Remember This Heartbeat ... For It Is the Beginning of Always
I received a few emails asking if my snippet of my new novel was its beginning.
I realized perhaps I should give you a taste of the start.
“I held an atlas in my lap,
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere,
everywhere,
everywhere.”
- Warsan Shire
“For Man there is no being good, merely no present opportunity to bebad.”
– Sentient
It isalways something of a bother to time date these entries.
You see, Ihave hopscotched along realities and possibilities for so long that I shouldhave mental whiplash.
In a time yet to be, a strangefellow with the stranger name of Snoop Dog told me: ‘You’ve got to go backin Time if you want to move forward.’
Childhood is pretty far back,isn’t it?
So. let’sstart there, shall we? For as long as I can remember, I have heard the Voice.Not voices, mind you. I am crazy. Just not that crazy.
If youare religious, you might be thinking Isaiah 30:21 Whether You Turn Right orLeft, Your Ears Will Hear a Voice Behind You, Saying, This is The Way; Walk inIt.
No, Inever thought the Voice was God’s since it was female. One of the first thingsGod made was Man. If God was female, the first thing She would have made wouldhave been chocolate.
The Voiccwas always faint. Sometimes nearly loud enough to understand a word or two …but not quite. It was quite maddening.
In somenightmares, the Voice sounded louder if I took one way or lower if I tookanother. The nightmares went better if I went along down the loud path. But notalways. I guess that fearful uncertainty was what made it a nightmare.
Whatcould a kid have nightmares about, you ask? I was an orphan at St. Marok’sin New Orleans. If you were a native of the “Twilight City,” that lastsentence would explain everything. Of course, the radio and newspapers beingfull of Hitler steamrolling all across Europe did not exactly fill my head withvisions of sugar plumbs as dance partners.
Besides,the waking hours in St. Marok’s were nightmare enough. Located in one of themost dangerous parts of the French Quarter, it received no church or cityfunding. How Headmaster Stearns kept the place running was a mystery to me. Whywe were all malnourished and hungry was not.
Only theprettiest of the girls and most handsome of the boys found enough food on theirplates. The rest of us were not envious. Those orphans soon disappeared.
The talkwas that Stearns sold them to the different “Houses of Pleasure” allaround us. Was it true? Who knew? I just knew I was glad I was nothing special.
I kept tothe middle of the pack. The scared, dumborphans hunched in the far back. They may as well have hung a sign around theirnecks in red paint: ‘Don’t pick on me.’ What bully could resist that,right?
I wassmarter than that. Too smart … and stubborn. I refused to do less than my bestin all the tests. That particular bit of brilliance on my part shone aspotlight on me for all the dim-witted but burly bullies.
It alsobrought me to the attention of Sister Ameal and let me know that the Voicecould do something that scared me to the bone.
Thatfateful morning, I heard a low buzzing in my head as I started down the secondstory stairs to my algebra class. Suddenly, my whole body twisted sharply to myright smack up against the wooden railing without my willing it.
Swish!
DonnyJenkins flew past me as he missed the shove he had aimed at my back. He tumbledawkwardly down the stairs to land with his head bent all wrong. I did not haveto be a doctor to know he was dead.
Down onthe first floor, Headmaster Stearns roared, “Mr. Blaine, what did you just do?”
Now, whatelse was wrong with me? The Voice was bad enough. Now, this?
My headstill spinning from having lost control of my body to some outside force, Isaid the first thing to come to me. “Gotout of his way, sir.”
A few ofthe knuckleheads behind me chuckled at that. Stearns was not amused. I cursedat myself for not thinking before I spoke.
“Youthink that funny, Mr. Blaine?”
I forcedout of a fear-thick throat, “N-No, sir.”
“Indeednot, young man. You have just bought yourself a one-way trip to the reformschool with that stunt.”
“No, hehas not, Stearns!” a harsh voice snapped from the open front door.
I lookeddown and saw for the first time the wiry body of Sister Ameal. It was an oddname for a nun, so I looked it up. I spent a lot of time in the library. I meanwhen you were threatened there at least they whispered.
Ameal wasa parish in Coimbra, Portugal. Maybe she was originally from that country, Tome, she did not look Portuguese, but I was hardly a world traveler … at leastnot then.
“Time is not a line but a dimension, like thedimensions of space. If you can bend space, you can bend time also, and if youknew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in timeand exist in two places at once.”
– Sentient
