car, listened to the last few instructions on how to deal with the media if any called.
Ethan wasn’t sure what was happening. He and Sparks had talked in the paddock, lying in the damp grass, and he’d remember how much he loved running his fingers through curly red hair. They had talked like that a million times, studying the sky of their boyhood, their adolescent sky. Sparks loved to lie down in the grass and rest his head on Ethan’s stomach. Ethan had loved it, too, even when he was grown up, until suddenly Sparks was grown up, too, and it meant something different. But it was all just nostalgia, right? Some memory of times past, echoes of sighs and smells and memories, bouncing off the bones of the skull.
He opened the door to Sparks’ Nissan Cube, a funny blue car that looked exactly like the sort of car Sparks would drive. Sparks sighed and climbed in, and Ethan closed the door after him. The window buzzed down. “Meet me for breakfast. We can have a strategy meeting.”
“I’ll meet you for breakfast,” Ethan agreed, “but only if you stop talking about this. My ears are full of strategy.”
“What do you want to talk about, then?”
“What do we always talk about? You, idiot. I want to hear all about your wonderful gay life, since you’re not a virgin anymore.”
“Okay, then. 0730? The Byways Café?”
The house seemed strangely quiet when Ethan went back in. “Dad?”
“In here.” Dieter was on the computer. Ethan looked over his shoulder. He was hunting for an address for Becky Green.
“Dad, no. Let’s not do this. You don’t need to contact her right now. Let things settle down, okay? We need to get you scheduled for your cataract surgery. Have you been to see the doctor?”
Dieter was quiet for a moment, his hand on Ethan’s arm. “I’m so proud of you, son. Have I told you that today?” Ethan shook his head. “Doesn’t Sparks look wonderful? He’s grown to be such a handsome man. He still looks at you the same way he did when he was six and you were sixteen. But ten years is not so much anymore, is it? It seems the years get shorter as we get older. The years are shorter and time is faster. But you and Sparks, together again, sitting at the table, telling me what I need to do.” He sighed. “It reminds me of those times. One of you was always a teenager, it seemed like to me. A teenager so much smarter than the old German father. Thanks goodness, I thought more than once, that I had these boys to tell me what to do, otherwise I might not be able to find my way home! And now, here you both are again, helping me find my way home.” He patted Ethan gently on the arm. “Son, I’m fine. You don’t need to stay with me tonight. And I know how to call the eye doctor. You call me later and let me know what you and Sparks have decided I need to do.”
**
Ethan arrived at the Byways fifteen minutes early, but Sparks was already there, set up in the back booth like a mafia Don getting his ring kissed. He had his tablet propped up and his phone up to his ear. The opposite bench was taken up by some Baker Street Irregular who slid out of the booth when Ethan glowered at him. He gave Sparks a camp look, eyebrows raised, then checked out Ethan’s butt when he reached up to hang his dripping jacket on the coat hook next to the bench.
“Give me a break,” Ethan said.
“Good morning to you, too.” Sparks looked hot in a charcoal business suit, with a grey button down and an elegant silk tie the exact color of his shirt. The only color on his person was the bright red of his flat top. He set off the gloomy gray morning like a flame. Very subtle and very hot. “I’ve got to be in court at nine.”
“Better tuck a napkin in your collar then so you don’t go before the judge with egg on your tie.”
Sparks rolled his eyes. “You’re still eating eggs? Ever heard of coronary artery disease?”
The waitress filled up both coffee cups and set a bowl of fruit in front of Sparks. “I’ll take biscuits and gravy,” Ethan said.
Sparks reached into the bowl and popped a blueberry into his mouth, then flicked one across the table. It hit Ethan on the nose. He felt ridiculous, all of the sudden, trying to pick a fight just because Sparks was dressed up like a man and looking fine and he wasn’t six years old anymore, running next door to drive Ethan crazy with his nonstop chatter.
He sighed, closed his eyes and picked up the coffee cup. Before he could formulate a tough-guy sort of semi-apology, another one of Sparks’ irregulars sidled up to the table.
Sparks handed him a couple of twenties.
“I sent the details to your email, but she never left her apartment after she got in last night.”
“Thanks, Bryan,” Sparks said.
“Later, Jude.”
“Did you arrange for every gay man in greater Portland to wander in here this morning and try to make me jealous?”
“Yes, Ethan, I did. I’m trying to drive you mad with longing.”
Ethan opened his mouth, then shut it again. Sparks stared across the table, his mouth pressed into a straight line. His eyes were moss green this morning. They were hazel, and changed color with the time of day, and the color of the sky, and his mood.
“Okay, sorry, sorry. I’m being an ass. That guy called you Jude. Nobody calls you Sparks, huh?”
The green eyes softened a bit. Sparks never stayed mad for very long. “Nobody ever called me Sparks but you. I talked to your dad this morning. He’s okay.”
“Really? I talked to him, too. He didn’t seem like he wanted to chat.”
“Maybe that’s because he was out feeding the alpacas when I called and I interrupted him.”
Ethan watched him eat his fruit, the napkin tucked into his shirt collar like a spill of snow. Why had he ordered biscuits and gravy? Just to agitate Sparks. What he really wanted was some cantaloupe.
“So where should I start? You want to hear about the first boyfriend? The first sex? Current partners?”
“None of the above,” Ethan said, and picked up his own napkin when the waitress slid a platter full of delicious saturated fats in front of him. “All I want to know is if you are currently in love with someone.”
“Yes,” Sparks said.
“Someone other than myself.”
“No.”
“All right, then.” Ethan picked up his fork, cut his biscuit into quarters, and ate a bite. Sparks reached across the table with his spoon, tasted a tiny bit of gravy.
“That’s not as bad as it looks,” Sparks said.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m in love with someone besides you?”
Sparks gave him a look full of pity and went back to his fruit. “Ethan, please.”
Ethan watched him tap on his tablet, eat his fruit, talk into his phone. “Sparks, what did you do?”
“I just arranged for some surveillance of the girl. I want to know what she’s up to.” His eyes were narrowed, and he studied his tablet. “I wish I could put some eyes on her, just a little camera.”
“That’s getting a bit creepy, don’t you think? We don’t know she’s going to do anything. Maybe she’s just a little pregnant bike-rider who got too far out of town and didn’t realize it was getting dark, and here comes Dad with his cataracts.”
“I don’t know. I’m suspicious of too much happenstance. There is no such thing as too much information, Ethan.”
“Just don’t get in trouble.”
“Ethan, what do you make of that story he told us? Do you think your grandfather really burned Hitler’s bones?”
Ethan shrugged. “I guess so. Dad wouldn’t make it up. He’s never talked about that before. And I never knew my grandfather. He died before I was born. Were we supposed to get something out of that story? I got the feeling I was missing something.”
“I know. I thought that, too. I was waiting for him to say, and the moral of this story is…I’ve got to go.” Sparks pulled his napkin out of his collar, threw it down on the table and started packing his electronics. “What time are you off work?”
“Five,” Ethan said.
“I’ll come by and pick you up. I told your dad we’d be at his place for supper. He’s got me craving pickled onions.”
Ethan looked up when Sparks slid out of the booth. Sparks stared at him for a moment, then he leaned forward and kissed Ethan on the mouth. “I’m craving pickled onions, too,” Ethan said, and Sparks laughed and kissed him again.
**
Ethan was tired by the end of the day, with the twitchy, agitated sort of tired that comes from too much thinking, too much stress, and not enough exercise. “I need to work out,” he told Sparks, climbing into the blue Cube.
“Yeah, me, too.” Sparks had changed into a pair of old jeans and a hoodie that was faded and frayed from years of wear. It was corn-yellow, and had a picture of an onion on the front. The graphic said Maui Sweet Onions. “I’m not a runner, though. I do Tai Chi.”
“Yeah? I’ve been thinking about trying Tai Chi. You go to a gym?”
“Down by my loft. It’s a twenty-four hour gym. You want to come back with me, and I’ll show you the moves?” Sparks grinned at him, and Ethan flashed on Sparks’ seven year old self, freckles and red hair, bouncing up and down, saying, want to see my Ninja moves, Ethan? Do you? Come on, watch my moves.
“Absolutely I want to see your moves, Jude.” He looked across at the driver’s seat. “I’m going to try and remember you’re all grown up, and you have a grown up name now. You remind me if I forget, okay?”
Sparks reached over and grabbed Ethan’s hand, put it on his thigh. “Keep your hand right there, Ethan. I promise it will help.”
Ethan bit down on his bottom lip, tried hard to keep from hyperventilating. The thigh was hard under his palm, and the denim was soft. This was a grown-up thigh. He wondered suddenly if the leg he was clutching was covered with curly red hair.
“Holy shit! Look at that.” There was a beat up white VW Beetle in the driveway. “That’s her car! The girl, Becky Green! What’s she doing here?”
“Dad was trying to find her address online last night after you left! I told him to leave it alone. What if he invited her out here?”
“Oh, God, if he tells her about the cataracts she’s going straight to civil litigation! She’s got an uncle in a law firm downtown. I don’t know much about him. He’s got a rep as a shark.”
Dieter and Becky Green were not in the house. Sparks, no, Jude, Ethan reminded himself, Jude followed a set of footprints out to the paddock. They were feeding the alpacas by hand. Ethan took Jude by the hand and they tiptoed into the barn. Ethan thought it was strange that the alpacas didn’t scatter and run when Becky Green was walking among them. They seemed actually calm. What was it about him that freaked them out? Jude climbed up on a stack of hay bales, peeked out the window. “Ethan, get up here! They’re coming this way.”
Ethan climbed up next to Jude. They lay down flat, on their stomachs, trying to catch a word. The girl was talking.
“So after he told me he’d had a change of heart about fatherhood, I sort of lost it. He said, ‘it’s too much, you know? The idea is freaking me out.’ Freaking him out? I was the one freaking out. Where did he get the idea he could change his mind at this point? I mean, shit! The baby’s got fingernails! We saw them on the ultrasound. So anyway, I just started riding, and I rode and rode until I found myself out here. It was getting dark, I didn’t have any idea where I was, and I was crying. I saw you next to me, and I even saw your blinker was turned on, but it just didn’t compute. I wasn’t taking anything in.”
Jude grinned and held both thumbs up in a gesture of victory.
“You are going to be a wonderful, strong mother, Becky, and already you will have stories to tell the baby! How a stupid old German farmer nearly ran you both over with his car because he was too stubborn to get his cataracts removed.”
“Well, I have to agree with you about that. That copayment was ridiculous.”
Jude was screaming silently into his hands. Ethan waved him off.
“You have family, Becky? A mother and father?”
“They’re a long way away from here. And they don’t approve. They thought I should have gotten married first. I haven’t even told my mom about him leaving. She’s going to think this is somehow what I deserve. For breaking the rules, you know?”
“Things happen,” Dieter said. “It’s just life. Sometimes life is so much bigger than we are. All we can do is remain ourselves. Remain true to ourselves. That’s what my father taught me. No matter what is happening around you, just try to remain yourself. This boy who left you, he is being himself, and he will regret it for the rest of his life. And you, you are being yourself, so strong and brave, and you are going to rise, and rise again, all the long years of your life.”
Ethan heard a muffled sob. He leaned over the edge of the hay and watched them, Becky in his father’s arms, crying, and Dieter rubbing her back, making soothing little noises. Jude peeked over the edge of the hay bale next to him, and Dieter looked up, caught sight of them both. He stared at them as if he had gone insane, then closed his eyes and sighed.
“Thank you for telling me that story. About the bonfire, and the war. About what happened to your father.”
“Shall we make a bonfire? You want to burn up everything this selfish boy left with you, and start a new life?”
Becky shook her head. Her hands went down to her belly. “No. Some things I’ll keep.”
“Let’s go into the kitchen, heat up some soup for supper. My boys will be home soon, and they will want to meet you. Such good boys, but there are no grandbabies coming my way, not from that pair. I don’t know what I’ll have to do to get a grandbaby. Maybe I should find a beautiful young mother and run her over with my car. You think that would work?”
Becky gave a shaky laugh, and then she swallowed a sob, and Dieter walked her back into the house, his old arm around her shoulder.
December 13, 2012
a tiny bit of the new story! The General and the Horse-Lord
Prologue, Kuwait, 1990
“General, there’s a boy here, says he’s got a letter for you. Won’t give it to anyone else. I frisked him. He’s clean, but he won’t tell me what he wants. Just says he has a letter for you, and it’s life and death.”
John looked up at his sergeant. “Can you check on it?” He bent back over the topo map, drew in the route for the new bridge. “We need to do it here or here,” he said, pointing to the penciled alternate. “Otherwise the roadwork to get there will take too long to build.”
His chief engineer followed the line of the river. “Where was the old bridge before they blew it?” John pointed to the trail, marked as a dashed line on the map.
“The foundations are gone. They tried to run a tank over it. The tank’s still there, but no way can we move it, not with the equipment we’ve got.”
Sergeant Miller was back. “Sir, you may want to see this kid. He speaks excellent English with a very proper Brit accent. His sandals are torn up from the road, but they were expensive once. He asked for John Mitchel. Didn’t know your rank.”
John looked up, puzzled. “Yeah, okay.” He threw a towel over the map. “Send him in here.”
The boy was small and thin, looked nine, maybe ten, with dusty black hair and deep circles of fatigue under big, dark eyes. He stepped up, held out his hand to John. “Sir, are you John Mitchel? I am Abdullah al-Salim. I believe you know my father.”
John shook his hand. The boy was trembling, shock or pain or fatigue, maybe all three. “Of course I know your father. He’s my good friend. I know you, too, though I haven’t seen you since you were three, I think, already kicking a soccer ball around the yard. I thought you were all back in Cambridge. Sit down and let’s get you some water and food.”
“No, not now. Not yet. I have to give you the letter.”
His lips were cracked from the heat, and he was swaying on his feet. John reached down, picked him up and set him down on his lap. He was as frail as a bird. “You eat and drink, and I’ll read, okay?” He looked at Miller, and the man nodded, left the tent to get some food. Miller had kids. He would know what to bring. “Where’s your father? Is he still at your house?”
“He’s hiding behind a wall in the basement. The soldiers came looking for him. He sent my mother and sisters to Lebanon, and he sent me to find you.” The boy was trembling, then he closed his eyes, lay his head down on John’s shoulder with a sigh.
John put his arms around the boy. “You’re safe now. Just rest, Abdullah.”
“Please, will help him? Sir, I don’t think he was planning to come out.”
John opened the letter. He recognized the handwriting immediately. John, my friend. I must beg your help for my son. The women, they will be safe, but the Iraqis are taking the sons of men like myself, leaving them in shallow graves in the desert. It’s a very old technique in war, is it not? It means something different to me today than when we studied the ancient texts together. Please, John, get him out of Kuwait and to safety. He is the very best of me. Do not worry about me. I am an old man, but my son is filled with beauty and light, John, and the world needs his light. Omar.
Miller came in with a bottle of water and a thermos cup of soup. John stood, set the boy back down on the desk chair. “Drink some water and eat the soup, then we’ll talk. But tell me this, is your father still in Al Jahra? I remember your house had orange trees in front. Is that the one?”
The boy nodded yes, his eyes on the bottle of water. He looked up at Sgt Miller. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Miller pulled up a chair. “I’ll just sit with you while you eat, son. Are you hurt?”
The boy shook his head. John ducked into the second room of the command tent, spoke to his radio operator. “Balish, can you get CW-3 Sanchez on the radio? I need to know where his squadron is.”
“The Horse-Lords? I think they’re two klicks down the road, General. Do you need him if he’s free?”
“Yes, I do.”
Gabriel walked into the command tent ten minutes later, his flight suit dusty. “I’ve got an Apache fueled up and ready, General.” He looked tired, but his eyes were deep and warm and smiling.
John let himself take a long look. “Sanchez, I need some transpo and backup, but feel free to say no. This is off the books, a little rescue mission into the city. I’ll probably get us killed. We’ve been ordered not to do anything stupid like this.”
“Roger that. Congratulations for putting on the star, General.”
John smiled at him. “Yeah, a week now. I should enjoy it, because I’m about to lose it.” He pulled Gabriel to the back of the tent. The boy was sleeping on his field cot. “This is Abdullah al-Salim. He’s the son of an old friend, Dr. Omar al-Salim. Omar was my dissertation advisor at Harvard. We’ve been friends for years. He taught me Greek, Gabriel.”
Gabriel nodded. “Okay, Greek, Got it. What do you need?”
Gabriel never wasted time on the nonessentials. “He’s been targeted as an intellectual. He asked me to get his son out of the country. Why don’t we go get him, send them both back home to America?”
“Roger that, General. You know where he is?”
“Al Jahra, just west of Kuwait City. In hiding.”
“Oh, shit. Heavy tank losses in Al Jahra.” Gabriel looked closer at the sleeping boy, reached out and touched his foot. “His feet have been bleeding. Did he walk here barefoot?”
“Sandals.”
“Okay, boss. Let me go check the weapons. I’ll have to blow the helo if they try to take it. We’ll be on foot in the city.”
“You got your side arm?” Gabriel nodded. “Let me see what else I can round up.”
Gabriel was already moving out of the tent. “I’ll find some smoke grenades. Smoke is always good to make a confusing situation a little more confusing.”
John had a side arm in the leg pocket of his flight suit, and he grabbed two M-16’s and briefed Miller. “No one comes after me if I fuck this up, Miller.”
“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll go, sir? We really don’t want to lose a general officer.”
“Negative, Sergeant.”
“How long before I sound the general alarm?”
“You don’t. I don’t come back, you get that boy to my sister in Virginia. Any way you can, Miller, understand? His father’s got an American passport.”
“Roger that, General. No worries. So where are you going to be?”
“Al Jahra. I’m going to extract Dr. al-Salim and bring him here. I’m taking Sanchez.”
Miller nodded. “Okay, well, your odds of survival just went up about 99 per cent. We’ll give you twelve hours, and then we come after you.”
“Negative.”
“See you in twelve hours, sir.”
John climbed into the chopper, shaking his head. “We’ve got twelve hours. Miller is such a pain in the ass. I gave him a direct order to not come after me and I know he’s going to blow it off and bring a frigging tank if we don’t show up on time.”
“Actually, that makes me feel better. Did you see the new horse on the nose?”
“Yeah. I like that golden mane. Wild. You always have the best art on your birds.”
“It’s not art. It’s the soul of man and machine together. That boy walked here from Al Jahra? That’s over thirty miles.” Sanchez leaned over, took John by the shirt front and pulled him close. He was so close John could feel the heat of Gabriel’s breath on his mouth. He’d been chewing cinnamon gum. “Are we off to rescue an old boyfriend?”
John smiled up into his eyes for so long Sanchez leaned a tiny bit closer, kissed him hard. John reached for his cheek, ran his fingers over two days of rough stubble.
“You’re my only old boyfriend. Try not to get killed, okay?”
“I haven’t slept with you since you’ve been promoted. I’d hate to miss sleeping with a general.”
“You know that we can’t let them take a general officer, even just a road-builder like myself. It would be too embarrassing for everyone. If things go south, you’ll need to take care of it.”
“You’re saying, what, you want me to shoot you in the head if the bad guys are closing in?”
“Roger that.” John wondered if he should tell Gabriel he loved him. No, that would freak him out worse than ordering him to shoot him in the head. John shoved the two rifles down between his knees, and Sanchez lifted the chopper into the dark. His mouth was pressed into a thin line. “Let’s get the job done and get through this night, and I’ll treat you to a bottle of tequila. And anything else you’d like.”
Gabriel looked at him, an unwilling smile softening his mouth. “Anything?”
“General, there’s a boy here, says he’s got a letter for you. Won’t give it to anyone else. I frisked him. He’s clean, but he won’t tell me what he wants. Just says he has a letter for you, and it’s life and death.”
John looked up at his sergeant. “Can you check on it?” He bent back over the topo map, drew in the route for the new bridge. “We need to do it here or here,” he said, pointing to the penciled alternate. “Otherwise the roadwork to get there will take too long to build.”
His chief engineer followed the line of the river. “Where was the old bridge before they blew it?” John pointed to the trail, marked as a dashed line on the map.
“The foundations are gone. They tried to run a tank over it. The tank’s still there, but no way can we move it, not with the equipment we’ve got.”
Sergeant Miller was back. “Sir, you may want to see this kid. He speaks excellent English with a very proper Brit accent. His sandals are torn up from the road, but they were expensive once. He asked for John Mitchel. Didn’t know your rank.”
John looked up, puzzled. “Yeah, okay.” He threw a towel over the map. “Send him in here.”
The boy was small and thin, looked nine, maybe ten, with dusty black hair and deep circles of fatigue under big, dark eyes. He stepped up, held out his hand to John. “Sir, are you John Mitchel? I am Abdullah al-Salim. I believe you know my father.”
John shook his hand. The boy was trembling, shock or pain or fatigue, maybe all three. “Of course I know your father. He’s my good friend. I know you, too, though I haven’t seen you since you were three, I think, already kicking a soccer ball around the yard. I thought you were all back in Cambridge. Sit down and let’s get you some water and food.”
“No, not now. Not yet. I have to give you the letter.”
His lips were cracked from the heat, and he was swaying on his feet. John reached down, picked him up and set him down on his lap. He was as frail as a bird. “You eat and drink, and I’ll read, okay?” He looked at Miller, and the man nodded, left the tent to get some food. Miller had kids. He would know what to bring. “Where’s your father? Is he still at your house?”
“He’s hiding behind a wall in the basement. The soldiers came looking for him. He sent my mother and sisters to Lebanon, and he sent me to find you.” The boy was trembling, then he closed his eyes, lay his head down on John’s shoulder with a sigh.
John put his arms around the boy. “You’re safe now. Just rest, Abdullah.”
“Please, will help him? Sir, I don’t think he was planning to come out.”
John opened the letter. He recognized the handwriting immediately. John, my friend. I must beg your help for my son. The women, they will be safe, but the Iraqis are taking the sons of men like myself, leaving them in shallow graves in the desert. It’s a very old technique in war, is it not? It means something different to me today than when we studied the ancient texts together. Please, John, get him out of Kuwait and to safety. He is the very best of me. Do not worry about me. I am an old man, but my son is filled with beauty and light, John, and the world needs his light. Omar.
Miller came in with a bottle of water and a thermos cup of soup. John stood, set the boy back down on the desk chair. “Drink some water and eat the soup, then we’ll talk. But tell me this, is your father still in Al Jahra? I remember your house had orange trees in front. Is that the one?”
The boy nodded yes, his eyes on the bottle of water. He looked up at Sgt Miller. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Miller pulled up a chair. “I’ll just sit with you while you eat, son. Are you hurt?”
The boy shook his head. John ducked into the second room of the command tent, spoke to his radio operator. “Balish, can you get CW-3 Sanchez on the radio? I need to know where his squadron is.”
“The Horse-Lords? I think they’re two klicks down the road, General. Do you need him if he’s free?”
“Yes, I do.”
Gabriel walked into the command tent ten minutes later, his flight suit dusty. “I’ve got an Apache fueled up and ready, General.” He looked tired, but his eyes were deep and warm and smiling.
John let himself take a long look. “Sanchez, I need some transpo and backup, but feel free to say no. This is off the books, a little rescue mission into the city. I’ll probably get us killed. We’ve been ordered not to do anything stupid like this.”
“Roger that. Congratulations for putting on the star, General.”
John smiled at him. “Yeah, a week now. I should enjoy it, because I’m about to lose it.” He pulled Gabriel to the back of the tent. The boy was sleeping on his field cot. “This is Abdullah al-Salim. He’s the son of an old friend, Dr. Omar al-Salim. Omar was my dissertation advisor at Harvard. We’ve been friends for years. He taught me Greek, Gabriel.”
Gabriel nodded. “Okay, Greek, Got it. What do you need?”
Gabriel never wasted time on the nonessentials. “He’s been targeted as an intellectual. He asked me to get his son out of the country. Why don’t we go get him, send them both back home to America?”
“Roger that, General. You know where he is?”
“Al Jahra, just west of Kuwait City. In hiding.”
“Oh, shit. Heavy tank losses in Al Jahra.” Gabriel looked closer at the sleeping boy, reached out and touched his foot. “His feet have been bleeding. Did he walk here barefoot?”
“Sandals.”
“Okay, boss. Let me go check the weapons. I’ll have to blow the helo if they try to take it. We’ll be on foot in the city.”
“You got your side arm?” Gabriel nodded. “Let me see what else I can round up.”
Gabriel was already moving out of the tent. “I’ll find some smoke grenades. Smoke is always good to make a confusing situation a little more confusing.”
John had a side arm in the leg pocket of his flight suit, and he grabbed two M-16’s and briefed Miller. “No one comes after me if I fuck this up, Miller.”
“Why don’t you stay here and I’ll go, sir? We really don’t want to lose a general officer.”
“Negative, Sergeant.”
“How long before I sound the general alarm?”
“You don’t. I don’t come back, you get that boy to my sister in Virginia. Any way you can, Miller, understand? His father’s got an American passport.”
“Roger that, General. No worries. So where are you going to be?”
“Al Jahra. I’m going to extract Dr. al-Salim and bring him here. I’m taking Sanchez.”
Miller nodded. “Okay, well, your odds of survival just went up about 99 per cent. We’ll give you twelve hours, and then we come after you.”
“Negative.”
“See you in twelve hours, sir.”
John climbed into the chopper, shaking his head. “We’ve got twelve hours. Miller is such a pain in the ass. I gave him a direct order to not come after me and I know he’s going to blow it off and bring a frigging tank if we don’t show up on time.”
“Actually, that makes me feel better. Did you see the new horse on the nose?”
“Yeah. I like that golden mane. Wild. You always have the best art on your birds.”
“It’s not art. It’s the soul of man and machine together. That boy walked here from Al Jahra? That’s over thirty miles.” Sanchez leaned over, took John by the shirt front and pulled him close. He was so close John could feel the heat of Gabriel’s breath on his mouth. He’d been chewing cinnamon gum. “Are we off to rescue an old boyfriend?”
John smiled up into his eyes for so long Sanchez leaned a tiny bit closer, kissed him hard. John reached for his cheek, ran his fingers over two days of rough stubble.
“You’re my only old boyfriend. Try not to get killed, okay?”
“I haven’t slept with you since you’ve been promoted. I’d hate to miss sleeping with a general.”
“You know that we can’t let them take a general officer, even just a road-builder like myself. It would be too embarrassing for everyone. If things go south, you’ll need to take care of it.”
“You’re saying, what, you want me to shoot you in the head if the bad guys are closing in?”
“Roger that.” John wondered if he should tell Gabriel he loved him. No, that would freak him out worse than ordering him to shoot him in the head. John shoved the two rifles down between his knees, and Sanchez lifted the chopper into the dark. His mouth was pressed into a thin line. “Let’s get the job done and get through this night, and I’ll treat you to a bottle of tequila. And anything else you’d like.”
Gabriel looked at him, an unwilling smile softening his mouth. “Anything?”
December 8, 2012
Hola from the City of Roses!
I have landed in Portland, Oregon, and am filled with bliss at the new city. I was planning on Fiji, but life will surprise you. How can a person not like a tropical paradise? Easily, so it seems. But I had enough of travelling and begged work to find me a place to stay. So here I am in Portland, and it’s gray and rainy and dark by 1600, and I am over the moon with happiness. The city reminds me a lot of London in the winter.
The kid and I found a lovely tiny apartment downtown in the Pearl District. From our place you can walk down to Burnside, where Powell’s books lives, the largest bookstore in the world. It is like a city of its own and full of weirdly esoteric titles and bestsellers and everything in between. I could live there and sleep in the bathrooms at night and I’m very happy I don’t have to do anything so drastic. Also a grocery store across the street and hundreds of coffee shops and bistros and bars and shops etc, all within walking, so I am getting some exercise in between the lattes.
I’m really not much of a shopper, but I love to look at people. From my apartment I can look into the windows of the high-rise next door and across the street and see all sorts of interesting things. Like who still doesn’t have their Christmas tree up! Last night at 0300, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I looked out the big loft windows down to the street and saw a homeless couple, the guy having what looked like a bad reaction to some substance- he was walking in circles, clutching his head, and from high up it looked like he was screaming, then every few seconds he reached over to the woman and touched her, like he was making sure she was still there. She just waited it out, then when the moment seemed right, she took his arm and walked him off down the street. He might have just been having a migraine. Can you imagine being homeless and getting a migraine?
The place is really tiny, but it is a loft with a first floor and a second floor, so the kid has the upstairs and I have the downstairs. None of the old furniture will fit, so naturally I am using the opportunity to hang out in antique stores and vintage junk, looking for interesting things. I am making myself a sleeping nook under the stairs, like Harry Potter, and found some prints by a local printmaker of birds for the walls. The backgrounds are bright pink, bright orange, with yellow birds, and they are like a lovely beacon of color for the wall in the nook.
Oddly enough, I seem to be reevaluating the use of color since coming to Portland. Something about the gray skies and the rainy, gray streets, gray bridges, makes me want to put on sweaters in jade green or bright red or sapphire blue. My usual clothes of black and charcoal grey are just not going to do the trick here. I bought a white raincoat with red trim! But I love the look of the city. It’s drenched in rain, and everywhere, things are growing. There are several cross streets built like parks, tiny one-block Central parks, and the benches are clean and the air is sweet. I’m going to grow a rose outside my front door.
And, one bit of very good writing news- the new story has gone to Dreamspinner, and is called The General and the Horse Lord. It’s a novel! Greater than 60,000 words and counting! I really like it- I think it’s going to come out around April or May.
The kid and I found a lovely tiny apartment downtown in the Pearl District. From our place you can walk down to Burnside, where Powell’s books lives, the largest bookstore in the world. It is like a city of its own and full of weirdly esoteric titles and bestsellers and everything in between. I could live there and sleep in the bathrooms at night and I’m very happy I don’t have to do anything so drastic. Also a grocery store across the street and hundreds of coffee shops and bistros and bars and shops etc, all within walking, so I am getting some exercise in between the lattes.
I’m really not much of a shopper, but I love to look at people. From my apartment I can look into the windows of the high-rise next door and across the street and see all sorts of interesting things. Like who still doesn’t have their Christmas tree up! Last night at 0300, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I looked out the big loft windows down to the street and saw a homeless couple, the guy having what looked like a bad reaction to some substance- he was walking in circles, clutching his head, and from high up it looked like he was screaming, then every few seconds he reached over to the woman and touched her, like he was making sure she was still there. She just waited it out, then when the moment seemed right, she took his arm and walked him off down the street. He might have just been having a migraine. Can you imagine being homeless and getting a migraine?
The place is really tiny, but it is a loft with a first floor and a second floor, so the kid has the upstairs and I have the downstairs. None of the old furniture will fit, so naturally I am using the opportunity to hang out in antique stores and vintage junk, looking for interesting things. I am making myself a sleeping nook under the stairs, like Harry Potter, and found some prints by a local printmaker of birds for the walls. The backgrounds are bright pink, bright orange, with yellow birds, and they are like a lovely beacon of color for the wall in the nook.
Oddly enough, I seem to be reevaluating the use of color since coming to Portland. Something about the gray skies and the rainy, gray streets, gray bridges, makes me want to put on sweaters in jade green or bright red or sapphire blue. My usual clothes of black and charcoal grey are just not going to do the trick here. I bought a white raincoat with red trim! But I love the look of the city. It’s drenched in rain, and everywhere, things are growing. There are several cross streets built like parks, tiny one-block Central parks, and the benches are clean and the air is sweet. I’m going to grow a rose outside my front door.
And, one bit of very good writing news- the new story has gone to Dreamspinner, and is called The General and the Horse Lord. It’s a novel! Greater than 60,000 words and counting! I really like it- I think it’s going to come out around April or May.
November 23, 2012
Stories- a few questions
Stories
I was at the Hometown Buffett for dinner and I was thinking about stories. I have some questions. Now, it might be that the more appropriate questions are:
1. Why are you at the Hometown Buffett the day after Thanksgiving?
2. Is everyone at the Hometown Buffett, you included, clinically obese?
But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about stories. Not about writing, the process of creating the stories, and not about us as writers, but about the little darlings themselves. They are all dressed up in their neatly pressed holiday clothes, shiny and new, ready to march out into the world. Who are they? What do we expect from them? Who owns them?
1. What do we expect our stories to do for us as writers? Are they hard working little moneymakers? Are they the ticket that gives us a new identity, and a cool one: Now you are a Writer. Are they the magic key that unlocks the door to the magic life of the writer, a life that never requires the use of an alarm clock again? Are stories simply the way we get someone to listen to us when we talk? Or is a story like the Alka-Selzer for writers, we have a large psychic burp burning in our guts, as if we’d had lunch at the Hometown Buffet, and we feel so much better when we can get it out?
2. What are they? Do they exist outside of the human mind? I don’t mean a book, I mean the story itself. Are stories tiny ripples on the big river of the collective unconscious, one story among millions that in whole define us as human? Are they dreams? Is the story the same, even if it is read differently, interpreted differently, by everyone who reads it? Or are stories plastic? We know animals talk to each other. Do they tell each other stories?
3. Does the story belong to the writer or to the reader? Or does the story belong to the tribe? Do stories conform to the Native idea of ownership—you can’t own the air, or the water, or the land, or the stories? Or are they products of our work, and we own their asses until 100 years have lapsed and the copyright goes away?
4. Do stories have a function in human society? Why do we love narrative so much? Is storytelling essential to mental health? (Or just mine?) Can stories kill? Can stories heal? What is the source of their power over us? What do we need so desperately? Why, in countries where writing the truth can get you sent to the gulag, hard labor in Siberia, the torture chambers, do writers keep writing the truth? Is what they are writing different from what we are writing? Does the intention change the story?
I was at the Hometown Buffett for dinner and I was thinking about stories. I have some questions. Now, it might be that the more appropriate questions are:
1. Why are you at the Hometown Buffett the day after Thanksgiving?
2. Is everyone at the Hometown Buffett, you included, clinically obese?
But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about stories. Not about writing, the process of creating the stories, and not about us as writers, but about the little darlings themselves. They are all dressed up in their neatly pressed holiday clothes, shiny and new, ready to march out into the world. Who are they? What do we expect from them? Who owns them?
1. What do we expect our stories to do for us as writers? Are they hard working little moneymakers? Are they the ticket that gives us a new identity, and a cool one: Now you are a Writer. Are they the magic key that unlocks the door to the magic life of the writer, a life that never requires the use of an alarm clock again? Are stories simply the way we get someone to listen to us when we talk? Or is a story like the Alka-Selzer for writers, we have a large psychic burp burning in our guts, as if we’d had lunch at the Hometown Buffet, and we feel so much better when we can get it out?
2. What are they? Do they exist outside of the human mind? I don’t mean a book, I mean the story itself. Are stories tiny ripples on the big river of the collective unconscious, one story among millions that in whole define us as human? Are they dreams? Is the story the same, even if it is read differently, interpreted differently, by everyone who reads it? Or are stories plastic? We know animals talk to each other. Do they tell each other stories?
3. Does the story belong to the writer or to the reader? Or does the story belong to the tribe? Do stories conform to the Native idea of ownership—you can’t own the air, or the water, or the land, or the stories? Or are they products of our work, and we own their asses until 100 years have lapsed and the copyright goes away?
4. Do stories have a function in human society? Why do we love narrative so much? Is storytelling essential to mental health? (Or just mine?) Can stories kill? Can stories heal? What is the source of their power over us? What do we need so desperately? Why, in countries where writing the truth can get you sent to the gulag, hard labor in Siberia, the torture chambers, do writers keep writing the truth? Is what they are writing different from what we are writing? Does the intention change the story?
November 7, 2012
A Night at the Movies
A Night at the Movies
I couldn’t bear to watch the election returns last night, thinking Health Care Reform might be going under the knife, so I got a bag of Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs and Magic Mike at Wal-Mart.
Channing Tatum really can dance. He was hands down so much better than the rest of the strippers. That said, it was a sad, seedy movie, the way sex without love is always sad and seedy. You start with such high hopes!
We really need to do something about jobs for knuckleheaded boys, like my son and the other 20 yr olds with no skills or education, so they are not drawn into the creepy world of male exotic dancers. I don’t suppose that was the take-home message the movie producers intended, but maybe it was! MM did an excellent job of acting a corrupt soul.
I’ve noticed lately that I don’t agree with the movie critics much, and I’ve started to wonder about that. I adored Battleship and I adored Rock of Ages.
Who could possibly not like Battleship? Good-looking boys in Navy uniforms, big guns, bad guys getting butts whipped, Rhiannon with her finger on the trigger- she was a very authentic Navy girl, a nice little love story that ends happily. What is wrong with people that the critics panned this movie? This was an old-fashioned Saturday Matinee shoot out, and surely we aren’t all so sophisticated we don’t love a shoot-out? With the biggest guns in the world?
I also loved Rock of Ages, and oddly enough the hair and music didn’t seem dated at all! Maybe that’s because I was 25 in 1985? I knew the words to all the songs and sang along while the kid slid down in his seat and tried to look invisible. I forgive Tom Cruise for everything, all his weirdness, because this movie reminded me he is an absolutely frigging wonderful actor. Oddly enough, this movie was also about the old sex vs love conundrum, with loud guitars! I will ask again, what is wrong with people that this movie was panned?
But this last weekend I went with my kid to see Cloud Atlas. Hands down the best movie I’ve seen in years. I think with a really complicated story like this one, movies are the perfect medium. I was able to follow the shifting storylines easily. It was beautifully shot, beautifully acted- I can’t say enough about how rich and heartfelt this movie was. Oh, it was about love. I’m getting the idea there is a theme here! Oh, well. Romance writer. I know what is most important in the world. This morning I feel sick from eating half a bag of Cheetos, but at least my kid will get to keep his health insurance for a few more years.
I couldn’t bear to watch the election returns last night, thinking Health Care Reform might be going under the knife, so I got a bag of Cheetos White Cheddar Puffs and Magic Mike at Wal-Mart.
Channing Tatum really can dance. He was hands down so much better than the rest of the strippers. That said, it was a sad, seedy movie, the way sex without love is always sad and seedy. You start with such high hopes!
We really need to do something about jobs for knuckleheaded boys, like my son and the other 20 yr olds with no skills or education, so they are not drawn into the creepy world of male exotic dancers. I don’t suppose that was the take-home message the movie producers intended, but maybe it was! MM did an excellent job of acting a corrupt soul.
I’ve noticed lately that I don’t agree with the movie critics much, and I’ve started to wonder about that. I adored Battleship and I adored Rock of Ages.
Who could possibly not like Battleship? Good-looking boys in Navy uniforms, big guns, bad guys getting butts whipped, Rhiannon with her finger on the trigger- she was a very authentic Navy girl, a nice little love story that ends happily. What is wrong with people that the critics panned this movie? This was an old-fashioned Saturday Matinee shoot out, and surely we aren’t all so sophisticated we don’t love a shoot-out? With the biggest guns in the world?
I also loved Rock of Ages, and oddly enough the hair and music didn’t seem dated at all! Maybe that’s because I was 25 in 1985? I knew the words to all the songs and sang along while the kid slid down in his seat and tried to look invisible. I forgive Tom Cruise for everything, all his weirdness, because this movie reminded me he is an absolutely frigging wonderful actor. Oddly enough, this movie was also about the old sex vs love conundrum, with loud guitars! I will ask again, what is wrong with people that this movie was panned?
But this last weekend I went with my kid to see Cloud Atlas. Hands down the best movie I’ve seen in years. I think with a really complicated story like this one, movies are the perfect medium. I was able to follow the shifting storylines easily. It was beautifully shot, beautifully acted- I can’t say enough about how rich and heartfelt this movie was. Oh, it was about love. I’m getting the idea there is a theme here! Oh, well. Romance writer. I know what is most important in the world. This morning I feel sick from eating half a bag of Cheetos, but at least my kid will get to keep his health insurance for a few more years.
November 4, 2012
Denis Johnson and writing in blood
I’ve been listening to the panel discussions from the LA Times Festival of Books- the first one was a panel discussion on writing the exile and outsider. One of the panelists mentioned Denis Johnson’s motto about writing- Write yourself naked, from exile, in blood.
I really love his fiction, and I would have to say he does this exactly- he writes in blood, and not just naked- sometimes I think he rips open his chest and shows up his beating heart. How exactly does he wake up the next morning and get on the treadmill and then go to work? That’s what I’d like to know.
I’ve tried writing like this, and the thing is, when you write in blood? You have to open a vein to do it. Sometimes an artery. And I’m a woman, so I’m already fucking anemic!
What do you guys think? Do you have to give it in blood, to write anything with this kind of power? If we try to protect ourselves, go easy so there is something left at the end of the day, do we end up with fiction that you can skate across, and never feel? I fear this is so.
I really love his fiction, and I would have to say he does this exactly- he writes in blood, and not just naked- sometimes I think he rips open his chest and shows up his beating heart. How exactly does he wake up the next morning and get on the treadmill and then go to work? That’s what I’d like to know.
I’ve tried writing like this, and the thing is, when you write in blood? You have to open a vein to do it. Sometimes an artery. And I’m a woman, so I’m already fucking anemic!
What do you guys think? Do you have to give it in blood, to write anything with this kind of power? If we try to protect ourselves, go easy so there is something left at the end of the day, do we end up with fiction that you can skate across, and never feel? I fear this is so.
November 3, 2012
Cursing with the Master
I was looking for a quote about revenge and women for the new story, and along the way I came across a quote from Hamlet: ‘And where the offence is, let the great axe fall.’ Isn’t that great?
Then, while I was roaming around in a bookstore in Eureka, California, thinking about this quote, I found a pack of playing cards. These cards all contain a quote from one of Shakespeare’s plays (or, as I weirdly suspect, Christopher Marlowe’s plays!)
There was a pack of cards with regular quotes, but the lady behind the counter showed me the curses cards- !! Each card held a curse from one of the plays. I am determined to improve my cursing since reading these. Here are some of my favorites:
1) Tis such fools as you that makes the world full of ill-favored children. (As You Like It)
2) Doth thy other mouth call me? (The Tempest)
3) Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon! (Timon of Athens)
4) Eat my leek. (Henry V)
5) You are one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning (Coriolanus)
6) Villain, I have done thy mother (Titus Andronicus)
7) You show yourself highly fed and lowly taught (All’s Well that Ends Well)
8) You blocks, you stones, you worse than useless things! (Julius Ceaser)
9) To say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title, which is within a very little of nothing (All’s Well That Ends Well)
10) You are weaker than a woman’s tear, tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance, less valiant than the virgin in the night, and skilless as unpractis’s infancy. (Troilus and Cressida)
11) How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after. (Much Ado About Nothing)
12) The gold I give thee will I melt and pour down thy ill-uttering throat (Anthony and Cleopatra)
13) You are an index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts (Othello)
Then, while I was roaming around in a bookstore in Eureka, California, thinking about this quote, I found a pack of playing cards. These cards all contain a quote from one of Shakespeare’s plays (or, as I weirdly suspect, Christopher Marlowe’s plays!)
There was a pack of cards with regular quotes, but the lady behind the counter showed me the curses cards- !! Each card held a curse from one of the plays. I am determined to improve my cursing since reading these. Here are some of my favorites:
1) Tis such fools as you that makes the world full of ill-favored children. (As You Like It)
2) Doth thy other mouth call me? (The Tempest)
3) Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon! (Timon of Athens)
4) Eat my leek. (Henry V)
5) You are one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning (Coriolanus)
6) Villain, I have done thy mother (Titus Andronicus)
7) You show yourself highly fed and lowly taught (All’s Well that Ends Well)
8) You blocks, you stones, you worse than useless things! (Julius Ceaser)
9) To say nothing, to do nothing, to know nothing, and to have nothing, is to be a great part of your title, which is within a very little of nothing (All’s Well That Ends Well)
10) You are weaker than a woman’s tear, tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance, less valiant than the virgin in the night, and skilless as unpractis’s infancy. (Troilus and Cressida)
11) How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after. (Much Ado About Nothing)
12) The gold I give thee will I melt and pour down thy ill-uttering throat (Anthony and Cleopatra)
13) You are an index and obscure prologue to the history of lust and foul thoughts (Othello)
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