K.J. Stevens's Blog, page 3

Breaking

~from “Pilgrim’s Bay”

We’re at Sammy’s on 2nd Avenue. Sitting in the same ratty old booth we sit in every night from ten to midnight. We are drinking five-dollar pitchers of Lumber Lager Red.

     “Suckers are runnin’ in Polack Creek,” Jake says. His elbows are on the table, both hands on his beer.

     Kali’s playing with her hair. Twirling her brown locks round and round with her finger. She smells good, like she’s just showered, and I’m doing my best to take her all in without getting taken back in.

     “Jake, why do you have to say that?” she asks.

     “Say what?”

     “Polack,” she says, and takes a drink.

     “I call it ‘Polack’ because that’s its goddamned name,” he says.  

     “And that too,” Kali says. “You and all your goddamns. Ignorance. That’s what it is.”

     I’ve been waiting for this. For Kali to introduce us to her college knowledge. Since we’ve broken apart, she’s been attending classes three days a week so she can learn about life, she says. The good. The bad. The right and wrong. But Kali—as deep as she wants to be—is moving through life like the rest of us. Biding time on the surface, immersed in daily distractions so she’s not tempted to go deep—to the places where secrets are hidden.

     “Polack is a derogatory term, Jake.”

     Jake looks at me. Slowly shakes his head in disgust.

     We’ve called it Polack Creek since we were kids because that’s what the sign’s always said. POLACK CREEK. Painted in big black letters on a white metal sign mounted to an old railroad tie that’s stuck into the ground near the culvert that filters water through the cedar swamp. A sign put there by Bob Donakowski. A big, burly farmer who made his fortune playing the Michigan lottery. He hit it big. Made his millions. And bought as much property along Issacson Bay as he could so that it would never be developed. Zoned for housing. Changed. And that was just fine with me and Jake because it was one of our favorite places to fish.

     “Kali,” I say, “Don’t go off on Jake. We’re not here for anything, but this.”

     I raise my glass to toast. Kali smiles.

     “And what is this, Aden?”

     “This is us. Friends in a booth, drinking.”

     “Ah yes,” Kali says. “Once again, I have the pleasure of watching boys drown their sorrows.”

     “I’m not a boy,” Jake snaps. “And I’m not drowning sorrows.”

     He raises his glass to mine.

     “A toast!” he shouts.

     Reluctantly, Kali raises her glass. Jake flashes his crooked smile.

     “To ignorant Poles everywhere!” he hollers.

     Jake and I race to the bottom. Slam our glasses to the table. Kali lowers hers and moves it around in big wet circles. She looks at me, but our eyes do not meet. She stares through me toward the jukebox, but I am used to it. This my punishment. For leaving her. For not saving us. For our loss. And slowly, it is killing me.

     She leans forward. Her long hair touches the table.

     “Jake, you do realize that you’re a Polack, don’t you?”

     “Goddamned right I do!” he beams.

     I know I shouldn’t, but the beer’s reached my belly, entered my bloodstream and started its run.

     “Jake is thee finest goddamned Polack I know!” I say.

     Jake winks.

     “You’re not so bad yourself,” he says and then their eyes meet. She is pleading with him without words, without movement, with only her eyes. She wants all of this to stop. But I know better, and Jake knows better and by now Kali should know better than to ask. All she can do, all she can hope for, is that we’ll slow down. Jake, in the only way he knows how, grants her silent request.

     “There’ll be no more Polacks and no more goddamns. We don’t want to disappoint sweet Kali.”

     He shakes his finger at the ceiling.

     “And we mustn’t forget. The big man is watching.”

     Kali bites her lip and twirls her hair with fury as she watches people walk into the bar.

     “Jake and God have a lot in common,” I say.

     She sighs, turns toward me.

     “Something tells me I shouldn’t ask, but what is it that Jake and God have in common?”

     Jake leans forward.

     “We’re both carpenters!” he shouts, and he pounds his fist on the table. Kali doesn’t flinch.

     “To carpenters, I say!”

     Jake is a carpenter. In fact, he’s so good at it that instead of going to college after high school, or taking over his old man’s shoe store, he built a workshop, bought a van, filled it with wood and tools, and became known as Pilgrim’s Bay’s very own Woodwork on Wheels.

     I raise my glass. Jake raises his. We wait for Kali to raise hers, but she snubs us.

     “To Jake and God!” I say, “Creators both!”

     “It’s a shame,” Jake says. “Nobody giving a shit about God no more. A damned shame. People got distractions. And they’re moving farther away from God every day. Goddamned people. Everyone’s losing God—”

     He stops. Breathes deeply.  

     “When’s the last time you went to church?” Kali asks.

     “The van, the wood, and Polack Creek. Those are my church.”

     He grabs the pitcher, fills our glasses, and we are quiet for a time with our thoughts and our drinking. Jake sits and smiles into the round flickering light that dangles above our booth. Kali drinks and sighs. I sip my beer and feel good. We’re one pitcher into the night, Eddie Vedder reminds us that we’re still Alive, and I’m glancing at a blonde playing pool.

     Her hair is straight and shoulder length. Her body is slender, but full of shape and curve. Her cheeks are dimpled when she smiles, and she’s smiling a lot. Twice so far, I think she’s smiled at me.

     “That dame’s a scorcher,” Jake says, his attention gone from booth light to blonde.

     “A dame?” Kali asks. “A scorcher? Dammit Jake, you’re sick. A sick little boy.”

     I take my eyes off the blonde and chime in.

     “Jake’s not sick. He’s just gone from looking at one light to another.”

     Jake nods toward the blonde.

     “And, Miss Kali, you forget one crucial detail.”

     “What’s that?” she asks.

     “The big carpenter upstairs made that little angel. All light and glory. Hallelujah!”

     He laughs and drinks. Condensation beads and trickles down his glass. Kali looks at me, our eyes meet, and we wander into each other for only a few seconds, but long enough so that everything comes rushing back—moments shared, secrets known, the sorrow and the pity, the desire and the resentment, and of course our great loss. She is the place I once belonged and there’s nothing I can do but break the gaze, look away, and begin forgetting again because I cannot go back and be inside her again.

     I stand. Dig into my pockets for change.

     “What are you doing?” she asks.

     “Jukebox,” I say.  

     Jake tops our glasses. Empties the pitcher. Kali rises and takes it from him. Glides away to the bar.

     “Any requests?” I shout after her.

     She turns and smiles and flips me the bird.

     Sammy’s is usually dead, but tonight there are extra bodies. College kids wearing college sweatshirts and college hats. Central Michigan University. Albion. U of M. I can’t imagine why they’ve all come to Sammy’s. There are other places closer to where they’re from. Clubs with hips shaking and bodies rocking to pounding bass. Cover-charging, three-level joints serving Jell-O-shots in tiny plastic cups and watered down booze in test tubes. All of it sold by beautiful waiters and waitresses flirting for dollars.

     At the jukebox two girls scan through the music catalog. Their long dark hair is pulled into ponytails. They reek of perfume and wear identical red sweatshirts.

     “Look at this garbage,” one groans.

     I move closer to them, jingling change.

     “Excuse me. Can I squeeze in there and play some music?”

     They crane their necks to look at me.

     Very pretty girls. Experts at camouflage and concealment. Made up nice with fake tans, Revlon, and Maybelline. They scowl at me, then smile at each other.

     “Excuse us,” one says. “That’s what we’re trying to do. You’re going to have to wait until we’ve made our selections.”

     They turn back to the jukebox. I stand there steaming. Jake appears at my side. Looks at the girls. Gives me an elbow and a wink.

     “What’s taking so long?” he asks.

     “Waiting for these young ladies,” I say.  “They seem to be having a most difficult time with their music selections.”

     “Most difficult?” Jake asks.

     “Yes. Most difficult.”

     The girls turn and look at us. On the front of their shirts it says, Success is getting IT. Greeks get IT. Me and Jake move closer to them. Squint at the writing on their chests. They back away.

     “You really think they get it, Jake?”

     He gulps his beer. Burps and smiles wide.

     “Oh, fuck yes they do. These Greek chicks get it all the time.”

     The girls shove by us and walk away.

     Jake takes my change. Puts it in the jukebox. Punches in the numbers. We’ve been here so many times that we have the music memorized.

     #1005—Black by Pearl Jam

     #1070—Take a Little Piece of my Heart by Janis Joplin

     #0771—People are Strange by The Doors

     Kali’s back at the booth, pouring beer. We move through the crowd toward her, bumping and brushing against bodies and every time I touch someone, I feel I’m losing bits and pieces of myself. It’s a familiar feeling. Quick like lightning, but intimate and lasting all the same. I wonder how many others feel this way—that with every connection and bit of contact, we make—we give ourselves away.  

     “Have fun, flirting?” Kali asks.

     I sit next to her. Compliment her the only way I know how.

     “Those are a couple of grade-A bitches, Kali. Not like you. You’re one of the nice ones.”

     Jake stretches out in the booth. Puts his feet up and yawns.

     “Kali’s not nice,” he says.

     “That’s right,” Kali adds.

     She slides away from me.

     “I’m a bitch, too. I just haven’t persuaded anyone I’m bitchy enough for them.”

     I lean forward and rest my elbows on the table. I look into my glass and stare into the beer until a foamy face appears. It has an elongated head. Hollow eyes. A wide grin. I think about how it won’t be long before I’m to the bottom again and suddenly, I feel her. Kali, the girl I used to know. She is as far away from me as she can get in the booth but radiating heat and warming me all the same. She smells so damn good that all I want to do is bury my face in her hair and just breathe. I want to hold her and stay that way for always and because of this I lift the glass, take a long

 drink and wash everything away, down deep, until it reaches the knot in my gut and drowns.

     “What about your little angel at the pool table?” Kali asks. “I bet she’s the real deal. Pretty, funny and smart.”

     “Bet she’s a goddamned genius,” Jake says, as he slides his half-empty glass across the table. “A goddamned genius. Just like all those other college girls.”

     I top off his glass and mine. Jake talks more about the suckers in Polack Creek. He’ll go tonight after the bar and shine the water, he says. He’s got a miner’s helmet that his grandpa used to wear when he worked the copper mine in the U.P. It’s good luck, he says, but the light on top makes it practical too. He will walk out onto the end of the big culvert, lean over the edge, steady himself, and listen to crickets and frogs and the sounds deer make when navigating the swamp in the dark. And then, when everything feels just right, when there is no other time but the now a man feels when he is just drunk enough and free enough and alone enough, holding a spear in the dark, he’ll turn on the light and see the thick run of fish just a few feet beneath him. All of them blasting upstream to the places he’ll later find and catch them. Spearing them in the head while he balances on log jams. Snatching them barehanded from hollows under the bank. And the more Jake talks about suckers in the dark, the more I realize he’s better than the rest of us. He is stronger. More durable. The kind of person that lasts. Kali, I can tell, senses this too and she raises her glass.

     “To Jake and fishing,” she says.  

     The three of us clink glasses. Drink, sip and spill. I look to the pool table. There isn’t anyone playing. The blonde’s gone to a corner to talk with her Greek, pony-tailed friends. And there are more Greeks too. Frat boys and sorority girls standing around everywhere sporting their Alphas, Omegas, Sigmas and Pis.

     “Let’s shoot pool,” Jake asks.

     Kali sighs.

     “You boys and your games. Why can’t we sit and talk?”

     I rise from the booth. My vision whirls. I try focusing on Jake as he carries his glass and the pitcher toward the pool table, but he looks like a different man. It’s as if I’ve never seen him before. Dirty jeans covered in wood dust. Faded black shirt with the sleeves torn off. Steel-toed work boots dragging frayed leather laces behind. I feel I’m lost in unfamiliar space. Moving around in someone else’s body. Spending time with someone else’s friends. Seeing everything for the first time again.

     I guzzle my beer as I approach the pool table. There are four quarters sitting on the rail. Bar etiquette says I’m to wait for the person who has the quarters up because they have control of the table. I look around at the Greeks. Most have their backs toward the table. Some look through me. The two girls in red sweatshirts stare at me and scowl.

     “Is this an open table?” I ask, loud enough so everyone can hear. Nobody answers.

     “Fuck these preppies,” Jake says. “Let’s play.”

     I take the quarters off the rail and shove them into the slots. The balls fall, rumble and roll. The blonde steps up.

     “Those quarters are mine.”

     I take four quarters out of my pocket and put them on the rail.

     “You can use these,” I say. “Besides, I asked if the table was open.”

     “You didn’t ask me. You stepped over here like you own the place, took my quarters and took the table.”

     “With the amount of time and money we spend here, we sorta do own the place.”

     I take a pool stick from the rack. Call to Jake and Kali.

     “Who wants to break?”

     The blonde waits. I walk by her and rack the balls. Jake sidles up to her.

     “I’m Jake. That’s Kali. And this—” he says, shaking a finger at me, “is Aden.”

     She comes to me. Takes the stick from my hands.

     “I’m Maggie. My quarters. My table. I break.”

     Kali chalks her stick. Jake walks to the bar and orders a round of shots.

     I rack the balls and watch Maggie. She isn’t wearing any makeup. Or at least, very little. She has pleasant green eyes, thin lips, a fair complexion. There is something about her that strikes me. Makes me nervous, self-conscious, aware. I center the balls, remove the rack and watch as she leans over the table to break.  A tiny silver cross falls out of her shirt. It dangles from a delicate chain, spins and sparkles above the green felt.

     “Kamikazees!” Jake cheers. He hands each of us a shot. “How about a toast?” he says to me.

     The small glass feels big and heavy in my hand. The bar buzzes and swirls. The people, the lights, the barstools and the booths—everything—moves round and round, and once again I am anchored to the center of my own dysfunctional universe going down, down, down. Sinking to the bottom as everything on the surface grows in layers and levels and I find myself floating farther and farther away from any ideas of having control in this world. I take a deep breath and toast.

     “To playing the game,” I say.  

     I am a weak voice aiming farther than it can carry. I fall on deaf ears and cannot be seen by all the eyes around me as they have gone glassy and glazed. And as I look around Sammy’s in search of a feeling—an idea, a spark, something new—that will rise from the deep and change me, I see myself in the mirror behind the bar. A boyish looking man. A red-faced stranger. Just another person that’s gone heavy under the chin and gotten thicker at the bottom than at the top. Getting older and weaker and slower, so that even the shiniest things can only temporarily heal the heart. Maggie moves behind me. Toward me. Her silver cross flickers in the light. She touches it with her long, white fingers. Tucks it into her shirt. And I feel like I’ve seen her thousands of times.

     Jake swears up and down that suckers are running in Polack Creek. That it’s one of the most beautiful things a man can see. Kali laughs, begins to relax, and though she looks happy I can tell she’s just as lost as Jake and me. We are wasting our lives in Sammy’s Bar in Pilgrim’s Bay. Drinking away at quiet desperation until it feels like contentment. Numbing reality so that the true, fragile lines of happiness are impossible to see. But none of that matters. Not now. Not most days. I stare at the triangle of balls—colors and numbers, organization and form given to small spheres floating on a green sea—and I wait for the break. My guts roll over and acid burns my throat. My arms and legs tingle. My hands shake, but just a little.

     We down more shots. Pitchers are filled. Emptied. We consume the offerings. Sedate ourselves with distraction so that whatever rises is kept down. Weighted. Anchored where it belongs.

     Maggie smells like a spring morning. She is close enough to touch, to have and to hold.

     “I’ll let you break this time,” she says. And it feels like she means everything.

~ KJ

The 45th Parallel

We are halfway between the equator and the North Pole. At least that’s what the sign says alongside the road. It is big and green with white block lettering, and it is mounted to two eight-by-eights that are cemented into the ground. Anyone traveling US 23, the single paved vein that connects our harbor to the rest of the world, sees this sign and eight miles later they see another. Pilgrim’s Bay, Michigan, it says, A Warm and Friendly Port. But don’t let that saccharine slogan fool you. The people here are as deep and unpredictable as the mighty Pilgrim’s Bay River that brings ships in, sends ships out, and makes Lake Huron rise and fall.

Pilgrim’s Bay feels safe, but accidents happen all the time. People are found face down in the river, belly up in streams, bloated and unrecognizable in the big lake. Some are found shot dead during deer hunting season, burned up in their house, blind, or fish shanty. Others die while cleaning their shotguns. More often than not, alcohol is involved. But according to our local statistics, Pilgrim’s Bay is a great place to live. We have a decent school system. A low cost of living. We’ve never had a murder and we don’t have much crime. We are quiet folks, living quiet lives in a lakeshore town. Once, we were lumberjacks. Now, we work in the steel mill, the paper plant, on the boats, or in the quarry. But some of us don’t work at all. We get by on unemployment. Social security. Handouts. And the land.

Besides shipwrecks—we are a bit of a tourist attraction for divers, shipwreck hunters, and Great Lakes historians—the only time Pilgrim’s Bay has made headlines was when Newsday listed it as one of the top ten places to live, if you’re an alcoholic. But I’m not sure we’re all drunks. I think our headlining has to do with the churches we’ve forgotten, the gods we’ve lost, the lives we’ve taken for granted, and the way we’ve given up on love.

~ from “Pilgrim’s Bay”

on the opening to “fading”

I write slowly. Not because I’m blocked or unsure—but because I want the words to match the feelings in my gut and the images in my head. I usually have a few stories going at once. I work them, leave them, come back.

They always start with an image—a scene—but most importantly, with a feeling. A person seems all sorts of things during the day, but for some reason, only certain moments stir something. Those are the ones that stand out.

That’s how fading came about.

It’s about a man carrying on with life. Walking the dog with his wife. While secretly battling something. Something is off. The world around him is unreliable. Unfamiliar.

Below is the latest version of the opening scene. It’s unfinished, but I thought I’d share it as part of the process.

~ KJ

fading

A step ahead of Victoria. Struggling to remember what she’s said.

An art walk. A mural. Paintings by the water?

Jiminy, our lemon-white Beagle, pulls ahead. She’s on the hunt—has already gobbled up a grasshopper, slurped a Roly-poly off the sidewalk, and chewed up two dried worms. Up ahead, dragonflies are clustered on the sidewalk. We get closer. They don’t move. I stop and hand the leash to Victoria.  

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Dragonflies.”

“What?”

She looks past me, straining to see.

“I don’t see anything.”

Jiminy pulls her toward a girthy maple. Sniffs and digs in the grass. Victoria pulls back.

“No!” she shouts.

Jiminy doesn’t care. Yesterday, she ate a dead baby bird in the very same spot.

I kneel a few feet from the dragonflies. They are brilliant green, metallic black, shimmery purple. Twenty-eight of them have encircled something. Their translucent wings, veined like stained glass beat in unison. There’s a sudden change in air pressure. My ears muffle, pop, open again. Like I’m on a plane.  Then, I can hear it—a soft clattering, like tiny bones, ticking in rhythm. But then the ringing starts. And tingling cheeks. And tunnel vision. And I’m closing my eyes for long, slow breaths—in all the way, out all the way, in all the way, out all the way—to try and ward off impending doom.

stay asleep

A few casts from the dock. A blue spinner. Into water going dark. Temperature drops. Thunder grumbles at the red-and-white pontoon trolling the middle of the lake and at the guy with the farmer tan buzzing past on a wave runner. Still hot, but bearable. The wind disappears. Water goes silent. Even the birds have stopped. And the flies bite.

Let Nature do her thing. She knows best—always ahead. No matter what we think we know from satellite systems, high-resolution modeling, and artificial intelligence. She wins. Always will. The most motivating muse is like that—unpredictable.

Tired tonight. The real stuff that comes from work and thought and trying not to think about how making words is growing more important each day. It comes at night. When the fat gray cat—Little Rhino—meows then leaps from floor to headboard. And her tail brushes my forehead—back and forth—a soft, comforting pendulum, ticking off our time. When the dog barks in his sleep and I hear it in my dreams. As the kids take turns sneaking down our creaky stairs for their midnight snacks. In my wife’s deep sighs when she changes position and explores the world she lives without me. A break finally from all we ask of her.

There’s a lot more left here. Can’t you see it? Do you feel it?

The threats have passed. Waves are back. Cedar boughs sway. Robins are calling to one another. And I’m satisfied. There’s no sense picking it apart now. An evening like this is unremarkable. Not worth noting. And that, I think, will help me stay asleep tonight.

~ KJ

second day of summer

Need to start writing about real life. Mine. I’d sell more books.

People are asking if DEVOTION is real. It’s not. That disappoints them. The ache, pain, and loss—that engages. Pulls. Gets people digging into their own layers. But when I tell them the stories are only stories, they deflate. They’re hoping the narrators and characters are walking around earth, making their way through mess.

In his Notebook, Mark Twain wrote: “Write what you know. It will always be original because no one else knows exactly what you know.”

He’s not the only one that’s said it. But that’s the one I remember. And memory beats reality.

The stories in DEVOTION are memories. They have to be. Just like the rest of this. All this waking and working, relating and fighting, figuring and fucking, dreaming and losing, guessing and winning, just to make ends meet. The makings to make everything work are otherworldly. Physics and religion be damned.

I woke without my wife beside me this morning. A punctuation mark on a dream I’d returned from. She had a baby on her hip. Was with another man. They were in a driveway of a home in a neighborhood from another time. I was in the house. Mug in my hand, coffee nearly gone. Watching her. She was taking all she is somewhere else. So, when I got up–here in reality–I got up and out of bed as quickly as I could. I stumbled downstairs. She was outside with the dogs, but had just come inside. I was waiting. “Miss me already?” she asked. I laughed. We hugged.

There are no more babies for us. We’re in that weird spot. Kids aging out of our care. Out of our water, our food, our gas, our electricity. Forming their own plans. Narrating their own stories. Picking flashbacks and flashforwards. Using coded language. Choosing complex characters and complex situations and complex worlds, when all they really need are simple sentences about their daily life mixed in with a little weather.

Another hot one today. Don’t care though. I’m going to hit the hammock at the lake. Read. Then wade in the water. Pick rocks from the bottom of the lake and stack them against the break wall. Feel the hot sun on my neck, my back, my face. Watch minnows peck at my legs. Consider how to write a story about a man moving closer to the end of his life. Getting quieter, braver, stronger, so he can be more supportive of the characters he’s surrounded himself with—and loves so much.

~ KJ

shake it out

Early traffic. Cars shooshing by. Thankful the window’s open. Weather allows it—for now. Rain’s coming. Depends on the slant. How the drops fall. I’m hoping straight down so we keep the air moving in, through, out.

Drove past the food bank yesterday. Dozens outside. I didn’t stop. Just like everyone else with it better than most. Some stood in line. Some paced or leaned, smoking. A few clustered in small groups—smoking. People walked out carrying white plastic bags, one each—smoking. Like they’d just grabbed odds and ends at Meijer and were heading home.

I doubt they’re writing about me this morning. But maybe one is. The backpack guy with a bushy, red beard, maroon knit cap, orange hunting coat, heavy work pants, army boots. Looked like a creative type. A lot like Andy Hull from Manchester Orchestra and the Shake it Out video days, before jumping rope became a religion and he lost fifty pounds. I can see backpack guy observing, pondering, snatching meaning from the ether and scrawling it down onto paper. Maybe I’m in there—just another chubby white guy driving past in a nice car. Heading home to his nice house. Hating me a little. I wouldn’t blame him. If I didn’t know me, I’d hate me too.

A grown man with his silly lunch routine—a hotdog, or bologna sandwich, or a PB&J. Then, a walk with my wife. Dogs dragging us along as we talk about the kids, work, dinner. And always, I receive the same reward. Turds, because one of them has to shit, every single time.

It’s a good life. Not the one I planned. Plenty of zigging when I should’ve zagged. Down when I should’ve gone up. Bad decisions. Or into bad places because of someone else’s bad call. It’s not over. There’s still time for things to go wrong. Tomorrow I could be in line at the bank. Or at the church, holding out my hands.

But for now, I’m here. Banging out morning words to clear away the sleepless night, shake off the past, set aside plans for tomorrow, and revel in the first drops that have come. Big, round, heavy ones. Straight down. Hitting hard on the sill of this big open window.

~ KJ

our thursday best

Nothing is as important as these words. There’s weight here. We carry it. They shove it aside. Give it to us. But we run with it. Lovingly. We want this burden of life. Existence. We took the challenge. We’re here to see it through. The end is our choosing. We’re writing it now. If you don’t believe it, you will.

Nothing dark about it. The stories are sad, but they are not. Reality is tough. It isn’t what’s on the surface. It’s deep below. Guiding us. Teaching us to fear not. Fear nothing. To learn to swim, to dive, to rise, to float, to fly. Glide. That’s what we’re doing. Facing it. Pushing it. Fighting it. We cannot be stopped. Even when we’re slowed, we’re at it harder and more thoughtfully than the others. Wind up all the toys you want, all they do is make noise and distract us from the real work that needs to be done—honing the senses, strengthening the spirit.

Nonsense like this can be easily explained away. It’s dreary today. All gray. Drizzle. Trees weep. Birds are silenced. Invisible fingers tap the windows. Ghosts are poking me. They know I’ve been thinking thoughts that have no real bearing on where it is we need to be. So, they’ve been at it, prodding me, waking me—a little at a time—so that it’s not a shock. They know by now that’s unnecessary. It doesn’t work. The small signs are what catch the attention of those devoted to making meaning.

So, let’s put on our Thursday best. Pretend. Do all those things that make sense to so many. But let’s not forget why we’re here. This work. These words. This weight only we know how to carry.

~ KJ

a little about “burying mr. beasley”

A few years back, our family ferret—Mr. Beasley—died. He was my daughter’s best friend. He was a pain sometimes—stinky, messy—but he was also playful and loyal. He loved us, and we loved him.

When he passed, my daughter and I buried him in the backyard. It was sad. A quiet moment we shared—separately, but together. That moment stuck with me. It became the seed for the story burying mr. beasley, which appears in DEVOTION.

The story, though, is very different from reality. In it, a father and daughter bury a ferret too. But for them, it’s not just about the pet. It’s about the wife and mother who’s recently died. The burial is a way to grieve, to remember, to stay tethered. The daughter speaks about earthworms and survival. The father tries to keep it together. Both of them doing what they can to keep going. To be okay.

It’s a story about loss, yes. But also love. And hope. About being devoted—moving forward, even when it hurts.

Here’s the story in its earliest form—a poem:

Burying the Ferret

Magic

in tulips and top soil

and earthworms

split into halves

by the shovel

as I dig a hole

next to the flower garden

for the Saucony shoebox

my five-year-old daughter

has put him in.

She closes her eyes

and kneels

and we pray silently,

just as we’ve done

for Bucky the goldfish,

Teddy the cat,

Bobsled the parakeet,

and Jawbreaker the gerbil.

Only this time

it’s for Mr. Beasely,

the ferret I did not want

because of the stink and poop and pee,

but that I knew was perfect

for our misfit family

the moment he climbed

into the pocket

of my Central Michigan University sweatshirt

at the pet store.

Just two bodies

alone together

on a big ball of dirt

zipping through space

and time,

trying not to be alone,

far, far away

from everything we’ve come to know

but closer than ever

to where we began—

what made us.

I shovel dirt onto our friend.

My little girl buries her head

into my thigh

and cries

and the lump rises

and grows hard

in my throat

and no matter how hard I fight it

a tear comes.

~ KJ

drinking buddies

This is an excerpt from “Pilgrim’s Bay,” a novella about rusted-out hometowns, quiet tragedy, and the things we carry that no one else can see.

Me, Jake, and Kali meet up day-after-day. At Sammy’s Bar. Five dollar pitchers from ten to midnight. Pearl Jam. The Doors. Janis Joplin on the jukebox. There are other artists, but we don’t care. We know what we like. And we like where we are.

“Suckers are runnin’ in Polack Creek,” Jake says.

“Why do you have to say Polack?” Kali asks.

“I call it Polack because that’s its goddamned name.”

…She sees through me. Toward the jukebox. And blows smoke at dirty ceiling tiles. I am used to this. Her disappointment. And the solid knot of regret that tightens and burns in my gut. It is my punishment. For leaving her. For not saving us. For our loss. And slowly, it is killing me.

Pilgrim’s Bay is Available now at Amazon.

observe and report

May 27, 2025 – 6:37 am

I want to write what sells. I really do. Who wouldn’t want that? But that’s not what comes out. The words that end up in your brain are what I’m finding in the ether. It’s not for me to explain. The hidden magic brings the meaning. Even now, early morning, looking out at the lake—so calm, deceiving—I cannot decipher how I’m seeing below the glassy surface into green water. There are bass and perch, snails and crayfish, lost lures, discarded bottles, and a rifle wrapped in a rug. Down there for years. As the result of nefarious behavior. I see it. I know there’s a story there. A familiar one. It’s come up before.

The rifle in the rug. When Aden and Jake were dragging hooks along the bottom of Thunder Bay River in search of answers they couldn’t handle if they found them. The live in Pilgrim’s Bay. Fiction. A book released years ago, then picked up by RedRaw, a publisher in the UK, and released as Black.

I wonder what it is about that story that encouraged an editor to take a chance on such a dark little book. But then I stop my wondering. I don’t want to know. If I did, I would spoil my writing and then I’d write toward that end—to get the result—become the type of writer that churns out the same story over and over again.

Knowing what you want—writing to fill your belly, quench your thirst, ease your aches—that’s cheating. I’d rather peer into the lake and share what I see under the surface where boats float and ducks swim. I want to get to work. Dive deeper. Drop enough weight so the lines sink, and we drag up what’s hidden up and then hold it for you to see. Because that’s what this is all about. Getting up and at it. Observing and reporting. Getting it together. Into simple letters. So you can do the feeling.

~ KJ